Feminism and Sex-Extinction

by Arabella Kenealy

CHAPTER IX

THE IMPENDING SUBJECTION OF MAN

"The Earth never tires.... Nature is rude and incomprehensible at first;

Be not discouraged, keep on, there are divine things well envelop'd;

I swear to you there are Divine Things more beautiful than words can tell."

Walt Whitman.

I

In the long and painful history of man's more or less total failure to value and to honour woman for her greatest, her most vital and self-sacrificing part in human affairs, none has approached in obliquity his recent deplorable blunder of awarding her the suffrage and the right to sit in Parliament, as recognition of her War-services.

All the long ages of Mother-surrender, of quiet heroism and attainment, all the best, beautiful years of women's lives which the burden and sickness, the weariness, danger and anguish have devoured down the centuries, while the mothers were giving themselves to be the nation's bone and blood and brain, to nourish, cherish, and upbring it—All were passed over without word or sign.