[Footnote 143: Essays on Woman's Work, by Bessie R. Parkes. The higher Education of Woman, by Emily Davis. Woman's Work in the Church, by J. M. Ludlow. London and New York: Alex. Strahan.]
Among the social topics of the day, that of the present position and future prospects of woman holds a prominent place. This is the less to be wondered at, in that the course of civilization, the force of public opinion, together with the effect of the progress of machinery upon labor, have materially altered the duties which were once esteemed peculiarly her own.
We have three small books before plus, all from England, and all bearing on this one topic. The first ("Essays on Woman's Work") delineates very forcibly the fact, that the actual work of women, independently of that performed within the domestic circle, is (relatively to the employment of numbers) immense. Our authoress calls it "the great revolution which has been so little noticed amidst the noise of politics and the clash of war—the withdrawal of women from the life of the household, and the suction of them by the hundreds of thousands within the vortex of industrial life." Page 20 she says: "I was told in Manchester, by one of the most eminent and thoughtful women in England, that the outpouring of a mill in full work at the hour of dinner was such a torrent of living humanity that a lady could not walk against the stream. I was told the same thing at Bradford by a female friend." (Page 22)—"It is clear then, since modern society will have it so, women must work." But not women only; "young female children are winding silk for twelve clear hours a day beneath a hot African sun, in a charitably economical institution," (27) and "mothers have left the hearth and the cradle, and the young girls and the little children themselves have run to offer their feeble arms; whole villages are silent, while huge brick buildings swallow up thousands of living humanity from dawn of day until twilight shades." (33)—"There are to be seen the obvious results of the absence of married women from their homes, in discomfort, etc., and in the utter want of domestic teaching and training during the most important years of youth; besides the sure deterioration of health consequent on long confinement." Well may Miss Parkes consider it "a purely economical and selfish tendency, acting by competition alone and casting aside unprofitable material. Women are more and more left to provide for themselves, and society takes hardly any trouble to enable them to do so, either by education or by opening the doors to salaried employment. The great overplus of the female sex in England, caused chiefly by the wholesale emigration of men to the colonies, increases the difficulty tenfold." "In fact, the general freedom and laisser aller of English political and social life, while it serves many admirable purposes in the general economy of the nation, allows the weaker classes, those who are in any way unfitted for the race, to go to the wall, while the others pass by. I believe the very poor to suffer far more in England than elsewhere; and I am sure there is no country on earth where so many women are allowed to drift helplessly about, picking up the scanty bread of insufficient earnings." "We are at present in an extraordinary state of social disorganization." (Pp 37, 38.)
This is but a dismal result of progress, of civilization; modern society with all its boasting seems to have [{418}] achieved little for happiness. After this witness for the uneducated class, Miss Parkes proceeds to show the difficulties that encompass the educated strivers after bread, and here difficulties seem to increase, from the danger incurred by exposing young women to intercourse with a corrupted social state; "it is better," says Miss Parkes, "to be starved in body than made worse in the moral and spiritual life," and in this we can but agree with her, as also in the conclusion that this fact renders many an occupation ineligible which would otherwise be good in itself. The lady's remarks on the changes of eighty years are interesting, as her accounts of "educated destitution" are graphic and painful in their truth. Her remarks are sensible, and her plans proposed are so modest and unassuming they seem rather suggestions, "helps to thought," than projects, and as such we cordially recommend them; for though American society is not yet in the state depicted of the superabundant populations of Europe, we cannot fail to recognize that if the same principles are exercised on this side of the Atlantic as have been exercised on that, the same results will follow when population becomes denser; it behooves us, then, to be wise in time, and acknowledge some higher law than that provided by an inexorable system of political economy, if we would be happy. Men and women are not necessarily blind agents of capitalists, mere creators of a wealth which they do not share in due proportion to their intelligence and their industry. They are moral beings, if they would but know it, if they would but exercise and cultivate their moral powers; beings capable of controlling themselves, and, by enlightened industrial arrangements, of providing for themselves and for their neighbors. The tendencies of Miss Parkes are evidently to the formation of joint-stock societies, making the laborer at once a worker