Woman free

NOTES, &c. (continued 2)

Reading edition

Par. 9. “... There has already been a provision in the Indian Penal Code, passed more than thirty years ago, that a man having sexual intercourse with his own wife, with or without her consent, she being under the age of ten years, shall be considered guilty of the offence of rape, and shall be liable to transportation for life, or to rigorous or simple imprisonment for ten years.”

Par. 10. “From this it follows that, under the Penal Code a man having sexual intercourse with his own wife, with or without her consent, if she is above ten years of age, shall not be 96considered to have committed the offence of rape. But the Act that has just been passed, in amendment of the above provision in the Penal Code, raises the age of consent from ten to twelve years, and provides that a man having sexual intercourse with his own wife, even with her consent, shall be considered to be guilty of the offence of rape, if the wife be of any age under twelve completed years. This is all the change that has been made in the law.”

Par. 11. “It having been ascertained, from various sources, that in some parts of the country husbands cohabit with their wives before they have attained to the age of twelve years, and even before they have arrived at puberty, the result of such intercourse being in many cases to cause injury to the health, and even danger to the life of the girls, and to generate internal maladies which make them miserable throughout their lives, and such a state of things having come to the notice of Government, they have considered it their duty to put a stop to it, and this is the object of the present legislation.”

Par. 12. “The law does not interfere with the age at which a girl may be married, but simply prohibits sexual intercourse with her by her husband before she is twelve years of age.”

Par. 13. “It is therefore incumbent upon all husbands and their guardians (if they are very young and inexperienced lads) to be very careful that sexual intercourse does not take place until the girl-wife has passed the age of twelve years. It will also be the duty of the guardians of the girl-wife not to allow her husband to cohabit with her until she has attained that age.”

Par. 17. “... The Mahomedan law (i.e., religious law) distinctly sanctions consummation of marriage only when the wife has reached puberty, and has besides attained such physical development as renders her fit for sexual intercourse, and it is not imperative upon a Mahomedan husband to consummate marriage with his wife when she is under the age of twelve years. Even in those rare cases in which the wife attains to puberty and the necessary physical development before the age of twelve, a Mahomedan husband may, without infringing any canon of the Mahommedan Ecclesiastical Law, abstain from consummating his marriage with her until she attains that age.

Par. 18. “The above will clearly show that the Act recently 97passed by the Legislature does not, in any way, interfere with the Mahomedan religion, and no Mahomedan husband will be considered to have committed a sin if he abstains from consummating marriage with his wife before she is twelve years of age.”

(The pamphlet is published, as aforesaid, by the Mahomedan Literary Society of Calcutta, of which the patron is the Hon. Sir Charles A. Elliott, K.C.S.I., C.I.E., and the president Prince Mirza Jahan Kadar Bahadur (of the Oudh family), and is signed by the secretary, Nawab Abdool Luteef Bahadur, C.I.E.; Calcutta, 16 Taltollah, 22nd June, 1891.)

The italics, as above, exist in the original (with the exception of those in Par. 3), and serve, singularly enough, to point for us a moral very much deeper than that intended. It is a happy fact that British feeling, supported by the growing sentiment of the more intelligent and educated of the native population, has effected even so slight an amelioration of law and custom, and we may hope for and press forward to further improvement. Though the utterance quoted above is only that of the Mahomedan section, it is, of course, understood that the law does not apply or point to them alone, but to all the peoples and sects of India; and that the approval of this legislation is also general among the enlightened of those other creeds. (See end of Note XVII., 8.)

Singular confirmatory evidence as to the distressing prevalence of this child-marriage is incidentally given in the following paragraph from the Times of 31st March, 1892:—

“A correspondent of the Times of India mentions some odd 98instances of minor difficulties which have occurred in the working of the amended Factory Act, which came into force in India at the commencement of the present year. The limit of age for ‘full-timers’ in factories is fixed at fourteen years, and as very few native operatives know their children’s ages, or even their own, the medical officer has, in passing lads and girls for work, to judge the age as best he can—generally, as in the case of horses, by examining their teeth. If he concludes that they are under fourteen, he reduces them to ‘half-timers.’ In one Bombay mill recently a number of girls were thus sent back as under age who were actually mothers, and several boys who were fathers were also reduced; and one of the latter was the father, it is said, of three children. The case of these lads is particularly hard, for, with a wife and child, or perhaps children, to support, life, on the pay of a ‘half-timer,’ must be a terrible struggle.”

Lest it should be objected that such abuses—with their consequences—as have been instanced in India, are peculiar to that country or civilisation, and that their discussion has therefore no bearing on our practices in England, and the physical consequences ensuant here, it will be salutary to recall what has been our own national conduct in this matter of enforcement of immature physical relations on girl children or “wives” within times of by no means distant date. Blackstone tells in his “Commentaries,” Book II., Chap. VIII., that “The wife must be above nine years old at her husband’s death, otherwise she shall not be endowed, though in Bracton’s time the age was indefinite, and dower was then only due ‘si uxor possit dotem promereri, et virum sustinere.’” Whereupon Ed. Christian makes the following note, worthy of the most careful meditation:—“Lord Coke informs us that ‘if the wife be past the age of nine years at the time of her husband’s death, she shall be endowed, of what age soever her husband be, albeit he were 99but four years old. Quia junior non potest dotem promereri, et virum sustinere.’ (Coke on Litt., 33.) This we are told by that grave and reverend judge without any remark of surprise or reprobation. But it confirms the observation of Montesquieu in the ‘Spirit of Laws,’ Book XXVI., Chap. III. ‘There has been,’ says he, ‘much talk of a law in England which permitted girls seven years old to choose a husband. This law was shocking two ways; it had no regard to the time when Nature gives maturity to the understanding, nor to the time when she gives maturity to the body.’ It is abundantly clear, both from our law and history, that formerly such early marriages were contracted as in the present times are neither attempted nor thought of.

“This was probably owing to the right which the lord possessed of putting up to sale the marriage of his infant tenant. He no doubt took the first opportunity of prostituting (i.e., selling in marriage) the infant to his own interest, without any regard to age or inclinations. And thus what was so frequently practised and permitted by the law would cease even in other instances to be considered with abhorrence. If the marriage of a female was delayed till she was sixteen, this benefit was entirely lost to the lord her guardian.

“Even the 18 Eliz., cap. 7, which makes it a capital crime to abuse a consenting female child under the age of ten years, seems to leave an exception for these marriages by declaring only the carnal and unlawful knowledge of such woman-child to be a felony. Hence the abolition of the feudal wardships and marriage at the Restoration may perhaps 100have contributed not less to the improvement of the morals than of the liberty of the people.”—(Blackstone’s Comm., Christian’s Edition, 1830, Vol. II., p. 131.)

6.—“... manner ...”

“Manner,” or “custom” is the early Biblical definition for this habit (vide Gen. xviii. 11, and xxxi. 35). It may be noticed that the word is not rendered or translated as “nature.” It is also called “sickness” (Lev. xx. 18); and “pollution” (Ezek. xxii. 10). See also Note XXV. 8.

The authorised version of the Bible is here referred to. The euphemisms attempted in the recent revised version as amendments of some of these passages are equally consonant with the argument of this note.

XXV.

1.—“Vicarious punishment ...”

