THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VIII, Issue 48, 28 November 1891, Page 637

THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN.

N English paper has the following interesting review :— ®W«/W\ ‘ Vindication on the Rights of Women,’ with strictures on political and moral subjects, by Mary Wollstonecraft. New edition, with an intro- _ dnction by Mrs Henry Fawcett. (T. Fisher Unwin.) This re-issue of Mary r Wollstonecraft’s famous ‘ Vindication ’ is very well timed, and it is especially welcome on account of the admirable introduction by Mrs Fawcett. It is always well to pause now and then in our onward quick march, and in order to ‘ mark time,’ and to read this book, now nearly a hundred years old, gives us an opportunity of noting some of the really remarkable changes which have taken place in the position of women mentally, socially, and politically since Mary Wollstonecraft took up her pen to satirise the sermons of the Rev. James Fordyce and Dr. Gregory’s ‘ Legacy to His Daughters.’ The latter work, says Mrs Fawcett in her preface, Seems to have been regarded as a standard work on female propriety at the end of the eighteenth century. That opinions such as those of Mr Fordyce and Dr. Gregory could have been taken seriously at any period of the world’s history is scarcely credible. The learned doctor warns wives never to let their husbands know the extent of their affection, and he is even more emphatic in his declaration that if nature has endowed a woman with good sense she must take special pains to hide it. Be cautious (he says) even in displaying your good sense. It will be thought you assume a superiority over the rest of the company. But if you happen to have any learning, keep it a profound secret. especially from the men, who generally look with a .jealous and malignant eye on a woman of great parts and a cultivated understanding. The Rev. James Fordyce, perhaps unconsciously, followed the advice of the learned Gregory even more obediently than if he had been a woman ; for he effectually hides his sense in the following sentence from a sermon on feminine pity :— Never (he says), perhaps, does a fine woman strike more deeply than when composed into pious recollections. . . . Sheassumes without knowing it, superior dignity and new graces; so that the beauties of holiness seem to radiate about her. He is, perhaps, a little less wide of the mark, when he says, Let it bo observed that, in your sex, manly exercises are never graceful; that in them a tone, and figure, as well as an air and deportment of the masculine kind, are always forbidding; that, men of sensibility desire in every woman soft features and a flowing voice, a form not robust, and a demeanour delicate and gentle. I do not myself think that men ever really admire mannish women ; but not many of them would insist upon the form not robust; the idea that sickliness is feminine and attractive to the other sex has long since been exploded. Mrs Fawcett’s remarks upon the above quotations are admirable. Profanation could hardly go lower than this (she says! .... Cowardice, as well as physical weakness, was regarded as part of what every woman ought to aim at. Ignorance was likewise extolled. Female modesty was held to be outraged by the confession of strong and enduring love from a woman to a man. even when that man was her husband. . . . Pretence, seeming, outward show, were the standards by which a woman’s character was measured. A man is taught to dread the eye of God, but women were taught to dread nothing but the eye of man. Rousseau embodies the then current doctrine that reputation in the case of women takes the place of virtue in a passage which Mary Wollstonecraft quotes. ‘ To women,’ he says, ‘ reputation is no less indispensable than chastity. . . . what is thought.of her is as important to her as what she really is. . . . Opinion is the grave of virtue among the men, but its throne among women.’ On page 11 Mrs Fawcett goes on to say : — With a touch of humour, more common in her private letters than in her more studied works. Mary Wollstonecraft expresses her conviction that there is really no cause to counsel women to pretend to be sillier and more ignorant than they are. ‘ When a woman has suflicient sense not to pretend to anything which she does not understand in some degree, there is no need of determining to hide her talents under a bushel. Let things take their natural course, and all will be well.' The idea that if a woman did not marry she was to all intents and purposes a failure was attacked with great vigour in the ‘ Vindication,’ and the attack is commented upon by Mrs Fawcett in a passage that is worth quoting in full: — In the scathing and cruel light of common sense she places in close jnxta-positlon two leading facts which ate like acids into the moral llbre of the whole of society in her time. The one aim and object of women was to get married, an unmarried woman was a social failure. A writer quoted by Mary Wollstonecraft had expressed his sentiment in plain language, by exclaiming. ’ What business have women turned of forty to do in the world T Yet,

