Equality Read online

  CHAPTER XX.

  WHAT THE REVOLUTION DID FOR WOMEN.

  "It occurs to me, doctor," I said, "that it would have been even betterworth the while of a woman of my day to have slept over till now than forme, seeing that the establishment of economic equality seems to havemeant for more for women than for men."

  "Edith would perhaps not have been pleased with the substitution," saidthe doctor; "but really there is much in what you say, for theestablishment of economic equality did in fact mean incomparably more forwomen than for men. In your day the condition of the mass of men wasabject as compared with their present state, but the lot of women wasabject as compared with that of the men. The most of men were indeed theservants of the rich, but the woman was subject to the man whether hewere rich or poor, and in the latter and more common case was thus theservant of a servant. However low down in poverty a man might be, he hadone or more lower even than he in the persons of the women dependent onhim and subject to his will. At the very bottom of the social heap,bearing the accumulated burden of the whole mass, was woman. All thetyrannies of soul and mind and body which the race endured, weighed atlast with cumulative force upon her. So far beneath even the mean estateof man was that of woman that it would have been a mighty uplift for hercould she have only attained his level. But the great Revolution notmerely lifted her to an equality with man but raised them both with thesame mighty upthrust to a plane of moral dignity and material welfare asmuch above the former state of man as his former state had been abovethat of woman. If men then owe gratitude to the Revolution, how muchgreater must women esteem their debt to it! If to the men the voice ofthe Revolution was a call to a higher and nobler plane of living, towoman it was as the voice of God calling her to a new creation."

  "Undoubtedly," I said, "the women of the poor had a pretty abject time ofit, but the women of the rich certainly were not oppressed."

  "The women of the rich," replied the doctor, "were numerically tooinsignificant a proportion of the mass of women to be worth consideringin a general statement of woman's condition in your day. Nor, for thatmatter, do we consider their lot preferable to that of their poorersisters. It is true that they did not endure physical hardship, but were,on the contrary, petted and spoiled by their men protectors likeover-indulged children; but that seems to us not a sort of life to bedesired. So far as we can learn from contemporary accounts and socialpictures, the women of the rich lived in a hothouse atmosphere ofadulation and affectation, altogether less favorable to moral or mentaldevelopment than the harder conditions of the women of the poor. A womanof to-day, if she were doomed to go back to live in your world, would begat least to be reincarnated as a scrub woman rather than as a wealthywoman of fashion. The latter rather than the former seems to us the sortof woman which most completely typified the degradation of the sex inyour age."

  As the same thought had occurred to me, even in my former life, I did notargue the point.

  "The so-called woman movement, the beginning of the great transformationin her condition," continued the doctor, "was already making quite a stirin your day. You must have heard and seen much of it, and may have evenknown some of the noble women who were the early leaders."

  "Oh, yes." I replied. "There was a great stir about women's rights, butthe programme then announced was by no means revolutionary. It only aimedat securing the right to vote, together with various changes in the lawsabout property-holding by women, the custody of children in divorces, andsuch details. I assure you that the women no more than the men had atthat time any notion of revolutionizing the economic system."

  "So we understand," replied the doctor. "In that respect the women'sstruggle for independence resembled revolutionary movements in general,which, in their earlier stages, go blundering and stumbling along in sucha seemingly erratic and illogical way that it takes a philosopher tocalculate what outcome to expect. The calculation as to the ultimateoutcome of the women's movement was, however, as simple as was the samecalculation in the case of what you called the labor movement. What thewomen were after was independence of men and equality with them, whilethe workingmen's desire was to put an end to their vassalage tocapitalists. Now, the key to the fetters the women wore was the same thatlocked the shackles of the workers. It was the economic key, the controlof the means of subsistence. Men, as a sex, held that power over women,and the rich as a class held it over the working masses. The secret ofthe sexual bondage and of the industrial bondage was the same--namely,the unequal distribution of the wealth power, and the change which wasnecessary to put an end to both forms of bondage must obviously beeconomic equalization, which in the sexual as in the industrial relationwould at once insure the substitution of co-operation for coercion.