Revolting was the shock to the writer, coming, some years ago, with unprejudiced and ingenuous mind, to the study of the so-called “Diseases of Women,” on finding that nearly the whole of these special “diseases,” including menstruation, were due, directly or collaterally, to one form or other of masculine excess or abuse. Here is a nearly coincident opinion, afterwards met with:—“The diseases peculiar to women are so many, of so frequent occurrence, and of such severity, that half the time of the medical profession is devoted to their care, and more than half its revenues depend upon them. We have libraries of books upon them, special professorships in our medical colleges, and hosts of doctors who give them their exclusive attention.... 101The books and professors are all at fault. They have no knowledge of the causes or nature of these diseases” (or at least they do not publish it, or act on it), “and no idea of their proper treatment. Women are everywhere outraged and abused. When the full chapter of woman’s wrongs and sufferings is written, the world will be horrified at the hideous spectacle....”—T. L. Nichols, M.D. (“Esoteric Anthropology,” p. 198).

So, again, in speaking of menorrhagia:—“The causes of this disease, whatever they are, must be removed. Thousands of women are consigned to premature graves; some by the morbid excesses of their own passions, but far more by the sensual and selfish indulgences of those who claim the legal right to murder them in this manner, whom no law of homicide can reach, and upon whose victims no coroner holds an inquest.”—(Op. cit., p. 301.)

2.—“... grievous toll ...”

And this in every grade of society, even to the pecuniary loss, as well as discomfort, of the labouring classes of women.

“Statistics of sickness in the Post Office show that women” (these are unmarried women) “are away from their work more days than men.”—(Sidney Webb, at British Association, 1891.)

5.—“... no honest claim.”

The Times of Aug. 3, 1892, reports a paper by Professor Lombroso, of Turin (at the International Congress of Psychology, London), in which occurs the following:—“It 102must be observed that woman was exposed to more pains than man, because man imposed submission and often even slavery upon her. As a girl, she had to undergo the tyranny of her brothers, and the cruel preferences accorded by parents to their male children. Woman was the slave of her husband, and still more of social prejudices.... Let them not forget the physical disadvantage under which she had to labour. She might justly call herself the pariah of the human family.”

The word is apt and corroborative, for it was no honest act—it was not Nature, but human cruelty and injustice that formed a pariah.

8.—“... opprobrious theme.”

Conf. ancient and mediæval superstitions and accusations on the subject. Raciborski notes these aspersions (Traité, p. 13):—“Pline prétendait que les femmes étant au moment des règles pouvaient dessécher les arbres par de simples attouchements, faire périr des fruits, &c., &c.” And a further writer says more fully:—“Pliny informs us that the presence of a menstrual woman turns wine sour, causes trees to shed their fruit, parches up their young fruit, and makes them for ever barren, dims the splendour of mirrors and the polish of ivory, turns the edge of sharpened iron, converts brass into rust, and is the cause of canine rabies. In Isaiah xxx. 22, the writer speaks of the defilement of graven images, which shall be cast away as a menstruous cloth; and in Ezekiel xviii. 6, and xxxvi. 17, allusions of the same import are made.” Unless we accept the antiquated notion of a “special curse” on women, how 103reconcile the idea of an “ordinance of Nature” being so repulsively and opprobriously alluded to? Well may it be said:—“Ingratitude is a hateful vice. Not only the defects, but even the illnesses which have their source in the excessive” (man-caused) “susceptibility of woman, are often made by men an endless subject of false accusations and pitiless reproaches.”—(M. le Docteur Cerise, in his Introduction to Roussel, p. 34.)

XXVI.

1.—“Thoughts like to these are breathings of the truth.”

“I submit that there is a spiritual, a poetic, and, for aught we know, a spontaneous and uncaused element in the human mind, which ever and anon suddenly, and without warning, gives us a glimpse and a forecast of the future, and urges us to seize truth, as it were, by anticipation. In attacking the fortress we may sometimes storm the citadel without stopping to sap the outworks. That great discoveries have been made in this way the history of our knowledge decisively proves.”—H. T. Buckle (“Influence of Women on the Progress of Knowledge”).

Id.... “Then there is the inner consciousness—the psyche—that has never yet been brought to bear upon life and its questions. Besides which, there is a supersensuous reason. Observation is perhaps more powerful an organon than either experiment or empiricism. If the eye is always watching, and the mind on the alert, ultimately chance supplies the solution.”—Jefferies (“The Story of My Heart,” Chap. X.).

104Id.... “Women only want hints, finger-boards, and finding these, will follow them to Nature. The quick-glancing intellect will gather up, as it moves over the ground, the almost invisible ends and threads of thought, so that a single volume may convey to the mind of woman truths which man would require to have elaborated in four or six.”—Eliza W. Farnham (“Woman and Her Era,” Vol. II., p. 420).

3.—“... futile mannish pleas ...”

Roussel details fully some nine of these main theories or explanations of the habitude. (“Système,” Note A.)

6.—“In blindness born ...”

“Tous ces faits nous induisent fortement à conjecturer qu’il a dû exister un temps ou les femmes n’étaient point assujettiés à ce tribut incommode; que le flux menstruel bien loin d’être une institution naturelle, est au contraire un besoin factice contracté dans l’état sociale.”—Roussel (Op. cit., Chap. II.).

Note that menstruation (scriptural “sickness”) remains a pathological incident, not, as child-birth, an indubitably natural and normal physical function.

XXVII.

1.—“Grievous the hurt ...”

Buckle notes one of the many incidental evil results in his “Common Place Book,” Art. 2133:—

“It has been remarked that in our climate women are 108more frequently affected with insanity than men, and it has been considered very unfavourable to recovery if they should be worse at the time of menstruation, or have their catamenia in very small or immoderate quantities.” (Paris and Fonblanque’s “Medical Jurisprudence,” Vol. I., p. 327).

5.—“... reintegrate in frame and mind.”

“Thus then you have first to mould her physical frame, and then, as the strength she gains will permit you, to fill and temper her mind with all knowledge and thoughts which tend to confirm its natural instincts of justice, and refine its natural tact of love.”—John Ruskin (“Of Queens’ Gardens,” p. 154).

XXVIII.

5, 6.—“... given in our hand,

Is power the evil hazard to command.”

“That which is thoughtlessly credited to a non-existent intelligence should really be claimed and exercised by the human race. It is ourselves who should direct our affairs, protecting ourselves from pain, assisting ourselves, succouring and rendering our lives happy. We must do for ourselves what superstition has hitherto supposed an intelligence to do for us.... These things speak with a voice of thunder. From every human being whose body has been racked with pain; from every human being who has suffered from accident or disease; from every human being drowned, burned, or slain by negligence, there goes up a continually increasing cry louder than the thunder. An 109awe-inspiring cry dread to listen to, against which ears are stopped by the wax of superstition and the wax of criminal selfishness. These miseries are your doing, because you have mind and thought and could have prevented them. You can prevent them in the future. You do not even try.”—R. Jefferies (“The Story of My Heart,” pp. 149 et seq.).

Id.... “From one philosophical point of view, that of Du Prel, the experiments are already regarded as proving that the soul is an organising as well as a thinking power.... Bernheim saw an apoplectic paralysis rapidly improved by suggestion.... The more easily an idea can be established in the subject, the quicker a therapeutic result can be induced.... I think that hardly any of the newest discoveries are so important to the art of healing, apart from surgery, as the study of suggestion.... Now that it has been proved that even organic changes can be caused by suggestion, we are obliged to ascribe a much greater importance to mental influences than we have hitherto done.”—Dr. Albert Moll (“Hypnotism,” pp. 122, 318, 320, 325, 327).

