Chapter IX: Woman as a Citizen

At last
She rose upon a wind of prophecy
Dilating on the future; everywhere
Two heads in council, two beside the hearth,
Two in the tangled business of the world,
Two in the liberal offices of life.

_The Princess_, TENNYSON.

The simple reason why the Law should be amended to give Woman full rights of citizenship is best stated in the homely saying that “two heads are better than one.”

In the dark ages this maxim did not apply, for learned Man doubted whether Woman had a head in any but a physical sense, and the early celibate theologians went so far as to deny her a soul, regarding her with dread as a noxious animal.

Remembering these ancient beliefs a French satirist of the eighteenth century solemnly proclaimed his “Plan for a Law prohibiting the Alphabet to Women,” and small wonder that many good simple people took him quite seriously, which is the nasty way your dull world has of crabbing the humorist. For until quite modern days we were all Chinese in our outlook on the Woman question, holding it to be an unanswerable article of faith that “for men to cultivate virtue is knowledge; for women to renounce knowledge is virtue.”

But once Woman has eaten of the Tree of Knowledge who can forbid her the right to use her knowledge for the benefit of the human race? A woman, like any other human being, may do far more harm by dropping a letter into a pillar box than by placing a voting paper in a ballot box. The Frenchman was right. The mistake that the Chinese and the early Fathers had so clearly warned us against has been made. We should never have taught Woman the Alphabet. That, in the thoughtful phrase of modern slang, has “torn it,” and having torn up the old heathen ideal of womanhood let us by all means put the remnants in the fire of forgetfulness and have done with them.

An educated woman will naturally expect a better fortune in life than to “suckle fools and chronicle small beer.” Man in a minority has always preached to his discontented disciples that the cure-all for political evils is the vote, and how can he with any self-respect ask Woman to believe that all the time he has been talking to the poor and down-trodden with his tongue in his cheek. If we have upheld the suffrage as a way out of all evil for the slave, the serf, the conquered nation and the submerged tenth of our own male citizens, it is pure cant to tell Woman that it will not help her to realize her ideals.

For my part, though I recognize the elementary right in every citizen to share in choosing those who make the laws so that he may have some small voice in preventing unjust and socially injurious laws being passed, yet I do not think any new and beautiful world is going to be created even by a new and more beautiful electorate.

It is the inherent justice in Woman’s demand that attracts me, and not any hope or belief that much immediate reform will come of it.

On the contrary, many of the things I care about would probably receive scant support from the first generation of women voters. When you deny rights to any body of citizens they are ardent progressives and march in the ranks of radicals and reformers, but they are generally reactionary at heart. The Catholics and the Jews have proved this in the past, and any old electioneering hand who knows the country will tell you that there are thirty Welsh constituencies waiting for the disestablishment of the Welsh Church to vote Conservative.

The philosopher tells us that there must be a new world if there is to be any world at all, but history does not encourage the belief that it will be made by the votes or hands or even the brains of the “Six hundred and fifty-eight miscellaneous persons set to consult about ‘business,’ with twenty-seven millions, mostly fools, assiduously listening to them.” On the contrary, for any real progress we shall have to look for individual personal improvement in actions and ideals, upon which the power to vote has very little influence. You cannot follow the excellent prescription of the Psalmist for the betterment of the world and renew a right spirit within yourself merely by voting for the kind of being that wants to get into Parliament.

But this does not belittle the right of Woman to her place in the sun of citizenship. John Morley used to say that every public reform went through three stages, neglect, epigram and the guillotine; then came universal acceptance. I think in our sensible English way the question of Woman’s citizenship is rapidly approaching the final stage of universal acceptance which we may hope to achieve without the guillotine.

Nor ought the supporters of the movement to grumble at the pace at which it has progressed. At the beginning of last century the idea of citizenship in relation to Woman was hardly thought of in Western Europe and was quite unknown in this country.

