What Is the Real Emancipation of Woman?

THERE are two tendencies in the direction of the emancipation of woman to-day, and there are two kinds of emancipation possible. On the one side, there is simple impatience with restraint; on the other, a reaching after a higher and broader life. The one sort of impulse animals may feel in common with men ; the other is peculiarly human, — it arises only when an idea of something higher and broader dawns upon the mind. The outward results may be more or less the same for a time ; but the motives are different, and ultimately the results must be different.

In principle the emancipation of woman does not differ fz*om the emancipation of man. There are men who want to be free only that they may do as they like, — even to the extent of following their basest impulses ; others are impatient only at restraints that hinder them from doing their highest and best. The cry for “ personal liberty ” that we often hear in these days means in some mouths open saloons, open gambling houses, and worse places; perhaps the right to do with wife and child as one likes, or the right to use one’s property as one likes ; in short, impatience with salutary social restraints. To others liberty means simply a state of society in which, while all are subject to the law, all have the chance to rise and do and be their best, in which none are hindered because of race or nationality or previous social condition.

It is the passion for liberty in the nobler sense that is the mainspring of progress ; and it is this emancipation that (with due abatements) is gradually taking place in the world. What of old was thought to be an order resting on divine right is making way for an order serving the widest human good ; divine, too, in the higher sense. Since Luther religion has been shaping itself into truer, more rational forms. Since the French Revolution the rule of kings and great landowners has yielded to states giving an equal place in their councils to trade and manufactures. With the century just closed the workingman has become a partner in the state. In theory all are active members of the body politic, and to give and maintain chances for all is a part of the state’s function. These changes are not alone political or religious or social, but all together; they involve a general heightening of human existence ; it is an enfranchisement of the mind as well as the body, a liberation of the human spirit, that has taken place. But just to the extent that there has been an unchaining of the passions and of unbridled selfish interests there is a shadow side to the picture. There can, of course, be egoism in the commercial class and in the working class as well as in the old-time king and noble class; and so far as this exists there is disorder rather than order in the world.

The emancipation of woman is a part of the general forward movement, and is attended with the same dangers. Along with the labor movement the woman’s movement is one of the glories of the last half century, as the rise to consciousness and power of the trading and manufacturing class was one of the glories of the half century or century previous. In a way, it has the promise of being a greater blessing than either the labor movement or the movement for the elevation of the trading and manufacturing class. So far as it is really a woman’s movement, it means not merely the elevation of a class, but the regeneration of the race. When woman can become something like what she ought to be, the fountains of our being will be renewed.

Woman is coming to believe herself a person. She is coming to have a sense of her essential humanity, — that she is to be something and to do something in the world besides waiting on other people. Of old, a trader, a man of business, was nobody; there were times when people of this class could almost be plucked at will. Down to very recent times the workingman was nobody, and he more or less contentedly accepted his inferior place. Now woman is beginning to rise out of the half-unconscious, half-servile state in which she has lived so long. The spirit of the modern age which is working such wonderful transformations among the sons of men is touching as with a fairy wand the daughters, also, and awakening them out of their sleep. I look on the woman’s movement in this spiritual light. There may be license in it, and to this extent there will be temporary evil from it; but at bottom it is due to an ill-defined sense that woman is not what she might be and ought to be, — a sense that her life might be vastly more significant, that she might be a far more valuable member of the race than is at present the case.

