WOMAN'S SPHERE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIII, Issue 7774, 21 October 1886, Page 6

WOMAN'S SPHERE.

[By Colonus.] Some weeks ago there was a meeting of the British Medioal Association, at Brighton; there were over two thousand doctors present, including many from America; they were addressed by one of their number, in a formal and learned address, and his theme was the " Higher Eduoation of Women." It does not follow that they all endorsed the principles enunciated, but the fact of these utterances being made in the ears of two thousand men learned in the laws of human physiology, gives them a certain dignity and prestige which they would not have had, if they had been delivered in a debating olub. But that rubbish may be shot in An assembly of medioal pundits as easily as in a Mutual Improvement Society, it requires to go no further than this meeting at Brighton to see. The lecturer on the occasion (Dr. Withers Moore) had the courage to denounce the unmistakable ourrent of publio feeling whioh has been running so steadily in the direction of the emancipation of woman from the conventional and indefensible disabilities of her sex, and he sighed for the good old days when " to the men of the old time their thought was not that woman should have her fair chance in the battle of life, but that man should fight it for her," and he lamented that " the age of chivalry and of chivalrous courtesy so far as woman is concerned, with all whioh that courtesy did to make life noble and beautiful must indeed be held finally to have passed away." To this melancholy conclusion he was led by his consideration of the question which he had set himself to discuss. . That question was" Is it for the good of the human race, considered as progressive, that women should be trained and admitted to compete with men in the ways and walks of life, from which heretofore, as unsuited to their sex, they have been exoluded by feeling and usage, and largely indeed by actual legislation?'.' That question he resolved in the negative; and the arguments which he adduced were twofold—first, the physical inequality of the sexes, and next the allegation that in spheres of industry in whioh the opportunity of competition bad been afforded, women had not won the distinction that had been won by men. To the first argument it might be replied, that physical inferiority has not proved a barrier to the usefulness of some of the greatest men; and to the second, that failure in winning the foremost places may be legitimately attributed to that very usage in the past which he so extols, and which debarred women from that preparation for the battle of life which so heavily handicaps them in the race for distinction. But it is a noteworthy thing that in his theorising, the lecturer entirely overlooked the change that has come over our social relations themselves, a fact which is steadily ignored by all those who advocate the continuance of the state of helpless and it may be beautiful dependence whioh was the lot of woman in the aappy days of eld. We know that the days of feudalism have passed away. In them the humble dependent of his chief was happier perhaps than the artisan and labourer of the present day. For the protection and the sustenance of the humble dependent which the feudal system gave have passed away, and the poor are left to undertake the stern straggle for existence for themselves; and in the same way those happy days of chivalry have gone, .when daughters and sisters were regarded to the last as members of the family ; and in the bursting up of family ties, and in the confusion and whirl which have come of fierce and selfish competition, we know as a matter of fact that women are thrown on their own resources, and left to sink or swim as they can. There is no use in sighing over » social state that has gone for ever; and it is the duty of the student of social science, and more so of the social reformer, not so muob to inquire what would have best become the conditions of the past, bat how women should stand related to the condition of things existing now. If any certainty could be afforded that sisters would remain happy and contented inmates in their brothers' homes, then by all means let them be even as tender hothouse plants shedding around them the fragrance only of sweet and gentle womanhood; but if the chanoes are, and we know they are, that sooner or later such dependence may be made irksome, and they must go out and bear the keen and bitter blasts of life as it is, when we know that in the uncertainties of commerce, and in the fierce rush of life whioh are characteristic of the age in which we live, the most tenderly nuturea child may at some time or other be thrown penniless on the world, it is not folly only, but heartless cruelty, for anyone to say that women should be fitted only to beautify existence, and for the enjoyment of the sweet amenities of home. The change that has come over social life has imposed the imperious neoessity that women should be prepared to take their part in the struggle for existence, and the dilettanteeism that maintains that a preparation for taking an active and a useful part in life will mar the attractive grace of womanhood is as