“I suppose you would have them stay at home where they belong,” said Zenith, with a good-natured laugh, which sounded as if she were confident enough of her ability to meet any possible argument.
“Yes,” I replied, “out of pure kindness to them. It is an astonishing thing to me that they can think of gaining anything by giving up all that is distinctive in their nature and becoming more like us. I am not so much in love with my own sex as to enjoy seeing our sisters and our wives and daughters trying to make themselves over into men.”
I now felt that I had said enough, and so expressed myself to Zenith, but she replied pleasantly that she was glad I had told my thoughts, as it gave her an opportunity to say some things that might not otherwise have been called for.
“You seem to think,” she continued, “that woman’s supreme happiness is to be gained by self-effacement. I suppose her custom is with you, as it formerly was here, to renounce her own name at the marriage altar.”
“It is,” I replied.
“And from that hour,” resumed Zenith, “she makes every effort to bury herself, to deny her personality, and to lay aside whatever individual desires and aspirations she may have had; that is, if she is what you would call a true woman. If she objects to this renunciation and attempts to make an independent career suited to her talents, then she is strong-minded and is trying to unsex herself. With the world full of work waiting for her nimble fingers and loving heart, she is compelled to suppress all secret hope of doing something to impress her own character on that world, because her only duty is in the home. A man is also called upon to be a good husband and father, but that by no means comprises all he is expected to be and do. To him it is given to strike out into untrodden fields, and, without reproach, to make a name for himself if possible.
“You say work is hard and disagreeable, but is it all dull and uninteresting? Are there not sweet moments of hope in every work, and then the joy of achievement when it is over? Do not men find this joy and the rewards of labor amply sufficient? The more difficult the task, the greater the satisfaction when it is accomplished. Business is perplexing and uncertain, you say, but what of the triumphs of success? Would any man refuse to undertake an enterprise because success was not certain? The very uncertainty adds zest to the business, and makes hope possible. From all this striving and achieving, and from all the satisfying rewards which come with success, woman is debarred. Then there are the professions and the wide range of occupations which require education and special training. What a variety for man to choose from, while you would confine woman to one; and a great many women, not being born good cooks or good housekeepers, cannot fill that one with any credit to themselves. So what can life be to them compared with what it ought to be? Think of the opportunities they might have in these higher occupations of competing for the prizes of life—honor, fame, position, riches, and, above all, the consciousness of doing some good in the world. Oh, it is impossible for you to realize anything of the longing in woman’s heart to be someone, to do something, and so to be relieved from the everlasting monotony of the treadmill, which, if men were obliged to submit to it, would make the majority of them insane.
“You see I have put myself in the place of one of my sex in that olden time, and have spoken as she felt when to express her feelings would have been almost a shame to her.
“What I desire to show you is that woman had not then received all that was due her, although men seemed to think she was fully emancipated. But events moved rapidly in that stirring age, and this great question could not be kept in the background in a day when every abuse and injustice was allowed a hearing and reform was in the very air. Even the dumb beasts had such powerful advocates that cruelty and unkindness were greatly checked. What wonder then, as men’s sensibilities and consciences became quickened, that they should begin to see, what they could not see before, that a fuller liberty ought to be accorded to woman? But this vision came not without help. Sometimes in our history we have known of a race being deprived of their freedom, and so benumbed by their condition that they desired nothing better, and so perforce waited for a movement for their enfranchisement to come from without. It was not so in this case. Women themselves cried out against their lot. They were not so enraptured with the calm and quiet of their conventional life but that they felt the stirrings of ambition for something different, and they did not fear to raise their voice for more liberty.”
“Liberty!” I echoed. “Were they really deprived of liberty?”