Chapter 1 of 11 · 3962 words · ~20 min read

Part 1

THE WOMAN OF TO-MORROW

_The Woman of To-morrow_

_By Helen M. Winslow Author of “Literary Boston of To-day,” “Concerning Cats,” etc._

New York _James Pott & Company_ 1905

First Impression, September, 1905

_To My Sisters_

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. THE WOMAN OF TO-MORROW 7

II. ON INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY 15

III. ON OUR RELATION TO LIFE 29

IV. ON FRIENDS 38

V. ON ENEMIES 49

VI. ON MRS. GUMMIDGE 58

VII. ON MENTAL ATTITUDES 69

VIII. ON THE ESSENTIALS OF HAPPINESS 79

IX. ON WORRY 93

X. ON SOLITUDE 102

XI. ON WOMEN’S CLUBS 115

XII. ON THE ETHICS OF CLOTHES 139

XIII. ON THE AVERAGE WOMAN 149

XIV. ON PUBLIC DUTIES 160

XV. ON HOME-LOVING AND HOUSEKEEPING 169

XVI. ON GROWING OLD 179

XVII. ON THE OUTLOOK 193

THE WOMAN OF TO-MORROW

What will she be like, the woman of to-morrow? We know all about the woman of to-day—her virtues, tendencies, shortcomings, her hopes, aims and splendid promise; reams have been written about the woman of the past, in all ages, under all conditions, her limitations, her achievements. But what about the woman of to-morrow? Will she go on steadily, firmly, unswervingly towards the full accomplishment of what we women to-day long for, hope for, pray for, wait for? Will she?

When we look back fifty years and note what has been overcome, what women have achieved in educational, business, philanthropic and sociological lines, we are wont to preen ourselves and to glory in all “we” have accomplished. Fifty years ago the first woman was just beginning to wrest her diploma from the unwilling university. Fifty years ago the first woman doctor was taking her degree. The first newspaper women were making their first attempts at journalism. And scores, yes, hundreds, of avenues, now so long open to women that we do not stop to count them, were not only shut, but nobody was dreaming of pushing them ajar—nobody, that is, but Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucy Stone and their friends—and well ridiculed for it they were, too.

But to-day all American womanhood stands on a broad, high plateau, with eager faces turned hopefully to the future. We look forward confidently and with the surety of success, because everything has been made easy for us. Are we too confident? Is there not danger of our forgetting that we are still a long footpath from the millennium and that there is a deal of work to be done before women, collectively speaking, get there? Do we realize sufficiently the duty and responsibility devolving upon us in regard to the betterment of home and humanity? Do we really understand the opportunities which influence begets? And since woman’s responsibility goes hand in hand with her influence, which has always been proportionate to her own merit, while environment and education have been important factors in determining this work, then how great must be her responsibility to-day as compared with that of her sister in former ages!

Mary Lyon used for the motto at Mount Holyoke in the days when our mothers and grandmothers used to come under her care, “Freely have ye received, freely give”—although, for that, the words originated with a Greater than Mary Lyon. There is no doubt about our having “freely received”; are we “freely giving”? There was never a period in the world’s history when women’s work counted for so much, when it was so much needed. Ancient history says very little about what women did in the early ages; but we know they did their part. The model women of Hebrew history were toilers. We see, as one bright woman has said, “a mother’s ready ingenuity saving the life of her baby boy, when the father’s strength was a broken reed. We see her commit the tiny ark to the mercy of the waters of the Nile; we see another woman—a sister—running fleet-footed along the reedy banks of the river, her loving eyes upon the rocking cradle adrift on the eddying stream. We see yet another woman—a king’s daughter—stoop to the river’s edge to lift in her arms the child of destiny. Three women working in unconscious federation—and lo! a race of men is freed and a kingdom builded in the wilderness!”

What the world wants of woman to-day is the utmost development of the positive feminine moral force in her spirit and her life. Woman has been said to be the conscience of the world, and there is profound truth in that. It was the conscience of Blanche of Castile which melted the noblest king France ever had—Louis the Ninth. It was the conscience of the American woman which was the one invulnerable, irresistible, unsilenced enemy of American slavery. That conscience of woman is the tower which society will always need to have developed and regnant within it, and there is no other office so great.

