A Short History of Women's Rights: From the Days of Augustus to the Present Time. with Special Reference to England and the United States. Second Edition Revised, With Additions.Hecker, Eugene A. (Eugene Arthur)
History
A Short History of Women's Rights: From the Days of Augustus to the Present Time. with Special Reference to England and the United States. Second Edition Revised, With Additions.
Hecker, Eugene A. (Eugene Arthur)
Women's rights -- History
"A woman who is perfectly truthful and does not dissemble, is perhaps an
impossibility. In a court of justice women are more often found guilty
of perjury than men.... Women are directly adapted to act as the nurses
and educators of our early childhood, for the simple reason that they
themselves are childish, foolish, and shortsighted.... Women are and
remain, taken altogether, the most thorough and incurable Philistines;
and because of the extremely absurd arrangement which allows them to
share the position and title of their husbands they are a constant
stimulus to his ignoble ambitions.... Where are there any real
monogamists? We all live, at any rate for a time, and the majority of us
always, in polygamy.... It is men who make the money, and not women;
therefore women are neither justified in having unconditional possession
of it nor capable of administering it.... That woman is by nature
intended to obey, is shown by the fact that every woman who is placed in
the unnatural position of absolute independence at once attaches herself
to some kind of man, by whom she is controlled and governed; that is
because she requires a master. If she is young, the man is a lover; if
she is old, a priest."
Essentially the opinion of Schopenhauer is that of the Prussian ruling
class to-day. It is indisputable that in Germany, as elsewhere on the
Continent, chastity in men outside of marriage is not expected, nor is
the wife allowed to inquire into her husband's past. The bureaucratic
German expects his wife to attend to his domestic comforts; he does not
consult her in politics. The natural result when the masculine element
has not counterchecks is bullying and coarseness. To find the
coarseness, the reader can consult the stories in papers like the
_Berliner Tageblatt_ and much of the current drama; to observe the
bullying, he will have to see it for himself, if he doubts it. This is
not an indictment of the whole German people; it is an indictment of the
militaristic-bureaucratic ruling class, which, persuaded of its divine
inspiration and intolerant of criticism,[432] has plunged the country
into a devastating war. It is not unlikely that the end of the conflict
will mark also the overthrow of the Hohenzollern dynasty. The spirit of
the Germans of 1848, who labored unsuccessfully to make their country a
republic, may awake again and realise its dreams. In concluding this
chapter, I wish to enlarge somewhat upon the philosophy of suffrage as
exhibited in the preceding chapter. The "woman's sphere" argument is
still being worked overtime by anti-suffrage societies, whose members
rather inconsistently leave their "sphere," the home, to harangue in
public and buttonhole legislators to vote against the franchise for
women. "A woman's place," says the sage Hennessy, "is in th' home,
darning her husband's childher. I mean----" "I know what ye mean," says
Mr. Dooley. "'Tis a favrite argument iv mine whin I can't think iv
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