This is my interpretation of the underlying meaning even of the efforts for political independence. Woman has heretofore acted in public affairs (if she has acted at all) through man ; now she wishes to act for herself. She wishes to broaden her own being ; she feels that public interests might be her interests, that she might have views, and she does not see why those views should not count and tell as well as other people’s. Is it not an unmixed good when women begin to think about public sanitation, about education, about the care of waifs and truants ? And why should they not think about what is fair taxation, and trusts, and the Philippines, and Cuba, and any other public question ? Does it not enlarge a woman’s horizon to get these wider concerns, does not her intelligence grow, do not her sympathies expand, does she not become, while no less a woman, more of a human being ? If man is not injured by having interests beyond those which concern him as a male, why should woman be by having interests beyond those which concern her as a female ? Home is not everything for man or woman, and should not be. It is dear, it is sacred ; but there is a larger field of duty. Society, the state, civilization, are, if not so tender, greater words. Home should be a place to rest in, to be refreshed in, to get strength in for the larger tasks. It is already that for man ; it might conceivably be so — at least, more than it is — for woman. We all should have the dignity of living — in part — for public ends. And this sort of individual good is identical with the social good. By every one who acquires an interest in public affairs the state is so much richer. It gets new points of view ; it is moved to more evenhanded justice; by getting a broader base it comes to stand securer. Gladstone knew this when he moved successively for a wider and wider political emancipation of the working class. It applies to the political emancipation of women. The true wealth of a state is not in its dollars, but in its self - conscious citizenship ; in those who know the laws and obey them, and make ever better laws ; in its men, — and this includes women. It is not maleness, but humanity, that is the true basis of a state. That women — whether few or many of them just now — are coming to realize that they are members of humanity, that they have the essential human rights and duties, that they are not simply an appendage to mankind, told off to keep it going, is one of the most encouraging signs of the times. An English statesman ¹ lamented, with this in mind, that one half of the intellect of the world had been shut out from the use of men. The movement for woman’s political emancipation, timid and hesitating and laalfhearted as it now is, is humanity’s movement. It is to be like a fresh stream poured into the current of the larger life : the great river is to move on to the sea, richer, more majestic, for this tributary pouring its waters into it.

From this same point of view I look on the efforts which women are beginning to make for their economic independence. To some it seems a sort of desecration that woman should be compelled to go out into the world to earn her living, and a sort of madness that she should choose to do so. It is thought that the husband or the father or the brother should take care of her; that she should be protected from the rude jostlings of the world. Now there are probably few men who would not save women from any work outside the home, if they could do it. Moreover, grave economic arguments can be urged against their going out into the world and competing with men. They lower the wages of men, it may be said, and this is perhaps true. Sometimes they take the places of men. There are factory towns where women and children have the jobs, and their husbands and fathers bring their dinner pails to them. Hence the labor movement is opposed to the employment of women and children, and I have sympathized with it in being so. Indeed, I have a half-divided mind now, and yet I am increasingly convinced that deeper issues are involved. The great issue is this: If woman is to be a being by herself, she must have property or income for herself. Individuality and property (or income) go together. If woman has her living only as a member of a family, then she must be a member of a family to have a living ; that is, an independent being, a free being, she is no longer. If, for instance, she has no father or brother to support her, then she must become a wife. If, to speak quite colloquially, man does the work of the world and has the money, then to get money (or its equivalent) she must oblige him. Every one who does not wish that woman should be forced into marriage must regard this as an unfavorable position for her. Indeed, every father or brother of the olden time who had any heart in him or respect for womanhood tried to provide for his daughter or sister, at least by giving her a home, and if possible some individual source of income : he does so still. But what are women to do who have n’t fathers or brothers who can thus provide for them ? Earn their own living; go out into the world and take up the life struggle. This is their only alternative, if they are not to be forced into marriage.

The crowding out into the arena with men has thus a deeper significance than would at first appear. Not only is necessity (in one sense) behind it, but it is a means to a moral end. That end is a position in which a woman shall not be bound to act against her conscience and her heart. Those who have inherited property have that position already; those who have not inherited property have to earn it. Somehow women must become free ; they must be able to have a living outside marriage. They must not stoop to marriage, but rise to it. They must not surrender their freedom ; they must assert it in taking this great step. They must so act because it is the choice, the great uncompelled choice, of their minds and hearts. To my mind this makes a very deep interest of human life; yes, something upon which about as much hangs as upon anything else I can think of. That women should be free to choose who shall be their mates in one of the most solemn relations human beings can assume to each other, a relation extending in its consequences quite beyond themselves or those about them, and involving the bringing of new beings to the light of day, surpasses in importance most things society cares for.