Sympathy in woman comes nearest to the heart of Christ—sympathy for the erring, the sick and suffering. That is one power which she needs to contribute to society. Her sympathy is the heat ray combined with the light ray in the perfect sunbeam, and wherever it goes there flower charities, asylums, and all institutions of human benevolence spring naturally as the bloom of the flowers from the sod which the sun has warmed.

Then, too, there is woman’s courage. We are so accustomed to associate courage with physical strength that we do not always think of it as pre-eminently a womanly grace when the feminine nature has been fully unfolded and trained, but it is. The reckless rapture of self-forgetfulness, that which inspires persons and nations, that which is sovereign over obstacle and defeat, and perils and resistance, has belonged to woman’s heart from the beginning. In the early pagan time, in the Christian development, in mission and in martyrdoms, it has shown; in the mediæval age as well as in our own time; in the Prussian woman after the battle of Jena, when Prussia seemed trampled into the bloody mire under the cannon of Napoleon. Oh, the passion, the forgetfulness, the supreme self-devotion with which woman flings herself into the championship of a cause that is dear and sacred and trampled under foot! It is her crown of renown; it is her staff of power! This conscientiousness in woman, this sympathy, this courage and self-devotion in woman, give her her place in the future civilization of the world and glorify the society into which she is born and of which she becomes the mistress.

We are in need of city mothers as well as city fathers; not until the mother-care has reached out into all departments of municipal life and the incentive to good has become as powerful as the incentive to evil; not until the beautiful and the true are clothed in forms as attractive as the vile and false; not until nobleness and purity of character are requisites demanded of those who fill high public positions—not until then will women cease to have opportunity for efficient, practical effort; not until then will women cease to have a share of public responsibility.

According to Dean Swift, the men of his age asked each other if it were prudent to choose a wife who had a little knowledge of history and the capacity to discuss the more important affairs of the time and the obvious beauties of poetry. The general verdict, he says, was against such attainments in women because their tendency was to make wives pretentious and conceited, and not duly subject to their husbands. I know of but one man to-day who would dare express such sentiments, if he believed them—and but few who can be suspected of cherishing such ideas in secret. For we have not many men who belong in the past ages.

Even in the early years of the last century it was supposed that woman’s mentality could be broadened and exercised sufficiently by the receipt book and the sampler, and it was not till the inventions of each succeeding decade lightened woman’s labor that she had greater time for study. It was this development which brought about the beginnings of the club movement, in the late sixties and early seventies, which gathered in women who desired mental improvement and longed for that life which was more than meat and drink—women who needed an outlook upon the world at large and an inlook upon their own intellectual condition. But mere literary work did not satisfy women who conscientiously believed that influence meant responsibility and were clear-sighted enough to see that in organization was the power to combat the ills of the world and to elevate humanity. Thus they broadened their scope, making their object humanity-lifting. Above all is it to be seen in the mental development of woman herself and in her awakening to the fact that she has powers and capabilities which can be used for the good of humanity.

This rule, given in “What All the World’s a-Seeking,” ought to be daily read over by all women: The self should never be lost sight of. It is the one thing of supreme importance, the greatest factor even in the life of the greatest service. Being always and necessarily precedes doing; having always and necessarily precedes giving. But this law also holds: That when there is being, it is all the more increased by the giving. Keeping to one’s self dwarfs and stultifies. Hoarding brings loss; using brings ever greater gain. In brief, the more we are, the more we can do; the more we have, the more we can give. And thus it is that one becomes a queen among women. Not honor for themselves, but service for others. But notice the strange, wonderful, beautiful transformation as it returns upon itself—honor for themselves, because of service for others.

ON INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY

But we must not let our sense of individual responsibility for the general welfare become too keen. When we consider the multiplication of societies almost daily for the amelioration of every possible wrong and the furtherance of nearly every possible good, we seem in some danger of such a result. Not only the average woman, but the exceptional one, is infected by the universal desire to improve the world in general and mankind in particular; and, figuratively, she seems to be going forth morning, noon and night seeking for new evils to conquer. Mrs. Jellaby and her Society for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Orphans of Borrioboolah Gah was but a caricatured prototype of the passion for organized work among women at the close of the century in which Dickens lived and wrote. We are all in danger of overlooking the best and sweetest in life, as well as its real meaning and essence, in our mad rush after what? Is it the passion for humanity? or is it a sort of contagious fever, the germs of which, having obtained an insidious foothold in our mental and moral systems, work an unconscious change in us from earnest, sincere and reasonably contented women to restless, ambitious and discontented ones?

True, Saint Paul did say that woman was created for the man, and there will always be men—and women, too—who, though they deny the inspiration of every other part of the Scriptures, stake their faith on the infallibility of this alleged prophecy of woman’s perpetual subjection. But the copyright on his oracular utterances expired centuries ago. Some of the new beliefs are not so good as some of the old ones, and these will pass away. Some are better, and these will remain. But the whole truth is that it is fair neither to Saint Paul nor to woman to quote him in fragments. He adds, a very little way further on, “for as the woman is of the man, so is the man also by the woman.” And this almost inextricably mixes up the relations of man and woman; but there does not seem to be any escaping the conclusion that woman’s responsibilities began about at the beginning.

Saint Paul’s opinion as to the attitude and behavior of women in public assemblies is hardly apropos now, and if he were alive to-day he would be the first to admit it. Thucydides antedated the apostle by four centuries, and his remarks to the effect that “Happiest is that woman whose name is least in the mouths of men” are, of course, equally beneath the serious consideration of the woman of to-day, even though they are echoed by so recent and popular a writer as the author of “The Bread Winners.” “A woman’s name should never be in the newspapers more than twice: when she marries and when she dies.” Yet it was but a little while ago that I heard a prominent woman say:

“I wish you and I were living in a little country town somewhere where we could be content to knit and crochet and wash dishes and feed the cat. I know we would all be much happier if we were freed from this ‘divine discontent’ which leads us to fret our souls for that which is naught when we get it.” There might, however, be some trouble in finding the country town where the modern longing to be a factor in the life of to-day has not penetrated. It is not altogether confined to cities, this passion for the general welfare. It is shared by the woman of limited opportunities and crops out in the least suspected places.

Without it where would be the progress made by our sex in the last half of the nineteenth century? What would be the position of woman, for instance, had not Lucy Stone been born with the sense of individual responsibility which made of her a saint and an apostle for the uplifting of the modern woman, to whom all femininity, whether suffragist or remonstrant, owes its recognition and its place to-day? She and her immediate followers were, perhaps, the first to develop this divine discontent which is the inspiration and source of much of the modern sense of individuality for the general welfare. And in view of all the good work that is being inspired and carried out by women, who shall be so blind as to deny that it is a part of the great plan of evolution concerned in the problems that beset the opening of a new century?

The banding together of hundreds of thousands of women for various purposes directly dealing with the world’s advancement along the lines of education, temperance, philanthropy, political affairs and good government emphasizes a new phase of this old world’s history. And the fact that the very existence of this state of affairs is owing to the impossibility of the modern woman’s sitting quietly at home and ignoring her part in the general scheme of humanity compels us to own that this sense of responsibility is not to be regretted, but rather to be taken as an awakening of the real woman to a knowledge of what the “eternal feminine” may be made to mean to the world at large.

It is not, therefore, to be deplored, but to be controlled. There is little danger of its becoming abnormally strong in the aggregate; but alas! for her who lets her own sense of what she as an individual owes to society at large, cease to be a purpose in life and become her master. She it is who joins every club within reach and rushes madly from section to class in search of diversion and from club to club in what she flatters herself is the pursuance of culture. She it is who forgets that an hour spent in the silence of her own room or by her own fireside with some book that is really worth while is more profitable than two afternoons listening to mosaics carefully inlaid from bits of the encyclopædia. She it is who leaves her sick and lonely child to the care of hired nurses while she goes gaily from club pillar to D. A. R. post or neglects the great home truth that a smiling, restful wife across the dinner table is the easiest way to convert the ordinary man to belief in women’s organizations.

It cannot be denied, however, that the modern tendency to organize has greatly stimulated this sense of responsibility for the whole human race that is at once a bane and an inspiration to the up-to-date woman. Women are gregarious and imitative. Let us once realize that our friends are active factors in the arena of life and we are immediately fired with a determination to become factors, too. We want to go with the rest of our kind, whether it be in the manner of reforms or bonnets. We will no more be considered behind the times in organization than in sleeves. Therefore, if other women belong to dozens of such societies, why not we?

