They are ready for these fresh fields and pastures new. They see women of other nations so engaged, and example is contagious. A gain for feminism in Sweden gives impetus in France; a rebellion against long-established custom in Constantinople gives courage for one in Paris. Above all, the several international women’s conferences that have met in Chicago, Berlin, London, and Paris in the last fifteen years have been great educators, great awakeners. Then, too, Parisians never lack for foreign examples, for Paris is cosmopolitan, and Americans especially she has always with her. The Frenchwoman, who, when her children are grown, is inclined to lose all interest in life, and settle down to old age, sees American grandmothers making a tour of the world, and tries to find the secret of their eternal youth. Thus it may be that as French diplomats have won half Africa by the skilful use of American inventions and institutions, so Frenchwomen may yet win all France by clever adaptation of the American type of woman.

Englishwomen also furnish examples in their interest in sport. “Sport” is fashionable. Bicycling was once a fad; tennis, riding, and swimming are popular. The girls’ schools are now advertising swimming-pools and tennis-courts. For one woman that you met skating thirty years ago, you now meet five hundred. We long ago learned, if we ever had to learn, the moral and intellectual value of exercise. The French, both men and women, are only now discovering it. We find, therefore, that the hothouse products are vanishing, and with them, morbidity, unhealthy thoughts, overstimulated emotions, sluggish brains. In their stead we find healthy bodies, healthy minds, initiative, organizing ability, development of the dormant will power, and last, but not least, natural and unrestrained meeting with men in all sorts of games.

Certain classes of men have been strong and active supporters of the feminist cause. Indeed, this is one of the most characteristic features of the movement in France. It seems sometimes as though the men were more ardent and intelligent feminists than the women themselves. The little band of French Protestants is naturally in the forefront of sympathy for the movement. There are fewer Protestants in all France than there are Jews in New York City, but they exercise an influence for progress far out of proportion to their small number. Almost all literary men, no matter what their creed, and lawyers, teachers, professional men in general, as well as a few deputies and senators, are on the side of the feminists. The constant pounding away on the question by playwrights and poets such as Brieux, Lavédan, Mirbeau, and Jules Bois, has done much to break down prejudice and widen the point of view. The Odéon and Comédie Française have struck sounding blows against the old order of “The Doll’s House,” and novelists like Victor Margueritte, and Marcel Prévost have done their part in arousing sympathy for the Noras of France. Socialists, too, espouse the women’s cause.

III

IN the combination of all these causes, then, economic, industrial, cosmopolitan, social, religious, and literary, the awakening has come to the women—and men—of France. The successive steps, seeming slow as they were laboriously gained, become rapid in retrospect. In professional studies, since 1868, when the first woman was admitted to a medical school, one after another all barriers have come down, till to-day all doors are wide open, and in the University of Paris alone there are over two thousand women students. After permission to study and take a degree was obtained, came the more arduous struggle to be allowed to practise their profession, for prejudice acted as a complete boycott. The prejudice was of two sorts. One was that of friends and family, who considered a woman utterly disgraced if she worked. This attitude is still general, and is the cause of untold unhappiness and estrangement. The other prejudice, and a strong one, was from her competitors, the men. Women medical students could obtain their degree, but had no opportunity to attend clinics or to be internes in hospitals. Law students, likewise, could not take the bar examinations or practise. It is owing to the unflagging efforts of two or three able women that this competitive struggle is also now a thing of the past. Mlle. Jeanne Chauvin was the test case in law practice. She won after a long and bitter struggle only ten years ago. In the profession of university teaching women have been on a par with men since Mme. Curie, having twice won the Nobel prize for her benefits to mankind through her chemical discoveries, was appointed to succeed her deceased husband in the chair of physics and chemistry in the Sorbonne. Three years ago she became the test case in yet another contest—a contest over the right of women to public recognition of their attainments by admission to the Academy. In this first engagement, like most pioneers, she lost; but the decision raised such a storm of protest and discussion that there is scarcely a question of the ultimate victory in this also. We shall yet see women taking their honored place among the seats of the famous Forty.

The struggle to change woman’s legal status has been particularly long and hard, and is still in progress. This cause owes much to Mlle. Maria Chéliga, a Pole, who has lived most of her life in Paris, and by her essays, lectures, stories, and plays has awakened public sympathy; and to Mlle. Jeanne Schmahl, editor of “L’Avant Courrière,” who succeeded after many years of effort in getting a bill through the Chamber of Deputies giving to married women the control of their own earnings. At first it failed in the Senate. Undaunted, she worked for eleven years more until, in 1907, she wrested from an unwilling Senate the vote in favor of the bill. For the last five years, therefore, a married woman has been able to spend what she earns, and to have her own bank-account. Within the last four years women at the head of large business houses have been able to vote for the judges of the tribunals of commerce, and thus see that their business interests are not unfairly dealt with by this powerful body. Women teachers have for some time been allowed to vote for the members of the board of education, though women are not eligible for office in either of these bodies. A married woman can now testify, and act as a witness in legal documents. She still has no voice in the family council, a vital institution in France; and if she invests her earnings in furniture or other portable property, these possessions belong to the husband.

Photograph by Henri Manuel
JEAN BERTHEROY (MME. LE BARILLIER)
Poet and historical novelist.

Photograph by Henri Manuel
MME. HENRI DE REGNIER
(GÉRARD D’HOUVILLE)
Poet and novelist.

Photograph by Ogerau
MME. SÉVÉRINE
A fervent and eloquent
public speaker, whose
conférences at the
Odéon are a feature
of Parisian life.