(American contemporary. Said by the London critics to be the most brilliant of American women novelists. The following is from “Julia France and Her Times.”)
No wonder so few women had left an impression on history. How could any brain, even if endowed with true genius, reach the highest order of development while the character remained placid in its willing dependence upon the reigning sex? And man had despised woman through the ages, even when most enslaved by her, knowing that on him depended her very existence. He had the physical strength to wring her neck, and the legal backing to treat her as partner or servant, whichever he found convenient.
A Pageant of Great Women
By Cicily Hamilton
A dramatic poem of power and beauty. Woman contends with prejudice in an argument before the throne of Justice, calling a pageant of the world’s great women to justify her claims. She wins her freedom and speaks to man as follows:
I have no quarrel with you, but I stand
For the clear right to hold my life my own:
The clear, clean right. To mould it as I will,—
Not as you will, with or apart from you
To make of it a thing of brain and blood,