  "The first leaders of the women's revolt were unable to see beyond theends of their noses, and consequently ascribed their subject conditionand the abuses they endured to the wickedness of man, and appeared tobelieve that the only remedy necessary was a moral reform on his part.This was the period during which such expressions as the 'tyrant man' and'man the monster' were watchwords of the agitation. The champions of thewomen fell into precisely the same mistake committed by a largeproportion of the early leaders of the workingmen, who wasted good breathand wore out their tempers in denouncing the capitalists as the willfulauthors of all the ills of the proletarian. This was worse than idlerant; it was misleading and blinding. The men were essentially no worsethan the women they oppressed nor the capitalists than the workmen theyexploited. Put workingmen in the places of the capitalists and they wouldhave done just as the capitalists were doing. In fact, wheneverworkingmen did become capitalists they were commonly said to make thehardest sort of masters. So, also, if women could have changed placeswith the men, they would undoubtedly have dealt with the men precisely asthe men had dealt with them. It was the system which permitted humanbeings to come into relations of superiority and inferiority to oneanother which was the cause of the whole evil. Power over others isnecessarily demoralizing to the master and degrading to the subject.Equality is the only moral relation between human beings. Any reformwhich should result in remedying the abuse of women by men, or workingmenby capitalists, must therefore be addressed to equalizing their economiccondition. Not till the women, as well as the workingmen, gave over thefolly of attacking the consequences of economic inequality and attackedthe inequality itself, was there any hope for the enfranchisement ofeither class.

  "The utterly inadequate idea which the early leaders of the women had ofthe great salvation they must have, and how it must come, are curiouslyillustrated by their enthusiasm for the various so-called temperanceagitations of the period for the purpose of checking drunkenness amongmen. The special interest of the women as a class in this reform in men'smanners--for women as a rule did not drink intoxicants--consisted in thecalculation that if the men drank less they would be less likely to abusethem, and would provide more liberally for their maintenance; that is tosay, their highest aspirations were limited to the hope that, byreforming the morals of their masters, they might secure a little bettertreatment for themselves. The idea of abolishing the mastership had notyet occurred to them as a possibility.

  "This point, by the way, as to the efforts of women in your day to reformmen's drinking habits by law rather strikingly suggests the differencebetween the position of women then and now in their relation to men. Ifnowadays men were addicted to any practice which made them seriously andgenerally offensive to women, it would not occur to the latter to attemptto curb it by law. Our spirit of personal sovereignty and the rightfulindependence of the individual in all matters mainly self-regarding wouldindeed not tolerate any of the legal interferences with the privatepractices of individuals so common in your day. But the women would notfind force necessary to correct the manners of the men. Their absoluteeconomic independence, whether in or out of marriage, would enable themto use a more potent influence. It would presently be found that the menwho made themselves offensive to women's susceptibilities would su
e fortheir favor in vain. But it was practically impossible for women of yourday to protect themselves or assert their wills by assuming thatattitude. It was economically a necessity for a woman to marry, or atleast of so great advantage to her that she could not well dictate termsto her suitors, unless very fortunately situated, and once married it wasthe practical understanding that in return for her maintenance by herhusband she must hold herself at his disposal."

  "It sounds horribly," I said, "at this distance of time, but I beg you tobelieve that it was not always quite as bad as it sounds. The better menexercised their power with consideration, and with persons of refinementthe wife virtually retained her self-control, and for that matter in manyfamilies the woman was practically the head of the house."

  "No doubt, no doubt," replied the doctor. "So it has always been underevery form of servitude. However absolute the power of a master, it hasbeen exercised with a fair degree of humanity in a large proportion ofinstances, and in many cases the nominal slave, when of strong character,has in reality exercised a controlling influence over the master. Thisobserved fact is not, however, considered a valid argument for subjectinghuman beings to the arbitrary will of others. Speaking generally, it isundoubtedly true that both the condition of women when subjected to men,as well as that of the poor in subjection to the rich, were in fact farless intolerable than it seems to us they possibly could have been. Asthe physical life of man can be maintained and often thrive in anyclimate from the poles to the equator, so his moral nature has shown itspower to live and even put forth fragrant flowers under the most terriblesocial conditions."

  "In order to realize the prodigious debt of woman to the greatRevolution," resumed the doctor, "we must remember that the bondage fromwhich it delivered her was incomparably more complete and abject than anyto which men had ever been subjected by their fellow-men. It was enforcednot by a single but by a triple yoke. The first yoke was the subjectionto the personal and class rule of the rich, which the mass of women borein common with the mass of men. The other two yokes were peculiar to her.One of them was her personal subjection not only in the sexual relation,but in all her behavior to the particular man on whom she depended forsubsistence. The third yoke was an intellectual and moral one, andconsisted in the slavish conformity exacted of her in all her thinking,speaking, and acting to a set of traditions and conventional standardscalculated to repress all that was spontaneous and individual, and imposean artificial uniformity upon both the inner and outer life.