out of place as if we advocated that the beauties of an Eastern harem are the proper type of womanhood in England or America. Nor is it on only one class in sooial life that such imperious neoessity is imposed ; nor is it to the after history of the members of but one class that we are to look for painful proof of the folly of this cruel theory. Who is there that can look around him without being able to point to the pitiful helplessness of women who have been reared in comfort and comparative affluence, but whom a change of fortune has thrown on themselves? and seeing the contrast between the success and independence of men in similar circumstances, and the pitiful and futile efforts of a woman to maintain herself in the social position to whioh she belongs, who can refrain from protesting against the traditionary and conventional usage that has consigned her to such helplessness ? and who can do otherwise than censure the heartless thoughtlessness of the father who, in deference to mere conventionalism, has consigned a daughter whom perhaps he loved with all the tenderness of a father's heart to a lifelong weary struggle from which there is no release but in the stillness of the grave P And when we think of the temptations to which this pitiful dependence leads. Let us not look for them in the social rank of which I have been speaking, though they may be just as frequent and quite as fatal, but let us take a lower social stratum. And what is the prevalent cause of that fall to misery, which in the estimation of nearly every father, is worse than death ? Social reformers often maintain that it is the oup that steals the brains away. It is not so. That leads on and sinks in deeper and deeper misery. But it is rarely the first cause in woman's fall. As a rule she has reached the second stage when she takes to drink to drown her misery, But for one that begins the downward course under the stimulus of drink there are a hundred who are the victims of that miserable inadequacy of the means of subsistence which our fatal conventional usages impose on the weaker sex. From the doOrs being closed to a hundred employments that are open to men, they are crowded into deadly competition in the only callings which they are capable of filling. The fierceness of competition leaves them at the mercy of employers who cut down the recompense of their labours t» amounts inadequate to keep body and soul together, and the terrible temptation in ever present to supplement the means of getting food and clothing. In the more orowded centres of civilisation this is so general that the world was shooked to learn that it was true of the employes of the Religious Tract Society in London. This state of things has resulted from the conventional usage which forbids " that women should be trained and admitted to compete with men in the ways and walks of life," and though its more (shocking results may be seen among the humbler strata, and in the more crowded haunts of population, the same principle is true in every rank of life, that the helpless dependence of women is the souroe of the sorest temptations to which they can be exposed. The proud independence of the woman who can win a comfortable competence and maintain her sooial standing by her well - requited industry is one of the surest safeguards of an honourable and a noble life ; and it is when dependence has broken her spirit, and wretchedness has made her hunger for human sympathy, that the kindly word and generous aid melts her woman-heart, and the hand that is stretohed to help becomes the hand that slays. There is no so fatal oause of woman's sin and woman's wretchedness as the dependence that is forced on her by the cruel conventional usage which closes so many doors of

honourable industry against her, and forces her to humbly wait for the crumbs that fall from her master's table; and though we might wish that the gentle days of chivalry I should come again, when the support and protection of woman was man's highest and most generous pride; there is in the present constitution of society nothing that promises to it more of reformation and amelioration of evil and suffering _ than the universal growth of the feeling in favour of fitting woman for taking her part in every sphere of life for which she is physioally or intellectually competent:. It is no time now to talk of this marring the graces of the womanly character. The cultivation and the exercise of her faculties in every sphere for which she is fitted will beautify her graces, and make her all the more lovely and attractive; and the indepen* dence which it will brine; will give a more commanding power to the moral influences for good with which the Creator has endowed her far more lavishly than he has the stronger and coarser sex. But whether it mar or not mar her "sweet attractive grace" the exigencies of the age demand that woman shall be fitted fully for performing her part of the struggle in life ; and the father that nowadays allows his daughter to go forth unprepared—influenced by any silly conventional theory—is heartlessly exposing her to an unequal and a wearying and a hopeless struggle, and to a possibility of dependence, with contingent dangers crueller than the grave.