Kitabı oku: «The Task of Social Hygiene», sayfa 4

III
THE NEW ASPECT OF THE WOMAN'S MOVEMENT

Eighteenth-Century France—Pioneers of the Woman's Movement—The Growth of the Woman's Suffrage Movement—The Militant Activities of the Suffragettes—Their Services and Disservices to the Cause—Advantages of Women's Suffrage—Sex Questions in Germany—Bebel—The Woman's Rights Movement in Germany—The Development of Sexual Science in Germany—the Movement for the Protection of Motherhood—Ellen Key—The Question of Illegitimacy—Eugenics—Women as Law-makers in the Home.

I

The modern conception of the political equality of women with men, we have seen, arose in France in the second half of the eighteenth century. Its way was prepared by the philosophic thinkers of the Encyclopédie, and the idea was definitely formulated by some of the finest minds of the age, notably by Condorcet, ⁵² as part of the great new programme of social and political reform which was to some small degree realized in the upheaval of the Revolution. The political emancipation of women constituted no part of the Revolution. It has indeed been maintained, and perhaps with reason, that the normal development of the revolutionary spirit would probably have ended in vanquishing the claim of masculine predominance if war had not diverted the movement of revolution by transforming it into the Terror. Even as it was, the rights of women were not without their champions even at this period. We ought specially to remember Olympe de Gouges, whose name is sometimes dismissed too contemptuously. With all her defects of character and education and literary style, Olympe de Gouges, as is now becoming recognized, was, in her biographer's words, "one of the loftiest and most generous souls of the epoch," in some respects superior to Madame Roland. She was the first woman to demand of the Revolution that it should be logical by proclaiming the rights of woman side by side with those of her equal, man, and in so doing she became the great pioneer of the feminist movement of to-day. ⁵³ She owes the position more especially to her little pamphlet, issued in 1791, entitled Déclaration des Droits de la Femme. It is this Déclaration which contains the oft-quoted (or misquoted) saying: "Women have the right to ascend the scaffold; they must also have the right to ascend the tribune." Two years later she had herself ascended the scaffold, but the other right she claimed is only now beginning to be granted to women. At that time there were too many more pressing matters to be dealt with, and the only women who had been taught to demand the rights of their sex were precisely those whom the Revolution was guillotining or exiling. Even had it been otherwise, we may be quite sure that Napoleon, the heir of the Revolution and the final arbiter of what was to be permanent in its achievements, would have sternly repressed any political freedom accorded to women. The only freedom he cared to grant to women was the freedom to produce food for cannon, and so far as lay in his power he sought to crush the political activities of women even in literature, as we see in his treatment of Mme de Staël. ⁵⁴

An Englishwoman of genius was in Paris at the time of the Revolution, with as broad a conception of the place of woman side by side with man as Olympe de Gouges, while for the most part she was Olympe's superior. In 1792, a year after the Déclaration des Droits de la Femme, Mary Wollstonecraft—it is possible to some extent inspired by the brief Déclaration—published her Vindication of the Rights of Women. It was not a shrill outcry, nor an attack on men—in that indeed resembling the Déclaration—but just the book of a woman, a wise and sensible woman, who discusses many women's questions from a woman's point of view, and desires civil and political rights, not as a panacea for all evils, but simply because, as she argues, humanity cannot progress as a whole while one half of it is semi-educated and only half free. There can be little doubt that if the later advocates of woman's suffrage could have preserved more of Mary Wollstonecraft's sanity, moderation, and breadth of outlook, they would have diminished the difficulties that beset the task of convincing the community generally. Mary Wollstonecraft was, however, the inspired pioneer of a great movement which slowly gained force and volume. ⁵⁵ During the long Victorian period the practical aims of this movement went chiefly into the direction of improving the education of girls so as to make it, so far as possible, like that of boys. In this matter an immense revolution was slowly accomplished, involving the entrance of women into various professions and employments hitherto reserved to men. That was a very necessary preliminary to the extension of the franchise to women. The suffrage propaganda could not, moreover, fail to benefit by the better education of women and their increased activity in public life. It was their activity, indeed, far more than the skill of the women who fought for the franchise, which made the political emancipation of women inevitable, and the noble and brilliant women who through the middle of the nineteenth century recreated the educational system for women, and so prepared them to play their proper part in life, were the best women workers the cause of women's enfranchisement ever had. There was, however, one distinguished friend of the emancipation of women whose advocacy of the cause at this period was of immense value. It is now nearly half a century since John Stuart Mill—inspired, like Thompson, by a woman—wrote his Subjection of Women, and it may undoubtedly be said that since that date no book on this subject published in any country—with the single exception of Bebel's Woman—has been so widely read or so influential. The support of this distinguished and authoritative thinker gave to the woman's movement a stamp of aristocratic intellectuality very valuable in a land where even the finest minds are apt to be afflicted by the disease of timidity, and was doubtless a leading cause of the cordial reception which in England the idea of women's political emancipation has long received among politicians. Bebel's book, speedily translated into English, furnished the plebeian complement to Mill's.

