One of our quarrels with the Advanced Women of our generation is the hysterical parade they make about their wants and their intentions. It never seems to occur to them that the best means of getting what they want is to take it, when not forbidden by the law—to act, not to talk; that all this running hither and thither over the face of the earth, this feverish unrest and loud acclaim are but the dilution of purpose through much speaking, and not the right way at all; and that to hold their tongues and do would advance them by as many leagues as babble puts them back. A small knot of women, 'terribly in earnest,' could move multitudes by the silent force of example. One woman alone, quietly taking her life in her own hands and working out the great problem of self-help and independence practically, not merely stating it theoretically, is worth a score of shrieking sisters frantically calling on men and gods to see them make an effort to stand upright without support, with interludes of reproach to men for the want of help in their attempt. The silent woman who quietly calculates her chances and measures her powers with her difficulties so as to avoid the probability of a fiasco, and who therefore achieves a success according to her endeavour, does more for the real emancipation of her sex than any amount of pamphleteering, lecturing, or petitioning by the shrieking sisterhood can do. Hers is deed not declamation; proof not theory; and it carries with it the respect always accorded to success.
And really if we think of it dispassionately, and carefully dissect the great mosaic of hindrances which women say makes up the pavement of their lives, there is very little which they may not do if they like—and can. They have already succeeded in reopening for themselves the practice of medicine, for one thing; and this is an immense opportunity if they know how to use it. A few pioneers, unhelped for the most part, steadily and without shrieking, stormed the barricades of the hospitals and dissecting-rooms; heroically bearing the shower of hard-mouthed missiles with which they were pelted, and successfully forcing their way notwithstanding. But the most successful of them are those who held on with least excitement and who strove more than they declaimed; while others, by constitution belonging to the shrieking sisterhood, have comparatively failed, and have mainly succeeded in making themselves ridiculous. After some pressure but very little cackle—for here too the work was wanted, the desire real, and the workers in earnest—female colleges on a liberal and extended system of education have been established, and young women have now an opportunity of showing what they can do in brain work.
It is no longer by the niggardliness of men and the fault of an imperfect system if they prove intellectually inferior to the stronger sex; they have their dynamometer set up for them, and all they have to do is to register their relative strength—and abide the issue. All commerce, outside the Stock Exchange, is open to them equally with men; and there is nothing to prevent their becoming merchants, as they are now petty traders, or setting up as bill-brokers, commission agents, or even bankers—which last profession, according to a contemporary, they have actually adopted in New York, some ladies there having established a bank, which, so far as they have yet gone, they are said to conduct with deftness and ready arithmetic.
In literature they have competitors in men, but no monopolists. Indeed, they themselves have become almost the monopolists of the whole section of light literature and fiction; while nothing but absolute physical and mental incapacity prevents their taking the charge of a journal, and working it with female editor, sub-editor, manager, reporters, compositors, and even news-girls to sell the second edition at omnibus doors and railway stations. If a set of women chose to establish a newspaper and work it amongst themselves, no law could be brought to bear against them; and if they made it as philosophical as some, or as gushing as others, they might enter into a formidable rivalry with the old-established. They would have a fair hearing, or rather reading; they would not be 'nursed' nor hustled, and they would get just as much success as they deserved. To be sure, they do not yet sit on the Bench nor plead at the Bar. They are not in Parliament, and they are not even voters; while, as married women with unfriendly husbands and no protection-order, they have something to complain of, and wrongs which are in a fair way of being righted if the shrieking sisterhood does not frighten the world prematurely. But, despite these restrictions, they have a very wide circle wherein they can display their power, and witch the world with noble deeds, if they choose—and as some have chosen.
Of the representative 'working-women' in England, we find none who have shrieked on platforms nor made an hysterical parade of their work. Quietly, and with the dignity which comes by self-respect and the consciousness of strength, they have done what it was in their hearts to do; leaving the world to find out the value of their labours, and to applaud or deride their independence. Mrs. Somerville asked no man's leave to study science and make herself a distinguished name as the result; nor did she find the need of any more special organization than what the best books, a free press and first-rate available teaching offered. Miss Martineau dived with more or less success into the forbidding depths of the 'dismal science,' at a time when political economy was shirked by men and considered as essentially unfeminine as top-boots and tobacco; and she was confessedly an advanced Liberal when to be a high Tory was part of the whole duty of woman. Miss Nightingale undertook the care of wounded soldiers without any more publicity than was absolutely necessary for the organization of her staff, and with not so much as one shriek. Rosa Bonheur laughed at those who told her that animal painting was unwomanly, and that she had better restrict herself to flowers and heads, as became the jeune demoiselle of conventional life; but she did not publish her programme of independence, nor take the world into her confidence and tell them of her difficulties and defiance. The Lady Superintendents of our own various sisterhoods have organized their communities and performed their works of charity with very faint blare of trumpets indeed; and we might enumerate many more who have quietly lived the life of action and independence of which others have only raved, and who have done while their sisters shrieked. These are the women to be respected, whether we sympathize with their line of action or not; having shown themselves to be true workers, capable of sustained effort, and therefore worthy of the honour which belongs to strength and endurance.
Of one thing women may be very sure, though they invariably deny it; the world is glad to take good work from any one who will supply it. The most certain patent of success is to deserve it; and if women will prove that they can do the world's work as well as men, they will share with them in the labour and the reward; and if they do it better they will distance them. The appropriation of fields of labour is not so much a question of selfishness as of (hitherto) proved fitness; but if, in times to come, women can show better harvesting than men, can turn out more finished, more perfected, results of any kind, the world's custom will flow to them by the force of natural law, and they will have the most to do of that which they can do the best. If they wish to educate public opinion to accept them as equals with men, they can only do so by demonstration, not by shrieks. Even men, who are supposed to inherit the earth and to possess all the good things of life, have to do the same thing.
Every young man yet untried is only in the position of every woman; and, granting that he has not the deadweight of precedent and prejudice against him, he yet has to win his spurs before he can wear them. But women want theirs given to them without winning; and moreover, ask to be taught how to wear them when they have got them. They want to be received as masters before they have served their apprenticeship, and to be put into office without passing an examination or submitting to competition. They scream out for a clear stage and favour superadded; and they ask men to shackle their own feet, like Lightfoot in the fairy tale, that they may then be handicapped to a more equal running. They do not remember that their very demand for help vitiates their claim to equality; and that if they were what they assume to be, they would simply take without leave asked or given, and work out their own social salvation by the irrepressible force of a concentrated will and in the silence of conscious strength.
While the shrieking sisterhood remains to the front, the world will stop its ears; and for every hysterical advocate 'the cause' loses a rational adherent and gains a disgusted opponent. It is our very desire to see women happy, noble, fitly employed and well remunerated for such work as they can do, which makes us so indignant with the foolish among them who obscure the question they pretend to elucidate, and put back the cause which they say they advance. The earnest and practical workers among women are a very different class from the shriekers; but we wish the world could dissociate them more clearly than it does at present, and discriminate between them, both in its censure and its praise.