and a capitalist. This might be so contrived as to form another style of "guild" of auld lang syne, when Catholic workmen protected each other from want. Christian love, and earnest thought, endeavoring, to form associations for mutual interchange of kind offices, and for encouraging each other in practices of piety and good will to men, are essentially Catholic; it is only when based on a purely selfish motive, and with purely earthly aims, that they lose their charm and best security. We confess that for ourselves we do not expect to see any great improvement in the condition of the worker, whether male or female, in Europe or elsewhere, by combination or otherwise, while the effort for improvement is unsustained by a recurrence to first principles, and unbased on positive religious forms and dogmas. As long as the world is unchristian it must remain selfish, and the weakest will go to the wall, in every form of of civilization, whether named co-operative or competitive. But once recognize that man's most essential life resides in his soul, and that he is bound to provide for the wants of that soul as his first object, "guilds" take form and shape, and the laborer, rising in dignity, performing his labor as an ordinance of God, "loving his neighbor as himself," establishes, or may establish, associations, in which the weaker shall be protected, and the poor recognized as the representatives of Christ. This we shall see exemplified on another page in speaking of the "Rosines" instituted by Rosa Governo, who had been a servant.
Miss Davis's book on the Higher Education of Woman, is addressed more especially to the middle classes, for whom she requires education has a means of obtaining a livelihood. The discrepancies between the education accorded to English girls and boys are greater than those existing between American boys and girls; still there is much room for improvement. Girls are too apt to be superficial, "to read too much, and think too little;" and even here in free America, some may be found who think they should lose [{419}] caste being useful, thorough, and energetic. To such as these we particularly recommend Miss Davis's book, for it sifts all such fallacies, and regards the question of woman's place in the social order, primarily considering them as "children of God, members of Christ, and heirs of the kingdom of heaven; and, secondarily, as wives, mothers daughters, sisters" (p. 36). Miss Davis writes modestly, suggestively, not dogmatically; feeling her way as it were at every step. Her descriptions are of course English, but much that she says of the necessity of suitable employment for woman, not only for a maintenance but for healthy existence as a moral and intellectual being, is applicable to every nation, and will afford useful hints to any one who has pondered seriously on woman's present position and future prospects.
We regret that we cannot speak so favorably of the tone of Mr. Ludlow's book, valuable as is the information it affords as to what the collective energy of women can effect when strong religious motive is the prompter of their actions. The author gives a consecutive account of the work of women in the church from the time all the apostles to the present era, tracing their usefulness, their power of varying their action according to the exigencies of the day in which they lived; the devotedness of the ancient deaconesses the learning of the nuns, when the world was the prey of the Goths and Vandals and their successors; the intellectual activity that characterized the communities while the outer world was sunk in barbarism; the books they spent their lives in copying, and the works they themselves composed. Then he gives an account of the active orders, or, perhaps, rather associations, as of the Béguines—
"who, without renouncing the society of men or the business of life, or vowing poverty, perpetual chastity; or absolute obedience, yet lead, either at their own homes or in common dwellings, a life of prayer, meditation, and labor. Matthew Paris mentions it as one of the wonders of the age for the year 1250, that 'in Germany there rose up an innumerable multitude of those continent women who wish to be called Béguines, to that extent that Cologne was inhabited by more than 1,000 of them.' Indeed, by the latter half of this century, there seems to have been scarcely a town of any importance without them in France, Belgium, Northern Germany, and Switzerland." (P. 118.)
"The first of these fellowships was composed of weavers of either sex; and so diligent were they with their work, that their industry had to be restricted, lest they should deprive the weavrers' guilds of their bread. Wholly self-maintained at first, they rendered moreover essential service in the performance of works of charity. As soon as a Béguinage became at all firmly established, there were almost invariably added to it hospitals or asylums for the reception, maintenance, or relief of the aged, the poor, the sick. To this purpose were devoted the greater part of the revenues of the sisterhood, however acquired, another portion going to the maintenance of the common chapel. The sisters moreover received young girls to educate; went out to nurse and console the sick, to attend death-beds, to wash and lay out the dead; were called in to pacify family disputes." (P. 118.).
