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 P3
 
 The Unquiet Sex
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 . •- •• • 
 
 
 * ••• .'. ••. •. • • • 
 
 BY 
 
 Helen Watterson Moody 
 
 : ••• .. ; 
 
 I, . • • • •• 
 ' • • • • 
 
 J 3 J » 
 
 . . . J J • ». 
 
 
 New York 
 
 Charles Scribner's Sons 
 
 1898
 
 . < • « 
 
 Copyright, 1898, bj> 
 Charles Scribner's Sons 
 
 c « « 
 
 « « t 
 
 « • « 
 
 1 ♦, * * • 
 
 •..*.....••• 
 
 « « • » " 
 
 C i * * i. *■ 
 
 
 
 TROW DIRECTORV 
 
 PRINTING *N0 BOOKBINDING COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK
 
 HT'. 
 
 KATE AND A. B. 
 
 434436 '
 
 PREFACE 
 
 'T^HIS little hook, for men, women, and 
 the Unquiet Sex, is written with no 
 thought of preferring charges against any 
 class of persons or estate of being, still less 
 is it intended to set forth any comprehensive 
 treatment of the duties and privileges of 
 women in the hurried and perplexing pres- 
 ent. I have desired simply to offer a pre- 
 sentation of a single phase — a passing one, 
 let us hope — in the affairs of women; a 
 phase to which many of us have been too 
 busy, perhaps, to give its full share of 
 consideration. 
 
 Tins singleness of purpose has, not un- 
 naturally, involved a limitation in the 
 
 vii
 
 Preface 
 
 point of view ; and since this was intended, 
 I trust it will not be reckoned against my 
 fairness of judgment. Doubtless there is 
 much to be said in rejoinder, and each 
 reader will be able to comment for himself 
 or herself in passing. 
 
 My thanks are due the editor of the 
 Forum for his courtesy in permitting me 
 to include " The Evolution of ' Woman,' " 
 published under another title in the Forum 
 of September, 189^. 
 
 H. IV. M. 
 
 Vlll
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Page 
 
 The Woman Collegian / 
 
 Women's Clubs 5i 
 
 Women and Reforms 65 
 
 The Evolution of "Woman" . . . 89 
 
 The Case of Maria ng
 
 THE WOMAN COLLEGIAN
 
 3 y i 
 
 THE WOMAN COLLEGIAN 
 
 THE woman collegian, both as a gradu- 
 ate and an undergraduate, is a very se- 
 rious young person. So is her brother, but 
 he is serious about different things. As 
 an undergraduate he takes his fraternities 
 and his societies and his clubs and his Alma 
 Mater's record in athletics with great grav- 
 ity; he takes his particular college very hard 
 indeed; he is a Yale or a Cornell or a AsTo,>rand 
 Harvard man, and that is about all there is takTu.^ 
 of him for the first year after graduation. 
 Then he gets over it. But his sister thinks 
 more of her education than she does of her 
 college, and her choice of electives is of 
 more importance to her than her choice of 
 societies. When she gets out of school, 
 even after several years — after her brother 
 has digested all his importance as a collegian 
 
 3
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 and thinks only of his college training as a 
 good thing to have had in order that he 
 might know how secondary was its value, 
 after ail exr.ept Lo set hin^ on an easy level 
 with other fellows, and give him an occasional 
 interest in athletics, and put him into a uni- 
 versity club — the woman collegian does not 
 succeed in sloughing off her scholastic hab- 
 its of thought. She goes in for serious re- 
 forms and post-graduate knowledge. She 
 has convictions beyond her unschooled sis- 
 ter, and is, even yet, caught writing papers 
 on the careers of college women, and hsten- 
 ing while others discourse upon what college 
 neu,on^an womcu owe the world. All this makes her 
 7"'^nTyci a trifle /^^^^, over-assertive, too conscious of 
 /roZTet herself and her type. Thus she has attracted 
 education,. ^^ herself a certain interest, which she must 
 not mistake for entire admiration, as one 
 may get the attention of a drawing-room by 
 an awkward and self-conscious entrance. 
 Her learning is distinctly an acquirement 
 and not a part of herself, and not infre- 
 quently fits her badly, like a suit of ready- 
 made clothes. It is still customary, even
 
 The Woman Collegian 
 
 in polite circles, to make distinct mention 
 of collegiate advantages whenever a young 
 woman is present who has been fortunate 
 enough to enjoy them, in order that the un- 
 wary stranger may have his cue. While 
 everything in Tom's life after Harvard is 
 calculated to take the nonsense out of him 
 and put the man collegian on a level with 
 the rest of us, everything in Harriet's life, in 
 college and out of it, marks her as one set 
 apart. And all this after thirty years of col- 
 lege training for women, and with thousands 
 of women graduates, whose lives and achieve- 
 ments bear witness to the fact that a woman 
 may undertake the utmost severities of what 
 is still politely known as the " higher " edu- 
 cation, without giving the least indication 
 then or thereafter of remarkable ability of 
 any kind. 
 
 "And a very good thing it is, too," as 
 Mr. Punch says in answer to the sentiment, 
 "There's no place like home." It would 
 be sad, indeed, if a young woman who asks 
 no more than the indifferent equipment for 
 life that a college training gives should be 
 
 5
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 made to pay the penalty of extraordinariness 
 therefor, when to be ordinary is so much 
 more wholesome for the individual and so 
 much more desirable for the world in general. 
 
 There are several reasons why this un- 
 fortunate solemnity has attached itself to 
 Harriet's education, some of which will be 
 easily dissipated, no doubt, as the results of 
 education inhere in the physical and men- 
 tal constitution of women. When one's 
 Some rea- graudmothcr is known to have been a bache- 
 //:;^:^' is lor of the nberal arts, a master's degree for 
 rr'"' the fourth descendant is a matter of simple 
 assumption. But some of these reasons will 
 not disappear until certain defects in the col- 
 lege training for women shall have been 
 remedied. I suppose we all agree that the 
 ideal education for women cannot result 
 from segregating them, since the segregation 
 of either sex is sure to result in intensifying 
 its peculiarities. Women, as a sex, are dis- 
 posed to take things too seriously, and to 
 dissipate vital force in that nervous debauch 
 known as worrying. Ten women shut in 
 
 6
 
 The Woman Collegian 
 
 together will worry one hundred times as 
 much as ten men shut in together, and espe- 
 cially is this true when the women are in 
 that unstable equilibrium of the emotions 
 which goes with youth. So, also, a hun- 
 dred women shut in together will exhaust 
 themselves, presently, merely by being to- 
 gether, the sensitive temperaments eating 
 into each other like corrosive acids. The 
 housing of hundreds of girls in large dormi- 
 tories, with a common sitting-room for three 
 or four girls, is wholly inadequate to the 
 needs of human nature, and some day some 
 wise woman with money to spend for the 
 better education of women (which is not 
 necessarily the higher education) will build 
 the ideal home for women students, in which 
 there shall be no more than a dozen girls, 
 each of whom shall have a suite of rooms 
 altogether her own, into which she may shut Heaitk of 
 herself as she wills for the solitude which is body de- 
 
 1 itiand soli- 
 
 so necessary alike to the health ot the soul tude. 
 and the body, and which, more than any- 
 thing else, relieves the nervous tension 
 brought about by the action and reaction of 
 
 7
 
 V^e Unquiet Sex 
 
 one personality upon another. Meantime I 
 wish it were possible for some college presi- 
 dent to try the experiment of requiring each 
 woman student to spend one or two hours of 
 each day absolutely alone and relaxed, that 
 the whirling mind and quivering nerves 
 might hush themselves in the blessedness of 
 silence and seclusion. Such quiet insistence 
 upon the individual life would do much 
 toward a correction of the common and not 
 unnatural tendency among these segregated 
 and unstable young women to lavish them- 
 selves in extravagant friendships with each 
 other, and very often, also, in excessive 
 and emotional admiration for some teacher, 
 whose personal magnetism is thus made to 
 bring tribute to her egotism and vanity. 
 The wisest and most helpful teacher is not 
 the one whom the girls themselves "rave 
 over" and find most "magnetic." It is 
 she who carefully avoids the appeal to the 
 emotions, and who, without repelling the 
 affections, kno\A's how to check hysterical 
 excess and keep the young nature cool and 
 steady by a delicate reserve and a gentle de- 
 
 8
 
 The Woman Collegian 
 
 v^^ 
 
 cision at the first indication of need. It is why is he- 
 a curious fact m psychology — or is it phys- good /or 
 iology ? — that while hero-worship is a good good/or "" 
 thing for a boy, it is seldom a good thing ^^ 
 for a girl. 
 
 It is declared, by those who have had the 
 opportunity of judging, that one of the ad- 
 vantages of co-education is a distinct lessen- 
 ing of the emotional and nervous strain 
 among the women students. Just why the 
 presence of men as teachers and fellow-pupils 
 should have both a quieting and a tonic ef- ^- ''^''" j|. 
 feet upon women, I leave it for others wiser , , 
 
 than myself to explain, but there is certainly 
 less nervous tension, morbidity, and self- ^ 
 
 consciousness among college women associ- '^ 
 
 ated with men than among those in the 
 women's colleges, even though there is also 
 to be found an occasional instance of that 
 exclusive love between a man and a woman, 
 which will spring up sometimes even in the 
 arid soil of the higher education. To many 
 persons this last is a most undesirable state 
 of affairs, and it is usually considered one of 
 the strongest arguments against co-education. 
 
 9
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 It is a fact that boys and girls in college do 
 sometimes fall in love, and sometimes they 
 marry, though oftener they both fall well out 
 of it before their first year of separation is past. 
 Of course falHng in love " takes their minds 
 off their books," in the phrase of the anxious 
 parent, but love is a distraction whenever it 
 occurs, and it is hard to believe that there 
 can be granted a more fortunate opportunity 
 for indulging in so engrossing an experience 
 than the seclusion and serenity of college 
 life. I should call those two young persons 
 exceptionally blest by fortune who get their 
 is/auin.in falling in love satisfactorily accomplished 
 ^^% ,;:?/"■ before graduation, in the -little, bubbling 
 ^'"''""'' back-water of the quadrangle." There is no 
 handicap to business, later on, so heavy as 
 love and the pursuit of the loved one, as any 
 man who has borne its burden in the heat of 
 the day can testify. 
 
