The Power of Womanhood: or, Mothers and Sons.

White Ribbon, Volume 8, Issue 87, 1 August 1902, Page 1

The Power of Womanhood: or, Mothers and Sons.

A Book for Parents and those in Loco Parentis.* By Ellice Hopkins. Perhaps the warmest recommendation I can give to this hook is to say that had I the power I would send a copy into every home in the land, that its words of warning and counsel might cut at the very roots of the deadly tree of impurity, which not only rears itself in the streets of our cities, but sends out shoots and branches into almost every department of lift. The hook is an appeal to womanhood - specially educated womanhood, for through womanhood is touched human life at every point. Ten years of her life Miss Hopkins devoted to this work—years of warfare, the strain of which so told upon her health that sirce that time she has been practically invalided. (The book was penned amid weakness and suffering.) Speaking of these years of work, she says : —“ The conclusion was forced upon me that this evil, in one form or another, is more or less everywhere- in our nurseries, in our public, and still

more our private, schools, decorously seated on magisterial benches, fouling our places of business, and even Sanctimoniously seated in our places of worship. “ After the first two years of work among women, 1 found that it was

absolutely hopeless attacking the evil from one side only, and I had to nerve myself as best I could to address large mass meetings of men. The first of these I addressed at the instance of the late revered Bishop of Durham, Dr Lightfoot, who took the chair, and inaugurated

the W hite Cross Movement, which has since spread over the civilised world.” As to why women, specially mothers, should “interfere,” Miss Hopkinsnotes, firstly, the low life value of men between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five, as compared with women of similar years (despite the added natural risks of the latter during that period), and quotes authorities who unhesitp.tingly avow unchastity to be the cause. Therefore, to save the physical life of their sons, mothers need to “ interfere.” Secondly, and with regard to the effect of impurity on the moral nature of mothers’ sons, Miss Hopkins says, “Granted that, owing to social ostracism, the outward degradation of impurity to the woman is far greater, I contend that a deeper inner debasement is its sure fruition in man.” Tbudly, “we cannot leave on one side the anguish of workingclass mothers just because we belong to the protected classes, and it is not our girls that are sacrificed. . . . The day is at hand when every mother ot Ixjys will silently vow before God to send at least one Knight of God into the world to fight an evil before which even a child’s innocence is not sacred, and which tramples under its swine’s feet the weak and the helpless.” In the chapter on the “ Secret, and Method ” of implanting pure instincts, the principle is urged of so developing

life on a higher plane that there shall be little danger of the animal nature becoming unduly pronounced. “ You are not called to hit down directly on the evil, to give warnings against vice, or to speak on things which your womanhood unspeakably shrinks from mentioning. It is more an attitude you have to form than a warning you have to give . . . Who so well as a mother can teach the sacredness of the body as the temple of the Eternal ? Who else can implant in her son that habitual reverence for womanhood which to a man is as ‘ fountains of sweet water in the bitter sea ’ of life ? Who like a mother, as he grows to years of sense and observation, and the curiosity is kindled, which is only a cry for light and teaching, can so answer the cry and so teach as to make the mysteries of life and birth to be for ever associated for him with all the sacred associations of home and his own mother and not with the talk of the groom or the dirty minded schoolboy ? . . . I hold by the old Spanish proverb, ‘ An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy.’ ” From stating general principles Miss Hopkins goes on to make practical suggestions as to how these principles may be carried out. The difficulty usually found in imparting knowledge is recognised, but as “ these functions are and must be the very shrine of a body which is a temple of the Lord and Giver of life . . . there must be some method of conveying pure know ledge to the opening mind with regard to them. The difficulty must be with ourselves and not in the very nature of things themselves. . . . What it seems to me we need is to teach the facts of life-giving, or, in o’her words, of sex, as a great wide 4 v..< air law runningright through animated creation, an ever ascending progression forming a golden ladder leading up to man . . You could explain the whole process by the method of fertilisation in plants. . . . . Man as a spiritual being, incarnate in an animal body, takes this great law of sex which we have seen running through the animated creation and lifts it into the moral and the spiritual. The physical love which in animals only lasts for the brief time that is needed for the production and rearing of offspring becomes in him a love that inhabiteth eternity, and unites him to the mother of his children in the i - dissoluble union of marriage. His fatherhood becomes the very representative of the Father in heaven. The

mother becomes the very type and image of the love that has loved us with more than a mother’s love. . . The love of brothers and sisters becomes the first faint beginning of the Brotherhood of Man.” The influence of diet on moials is briefly touched upon, general simplicity and little meat being recommended. Full occupation for both body and mind of the growing lad is helpful in the highest degree. Early manhood has its special trials and triumphs. “ A pure affection is an almost awful revelation in itself to a young man of the true nature of sensual sin. He would gladly die for the woman he loves. And we look, therefore, to you mothers to bring into the world that Christian ideal of marriage which at present is practically shut up between the covers of our Bibles, that the husband is to love the wife as 4 Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for it;’ not our ideal of the self sacrificing woman or patient Griseldas and Enids—but the selfsacrificing man, who is but poorly represented in our literature at all, the man who loves the woman and gives himself for her, holding all the strongest forces and passions of his nature for her good, to crown her with perfect wifehood and perfect motherhood. ’ The chapter on the Influence of Sisters is wholesome “ W hat I would therefore teach the girls is this : that they have got to mother the boys, that they are the guardians of all that is best and highest in them.” In the following chapter we meet with what can only be characterised as a false note, altogether out of harmony with the general tenor of the book. It suggests that girls should be advised to marry men who do not altogether satisfy the requirements of their —perhaps unreasonable ideals, because a lonely old age, with possible penury , may be encountered. I he difference between the outcast of the streets, who sells herself for bread, and the “respectable” matron who takes upon herself the name of wife that she may not lack tbis world’s goods is certainly only one of degree. We can but imagine the writer’s inner sight to have been mysteriously dimmed when she penned those lines. Thus far the subject is treated from the individualistic standpoint. Towards the close of the book two short chapters, “Imperial Aspects” and “ The Dynamic Aspect of Evil,” deal

with it as affecting the stability and progress of the nation. “ Let us always bear in mind that our empire . . . isboundtogetherbyamor.il continuity alone ; it is based on charac■. ter, the strong upright character of a ruling race, and if that decays it will go to pieces, as have other great empires before it.” L. M. S.