Coward Adam, as he is seen and known among the lower classes, crops up every day in newspapers, which duly chronicle his various acts, such as promising marriage to poor working girls and robbing them of all their little savings, as well as of their good names,—kicking his wife, starving his children, and spending every penny he earns in the public-house. But he is just as frequently met with in the houses of the Upper Ten. He will wear the garb of a lord with ease, and, entering the house of another lord, will cozen his host’s wife away from loyalty to her husband in quite the manner “friendly.” He is likewise to be found occasionally in the walks of literature, and where a woman is concerned in matters artistic will “down” her if he can. He has always done his best to hinder woman from receiving any acknowledgment for superior intellectual ability. Notably one may quote the case of Madame Curie, the discoverer of radium. Coward Adam says she discovered it by “a fluke”—that is to say, by chance. Most great discoveries occur, even to men, in the same way. In the present instance the “chance” came to a woman. Why should she not therefore have all the honour due to her?—the same honour precisely as would fall to the lot of a man in her place? Columns upon columns of praise would be bestowed upon her were she of Adam’s sex, and all the academies of science would contend with each other as to which should offer her the best and most distinctive award. But Coward Adam cannot abide the thought that “the woman whom thou gavest” should take an occasionally higher rank than his own among the geniuses of his age. He must have everything or nothing. He tries to ignore the fact that woman is winning equal honours with himself in University degrees; he would fain forget that the two greatest monarchs Great Britain ever had were women—Elizabeth and Victoria. There is a brave Adam, of course—a civilized creature who owns and admits the brilliant achievements of woman with pride and tenderness,—I am only just now speaking of the coward specimen. The brave Adam does not turn tail or climb trees, and he appears to have had nothing to do with the Garden of Eden. Very likely he was born somewhere else. For he says—“The woman whom thou gavest to be with me is the joy of my life,—the companion of my thoughts. To her my soul turns,—for her my heart beats—in her I rejoice,—her triumphs are my pride,—her success is my delight! If danger threatens her, I will be her defender, not her accuser,—should she be blamed for aught, I will take her fault upon myself, and will serve as a strong shield between her and calumny. This is the least I can do to prove my love towards her—for without her I should be the worst of creatures,—a lonely soul in an empty world!”
So says, or may say brave Adam! But his coward brother does not understand such high-flown sentiments. Coward Adam’s main object in life is to “avoid a scene” with either the Lord Almighty, Mister Sarpint or Missis Eve. He likes to wriggle out of difficulties, both public and private, in a quiet way. He does not understand the “methods” of plain blunt people who tell him frankly what a sneak he is. He is very ubiquitous, and much more frequently to be met with than his braver twin. And if he should chance to read what I have here set down concerning him, he will probably say as usual: “The woman whom thou gavest” in various forms of anonymous vituperation. But his active policy will remain the same as it ever was—“Mister Adam, he, Clum up a tree!”
ACCURSËD EVE
When the masculine Serpent, “who was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord had made,” tempted the mother of mankind to eat of the forbidden fruit, the Voice in the Garden said to her—“I will greatly multiply thy sorrow!” It can scarcely be denied that this curse has been fulfilled. So manifold and incessant have been the sorrows of Woman since the legendary account of the creation of the world, that one cannot help thinking the whole business somewhat unfair, if,—for merely being “beguiled” by a beast of the field who was known to be more “subtil” than any other, and afterwards being “given away” by Coward Adam,—Eve and all the descendants of her sex should be compelled to suffer centuries of torture. The injustice is manifestly cruel and arbitrary,—yet it would seem to have followed poor Accursëd Eve from then till now. “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow!” And sorrow has been multiplied to such an aggravated and barbarous extent upon her unfortunate head, that in the Jewish ritual to this very day there is a part of the service wherein the men, standing in the presence of women, individually say: “Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who hast not made me a woman!” thus deliberately insulting, in their very house of worship, the sex of their mothers!
But from the earliest times, if we are to accept historical testimony, the Jews of the ancient world appear to have treated women in the majority as “Something worser than their dog, a little lower than their horse.” Save and except those rare cases where the Jewish woman suddenly found out her latent powers and employed them to advantage, the Jewish man made her fetch and carry for him like a veritable beast of burden. He yoked her to his plough with oxen,—he sold and exchanged her with his friends as freely as any other article of commerce,—his “base uses” of her were various, and seldom to his credit,—while, such as they were, they only lasted so long as they satisfied his immediate humour. When done with, she was “cast out.” The kind of “casting out” to which she was subjected is not always explained. But it may be taken for granted that in many instances she was either killed immediately, or turned adrift to die of starvation and weariness. The Jews in their Biblical days were evidently not much affected by her griefs. They were God’s “chosen” people,—and the fact that women were the mothers of the whole “chosen” race, appeared to call for no claim on their chivalrous tenderness or consideration.