 Nor is the value of a tender experience of 
 this kind in early youth to be despised in 
 casting up the sum of the educative forces in 
 college life. Aside from the general human- 
 izing effect it is sure to have on the young 
 
 lO
 
 The Woman Collegian 
 
 male a nimal , such an affair usually results in 
 opening up to him a whole new world of in- 
 tellectual perceptions. The objective world, its place in 
 
 the general 
 
 which was his so long, suddenly grows dmi. edu.ationo/ 
 
 . the human 
 
 He learns, probably for the first time, the male. 
 value of introspection, the uses of poetry, 
 the joys of melancholy, the possibility — nay, 
 the potency — of quite another .point ofwie^ 
 than his own. After one has been years 
 out of college he not infrequently looks back, 
 to find that the influences most potent and 
 helpful, and sweetest to remember, were, not 
 the triumphs in the class-room, the strug- 
 gles in the debating-society, the slow acquire- 
 ment of random and unprofitable fact, but 
 the touch of arm in arm on the college cam- 
 pus, the " simmerings of thought and heart at 
 the hearth-stone of a friend," and perhaps 
 also the sophomore love that was so awaken- 
 ing, so delicate, so deep, and so short-lived ! 
 
 Just what should be the ideal education 
 for women, is, and must be, an unsettled 
 question for some time to come. For it is 
 still undetermined how distinctly the area of 
 
 II
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 woman's needs and activities should be 
 bounded by sex -limitations, and how largely 
 ive have not it may be identified with the needs and 
 i%n"Ihf activities of men. This conclusion, when 
 iilntr' it comes, will be deduced, not from tradition 
 tvomen, ^^ ambition, nor from personal prejudice, 
 but from science, through the things biology 
 and physiology and sociology have yet to 
 find out about this serious matter of sex. 
 > We have lately been told by a man with a 
 \^''i^"microscope that a^division of labor upon the 
 Vf^' lines of sex is distinctly marked as far down 
 ^ ' in the anima l world as the sponges. If this 
 
 be true,!? would seem that no system of edu- 
 cation for human beings can be comprehen- 
 sive and satisfactory, which leaves out of 
 account this first dividing principle. For 
 thirty years now we have been exploiting a 
 higher education for women, based on what 
 has been called the rational principle, that 
 there is no sex in mind ; and yet, as a matter 
 Because ^e of fact, the idea of sex has not for an hour 
 Z'aung '^' been lost sight of. The education of women 
 'IhriitTof has still proceeded along the lines of sex— 
 ''''' the other sex. A strenuous insistence in the 
 
 12
 
 The Woman Collegian 
 
 women's colleges that the curricula should 
 be as nearly as possible identical with those 
 of men, the constant and jealous watch kept 
 on the comparative standings of young men 
 and women in examinations, and (where the 
 desire to keep up the masculine standards 
 has been lost sight of) the in-breeding and 
 intensifying of sex-peculiarities, through de- 
 sire to remain womanly, though educated — 
 if all these be not the indices of the sex idea 
 in education, one knows not, indeed, where 
 to look for them. 
 
 But even more significant of the persist- 
 ency and power of this underlying thought 
 has been the result of the higher education, 
 as expressed in the immediate desire of the 
 young woman, upon graduation, to stake out 
 for herself a career in the world, to do 
 something that shall be noticeable if not 
 n otab le, with an idea of proving to the 
 world that she can do a man's work as well Atid a has 
 
 , . , . . , made thein 
 
 as a man, displaymg no prepossession what- dissatisfied 
 
 f _ , . 7vith their 
 
 ever m lavor of domg a woman s work as o^vn work. 
 well as a woman can do it. The higher 
 education of women without reference to 
 
 13
 
 77?^ Unquiet Sex 
 
 sex seems, thus far, to have resulted greatly 
 in the glorification of men and men's work, 
 and in dissatisfaction with women and wom- 
 en's work— which is the most logical thing in 
 the world, and quite to be expected, so long 
 as we insist upon ignoring certain simple, 
 radical, dignified distinctions between the 
 sexes. I hasten to say with the introduc- 
 tion of this threadbare and somewhat be- 
 draggled phrase, that such sex distinctions 
 as I have in mind have nothing to do with 
 any childish and uneasy comparison of the 
 relative endowment of the sexes— that can 
 surely be trusted to take care of itself and to 
 expound itself fully with time and a little 
 judicious negligence. But, as things are at 
 present, with half the capable women of the 
 world doing the work of men, and the 
 ivAy we other half wishing they could do it, while 
 "dtifon'Tn the whole economic situation is upset by the 
 '"'"'^' thousands of unfortunate incapables who are 
 
 only trying to earn a temporary and unlucky 
 living until they can marry into abetter one, 
 there seems to be a desperate need of some 
 serviceable division of labor along the lines 
 
 14
 
 The Woman Collegian 
 
 of sex. And since it is to be devoutly 
 hoped and expected that the greater part of 
 our college girls will not be educated or co- 
 educated out of the good old fashion of mar- 
 rying, and taking up thereafter the noble 
 profession of housewifery, it would appear to why net cd- 
 be practicable and sensible to make such a -aw7>tan /or 
 
 .... . , ^ , her life- 
 
 sex-division with some reference to the spe- work? 
 cial and particular knowledge she will need 
 in her life's work, just as one puts a boy into 
 the School of Mines to fit him for a civil 
 engineer, or into the laboratory to make a 
 chemist of him. For the day has gone by 
 when the profession of the housevnfe may be 
 considered an affair of enthusiasm and in- 
 spiration alone. It has come to be sus- 
 pected, even by the non-participating sex, 
 that its capable conduct demands a knowl- 
 edge of all the learned professions and all the 
 unlearned trades, of most of the liberal arts, 
 and the exact and inexact sciences — physical, 
 mental, and moral. Therefore, one must 
 feel that the most hopeful and helpful move- 
 ment in the entire education of women is 
 the establishment in some of the women's 
 
 15
 
 Tlje Unquiet Sex 
 
 The neces- 
 sity/or 
 something 
 more than 
 facts. 
 
 colleges of courses in domestic science or 
 household economics. 
 
 I know the argument to the contrary; I 
 used to \^Tite about it myself, and beheve it, 
 too; but that was before the serious days 
 settled down upon me, when I would gladly 
 have exchanged my small birthright of Latin 
 and Greek for the ability to make one single, 
 respectable mess of anything half so good as 
 pottage. The argument is, of course, that, 
 given a certain amount of intellectual disci- 
 pline and general training, the young wom- 
 an will absorb easily enough such special 
 facts as she needs when the time of their use- 
 fulness comes. But facts, you see, are apt 
 to be solid things ; you cannot absorb them ; 
 you must work them over into something else 
 first — to change the figure, you must masti- 
 cate them, and digest them, and make them 
 a very part of your bone and tissue before 
 they can be of much service to you. And 
 this is not to be done when a sudden emer- 
 gency arises. One needs something more 
 than facts; one needs that last product 
 known as a knowledge of facts, in the pro- 
 
 i6
 
 The Woman Collegian 
 
 fession of the housewife and in the presence 
 of the cook. 
 
 A college preparation for this profession is 
 by no means to be interpreted as any dis- 
 tasteful and indelicate preparation for the 
 privileges and duties of an estate toward 
 which the young girl has not, as yet, the 
 slightest inclination. It is rather a simple 
 and dignified recognition of the sociological 
 fact that women and the home and all the 
 social institutions that spring from it, are in- 
 terdependent, and that, whether we are will- 
 ing as yet to admit it or not, the natural and 
 simple division of human labor is the one 
 that assigns to women the duties and activi- 
 ties that centre around the hearth. The first women 
 division of human labor was undoubtedly first home- 
 one of sex in those days when Primitive Man fire-tend- 
 went out hunting, fishing, or fighting, while 
 his primitive wife stayed by the fire to keep 
 it [^bright against his return, and to develop 
 such rude industries as grew out of his needs 
 and her ingenuity ; and I make so bold as to 
 say, though "with trembling pen," as Mr. 
 Zangwill says, that I have never been able 
 
 17
 
 Vjc Unquiet Sex 
 
 to see why women should quarrel with this 
 division of human labor, or feel crestfallen 
 over it. Either it was accidental — in which 
 case nothing derogatory either to women or 
 their ability is assumed, much less proved — 
 or else it sprang from causes so deep as to 
 reach down and enwrap the very roots of 
 human nature and the first conditions of hu- 
 man society ; and then there is no use in 
 being disturbed about it, because there is no 
 chance of altering it. Nothing is so un- 
 changeable as those instincts and convic- 
 tions which lie at the base of human nature 
 to keep the foundations of human life steady 
 ivhy Strug, and secure. It would be sad, indeed, if the 
 fatpfof' present struggle against sex limitations should 
 things? p^^^^g ^^ l^g ^ quarrel with the nature of 
 things, for, as Mr^^ljittfill once said, "who- 
 ever wittingly or unwittingly quarrels with 
 the nature of things is certain in the long 
 run to get the worst of it." 
 