while in a variety of wavs it was dinned into the minds and consciences of women that husband-catching was the end of their existence, they were at the same time enjoined that this object must never be avowed. The aim must be pursued with unceasing vigilance. the whole of women’s education, dress, manners, and thoughts must be subordinated to this one object, but they must never openly avow it. In Mary Wollstonecraft’s time those who undertook to lead the female mind in the principles of virtue advised women neyei to avow their love for the man they were about to marry ; it was argued that it was ‘ indelicate in a female ' to let it appear that she married from inclination; she must always strive to make it appear that her physical and mental weakness hail caused her to yield to force. It is interesting to note the marked difference in the style of Mary Wollstonecraft and her accomplished editor. The one is stilted and unconcentratod. the other clear, concise, and smooth. Mrs Fawcett herself says: — The faults of the ‘ Vindication ’ as a literary work are patent upon the face of it. There is a want of order and system in it. which may perhaps be attributed to the desultory education of the writer. As she herself points out, the want of order in women’s education is answerable to a large extent for the want of order in their after work. A more important blemish to modern ears consists in the formal and frequently stilted language in which the writei conveys her meaning. All that follows the above on pages 22 and 23 is well worth reading, but I have not space for a longer ([notation. I have great pleasure in recommending the book itself, and especially the admirable introduction, to my readers, or, at least, to those amongst them who are interested in the advance we have made along many roads in a hundred years. ‘Our Boysand Girls at School.’ Their Naivete, Humour, and Wit,’ by Henry J. Barker, 8.A., author of ‘Very Original English,’etc., etc. (J. W. Arrowsmith, Bristol.) In this amusing little volume are included the writer’s contributions to Longman's, Chamber's, and other periodicals. I remember the articles in Longman's very well, as I had many a hearty laugh over them :— ‘ Every walk in life,’ says Mr Barker in his opening paragraph. ‘ has its humorous dashmgs, provided a man has but a kindly eye and a good heart; and although the pathway ol a schoolmaster is beset with a bristling array of petty worries, still even he . . may gather . . . many a bright, gay, and beaming floweret.’ The following answer received by a school inspector in Yorkshire is very funny. Having dealt for a time with the tenses of verbs, He determined to put a question or two upon the comparatively abstruse subject of co/cc—active and passive. Accordingly he asked — ‘ Now, girls, what would be the active form of “ To be loved ?” ’ The gentleman at once perceived by the blank dismay upon the children’s faces that he had touched upon a branch of etymology with which they were not acquainted ; and he was about to summarily close his examination, when he noticed one of the little maids suddenly thrust out her right hand. The inspector was pleased and . . . ‘Yes child?’he queried. And the practical little dame promptly replied : ‘Why, sir, it’s the active voice when he just asks the lady whether she’ll have him.’ The first clause of an essay on ‘ Dreams,’ written by a girl at a poor school in the East End, is so very practical that I must quote it in full :— Dreams are those queer tales that come into your head when you are asleep. The boys have them as well as girls and women. They are not true. If you have a good supper they are rather longer and not quite so true. Meat or fried flsh makes them very long. When you have no supper at all you either do not dream or else you can’t remember them. A North country school was being examined in grammar, and the inspector, who was dealing with the genders of nouns and pronouns, asked amongst other questions, the gender ot egg. ‘Sir,’ answered a tall shrewd lad behind, who probably surmised that it was a ‘catch’ question, and determined to prove himself equal to the occasion, ‘you canna tell til* it's hatched.’ I have a shrewd suspicion that the above anecdote has done duty many times before, and that the gender of an egg is a favourite question with school inspectors. The essay of a little girl who was in the third class ot a Board School in Lambeth, is so very smart and amusing that I must give an extract or two. Health, begins this young philosopher, means feeling all right, and able to work and like your meals. If everybody lived in good health until they died the doctors would not get a living. I have never been ill, and I never felt any pain except smaking, which Doctors don’t count. The Teacher says as the best, way to keep healthy, is to keep clean, and to keep your feet warm ; and she also told that poytry to us Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise. When I told that poytry to my father, he answered as he knew it before either me or the School Board, but he said as he didn't believe it for all that. He said as he was forced to be up early, and forced to be healthy too, else he would get the sack, and that it was them who laid in bed and cote 10 o’clock trains who was the wisest and the best oil’.

An extract from an essay upon ‘Education,’ written by a girl of twelve which Mr Barker reproduced verbatim from the original, is full of shrewd common-sense, quaintly expressed and originally spelled : —

If you get plenty of Education you will be happier when you grow old than if you lyid truanted or stopped at home going herrins for your mother. But education seems to make the hoys the best oft’, beeose their are three or four pictures bigger than blackboards which I sec on the street, wall going to school, where it says, ‘The Boy, what will he Become V And then theirs a row of nice, clean heads at the top, all full of education, and getting o'der and older till at last theirs a smiling old man’s head with speckteckies on, same as you see leaning back in carriages. But the bottom row of heads have not got any education, but, they seem to be getting drunker and drunker, till you get to the dirty drunken old man at the end who is called Beggary with hairs growing out on his nose.

Why don’t they draw a girl as well and what will she become I lam sure I am glad as I can read and write and I am sure I should not grow up a nasty old woman. . . . Then why can’t t hey put a picture up for us, and a nice old smiling lady with speckteckies on, at the end of the row I

I must finish with the anecdote of the genial Bishop ; his name is not given, but he is classified amongst the few who are capable of winning the confidence and hearts of the little ones. His Lordship was present on one occasion at the diocesan inspection of a village church school some

dozen miles from the metropolis. After the formal class examination by the recognised otlieial, the Bishop himself catechised the little yokels on various Scriptural subjects in his own free and chatty fashion. By-and-bye he said to his attentive array of listeners :— * And now, my children, 1 will put myself in i/uur place; and 1 hereby beg of you to ask inc a few questions. Hut don't make them too hard for me. and then 1 will try to answer them as well tvs you have answered mine. Now!’ The Bishop hail not long to wait; for one little corduroyed youngster, with ruddy cheeks and glistening eyes, almost ini mediately cried out: * Please, sir, what day is the circus a-comin’ f Whether the Bishop was able to answer the question or not I cannot tell.