CHAPTER II. The Beginnings of a Feminist Movement in France.
The two main feminist tendencies of the preceding chapter may be found illustrated among the Ancients by the respective theories of Plato and Plutarch regarding women.
The history of ancient Greece records the earliest traces of what might be termed a feminist movement. There was a period when the position of the women of Greece, who had long been kept in submission, excluded from political influence and treated contemptuously in literature, began to awaken some interest. The views of Plato were of an advancedly feminist tendency. His Republic, of which the fifth Book deals with the position of women in the ideal state, ascribed their inferior power of reasoning to an education which was based upon the assumption of a sexual character. Plato was the first to assert the moral and intellectual equality of women and to claim for them an equal share in the public duties. His writings foreshadow the constant alternative of later centuries. The woman who is regarded as essentially a citizen will find the consequent responsibilities crowding upon her, which she will be expected to share with her male partners, a bar to the exclusively feminine duties of motherhood and the education of her own progeny. No theories and social movements of the past or of any future time have altered or will alter the axiom that every individual woman will sooner or later find herself at a parting of roads, one of which will lead her to devote her energies to the progress of human society at large, the other to the more exclusive happiness and welfare of the domestic circle. So completely does Plato disregard the feminine instinct, that the children in his commonwealth were to be entrusted to professional nurses, and that the mothers were to be allowed only to suckle the infants promiscuously and without even recognising them, out of bare necessity. The maternal instinct in Plato's state was ignored, and the existence of a sexual character emphatically denied.
Another feminist among the Ancients, although his views differed widely from Plato's, was Plutarch, whose ideas represent the opposite extreme of the ideal set up for women. Woman's chief duty he held to be, not to the state, but to her own family. She should try to be her husband's associate not merely in material things, but also in the fulfilment of more delicate tasks, prominent among which is that of educating the young, for which purpose she herself requires to be instructed. In direct opposition to Plato, Plutarch insists on the essentially feminine qualities of tenderness, gentleness, grace and sensibility. In preference to a national education, he wishes for a home-education, based upon the natural affections between parent and child.
The theories of Plato and Plutarch contain the germ of one of the main points of dispute among later feminists and anti-feminists: that of a sexual character. On the attitude taken by later writers on the Woman Question towards this all-important problem depends the course into which they are directed. Those who, like Plato, either deny or ignore the existence of a specially feminine character and specially feminine proclivities, are naturally driven to assert the equality of the sexes, and to claim for the female sex an equal share in both the rights and the responsibilities of social life. On the other hand, those who, like Plutarch, lay stress on the domestic and educational duties of womanhood, counterbalancing the public duties of man, duties which take their origin in the innate propensities of the female character, may yet become defenders of the cause of woman, but their demands will be more qualified, and while including in their programme a liberal female education to make women fitting companions to their husbands and wise mothers to their children, will regard the political emancipation of the sex as a hindrance to the discharge of more important duties, and therefore as undesirable.
Although the problem regarding the social status of women was a matter of some speculation and discussion in the early days of antiquity, no female writers arose to take part in them, and the position of the female sex was exclusively determined by male opinion. This circumstance in itself proves conclusively that the prevailing opinion was that woman in her then state was an inferior creature. Women were not even appealed to to make known their own wishes on a subject so vitally concerning them. Their participation in the movement belongs to later times. Upon the whole, the educationalists of Rome took little notice of the problem of female education and instruction. Quintilian, the chief among them, completely ignores the point, and Roman literature affords no contribution of any real importance.
The first statements of the cause thus remained without any direct results. Such traces as had been left were completely swept up in the years of turmoil that followed, causing early civilisation to fall back into barbarism. The centuries that elapsed between the fall of the Latin Empire and the Renaissance may be called the Dark Age of feminism. Mr. Mc. Cabe in his "Woman in Political Evolution" states that the decline of the comparative esteem in which women were held among the Romans set in even before the great Empire began to totter on its foundations, and was largely due to the Judaic spirit which prevailed in the early days of Christianity, demanding the implicit obedience of women to the stronger sex, a point of view which was found endorsed in many places in both the old and the New Testament. The earliest Christian leaders had been taught to regard woman as the agent of man's downfall, and readily observed the law that rendered her dependent. They were for the most part zealots, who did not believe in any literature that was not devotional. Even the most enlightened among them, St. Jerome, who had to answer the charge of occupying himself preferably with the instruction of women—which accusation he met with the complaint that the men were displaying an absolute indifference to instruction of any kind—wanted to make narrow religious asceticism the basis of his education of women. Being exempt from social and political duties, they seemed naturally fitted for a life of devotion and contempt of the world, directing their energies and hopes towards a life to come. In the strict retirement of the cloisters they filled their time with prayer and sacred literature. Thus, in the dark age, the ideal of womanhood became the Virgin, who lived her life of devotion far from the temptations of a wicked world with which she had nothing in common. Those women—and they were the majority—who did not pursue so lofty an ideal, sank lower and lower, and came to be regarded as mere sexual instruments, without any claim to consideration, by men whose only interest was war, and among whom learning was regarded with contempt.
Before the great Renaissance came with its revival of learning in which some women had a share, bringing improvement to some privileged ones, but leaving the bulk of them in the pool of ignorance and slavery into which they had sunk, two minor renaissances call for mention. The first, of the late eighth and early ninth century, centres round the names of Charlemagne, Emperor of the Franks, and Alcuin. They saw, indeed, the necessity for better instruction and founded a great many schools, but in their scheme women as a class were unfortunately overlooked. The second revival, that of Abélard, which took place in the twelfth century, marks the beginning of a more rational education, subjecting various theological problems to the test of reason and logic. Unfortunately, this second revival soon degenerated, and gave rise to a class of pedants who neither understood the aims, nor even the principles of education and against whose severity and arrogance the great reformers of the Renaissance as Rabelais, Montaigne and Roger Ascham directed their shafts. Neither of these revivals, therefore, exercised any considerable influence on the position of women.
It was also in the twelfth century that the influence of the conquest of England by the Normans began to make itself felt in Latin Europe. The early traditions of England regarding women offer a striking contrast to those which lived on the continent. When in the days of Julius Caesar the Romans first set foot on British soil, they found a well-balanced society, in which prevailed a state of comparative equality between the sexes, and a correspondingly high code of morality. The British women were consulted whenever an important resolution had to be taken, and Tacitus, and in later days Selden, were lavish in their praise of the dignity and bravery of Boadicea, whose history has furnished even modern authors with a fitting subject.