In this "New-Woman" movement--as these blind and incoherent efforts to
rehabilitate the woman's pre-glacial standing have been named--there
are at least two elements discernible, both of which are of an economic
character. These two elements or motives are expressed by the double
watchword, "Emancipation" and "Work." Each of these words is recognized
to stand for something in the way of a wide-spread sense of grievance.
The prevalence of the sentiment is recognized even by people who do not
see that there is any real ground for a grievance in the situation as
it stands today. It is among the women of the well-to-do classes, in the
communities which are farthest advanced in industrial development, that
this sense of a grievance to be redressed is most alive and finds most
frequent expression. That is to say, in other words, there is a demand,
more or less serious, for emancipation from all relation of status,
tutelage, or vicarious life; and the revulsion asserts itself especially
among the class of women upon whom the scheme of life handed down from
the regime of status imposes with least litigation a vicarious life, and
in those communities whose economic development has departed farthest
from the circumstances to which this traditional scheme is adapted. The
demand comes from that portion of womankind which is excluded by the
canons of good repute from all effectual work, and which is closely
reserved for a life of leisure and conspicuous consumption.
More than one critic of this new-woman movement has misapprehended its
motive. The case of the American "new woman" has lately been summed
up with some warmth by a popular observer of social phenomena: "She is
petted by her husband, the most devoted and hard-working of husbands in
the world.... She is the superior of her husband in education, and
in almost every respect. She is surrounded by the most numerous and
delicate attentions. Yet she is not satisfied.... The Anglo-Saxon 'new
woman' is the most ridiculous production of modern times, and destined
to be the most ghastly failure of the century." Apart from the
deprecation--perhaps well placed--which is contained in this
presentment, it adds nothing but obscurity to the woman question. The
grievance of the new woman is made up of those things which this typical
characterization of the movement urges as reasons why she should be
content. She is petted, and is permitted, or even required, to consume
largely and conspicuously--vicariously for her husband or other
natural guardian. She is exempted, or debarred, from vulgarly useful
employment--in order to perform leisure vicariously for the good repute
of her natural (pecuniary) guardian. These offices are the conventional
marks of the un-free, at the same time that they are incompatible with
the human impulse to purposeful activity. But the woman is endowed
with her share-which there is reason to believe is more than an even
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