Looking back through the vista of time to that fabled Eden, when she listened to the tempting of the “subtil” one, the wrongs and injustices endured by Accursëd Eve at the hand of Coward Adam make up a calendar of appalling, almost superhuman crime. Man has taken the full licence allowed him by the old Genesis story (which, by the way, was evidently invented by man himself for his own convenience). “Thy desire shall be to thy husband and he shall rule over thee.” And among all tribes, and in all nations he has ruled with a rod of iron! The Christian dispensation has interfered somewhat with his former reign of tyranny, for with the birth of Christ came, to a certain extent, the idealization and beatification of womanhood. The Greeks and Romans, however, had a latent glimmering idea of what Woman in all her glory should be, and of what she might possibly attain to in the future,—for all their grandest symbols of life, such as Truth, Beauty, Justice, Fortune, Fame, Wisdom, are always represented by their sculptors clothed in the female form divine. It is a curious fact, that in those early periods of civilization, when Literature and Art were just dawning upon the world, man, though aggregating to his own Ego nearly everything in the universe, paused before representing himself as a figure of Justice, Mercy or Wisdom. He evidently realized his unfitness to stand, even in marble, before the world as a symbol of moral virtue. He therefore, with a grace which well became him in those “pagan” days, bent the knee to all noble attributes of humanity as represented in Woman. Her fair face, her beauteous figure, greeted him in all his temples of worship;—as Venus and Diana she smiled upon him; as the goddess of Fortune or Chance, she accepted his votive wreaths,—as Fame or Victory, she gave him blessing whenever he went to war, or returned in triumph from the field;—and all this was but the embryo or shadowing-forth of woman’s higher future and better possibilities, when the days of her long and cruel probation should be accomplished, and her “curse” in part be lifted. There are signs and tokens that this happy end is in sight. Accursëd Eve is beginning to have a good time. And the only fear now is, lest she should overstep the mark of her well-deserved liberty and run headlong into licence. For Eve,—with or without curse,—is naturally impulsive and credulous; and being too often forgetful of the little incident which occurred to her in the matter of the Tree of Good and Evil, is still far too prone to listen to the beguiling of “subtil” personages worse “than any beast of the field which the Lord hath made.”
Accursëd Eve, having broken several of her old-time fetters, and beginning to feel her feet as well as her wings, just now wants a word in politics. As one of her cursëd daughters, I confess I wonder that she should wish to put herself to so much unnecessary trouble, seeing that she has the whole game in her hands. Politics are generally hustled along by Coward Adam,—unless, by rarest chance, Brave Adam, his twin brother, suddenly steps forth unexpectedly, when there ensues what is called a “collapse of the Government.” In any question, small or great, Accursëd Eve has only to offer Coward Adam the apple, and he will eat it. Which metaphor implies that even in politics, if she only moves him round gradually to her own views in that essentially womanly way which, while persuading, seems not to persuade, he is bound to yield. Personally speaking, I do not know any man who is not absolutely under the thumb of at least one woman. And I will not believe that there is any woman so feeble, so stupid, so lost to the power and charm of her own individuality, as not to be able to influence quite half a dozen men. This being the case, what does Accursëd Eve want with a vote? If she is so unhappy, so ugly, so repulsive, so deformed in mind and manners as to have no influence at all on any creature of the male sex whatever, neither father, nor brother, nor uncle, nor cousin, nor lover, nor husband, nor friend,—would the opinion of such an one be of any consequence, or her vote of any value? I assert nothing,—I only ask the question.
Speaking personally as a woman, I have no politics, and want none. I only want the British Empire to be first and foremost in everything, and I tender my sincerest homage to all the men of every party who will honestly work towards that end. These being my sentiments, I deprecate any strong separate parliamentary attitude on the part of Accursëd Eve. I say that she has much better, wider work to do than take part in tow-rows with the rather undignified personages who often make somewhat of a bear-garden of the British House of Commons. That she would prove a good M.P. were she a man, I am quite sure; but as a woman I know she “goes one better,” in becoming the wife of an M.P.