My "Little Bit"

by Marie Corelli

I had been brought up on the chivalric view of man as taken by Sir Walter Scott in his immortal romances, and my idea, gathered from these exalted specimens of the race, was that as man was always ready to worship woman it seemed invidious on her part to contend with him in his own particular sphere. But when it was forced on me that, more often than not, man was more ready to deride rather than worship woman, that the special “strain” of Walter Scott’s heroes was in Walter Scott’s delightful imagination only, and that as a matter of fact men denied to women such lawful honours as they might win through intellectual attainment, and that in certain forms of their legal procedure women were classed with “children, criminals, and lunatics,” I began to change my opinion.

I thought that if the mothers of the race were to be assorted with “criminals and lunatics,” the men they had given birth to might be, in their toleration of such a stigma, criminals and lunatics themselves. And when the war broke out and all the world raised itself, as it were, on tiptoe to see what was going to happen, and beheld among many marvels perhaps the greatest marvel of all—the women going forth to work in the places of men, going in thousands, without demur or hesitation, and taking their full share of the hardest and most menial labour with a cheerfulness and spirit no less remarkable than the intelligence with which they handled difficulties hitherto unknown, it was no longer possible to deny them equal rights with men in every relation of life and every phase of work. By every law of justice they deserved the vote—and I who, as a woman, was once against it, am bound to support the cause. All the same I shall be sorry to see them in Parliament; deeply sorry to find them straying so far out of their higher and far more influential sphere. The vanishing of modest and refined womanhood will prove a greater loss to the nation than any other asset of its power and renown. No woman can mingle with the mess of political intrigue without losing something of the charm and reticence originally in her nature, which has inspired men to their noblest aims and ends. I imagine that a true woman would rather be the Madonna of a Faith than the Premier of an Empire!

Nevertheless I grant freely and fully that it will be “well for England” when women have a voice in the education of children, and when they can refuse to “temporise” on questions of the national morality and well-being.

The recent “food muddle” under the management of men is a proof, if one were needed, of the superiority of women in all matters of domestic management, for any capable housekeeper would have organised the scheme with better knowledge and finer tact. That there will be jealousy and injustice displayed by the stronger sex towards the weaker on this matter of the vote, goes without saying. But jealousy and injustice exist anyhow, and a proof of man’s inconsistency towards women in matters of art alone is furnished by the purchase of Lucy Kemp-Welsh’s fine picture “Forward the guns!” in the Royal Academy, which has been bought “for the nation.” Yet, mark you, though this woman’s work is considered worthy of national keeping, she herself may not be admitted as an R. A.! Comment is superfluous. But it is possible that the granting of votes to women will alter all this, and that the barriers which the men have carefully erected against the sex of their mothers will be broken down for good.

The Jewish dispensation has to be credited for the rule of “keeping women in their place,” along with flocks and herds. But the Christian dispensation teaches a lovelier lesson—for a woman was the first to hold the God-Man in her arms, and a woman was the first to greet Him on His resurrection from the dead.

Does this teach nothing? Is there no symbol of the future of womanhood thus gloriously foreshadowed? I venture to think there is.

I believe and hope that a wider freedom to woman will mean a nobler heritage to man, and that through her intelligence and influence he may find and prove the “god” in him, and rise from the grave of old prejudice to the light of more brilliant possibilities. And this will be “well for England.”

Many changes are bound to come, many sorrowful and tragic happenings are yet in store for this dear country, but “it is well” that so these things should be, to the end that we realise where we have missed the way, and take heed that we stumble not again.

The secret of our regeneration is not in this or that government; it is with the people.

Yet on the whole, despite clouds in our sky, it is well for England so far. We shall come out of the darkness if—if the people will it. Up to the present they have grudged nothing—neither time, nor labour, nor money, nor sacrifice. They have been in every sense worthy of British tradition—a people splendid. Now it is that they must see they do not fall a prey to “party” traps, designed for the safeguarding of Germany in those quarters where British financial interests are concerned.