Men, viewing the literary productions of women, are apt to give them the color and bias of masculine thought. As instance the poetic critic of a New York periodical, who wantonly affronts the gifted author of “Poems of Passion” by declaring that her “fervent verses are but the burning of unseemly stubble that fails to give forth light or heat.” Yet Ella Wheeler Wilcox, all fair-minded critics will admit, has won a place in the ranks of poetic genius. Her poems throb with human sympathy, and from the exalted plane of her splendid womanhood she reaches down, fulfilling the law of Christly service, to lift up the fallen and soothe and bind the bruised and bleeding. Such masculine criticism is dying out, but it has not been uncommon in the past. Mrs. Browning and Jane Austen were accused of “breaking down by their writings the safeguards of society,” and they were admonished to “cease their literary efforts and devote themselves to sewing and washing dishes if they would retain the chivalrous respect of men.” “Jane Eyre” was pronounced too immoral to be ranked as decent literature. “Adam Bede” was classed as the “vile outpourings of a lewd woman’s mind.” Yet Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, Mrs. Browning, and Jane Austen have won an exalted and enviable place in the ranks of literature. Their writings have thrilled, uplifted, and sweetened humanity.
The test of literary genius is to create a character of universal acceptance. The record of half a century has but one world-wide, world-known character of that kind. That character was created by a woman. In all literature, no book since the Bible has been so widely circulated, so extensively translated, or has so thoroughly commanded the profound attention of all classes as Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Mrs. Stowe impressed her genius upon the race and time, and marked a new epoch for freedom. Previous to the publication of her book only a few men recognized slavery as wrong, but a woman’s sympathetic heart and throbbing genius laid bare the evil and disclosed to a horrified world the wrong underlying slavery.
In philanthropy and the domain of morals there is none who is doing more heroic and effective work than Mrs. Elizabeth B. Grannis. She deals not with theories, but with real conditions. Her sympathies, her broad work, her manifold charities, go out to flesh and blood, men and women. She has the intuitive faculty of probing deep into human nature, leading those she would reform to mourn real defects, rejoice in real victories, and hope and struggle for better things.
FRANCES WILLARD.
The constantly broadening sphere of woman’s usefulness is in a large measure due to the organized forms of intellectual activity among women known as clubs. Half a century ago club-life for women was unknown. Their social sympathies were limited to the political party that claimed the franchise of their male relatives, or the church at whose shrine the women worshiped. But so rapid has been woman’s development in this direction that to-day women’s clubs form a chain from ocean to ocean, binding them as one great whole. The effect upon the members is magical; nature is enlarged; charity broadened; capacity for judgment increased; and hitherto unsuspected faculties are called into life and power.
The first organized demand by women for political recognition in the United States was made in 1848, at what was known as the Seneca Falls Convention. Ridiculed, persecuted, kicked like a football from one generation to another, this brave demand for political recognition was destined to become an agency that would work a peaceful revolution. That the movement is progressing, and will eventually succeed, is evinced by the record of half a century. In that time school suffrage has been granted in twenty-three States and Territories, partial suffrage for public improvements in three States, municipal suffrage in one, and in four States full political equality. Wyoming was the first State to accord citizenship to her women, and she bears testimony to its efficacy in the progress, honor, and sobriety of her people. In 1893, the Wyoming state legislature passed resolutions highly commendatory of woman suffrage and its results, and among other things said, “We point with pride to the fact that after nearly twenty-five years of woman suffrage, not one county in Wyoming has a poor-house, that our jails are almost empty, and crime, except that by strangers in the State, is almost unknown.”
From the banks of the far-off Volga come the good tidings that even Russia is preparing to take a great step in advance by granting to women many legal and political privileges now enjoyed only by men. England granted municipal suffrage to women a quarter of a century ago, and has more recently granted partial parliamentary suffrage. And to the influence of English law, more particularly the Married Women’s Act, is largely due the betterment of the legal status of women throughout the world. In England we find women prominent in art, literature, politics, the school and the church. While in this country the middle classes have heretofore carried on the suffrage agitation, in England it finds active workers among the peerage.
Woman in politics meets with the opposition of job politicians, but she realizes that every step of her progress, from the unveiling of her face to a seat in the legislature of a State, has been taken in the face of fierce opposition and in violation of conventionalities and customs. Undismayed she advances for the ultimate betterment of humanity.
The historian of the future will record the nineteenth century as the Renaissance of womankind. And the ultimate effect upon the human race of having individuals, not servants, as mothers will surpass the progress made in science and in art.