Grant that, as its first fruits, the economic emancipation of woman brings an intensification of the competitive struggle, a lowering of wages and salaries, a displacement of male workers, a swelling to increased proportions the ranks of the unemployed : I question whether this may not all be better — nay, I am convinced it is better — than that the condition of no-choice which has been the lot of a large part of womankind in the past should continue. Making woman’s living depend upon her sex has, as is argued in a recent striking book,² unnaturally stimulated her sex development, — has oversexed her, and by transmission oversexed her descendants. No one can tell how far the excess of passions which in themselves are innocent and normal and necessary, but which in their abnormal and excessive development make havoc of human life, is due to this cause. Sometimes the uncivilized races seem to have more self-restraint than the civilized folk of to-day. The very animals have times, perhaps long times, when these passions are in abeyance. Man finds it hard to be calm at any time. We are diseased : sometimes, when one reads the shocking revelations of the extent to which vice exists in the community, one is tempted to say with an old Hebrew prophet, “ From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it.” We have been accustomed to say that this is natural, that it is our animal inheritance. But it is possible that it comes in no small measure from a preventable cause, and that, in case woman could ever become free again, could get her living as independently as man gets his, and hence be attracted to man in the simple, natural way in which all complementary beings are drawn to one another, and without any necessity of depending upon that attraction for the wherewithal to live, she and her descendants might in course of time become normal and healthful human beings; no longer injuring the race with what was meant to serve it, no longer blindly “ with their own blessedness at strife.” It is in view of such possibilities, as well as out of regard for the dignity of woman in herself, that the economic emancipation of woman seems to me of prime impor. tance, — an importance outweighing the painful and distressing phenomena that are so much in evidence in these first stages of the development of the process. It will not do always to judge by the sight of our eyes and the hearing of our ears. We have to use our minds ; we have to think whither a thing or a process tends. Few progressive movements fail to work hardship somewhere; the final question is always, Does the race gain ?

And then possibly woman’s pressing into the competitive struggle will make her realize, as she could not otherwise, the great travail under which the whole world labors. By striving to maintain herself, she will see, as she has never seen before, how man has to strive, and sometimes to agonize, to maintain himself. Perhaps she will see that her cause is one with his, and perhaps she will ask, as he is beginning to ask, whether the painfulness and agony of the strife might not be diminished. Possibly the thought will dawn on her mind that human beings might coöperate in the struggle for life, and contend with nature, but not with one another. Possibly she will see that it is not economy, not good housekeeping, to waste and war as industrial society does now. Perhaps her own pains will bring this home to her. Perhaps her very sympathies, her very innate motherliness, will make her keen to find out, or at least embrace, a way that will alleviate the sorrows of the world. Ah, if we could join a woman’s heart, a woman’s faith, a woman’s patience, a woman’s sweet reasonableness, to the cause of social transformation, what added force, what new persuasiveness, that cause might have ! Perhaps woman can never allay the world’s economic strife till she enters into it, — it being all too unreal to her till then ; and perhaps the workers will in time forgive their new competitors, when they find them initiated by their own experience into the common tragedy, and ready to stand with them in seeking and working for a better way. The woman’s movement and the labor movement are in their origin diverse, and the woman’s movement often looks down upon the labor movement, and the labor movement looks askance in return ; but when they understand each other, they will see that their cause is one : that the woman’s movement conducts straight to the labor movement, and that the labor movement can never attain its goal till it saves not merely half, but all the workers in the field.

