Feminist fiction; Women -- Social and moral questions -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
Yes, women were wanting the ballot because it included potentiality, and
in potentiality is happiness. No field seems fair if there is no gateway
to it--no farther field toward which the steps may be turned. Kate was
getting hold of certain significant similes. She saw that it was past
the time of walls and limits. Walled cities were no longer endurable,
and walled and limited possibilities were equally obsolete. If the
departure of the "captains and the kings" was at hand, if the new forces
of democracy had routed them, if liberty for all men was now an ethic
need of civilization, so political recognition was necessary for women.
Women required the ballot because the need was upon them to perform
great labors. Their unutilized benevolence, their disregarded powers of
organization, their instinctive sense of economy, their
maternal-oversoul, all demanded exercise. Women were the possessors of
certain qualities so abundant, so ever-renewing, that the ordinary
requirements of life did not give them adequate employment. With a
divine instinct of high selfishness, of compassion, of realization, they
were seeking the opportunity to exercise these powers.
"The restlessness of women," "the unquiet sex," were terms which were
becoming glorious in Kate's ears. She saw no reason why women as well as
men should not be allowed to "dance upon the floor of chance." All about
her were women working for the advancement of their city, their country,
and their race. They gave of their fortunes, of their time, of all the
powers of their spirit. They warred with political machines, with base
politicians, with public contumely, with custom. What would have crushed
women of equally gentle birth a generation before, seemed now of little
account to these workers. They looked beyond and above the irritation
of the moment, holding to the realization that their labors were of
vital worth. Under their administration communities passed from
shameless misery to self-respect; as the result of their generosity,
courts were sustained in which little children could make their plea and
wretched wives could have justice. Servants, wantons, outcasts, the
insane, the morally ill, all were given consideration in this new
religion of compassion. It was amazing to Kate to see light come to dull
eyes--eyes which had hitherto been lit only with the fires of hate. As
she walked the gray streets in the performance of her tasks, weary and
bewildered though she often was, she was sustained by the new discovery
of that ancient truth that nothing human can be foreign to the person of
good will. Neither dirt nor hate, distrust, fear, nor deceit should be
permitted to blind her to the essential similarity of all who were
"bound together in the bundle of life."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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