"To do or suffer ere they die
They know not what, they care not why."
But the "mission" must be exotic, meteoric, dazzling. Home missions present as little attraction as bonnets that do not come from Paris. The little opportunities for doing good that spring up about their feet are neglected. I know so many of those gifted, enthusiastic transcendental natures, at least in their own opinion, who cannot condescend to the meaner duties of life,—such as being faithful to their husbands, taking care of their children, and making themselves agreeable to their relatives.
Then really "earnest" women, who mean to be useful to their fellow-creatures, often do as much harm as good for the want of practical sense. Their dear little foundlings all die of measles, diphtheria, or scarlet-fever. They give their pet paupers a regular allowance, which supplies them bountifully with tobacco and grog. They quack pauperism, and increase the malady instead of curing it, because impulses of weakness miscalled feelings are consulted, instead of the hard, dry details of eleemosynary science; for science it is,—a branch of political economy. Benevolence like this is only another form of the love for excitement. Women will never take the trouble to consider the principle of things.
Diogenes. I have read somewhere a definition of woman,—"An unreasoning animal that pokes the fire on top."
Aristippus. Diogenes was converted to this hopeless condition of infidelity by a little French treatise, Le Mal qu'on dit des Femmes. I give him over to it. His doctrine, like unwholesome food, carries its punishment with it. But you, Hipparchia, have pulled woman to pieces for a purpose; and I should like to know on what practicable principle you propose to make her over again.
Hipparchia. Some one said wittily,—I think it was Mrs. Howe,—"Man carves his destiny; woman is helped to hers." Women have been kept so long in this state of dependence, that their characters have become dwarfed. The thirst for excitement that drives them restless from one amusement to another, and which finds relief in the extravagances of dress,—this passionate devotion to the frivolous and the absurd,—spring from the want of a reasonable employment for mind and body. My great principle is to exchange their passive condition for an active one. I would establish schools, where girls may receive a thorough education, such as is given to boys. In these schools, I should insist upon mathematical training as earnestly as Plato in his Republic. Women must be made to feel the magical power that numbers have in regulating the mind. Once get them really to believe that twice two make four, and can never make more or less,—once bring them to feel that a foot always means twelve inches, and that correct measurement is indispensable, even for seamstresses and cooks,—and the spirit of accuracy which now passes all their understanding will be with them and remain with them forever. Next, I should insist that the employments now monopolized by men should be thrown open to women. Why should we be excluded from all the well-paid trades and professions? Why should we not hold office, "commissioned, paid, and uniformed by the state"? Do you think it fair to limit us to scrubbing and plain-sewing as the only means of earning a livelihood?
Aristippus. I admit that many occupations for which women are admirably calculated are carried on by men, and I hope that some day a more manly public opinion will make all such persons as ridiculous as a male seamstress is now. I do not envy the feelings of men who can invent, manufacture or sell baby-jumpers, dress elevators, hoop-skirts, or those cosmetics I see "indorsed by pure and high-toned females." But when you and your friend seek the positions of "night-patrols or inspectors of police," you run into ultraism, the parent of all isms; but, luckily a parent like Saturn, who destroys its offspring.
Hipparchia. Marriage is now to women what all trades and professions are to men. Spinsters are supposed to have no chance in life,—neither liberty of action nor of ideas. Hence, rather than not marry at all, a woman will marry anybody; and, like Shenstone's Gratia,
"Choose to attend a monkey here
Before an ape below."
This prejudice is almost as strong and as absurd as the Mormon notion that a woman cannot get to heaven unless she is sealed to some saint. It has driven hundreds of women, who might have been happy single, into a slavery for life from which there is no relief. A husband, if he find that the connubial paradise he dreamed of turns out to be the other place, has the world all before him where to choose; but the lady is "cabined, cribbed,—confined" possibly: it is in the course of things. But when new fields of employment are thrown open to women, those who cannot marry, or who do not wish to marry, will lead useful and pleasant lives, and cease to be "superfluous existences,—inartistic figures, crowding the canvas of life without adequate effect." But all our reforms centre in one great point, on which our eyes are hopefully fixed,—I mean, the right to vote. Give women a vote, and at once they will take a direct interest in the business of life. They will have something to think of, and something to do. It will be the best form of education. Mr. Lecky, in his interesting, though perhaps rather windy, "History of Rationalism," has a passage that expresses my opinion and my hope. "If the suffrage should ever be granted to women, it would probably, after two or three generations, effect a complete revolution in their habits of thought, which, by acting upon the first period of education, would influence the whole course of opinion." Mr. Mill, it is well known, is warmly in favor of it. He has been abundantly sneered at in England for this crotchet, as they call it,—although it is not easy to see why it should be ridiculous for women to vote in a country governed by a queen.