It was true that a woman might be a churchwarden or a sexton, or even, I believe, a surveyor of highways, not to mention a reigning Sovereign, but these offices were not suited to every woman’s taste. The main avenues of a citizen’s life were closed to Woman by Law.

It was the French Revolution that swept away the cobwebs of custom which obscured society’s outlook on the world, and encouraged Woman to demand a citizen’s share in the rule, supremacy and sway which she had long considered entirely beyond her reach.

For centuries Woman had stood aloof from affairs of government and the Law, but all this came to an end in the early days of the Revolution, when starvation stalked through the squalid Paris garrets, and in Carlyle’s pithy phrase: “On Monday morning maternity awoke to hear children weeping for bread.”

That was the end of it. The Law which Woman had stared at from afar with superstitious veneration was a discredited failure. There before their mother’s eyes were starving children. If laggard Man with all the resources of the Law could handle the affairs of the world no better than this the hour had surely struck for Woman to take up the burden.

It is no sooner thought than done. In a flash the idea seizes all the women of Paris. A young girl catches up a drum and sets forth beating it with loud deliberation, a universal press of women following her, until there are some ten thousand Judiths clamouring at the doors of the Hôtel de Ville and threatening it with fire.

Of a sudden Woman of the Western world had made up her mind to commence citizen. This was the first act of her insurrection, and the end of the play will scarcely be reached in our lifetime.

What may be called the Petruchio sculpture of womanhood utterly perished on that memorable Monday morning in Paris, and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men were entirely incapable of picking up the pieces and restoring the idol of their worship to its former subordinate position.

As long as we live in the world without thinking about it, as most of us do, whatever is going on around us seems naturally right and proper. The legal subordination of one sex to the other has not worked so very badly because man, being in the main a reasonable, well-disposed sort of animal, has seldom claimed to make full use of his so-called legal rights.

If this principle of legal subjection were changed to a legal principle of perfect equality, allowing no power or privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other, it would probably affect the lives of most men and women very slightly. Moreover, when we had lived side by side with such a condition of Law for a few generations, we should be wondering how our dear old ancestors got along in the barbarous days of the early twentieth century.

It was only a few years ago that both education and physical exercise for women were thought to be not only unnecessary, but positively harmful. The general opinion seems to have been that the care and solicitude which a mother feels for her children depended directly on her ignorance of Greek and Latin, and that she would desert an infant for a quadratic equation.

Who to-day would close our High Schools and Women’s Colleges and shut the gates of our tennis lawns and golf links against lady members?

Our forefathers were just as absurd and inconsistent as we are, for rich women were always permitted to ride horses for pleasure and exercise, and poor women to work in coal-mines, at a time when most English middle-class girls were decreed to spend their girlhood in a common round of petty, frivolous, and “lady-like” occupations.

Our fathers and mothers, and more especially our grandmothers, were always prophesying red ruin if the young person were allowed to read the literature of the world and walk about without a chaperon. Their dreams of evil, like all such dreams, sound very foolish in the morning light of to-day.

Let us bear all this in mind when we are pondering over the troubled questions that surround us at this present. Any one can sit in an arm-chair in the club and join in the chorus of middle-aged Jeremiahs who never tire of chanting their dirges about the evil tendency of the age. No question was ever settled in that way, and Woman is quite unlikely nowadays to accept any final Law as to her citizenship from any gathering of superior persons of ancient and fish-like political principles. The business has got to be discussed on new lines by newer and younger people. I fancy the next generation will want to have less Law and more Liberty.

I have pointed out more than once in these papers that to make unnecessary laws forbidding people to do things is a great source of trouble in the world.

I suppose every one will agree that there is no necessity to make laws to forbid women to do what Nature has rendered it impossible they should do. Reckless lecturers tell you Woman is incapable of political understanding. If so, we must admit that no amount of legislation will make her acquire the faculty, whatever it may be.

But do we really believe that Woman is less capable of sane and honest political action than the average Man in the Street who goes to the poll? The fact is that until we experiment in the matter it is folly to dogmatise on the question whether, if we open the door to women citizens, they will be found capable or incapable of representing their own and their country’s interests.