  "The last was the heaviest yoke of the three, and most disastrous in itseffects both upon women directly and indirectly upon mankind through thedegradation of the mothers of the race. Upon the woman herself the effectwas so soul-stifling and mind-stunting as to be made a plausible excusefor treating her as a natural inferior by men not philosophical enough tosee that what they would make an excuse for her subjection was itself theresult of that subjection. The explanation of woman's submission inthought and action to what was practically a slave code--a code peculiarto her sex and scorned and derided by men--was the fact that the mainhope of a comfortable life for every woman consisted in attracting thefavorable attention of some man who could provide for her. Now, underyour economic system it was very desirable for a man who soughtemployment to think and talk as his employer did if he was to get on inlife. Yet a certain degree of independence of mind and conduct wasconceded to men by their economic superiors under most circumstances, solong as they were not actually offensive, for, after all, what was mainlywanted of them was their labor. But the relation of a woman to the manwho supported her was of a very different and much closer character. Shemust be to him _persona grata_, as your diplomats used to say. Toattract him she must be personally pleasing to him, must not offend histastes or prejudices by her opinions or conduct. Otherwise he would belikely to prefer some one else. It followed from this fact that while aboy's training looked toward fitting him to earn a living, a girl waseducated with a chief end to making her, if not pleasing, at least notdispleasing to men.

  "Now, if particular women had been especially trained to suit particularmen's tastes--trained to order, so to speak--while that would have beenoffensive enough to any idea of feminine dignity, yet it would have beenfar less disastrous, for many men would have vastly preferred women ofindependent minds and original and natural opinions. But as it was notknown beforehand what particular men would support particular women, theonly safe way was to train girls with a view to a negative rather than apositive attractiveness, so that at least they might not offend averagemasculine prejudices. This ideal was most likely to be secured byeducating a girl to conform herself to the customary traditional andfashionable habits of thinking, talking, and behaving--in a word, to theconventional standards prevailing at the time. She must above all thingsavoid as a contagion any new or original ideas or lines of conduct in anyimportant respect, especially in religious, political, and socialmatters. Her mind, that is to say, like her body, must be trained anddressed according to the current fashion plates. By all her hopes ofmarried comfort she must not be known to have any peculiar or unusual orpositive notions on any subject more important than embroidery or parlordecoration. Conventionality in the essentials having been thus secured,the brighter and more piquant she could be in small ways and frivolousmatters the better for her chances. Have I erred in describing theworking of your system in this particular, Julian?"

  "No doubt," I replied, "you have described to the life the correct andfashionable ideal of feminine education in my time, but there were, youmust understand, a great many women who were persons of entirely originaland serious minds, who dared to think and speak for themselves."

  "Of course there were. They were the prototypes of the universal woman ofto-day. They represented the coming woman, who to-day has come. They hadbroken for themselves the conventional trammels of their sex, and provedto the world the potential equality of women with men in every field ofthought and action. But while great minds master their circumstances, themass of minds are mastered by them and formed by them. It is when wethink of the bearing of the system upon this vast majority of women, andhow the virus of moral and mental slavery through their veins enteredinto the blood of the race, that we realize how tremendous is theindictment of humanity against your economic arrangements on account ofwoman, and how vast a benefit to mankind was the Revolution that gavefree mothers to the race-free not merely from physical but from moral andintellectual fetters.

  "I referred a moment ago," pursued the doctor, "to the close parallelismexisting in your time between the industrial and the sexual situation,between the relations of the working masses to the capitalists, and thoseof the women to men. It is strikingly illustrated in yet another way.