The movement for the education of women and their introduction into careers previously monopolized by men inevitably encouraged the movement for extending the franchise to women. This political reform was remarkably successful in winning over the politicians, and not those of one party only. In England, since Mill published his Subjection of Women in 1869, there have always been eminent statesmen convinced of the desirability of granting the franchise to women, and among the rank and file of Members of Parliament, irrespective of party, a very large proportion have pledged themselves to the same cause. The difficulty, therefore, in introducing woman's suffrage into England has not been primarily in Parliament. The one point, at which political party feeling has caused obstruction—and it is certainly a difficult and important point—is the method by which woman's suffrage should be introduced. Each party—Conservative, Liberal, Labour—naturally enough desires that this great new voting force should first be applied at a point which would not be likely to injure its own party interests. It is probable that in each party the majority of the leaders are of opinion that the admission of female voters is inevitable and perhaps desirable; the dispute is as to the extent to which the floodgates should in the first place be opened. In accordance with English tradition, some kind of compromise, however illogical, suggests itself as the safest first step, but the dispute remains as to the exact class of women who should be first admitted and the exact extent to which entrance should be granted to them.

The dispute of the gate-keepers would, however, be easily overcome if the pressure behind the gate were sufficiently strong. But it is not. However large a proportion of the voters in Great Britain may be in favour of women's franchise, it is certain that only a very minute percentage regard this as a question having precedency over all other questions. And the reason why men have only taken a very temperate interest in woman's suffrage is that women themselves, in the mass, have taken an equally temperate interest in the matter when they have not been actually hostile to the movement. It may indeed be said, even at the present time, that whenever an impartial poll is taken of a large miscellaneous group of women, only a minority are found to be in favour of woman's suffrage. ⁵⁶ No significant event has occurred to stimulate general interest in the matter, and no supremely eloquent or influential voice has artificially stirred it. There has been no woman of Mary Wollstonecraft's genius and breadth of mind who has devoted herself to the cause, and since Mill the men who have made up their minds on this side have been content to leave the matter to the women's associations formed for securing the success of the cause. These associations have, however, been led by women of a past generation, who, while of unquestionable intellectual power and high moral character, have viewed the woman question in a somewhat narrow, old-fashioned spirit, and have not possessed the gift of inspiring enthusiasm. Thus the growth of the movement, however steady it may have been, has been slow. John Stuart Mill's remark, in a letter to Bain in 1869, remains true to-day: "The most important thing women have to do is to stir up the zeal of women themselves."

In the meanwhile in some other countries where, except in the United States, it was of much more recent growth, the woman's suffrage movement has achieved success, with no great expenditure of energy. It has been introduced into several American States and Territories. It is established throughout Australasia. It is also established in Norway. In Finland women may not only vote, but also sit in Parliament.

It was in these conditions that the Women's Social and Political Union was formed in London. It was not an offshoot from any existing woman's suffrage society, but represented a crystallization of new elements. For the most part, even its leaders had not previously taken any active part in the movement for woman's suffrage. The suffrage movement had need of exactly such an infusion of fresh and ardent blood; so that the new society was warmly welcomed, and met with immediate success, finding recruits alike among the rich and the poor. Its unconventional methods, its eager and militant spirit, were felt to supply a lacking element, and the first picturesque and dashing exploits of the Union were on the whole well received. The obvious sincerity and earnestness of these very fresh recruits covered the rashness of their new and rather ignorant enthusiasm.

But a hasty excess of ardour only befits a first uncalculated outburst of youthfulness. It is quite another matter when it is deliberately hardened into a rigid routine, and becomes an organized method of creating disorder for the purpose of advertising a grievance in season and out of season. Since, moreover, the attack was directed chiefly against politicians, precisely that class of the community most inclined to be favourable to woman's suffrage, the wrong-headedness of the movement becomes as striking as its offensiveness.