 The health of the college woman leaves 
 something to be desired. But it is Amer- 
 icanitis rather than the college education 
 
 i8
 
 The Woman Collegian 
 
 that is to blame. Americanitis may be de- 
 fined as the desire to "get on," regardless 
 of everything else. It is Americanitis that American- 
 prompts the farmer's daughter to get a col- feliao/'' 
 lege education and make opportunities for woman'' 
 herself better than those her mother and 
 father had before her. Therefore she goes 
 to a small college, in a small town, with a 
 preparatory department attached, where she 
 often begins her education as a "junior 
 prep." She furnishes a single room in 
 which she, and even a room-mate, study, 
 sleep, eat, make their clothes, and some- 
 times do their laundering. She keeps up in 
 her studies, joins a choral class, a literary 
 society, and the Young Women's Christian 
 Association ; goes to chapel once a day and 
 twice on Sunday — and very often falls in 
 love and " gets engaged " besides. At the 
 beginning of her senior year she breaks 
 down. She ought to. It's the very least 
 she can do out of respect to herself as a 
 human being. 
 
 The situation is but little changed in the 
 larger and richer colleges, where the great 
 
 19
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 proportion of the undergraduates are poor 
 girls, the daughters of clergymen, or mis- 
 Her educa- sionaries, or business men in moderate cir- 
 ToXucVt'o cumstances ; girls to whom their education 
 ''"'• is the means to an end, bread and butter 
 
 and bonnets for themselves, certainly, and 
 perhaps a college education for a younger 
 brother or sister. Once in college, an am- 
 bitious girl is sure to get into a swim of 
 things she wants to do. Besides the fifteen 
 to twenty recitations a week, without which 
 her craving for knowledge cannot be satis- 
 fied, she finds a world of smaller interests, 
 with which she seriously identifies herself 
 or as seriously lets alone. There are the 
 Philolethians or the Idlers, and the Colonial 
 Dances and the concerts and The Shake- 
 speare Club, and the lectures, and the 
 many complexities of new thoughts and new 
 personal relations, all of which this tense 
 young woman wishes to take at a gulp, as 
 Great Opportunities of life, and with a so- 
 lemnity that defeats their very end. This 
 is perhaps not unnatural, while so many of 
 our American girls have still to seek their 
 
 20
 
 The Woman Collegian 
 
 U^ 
 
 culture elsewhere than in their own homes, 
 the while they are still too young to realize 
 that not what they acquire, but what they 
 enjoy, is at once the test and the measure of 
 their culture. 
 
 Co-ordinate with Americanitis as interfer- 
 ing with the health of the undergraduate, is 
 her inheritance of what I should like to call, 
 if nobody objects, Johncalvinitis — meaning johncaivin- 
 
 1 /-111 1-1. 1 ^^" awi/ Us 
 
 that contempt for the body, which is, let us conte„ipt 
 
 1 11 • ,- -1 1 ■■ for the body, 
 
 hope, the last outcropping of those old 
 Puritan ancestors of ours, who pr ayed as if 
 they had JqsL t heir s ouls, and al£ a s if 
 they had lost their bodies. To too many 
 American women, and especially to those 
 who have hard work of any kind in hand, 
 eating is a concession to the flesh which is 
 paid grudgingly, deprecatingly, and with as 
 much haste and as little thought as possible. 
 I have watched the undergraduate eat, and 
 she eats badly. She chooses her food ap- 
 parently from pure caprice or from a person- 
 al idiosyncrasy that ought to be reformed. 
 Doubtless she knows very well, having 
 learned it in the laboratory, that proper nu- 
 
 21
 
 77?^ Unquiet Sex 
 
 trition is secured only by the combination of 
 certain food substances in certain propor- 
 tions; she knows the use in the body of 
 protein, fats, and carbohydrates ; neverthe- 
 less, she makes her luncheon of bread-and- 
 butter and tea and pie, if she feels like it, 
 and her dinner of a soup and a salad. There 
 is still much to be done, you see, in educat- 
 ing the gustatory instincts of the college 
 woman, as undoubtedly there is still room 
 for improvement in the composition and 
 preparation of the daily bills of fare set be- 
 fore the girls even in our largest and richest 
 
 colleges. 
 
 When to the elemental education in cook- 
 ery which the ideal college for women is 
 Tkene.iect- going to supply, there is established, also, 
 /L'^'./Xr a chair of gastronomy for the education of 
 palate. ^^^ American palate and the elevation of 
 the American mind to an appreciation of 
 the dignity of cooking as a science and of 
 eating as a fine art, we shall, perhaps, un- 
 derstand that the ability to detect with ap- 
 preciation the subtle blending of an exqui- 
 site sauce or salad, and the power to make a 
 
 22
 
 The Woman Collegian 
 
 harmonious composition of companionable 
 savors in a single meal, is as distinctly a re- 
 sult and a test of culture as the appreciation 
 of the eye in painting or of the ear in music ; 
 while the ability to set forth a suave and 
 delicate dish as the product of one's own 
 skill, possibly contributes as much to the 
 sum of good in the world as a moderately 
 bad translation of a German pessimist, or 
 even a new manifestation in philanthropic 
 possibilities. Supposing, for a moment, that 
 the coming century were to have in it the 
 seeds of a new Carlyle, it might be consid- 
 ered a service to mankind if some college 
 woman could contrive to give us the phi- 
 losopher without the dyspepsia. 
 
 The attitude toward athletics of the aver- 
 age woman-undergraduate is usually misun- 
 derstood. The Sunday illustrated papers to The college 
 the contrary, very few college women live in not love 
 
 golf-clothes or sweaters, or wear snow-shoes 
 to recitations. On the contrary, most of 
 them detest "gym.," and evade its practice 
 whenever they can, by any allegation of 
 
 23 
 
 ^gym:
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 physical infirmity or other necessity. Too 
 often, their sole concession to the needs of 
 their young muscles is a long walk, at infre- 
 quent intervals, with another girl, while the 
 two talk about their worries, or their college 
 work, or their present needs, or their future 
 purposes. The question of physical exer- 
 cise is, as any college president knows, one 
 of the most perplexing in the college life ; its 
 necessity is so fundamental, and its accom- 
 plishment so unsatisfactory. And yet there 
 is something too natural and spontaneous 
 in the rebellion against the gymnasium, to 
 admit of the reproof that prudence sug- 
 gests. It would seem as though the young 
 women have discovered instinctively for 
 themselves that, at its best, a splendidly 
 equipped gymnasium is only a substitute for 
 the real thing, and that its purpose has to 
 do with pathology rather than physiology. 
 And it is The true physical exercise is unconscious of 
 7ehur''io self-improvement as its purpose or end ; it 
 ''cZdit is pure overflow. The gymnasium is for 
 those who train with purpose and with effort, 
 but the ideal exercise is not work, it is the 
 
 24
 
 The Woman Collegian 
 
 muscles playing. However, as things are 
 now, with the forlorn inheritance of over- 
 worked nerves and underworked muscles 
 which the average American girl brings 
 into the world with her, the gymnasium is 
 a necessary remedial agent. Some day, it 
 is to be hoped, we shall enter upon a phys- 
 ical estate wherein we can take the open 
 world for a place in which to play ; but until 
 that day comes, until the entail has accumu- 
 lated for several generations, let us still agree 
 to be tolerant of the gymnasium as a distinct 
 means of grace and growth, both literally 
 and figuratively. 
 
 There is nothing to be regretted in the 
 fact that nineteen out of twenty young wom- Tkesadcase 
 
 , , of the tivejt- 
 
 en who graduate from college take up at once Ueth giri, 
 some means of earning a livelihood. The 
 twentieth girl, who does not, is the one to 
 be pitied. It is not easy to say which is the 
 harder to bear with equanimity and philoso- 
 phy : the postponements of youth or the dis- 
 illusionments of middle age. Perhaps we pay 
 too great consideration to what has been 
 
 25
 
 ne Unquiet Sex 
 
 called "the decline in animal heat," and too 
 little to the demands of leaping young blood, 
 in whose red corpuscles inheres the necessity 
 for instant declaration and activity. Thus it 
 is that the twentieth girl often finds her first 
 year out of college the hardest one in her life. 
 After four years of definite routine work in 
 the "sweet serenity of books," with like- 
 minded friends to give zest to labor and 
 rest to recreation, she now finds herself in 
 a world with which she has grown strangely 
 out of touch. The home-life has become 
 adjusted to her absence, and, much to her 
 surprise, goes on smoothly without her. 
 Some of the girls who were her friends before 
 her college days are already married, and 
 some hopefully engaged; she finds young men 
 not enthusiastically prepossessed in favor of 
 the woman collegian, and, anyway, the cir- 
 cles of intimacy are already escablished, and 
 she stands quite outside. She must begin her 
 social life all over and on a different plane 
 of taste. ISIeantime, with noble ambitions, 
 but with unformed purposes and undirected 
 powers, she longs mightily for something 
 
 26
 
 The Woman Collegian 
 
 definite and worthy on which to expend her- 
 self, and this she usually fancies lies outside 
 the home ; for she is not yet wise, and her 
 philosophy of life is not final, therefore she whose phi- 
 
 • • 11 11 -11 losopky of 
 
 does not see, as it is to be hoped she will u/e is not 
 later on, that the richness and rewards of a 
 woman's life have nothing to do with that 
 Gospel of Ambition of which she has pos- 
 sibly heard too much. 
 
 •Therefore, if the young woman graduate 
 have any desire at all for activity outside the 
 home, she will be much happier and healthier 
 and better satisfied with herself, if she can 
 win the consent of a doubting father or an 
 over-tender mother to let her go about it at 
 once. The mere fact that her father pos- 
 sess^ a competence and is perfectly willing to 
 continue her support need not weigh against 
 her wishes. There are other necessities than 
 dollar ones. If the girl has right royal good Let her 
 
 . . ivorkin any 
 
 sense, there will, in time, develop m her char- -way she 
 
 acter areas of wisdom, and she will come back 
 all the more contented, after her little fling 
 in the busy world, to marry some wisely 
 chosen and fortunate young man, or to com- 
 
 27 
 
 chooses.
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 fort her father and mother in their decHning 
 years, and hold her sway in the home, well 
 sunned and ripened by her added experi- 
 ence. Besides, there is always the chance 
 that she may develop real talent for the 
 work she has undertaken, and, distancing 
 her brothers in the race for fame, become 
 herself the family pride and prodigy. 
 
 Usually a baker's dozen or more of the 
 scne of the nineteen graduates who must work drift into 
 w ?^:V teaching. Not that they specially like it, 
 1:g::L:n or fed their ability to shine as educators, 
 but because it is the work that lies closest 
 to the traditions and interests of the col- 
 lege hfe, and because it is still the one 
 profession into which the door swings, most 
 easily for women. Hundreds of college-bred 
 women have been, and are, more or less 
 capably and efficiently engaged in teaching, 
 and a few have gained a certain distinction as 
 presidents and professors in colleges for wom- 
 en, but no great and original educator has 
 come from among them. Occasionally a de- 
 termined young graduate gets a foothold in 
 
 28
 
 The JVoman Collegian 
 
 a newspaper office, and usually keeps it with 
 credit to herself and her higher education, 
 yet the few women editors of eminence have 
 not been college bred, and there is nothing 
 to be gained by concealing the fact that the 
 college women who have undertaken jour- 
 nalism seem, as yet, to have had no influ- 
 ence in sweetening the flood of sensational 
 and nasty print for which the newspaper 
 women of the country must bear their share 
 of discredit with the newspaper men. 
 
 The number of college women who have 
 taken up medicine is considerable, some of 
 them no doubt from a real love of science, 
 and some for love of a career. While their 
 work has been able and their success un- 
 doubted, it is just to say that they have not 
 contributed originally to medical science. 
 There are a few women collegians in law, in 
 literature, in the pulpit, and in other pro- 
 fessions, and their helpfulness and enthusiasm 
 have been especially noticeable in educa- 
 tional and philanthropic work; they have 
 done much to promote University Extension, 
 in the upbuilding — not to say the uplifting 
 
 29
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 — of the public schools, while in the college 
 settlements, the free kindergartens, and the 
 Their ckrtr- gracious charitics that spring therefrom their 
 %u"ntL. tact and courage have been unerring and un- 
 ^'"' daunted. In all these fields of usefulness, 
 
 the work of college women, ''taken by and 
 large," has been good, honest, competent 
 work, about like that of the average industri- 
 ous man, but it is fair to say that it has been 
 derivative, not creative, complemental, not 
 brilliant, offering little opportunity for sex 
 celebration on the part of those enthusiasts 
 who have believed that women have needed 
 only a diploma and a ballot to be entirely 
 equipped for conquering all the world that 
 men have left unconquered. 
 The most The most notable work undertaken by 
 
 Zofkthey college women in thirty years of opportunity 
 'llTen"'^''" is one which is still in its infancy, but which 
 developed, will do more for that eman- 
 cipation for which believers sigh, than all 
 the legislation of men and all the oratory of 
 women. In the chemistry of foods, the 
 science of nutrition, the sanitation of the 
 house, the economics of the home, their 
 
 30
 
 The Woman Collegian 
 
 work has been both original and thoroughly 
 scientific. It has not only added something 
 to science, but has opened up certain new 
 departments in special sciences. That the 
 one original contribution of college women 
 to the thought of the world should be along 
 these lines, is pleasing and significant, for it 
 puts the most efficient work of the educated 
 woman in the same category with the most 
 efficient work of all other women — with 
 those humanizing and conserving and elabo- 
 rating forces which add content and extent to 
 life, and which are — when shall we be satis- 
 fied to learn it ?— just as fundamentally im- 
 portant, just as dignified, and (if we must 
 also be heroic) just as difficult, as the con- 
 structive and creative forces. Perhaps, also, 
 the suspicion is to be deduced that women 
 are contributing most helpfully to the world 
 when they are willing to develop those abiH- 
 ties and possibilities with which custom, or 
 prejudice, or nature — call it what you will — 
 has made them most familiar; when they are The value 
 not working in the direction of greatest resist- "^uTtie"^ 
 ance ; when they are not pulling upstream. ^'"''^'"^■ 
 
 31
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 Be that as it may, it hardly seems that the 
 achievements of the college woman are as 
 yet remarkable enough to cause men to sit 
 uneasily upon their thrones, or to fear that 
 they will be asked for some time to come to 
 step down and take off their crowns. The 
 college woman has justified herself by being 
 hopefully "average" after all. The educa- 
 tion she wanted she has had ; it was right 
 and just that she should have it, and it has 
 done her good. Possibly it will do her still 
 more good, when she is able to forget it, or 
 if she must remember it, if she can realize 
 that, in having it, she is to-day no farther 
 ahead of the rest of the world than her 
 mother was, twenty-five years ago, when she 
 carried home in triumph the diploma of the 
 academy or the high-school where she had 
 finished her education. 
 
 32
 
 WOMEN'S CLUBS
 
 WOMEN'S CLUBS 
 
 ERNESTA tells me much of what I know 
 about women's clubs. Ernesta is my 
 intellectual other half, who as to her own 
 sex, hopeth all things, believeth all things, 
 and as to myself certainly rounds out the 
 Scripture by bearing all things, and endur- 
 ing all things. She and I never really agree ivhyEmes- 
 on any subject whatever of intellectual im- are better 
 
 than 7nine. 
 
 port, but each seems always about to con- 
 vince the other. This lends continual en- 
 chantment to an otherwise hopeless situation. 
 Ernesta is particularly fond of women's clubs, 
 and belongs to many. One club meets to 
 read papers, on Tuesdays at noon, and an- 
 other meets on Fridays at four. She is a 
 member of a woman's political league, a col- 
 lege association, a health club, is chairman 
 of two philanthropic societies, raises money 
 
 35
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 a7t's club. 
 
 for a hotel for working-women, and holds 
 a class for the study of Bach's fugues every 
 Saturday in her own drawing-room. I be- 
 long to no clubs whatever; from which it is 
 readily to be seen that her opinions on the 
 subject are much more valuable than my 
 own. I asked Ernesta the other day to de- 
 fine a woman's club, to give the club idea 
 feminine, in as few words as possible. She 
 thought profoundly for some minutes, then 
 A woman's Said, *' A woman's club is an association for 
 o/awom- the purposes of mutual helpfulness and self- 
 improvement. ' * 
 
 "But you have luncheon, don't you?" I 
 asked. 
 
 ' ' Sometimes, ' ' she answered, and her voice 
 had a deprecating note. "But then, you 
 know, we should have to eat anyway ; if we 
 eat then, there is just so much time saved, 
 and we can keep on with the discussion." 
 
 Then she went on to tell me about a cer- 
 tain club called the "Luncheon Club," 
 whose inspiring purpose it is to combine the 
 pleasures of the intellect with the duties of 
 the palate, by meeting once a fortnight at 
 
 36
 
 Women's Clubs 
 
 luncheon for the discussion of questions of 
 the day — political, scientific, sociological, 
 religious, revolutionary — whatever is excit- 
 ing the alert public mind at the hour — nay, 
 at the moment. The purpose of the Lunch- 
 eon Club is entirely ambitious ; the luncheon 
 merely a concession to human weakness, in- 
 geniously contrived so as to yield a maximum 
 of return in knowledge — and dyspepsia. 
 Ernesta regretted that she was unable to join 
 this club, by reason of a non-lunching club 
 which met on the same day — through no 
 mean desire of the luncheon, mind you, but 
 merely because the scheme recommended 
 itself to her as converting a lowering but 
 necessary function into a higher intellectual 
 force — lunch-power into thought-power, as 
 it were. 
 
 Then I asked a man to define a man's 
 club. ' ' Well, " he said, upon reflection, ' ' a t^^^^s 
 club is something you join in order that you 
 may stay away from it when you like. ' ' 
 
 "/.?" said I. "Oh, no, I don't, dear 
 sir. I am a woman, if you please. I should 
 be fined if I stayed away." 
 
 37 
 
 defin, 
 of a f) 
 club. 
 
 434136 '
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 " From a woman's club, do you mean? " 
 he asked. " Well, that's very queer. Fancy 
 a man's being fined for not going to his 
 club ! " And this seemed both to amuse 
 and instruct him so deeply that he forgot all 
 about me, and smoked two pipefuls before he 
 got around to saying again, " Fancy a man's 
 being fined for not going to his club ! ' ' 
 
 Ernesta tells me that one million women 
 in this country are members of clubs, and 
 that these million women are joined in one 
 gigantic association called the General Fed- 
 eration, composed of about five hundred in- 
 dividual clubs, representing nearly every 
 State, and that each State has also its smaller 
 organization known as the State Federation. 
 The nation- Bcsidcs the regular meetings of the single 
 zatian of local clubs, both Federations have their own 
 clubs. meetings, the smaller ones annually and the 
 
 large one biennially. This federating move- 
 ment is, she tells me, eight years old and 
 began, as did the club idea among women, 
 with Sorosis of New York City. The pur- 
 pose of all these clubs is earnest. Some of 
 
 38
 
 Women's Clubs 
 
 them are for study, some for action, but all 
 are for making of woman " a practical power 
 in the great movements that are directing the 
 world," and for giving her the ability to 
 serve "the highly developed and complex 
 civilization that is awaiting her influence 
 and stands sorely in need of her assistance, ' ' 
 to quote the words of the honored president 
 of the General Federation. 
 
 Well, unrepressed mental activity with a 
 purpose is better than unrepressed activity 
 without any purpose at all, and certainly here 
 is a high aim and a generous intent with 
 which it seems ungracious enough to quarrel. 
 But it would appear to be the part of ordi- a simple 
 
 , , 1 r 1 1 • matter of 
 
 nary prudence that, before undertaking so prudence. 
 large a mission as is outlined here, the one 
 million women who are pledged to it should 
 sit down together and talk it over with some 
 idea of finding out what it is going to cost 
 them to "serve this highly developed and 
 complex civilization," and where they are 
 likely to be landed when the work is done. 
 