Id.... “It would, I fancy, have fared but ill with one who, standing where I now stand, in what was then a thickly-peopled and fashionable part of London, should have broached to our ancestors the doctrine which I now propound to you—that all their hypotheses were alike wrong; that the plague was no more, in their sense, Divine judgment, than the fire was the work of any political, or of any religious, sect; but that they were themselves the authors of both plague and fire, and that they must look to 110themselves to prevent the recurrence of calamities, to all appearance so peculiarly beyond the reach of human control.... We, in later times, have learned somewhat of Nature, and partly obey her. Because of this partial improvement of our natural knowledge and of that fractional obedience, we have no plague; because that knowledge is still very imperfect and that obedience yet incomplete, typhus is our companion and cholera our visitor. But it is not presumptuous to express the belief that, when our knowledge is more complete and our obedience the expression of our knowledge, London will count her centuries of freedom from typhus and cholera as she now gratefully reckons her two hundred years of ignorance of that plague which swooped upon her thrice in the first half of the seventeenth century.”—T. H. Huxley (“On Improving Natural Knowledge”).

And the pestilent malady from which woman specially still suffers is as definitely the result of man’s ignorant or thoughtless misdoing, and is as indubitably amenable to rectification, as the plague of the bye-gone ages, or the typhus and cholera of the present.

8.—“... pain both prompts and points escape.”

“All evil is associated more or less closely with pain ... and pain of every kind is so repugnant to the human organism, that it is no sooner felt than an effort is made to escape from it.... Alongside of the evolution of evil there has ever been a tendency towards the elimination of evil.... The highest intellectual powers of the greatest men have for their ultimate object 111the mitigation of evil, and the final elimination of it from the earth.”—Richard Bithell (“The Creed of a Modern Agnostic,” p. 103).

XXIX.

1.—“... woman shall her own redemption gain.”

In the greatest depth of their meaning remain true the words of Olive Schreiner: “He who stands by the side of woman cannot help her; she must help herself.”

Id.... “Nothing is clearer than that woman must lead her own revolution; not alone because it is hers, and that no other being can therefore have her interest in its achievement, but because it is for a life whose highest needs and rights—those to be redressed in its success—lie above the level of man’s experiences or comprehension. Only woman is sufficient to state woman’s claims and vindicate them.”—Eliza W. Farnham (“Woman,” Vol. I., p. 308).

(See also Notes to XLVI. 7 and LVIII. 1.)

2.—“Instructed by the sting of bootless pain.”

“Toutes les fonctions du corps humain, sauf l’enfantement, sont autant de plaisirs. Dès que la douleur surgit, la nature est violée. La douleur est d’origine humaine. Un corps malade ou a violé les lois de la nature, ou bien souffre de la violation de la loi d’un de ses semblables. La douleur par elle-même est donc le meilleur diagnostic pour le médecin.... Entre la loi de la nature et la violation de cette loi, il n’y a que désordres, douleurs et ruines.... La maladie ne vient pas de la nature, elle n’y est 112même pas. Elle n’est que la violation d’une des lois de la nature. Dès qu’une de ces lois est violée, la douleur arrive et vous dit qu’une loi vient d’être enfreinte. S’il est temps encore, le mal peut être amoindri, expulsé, chassé.... La maladie n’est donc que le résultat de la violation d’une loi naturelle.... La science et la mécanique du corps humain, c’est l’art de vivre d’après les lois de la nature, c’est la certitude que pas un médecin ne possède contre la violation d’une de ces lois un remède autre que d’y rentrer le plus tôt possible.... Chaque fois que l’homme s’efforcera de suivre la loi de la nature, il chassera devant soi une centaine de maladies.”—Dr. Alexandre Weill (“Lois et Mystères de l’Amour,” pp. 41, 91, 24, 85, 83).

3, 4.—“With Nature ever helpful to retrieve

The injury we heedlessly achieve.”

“Thus, if we could, by preaching our pet ideal, or in any other way induce one generation of women to turn to a new pursuit, we should have accomplished a step towards bending all future womanhood in the same direction.”—Frances Power Cobbe (Essay: “The Final Cause of Woman”).

XXX.

1.—“With purer phase ...”

A noted specialist in this matter, Dr. Tilt, “basing his conclusions on his own unpublished observations, and on those already made public by M. Brierre de Boismont and Dr. Rawn,” has declared what is indeed a generally accepted proposition, that “luxurious living and habits render menstruation precarious, while this function is retarded by out-door labour and less sophisticated habits.” (“Proceedings of British Association,” 1850, p. 135; “On the Causes which Advance or Retard the Appearance of First Menstruation in Women,” by E. J. Tilt, M.D., &c., &c.)

4.—“... weakness ...”

It is to be carefully kept in mind that this “weakness” (Scriptural, “sickness,” Lev. xx., 18) is strictly a pathological 117incident; while maternity is truly a physiological one; the male false physicists seem in their mental and clinical attitude to have aimed to precisely reverse this definition. (See also Note XXIII., 8, and XXVI., 6.)

5, 6.—To the fact related in these two lines there is testimony in nearly every book connected with the subject; and doubtless numerous instances never come to light, owing to the very natural reticence pointed out in Note XXIX., 8. The improved condition reported by Mrs. Fawcett (Note XXIX., 6) is hence more readily verified by women practitioners; and the writer has had detailed personal experiences of perfect health and maternity being co-existent with little or no appearance of the menses in the case of women whose names, if published, would be indubitable guarantee for their accuracy and veracity.

7.—“Not to neglectful man to greatly care ...”

The Report of the British Association for 1850, in summarising the paper above referred to (Note 1), says of Dr. Tilt that, “in discussing what he calls the intrinsic causes which have been supposed to influence menstruation, his observations are rather of a suggestive character, for he considers such causes highly problematical and requiring further investigation.” Dr. Tilt rightly emphasises the question as “a matter equally interesting to the physician, the philosopher, and the statesman; and it behoves them to know that this epoch (of menstruation) varies under the influence of causes which for the most part have been insufficiently studied.” But the negligence or carelessness reprobated in the verse has again supervened.

118Buckle says, concerning this same paper of Dr. Tilt’s: “We take shame to ourselves for not having sooner noticed this very interesting and in some respects very important work; the author unknown,” (?) “and yet the book has gone through two editions, though written on a subject ignorantly supposed to be going on well. That women can be satisfied with their state shows their deterioration. That they can be satisfied with knowing nothing, &c.” (sic.) (“Miscellaneous and Posthumous Works,” Vol. I., p. 381.)

The whole passage seems somewhat incoherent, and is unfinished as above, as if left by Mr. Buckle for further consideration. The last two remarks as to women are certainly not written with his usual justice; when we remember how assiduously men have striven to prevent woman’s pursuit of physiological knowledge, especially as applied to her own person, it is manifest that the blame for woman’s ignorance, or her presumed “satisfaction” therewith, is more fittingly to be reproached to man than to her.

XXXI.

1.—“Her intellect alert ...”

“Intellectus prelucit voluntati.”—“Intellect carries the light before the will.”—Cardinal Manning (Review of Reviews, Vol. V., p. 135).

5, 6.—“... body still is supple unto mind,

By dint of soul is fleshly form inclined.”

