The Future of the Women's MovementSwanwick, Helena M. (Helena Maria)
General
The Future of the Women's Movement
Swanwick, Helena M. (Helena Maria)
Women -- Social and moral questions; Women's rights
only by stealth, alone, in the dark roads, on the bench of a park, or in
houses where there is little of the control of normal family life. And
her interviews with him are full of angry revolt against her mistress’s
prohibition, and of plots with him as to how to circumvent the tyrant.
The said tyrant is often desperately perplexed and anxious, but worse
than helpless, because of her ignorance and her sometimes wilful refusal
to admit the facts of human nature. I have known a woman who said, “I
don’t allow my girl to go anywhere without me, except to church and to
the G.F.S.”; but I had myself met the girl in a variety of other places.
Another employer, with two daughters who often went to dances, refused to
allow her pretty parlourmaid (who helped to dress the young ladies) to
go to a ball which her friends and brothers were attending. The employer
thought balls were not good “for that class of person.” Another lady, who
was constantly seen at dinner parties, theatres and receptions, said,
when asked that her servant should be allowed to join a social club,
where there was singing and dancing and acting and billiards, “I don’t
believe you can help that class of people except through religion.” Such
employers as these, and they are very many, bring into disrepute not
only the employment of domestic service, but the whole of the standard
of morals which they imagine themselves to be upholding. Young people
will have pleasure if they can get it, and to make their lives dreary and
lonely is to drive them underground for pleasure and for companionship.
The desolate loneliness of many domestic servants, far from home and
friends, and with well-meaning, puritanical mistresses, is a cause
perhaps quite as effective as service in a disorderly house or with an
immoral master. The living-in system is full of difficulties, and I
believe it is one of the systems which will have to go; but the only
chance of success is either to make the girl a part of the family she
serves, or to give her opportunities for a cheerful life of her own.
Another contributory cause, whose effect it is very difficult to
estimate, is the low state of public opinion, encouraged by the law, with
regard to physical brutality. Science recognises the close connection
between the lusts of cruelty and of sex. Public opinion must be brought
to support far more truly protective law for women and for little
children. We hear much just now of the segregation of feeble-minded
women, but we need, just as much, the segregation of men who have become
a danger to women and children. When women make public opinion much
more than they do now, and if only they will steer clear of retaliatory
brutality, we shall move much faster.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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