Women -- Massachusetts; Women -- Suffrage -- United States; Women's Anti-Suffrage Association of Massachusetts
To contrast the opposing ideals of the two groups of women, let me quote
from what a great Frenchman said in the time of the French Revolution:
"You have written upon the monuments of your city the words
Liberty--Fraternity--Equality. Above Liberty write Duty; above
Fraternity write Humility; above Equality write Service; above the
immemorial creed of your Rights inscribe the divine creed of your
Duties." I truly believe that the women who, perceiving present duties
imperfectly performed, refuse to take up the cry for more rights, are
following the more Christ-like ideal. I do not think that twentieth
century American women have outgrown His peerless example, which urges
them to be faithful first over a few things as He commanded. God made us
women; and if we are told that women suffer more than men in peace and
war, let us answer, "Very likely--Christ Himself found His cross
heavy--let us bear the cross and crown of womanhood in His name."
XIV
THE TRUE FUNCTION OF THE NORMAL WOMAN
MRS. HORACE A. DAVIS
_Anna Hallowell Davis, wife of Horace Davis; was educated in
Boston private schools and is a graduate of Radcliffe College;
was a member of Local School Board No. 46, New York City, for eight
years; is a member of Brookline Civic Society, the North Bennett
Street Industrial School Association, and of the Massachusetts
Peace Association._
_J. A. H._
The whole question of suffrage and anti-suffrage is significant chiefly
as it affects the married woman with children and a home; for if there
is any elemental fact on which to plant our feet, it is that the normal
woman is a wife and mother and home-maker. But is not the contention of
the suffragists fundamentally based upon the circumstances of the woman
who is not leading this normal life,--who is unmarried, who has no
children, or who is not making a home and bringing up her children
herself? It is in planning for these exceptional women, as I think they
do, that the suffragist leaders tend to ignore the truly representative
women--the majority. Do we not suspect, indeed, that they are turning
to new ideals, because they have never tried the old? As Chesterton
says: "The ideal house, the happy family, is now chiefly assailed by
those who have never known it, or by those who have failed to fulfil it.
Numberless modern women have rebelled against domesticity in theory,
because they have never known it in practice."
"But," the suffragists ask, "granting that your woman of 'normal' life
is in the majority, and doesn't want the vote, _oughtn't_ she to want
it? Casting a ballot takes next to no time, and that is all she needs to
do. Most men do no more than that."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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