Within the limits naturally described by their destiny as mothers, we can, on the contrary, positively assert that, at least in England and France, nothing—no obstacle, no restriction and no harsh measure whatsoever have stood in the way of women’s development.
Throughout the whole of its history, our people have been careful to place no barrier in the path of women’s advancement. It is rather the other way; everything has been done to enhance and to promote their importance.
Speaking of the early Teutonic tribes, from which we partly sprang, Tacitus emphasizes the prominent rôle that was allowed to the women for generations. “They neither scorn to consult them, nor slight their answers,” said Tacitus. “They even believe that a certain sanctity and prescience characterize the female sex. We have seen Veleda ... long revered as a deity by many. Aurima, besides, and many more, were formerly treated with the same veneration, but not with slavish adulation, nor as if they were goddesses.”[156] Speaking of the neighbours of the Suiones, the Sitones, Tacitus says, they “differ in submitting to a female ruler; so far have they degenerated, not only from liberty, but even from slavery.”[157] Gibbon, after referring more particularly to those women in the early Teutonic tribes who were revered as goddesses, goes on to say: “The rest of the sex, without being adored as goddesses, were respected as the free and equal companions of soldiers; associated even by the marriage ceremony to a life of toil, of danger and of glory.”[158]
“Even more marked than among the Teutonic and Frisian races,” says Dr. Browne, “was the recognition of women in the early Celtic races, whose blood—somewhat diluted—is in our veins.”[159] Two hundred years before the coming of Christ, in the league between Hannibal and the Celts, there was the following clause: “If the Celtae have complaints against the Carthaginians the Carthaginian commander in Spain shall judge it. But if the Carthaginians have anything to lay to the charge of the Celtae, it shall be brought before the Celtic women.”[160]
As regards the women of Anglo-Saxon England, the evidence of their freedom and high cultivation is so voluminous that it would be impossible to quote it in detail. We have only to mention such names as Rowena, Guiniver, Bertha, Ethelburga, Eanfled, Redburga and Osburga[161] the mother of Alfred the Great. Editha, the consort of Edward the Confessor, appears to have been a remarkable woman. The Saxon historian, Ingulphus, speaks highly of her learning and her domestic gifts, while Edith, or Alfgith, Harold’s wife, seems to have been at least a creature of refined sentiments. We also know that all mixed monasteries in Anglo-Saxon times were ruled over by able women.[162] “In 694 five Kentish abbesses were present at the Council of Beckenham and signed the decrees above all the presbyters,”[163] and Anglo-Saxon women also became the heads of monastic institutions in Thuringia. Dr. Browne tells us, moreover, that 1250 years ago those of our English ancestors who could afford it sent their daughters to Paris to be educated.[164]
With the arrival of the Normans, the already important position of women could but be still further enhanced; for, the Normans having attained to an even higher grade of civilization, brought with them the notion, created and taught by the troubadours and minstrels of France and Italy, that the softer sex was entitled, not only to the protection and tenderness, but also to the homage and service of all true knights.[165] Certainly if Emma, wife of Ethelred, and subsequently of Canute, represented the type of Norman women, they must have been a remarkable breed. I do not attach as much blame to her, as some are inclined to do, for sacrificing the interests of her children by her first husband to those by her second marriage with the Danish conqueror—and this seems the gravamen of the charges brought against her, even by Edward the Confessor; for we have to remember two circumstances in mitigation of this charge: (1) Her possible greater love for her second husband; (2) His ascendancy over her, to which it is a credit to her to have yielded, and consequently the likelihood of his having been himself responsible for her attitude to the children of the first bed. In any case, the fact that Edward the Confessor himself fell at her feet imploring her pardon with tears, after she had successfully passed through the ordeal of walking barefoot unscathed over nine red-hot ploughshares in Winchester cathedral, in order to clear herself of the charges brought against her by her foes; and the fact that he submitted to the discipline at the high altar, as a penance for having exposed her to such a test of her innocence, are, to my mind, overwhelming evidence in her favour. On this score, alone, I feel safe in concluding that she must have been a remarkable woman not only for her own time, but for all time.[166]
In the Middle Ages, therefore, women may be said to have enjoyed a position, not only of untrammelled freedom, but of exceptional honour. Matilda of Scotland, Adelicia of Louvaine, the third Matilda, Berengaria, Eleanor of Castille, were creatures who could only have deployed the qualities they did deploy, in an age in which every opportunity was afforded for female education and development. And, indeed, Mill himself sees an objection to his argument here;[167] for all historians are unanimous. Women were voting in municipal elections in France as early as 1316 and 1331. Guizot, writing of the women of the Middle Ages, says: “Quand le possesseur de fief d’ailleurs sortait de son château pour aller chercher la guerre et les aventures, sa femme y restait, et dans une situation toute différente de celle que jusque’là les femmes avaient presque toujours eue. Elle y restait maîtresse, châtelaine représentant son mari, chargée en son absence de la défense et de l’honneur du fief. Cette situation élevée et presque souveraine, au sein même de la vie domestique, a souvent donné aux femmes de l’époque féodale une dignité, un courage, des vertus, un éclat qu’elles n’avaient point déployés ailleurs, et elle a, sans nul doute, puissamment contribué à leur développement moral et au progrès général de leur condition.”[168]
We know that women surgeons were quite common in the Middle Ages;[169] Queen Philippa had one, Cecilia of Oxford[170]; the Middle Ages also produced many women writers; while there is even reason to believe that the ordinary duties of motherhood—which presumably Mill and his female authority would have regarded as part of the factors making for women’s subjection—were evaded by certain mediæval mothers.[171]
When we come to more recent times, with the more plentiful material that lies to hand, we are able to demonstrate beyond a doubt that, if ever women had limitations forcibly imposed upon the development of their intellect or character, it was certainly not in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In France in 1576 they were voting for the elections of the States-general, and in the same century they held seats in the States Assembly of Franche-Conté. As regards protection of the female in France in this and the following two centuries, it was rigorous to the point of being inhuman. In 1579 there was a law that made rape a capital offence.[172] In 1709 a certain Sieur La Gravigne was condemned to capital punishment for having seduced a girl with whom he had eloped; in 1712 a member of the Paris Parliament was ordered to pay 60,000 livres damages (or 200,000 francs) for breach of promise, and in 1738 the Parliament at Dijon condemned the Marquis de Tavannes to death for having eloped with a Demoiselle de Bron.[173]
Miss Alice Clark has gone to great pains to collect some of the evidence that may be adduced on this subject, in so far as England of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is concerned, and speaking of the women of the sixteenth century she says: “The ladies of the Elizabethan period possessed courage, initiative, resourcefulness and wit in a high degree. Society expected them to play a great part in the national life and they rose to the occasion; perhaps it was partly the comradeship with their husbands in the struggle for existence which developed in them qualities which had otherwise been atrophied.”[174] Of the women of the seventeenth century, she has shown how many were their opportunities of becoming self-reliant, versatile and resourceful. “At the beginning of the seventeenth century,” she tells us, “it was usual for the women of the aristocracy to be very busy with affairs—affairs which concerned their household, their estates, and even the Government.... Among the nobility the management of the estate was often left for months in the wife’s care.... In addition to the household accounts, those of the whole of Judge Fell’s estate at Swarthmore, Lancashire [circa 1670-1680] were kept by his daughter Sarah.” These accounts “show that the family affairs included a farm, a forge, mines, some interest in shipping and something of the nature of a bank.... A granddaughter of Oliver Cromwell, the wife of Thos. Bendish, was also interested in the salt business, having property in salt works at Yarmouth in the management of which she was actively concerned,”[175] etc., etc.