Reflecting Plato’s teaching, our second worthy Elizabethan poet has said:—

119“Every spirit as it is most pure,

And hath in it the more of heavenly light,

So it the fairer body doth procure

To habit in.

For of the Soul the Body form doth take:

For Soul is form, and doth the Body make.”

And in our own day, Charles Kingsley says, in serious sportiveness: “The one true doctrine of this wonderful fairy tale is, that your soul makes your body, just as a snail makes its shell.” And again: “You must know and believe that people’s souls make their bodies just as a snail makes its shell.... I am not joking, my little man; I am in serious, solemn earnest.”—(“The Water Babies,” Chaps. III. and IV.)

And Elizabeth Barrett Browning (“Aurora Leigh,” Book III.)—

“... the soul

Which grows within a child makes the child grow.”

The physiologists and psychologists, as is not unusual, tardily follow in the wake of the poets. At the International Congress of Experimental Psychology, London, 1892, “Professor Delbœuf said that at all times the mind of man had been capable of influencing the body, but it was only in recent times that this action had been scientifically put in evidence.”—(Times, August 3rd, 1892.)

And Dr. Albert Moll, of Berlin, had written the year previously, that—“When the practical importance of mental influences becomes more generally recognised, physicians will be obliged to acknowledge that psychology is as important as physiology. Psychology and psychical 120therapeutics will be the basis of a rational treatment of neuroses. The other methods must group themselves around this; it will be the centre, and no longer a sort of Cinderella of science, which now admits only the influence of the body on the mind, and not that of the mind on the body.”—(“Hypnotism,” p. 328.) See also Note XXVIII., 5.

XXXII.

2.—“... woo the absent curse.”

Even Raciborski condemns this common error of treatment:—“... quand les jeunes filles de cette catégorie paraissent souffrantes, quel que soit le caractère des souffrances, on est disposé à les attribuer au défaut du flux menstruel, on le regrette, on l’invoque, et l’on tente tout pour le provoquer. Ces idées sont aujourd’hui encore très profondément enracinées dans le public, et sont souvent la cause des entraves au traitement rationnel proposé par les médecins.”—(Traité, &c., ed. 1868, p. 377.)

And Mrs. E. B. Duffey very sensibly says:—

“Nature ... is very easily perverted: and the girl who begins by imagining she is ill or ought to be at such times will end by being really so.” (“No Sex in Education,” Philadelphia, 1874, p. 79.)

3.—“... counter-effort ...”

“Forel and many others mention that there are certain popular methods of slightly retarding menstruation. In one town many of the young women tie something round their little finger if they wish to delay menstruation for a few 121days in order to go to a ball, &c. The method is generally effectual, but when faith ceases, the effect also ceases.”—Dr. Albert Moll (“Hypnotism,” p. 226).

Before quitting this special subject it may be well to remark that little more than the fringe is here indicated of an enormous mass of evidence which affords more than presumptive confirmation and support for the position here taken in the whole question of this “abnormal habit.”

4.—“... custom ...”—See Note XXIV., 6.

XXXIII.

2.—“... newer vigour to the brain.”

“It is well-known that every organ of the body and, therefore, also the brain, requires for its full development and, consequently, for the development of its complete capability of performance, exercise and persistent effort. That this is and has been the case for thousands of years in a far less degree in woman than in man, in consequence of her defective training and education, will be denied by no one.” So says the learned biologist Büchner.—(“Man,” Dallas’s translation, p. 206.)

And Bebel also declares:—“The brain must be regularly used and correspondingly nourished, like any other organ, if its faculties are to be fully developed.”—(“Woman,” Walther’s translation, p. 124.)

Dr. Emanuel Bonavia, in the course of an able reply to a somewhat shallow recent disquisition by Sir James Crichton Browne, says:—

“From various sources we have learnt that the brain 122tissue, like every other tissue, will grow by exercise, and diminish, or degenerate and atrophy by disuse. Keep your right arm tied up in a sling for a month, and you will then be convinced how much it has lost by disuse. Then anatomists might perhaps be able to say—Lo! and behold! the muscles of your right arm have a less specific gravity than those of your left arm; that the nerves and blood-vessels going to those muscles are smaller, and that, therefore, the right arm cannot be the equal of the left, and must have a different function!

“Any medical student knows that if you tie the main trunk of an artery, a branch of it will in due course acquire the calibre of the main trunk. If, for some reason, it cannot do so, the tissues, which the main trunk originally supplied, must suffer, and be weakened, from want of a sufficient supply of blood.... Man, and especially British man, has evolved into what he is by endless trouble and struggle through past ages. He has had to develop his present brain from very small beginnings. It would, therefore, now be the height of folly to allow the thinking lobes of the mothers of the race to revert, intellectually, by disuse step by step again to that of the lower animals, from which we all come. That of course many may not believe, but it may be asked, how can he or she believe these things with such weakened lobes, as he or she may have inherited from his or her mother? How indeed! If there is anything in nature that is true, it is this—That if you don’t use your limbs they will atrophy; if you don’t use your eyes they will atrophy; if you don’t use your brain it will atrophy. They all follow the same inexorable law. Use 123increases and sharpens; disuse decreases and dulls. Diminished size of the frontal lobes and of the arteries that feed them mean nothing if they do not mean that woman’s main thinking organ, that of the intellect, is, as Sir James would hint, degenerating by disuse and neglect.”—(“Woman’s Frontal Lobes,” Provincial Medical Journal, July, 1892.)

These facts suggest strongly that the waste at present induced in the female body by the menstrual habit might well be absorbed in increase of brain power; and indeed, that this evolved habit has hitherto persistently sequestrated and carried off from woman’s organism the blood force that should have gone to form brain power. This explanation would dispose of the awkwardly imagined “plethora” theory, as well as one or two others, of sundry gynæcologists.

And the converse—that the increased appropriation of the blood in forming brain power induces a state of bodily well-being, free from the present waste and weariness,—would certainly seem to be borne out by such evidence as that of the Hon. John W. Mitchell, the president of the Southern California College of Law, who said in a recent lecture:—

“Not only in this, but in other countries, there are successful women practitioners (of Law), and in France, where the preparatory course is most arduous, and the term of study longest, a woman recently took the highest rank over 500 men in her graduating examinations, and during the whole six years of class study she only lost one day from her work.” (See Note LVII., 1.)

A few words may here be said as to the dubitable 124question of the relative size of the brain in man and woman, though the matter may not be of great import, from more than one reason. For, as Bebel observes: “Altogether the investigations on the subject are too recent and too few in number to allow of any definite conclusions” (p. 123). A. Dumas fils says (“Les Femmes qui Tuent,” p. 196)—“Les philosophes vous démontreront que, si la force musculaire de l’homme est plus grande que celle de la femme, la force nerveuse de la femme est plus grande que celle de l’homme; que, si l’intelligence tient, comme on l’affirme aujourd’hui, au développement et au poids de la matière cérébrale, l’intelligence de la femme pourrait être déclarée supérieure à celle de l’homme, le plus grand cerveau et le plus lourd comme poids, étant un cerveau de femme lequel pesait 2,200 grammes, c’est a dire 400 grammes de plus que celui de Cuvier. On ne dit pas, il est vrai, que cette femme ait écrit l’équivalent du livre de Cuvier sur les fossiles.”

