The woman of to-morrow

by Helen M. Winslow

What has stimulated it and spread it like bits of leaven among the masses is a question for us to consider. Is it because of the facility with which newspapers and magazines and books now reach even the remotest of our borders? It is hardly possible in these days to live apart from a knowledge of what is going on in the great round world. There is scarcely a hamlet in the country unreached by a daily newspaper, and the ordinary workingman to-day knows more of the general trend of affairs than the most learned and far-seeing of our grandfathers possibly could do. What is the effect of all this modern development of progress? of this individual sense of responsibility? The common consciousness of humanity, the sense of our individual need and our individual duty is making itself felt. We are open to deeper and wider impulses; let us see that they are not allowed to die away as mere impulses. One of the inevitable effects of the modern stimulus of organization is a high degree of personal consciousness. We feel the responsibility of the whole “woman’s movement”; we not only have a larger and broader personality and a sense of revolt against any form of injustice, but we feel a wider, deeper love for each other. We are standing together in a concerted movement seeking a common good; and that brings us into a broader charity and a commensurate growth of social consciousness. It is impossible for us henceforth to settle back into selfish living—that is, if we are developing the highest privileges that come to the modern woman. We shall possess our souls in patience and find our balance in a serenity of spirit that will give us a clearer vision and freedom from worry. We may still feel that we are personally responsible for a great deal in the world around us, but we shall not worry and fret over it, and we shall learn the secret of combining earnest, constant endeavor with a sublime unconsciousness to the pin-pricks of existence. We shall see and feel new forces and give way to them in loyal service.

Doubtless this modern sense of personal responsibility is one of the laws of social evolution which has been going on with greater activity than most people have realized during the past quarter century. The increasing individualism of women is one of the striking developments of the present age. For that very reason the radiating diffusion, as one writer has called it, of the clubs seems all the more welcome. Until the individual woman finds her special differentiation, or, in other words, finds her balance, she is in danger of wasting her nervous force in vague gropings after the right thing. Never before have women cared so much for other women, and the result is greater kindliness and helpfulness toward human nature everywhere. The heart of womanhood is alive and stirring as never before; shall we dare say this is not kindling a streak of electric fire that may burn out old prejudices and kindle a new era? We may still be in the groping, vague stage where mistakes are as frequent as the right steps, but it is an evident uplift in the scale of human advancement.

Even in our family life we are letting the old notions go and recognizing the individuality of each member. Children are now allowed to think their own thoughts, and if they have a special bent in any one direction it is encouraged rather than warped to fit an old, set pattern. Young women as well as young men are expected to cultivate outside interests. We realize that it is the duty of every woman of intelligence to take active interest in some social organization and recognize some duty beyond the borders of family life. Just as in the church women have labored together for years to raise funds for some common end—to send forth missionaries to the heathen or pay the one at home—so we have come to know the value of organized effort for the benefit of the school, the home and the individual. The work of women in sanitary commissions and in the temperance unions has shown what may come of the modern passion for outside work. The sense of humanity is growing daily, and though this may crumble and flatten some old ideals, it also puts a new meaning and a new heroism into life.

It depends upon us what we will make the effect on our own lives of this keen anxiety to do something for the world around us. There will always be work enough. There will always be some Macedonia with worthy objects crying earnestly, “Come over and help us.” It depends upon us whether we will take up our work calmly and strongly, careful not to undertake more than we can do and yet not to leave untouched that for which we are best fitted, or whether we will let ourselves become so “cumbered with much serving” that we shall lose the best of life’s harmonies, the inner life of the soul. We are in danger, in our eagerness to be of service and our dread of losing some of the frills of life, of forgetting that we can do no better service to humanity than to develop our own selves into the highest types of womanhood. The world will always stand in need of noble women.

The great trouble with the average woman is that she does not readily find her balance. Who does not recall some rare, sweet nature that while bearing the burdens of life—heavy burdens, perhaps—is marked by a serenity of soul that is as restful to her friends as it is helpful to herself? But alas! who cannot count on the fingers of one hand the number of such women? On the other hand, the women who flutter and hover and tremble and bustle and chatter are far from isolated cases. One is almost tempted to liken them to the sands of the seashore.

It is not that they are not eager to be of the highest service to mankind, but simply that they do not get at the true secret of how. How to be lifted above the personal frets, the personal sense of importance. Perhaps it is the personal element that spoils it; eliminate that and the true cause for fretting and worrying has in a large measure disappeared. Sometimes the question of what needs to be done gets entirely shunted off the track by that other one: What will be the easiest way for me to do it?

The sense of individual responsibility for the general welfare is one of the hopeful signs of the times. We may as well recognize it and that each generation needs more and more some sort of association with each other. We are individuals, but the force which draws us together and keeps us eager to work for a common cause is a need that belongs to the later development of the human race. We need each other and to come together and work together just as much as we need a home where we can sometimes be alone. And this social dependence on one another is, as one writer says, the highest faculty of the highest race on earth.

That is one of the chief reasons why we come together to discuss methods of thought and of work. The women who join clubs because it is the fashion or because of restlessness and emptiness of mind are few; the women who join because of their need of belonging to a throng that can stir and throb and work in unison are legion. We are seeking more or less consciously the higher forms of relation which are the strength of modern life. And this is the result of a prolonged thirst among women for a fuller and truer social life than that provided by the ordinary functions of society.

It scarcely seems necessary to sum up by saying that this sense of personal responsibility for the general welfare is back of all organized work, nor to repeat that it is to us, like life, what we make of it. It is for us each and severally to settle that question. If we take the attitude of master and make of this feeling a servant to do our bidding, well and good; if, on the other hand, we let it master us and become a slave to a vague and general desire to do something for somebody without the slightest idea of how or what, then woe be to us!