: Histoire parlementaire de France Volume 1. Recueil complet des discours prononcés dans les chambres de 1819 à 1848 by Guizot Fran Ois - France History Restoration 1814-1830 FR Histoire

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BIBLIOGRAPHY 183

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.

The history of the Emancipation of Women is the long and varied record of their slow and gradual liberation from that utter subjection to Man in which various circumstances beyond their control--among which the physical superiority of the latter, a form of male supremacy which has seldom been called into question, was probably the most prominent--had combined to place them. It relates how in the course of centuries--either with the support of a certain portion of the opposite sex or relying upon their own resources--they strove to cast off the shackles which bound and degraded them, and to acquire that degree of physical, intellectual and moral freedom to which they felt themselves entitled. That the movement towards complete enfranchisement met with a varied reception and was hampered and retarded by men and often by women themselves was due chiefly to the fact that in the question of female possibilities there was much diversity of opinions at different times and among different nations. The worst enemies to evolution of this kind were those women who, holding the Empire of Love and Gallantry to be their exclusive domain, in which their sway was not likely to be ever disputed, turned deliberately against those of their own sex who in trying to wrench from the hands of men the sceptre of social power, were willing to forego the privileges of sex. That women were thus divided among themselves from the first, was the natural outcome of those differences in personal attractions and in personal intelligence which have always constituted the great danger of too sweeping conclusions with regard to the inclinations and capabilities of the female sex. Individual members of the same sex may yet be radically different, and he who would prescribe for all will always find himself confronted by the bewildering problem of the disparity of individuals.

The champions of the Cause of Woman have had to overcome a great deal of stubborn opposition, nor can it be said that even at the present moment the emancipation of women is complete. Even now that the ideal of perfect equality in everything seems almost within reach, and the domestic woman has largely given way to the social worker and political agitator, it may be a matter of speculation whether the full realisation of the long wished-for end, throwing open to women all those occupations from which centuries of injustice rigorously excluded them, would mean a blessing to society and to women in particular, or a mixture of gain and loss. Those who regard women from the all-human standpoint, holding the functions of sex to be only a passing incident in the great scheme of life, will be inclined to take the former view; those, on the other hand, who believe that a woman's life derives its colour from considerations of sex which refuse to be ignored, may well wonder where a rigorous application of perfect equality will land us in the end. In one respect however, there has been great and undeniable progress. The modern tendency to overlook sexual differences ensures to individual women the necessary freedom to judge for themselves whether a life of domestic or one of social duties will be more compatible with their personal inclinations; and no woman whose hopes of domestic bliss are rudely blunted, need--as was the case in former times--despair of succeeding in life; any talents she may happen to possess, will find full scope. If we contrast with this the truly pitiable condition of unmarried women in earlier ages, who were too often treated contemptuously for failing to perform what was considered the only duty of womanhood--the propagation of the species--we cannot but feel grateful to the champions of emancipation, whose restless ardour and unceasing devotion has entailed such glorious results.

The feminist programme includes a number of points, on some of which something will have to be said. There is, in the first place, that physical enfranchisement which makes the woman cease to be the willess, and therefore irresponsible and soulless, slave to the caprices of a brutal master. There is, in the second place, the intellectual emancipation of women, admitting the female sex to the participation of Reason and granting them that education of the mind which is to place them on a par with the other half of humanity; and there is that moral emancipation which recognises woman as a being endowed with a soul, equal to that of man, with consequent moral duties and responsibilities, partly dictated by considerations of sex. As a direct consequence of these, there is finally, social emancipation, constituting principles of perfect equality between the sexes, also in matters of social and political interest. They are all of them largely dependent on the growth of civilisation. It has even been said that the degree of civilisation in a nation is determined by the position of its women in the life of the community.

While making every possible allowance for deviations due to individual opinion, which mostly had its roots either in a particular form of creed or in some special system of philosophy, it may be stated that there were throughout the centuries two directly opposing lines of thought, each leading to certain clearly marked conclusions.

Of these, the first and oldest is based upon considerations of practice rather than theory, which makes it less rigid and more adaptable to the exigencies of practical life. It was adopted on the whole by churchmen and religious moralists rather than by abstract philosophers, and had the full support of the unquestioned doctrines of Christianity, of which support its adherents never failed to make the best use. It determined the attitude of the early Christian Church towards women in taking for granted the existence of a sexual character, from which it draws inferences. The difference between the sexes is essential and not restricted to physical differentiations. They were intended for different functions and have widely different duties to fulfil. Man's chief duty is the support of the family he has reared--for which obviously his strength of muscle was intended,--his is the struggle for life against a hostile society in which egoism reigns supreme and the interests of individuals constantly clash. Woman's special province is the home; hers is the difficult and important task of regulating the domestic life and bringing up the children she has borne. So far this theory receives support from observations of the animal world. But that faculty which marks the essential difference between the human and the animal kingdom became the apple of discord among many later generations. For Reason was held to be the prerogative of Man only, in which Woman had no share. His world is the world of the Intellect, the world of Action, in which sex is only an episode; hers is the world of Sentiment and of Contemplation, in which sex is the dominant factor. To think is the prerogative of Man, to feel that of Woman. That there is also an intellectual side to the quiet undisturbed contemplation of confinement at home was demonstrated by Shakespeare when creating the character of Lady Macbeth, nor was the monopoly of Thought greatly abused by the mediaeval Lords of creation, the only scholars of that period being those who had resigned their sex. But apart from those who lived in convents and whose reading was exclusively religious, women were self-taught or rather taught by experience, and the use of books was confined to some monasteries.

Starting from the above principle, any claim to intellectual equality would have seemed an encroachment upon the male kingdom. Love and maternity, and the daily routine of the household ought to be the only considerations in a woman's existence and whatever is outside these is the domain of Man. To Woman was allotted the task of managing the home, to Man the more comprehensive one of managing society. That in reality the former is quite as important as the latter, which must always largely depend on it, since Woman is the mother of Man, and the guide of his first steps, did not find full recognition until the 17th century, when F?nelon and some of his contemporaries made this consideration a basis on which to build their demands for a female education.

Early Christianity, drawing the necessary conclusions from certain Biblical allusions to the position of Woman and guided by St. Paul's teachings, adopted the Hebraic notions of female inferiority and dependence, which long met with no resistance whatever. The early churchmen, in strict obedience to the teaching of their faith, tacitly accepted the inferiority of women and their subjection to men. About these little need be said here. They were partly responsible for the misery of women in the early Middle Ages, the time of their greatest debasement and degradation, and will be remembered only among the adversaries of feminism. However, the fact must here be emphasized, that even the full acceptance of a sexual character does not necessitate, and in practice did not always lead to, insistence upon the female inferiority.

There are those who, while assigning to woman a place in society differing essentially from that held by man, do not infer that woman is necessarily inferior to man. They purposely refrain from comparing that which by its very nature defies comparison: "for Woman is not undeveloped Man, but diverse." They insist instead on the division of functions which makes the sexes supplement each other. The majority are moralists, churchmen of a later age, and to them the problem is that of sexual duties, with the promise of eternity in the background, which is intended for both sexes, female as well as male. The pursuit of Christian virtue, which to them is the essential thing, is regardless of sex and leads to self-abnegation which renders the sexual problem of secondary importance. The very orthodoxy of her faith prevented Hannah More from becoming a feminist in the full sense of the word, and as Mary Wollstonecraft's feminism came to absorb her mind more fully, her religious convictions retired into the background. To the Christian moralist the place of woman in the social structure must of necessity be an important one; but it is made so only by the domestic duties which devolve upon her. She is expected to bring up her children to be good Christians, good citizens, and good fathers and mothers, in the moral interest of society, and this duty obviously involves the necessity for women to receive the benefit of a moral education. In this lies the gist of the moralist's arguments in favour of a partial female emancipation. To be a good educator of the young it is indispensable that the mother herself should be liberally instructed, for what is to become of her influence, should her male offspring come to regard her as intellectually inferior? In this argument the feminist and the moralist join hands. F?nelon and his contemporaries were philosophers and for the rigid, inflexible interpretation of Scripture by the early churchmen they substituted the structure of moral philosophy, which thus indirectly promoted the growth of feminist ideas. In their eyes an education is the very first requisite to enable a woman to discharge the duties imposed by motherhood.

It was again Mary Wollstonecraft who extended this implicit faith in the perfectibility of humanity to the case of woman. All that women needed was to be given a good education, and the rest would follow. So convinced were these idealists of the incontestability of their arguments that they refused to make any concessions, however slight, to those who held different views. This very inflexibility became the means of ruining their best intentions. They did not stop at intellectual and moral enfranchisement, their daring schemes comprised complete social and political emancipation. In the period with which we shall be chiefly concerned, their efforts were doomed to failure by the circumstance that their aims were physically incapable of realisation while society remained in the state in which it found itself at the time of the outbreak of the French Revolution. Those more or less unconscious feminists, the Bluestockings, were responsible for far more direct improvement through the very moderation of their suggestions than Mary Wollstonecraft, whose lonely voice in the wilderness of British conventionality heralded the great and successful movement of a later century. When the inevitable reaction set in, the entire feminist movement, which Mary had identified with the cause of liberty, as advocated by the French, was regarded as anti-national and seditious, and first ridiculed and reviled, to be soon after consigned to a temporary oblivion.

On the other hand, those moralists who exhort women to be content to take their place in society as "wives and mothers", not inferior to man, but different, forget to provide for those women, whom circumstances beyond their control have destined for celibacy, debarring them from the privileges of their own sex, while not allowing them to share those of the male. For such women it was indeed a blessed day when the word that was to deliver them from bondage and to open to them paths of public usefulness was first spoken by the pioneers of feminism, throwing open to the female sex the many professions for which they are as fit, or even fitter--in spite of the equality theory--than men!

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