To which last remark may be replied, again in the words of Bebel,—“Darwin is perfectly right in saying that a list of the most distinguished women in poetry, painting, sculpture, music, science, and philosophy, will bear no comparison with a similar list of the most distinguished men. But surely this need not surprise us. It would be surprising if it were not so. Dr. Dodel-Port (in “Die neuere Schöpfungsgeschichte”) answers to the point, when he maintains that the relative achievements would be very different after men and women had received the same education and the same training in art and science during a certain number of generations.”—(“Woman,” p. 125.)

125“It is of small value to say—yes, but look how many men excel and how few women do so. True, but see how much repression men have exercised to prevent women from even equalling them, and how much shallowness of mind they have encouraged. All manner of obstructions, coupled with ridicule, have been put in their way, and until women succeed in emancipating themselves, most men will probably continue to do so, simply because they have the power to do it. When women become emancipated, that is, are placed on social equality with men, this senseless, mischievous opposition will die a natural death.”—E. Bonavia, M.D. (“Woman’s Frontal Lobes”).

To revert to the question of brain weight, one of the first of English specialists says:—

“Data might, therefore, be considered to show, in the strongest manner, how comparatively unimportant is mere bulk or weight of brain in reference to the degree of intelligence of its owner, when considered as it often is, apart from the much more important question of the relative amount of its grey matter, as well as of the amount and perfection of the minute internal development of the organ either actual or possible.”—Dr. H. C. Bastian (“The Brain as an Organ of Mind,” p. 375.)

The American physiologist Helen H. Gardener states:—“The differences (in brain) between individuals of the same sex—in adults at least, are known to be much more marked than any that are known to exist between the sexes. Take the brains of the two poets Byron and Dante. Byron’s weighed 1,807 grammes, while Dante’s weighed only 1,320 grammes, a difference of 487 grammes. Or take two 126statesmen, Cromwell and Gambetta. Cromwell’s brain weighed 2,210 grammes, which, by the way, is the greatest healthy brain on record; although Cuvier’s is usually quoted as the largest, a part of the weight of his was due to disease, and if a diseased or abnormal brain is to be taken as the standard, then the greatest on record is that of a negro criminal idiot; while Gambetta’s was only 1,241 grammes, a difference of 969 grammes. Surely it will not be held because of this that Gambetta and Dante should have been denied the educational and other advantages which were the natural right of Byron and Cromwell. Yet it is upon this very ground, by this very system of reasoning, that it is proposed to deny women equal advantages and opportunities, although the difference in brain weight between man and woman is said to be only 100 grammes, and even this does not allow for difference in body weight, and is based upon a system of averages, which is neither complete nor accurate.”—(Report of the International Council of Women, Washington, 1888, p. 378.)

Concerning an assertion that “the specific gravity of both the white and grey matter of the brain is greater in man than in woman,” Helen H. Gardener says:—“Of this point this is what the leading brain anatomist in America (Dr. E. C. Spitzka) wrote: ‘The only article recognised by the profession as important and of recent date, which takes this theory as a working basis, is by Morselli, and he is compelled to make the sinister admission, while asserting that the specific gravity is less in the female, that with old age and with insanity the specific gravity increases.’ If this is the case I do not know that women need sigh over their 127shortcoming in the item of specific gravity. There appear to be two very simple methods open to them by which they may emulate their brothers in the matter of specific gravity, if they so desire. One of these is certain, if they live long enough; and the other—well, there is no protective tariff on insanity.”—(Loc. cit., p. 379.)

Helen Gardener further appositely observes:—“The brain of no remarkable woman has ever been examined. Woman is ticketed to fit the hospital subjects and tramps, the unfortunates whose brains fall into the hands of the profession as it were by mere accident, while man is represented by the brains of the Cromwells, Cuviers, Byrons, and Spurzheims. By this method the average of men’s brains is carried to its highest level in the matter of weight and texture; while that of women is kept at its lowest, and even then there is only claimed 100 grammes’ difference!”—(Loc. cit., p. 380.)

And she concludes her exhaustive paper with the closing paragraph of a letter to herself from Dr. E. C. Spitzka, the celebrated New York brain specialist:—“You may hold me responsible for the following declaration: That any statement to the effect that an observer can tell by looking at a brain, or examining it microscopically, whether it belonged to a female or a male subject, is not founded on carefully-observed facts.... No such difference has ever been demonstrated, nor do I think it will be by more elaborate methods than we now possess. Numerous female brains exceed numerous male brains in absolute weight, in complexity of convolutions, and in what brain anatomists would call the nobler proportions. So that he who takes 128these as his criteria of the male brain may be grievously mistaken in attempting to assert the sex of a brain dogmatically. If I had one hundred female brains and one hundred male brains together, I should select the one hundred containing the largest and best-developed brains as probably containing fewer female brains than the remaining one hundred. More than this no cautious experienced brain anatomist would venture to declare.”—(Loc. cit., p. 381.)

Charles Darwin has clearly summarised this question of comparison of brain:—“No one, I presume, doubts that the large size of the brain in man, relatively to his body, in comparison with that of the gorilla or orang, is closely connected with his higher mental powers.... On the other hand, no one supposes that the intellect of any two animals or of any two men can be accurately gauged by the cubic contents of their skulls. It is certain that there may be extraordinary mental activity with an extremely small absolute mass of nervous matter; thus the wonderfully diversified instincts, mental powers, and affections of ants are generally known, yet their cerebral ganglia are not so large as the quarter of a small pin’s head. Under this latter point of view the brain of an ant is one of the most marvellous atoms of matter in the world, perhaps more marvellous than the brain of man.”—(“The Descent of Man,” Chap. IV.)

3.—“Wide shall she roam ...”

John Ruskin says, of training a girl:—“Let her loose in the library, I say, as you do a fawn in a field. It knows 129the bad weeds twenty times better than you, and the good ones too; and will eat some bitter and prickly ones, good for it, which you had not the slightest thought were good.”—(“Sesame and Lilies,” p. 167.)

6.—“... murmurings ...”

“Man thinks that his wife belongs to him like his domesticated animals, and he keeps her therefore in slavery. There are few, however, who wear their shackles without feeling their weight, and not a few who resent it. Madame Roland says: ‘Quand vous parlez en maître, vous faites penser aussitôt qu’on peut vous résister, et faire plus peut être, tel fort que vous soyez. L’invulnerable Achille ne l’était pas partout.’”—Alexander Walker, M.D. (“Woman as to Mind, &c.,” p. 353).

“Why do women not discover, when ‘in the noon of beauty’s power,’ that they are treated like queens only to be deluded by hollow respect, till they are led to resign, or not assume, their natural prerogatives? Confined then in cages like the feathered race, they have nothing to do but to plume themselves and stalk with mock majesty from perch to perch. It is true they are provided with food and raiment, for which they neither toil nor spin, but health liberty, and virtue are given in exchange.”—Mary Wollstonecraft (“Vindication of the Rights of Woman,” Chap. IV.). See also Note XL., 5.

“What have they (men) hitherto offered us in marriage, with a great show of generosity and a flourish of trumpets, but the dregs of a life, and the leavings of a dozen other women? Experience has at last taught us what to expect 130and how to meet them.”—Lady Violet Greville (National Review, May, 1892).

XXXIV.

5.—“... his servitude ...”

“Villeins were not protected by Magna Charta. “Nullus liber homo capiatur vel imprisonetur,” &c., was cautiously expressed to exclude the poor villein, for, as Lord Coke 131tells us, the lord may beat his villein, and, if it be without cause, he cannot have any remedy. What a degraded condition for a being endued with reason!”—Edward Christian (“Note to Blackstone’s Commentaries,” Book II., Chap. VI.)