The effect on the early friends of the new movement was inevitable. Some, who had hailed it with enthusiasm and proclaimed its pioneers as new Joans of Arc, changed their tone to expostulation and protest, and finally relapsed into silence. Other friends of the movement, even among its former leaders, were less silent. They have revealed to the world, too unkindly, some of the influences which slowly corrupt such a movement from the inside when it hardens into sectarianism: the narrowing of aim, the increase of conventionality, the jealousy of rivals, the tendency to morbid emotionalism.

It is easy to exaggerate the misdeeds and the weaknesses of the suffragettes. It is undoubtedly true that they have alienated, in an increasing degree, the sympathies of the women of highest character and best abilities among the advocates of woman's suffrage. Nearly all Englishwomen to-day who stand well above the average in mental distinction are in favour of woman's suffrage, though they may not always be inclined to take an active part in securing it. Perhaps the only prominent exception is Mrs. Humphry Ward. Yet they rarely associate themselves with the methods of the suffragettes. They do not, indeed, protest, for they feel there would be a kind of disloyalty in fighting against the Extreme Left of a movement to which they themselves belong; but they stand aloof. The women who are chiefly attracted to the ranks of the suffragettes belong to three classes: (1) Those of the well-to-do class with no outlet for their activities, who eagerly embrace an exciting occupation which has become, not only highly respectable, but even, in a sense, fashionable; they have no natural tendency to excess, but are easily moved by their social environment; some of these are rich, and the great principle—once formulated in an unhappy moment concerning a rich lady interested in social reform—"We must not kill the goose that lays the golden eggs," has never been despised by the suffragette leaders; (2) the rowdy element among women which is not so much moved to adopt the methods for the sake of the cause as to adopt the cause for the sake of the methods, so that in the case of their special emotional temperament it may be said, reversing an ancient phrase, that the means justify the end; this element of noisy explosiveness, always found in a certain proportion of women, though latent under ordinary circumstances, is easily aroused by stimulation, and in every popular revolt the wildest excesses are the acts of women. (3) In this small but important group we find women of rare and beautiful character who, hypnotized by the enthralling influence of an idea, and often having no great intellectual power of their own, are even unconscious of the vulgarity that accompanies them, and gladly sacrifice themselves to a cause that seems to be sacred; these are the saints and martyrs of every movement.

When we thus analyse the suffragette outburst we see that it is really compounded out of quite varied elements: a conventionally respectable element, a rowdy element, and an ennobling element. It is, therefore, equally unreasonable to denounce its vices or to idealize its virtues. It is more profitable to attempt to balance its services and its disservices to the cause of women's suffrage.

Looked at dispassionately, the two main disadvantages of the suffragette agitation—and they certainly seem at the first glance very comprehensive objections—lie in its direction and in its methods. There are two vast bodies of people who require to be persuaded in order to secure woman's suffrage: first women themselves, and secondly their men-folk, who at present monopolize the franchise. Until the majority of both men and women are educated to understand the justice and reasonableness of this step, and until men are persuaded that the time has come for practical action, the most violent personal assaults on cabinet ministers—supposing such political methods to be otherwise unobjectionable—are beside the mark. They are aimed in the wrong direction. This is so even when we leave aside the fact that politicians are sufficiently converted already. The primary task of women suffragists is to convert their own sex. Indeed it may be said that that is their whole task. Whenever the majority of women are persuaded that they ought to possess the vote, we may be quite sure that they will communicate that persuasion to their men-folk who are able to give them the vote. The conversion of the majority of women to a belief in women's suffrage is essential to its attainment because it is only by the influence of the women who belong to him, whom he knows and loves and respects, that the average man is likely to realize that, as Ellen Key puts it, "a ballot paper in itself no more injures the delicacy of a woman's hand than a cooking recipe." The antics of women in the street, however earnest those women may be, only leave him indifferent, even hostile, at most, amused.

It may be added that in any case it would be undesirable, even if possible, to bestow the suffrage on women so long as only a minority have the wish to exercise it. It would be contrary to sound public policy. It would not only discredit political rights, but it would tend to give the woman's vote too narrow and one-sided a character. To grant women the right to vote is a different matter from granting women the right to enter a profession. In order to give women the right to be doctors or lawyers it is not necessary that women generally should be convinced of the advantage of such a step. The matter chiefly concerns the very small number of women who desire the privilege. But the women who vote will be in some measure legislating for women generally, and it is therefore necessary that women generally should participate.