"The Béguines had no community of goods, no common purse for ordinary needs. Nevertheless, those among them who were wholly destitute, or broken down with infirmities, were maintained at the public expense, or out of the poor fund; mendicancy was never allowed, unless in the extremely rare case of the establishment not being able to relieve its poorest members." (P. 120.)
This is refreshing testimony to woman's powers, and were a similar devoted principle now at work, many of the problems troubling earnest, thoughtful female minds might be solved. "The striking feature of her self-maintenance by labor" is a very valuable evidence, for now that machinery is called in to help the race, we cannot believe that under its rightful application, Christian women could effect less at the present time than they did in ancient days. A similar devotedness, a similar idea of the duty of living for God, a similar appreciation of the divine institution of industry as a means of sanctification, would produce equal or even superior effects, since intelligence is more diffused now than formerly, and mechanical assistance more within the reach of the many. [{420}] That which is needed is simply the spirit of godliness, and to him that asketh this is promised. Shall we then longer look calmly on the evils that beset the sex, when the means are at hand to remedy them, whenever we sincerely wish for them?
Mr. Ludlow proceeds to trace the educational fellowships, the Ursulines, Angustinians, and others. He says that in the sixteenth century female orders generally devoted themselves to education, even when founded on the old Franciscan basis of manual labor. Then comes the enumeration of the charitable sisterhoods, in all their varied modes of assuaging human misery or diminishing temptation to sin; in all their efforts for succoring the poor, the sick, the infirm, and for recalling the lost sheep to the fold. The information contained in the volume renders the book valuable in spite of Mr. Ludlow's prejudices, broadly and oftentimes coarsely expressed. We dare not repeat his blasphemies relative to the adoration of the blessed eucharist, to the vow of chastity, or to other dogmas; they are introduced, as he acknowledges, to free the author from the imputation of Romanizing tendencies, to which the involuntary testimony he bears to the right action of the church has subjected him. We pity him, that he did not see the force of his own evidence, that he was not led to the truth, rather than to the vilifying it. We give but one instance of the manner he has adopted in order to prove himself no Romanist; it will suffice to show the want of candor which reigns throughout the book when the Romish Church is touched upon. Having described, con amore, the institution of the Béguines as "being exempt from almost all the inconveniences of a convent life" (to which he appears to entertain an insuperable objection), he attributes at first their fall to the jealousy of the regular congregations. Yet after a while, the innate force of truth compels him to confess that the institution fell by its own fault. The free fellowships departed from the spirit of their foundation. "In place of the self-supporting industry and active charity which at first characterized them, there crept in the opposites of these—reliance upon others' alms and indifference to good works! So complete was the change that the very term Béghard, prayer, surviving in our 'beggar,' has come to designate clamorous pauperism" (pp. 136, 137) He continues on another page:
"But the Béguine sisterhoods of the north were too numerous, too useful, too much in harmony with the spirit of their age and country, too deeply rooted in the affections of the people, to perish before the canons of the council or a papal bull. Nor, indeed, it was soon seen, did Rome's safety require that they should perish. The existence of free brotherhoods was, indeed, inconsistent with that of Romanism itself; for every community of men, not bound by rule or vows, not subject to a clerical head, must be of necessity an asylum of free thought, such as a monastic church with an infallible head could not, without the greatest danger, allow. Sisterhoods, on the other hand, although equally unbound by vow or rule, might safely be tolerated; since, through the priestly director or confessor, generally an essential part of the organization of any Béguinage, they could be kept in dependence, tempted on into monachism. And thus, parallel with the current of censure against Béghardism and Béguinism as a system, there begins to flow another current of toleration, and even, as the danger diminishes, approval, for those 'faithful women who, having vowed continence, or even without having vowed it, choose honestly to do penance in their hospitals, and serve the Lord of virtues in spirit of humility.'"