Mr. Christian’s exclamation of concern is doubtless meant to apply to the serf, yet was not the lord’s position equally despicable?

6.—“... in turn was master to a slave.”

This was, in fact, simply extending the spirit of the feudal system (with its serfdom as just pictured), a little further. Buckle exemplifies in ancient French society the servility descending from one grade to another in man:—“By virtue of which each class exercising great power over the one below it, the subordination and subserviency of the whole were completely maintained.... This, indeed, is but part of the old scheme to create distinctions for which Nature has given no warrant, to substitute a superiority which is conventional for that which is real, and thus try to raise little minds above the level of great ones. The utter failure, and, as society advances, the eventual cessation of all such attempts is certain.” But, meanwhile, evil accompaniments are apparent, as Buckle further instances by saying: “Le Vassor, who wrote late in the reign of Louis XIV., bitterly says: ‘Les Français accoutumés à l’esclavage, ne sentent plus la pesanteur de leurs chaînes.’”—(“History of Civilisation in England,” Vol. II, Chaps III., IV.)

That the foregoing habits or foibles are human rather 132than simply masculine, or that the imitation of them very naturally spreads to the other sex, would seem to be shown by such evidence as Letourneau gives:—

“In primitive countries the married woman—that is to say, the woman belonging to a man—has herself the conscience of being a thing, a property (it is proved to her often and severely enough), but she does not think of retaliating, especially in what concerns the conjugal relations. Moreover, as her condition is oftenest that of a slave overburdened with work, not only does she not resent the introduction of other women in the house of the master, but she desires it, for the work will be so much the less for herself. Thus among the Zulus the wife first purchased strives and works with ardour in the hope of furnishing her husband with means to acquire a second wife, a companion in misery over whom, by right of seniority, she will have the upper hand.”—(“The Evolution of Marriage,” Chap. VIII.)

Yet, in point of fact, this is not woman seeking to establish her own dominion, but rather to secure somewhat more of freedom for herself. As Alexandre Dumas fils tells us, concerning the Mormon women:—

“Non seulement elles donnent leur consentement à leurs maris, quand ils le leur demandent pour un nouveau mariage, mais elles sont quelquefois les premières à leur proposer une nouvelle femme qui a, disent-elles, des qualités nécessaires à la communauté, en réalité pour augmenter un peu la possession d’elles-mêmes, c’est-à-dire leur liberté.”—(“Les Femmes qui Tuent,” &c., p. 169.)

8.—“... vassalage to man.”

133The Laureate Rowe makes his heroine bitterly but with reason exclaim:—

“How hard is the condition of our sex,

Through every state of life the slaves of man!

In all the dear delightful days of youth,

A rigid father dictates to our wills,

And deals out pleasure with a scanty hand:

To his, the tyrant husband’s reign succeeds;

Proud with opinions of superior reason,

He holds domestic business and devotion

All we are capable to know, and shuts us,

Like cloistered idiots, from the world’s acquaintance

And all the joys of freedom. Wherefore are we

Born with high souls, but to assert ourselves,

Shake off this vile obedience they exact,

And claim an equal empire o’er the world?”

—(“The Fair Penitent,” Act III. sc. i.)

Letourneau shows the state of feminine tutelage carried still further: “We shall find that in many civilisations relatively advanced, widowhood even does not gratify the woman with a liberty of which she is never thought worthy.” And later on he quotes from the code of Manu, Book V.:—“A little girl, a young woman, and an old woman ought never to do anything of their own will, even in their own house.... During her childhood a woman depends on her father; during her youth on her husband; her husband being dead, on her sons; if she has no sons, on the near relatives of her husband; or in default of them, on those of her father; if she has no paternal relatives, on the 134Sovereign. A woman ought never to have her own way.”—(“The Evolution of Marriage,” Chaps. VII., XII.)

Can a man be esteemed a human or even a rational being, who would accept or tolerate such terms for the life of his sister woman—the mother of the generations to come?

XXXV.

1, 2.—“... fearing that the slave herself might guess

The knavery of her forced enchainedness.”

“Here I believe is the clue to the feeling of those men who have a real antipathy to the equal freedom of women. I believe they are afraid, not lest women should be unwilling to marry ... but lest they should insist that marriage should be on equal conditions; but all women of spirit and capacity should prefer doing almost anything else, not in their own eyes degrading, rather than marry, when marrying is giving themselves a master, and a master too of all their earthly possessions. And truly, if this consequence were necessarily incident to marriage, I think that the apprehension would be very well founded.”—J S. Mill (“The Subjection of Women,” p. 51).

XXXVI.

1.—“By cant condoned ...”

“Much has been said by Guizot on the influence of women in developing European civilisation. It is at least certain that several of the fathers did everything they could to diminish that influence. Tertullian bitterly complains of the insolence of women who venture to teach and to baptise. He allows that in case of necessity baptism may be administered by a layman, but never by a woman. Again, among the other crimes of the heretics he particularly enumerates the insolence of their women, who ventured to teach, to dispute, &c., &c. In ‘De Cult. Faem,’ lib. I. Cap. I., he says: ‘Let women remember that they are of the sex of Eve, who ruined mankind, and let them therefore repair this ignominy by living rather in dust than in splendour.’”—Buckle (“Common-Place Book,” Note 1870).

Id.—“... man fashioned woman’s ‘sphere.’”

“We deny the right of any portion of the species to decide for another portion, or any individual for another individual, what is, and what is not, ‘their proper sphere.’ The proper sphere for all human beings is the largest and highest which they are able to attain to. What this is, cannot be ascertained without complete liberty of choice.”—Mrs. Harriet Mill (“Enfranchisement of Women,” Westminster Review, July 1851).

6.—“... civil law ...”

For example of this let us look at the law of our own 143country in even recent times. Blackstone says:—“The husband (by the old law) might give his wife moderate correction.... But this power of correction was confined within reasonable bounds, and the husband was prohibited from using any violence to his wife, aliter quam ad virum ex causa regiminis et castigationis uxoris suæ licite et rationabiliter pertinet (i.e., otherwise than to a man for the ruling and punishment of his wife, lawfully and reasonably pertains). The civil law gave the husband the same or a larger authority over his wife, allowing him for some misdemeanours, flagellis et fustibus acriter verberare uxorem (i.e., to severely beat his wife with whips and cudgels), for others, only modicam castigationem adhibere (to administer a moderate chastisement). But with us, in the politer reign of Charles the Second, this power of correction began to be doubted, and a wife may now (circ. 1750) have security of peace against her husband; or in return, a husband against his wife. Yet the lower rank of people, who were always fond of the old common law,” (query, were the women fond of it?) “still claim and exert their ancient privilege: and the courts of law will still permit a husband to restrain a wife of her liberty in case of any gross misbehaviour.” (“Commentaries,” Edward Christian’s Ed., Book I., Chap. XV.)

Such was undoubtedly the generally accepted and not infrequently acted upon assumption; and it is certain that the Courts of Law would, in the event of a wife absenting herself from her husband, order her return to his custody; and would, and did imprison her in default of her compliance. And this state of things continued until—as Mrs. 144Wolstenholme Elmy records in her history of the celebrated “Clitheroe case”—

“At length, in the year 1891, and, as in the case of the negro Somerset, upon the return to a writ of habeas corpus, there have been found judges bold enough and just enough to set aside the ancient saws and maxims, resting mainly upon obiter dicta and loose phrases of previous judges used in reference to hypothetical cases never actually before the Courts, and to declare plainly and straightly that the personal slavery of the wife is no part of the law of England. The actual words of the Lord Chancellor in dealing with the return to the writ are, as reported by the Times, March 20th, 1891, as follows:—

“After stating the circumstances of the marriage, the decree, and the refusal of the wife to cohabit, it states: ‘I therefore took my wife, and have since detained her in my house, using no more force or restraint than necessary to take her and keep her.’ That is the return which seeks to justify an admitted imprisonment of this lady. I do not know that I am able to express in sufficiently precise language the difference between ‘confinement’ and ‘imprisonment,’ but if there is any distinction, I can only say that upon these facts I should find an imprisonment, and looking at the return it is put as a broad proposition that the right of the husband, where there has been a wilful absenting of herself by the wife from her husband’s house—that it is his right to seize possession of his wife by force, and detain her in his house until she renders him conjugal rights. That is the proposition of law involved in the return, and I am not prepared to assent to it. The Legislature has expressly deprived the Matrimonial Court of the power of imprisoning the wife for refusal to comply with a decree for restitution of conjugal rights, and the result of such a system of law, if the husband had the power, would be that whereas the Court had no power to hand the wife over into her husband’s hands, but only to punish her for contempt by imprisonment under the control of the Court, and without any circumstances of injury or insult, and even that power was taken away, the husband might himself of his own motion seize and imprison her until she consented to the restitution of conjugal rights. That is the proposition I am called upon to establish by holding this return to be good. I am of opinion that no such right or power exists in law. I am 145of opinion that no such right ever did exist in our law. Whatever authorities may be quoted for any such proposition, it has always been subject to this condition: that where she has a complaint of, or is apprehensive of, ill-usage, the Court will never interfere to compel her to return to her husband’s custody. Now this brings me to the particular circumstances of this transaction. I am prepared to say that no English subject has a right to imprison another English subject (who is sui juris, and entitled to a judgment of his or her own) without any lawful authority, but if there were any qualification of that proposition I should be of opinion that on the facts of this case it would afford an ample justification to any Court for refusing to allow the husband in this case to retain the custody of his wife.

“On these and other grounds the Lord Chancellor declared that the return of the writ was bad, and ordered that the lady be restored to her liberty, the other judges concurring.”—(“The Decision in the Clitheroe Case and its Consequences,” pp. 3, 4.)

Lord Esher was one of the two other Judges, both concurring, who formed the Court of Appeal which granted the writ, and a few days subsequently he gave from his place in the House of Lords the following further statement of his judgment and views:—

“As I was a party to the judgment, which seems to have been more misunderstood than any judgment I recollect, I, perhaps, may be excused from making an observation. It was urged before the Court of Appeal that by the law of England a husband may beat his wife with a stick if she refuses to obey him, and that if a wife refused her husband conjugal rights, whatever that phrase may mean, which I have never been able to make out, he may imprison her until she restores him conjugal rights, or satisfies him that she will. All that the Court of Appeal decided was that a husband cannot by the law of England, if the wife objects, lawfully do either of those things. Those intelligent people who have declared that the judgment is wrong must be prepared to maintain the converse—namely, that if a wife disobeys her husband he may lawfully beat her; and if she refuses him a restitution of conjugal rights he may 146imprison her, it was urged, in the cellar, or in the cupboard, or, if the house is large, in the house, by locking her in it and blocking the windows. I thought, and still think, that the law does not allow these things....”—(The Times, 17th April, 1891.)

Mrs. Wolstenholme Elmy further tells us that:—

“To Lord Selborne the married women of this country owe a further debt of gratitude for his introduction in 1884 of the Matrimonial Causes Act of that session, which put an end to the punishment by imprisonment of the husband or wife who refused to obey the decree of the Court for restitution of conjugal rights. The arguments of Mr. Lankester and Mr. Finlay in the Clitheroe case, based upon this abolition of the power of the Court to imprison for disobedience, are known to everyone. It would be destructive not only to personal freedom, but a gross infraction of justice and common-sense, were a husband to be permitted to exercise on his own behalf and at his own pleasure a prerogative of punishment which had been withdrawn from the Court.

“That this power of imprisonment was not a mere brutum fulmen, but a terrible reality in former days, may be learned from a Suffolk case, early in the present century. A wife in contempt of court, a lady of good family in Suffolk, was imprisoned in Ipswich goal for disobeying a decree requiring her to render conjugal rights to her husband. At the end of a year and ten months she became in want of the common necessaries of life, and was reduced to the gaol allowance of bread and water; she suffered from rheumatism and other maladies, which were aggravated by the miseries of her imprisonment; and after many years of such suffering died in prison—for she never went back to her husband.”—(“The Decision in the Clitheroe Case and its Consequences,” p. 9.)

But while the law has thus been needfully amended in England, a further evil effect has meantime supervened in our dependency of India; for this faculty of imprisonment by the Courts for non-compliance with their order in the event specified, which has been abolished in England, seems 147to be still existent and appealed to in our Indian Courts. (See Note XXII., 2.) The strange thing is that the suit for the restitution of conjugal rights is not a matter of native law, but an inadvertent and apparently entirely unintentional introduction from our English system; the very judges who administer the Indian Law being at a loss to account for its appearance in their practice. One authority, in seeking the solution of the problem, declares that—“Mr. —— ‘could not find any enactment directly establishing suits for the restitution of conjugal rights, and believed there were none; but that they had been recognised in a Stamp Act, and again in the Limitation of Suits Act passed in 1871.’ The material point is that Indian lawgivers have not consciously given this remedy to those who did not possess it before; but that it has slipped into our law without design. Mr. —— thinks ‘That this class of suits was known in the old Supreme Courts, in the Presidency towns, and as between Europeans; and it was not an improper subject of legislation as regards Stamp Duty or Limitation by Time: but being spoken of without qualification was held by the High Courts to be available for all classes of the Indian communities.’ If this theory be true, it accounts in an easy way for a change effected without any intention of the Rulers at all. It is worth enquiry into under this aspect.” Yes, enquiry and rectification hand in hand!

Id.—“... and part divine.”

The fact has been that male lawgivers, in whatever land, have generally asserted for their code of feminine ethics or 148conduct a divine origin, and have announced the punishment for breach thereof as a divine injunction. In very few instances, indeed, was there any attempt to decree an equal punishment to the male who was partner with the female in a mutual breach of this morality, and very frequently no punishment of the male attached at all; and even in the few cases where such a punishment was nominally threatened, the man’s share in the offence was most generally connived at, and passed unpunished. This double code of morality has a flagrant exemplification in the English Law of Divorce, by which, while a man can procure a Decree of Divorce on the simple ground of the adultery of his wife, a woman cannot obtain a like decree for her husband’s adultery unless that offence be accompanied by such treatment of herself as the Court will recognise as “cruelty,” or with “desertion.” The double scheme of sexual morality, so revoltingly tolerated, in so far as man is concerned, by “society” in the present day is too patent to need further words here. And the repulsive cant is still that, while the man is allowed to go free, the punishment of the woman is due and commendable as in accordance with “divine law.” (See Note XIV., 3.)

XXXVII.

