Facts and Fictions of Life

by Helen H. Gardener

If by "being unfitted for the sphere of wife and mother" it is meant that this sphere is truly that of a mere animal—a healthy animal—if in order to be an ideal wife to civilized man, woman should remain a savage; if to be a mother to an intellectually advancing race she need not even comprehend the advance, then truly are these arguments against her higher education and intellectual development logical.

But even then they are not fair. Why? Simply because she has not been consulted as to her choice in the matter. The argument is still based on the tremendous assumption that man's happiness, man's desires, man's wishes, man's rights, are the sum total of all desire, all right, all freedom, all happiness and all justice. It omits two tremendous equations—that of the woman herself and that of her offspring, who will have a right to demand of her how she dared equip him so badly for the life into which she has taken the liberty to bring him. To demand of her how she dared equip herself so ill for her self-imposed task of creator of a human soul!

Up to the present time woman's moral responsibility in heredity has been below the point of zero, for the reason that she has had no voice in her own control nor in that of her children. With the present knowledge of heredity she who permits herself to become a mother without having demanded and obtained (1) her own freedom from sex dominion and (2) fair and free conditions of development for herself and her child, will commit a crime against herself, against her child and against the race.

But the learned doctor deplores the fact that educated women are bringing fewer children into the world, and argues that, this being the case, it shows that education is not within woman's sphere. Now, if a man does not choose to become the father of ten or twelve children nobody on earth feels called upon to criticise him as not properly filling his sphere—as out of his proper sphere—in case he prefers to spend more of his time on mental development and progress than upon irresponsible physical indulgence and paternity. If he makes up his mind that he cannot or does not wish to become responsible for the mental and physical endowment and well-being of more than one or two children, or of none, nobody says that his "college training unfitted him for the holy position of husband and father, which is his sphere." Perhaps the college training may have a good deal to do with it in the sense that with his developed mind and wider information, his sense of right and of personal obligation to the unborn has tended in that direction. We do not often notice a vast degree of self discipline of this nature in the uneducated, whether it be man or woman, but is this a reason for deprecating intellectual training for our boys? Why then for the girls? It appears to me that it is one of the greatest possible arguments in favor of higher education for women, unless, indeed, it is desirable to be mere Kaffirs, both male and female, which has its strong points. Kaffirs are healthier, hardier, more irresponsibly, happily brutal. They have few nervous moments, I fancy, over the future good of wife or child or friend. Their sense of obligation does not keep them awake nights. They are neither afraid nor ashamed to create helpless human beings simply to furnish targets for another tribe. They have not even a glimmer of the thought—still embryonic, indeed, in civilized man—that the woman whose life is risked, and the child upon whom life is thrust unasked, are of the least consideration in the matter. These have no rights which the Kaffir lord is bound to respect. I fancy if he were asked a question on the subject he would look at you in stupid, silent wonder, if he did not ask: "What have they got to do with it? I am the race. What she and my children are for is to look after me, to make me comfortable, to be my inferiors, for my glory." Most likely he would be so stupidly unequal to even the shadow of a thought not purely egotistic that he could not even formulate such preposterous questions and self-evident statements as these. But his civilized brother does it for him—so why complain?*

* The report of the marriage of another educated and refined
white woman to a full-blooded Sioux Indian shows the species
of lunacy that attacks those who make a hobby of Indian
education. The woman who has cast in her lot with an Indian,
whose savagery is only veneered with civilized manners, will
repent of her act, as all her sisters in misery have done
before her. As a husband the American Indian is not a model,
for even long training among white people fails to uproot
his native idea that a woman is simply provided to bear him
children and to do hard work which is beneath his dignity.—
N. Y. Press. June, 1893.

Now, suppose a woman would prefer to enjoy her mental capabilities to the full and develop these rather than to be the mother of a large brood; suppose she thinks she should be a developed woman first before daring to become a mother, whose right is it to object? If men prefer Kaffir wives there is a large assortment on hand. Squaws, both white and red, are to be had for the asking.

Whose right is it to decide that all women shall be squaws in mental development, in social position, in legal status and in political and economic relations, if all women do not choose to be such? Has a woman not the right to be a human being and count one in the economy of life before she is a mother—-quite aside from her maternal capabilities? If not, when and where did she forfeit that right? When and where did man get his? Every man has and maintains the right to be a man first—a unit, a responsible human being; after that—aside from it—he may, if he choose, become also a husband and a father. Is it not more than possible that the whole human race has been dwarfed and retarded and hampered in its upward struggle because of this unaccountable effort to climb one side at a time, because brute force and phenomenal egotism have always refused to place humanity on terms of equal opportunity and leave nature alone?

We are constantly informed that those who insist on equal opportunities, on equal status before the law for women are making an effort to subvert nature; that nature has done this and that and the other thing with and for women. Well if she has, then she will take care of the results in an open field. She does not need special, restrictive laws placed on the sex that she has already put under the ban of inferiority. If the superior sex cannot still more than hold its own without putting a high protective tariff on itself then how can it claim to be the superior sex? Nature has managed very well with the lower animals, giving them equal surroundings and opportunities. That nature is not allowed to manage for women is the very point we object to. Men have made all sorts of laws for and about women that are not made for and about men. Why not make laws and make them apply to the human being, leaving the sex of that human being out of the question? It is the special, restrictive, unnatural sex provisions in the laws and in the conditions of life that are objected to. No woman objects to nature's decree that she is a potential mother any more than men object to her decree that they are potential fathers.

It is the fact that men insist that women are this and nothing more—which nature did not say—to which women object. Nowhere else in nature does the male claim all of the other avenues of life as his special sex privilege, except alone the one which he cannot perform—that of maternity. The sexes stand on an exact equality as to opportunity until we come to man. The brain of each is developed to the extent of its capacity. The freedom and opportunity for food and pleasure are enjoyed by the sexes alike. When the desire for maternity is strong upon her is the only time that the female brute animal ever becomes a mother. She decides when she is a mere mother, and when she is an animal with all the rights and privileges of her genus. With the human race alone is one-half governed upon the theory, and its opportunities fitted to the idea, that the female is never a unit, never a human being, never a person, but that she is simply, solely and only a potential mother, whose one "sphere" even then is to be controlled and regulated as to time, place and conditions—not by nature, not by herself, as with the lower animals, but by the other half of the race, which holds itself as first human, individual, and with rights, duties, privileges and ambitions pertaining to him as such. His sex relation, his potential paternity, is truly his "sphere" also, but that it is his whole sphere he has never dreamed. There are women who look at life the same way, for the other half of humanity, and decline to read nature's teachings—are unable to read them—in any other way.

But aside from all this the doctor first claims that it is the intellectual development which cripples maternal capabilities and then he proceeds to give the reasons for the poor health of girls, which turn out to be bad ventilation in their schools, unwholesome sanitary conditions, injudicious or insufficient nourishment or physical and mental habits, and a lack of intelligent mothers and teachers, who dress and train the girls unhealthfully and in vitiated surroundings. How would boys fare under like conditions? Would the doctor say that it was the intellectual training which wrecked the health of the boys or would he say that it was the absurd conditions under which they got their training? Would he advise less mental work or less vile air; fewer studies or better light; more healthful clothing and food and exercise, or that the boys go homeland devote themselves to the sphere nature marked out for them—paternity?