 For the sake of the argument, I am tak- 
 ing for granted here certain premises which 
 
 39
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 I think might fairly be disputed. There 
 seems to be a unanimous opinion among 
 women to-day that the influence of their sex 
 has never before been so potent and so 
 needed. This much is certainly true, that 
 never before has so much been said about 
 woman's place and mission in the universe. 
 Yet there are some of us who believe that 
 modern research — historical, scientific, and 
 sociological — has set forth no one set of facts 
 Are women with more seriousness and more emphasis 
 portance to thau this, that the contribution of the wom- 
 
 tke world r n • i i ^ • •■>• 
 
 just now en of all past time to the culture and civili- 
 
 ihan ever . - , , , , , . 
 
 before? zatioH of the racc has always been equal m 
 importance and dignity to that of men ; 
 indeed, there are not a few — and strangely 
 enough, most of them are men — who say that 
 it has been greater, and that all the social, 
 and nearly all the religious, fabrics of the 
 world are built around women. Mr. Robert 
 Grant has recently said that women seem to 
 * ' fancy themselves very much at present, and 
 spend considerable time in studying the set 
 of their minds in the glass." And, to be 
 honest, I fear we are in no position to resent 
 
 40
 
 Women's Clubs 
 
 the charge. I fear we are in great danger of 
 taking ourselves and our achievements with 
 more seriousness than their vakie warrants. 
 No doubt we are doing well as a sex, if 
 ambition and ambulation and heroism and 
 hurry count for anything, and there is cer- 
 tainly no doubt that we are doing too much. 
 But there are still a few conservatives left 
 among us who are by no means sure that the 
 aspirations of the leaders among women to- 
 day, coincide with the highest interests of 
 the sex and the greatest general good. 
 
 All these assumptions of latter-day superi- 
 ority on the part of women and of its serious 
 value to the race, is, as I have said, fair ground 
 for dispute ; but let us assume that women are 
 really exerting a wider and a higher influence 
 just now than ever before, and that the world 
 still needs and calls for more. Then the 
 reason for this tremendous organizing impulse 
 appears at once. Given a work to do, or 
 only the idea of a work to do, and organiza- Wethinkin 
 tion of some kind is inevitable. This is the i^jl"^'re"t 
 hour of the convention, the congress, the ^'''"""" 
 mass-meeting. We think in by-laws and act 
 
 41
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 in resolutions. Man or woman, there is no 
 way but that of unanimity, even to the ac- 
 comphshment of the most personal and pri- 
 vate virtues. That women should resolve 
 themselves into clubs and declare themselves 
 in constitutions upon the slightest provoca- 
 tion is only to be expected. And if women 
 were intended ultimately to play the title- 
 roles in the big drama of civilization I sup- 
 pose the grave, earnest, strenuous note of 
 the woman's club is the necessary prelude. 
 But this seems to me very sad, because it 
 clearly indicates that women are likely to 
 have no easier time of it in the future than 
 An indict- they claim to have had in the past. One 
 Z'gainst of the indictments oftenest brought up by 
 *"" ' women out of that anthropological past 
 
 which would seem to be little enough to their 
 credit as creatures of superior endowment, is 
 that men have persistently taken unto them- 
 selves most of the good things of life, leaving 
 to women the particularly unpleasing and ob- 
 scure and unrewarded labors. No doubt 
 there is some truth in this, and there would 
 be something to reprobate in it if men had 
 
 42
 
 Women's Clubs 
 
 thus misbehaved with conscious intent, in- 
 stead of being, like women themselves, the 
 somewhat helpless creatures of civilizing 
 forces that were stronger than they. 
 
 I have always had a deal of sympathy for 
 that serviceable, hard-worked, abused, and The most 
 
 , J , . J, serviceable 
 
 despised creature known m the deductions oi and »ns- 
 
 . . used person 
 
 ingenious historians — and women — as Prmii- in history. 
 tive Man — that person at whose doors were 
 first laid all the charges from which his un- 
 happy male descendants have since suffered. 
 He was big, he was brutish and warlike, and 
 his only tastes were for slaying and stealing. 
 He preyed upon mankind openly, and in his 
 domestic privacy amused himself by beating 
 his womankind with the large club without 
 which he is not to be imagined. He begat 
 children for whom he had not even the love 
 of the animal for its young, and his only in- 
 stincts toward women were those of lust and 
 ferocity. Primitive Man did all these 
 things, and in that he did them and exulted 
 in them, has it come about that his descend- 
 ant has set his foot upon the neck of the 
 
 43
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 woman and deliberately willed that he should 
 be her master and tyrant and she should be 
 forever his slave. 
 
 One must be led to wonder with one of 
 the recent historians how, with the strong- 
 er half of the race continually abusing and 
 ill-treating the weaker, child-bearing half, 
 it would be possible to account for the con- 
 tinuance of the human species at all, under 
 conditions so severe. But allowing, for 
 the sake of the argument, all these state- 
 ments to stand in unrelieved unlovellness, 
 it still does not appear that the cause of 
 woman's emancipation should have needed, 
 then or thereafter, any passionate espousal. 
 Theneces- No doubt the bchavior of Primitive Man 
 Tadbehav' toward his womankind would be reprobated 
 'primitive in polite circles to-day. No doubt he beat 
 his wife, but he also beat his male associ- 
 ates, and took a good drubbing in turn when 
 he was indiscreet enough to pitch upon an 
 opponent stronger than himself. Nor is it 
 difficult to believe that occasions may have 
 arisen when the man took his first lessons in 
 that art of dignified retreat, which he has 
 
 44 
 
 Man.
 
 Women's Clubs 
 
 since mastered so nobly, by dodging an elo- 
 quent weapon in the hands of some woman. 
 Such possibilities are not unknown to our jt/Z'tun- 
 gentler days ; and there are worse clubs than ^^^"'« ^'^ 
 the primitive ones. I have myself seen, in 
 public gatherings for lady-orators, gentlemen 
 sit like smihng, graven images, while such 
 hurricanes of feminine wrath and invective 
 swept about their reddening ears as only 
 arguing women permit themselves. Such 
 things have I seen and heard on these occa- 
 sions, as give me to believe that the place of 
 these gentlemen in heaven will be very high. 
 Primitive Man was the exponent of his 
 own times and his own civilization. The 
 struggle for existence was necessarily a phys- 
 ical one, and physical force was the proper 
 expression of that desire to emphasize the 
 ego, which occasionally visits our civilized 
 bosoms to-day. And, in truth, I have some- 
 times thought a blow the least harmful and 
 offensive means by which to declare our- 
 selves, on occasion, even now. There is a 
 brute force of the mind, whose wounds go 
 deeper than the body. If the child-man 
 
 45
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 whipped the child-woman or was whipped 
 in turn by her, neither of them needs to be 
 severely reprobated therefor, and we may at 
 least cherish the hope that it did both of 
 them as much good as it does in the case of 
 certain small, civilized savages to-day ! 
 
 Be their past hardships what they may, the 
 curious thing is that, directly women get the 
 chance to carry out to any extent their own 
 idea of the privileges of life, they develop 
 none of that taste for ease and irresponsibil- 
 ity which characterizes the normal man. In- 
 stead, they manifest a desire for self-expres- 
 sion, for relations with every interest and 
 enterprise of the present, for all kinds of 
 responsibilities and hardihoods, often up to 
 the supreme hardihood of earning their own 
 living, even without necessity. Therefore, 
 if a man's club fairly expresses his idea of 
 fun, and a woman's club stands for hers, it 
 The superi- appears at once how vast and how melan- 
 Zilifn^en- choly is the superiority of the man in the 
 joy^ine Aim. g^^^j^ ^^^ ^^ eujoyiug himself. 
 
 There are, to be sure, associations of men 
 
 46
 
 Women's Clubs 
 
 whose purpose is utilitarian, such as political 
 clubs, or business or professional organiza- 
 tions, but no man befogs himself into think- 
 ing that any recreation is to be sought or 
 found in them. They fit into the general 
 serious purpose of his life in some way, and 
 he takes them as he does other duties, and 
 makes as much or as little of them as pos- 
 sible. But a man's social club is another 
 matter. It is a privilege and a pleasure, 
 or it is nothing. It is based on the prin- 
 ciple of exemption. A member goes to it 
 or not as he likes, but if he goes, he carries 
 no burden of duties with him. He has some- 
 thing to drink or to smoke, or a game of bill- 
 iards, if he wants them. He talks gossip 
 (in a highly elevated and impersonal way, Man in his 
 
 . club, and 
 
 of course) or he thrusts his hands deep in 
 his pockets and whistles at the window. If 
 he stays away for three hundred and sixty- 
 four days (and you may be sure he does stay 
 away if he wants to), and comes back on 
 the three hundred and sixty-fifth, he expects 
 to find his chair just where he left it, with 
 the ash-tray and the afternoon paper at its 
 
 47
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 side, and he betrays an immediate sense of 
 injury if he does not. He considers that 
 one of the things he pays for is to have the 
 club go on in his absence so that he may 
 feel no jar on his return. He demands of 
 it that it shall stand for that permanency 
 and unbroken hospitality which make it 
 as grateful to him in suggestion and mem- 
 ory as in the hour of enjoyment. There- 
 fore he is likely to misbehave sadly toward 
 the new man at the door (who is, no doubt, 
 a vastly better servant than the old one), 
 until the new face gets into his recollection, 
 and ceases to look strange. In short, a man 
 is disposed to take his clubs as he takes other 
 good things in life — as easily as possible — 
 feeling that they are quite his right, and 
 that his enjoyment is sufficient reason for 
 their existence. All the forces of a man's 
 club are centripetal, and have the comfort of 
 the male individual as their centre. 
 