3, 4.—“... lowest boor is lordly ‘baron’ styled,

And highest bride as common ‘feme’ reviled.”

“... husband and wife; or, as most of our elder law books call them, ‘baron’ and ‘feme.’”—(Blackstone’s “Commentaries,” Bk. I. Chap. 15.)

149But the context of the words “baron” and “feme” involved something more than a mere façon de parler of the law books. Edward Christian says, in Note 23 to the Chapter in “Blackstone” above quoted:—“Husband and wife, in the language of the law, are styled baron and feme; the word baron, or lord, attributes to the husband not a very courteous superiority. But we might be inclined to think this merely an unmeaning technical phrase, if we did not recollect, that if the baron kills his feme it is the same as if he had killed a stranger or any other person; but if the feme kills her baron it is regarded by the laws as a much more atrocious crime, as she not only breaks through the restraints of humanity and conjugal affection, but throws off all subjection to the authority of her husband. And, therefore, the law denominates her crime a species of treason, and condemns her to the same punishment as if she had killed the king. And for every species of treason (though in petit treason the punishment of men was only to be drawn and hanged), till the 30 Geo. III., Chap. 48, the sentence of woman was to be drawn and burnt alive.”

And Mr. Courtney Kenny says, on the same point, that the English Law of Marriage in the twelfth century had “clothed the humblest husband with more than the authority of a feudal lord, and merged his wife’s legal existence altogether in his own.”—(“History of the Law of Married Women’s Property,” p. 8.)

And he exemplifies the position of the “feme” as being accurately depicted in the words of Petruchio:—

“I will be master of what is mine own,

She is my goods, my chattels; she is my house,

150My household stuff, my field, my barn,

My horse, my ox, my ass, my anything.”

—(“The Taming of the Shrew,” Act III., scene 2.)

The picture of the past masculine proprietorship and “bullyism” is scarcely overdrawn. Ere a distant day Englishmen will shudder in reflecting on the male creatures who were their progenitors.

5, 6.—“The tardier fear that grants the clown a share

In his own governance, denies it her.”

By a leading article on Woman Suffrage, in the Times of 29th April, 1892, a clear light is thrown on the causes which largely influenced the extension of the Parliamentary franchise to the poorer class of male citizens,—“a share of political power which they are not particularly well fitted to use,” says the Times;—and which denied the same right of franchise to women of whatever class. The intellect of the Times enounces that—

“Without desiring to disparage the sex in any way, we must venture to maintain that in both camps a large female contingent would be a mischievous element. The female Conservative politician would be an obstacle to all rational reform; the female Liberal politician would be the advocate of every crude and febrile innovation. No doubt we have put plausible arguments in the mouths of mere logic-choppers by treating the franchise as a right rather than as a privilege and a trust. Men can demand a share of political power which they are not particularly well fitted to use, because they possess de facto a share of the physical force upon which all political arrangements ultimately repose. Women do not possess such physical force, and, therefore, can prefer no such claim.”

Passing over, as unworthy of serious refutation, the wild 151assertions due to sex-bias in the first part of the above extract, it may be noted how instantly the lauded masculine weapon of logic is discarded and contemned as soon as it points in the direction of equal justice for woman. The “physical force” question is further dealt with in Note XLV., 6. But considering the words we have italicised, does not the whole of the Times exposition as above justify the appellation of cowardly “fear”? (See also p. 78.)

Id.... Yet an even more unworthy thing than denial of the suffrage has taken place, in that English women have been really robbed of their earlier franchises. A lady Poor Law Guardian of the Tewkesbury Union has written:—

“... the present position of women in regard to the various franchises is anomalous and contradictory, unworthy of that great growth of freedom which the nineteenth century has given to men, and degenerate as regards the position which women held in the days of the Plantagenets and the Tudors. Freedom for women has not broadened down ‘from precedent to precedent.’ Rather has it suffered by unnecessary legislative interference. Every woman, except the Queen, is, politically, non-existent. It was not always so. Restrictions unknown to our ancient constitution have crept in.... Chief Justice Lee is reported to have cited a case (in a manuscript collection of Hakewell’s), Catherine v. Surrey, in which it was expressly decided, that a feme sole, if she has a freehold, may vote for members of Parliament; and a further one (from the same collection), Holt v. Lyle, in which it was decided, that a feme sole householder may claim a voice for Parliament men; but, if married, her husband must vote for her; whilst Justice Page declared, ‘I see no disability in a woman from voting for a Parliament man.’ So closely, in the minds of our Judges, were the local and Parliamentary franchises bound up, that a question as to the rights of women in local voting seemed to involve considerations as to their right to vote for Parliament men.

152“Yet, even in the matter of these local franchises, women have suffered, and do suffer, from legislative tinkering and sex-biassed decisions in our law courts.

“Down to 1835, women, possessing the qualifications which entitled men to vote, voted freely in municipal elections, and in some important cities, such as London and Edinburgh, the civic rights even of married women, possessing a separate qualification from the husband, were well established. The Municipal Corporations Act of 1835, however (passed by the Whig administration of Lord Melbourne), was framed upon the evil precedent of the Reform Act of 1832, and by the use of the words ‘male persons,’ in treating of the franchises under it, disfranchised every woman in the boroughs to which it applied, and this disfranchisement lasted for thirty-four years.

“Nevertheless, in non-corporate districts, women continued to vote as freely as before, and thus secured the ultimate restitution of the rights of their disfranchised sisters in incorporated districts; for, when in 1869, on the consideration of the Municipal Franchise Bill of that year, these peculiar facts were brought to the notice of the House of Commons, and it was shown that the incorporation of any district involved the summary disfranchisement of the women ratepayers, the House, without a dissentient word, or any shadow of opposition, adopted the proposal to omit the word ‘male’ before the word ‘person’ in Section 1 of the Bill, and thus restored the rights of the women ratepayers, of whom many thousands voted, as a consequence of the passing of the Act, in the municipal elections of the following November.”—Mrs. Harriett McIlquham (“The Enfranchisement of Women: An Ancient Right, a Modern Need,” pp. 5, 12, 13.)

8.—“... infants, felons, fools ...”

This legal courteousness has afforded Miss Frances Power Cobbe the text for an instructive paper: “Criminals, Idiots, Women, and Minors: Is the Classification Sound?” (Fraser’s Magazine, December, 1868.)

A recent instance of the official collocation is to be found in the Act 5 and 6 Vict., Cap. 35, Sec. 41:—

153“And be it enacted, that the trustee, guardian, tutor, curator, or committee of any person, being an infant, or married woman, lunatic, idiot, or insane, and having the direction, control, or management of the property or concern of such infant, married woman, lunatic, idiot, or insane person, whether such infant, married woman, lunatic, idiot, or insane person shall reside in the United Kingdom or not,” etc., etc.

XXXVIII.

7.—“... every bond erased ...”

“In the struggle of the races, keeping in view the teachings of evolutionists, the most reasonable and sensible thing, in addition to its justness, appears to be this:

“First, to place women on an equal footing with men, socially, and in the eyes of the law. Before that is done, it is useless to talk about women’s superiority or equality. It is all breath and words, or paper and ink. In the eyes of the law she is man’s inferior. That is not all. In the eyes of the law the most cultured woman is inferior to the most uncultured man; she is, in fact, pretty much on a level with a baby, or a boy or girl under age. Moreover, the most cultured woman in the United Kingdom is considered inferior, politically, to the American negro!