American Thumb-prints: Mettle of Our Men and WomenStephens, Kate
History
American Thumb-prints: Mettle of Our Men and Women
Stephens, Kate
National characteristics, American; University of Kansas; Women -- Social conditions
Ten to one--a hundred to one--the young woman is “unauthoritative”
because she is not peremptory, is not dictatorial, assumes no airs
of authority such as swelling chest and overbearing manners, is
sympathetic with another’s egotism, is altruistic, is not egotistical
with the egotism that is unwilling to cast forth its work for the
instructing and furthering of human kind unless it is accompanied by
the writer’s name--a “signed article.” She is not selfish and guarding
the ego. Individual fame seems to her view an ephemeral thing, but the
aggregate good of mankind for which she works, eternal.
The beaux of that century of Dr. Johnson’s were great in spite of
their sneers and taunts at the Clarindas and Euphelias and Fidelias,
not on account of them. We have no publication which is to our time
as the “Rambler” was to London in 1753, or the “Spectator,” “Tatler,”
and “Englishman” to Queen Anne’s earlier day. But in what we have let
us not deface any page with misogynous phrase and sentence--jeers or
expression of evil against one-half of humanity. Unsympathetic words
about women who by some individual fortune have become literary drudges
fit ill American lips--which should sing the nobility of any work that
truly helps our kind. These women go about in wind and rain; they sit
in the foul air of offices; they overcome repugnance to coarse and
familiar address; they sometimes stint their food; they are at all
times practising a close economy; with aching flesh and nerves they
often draw their Saturday evening stipend. They are of the sanest and
most human of our kind--laborers daily for their meed of wage, knowing
the sweetness of bread well earned, of work well done, and rest well
won.
Even from the diseased view of a veritable hater of their sex they have
a vast educational influence in the world at large, whether their work
is “authoritative” or “unauthoritative,” according to pronunciamento of
some one who assumes authority to call them “unauthoritative.” It must
not be forgotten--to repeat for clearness’ sake--that men laboring in
these very duties met and disputed every step the women took even in
“unauthoritative” work, using ridicule, caste distinction, and all the
means of intimidation which a power long dominant naturally possesses.
To work for lower wages alone allowed the women to gain employment.
“You harshly blame my strengthlessness and the woman-delicacy of
my body,” exclaims the Antigone of Euripides, according to another
citation of the “Florilegium,” of Stobæus named at the beginning, “but
if I am of understanding mind--that is better than a strong arm.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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