 Woman in But the forces of the woman's club are 
 largely centrifugal, and have a higher aim 
 than mere enjoyment. They are for the 
 
 48
 
 Women's Clubs 
 
 enrichment of the individual largely as a 
 means to the assistance and improvement 
 of others. Ernesta herself has said it bet- 
 ter than I should have dared — "A club 
 is an association for self-improvement and 
 mutual helpfulness. ' ' Under ' ' self-improve- 
 ment " are to be included, I suppose, all 
 those ambitions by reason of w^hich ladies 
 read and discuss papers, or listen to endless 
 lectures upon endless subjects ; while the 
 "helpfulness" sums up all those benevo- 
 lences, from cleaning our public highways 
 to cleaning our private morals, for which 
 women have developed so remarkable a taste 
 within the past few years. All this is very 
 noble, no doubt, and public-spirited, and 
 quite in keeping with the ideas set forth 
 thirty years ago by the first woman's club r/te first 
 in the country, when gentle Alice Gary, club. 
 sitting in the president's chair, pleaded for 
 the club as a means to the wider and fuller 
 development of women — " to teach them to 
 think for themselves and get their opinions 
 at first hand, ... to open out new 
 avenues of employment for them, to make 
 
 49 
 
 woman s
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 them less dependent and less burdensome, to 
 lift them out of unwomanly self-distrust and 
 disqualifying diffidence into womanly self- 
 respect and self-knowledge ; to teach each 
 one to make all work honorable by doing 
 the share that falls to her, or that she may 
 work out to herself agreeably to her own 
 special aptitude cheerfully and faithfully, 
 not going down to it, but bringing it up 
 to her." 
 
 " Now," says Ernesta, triumphant, at my 
 shoulder, " you must acknowledge that when 
 There was that was Written there was room for mutual 
 ^ken. "^ ^ helpfulness among women. They had few 
 amusements of an improving kind, and al- 
 most no stimulus to intellectual advance- 
 ment ; they were self-distrustful, incapable, 
 dependent. The woman's club has done 
 more than any other one thing to lift them 
 out of all this, and now you want to cast 
 discredit upon it !" 
 
 Upon my soul I do not. I only want to 
 extend the usefulness of the woman's club ; 
 to suggest to it, since its impelling motives 
 have always been missionary, a new and 
 
 5°
 
 Women's Clubs 
 
 serious mission — the mission of being less 
 serious. 
 
 Much of what Ernesta says is true. Al- 
 lowing something for a fashion of thought 
 and phrase set at that time by the earnest 
 followers of Mr. Mill and his question- 
 begging book, these words of Alice Gary 
 are sadly reminiscent of the need of that 
 ''emancipation," which enthusiastic be- 
 lievers declare to be the special and trium- 
 phant movement of this "Woman's Cen- 
 tury." But it may be well to admit to 
 ourselves with candor that the sex seems ne arrival 
 to have arrived. The average American 
 woman is hardly to be suspected to-day of 
 " unwomanly self-distrust and disqualifying 
 diffidence." She has no legal disabilities, 
 she may enter any trade or profession she 
 likes, have a college education, travel alone, 
 ride a horse or a bicycle astride, and influ- 
 ence legislation greatly, if she cannot do it 
 directly. 
 
 *'Yes," admits Ernesta, ''women have 
 got a great many things they wanted and 
 ought to have had long ago, and, whether 
 
 51
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 you admit it or not, the club has been of 
 great assistance to them. Perhaps it is true 
 that part of the purpose of the woman's 
 club is accomplished, but you make no ac- 
 count of one of its most important and 
 gratifying uses still — that of intellectual 
 stimulation and culture. ' ' 
 
 Well, to blurt out the awful truth at 
 once, I have never thought so highly of in- 
 tellectual stimulation as I have of some other 
 things in life. It is by no means proved, as 
 yet, that, as a power upon life, the intel- 
 lect is to be held in the highest esteem ; 
 just as the history of human nature does not 
 go to show that seeing clearly and doing 
 well have been invariably associated. One 
 man or one woman, with that extended and 
 clarifying vision which is occasionally the 
 flower of a well-informed mind, but is of- 
 tener the fruit of a beautiful spirit, may be a 
 greater power for all right-mindedness than 
 the most active intellect, under the most 
 conscientious stimulation. And as to the 
 opportunity for culture offered in the wom- 
 an's clubs, it seems to me that in a last 
 
 52
 
 JVomen's Chibs 
 
 effort. 
 
 analysis, culture is found to elude any con- 
 scious effort to acquire it. I have liked to 
 think that culture, like all other graces of True cult- 
 the mind and soul, is not attained by being "Zsctou? 
 too greatly sought. It ''droppeth like the 
 gentle rain from Heaven," and in solitude 
 and self-dependence. It is a " quiet, fire- 
 side thing," which neither needs nor desires 
 the contribution of the exchange place. 
 One gets it, as one gets grace from Heaven, 
 in the seclusion of one's closet, and as "the 
 guest of one's own soul." And so far as 
 clubs may be supposed to minister to real 
 scholarship and culture, I make so bold as to 
 say that no club, social or technical, male or 
 female, bond or free, can do more than to 
 receive the results of individual scholarship 
 and culture, or offer more than mere stimu- 
 lation. Nor are these to be despised — nay, 
 they are good in themselves, if one does 
 not make too much of them ; if stimula- 
 tion does not take the place of culture, and 
 if an appetite for insignificant facts is not 
 mistaken for serious scholarship. Neither 
 is the usefulness of the club in small towns 
 
 53
 
 ne Unquiet Sex 
 
 to be overlooked. Here the wheels of life 
 go more slowly than in the larger centres, 
 The citib books are fewer, and often the resources of 
 towns. the individual are not abundantly devel- 
 
 oped ; though sometimes, indeed, the law is 
 otherwise, and one finds the richest endow- 
 ments of mind and soul in the most remote 
 and desert places. 
 
 But usually the little town finds in the 
 woman's club its one means of growth and 
 diversion, even though the work undertaken 
 is sometimes solemn enough to make a Ger- 
 man university professor laugh. And that 
 is reason enough for its existence. Never- 
 theless — that was a profound truth of Marga- 
 ret Fuller's : " The soul that lives too much 
 in relations becomes at last a stranger to its 
 own resources." 
 
 To go back to that cum hoc, propter hoc 
 assertion of Ernesta as to the efficiency of 
 clubs in the advancement of women : Some- 
 thing has certainly been going on among us 
 women for the last sixty years, and at a gal- 
 loping rate, too. Whether we have ever 
 
 54
 
 Women's Clubs 
 
 been in subjection or not, we are out of it 
 now (greatly instigated and assisted thereto 
 by a sex we have despised and arraigned), i^e seetn to 
 
 have gotour 
 
 and we have got our heads. There seems to heads. 
 belittle enough left i£>x_the women of .the 
 next century to accomplish in the way.joL. 
 
 mere emancipation, and to the glory . of, 
 
 themselves and their sex. No wonder this 
 has been called the Woman's Centuryl But"" 
 it is well to remember that it has also been a 
 marked century for a good many other per- 
 sons. In it, one race has almost disappeared 
 from the face of the earth, another has been 
 led out of slavery, and the blood of a dozen 
 others has passed into our veins. It has 
 been the century of democracy, of steam, of 
 electricity, of the public schools, of the 
 growth of big cities, of the mower and reap- 
 er, of the Hoe press. If it had not also 
 been the century of woman's advancement, 
 that fact would be really worth mentioning. 
 The invention of machinery alone has affect- *■ -_ 
 ed women more than it has men, both by 
 its substitution for hand- work in the h gige, 
 and by drawing them at once fr om the safe ty 
 
 55
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 and dignity of their own firesides into the 
 factories and the great whirl of industrial 
 life, thus making of them an economic prob- 
 lem whose value is still uncertain. It would 
 be pleasant and self-satisfying to agree with 
 Ernesta that we women and our clubs have 
 done our own emancipating, but when we 
 can sit down and think out this same con- 
 clusion in terms of half a dozen other agen- 
 cies, I fear we shall have to regard the assump- 
 tion as one of those fine but undigested ideas 
 which seem to have a special attraction for 
 our sex. The truth seems to be that, to the 
 wonderful and wide opportunities of this 
 century, women have responded with an 
 eagerness, an insistence, and a disposition to 
 carry things to extremes which cause some 
 of the more conservative of us to stop and 
 ask seriously whether this restless activity 
 among women is not hectic rather than nat- 
 Over-activ ural. For it must not be forgotten that 
 \ytnptom of there is an eagerness of disease as well as of 
 
 disease, not , ,,, -^ ^ , 11 
 
 0/ health, health. 1 know two women who have ner- 
 vous prostration at the present hour. One of 
 them has insomnia, and because she cannot 
 
 56
 
 IVomen's Clubs 
 
 sleep, writes innumerable papers for her club. 
 She now has several pounds of wisdom, on 
 widely varying subjects locked up in her 
 desk — all of which she regards as so much 
 clear gain. The other explains that she is 
 so restless as not to be able to sit still long 
 enough to " do " her back hair ; therefore 
 she has learned how to carry on this enter- 
 prise while walking up and down the room, 
 and the doctor threatens her with the hor- 
 rors of the rest cure. Let us devoutly hope 
 that the next century may not be Woman's 
 also, lest it bring us even greater earnest- 
 ness than this ! 
 