I have referred to marriage, and to the economic emancipation of woman as a means to nobler marriage. I raise no question of emancipation from marriage itself. That would be a false emancipation for woman. There are those who say a woman should not bind herself (for it is understood, of course, that by marriage I do not mean a fleeting relation of the sexes). But the capacity for taking an obligation, I should say, is one of the distinctive marks of a human being. A being of impulse merely cannot bind himself, but a being with will — that is, the power of acting according to some standard or idea — can. It is the very glory of man that something else can guide him than his momentary feelings. To be bound by superior force is indeed ignoble ; but to bind one’s self, to lay out a certain course, covering no matter how long a time, and then follow it, follow it on principle, — that is one of the very assertions of human freedom. I make no argument for marriage ; I take for granted that it is a contract for life, a contract in which a man and woman pledge themselves to be faithful to each other, a contract providing for one of those intimacies which are among the sacred things of human existence. My point now is that not only are such contracts necessary from the standpoint of the highest interests of society, but that to make them with full consciousness and with due solemnity is to rise to one of the summits of human experience. You may not be able to vow that you will always feel in a certain way, but you can vow that you will always act in a certain way. It is this vow, sincerely taken, that transports a man, transports a woman ; that lifts them above themselves, and makes them feel momentarily as if they were laying hold of eternity. Animals do not vow when they mate ; and human beings, when they mate without vowing, come perilously near to the condition of animals. Forethought, purpose, will, are of the very essence of distinctive humanity. When life becomes

it loses all it has of human dignity.

Of course, this is because marriage is unlike all ordinary relations. Normally marriage means a family ; and what are children without a father and a mother, — without those who take the obligations which these words imply ? Yet no one has so much to lose in consenting to any lower view of marriage as woman. With man, some cynic has said, love is an episode ; with woman it is a history. This is why experiments cannot be made in marriage, as in so many other things. You can look before you leap, but the leap once taken is irrevocable. You cannot wipe out the past. As one writer,³ who apparently would have it otherwise, pathetically admits, the experience which it might be thought would give woman “ the power of choice is frequently the very one which seals her destiny ; ” it opens upon her the tragedy of a lifetime, “ yet which she cannot do other than accept.” Hence no man with a spark of honor in his breast can refuse to father his child, and no free woman would consent to have a child by a man who would not father it.⁴

But though there can be no emancipation from marriage, this is not saying that there may not be emancipation in marriage. Marriage is not necessarily a one-sided contract, in which the woman agrees to obey or to serve. To consent to make one’s self another’s subject or servant is unworthy of a human being, even if done freely. In law we do not allow one person to sell himself into slavery to another ; the contract is null and void. There is no reason in morals why a woman should put herself at the beck and call of a man. Any true marriage is a relation of equals ; it is a relation in which the freedom of each is respected by the other; it is a relation of mutual service, in which force is never used, in which command is never heard. If the wife is obliged to submit to her husband, this is barbarism, no matter who, what rite, what Bible, what law, sanctions it. The exercise of authority may be necessary over children, it may be justified in the state at large ; but to the extent it is exercised between partners in the marriage relation, the beauty, the sacredness, of the relation is gone. I do not know to just what extent it is legally permissible. Down to recent times, at least, the so-called suit for the restitution of conjugal rights — a suit that practically reduced marriage to what George Sand cynically called it, “ the right at common law to outrage a woman ” —was possible. John Stuart Mill could make the cutting remark of his day, that marriage was then “the only form of serfdom recognized by law.” To whatever extent these or similar barbarities remain, the task of emancipating woman in marriage is still a real one.⁵

There is a lesser bit of emancipation in marriage ; or rather, in the household. I cannot resist the feeling that our wives and mothers are cumbered with much serving, and that life might be simpler. One would like to see them in possession of a little leisure, — leisure not to do nothing in, but to do something worth while. Why should not woman have a life of her own ? Might not some household services be rendered by those who make a business of it? Not that we should be better served than by our wives, but that our wives might be set free. A man likes his own home and his own table, but does he absolutely need his own kitchen ? I do not mean, does he not prefer it, but does he need it ? Perhaps some do, and others do not. Our wives or their maids used to make our stockings and our coats; they used to spin the yarn and weave the cloth. Now this is done outside; even the bread men eat is often baked outside. Is it beyond the bounds of imagination to conceive of arrangements in which other cooking might be done outside ; in which most of the work of a house might be done at stated times by maids and men coming in from the outside ; in which the home should be really the home of the family; in which the husband should have his work, whether at home or abroad, and in which the wife should have her work, whether at home or abroad ; in which the children, after they cease to be babies, should have much of their training from those specially fitted for the task (in accordance with an already existing tendency) ; in which everything should be specialized, and no one should undertake to do many things at once ? I cannot resist the feeling that there is emancipation for woman, and no harm for man, and in the long run gain for him, in the line of these possibilities. They do not mean breaking up the home or making it any less sweet a place ; the comradeship of thought and affection would be as real as ever, — yes, I suspect more real ; the fellowship of old and young, the sense of family unity, would not be in the slightest abated. The mournful fact now is not only that many women can do little outside the home, but that in the home they have so little time for real companionship with their husbands, being too anxious and careful about many things. It is distraction that takes away the calm and dignity of life, the worrying over trifles that might be systematized and the worry of them taken away. Of course, it is the average wife I have now in mind, not the one whose circumstances enable her to rid herself of domestic cares.

My whole thought in this paper is to urge on woman the claims of a larger, fuller, less exclusively feminine, and more human life. Her real emancipation, indeed, is the same as man’s. Like him, she needs intellectual emancipation as well as political and economic, — enfranchisement in thought and in religion. Superstition is thought to be excusable in a woman; but why should it be any more than in a man, at least when she has had the opportunity to see through it ? Prejudice is thought to be natural to a woman, but who does not see that to say this is to put a slight upon her ? Why should not woman try to be rational in her beliefs and opinions as well as man ? Is she not to grow, to see before and after, to have her own mind, as well as he ? The notion that woman is not to think, to inquire, to doubt if need be, is of the same origin with the notion that she is born to please man, and must take her opinions from him. The forces that put a stigma upon her for having an independent mind are the same forces that seek to keep her subject in the state, to prevent her acquiring economic independence, to keep her a serf in her husband’s power. Woman must rise altogether ; her whole being should be enriched as opportunity presents itself.

Yes, above all, woman needs to be emancipated by the uplifting power of a moral purpose. This is her safeguard in her new relation, just as it is always man’s safeguard. He may go shipwreck without a steadying aim, without scruples, without religion ; so may she. The emancipation that consists in the mere throwing off restraints may be fatal to him, and the same may be fatal to her. “ The right to rebellion,” said George Eliot, “ is the right to seek a higher rule, and not to wander in mere lawlessness.” Let a woman remember the sentiment of that, and though she may go far from the beaten track, she cannot go far wrong. Let her thought be, not what do I want to do or be, not what must I do or be, but what would it be right for me to do or be, taking for her standard the wide and permanent good of the race, and she may err in judgment, but she will never sin. Following one’s heart is of uncertain value. Following duty, or whatever is consistent with duty, or if not duty as commonly understood, then duty as more perfectly conceived, but always duty, and not mere inclination and pleasure, — this is the way of safety, this the higher liberty.

“ Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, These three alone lead life to sovereign power.”

There is no other way than this old way. It is the way for men and it is the way for women.

Women can attain real emancipation, whether in its lower or its higher forms, only by striving for it. What we do not crave and struggle for, what we are not even willing to sacrifice for, it is a doubtful blessing to receive. Woman will have, I believe, what she deserves. Desert is not only in an abstract right, but in putting forth force. “ Ask, and it shall be given you ; seek, and ye shall find ; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” But without knocking, without seeking, without asking, nothing, — that is the law of the world. I would only say to women : Be bold ; be bold not only for your own sakes, but for the sake of a higher humanity. We men cannot go much further without you; you are our other half. Dare for your own sakes, and you will dare for ours. With you as equals, as comrades, we shall do twice what we could ever have done in days gone by !

William M. Salter.