  "The subjection of the workingmen to the owners of capital was insured bythe existence at all times of a large class of the unemployed ready tounderbid the workers and eager to get employment at any price and on anyterms. This was the club with which the capitalist kept down the workers.In like manner it was the existence of a body of unappropriated womenwhich riveted the yoke of women's subjection to men. When maintenance wasthe difficult problem it was in your day there were many men who couldnot maintain themselves, and a vast number who could not maintain womenin addition to themselves. The failure of a man to marry might cost himhappiness, but in the case of women it not only involved loss ofhappiness, but, as a rule, exposed them to the pressure or peril ofpoverty, for it was a much more difficult thing for women than for men tosecure an adequate support by their own efforts. The result was one ofthe most shocking spectacles the world has ever known--nothing less, infact, than a state of rivalry and competition among women for theopportunity of marriage. To realize how helpless were women in your day,to assume toward men an attitude of physical, mental, or moral dignityand independence, it is enough to remember their terrible disadvantage inwhat your contemporaries called with brutal plainness the marriagemarket.

  "And still woman's cup of humiliation was not full. There was ye
t anotherand more dreadful form of competition by her own sex to which she wasexposed. Not only was there a constant vast surplus of unmarried womendesirous of securing the economic support which marriage implied, butbeneath these there were hordes of wretched women, hopeless of obtainingthe support of men on honorable terms, and eager to sell themselves for acrust. Julian, do you wonder that, of all the aspects of the horriblemess you called civilization in the nineteenth century, the sexualrelation reeks worst?"

  "Our philanthropists were greatly disturbed over what we called thesocial evil," said I--"that is, the existence of this great multitude ofoutcast women--but it was not common to diagnose it as a part of theeconomic problem. It was regarded rather as a moral evil resulting fromthe depravity of the human heart, to be properly dealt with by moral andreligious influences."

  "Yes, yes, I know. No one in your day, of course, was allowed to intimatethat the economic system was radically wicked, and consequently it wascustomary to lay off all its hideous consequences upon poor human nature.Yes, I know there were, people who agreed that it might be possible bypreaching to lessen the horrors of the social evil while yet the landcontained millions of women in desperate need, who had no other means ofgetting bread save by catering to the desires of men. I am a bit of aphrenologist, and have often wished for the chance of examining thecranial developments of a nineteenth-century philanthropist who honestlybelieved this, if indeed any of them honestly did."

  "By the way," I said, "high-spirited women, even in my day, objected tothe custom that required them to take their husbands' names on marriage.How do you manage that now?"

  "Women's names are no more affected by marriage than men's."

  "But how about the children?"

  "Girls take the mother's last name with the father's as a middle name,while with boys it is just the reverse."

  * * * * *

  "It occurs to me," I said, "that it would be surprising if a fact soprofoundly affecting woman's relations with man as her achievement ofeconomic independence, had not modified the previous conventionalstandards of sexual morality in some respects."

  "Say rather," replied the doctor, "that the economic equalization of menand women for the first time made it possible to establish theirrelations on a moral basis. The first condition of ethical action in anyrelation is the freedom of the actor. So long as women's economicdependence upon men prevented them from being free agents in the sexualrelation, there could be no ethics of that relation. A proper ethics ofsexual conduct was first made possible when women became capable ofindependent action through the attainment of economic equality."

  "It would have startled the moralists of my day," I said, "to be toldthat we had no sexual ethics. We certainly had a very strict andelaborate system of 'thou shalt nots.'"

  "Of course, of course," replied my companion. "Let us understand eachother exactly at this point, for the subject is highly important. Youhad, as you say, a set of very rigid rules and regulations as to theconduct of the sexes--that is, especially as to women--but the basis ofit, for the most part, was not ethical but prudential, the object beingthe safeguarding of the economic interests of women in their relationswith men. Nothing could have been more important to the protection ofwomen on the whole, although so often bearing cruelly upon themindividually, than these rules. They were the only method by which, solong as woman remained an economically helpless and dependent person, sheand her children could be even partially guarded from masculine abuse andneglect. Do not imagine for a moment that I would speak lightly of thevalue of this social code to the race during the time it was necessary.But because it was entirely based upon considerations not suggested bythe natural sanctities of the sexual relation in itself, but wholly uponprudential considerations affecting economic results, it would be aninexact use of terms to call it a system of ethics. It would be moreaccurately described as a code of sexual economics--that is to say, aset of laws and customs providing for the economic protection of womenand children in the sexual and family relation.

