Reactions and rebellions, not being normal in their character, go on
hurting truth until peace is restored. Therefore, when woman refuses
to acknowledge the distinction between her life and that of man, she
does not convince us of its truth, but only proves to us that she is
suffering. All great sufferings indicate some wrong somewhere. In the
present case, the wrong is in woman's lack of freedom in her
relationship with man, which compels her to turn her disabilities into
attractions, and to use untruths as her allies in the battle of life,
while she is suffering from the precariousness of her position.
From the beginning of our society, women have naturally accepted the
training which imparts to their life and to their home a spirit of
harmony. It is their instinct to perform their services in such a
manner that these, through beauty, might be raised from the domain of
slavery to the realm of grace. Women have tried to prove that in the
building up of social life they are artists and not artisans. But all
expressions of beauty lose their truth when compelled to accept the
patronage of the gross and the indifferent. Therefore when necessity
drives women to fashion their lives to the taste of the insensitive or
the sensual, then the whole thing becomes a tragedy of desecration.
Society is full of such tragedies. Many of the laws and social
regulations guiding the relationships of man and woman are relics of
a barbaric age, when the brutal pride of an exclusive possession had
its dominance in human relations, such as those of parents and
children, husbands and wives, masters and servants, teachers and
disciples. The vulgarity of it still persists in the social bond
between the sexes because of the economic helplessness of woman.
Nothing makes us so stupidly mean as the sense of superiority which
the power of the purse confers upon us.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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