But even if it is admitted—although, as we have seen, there is a twofold reason for not making such an admission—that the suffragettes are justified in regarding politicians as the obstacles in the way of their demands, there still remains the question of the disadvantage of their method. This method is by some euphemistically described as the introduction of "nagging" into politics; but even at this mild estimate of its character the question may still be asked whether the method is calculated to attain the desired end. One hears women suffragettes declare that this is the only kind of argument men understand. There is, however, in the masculine mind—and by no means least when it is British—an element which strongly objects to be worried and bullied even into a good course of action. The suffragettes have done their best to stimulate that element of obstinacy. Even among men who viewed the matter from an unprejudiced standpoint many felt that, necessary as woman's suffrage is, the policy of the suffragettes rendered the moment unfavourable for its adoption. It is a significant fact that in the countries which have so far granted women the franchise no methods in the slightest degree resembling those of the suffragettes have ever been practised. It is not easy to imagine Australia tolerating such methods, and in Finland full Parliamentary rights were freely granted, as is generally recognized, precisely as a mark of gratitude for women's helpfulness in standing side by side with their men in a great political struggle. The policy of obstruction adopted by the English suffragettes, with its "tactics" of opposing at election times the candidates of the very party whose leaders they are imploring to grant them the franchise, was so foolish that it is little wonder that many doubted whether women at all understand the methods of politics, or are yet fitted to take a responsible part in political life.

The suffragette method of persuading public men seems to be, on the whole, futile, even if it were directed at the proper quarter, and even if it were in itself a justifiable method. But it would be possible to grant these "ifs" and still to feel that a serious injury is done to the cause of woman's suffrage when the method of violence is adopted by women. Some suffragettes have argued, in this matter, that in political crises men also have acted just as badly or worse. But, even if we assume that this is the case, ⁵⁷ it has been one of the chief arguments hitherto for the admission of women into political life that they exercise an elevating and refining influence, so that their entrance into this field will serve to purify politics. That, no doubt, is an argument mostly brought forward by men, and may be regarded as, in some measure, an amiable masculine delusion, since most of the refining and elevating elements in civilization probably owe their origin not to women but to men. But it is not altogether a delusion. In the virtues of force—however humbly those virtues are to be classed—women, as a sex, can never be the rivals of men, and when women attempt to gain their ends by the demonstration of brute force they can only place themselves at a disadvantage. They are laying down the weapons they know best how to use, and adopting weapons so unsuitable that they only injure the users.

Many women, speaking on behalf of the suffragettes, protest against the idea that women must always be "charming." And if "charm" is to be understood in so narrow and conventionalized a sense that it means something which is incompatible with the developed natural activities, whether of the soul or of the body, then such a protest is amply justified. But in the larger sense, "charm"—which means the power to effect work without employing brute force—is indispensable to women. Charm is a woman's strength just as strength is a man's charm. And the justification for women in this matter is that herein they represent the progress of civilization. All civilization involves the substitution in this respect of the woman's method for the man's. In the last resort a savage can only assert his rights by brute force. But with the growth of civilization the wronged man, instead of knocking down his opponent, employs "charm"; in other words he engages an advocate, who, by the exercise of sweet reasonableness, persuades twelve men in a box that his wrongs must be righted, and the matter is then finally settled, not by man's weapon, the fist, but by woman's weapon, the tongue. Nowadays the same method of "charm" is being substituted for brute force in international wrongs, and with the complete substitution of arbitration for war the woman's method of charm will have replaced the man's method of brute force along the whole line of legitimate human activity. If we realize this we can understand why it is that a group of women who, even in the effort to support a good cause, revert to the crude method of violence are committing a double wrong. They are wronging their own sex by proving false to its best traditions, and they are wronging civilization by attempting to revive methods of savagery which it is civilization's mission to repress. Therefore it may fairly be held that even if the methods of the suffragettes were really adequate to secure women's suffrage, the attainment of the franchise by those methods would be a misfortune. The ultimate loss would be greater than the gain.

If we hold the foregoing considerations in mind it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that neither in their direction nor in their nature are the methods of the suffragettes fitted to attain the end desired. We have still, however, to consider the other side of the question.

Whenever an old movement receives a strong infusion of new blood, whatever excesses or mistakes may arise, it is very unlikely that all the results will be on the same side. It is certainly not so in this case. Even the opposition to woman's suffrage which the suffragettes are responsible for, and the Anti-Suffrage societies which they have called into active existence, are not an unmitigated disadvantage. Every movement of progress requires a vigorous movement of opposition to stimulate its progress, and the clash of discussion can only be beneficial in the end to the progressive cause.

