In this world ’tis the best you get at all,
For God in cursing, gives us better gifts
Than man in benediction.”
But even with her it was too much work for its own sake. It has taken fuller education, even since her time, for women to recognise that it is equally noble and just for them to receive the reward of toil in earning as it is for a man; and to be able to keep or use these earnings as they will. A century ago, men suffered somewhat from the state of things they had themselves initiated. An eldest son that received all the inheritance and privilege had therewith to support the women of his father’s family as well as of his own. It was disgraceful for him as well as for them that they should earn money. But they gave him labour, acting as upper servants, butts of ridicule, as the case might be, or blind worshippers when all the outer world had learned to disbelieve in him. Their recreation was the manufacture of useless Berlin-wool monstrosities; or self-sacrificing work in pauperising the poor of the parish, under the misdirection of a callow curate. Higher education was discredited; literary aspiration a shame-faced secret. Miss Austen had to hide her pen and ink and manuscripts by a piece of fancy-work kept handy, lest her world should know and speak its mind of her and her dreadful doings. The only profession open to a lady was matrimony; and the chances of happy matrimony were thereby enormously decreased.
If the dignity of being able to earn money has raised women immensely in social life, their higher education has made this earning possible. Dependent sisters need no longer hang their heads in shame before supporting brothers. If they are not needed in their homes, they may go forth into the world, eat the sweet bread of honest labour, and become individuals.
But the woman is fettered still by the trammels of custom, by the protection accorded to males; false social and economic creeds which teach that man’s work must be paid higher than woman’s, whether it is better done or not; by men’s power of place, which gives them power of veto; by inherited thought-fallacies and linguistic inaccuracies; by the nature of the medium through which things are seen.
Bacon wisely advised men to study all things in the “lumen siccum” or dry light of science, lest vapours arising from the mind should obscure the vision. He also pointed out that “There are four classes of Idols which beset men’s minds. To these for distinction sake I have assigned names—calling the first class Idols of the Tribe; the second, Idols of the Cave; the third, Idols of the Market-place; the fourth, Idols of the Theatre” (“Novum Organum,” Article xxxix., p. 53; also in lix.). “But the Idols of the Market-place are the most troublesome of all; idols which have crept into the understanding through the alliances of words and names. For men believe that their reason governs words; but it is also true that words react on the understanding.” Is the word “man” a common or masculine term?
After an impartial analysis of the laws regarding women, can men say that they are just? Can they continue to assert that they know better than women do what they need, and wish, and strain after; and if they know, will they do the thing that is necessary? With the best will in the world, which I believe the majority of men have, they do not know how. Only the foot that wears the shoe knows just where it pinches, and feels keenly the need of alteration.
Why must a woman be unable to free herself from an unfaithful husband if his hand is restrained from personal cruelty?
Why may a noble and loving mother have less power over the children she bore, and toiled for, than a selfish, indifferent father, who still “has sacred rights, because he has sacred duties” that he has despised?