It is a great compliment to women that they are being so cordially recognized by organizations of men. Their educational associations are inviting our co-operation in the consideration of questions of how best to work out the problems with which they are confronted. From time immemorial men have not asked the help of women in vain. Since Eve’s day we have been making up for her thoughtlessness in allowing temptation to come before Adam (she not having lived long enough to realize that men are to be guarded from, not exposed to, temptation), and in all ages whenever women could be of use to mankind in general they have done their work nobly and well. Our Pilgrim foremothers are not exploited in histories as they would have been had they fought Indians and defied kings. But nobody pretends to deny that they acted fully as important a part as did their worthy husbands and sires. Our grandmothers of the Revolutionary War were no small factors in the establishment of a new republic. The religious history of the world, since the day of Mary, the carpenter’s mother, shows that the sense of individual responsibility is no new development of the modern woman. It has been behind the greatest achievements of the ages.

What has stimulated it and spread it like bits of leaven among the masses is a question for us to consider. Is it because of the facility with which newspapers and magazines and books now reach even the remotest of our borders? It is hardly possible in these days to live apart from a knowledge of what is going on in the great round world. There is scarcely a hamlet in the country unreached by a daily newspaper, and the ordinary workingman to-day knows more of the general trend of affairs than the most learned and far-seeing of our grandfathers possibly could do. What is the effect of all this modern development of progress? of this individual sense of responsibility? The common consciousness of humanity, the sense of our individual need and our individual duty is making itself felt. We are open to deeper and wider impulses; let us see that they are not allowed to die away as mere impulses. One of the inevitable effects of the modern stimulus of organization is a high degree of personal consciousness. We feel the responsibility of the whole “woman’s movement”; we not only have a larger and broader personality and a sense of revolt against any form of injustice, but we feel a wider, deeper love for each other. We are standing together in a concerted movement seeking a common good; and that brings us into a broader charity and a commensurate growth of social consciousness. It is impossible for us henceforth to settle back into selfish living—that is, if we are developing the highest privileges that come to the modern woman. We shall possess our souls in patience and find our balance in a serenity of spirit that will give us a clearer vision and freedom from worry. We may still feel that we are personally responsible for a great deal in the world around us, but we shall not worry and fret over it, and we shall learn the secret of combining earnest, constant endeavor with a sublime unconsciousness to the pin-pricks of existence. We shall see and feel new forces and give way to them in loyal service.

Doubtless this modern sense of personal responsibility is one of the laws of social evolution which has been going on with greater activity than most people have realized during the past quarter century. The increasing individualism of women is one of the striking developments of the present age. For that very reason the radiating diffusion, as one writer has called it, of the clubs seems all the more welcome. Until the individual woman finds her special differentiation, or, in other words, finds her balance, she is in danger of wasting her nervous force in vague gropings after the right thing. Never before have women cared so much for other women, and the result is greater kindliness and helpfulness toward human nature everywhere. The heart of womanhood is alive and stirring as never before; shall we dare say this is not kindling a streak of electric fire that may burn out old prejudices and kindle a new era? We may still be in the groping, vague stage where mistakes are as frequent as the right steps, but it is an evident uplift in the scale of human advancement.

Even in our family life we are letting the old notions go and recognizing the individuality of each member. Children are now allowed to think their own thoughts, and if they have a special bent in any one direction it is encouraged rather than warped to fit an old, set pattern. Young women as well as young men are expected to cultivate outside interests. We realize that it is the duty of every woman of intelligence to take active interest in some social organization and recognize some duty beyond the borders of family life. Just as in the church women have labored together for years to raise funds for some common end—to send forth missionaries to the heathen or pay the one at home—so we have come to know the value of organized effort for the benefit of the school, the home and the individual. The work of women in sanitary commissions and in the temperance unions has shown what may come of the modern passion for outside work. The sense of humanity is growing daily, and though this may crumble and flatten some old ideals, it also puts a new meaning and a new heroism into life.

It depends upon us what we will make the effect on our own lives of this keen anxiety to do something for the world around us. There will always be work enough. There will always be some Macedonia with worthy objects crying earnestly, “Come over and help us.” It depends upon us whether we will take up our work calmly and strongly, careful not to undertake more than we can do and yet not to leave untouched that for which we are best fitted, or whether we will let ourselves become so “cumbered with much serving” that we shall lose the best of life’s harmonies, the inner life of the soul. We are in danger, in our eagerness to be of service and our dread of losing some of the frills of life, of forgetting that we can do no better service to humanity than to develop our own selves into the highest types of womanhood. The world will always stand in need of noble women.