  "The marriage contract was embellished by a rich embroidery ofsentimental and religious fancies, but I need not remind you that itsessence in the eyes of the law and of society was its character as acontract, a strictly economic _quid-pro-quo_ transaction. It was alegal undertaking by the man to maintain the woman and future family inconsideration of her surrender of herself to his exclusive disposal--thatis to say, on condition of obtaining a lien on his property, she became apart of it. The only point which the law or the social censor looked toas fixing the morality or immorality, purity or impurity, of any sexualact was simply the question whether this bargain had been previouslyexecuted in accordance with legal forms. That point properly attended to,everything that formerly had been regarded as wrong and impure for theparties became rightful and chaste. They might have been persons unfit tomarry or to be parents; they might have been drawn together by the basestand most sordid motives; the bride may have been constrained by need toaccept a man she loathed; youth may have been sacrificed to decrepitude,and every natural propriety outraged; but according to your standard, ifthe contract had been legally executed, all that followed was white andbeautiful. On the other hand, if the contract had been neglected, and awoman had accepted a lover without it, then, however great their love,however fit their union in every natural way, the woman was cast out asunchaste, impure, and abandoned, and consigned to the living death ofsocial ignominy. Now let me repeat that we fully recognize the excuse forthis social law under your atrocious system as the only possible way ofprotecting the economic interests of women and children, but to speak ofit as ethical or moral in its view of the sex relation is certainly aboutas absurd a misuse of words as could be committed. On the contrary, wemust say that it was a law which, in order to protect women's materialinterests, was obliged deliberately to disregard all the laws that arewritten on the heart touching such matters.

  "It seems from the records that there was much talk in your day about thescandalous fact that there were two distinct moral codes in sexualmatters, one for men and another for women--men refusing to be bound bythe law imposed on women, and society not even attempting to enforce itagainst them. It was claimed by the advocates of one code for both sexesthat what was wrong or right for woman was so for man, and that thereshould be one standard of right and wrong, purity and impurity, moralityand immorality, for both. That was obviously the correct view of thematter; but what moral gain would there have been for the race even ifmen could have been induced to accept the women's code--a code so utterlyunworthy in its central idea of the ethics of the sexual relation?Nothing but the bitter duress of their economic bondage had forced womento accept a law against which the blood of ten thousand stainlessMarguerites, and the ruined lives of a countless multitude of women,whose only fault had been too tender loving, cried to God perpetually.Yes, there should doubtless be one standard of conduct for both men andwomen as there is now, but it was not to be the slave code, with itssordid basis, imposed upon the women by their necessities. The common andhigher code for men and women which the conscience of the race demandedwould first become possible, and at once thereafter would become assuredwhen men and women stood over against each other in the sexual relation,as in all others, in attitudes of absolute equality and mutualindependence."

  "After all, doctor," I said, "although at first it startled me a littleto hear you say that we had no sexual ethics, yet you really say no more,nor use stronger words, than did our poets and satirists in treating thesame theme. The complete divergence between our conventional sexualmorality and the instinctive morality of love was a commonplace with us,and furnished, as doubtless you well know, the motive of a large part ofour romantic and dramatic literature."

  "Yes," replied the doctor, "nothing could be added to the force andfeeling with which your writers exposed the cruelty and injustice of theiron law of society as to these matters--a law made doubly cruel andunjust by the fact that it bore almost exclusively on women. But
theirdenunciations were wasted, and the plentiful emotions they evoked werebarren of result, for the reason that they failed entirely to point outthe basic fact that was responsible for the law they attacked, and mustbe abolished if the law were ever to be replaced by a just ethics. Thatfact, as we have seen, was the system of wealth distribution, by whichwoman's only hope of comfort and security was made to depend on hersuccess in obtaining a legal guarantee of support from some man as theprice of her person."

  "It seems to me," I observed, "that when the women, once fairly openedtheir eyes to what the revolutionary programme meant for their sex by itsdemand of economic equality for all, self-interest must have made themmore ardent devotees of the cause than even the men."

  "It did indeed," replied the doctor. "Of course the blinding, bindinginfluence of conventionality, tradition, and prejudice, as well as thetimidity bred of immemorial servitude, for a long while prevented themass of women from understanding the greatness of the deliverance whichwas offered them; but when once they did understand it they threwthemselves into the revolutionary movement with a unanimity andenthusiasm that had a decisive effect upon the struggle. Men might regardeconomic equality with favor or disfavor, according to their economicpositions, but every woman, simply because she was a woman, was bound tobe for it as soon as she got it through her head what it meant for herhalf of the race."