 For one of the special confusions of the The case 
 
 against 
 
 situation is that we seem to have got what we -womaK. 
 wanted without knowing exactly what to do 
 with it. We are still on nervous tiptoe ; we 
 make duties even of our pleasures, and we 
 lack conspicuously in that sense of propor- 
 tion — that sense of the real values of things 
 — which, if it be not essential to one's salva- 
 tion in the next world, is certainly essential 
 to one's salvation in this. '' We sow hurry, 
 and reap indigestion ; " we cultivate our as- 
 
 57
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 pirations, and are landed in a typical case 
 of neurasthenia ; we tipple all kinds of intel- 
 lectual stimulants — not to say intoxicants — 
 and then we wonder that our knowledge of 
 things is not steadier and more serviceable. 
 I sometimes wonder if there are not plenty 
 of women to-day, conscientiously weighted 
 down with the burdens of progress, who 
 would gladly exchange all the privileges of 
 "emancipation" for the exemptions of a 
 lesser liberty. It was with no smile of self- 
 gratulation that I came upon this passage 
 not long ago in one of Hannah More's let- 
 
 jn Hannah ters : " Womcn are from their domestic 
 days. habits in possession of more leisure and 
 
 tranquillity for religious pursuits, as well as 
 secured from those difficulties and strong 
 temptations to which men are exposed in the 
 tumult of a bustling world. Their lives are 
 more regular and uniform, less agitated by 
 the passions, the businesses, the contentions, 
 the shocks of opinions, and the opposition 
 of interests which divide society and con- 
 vulse the world." If the average intelligent 
 American woman with a family and a house 
 
 58
 
 Women's Clubs 
 
 to look after, one or two clubs to attend, a 
 moderate interest in public affairs, and a rea- 
 sonable social ambition, leads a life "less 
 agitated by the passions, the businesses, the 
 contentions, the shocks of opinions, and the 
 opposition of interests," either my observa- 
 tion must be most defective or my experience 
 most unfortunate. 
 
 Truly, to strike a brave and generous 
 average between duty to one's self and desire 
 for others is the highest task of wisdom. 
 One wishes, of course, to be neither a shirk 
 nor a parasite. Yet, surely, there should be 
 somewhere in life occasional garden-spots 
 wherein one may walk lightly, and with ease 
 of heart concerning one's self and one's 
 neighbor, without deliberate and selfish 
 purpose of self-improvement or any imperti- 
 nence of bestowal upon others. And if, in Onegreen 
 
 ... . ^ . . . . , and shady 
 
 the unambitious intercourse of friends, with spot in u/e. 
 sympathy and a happy certainty of response, 
 there be not such a green and shady spot, 
 I know not, indeed, where to look for one. 
 Moreover, it is just this ease in intercourse of 
 which women stand most in need. If our 
 
 59
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 doctrine of life must be heroic, then the ten- 
 sion must be the oftener relaxed. If women 
 needed stimulation and opportunity forty 
 years ago, we need to-day strength more than 
 stimulation, and capacity rather than oppor- 
 tunity. We need repose, leisure, and that 
 sense of ample self-possession which comes 
 from the habit of "staying at home in one's 
 mind." 
 The higher Here is the higher mission of the woman's 
 
 viission of 
 
 thewomati's club — to give women the occasional chance 
 
 club. ° 
 
 to rest, both in mind and body. For such a 
 club as this, developed along the lines of 
 ease, of relaxation, of pure vacuity if one 
 wished, with exemption, and not responsi- 
 bility, as its first privilege, above all, with 
 abundant inclination in the souls of its mem- 
 bers toward nothing but that profitable idle- 
 ness which, as Mr. Stevenson says, consists 
 not so much in doing nothing as in doing a 
 great deal that is not usually recognized as 
 work — for such a club it would be almost 
 worth while to become a propagandist ! For 
 here no insidious desire for work would be 
 allowed to masquerade under the guise of 
 
 60
 
 Women's Clubs 
 
 recreation, and no amount of recreation 
 would serve to carry any ulterior purpose of 
 self-improvement. There would be luncheon 
 for luncheon's sake, and women would sit 
 down to eat it, greedy and unashamed. And 
 you may be sure there would be no papers 
 read, and no members fined because they 
 were not there to listen to them. Thus a 
 normal and natural intercourse would be pro- 
 moted in which the self-improvement, though 
 incidental and half unconscious, would be 
 real and permanent, because developed upon 
 the plane on which the individual custom- 
 arily dwells. 
 
 Ernesta tells me that there is a growing The estab- 
 
 . . hsiiment of 
 
 desire among the wealthy and mnuential homes/or 
 
 , r ^ cllibs. 
 
 women's clubs to build club-houses for them- 
 selves, that some few have already been built 
 and others are devoutly projected, and when 
 I hail this as special cause for congratulation, 
 since all these higher uses of the club will 
 begin with permanency in residence, she 
 cools the fervor of my delight by saying 
 that none of the club-houses she knows any- 
 
 6i
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 There is 
 something 
 better than 
 being in- 
 structed. 
 
 thing about are especially designed for the 
 frivolous purposes I have outlined. ' ' There 
 isn't a restaurant," she explains, "or such 
 lounging-rooms as men enjoy, and as you 
 seem to consider the only things worth hav- 
 ing about a club. There are rooms for meet- 
 ings of different kinds, from a large audi- 
 torium to small committee-rooms. There is 
 a writing-room, usually, and a library, and 
 sometimes a free kindergarten or a working- 
 girls' club has quarters under its roof, since 
 the building is intended for rational purposes 
 and for women with earnest and rational 
 minds." 
 
 Yet money spent for earnest and rational 
 club purposes alone, seems to me money only 
 half spent, since a club is hardly to be con- 
 sidered as a business enterprise, or a philan- 
 thropic manifestation, or an educational in- 
 stitution, but only an added area in the small 
 personal life. And I shall continue to hope 
 earnestly for the coming of the day when 
 some woman's club shall rise to a new dec- 
 laration of dependence, and confess that it 
 is tired of being instructed and wants to be 
 
 62
 
 Women's Clubs 
 
 amused ; when my dear, hurried, clubbed 
 sisters may be willing to take their " little 
 gift of being clean from God, not haggling 
 for a better ; ' ' content even in their limi- 
 tations ; satisfied to know less and be more ; 
 glad to let the savor of happy intercourse 
 (though without profit) have its rightful 
 place in that complete living which would 
 not be complete without it. 
 
 63
 
 WOMEN AND REFORMS
 
 WOMEN AND REFORMS 
 
 NOT long ago, a man, a busy and sue- ' "7'''' '" 
 cessful editor, who has an unusual way j^'' 
 of ruminating facts until he gets all the 
 significance possible out of them, said to 
 me, "Have you ever thought of this? — 
 there are in this country at the present time 
 an unusual number of capable and conspic- 
 uous women, at the head of distinguished 
 political or educational movements and re- The classes 
 forms, or administering unpaid public offices "-^hoTaTeup 
 with great tact and charm, and with some ^^■^'"'""• 
 helpfulness. Now, if one were fully to in- 
 form himself as to the station in life of these 
 busy persons, he would find, I think, that 
 they are, almost Avithout exception, either 
 women of great wealth, having, consequently, 
 abundant leisure and the power to destroy it, 
 unmarried or childless women, or self-sup- 
 
 67
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 porting women whose business interests are 
 supposed in some way to be forwarded by 
 publicity." 
 
 Yes, I had thought about it in a desultory 
 and unproductive fashion. 
 
 "Well, go on thinking about it and you 
 will find conclusions ahead of you some- 
 where, if I am not mistaken." 
 
 I did go on thinking about it, and he was 
 not mistaken, but the first conclusions I ar- 
 rived at (to put it in the pleasant Hiber- 
 nian fashion) were questions. Which is cause 
 and which effect ? Is it public service for 
 public service's sake or for publicity's sake ? 
 Is it not possible with leisure and the con- 
 sciousness of money-power to develop a kind 
 of epicurean taste for reforms, as for the 
 other pleasures of life ? Are Ave in danger of 
 making a fad of what must be really a very 
 solemn undertaking, when one considers that 
 a reform is necessarily a readjustment of 
 creation, and that if it comes to anything 
 Somegues- more than an experiment in reform, it must 
 i^t^answ^r. be about as serious a matter as creation it- 
 self? I have not yet answered any of these 
 
 68
 
 Women and Reforms 
 
 questions with satisfaction to myself. Can 
 anybody give me a ray of light ? 
 
 So much for the first conclusions, which, 
 as you see, were no conclusions at all, and 
 perhaps the second were like unto them, for 
 the one serious matter I settled with myself 
 was that I did not agree with my friend as to 
 the limitation, among women, of this taste 
 for public affairs. So far as my own observa- 
 tion goes, most women have it, to-day, to a 
 greater or less degree, and have had it, with 
 different manifestations, ever since the days 
 when their Puritan fathers and husbands 
 pushed into reforms, having not yet taken 
 the time to push out of the wilderness. In 
 those early days of transcendentalism in New 
 England (which must have been glorious Thegiori- 
 
 r ■ • • r Ti T ""' days of 
 
 times for the reforming instinct, for as Mr. early re- 
 
 Lowell says, there was " no brain but had its 
 private maggot, which must have found 
 pitiably short commons sometimes"), it is 
 evident that women were deeply involved, 
 from the very nature of the reforms them- 
 selves, which were such as women would 
 naturally gravitate to. These dealt not only 
 
 69 
 
 form.
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 The desire 
 /or reform 
 in every 
 earnest 
 vtan or 
 woman. 
 
 with the establishment of communities, 
 where, as one chronicler has it, " everything 
 was to be common, except common-sense," 
 and with a reversion to labor upon land, 
 which was declared to be the only work in 
 which men could lawfully engage ; but there 
 were those who wished to do away with yeast, 
 and eat unleavened bread, fermentation being 
 considered an unholy and unwholesome proc- 
 ess ; there were persons who attacked but- 
 tons as allies of the devil, and other means of 
 locomotion than legs, and marriages, and 
 miracles, and the ordinary courtesies of ex- 
 pression — from all of which it is indubitably 
 to be inferred that many of the prophets 
 ''wore combs at the backs of their heads." 
 
 Now, the desire for reform is by no means 
 to be decried, since it must make an essential 
 part of the working capital of every earnest 
 man or woman. Heaven forbid that any 
 word of mine should be interpreted as re- 
 motely casting levity (which is worse than 
 casting discredit) upon any attempt on the 
 part of anybody toward that strenuous 
 "reach to exceed one's grasp" which is 
 
 70
 
 Women and Reforms 
 
 " what a heaven's for." Yet since we wom- 
 en (I see no derogation in acknowledging 
 it) are, by that entire physical and mental 
 organization generally known as tempera- 
 ment, more inclined to extremes in all things 
 than men are, it appears wise to me that we 
 should suspect the desire for reform whenever 
 we can see that it has passed onward from a 
 latent quickening heat into open excitement. 
 To be able to sit down, beforehand, to a 
 cool and impartial scrutiny both of the ani- 
 mating spirit of our reforms and of their ob- 
 jective and subjective results, seems to me 
 wholly necessary before we can be sure that 
 we are not undertaking reform for reform's 
 sake alone, or that, in the high and unselfish 
 purpose which is prompting us, we are not Something 
 
 . r 1 1-1 better than 
 
 losmg some adornments of character which reforms. 
 are greatly worth keeping. 
 