But the immense advantage of the activity of the suffragettes has been indirect. It has enabled the great mass of ordinary sensible women who neither join Suffrage societies nor Anti-Suffrage societies to think for themselves on this question. Until a few years ago, while most educated women were vaguely aware of the existence of a movement for giving women the vote, they only knew of it as something rather unpractical and remote; its reality had never been brought home to them. When women witnessed the eruption into the streets of a band of women—most of them apparently women much like themselves—who were so convinced that the franchise must be granted to women, here and now, that they were prepared to face publicity, ridicule, and even imprisonment, then "votes for women" became to them, for the first time, a real and living issue. In a great many cases, certainly, they realized that they intensely disliked the people who behaved in this way and any cause that was so preached. But in a great many other cases they realized, for the first time definitely, that the demand of votes for women was a reasonable demand, and that they were themselves suffragists, though they had no wish to take an active part in the movement, and no real sympathy with its more "militant" methods. There can be no doubt that in this way the suffragettes have performed an immense service for the cause of women's suffrage. It has been for the most part an indirect and undesigned service, but in the end it will perhaps more than serve to counterbalance the disadvantages attached to their more conscious methods and their more deliberate aims.

If, as we may trust, this service will be the main outcome of the suffragette phase of the women's movement, it is an outcome to be thankful for; we may then remember with gratitude the ardent enthusiasm of the suffragettes and forget the foolish and futile ways in which it was manifested. There has never been any doubt as to the ultimate adoption of women's suffrage; its gradual extension among the more progressive countries of the world sufficiently indicates that it will ultimately reach even to the most backward countries. Its accomplishment in England has been gradual, although it is here so long since the first steps were taken, not because there has been some special and malignant opposition to it on the part of men in general and politicians in particular, but simply because England is an old and conservative country, with a very ancient constitutional machinery which effectually guards against the hasty realization of any scheme of reform. This particular reform, however, is not an isolated or independent scheme; it is an essential part of a great movement in the social equalization of the sexes which has been going on for centuries in our civilization, a movement such as may be correspondingly traced in the later stages of the civilizations of antiquity. Such a movement we may by our efforts help forward, we may for a while retard, but it is a part of civilization, and it would be idle to imagine that we can affect the ultimate issue.

That the issue of women's suffrage may be reached in England within a reasonable period is much to be desired for the sake of the woman's movement in the larger sense, which has nothing to do with politics, and is now impeded by this struggle. The enfranchisement of women, Miss Frances Cobbe declared thirty years ago, is "the crown and completion" of all progress in women's movement. "Votes for women," exclaims, more youthfully but not less unreasonably, Miss Christabel Pankhurst, "means a new Heaven and a new Earth." But women's suffrage no more means a new Heaven or even a new Earth than it means, as other people fear, a new Purgatory and a new Hell. We may see this quite plainly in Australasia. Women's votes aid in furthering social legislation and contribute to the passing of acts which have their good side, and, no doubt, like everything else, their bad side. As Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who devoted her life to the political enfranchisement of women, declared, the ballot is, at most, only the vestibule to women's emancipation. Man's suffrage has not introduced the millennium, and it is foolish to suppose that woman's suffrage can. It is merely an act of justice and a reasonable condition of social hygiene.

The attainment of the suffrage, if it is a beginning and not an end, will thus have a real and positive value in liberating the woman's movement from a narrow and sterilizing phase of its course. In England, especially, the woman's movement has in the past largely confined itself to imitating men and to obtaining the same work and the same rights as men. Putting the matter more broadly, it may be said that it has been the aim of the woman's movement to secure woman's claims as a human being rather than as woman. But that is only half the task of the woman's movement, and perhaps not the most essential half. Women can never be like men, any more than men can be like women. It is their unlikeness which renders them indispensable to each other, and which also makes it imperative that each sex should have its due share in moulding the conditions of life. Woman's function in life can never be the same as man's, if only because women are the mothers of the race. That is the point, the only point, at which women have an uncontested supremacy over men. The most vital problem before our civilization to-day is the problem of motherhood, the question of creating the human beings best fitted for modern life, the practical realization of a sound eugenics. Manouvrier, the distinguished anthropologist, who carries feminism to its extreme point in the scientific sphere, yet recognizes the fundamental fact that "a woman's part is to make children." But he clearly perceives also that "in all its extent and all its consequences that part is not surpassed in importance, in difficulty, or in dignity, by the man's part." On the contrary it is a part which needs "an amount of intelligence incontestably superior, and by far, to that required by most masculine occupations." ⁵⁸ We are here at the core of the woman's movement. And the full fruition of that movement means that women, by virtue of their supremacy in this matter, shall take their proper share in legislation for life, not as mere sexless human beings, but as women, and in accordance with the essential laws of their own nature as women.