I
It is not too much to say that the entire present generation of women is going to school. Infancy cultivates its mind in the kindergarten, while the woman of threescore seeks consolation and diversion in clubs or a university course, instead of resigning herself to seclusion and prayers, or the chimney-corner and knitting, after the manner of her ancestors. Even our amusements carry instruction in solution. Childhood takes in knowledge through its toys and games; the débutante discusses Plato or Coquelin in the intervals of the waltz; youth and maturity alike find their pleasure in papers, talks, plays, music, and recitations. In these social menus everything is included, from a Greek drama or an Oriental faith to Wagner and the latest theory of economics. We have Kipling at breakfast, Rostand or Maeterlinck at luncheon, and the new Utopia at dinner. After a brilliant day of being adored and talked about, Browning has been duly labeled and put away, but Homer classes and Dante classes still alternate with lectures on the Impressionists or the Decadents. In this rage for knowledge, science and philosophy are not forgotten. Fashion ranges the field from occultism to agnosticism, from the qualities of a microbe to the origin of man. To-day it searches the problems of this world, to-morrow the mysteries of the next. There is nothing too large or too abstruse for the eager, questioning spirit that seeks to know all things, or at least to skim the surface of all things.
Nor is this energetic pursuit of intelligence confined to towns or cities. Go into the remote village or hamlet, and you will find the inevitable club, where the merits of the last novel, the labor problem, the political situation, the silver question, the Boer war, and the state of the universe generally, are canvassed by a circle of women as freely, and with as keen a zest, as the virtues and shortcomings of their neighbors were talked over by their grandmothers—possibly may be still by a few of their benighted contemporaries.
In its extent, this mania for things of the intellect is phenomenal. One might imagine that we were rapidly becoming a generation of pedants. Perhaps we are saved from it by the perpetual change that gives nothing time to crystallize. The central points of all this movement are the women’s clubs, of which the social element is a conspicuous feature, and we take our learning so comfortably diluted and pleasantly varied that it ceases to be formidable, though on the side of learning it may leave much to be desired.
But it is notably in this mingling of literature and life that women have always found their greatest intellectual influence, and the club is not likely to prove an exception. The rapidity of its growth is equaled only by the extent of its range. Of women’s clubs there is literally no end, and they are yet in their vigorous youth. We have literary clubs, and art clubs, and musical clubs; clubs for science, and clubs for philanthropy; parliamentary clubs, and suffrage clubs, and anti-suffrage clubs—clubs of every variety and every grade, from the luncheon club, with its dilettante menu, and the more pretentious chartered club, that aims at mastering a scheme of the world, to the simple working-girls’ club, which is content with something less: and all in the sacred name of culture. They multiply, federate, hold conventions, organize congresses, and really form a vast educational system that is fast changing old ideals and opening possibilities of which no prophetic eye can see the end. That they have marvelously raised the average standard of intelligence cannot be questioned, nor that they have brought out a large number of able and interesting women who have generously taken upon themselves not only their own share of the work of the world, but a great deal more.
One can hardly overrate the value of an institution which has given light and an upward impulse to so many lives, and changed the complexion of society so distinctly for the better. But it may be worth while to ask if the women of to-day, with their splendid initiative and boundless aspirations, are not going a little too fast, getting entangled in too much machinery, losing their individuality in masses, assuming more responsibility than they can well carry. Why is it that lines too deep for harmonious thought are so early writing themselves on the strong, tense, mobile, and delicate faces of American women? Why is it that the pure joy of life seems to be lost in the restless and insatiable passion for multitudes, so often thinly disguised as love for knowledge, which is not seldom little more than the shell and husk of things? Is the pursuit of culture degenerating into a pursuit of clubs, and are we taking for ourselves new taskmasters more pitiless than the old? “The emancipation of woman is fast becoming her slavery,” said one who was caught in the whirl of the social machinery and could find no point of repose. We pride ourselves on our liberty; but the true value of liberty is to leave people free from a pressure that prevents their fullest growth. What do we gain if we simply exchange one tyranny for another? Apart from the fact that the finest flowers of culture do not spring from a soil that is constantly turned, any more than they do from a soil that is not turned at all, it is a question of human limitations, of living so as to continue to live, of growing so as to continue to grow. Nor is it simply a matter of individuals. Societies, too, exhaust themselves; and those which reach an exaggerated growth in a day are apt to perish in a day. It is not the first time in the history of the world that there has been a brilliant reign of intelligence among women, though perhaps there was never one so widely spread as now. Why have they ended in more or less violent reactions? We may not be able to answer the question satisfactorily, but it gives us food for reflection.