Now, obviously, if women could be taught to regard such invasions of their right to pardon offence in others as a direct attack upon their own honour and liberty--a far worse attack than the act of folly which gave occasion for this tragedy--and if they would teach these possessive lovers of theirs that any such intrusion on their womanly prerogative of mercy was in itself an unforgivable sin against womanhood--then such invasions of the woman’s sphere would quickly come to an end. They might even put an end to duelling altogether. See, on the other hand, how acceptance of such an institution trains women to give up their own right of judgment, to think even that honour, at first hand, hardly concerns them. Is it not natural that, as the outcome of such a system from which we are only gradually emerging, we should hear it said of these conventionally womanly women that they have “a very low sense of honour.” Low it must naturally be. For that attitude of complaisant passivity on the part of the woman while two male rivals fight to possess her is the normal attitude of the female in the lower animal world; but it is an attitude from which, as the human race evolves into more perfect self-government, you see the woman gradually drawing away. While it pleases something in her animal instincts, it offends something in her human instincts; and while to be fought over is the highest compliment to the female animal, it is coming to be something like an insult to the really civilized woman--the woman who has the spirit of citizenship awake within her. One remembers how Candida, when her two lovers are debating which of them is to possess her--brings them at once to their senses by reminding them that it is not in the least necessary that she should be possessed by either of them; but she does in the end give herself to the one who needs her most. That may be the truest womanliness under present conditions; as it may once have been the truest womanliness for the woman to give herself to the strongest. But it may be the truest womanliness, at times, for the woman to bring men to their senses by reminding them that it is not necessary for her to give herself at all. To be quite sure of attaining to full womanliness, let her first make sure that she possesses herself. In the past men have set a barrier to her right of knowledge, her right of action, her right of independent being; and in the light of that history it seems probable that she will best discover her full value by insisting on right of knowledge, on right of way, and on right of economic independence. So long as convention lays upon women any special and fundamental claim of control--a claim altogether different in kind and extent from the claim it lays upon men--so long may it be the essentially womanly duty of every woman to have quick and alive within her the spirit of criticism, and latent within her blood the spirit of revolt. FOOTNOTE: