When called upon to decide which of the two lines of argument referred to above deserves most sympathy, the unbiased onlooker may find himself sadly perplexed. In choosing between the advocates of dignified domesticity and those of perfect equality, one might be inclined to decide in favour of the former; yet the fact remains that, if especially the last decades have brought considerable progress, it is chiefly the latter we have to thank for it. For the pathway of the pioneer is rough and beset with difficulties, and she may seem "no painful inch to gain", and yet the amount of progress, when measured after the lapse of ages may be found to be considerable. But the fatal tendencies to generalise and to exaggerate are everywhere, and invariably spoil the best arguments. To the advocates of equality à outrance might be held up the warning example of the "masculine woman", who has succeeded in getting herself abominated both by man and by the wise members of her own sex; who has voluntarily, for the prospect of mostly imaginary gains, unsexed herself, forgetful alike of her task of propagation and education and of the fact that even outside the home-circle there are the sick to be ministered to, and the suffering to be comforted, occupations that demand the loving gentleness and unselfish devotion of which the womanly woman is made more capable by Nature than her brother Man. She scornfully resigns the chivalrous worship of the opposite sex, mixing in political and other debates with a want of moderation and often with a narrowness of views which prove all too clearly that the average woman's qualities fit her for the domestic rather than the social task.
On the other hand, those moralists who exhort women to be content to take their place in society as "wives and mothers", not inferior to man, but different, forget to provide for those women, whom circumstances beyond their control have destined for celibacy, debarring them from the privileges of their own sex, while not allowing them to share those of the male. For such women it was indeed a blessed day when the word that was to deliver them from bondage and to open to them paths of public usefulness was first spoken by the pioneers of feminism, throwing open to the female sex the many professions for which they are as fit, or even fitter—in spite of the equality theory—than men!
Whatever may be the absolute truth,—which probably no moralist or feminist has ever held, although some may have held a considerable portion of it,—both may be credited with a firm and unshakable belief in the creative force of a good education for women, of whatever description their chief duties in life may be. And, after all, the question of perfect equality and of rivalry between the sexes leading to a struggle for pre-eminence will chiefly attract women who, being more gifted than their sisters, and filled with a laudable desire to devote their talents to their cause, make the error of identifying their own individual plight with that of their sex, imagining women in general to be thwarted in their aims and ambitions, and ascribing to them aspirations which the majority of women never cherished and probably never will cherish. They turn their weapons against "man, the usurper", goading him to opposition and forgetting Hannah More's wise remark that "cooperation, and not competition is indeed the clear principle we wish to see reciprocally adopted by those higher minds in each sex which really approximate the nearest to each other"[2]. This remark, however much it may hold good for the times in which we live, would have elicited from Mary Wollstonecraft the reply that between master and slave there can be no cooperation until the latter's individuality has been fully recognised by emancipation. If, moreover, we consider how she was always thinking of duties before considering the question of female rights, claiming the latter only that with their help women might be better enabled to perform the former, it is difficult to withhold from either woman that sympathy to which the purity of her motives and the extreme earnestness of her endeavour justly entitles her.
The history of female emancipation, therefore, is so closely bound up with that of female education that it often becomes impossible to separate them. Education, to follow the feminist line of rational thought, forms the mind; and a well-formed mind shows a natural inclination towards that perfect virtue which ought to be the ruling power in the universe and the attainment of which is the sole aim of humanity. The feminist problem will not be fully settled until all men and women are equal partakers of the best education which it is in our power to bestow.
It is impossible to record the earliest beginnings of feminism in England without first glancing at that country whence came the powerful wave of philosophical thought which, stimulated by the fathers of British philosophy, in its turn stung the latent feminist energy of a Mary Wollstonecraft to life and was also—although in a less degree—indirectly responsible for the more qualified feminism in the tendencies of the Bluestocking circles and their literature, which it will be our business to describe. After one or two abortive attempts of a directly feminist nature a movement of indirect feminism, which was fostered and nursed by the French salons of the 17th century began at a time when in England the condition of women was rapidly sinking to the lowest ebb since the dark ages of mediaevalism. All through the 17th and the greater portion of the 18th century female influence and importance grew and intensified without calling forth anything like a parallel movement in the great rival nation beyond the Channel. Those who, like Mary Astell and Daniel Defoe, caught the spirit of emancipation were indeed pioneers, and to them all English women owe a never-to-be-forgotten debt.
From the beginning of the religious revival in England in the early part of the 18th century to the outbreak of the French Revolution a strong and determined reaction against French manners was noticeable in England. This reaction found its root in national prejudices, which held whatever came from France to be tainted with the utter corruption and depravity of French society and as a natural consequence disqualified public opinion from appreciating the glorious edifice of philosophical thought which was being erected at the same time. It derived greater emphasis from the vicious excesses of the French aristocracy and afterwards from the unparalleled horrors of the Revolution. The English nation has never been remarkable for any special love of imitation, and the menace of French revolutionism turned Great Britain into the very bulwark of the most rigid conservatism. So general did the feeling of hatred of the French revolutionary spirit become, that even Mary Wollstonecraft's determined attempt remained unsupported and was predoomed to failure merely because it was identified with the hated principles of the French Revolution.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Edition T. Cadell, Strand, 1830; p. IX.
[2] Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education, p. 226.