The Secret Life: Being the Book of a HereticBisland, Elizabeth
Philosophy
The Secret Life: Being the Book of a Heretic
Bisland, Elizabeth
Diaries
These may, after all, seem to be frivolous accusations--that men do
not dress well; do not behave dramatically; but the signification of
these seemingly capricious charges lies deeper than may appear. Man has
been seized with a democratic ideal, and after applying it to political
institutions has attempted to carry it into domestic application. He
is relentlessly forcing a democracy of sex upon woman; industrially,
mentally, and sentimentally. He refuses to gratify her imagination;
he insists upon her development of that logical selfishness which
underlies all democracy, and which is foreign to her nature. Now,
nature has inexorably laid upon woman a certain share of the work that
must be done in the world. In the course of ages humanity adjusted
itself to its shared labours by developing the relation of master and
defender, of dependent and loyal vassal. Sentiment had adorned it
with a thousand graces and robbed the feudal relation of most of its
hardships. Mutual responsibilities and mutual duties were cheerfully
accepted.
Woman was obliged to perform certain duties, and these could only be
made easy and agreeable by sentiment, by unselfishness. Man needed her
ministrations as much as she needed his. He realized that sentiment
was necessary to her happiness and he accepted the duty of preserving
that sentiment of loyalty and admiration for himself which made her
hard tasks seem easy when performed for a beloved master. He took
upon himself that difficult task of being a hero to a person even
more intimate than his valet. He took the trouble to please woman's
imagination.
The hard democracy of to-day will take no note of the relation of
master and dependent. Each individual has all the rights which do not
come violently in contact with other's rights, and has no duties which
are not regulated by the law. Unselfishness is not contemplated in its
scheme. Every individual has a right to all the goods of life he can
get.
Women are beginning to accept these stern theories; beginning to apply
the cruel logic of individualism. So far from the power to win his
favour being her one hope of advancement or success, she does not
hesitate to say on occasion that to yield to his affections is likely
to hamper her in the race for fame or achievement. So far from the
giving of an heir to his greatness being the highest possibility of
her existence, she sometimes complains that such duties are an unfair
demand upon her energies, which she wishes to devote exclusively to her
own ends.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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