A very little while ago in the history of the world it appeared absurd in Court circles to suggest that a country could be properly governed except by a particular breed of royal person dressed in ermine and wearing a crown and carrying a sceptre.

The idea that it could be equally well done by any old boy in a top hat and frock coat whose presidential ticket had caught on with the public fancy would have appeared in mediæval times as an insanity. Charles I was no fool, but I doubt if any University professor who ever lived could have explained to his Royal Highness the true inwardness of the Sovereign power of George Washington.

If, therefore, the principle of the open door in the question of Woman’s citizenship seems to some of us a strange one, it is probably only because we have got into a habit of thinking the world around us is more or less as good as it is possible to be.

In the case of election to public offices should Woman take any part? Clearly these matters touch her life and her interest, and it would seem just that she should have a say in them.

Try to imagine meeting a Messenger from Mars and asking him what he thought about it. “Ah,” he would say, “I see you allow Woman no voice in choosing her governors. How wise, how sane! To what department, then, in your government belongs that difficult task of choosing the Woman’s husband?”

Of course, you explain to Mr. Mars that a woman chooses her own husband. But how are you to explain to his dense astronomical mind that it is a wise and sane thing to allow a woman by her sole casting vote to choose her own Lord and Governor, the father of future citizens, the ruler of the family, and having given her this monstrous and terrible power, to deny her the trumpery gratification of voting for a middle-aged gentleman to be one of many hundred others who exercise very little practical control of the affairs of the nation?

Now to us there is nothing Gilbertian in allowing a woman to elect her own husband, yet what an absurd idea it seems if you give it serious and unbiassed consideration. I suspect we acquiesce in it either because we have been duly elected to a satisfactory post, or live in hopes of drawing a prize in the lottery.

But when I hear Jeremiah groaning about the inherent incapacity of Woman to exercise a vote, I often feel that we shall have to adopt something like the Martian Marriage Act. For my friend from Mars tells me that in his planet husbands are assigned to wives by the Board of Trade Allotment Department, which if it is anything like our Board of Trade must be very satisfactory to everybody.

There are some worthy enthusiasts who tell you that if you grant the rights of Citizenship to Woman there will be a tremendous alteration in her manners and customs. Her passion for dress and things that are both beautiful and expensive will disappear in her interest in Blue Books, and mischievous luxury will be subordinated to political economy. Candidly I believe this as little as I believe the other side of the matter, that the result will be a campaign of united Woman to domineer over and displace discredited Man.

The fact is that there is no great evidence in the history of franchises that they ever had any very serious and certainly no very sudden moral effect on human character.

If I were enfranchising the beings of my garden I should not expect that if I gave a vote to a butterfly it would adopt a grey moth-like demeanour and walk seriously about the gravel paths on its hind legs.

But you say triumphantly, Why give a vote to a butterfly? To which I reply that in my garden I act on principle--the principle of equality--and I cannot deny to the butterfly the vote that I have already given to the slug and the snail.

Ultimately we shall no doubt have a universal suffrage of both sexes, and I expect Woman will make a peculiarly free and independent voter. I do not expect she will vote as a class, because I firmly believe with Gilbert that every little boy or girl is either a little Liberal or else a little Conservative, and will vote accordingly.

Franchises have never been fruitful of reform, and we need not hope to make a new world out of a Woman’s vote. The reason for granting citizenship to Woman is the selfish and sensible one that it is good business to make use of every human power for improvement that the State possesses.

Woman is “some” power.

INDEX

Abduction, 107, 108

Adultery, a crime in India, 106

Anderson, Mrs. Garrett, 91

Ankers, Fru Ella, on divorce, 66, 67

Bacon, Lord, on marriage, 29

Bacon, Matthew, on wife beating, 44

Bailey, Sir William, 15

Ballad of John Hobbs, 24

Bentham, Dr. Ethel, on divorce, 59, 60

Blackstone, on wife beating, 44;
on mother’s right to custody of child, 72;
on seduction, 106

Blackwell, Dr. Elizabeth, her pioneer work in medical profession,
85-91

Branks, Scotch instrument of torture for women, 100

Breach of promise, 37, 38

Bridewell, whipping of women in, 96

Buller, Mr. Justice, his alleged ruling on wife beating, 45

Bumble, on husband’s control of wife, 43, 49

Children, custody of, 69-76

Clandestine marriages, 38

Coke, Lord, on abduction, 107

Confucius, on status of woman, 17

County Court, as divorce tribunal, 57

Cranmer, Thomas, on divorce, 54

Davies, Miss Llewellyn, on divorce, 59

Denman, Lord, on mother’s right to custody of child, 72

_Dodd v. Dodd_, separation orders, 55, 57

Dooms, 20, 21, 26, 27

Ducking-stool, punishment for common scolds, 100-101

Esher, Lord, his judgment on dominion of husband, 48

Ethelbert, Doom of, 21

Exeter, Bishop of, on seduction, 113

Fleet marriages, 35

Fry, Lord Justice, his judgment in Jackson case, 48

Geneva, University of, grants medical degree to Elizabeth Blackwell,
89

Gorell, Lord, on divorce reform, 55-58

_Grinnell v. Wells_, seduction, 111

Hale, Chief Baron, on witchcraft, 99

Halsbury, Lord, his judgment on dominion of husband, 47-49

Hardwicke, Lord, his Act to prevent clandestine marriages, 36

Hardy, Mrs., her hospital work in Serbia, 85

Hardy, Thomas, on wife selling, 22

Holloway, Dr., her hospital work in Serbia, 85

Holt, Chief Justice, on scolds, 100

Husband, right to sell wife, 22-26;
to beat, 44-46

Huxley, Thomas, on woman’s right to enter professions, 93

Illegitimate child, mother’s right to custody of, 74-76

_Jackson v. Jackson_, right of husband to control wife, 46-49

Johnson, Dr., on marriage, 33

Juvenal, on wives, 18

Lansdowne, Lord, on divorce, 57

Littledale, Mr. Justice, on custody of children, 73, 76

Magistrates, women as, 104

Mansfield, Lord, his judgment on slavery, 49

Mantalini, and earnings of wife, 41

Married Women’s Property Acts, 41, 42, 50, 102

Maternity rights, 76-78

Maule, Mr. Justice, on divorce, 54

Milton, John, 16, 17;
on divorce, 54

Montaigne, on freedom of divorce, 65

Morley, John, on stages of reform, 118

New South Wales, Affiliation law, 113

Nightingale, Florence, 91, 92

Norwegian divorce law, 67

Nursing, 92

Parry, John Humffreys, and Institution for Protection of Women, 108

Police, women as, 103, 104

Polygamy, 34

Praed, on wife beating, 46

Protection of Women and Children Bill, 109

_Queen against Foxby, The_, prosecution of common scold, 100, 101

Restell, Madame, a “female physician,” 87

_Rex v. Greenhill_, custody of children, 71-74

Roman Law, as to Woman, 18, 19, 27, 33, 66

Saxon Law, as to Woman, 19, 27, 33, 44

Scold, woman as common scold, 99-101

Scotch law of legitimacy, 75

Seduction, 106-114

Soltau, Dr., her hospital work in Serbia, 85

Steele, on wife beating, 45

Summary Jurisdiction Act (Married Women), 1895, 56

Talfourd, Serjeant, his Infant Custody Bill, 73

Webb, Dr. Helen, on divorce, 59, 61

Welsh Law of wife beating, 45

Westermarck, on marriage and the family, 31

Witchcraft, 99

Woolrych, Serjeant, on wife beating, 46

York, Archbishop of, on divorce, 56, 60

* * * * *

Transcriber’s note

Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice.

Page number references in the index are as published in the original publication and have not been checked for accuracy.

Spelling was retained as in the original except for the following changes:

Page 106: “English Comman Law in” “English Common Law in”