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
If we examine the qualities of Mr. Chamberlain’s womanly woman, we find
that they are quite frankly selected for his own satisfaction, and not
because they are of any use either to woman herself or to the world. He
likes a woman to be dependent on a man; he likes her to give up her own
opinions; he likes her to sacrifice herself, even although it be often on
unworthy objects. What does the dependence of a woman on a man and her
yielding of her opinions to him involve? It involves the misunderstanding
and neglect of all the specifically womanly sides of life. The woman who
yields her belief to a man, not by conviction, but by submission, is
shirking her work, and is a traitor to the future of which she is the
guardian. She is, in fact, the _un_womanly woman, for she has yielded the
fruits of her instinct, her knowledge, her experience as a woman, and has
adopted, to command, a man’s opinion based on man’s instinct, knowledge
and experience. She is “aping man” and is (what the reactionaries falsely
call the progressive woman), in truth, a “feeble imitation.”
Dependence of this sort means degradation. There is a sense, of course,
in which we are all, of necessity, dependent upon each other, men upon
women and women upon men. But the sort of dependence which means that
men do all they do for women as grace and favour, but that women do all
they do for men from subjection and compulsion,—because they can’t help
themselves,—is degrading to both men and women. One knows the exquisite
delight there is in serving or being served by a beloved person; but all
women do not love all men, and there is no joy whatever in dependence
upon those whom you do not love. Even the pleasure to be derived from
dependence on a loved one is a purely personal matter, and varies with
individuals and with times, and is not proper matter upon which to base
institutions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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