Man and Woman

Maoriland Worker, Volume 4, Issue 146, 19 November 1913, Page 6

Man and Woman

By AN OLD MOTHER.

Mrs. Gilman, in an article appearing j in a. piwious "Worksw,"' seems to have become a little impatient with ma.v.l Times have changed. We hare beenj accustomed to hear that next to, money, j woman was the root of all evil. Now, according to Mrs. Gilraan and the advanced women's movement, men and! man alone is the root cave« of all the| ills that flesh is heir to. This is surely! unfair. Mrs. Gilman, in "Womin andj Economics," has ably, sanely, and calmly stated the cause. There is no pointing the accusing finger at man aud telling him he has filled the world with vice, drunkenness, etc., but that, "not woman but the condition of woman has always been a doorway of evil, that while we have trained in men the larger qualities of human usefulness which the pressure of their econoroic conditions was also developing, aid i we have done this by means of conscious praise'and blame, reward, and, punishment, and with the aid, law and custom, we have trained in...wciman i by the same means the small qualities of personal usefulness which the. pie's-. sure of their economic conditions was also developing. We. have made a creature who is nbfc homogeneoufy whose life is fed by two currents of inheritance as dissimilar and opposed as could [ be well imagined. We have' bre.d a race of psychic hybrids, and the moral qualities of hybrids are well known." Heredity, as Mrs. Oilman points out later, the child inheriting from father as well as mother, has prevented the full evil of the results that might have ensued, but has also added to the difficulties of each of us and retarded the general progress of the race. "Worse than the check upon the physical activities of women has been the restriction of their power to think and judge for themselves. The extended use of the human will and its decisions is conditioned upon free voluntary action. In her rudimentary position, woman was denied the physical freedom which underlies all knowledge. She was denied the mental freedom which is the path to further wisdom; she was denied the moral freedom of being mistress of her own actions and of learning by the merciful law of consequences what was right and ' what was wrong; and she has remained, perforce, undeveloped in the larger judgment of ethics. Her moral sense is large enough, morbidly large, because in this tutelage she is always being praised or blamed for her conduct. She lives in a forcing-bed of sensitiveness to moral distinctions, but the broad judgment that alone can guide and govern this sensitiveness she has not.' Her contribution to moral progress has added to the anguish of the world the fierce sense of sin and shame, the desperate desire to do right, the' fear of wrong; without giving it the essential help of a practical wisdom and a regulated will. Inheriting with each generation ■♦■he accumulating forces of, our social nature, set 'back in each generation by the conditions of" the. primitive human female,, women have become vividly self-conscious centres of. m6ral impulse, but poor .guide* as to the conduct which alone can make that impulse useful and build the;habit of ni6rality into tlio constitution of the race." This, spoaking ■ generally, •is true; although woman is advancing rabidly into line, she cannot afford to bofrst of marvellous things she can do alone M<»n as well as women wish t<o sHt war, vice, etc., abolif>hpd. ■ A good beginning tor women who desire... to" see .-the* abolition of social evils would be to get into line with meu who are striving for better-social conditions— Socialism, which will free women economically, and which if it is not the whole solution of the problem goes at': least to solve the greater part of it. |