Social institutions alter very slowly as a rule; for long a change may pass unnoticed, until one day it is discovered that a step forward has been taken. Those changes that appear so new and are bringing fear to many to-day, are but the last consequences of causes that for long have been operating slowly. The extraordinary enthusiasm now sweeping through womanhood reveals behind its immediate feverish expression a great power of emotional and spiritual initiative. Wide and radically sweeping are the changes in women’s outlook. So much stronger is the promise of a vital force when they have refound their emancipation. To this end women must gain economic security, and the freedom for the full expression of their womanhood. The ultimate goal I conceive—at least I hope—is the right to be women, not the right to become like men. There can be no gain for women except this. To be mothers were women created and to be fathers men. This rightly considered is the deepest of all truths.

What is needed at present is that women should be allowed to rediscover for themselves what is their woman’s work, rather than that they should continue to accept perforce the rôle which men (rightly or wrongly) have at various times allowed to them throughout the patriarchal ages. This necessity is as much a necessity for men as it is for women.

I do not think that women will fail (even if for a time they stumble a little) in finding the way. The vital germinal spot of each forward step in women’s position must be sought with the women who are the conscious mothers of the race. The great women reformers are not those who would have women act just like men in all externals, but those who are conscious that all men are born of women. In this lies women’s strength in the past and in this must be their strength in that glad future that is to be. But only if motherhood is regarded as an intrinsic glory, and children are born in freedom. Think what this means. The birth of a child, in so far as its mother has not received the sanction of a man, is subject to the fire and brimstone of public scorn. And this scorn is the most pitiful result in all the patriarchal record. A woman’s natural right is her right to be a mother, and it is the most inglorious page in the history of woman that too often she has allowed herself to be deprived of that right. Women have this lesson first to learn. We, and not men, must fix the standard in sex, for we have to play the chief part in the racial life. Let us, then, reacquire our proud instinctive consciousness, which we are fully justified in having, of being the mothers of humanity; and having that consciousness, once more we shall be invincible.

FOOTNOTES:

[247] It is significant that in Sumatra polygamy occurs with the djudur marriages, where the wife is bought and lives with her husband, while it is unknown in the maternal marriages. It is frequent in Africa and elsewhere, when the marriage is not the maternal form.

[248] I hope to do so in a future book on Motherhood.

INDEX

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BY THE SAME AUTHOR