 It may or may not be worth comment 
 that during the early days of reforms in this 
 country there were more men reformers than 
 women ; but that later on, dating perhaps 
 from the Civil War, the number of reforms 
 instituted by women is the greater. Per- 
 
 71
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 haps this bears out my editor's suspicion that 
 
 leisure and wealth and the power it buys, are 
 
 n^hat has at the bottom of half our reforms, as well as 
 
 ■wealth to r t -i r • ^ ■ r 
 
 do with of half our mischiefs. At any rate, the 
 number of public affairs we poor women 
 have to look after nowadays must be either 
 exceedingly gratifying or exceedingly dis- 
 heartening, according to one's point of 
 view. We seem to have the health of the 
 country wholly in our hands (at least, one 
 is inclined so to fear, contrary to what one 
 has been taught to believe about microbes 
 and bacteria, to say nothing of an all-wise 
 Creator whom we used to credit with some 
 sense of responsibility for the world He has 
 made) ; we have kindergartens, and the 
 Alaska Indians, and sanitary plumbing, and 
 doing away with distinctions of sex in work, 
 and the introduction of patriotic teaching 
 in the public schools, and the higher educa- 
 tion of parents, and dress reform and many 
 more things of like gravity, which, like the 
 apostle, I have not time to speak of now. 
 
 Now, very likely, all these things are good 
 to do, and to be — and to suffer, too, if one 
 
 72
 
 Women and Reforms 
 
 is able to "drink fair" in the matter of 
 reforms, and to take as well as offer an appro- 
 priate opportunity for improvement. But it "Drink 
 seems to me most essential that we should sey, w'ot- 
 not lose what the Germans call Uebersicht, do." 
 in our zeal, and that we should remember, 
 however necessary it may be to the world 
 that any reform should be instituted, it is 
 surely of much more importance both to the 
 world and the reform — to say nothing of 
 ourselves — that the reformer herself should 
 be sane and pleasing — particularly pleasing. 
 For here, my friends, I stoop to plead the 
 cause of unreformed feminine nature. I 
 have never been able to see why any one of 
 us should be ashamed of a desire to please — 
 even to please men. Could women's desire 
 go farther, on the whole, even in post-mor- 
 tem vanity than the epitaph Mr. Lowell was 
 so fond of recalling, " She was so pleasant?" 
 For myself, in honest confession, I would 
 rather be pleasant than be President, and St. 
 Paul defend me if I imitate his example and 
 speak these words as a fool ! 
 
 One of the regrettable things about the 
 
 73
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 The persist- 
 ence of the 
 re/orniato- 
 ty instinct. 
 
 reformatory instinct is its persistence. If 
 one could only occasionally be a reformer 
 and anon come back to one's quiet and pas- 
 sive provincialism, the case for the reformers 
 would be proved at once. But a taste for 
 reform is like a taste for the luxuries of life 
 — one seldom gets over it. This in the case 
 of women is particularly to be deplored, be- 
 cause there is likely to result a habit of mind 
 and behavior more or less egoistic, down- 
 right, declaratory, and dead-in-earnest, while 
 most of us still like our women as Sairey 
 Gamp liked her porter — "drawed mild." 
 Why not ? Is there any advantage, in the 
 nature of things, in severity and strenuous- 
 ness over mildness and serenity ? Can we be 
 certain that the latter have not a surer vital- 
 ity of their own ? It is to the meek and not 
 to the dead -in-earnest that the inheritance of 
 the earth is promised, and at least it is to 
 be conceded that in mildness and serenity 
 is found the antidote to the strain and 
 tension which the acceleration of the age 
 puts upon us all. Possibly here is still an- 
 other mission for women — or will be, when 
 
 74
 
 Women and Reforms 
 
 we get the composure to consider it ; that of 
 putting ourselves and our influence on the 
 side of nature, all of whose forces are calm 
 and leisurely, and whom even the American 
 himself has found no way to bully out of her 
 supreme composure. Let us thank heaven 
 and take courage that, with all the changes 
 which the environment of civilization has 
 brought about in the human being, whenever 
 he depends upon nature he must still con- 
 form to her tranquil ways. He can digest 
 no faster, though he may be able to digest 
 more badly than the first man did, he must 
 still sleep eight hours, and he has not yet 
 shortened his leisurely prenatal life. 
 
 All this national misbehavior on the part 
 of men is bad enough, but it seems to me 
 infinitely worse when we come to women, 
 for I do not see how it is possible to evade 
 the conclusion, as indicated by the supreme 
 functions and most imperative duties of 
 women, that they were meant to live closer to Watnan's 
 
 relation to 
 
 nature than men were, to be a very part of Nature. 
 its great orderly processes, and to have the 
 inestimable privilege of sharing, if they \nll, 
 
 75
 
 Vje Unquiet Sex 
 
 in its simplicity, its largeness, its tranquillity, 
 its unconscious patience. If this be true, 
 and I like to believe that it is, it seems to 
 me most essential that in our desire to per- 
 form one set of duties we should not lose 
 sight of another still more important set, 
 that we should keep our sense of perspec- 
 tive, and not mistake, even in reforms, the 
 false need for the real one ; that we should 
 be able to discriminate between the right- 
 eous necessity for fundamental adjustment 
 and the mere desire to relieve our feelings. 
 
 "Is reform needed?" asks Walt Whit- 
 man. "Is it through you? The greater 
 Whitman's the rcform needed the greater personality 
 
 test /or T 1 • u T 
 
 reformers, you need to accomplish It. Let us see. 
 Is reform needed? Not always. A num- 
 ber of men and women, all good and wise, 
 and in evening-dress, may meet together 
 and, discovering a great evil or a real abuse, 
 may decide that something ought to be 
 done, and set about doing it at once. Yet 
 it by no means follows that because things 
 are out of joint no duty remains but to set 
 them right. It is not quite enough that a 
 
 76
 
 Women and Reforms 
 
 reform should be desirable or even neces- 
 sary ; it must also be inevitable. And when 
 it is inevitable it "hath a way " of its own. 
 It seems then to be set in motion by an in- 
 ner spiritual vitality, rather than from any 
 mechanical and outside force. And when 
 the reform is accomplished, it is usually to 
 be observed that it seems to have moved 
 with a curious — almost human — perversity, 
 never in the obvious or direct line toward 
 its end, but, bringing up its reinforcements 
 from unexpected quarters, its march has been 
 through a series of zigzags, leading sidewise, 
 backward, anywhere but along the simple 
 straight line upon which our convictions 
 have settled as the one practical method of 
 approach. The genius of reform, like the The^.-nhn 
 
 /- 1 >~. 1 of reform. 
 
 genius of the German sentence, seems to be 
 for "yawing and backing, for getting stern 
 foremost and for not minding the helm." 
 
 Nothing better betrays this delightful sense 
 of humor in the spirit of reforms than that 
 reform, at once the most complicated, the 
 simplest, the most long-suffering, most en- 
 
 77
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 refortn. 
 
 deared to the hearts of women — dress-re- 
 form. It is hardly to be supposed that the 
 dress-reforming spirit is a product of mod- 
 ern times, since we find the necessity of it 
 enjoined upon women as far back as Bible 
 times, but for present purposes it is suffi- 
 cient to go back forty years, to the time when 
 the women of this country began to look 
 Dress- timidly and tentatively (much as the little 
 
 fish in the fable looked at the fly on the 
 hook) toward the mere possibility of such 
 changes in the garments they wore as should 
 conform them, in some degree at least, to 
 the demands of beauty or health or conveni- 
 ence or adequate bodily protection. A few 
 women, looking at the matter quite simply 
 and directly, and conceiving, therefore, that 
 dress-reform was a matter solely of individ- 
 ual and private concern, shut themselves 
 into the privacy of their homes, snipped and 
 sheared and stitched industriously, coming 
 forth at last to shock the gaze of a waiting 
 world with a curious hybrid garment, nei- 
 ther male nor female, lacking the stern prac- 
 ticability of the masculine garb, lacking 
 
 78
 
 Women and Reforms 
 
 also all the sweet appeal of the flowing 
 feminine line, lacking even that long ''pet- 
 ty-coat," without which, as the acute Mr. Pepys and 
 
 petticoats. 
 
 Pepys observes, " nobody could take them 
 for women." It is not strange that the re- 
 form received a blow, then and there, from 
 which it staggered along unsteadily, upheld 
 only by the occasional enthusiasm of a busi- 
 ness-like prophet, or a Rainy Day Club, or 
 a Woman's Congress (where it crept in with 
 other more popular and less necessary re- 
 forms), until about three years ago. Then, 
 without any seeming movement, without de- 
 claring itself at all, suddenly, like light at 
 the creative fiat, it was. And it came, 
 not through any tempest of organization or 
 any whirlwind of enthusiasm, but through 
 the still, small wheels of the bicycle, bring- 
 ing forth the one thing that was necessary 
 and had been lacking all the time — rea- 
 son enough. What a regard for health or 
 beauty, or convenience, or individuality, 
 or comfort had never accomplished, the 
 desire for pleasure brought at once. To- 
 day the short skirt, the comfortable blouse, 
 
 79
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 the well-protected ankle, make up a costume 
 as respected and as non-committal on the 
 streets of a great city as on the golf-links of 
 the most remote meadows. Dress-reform 
 need go no farther in accomplishing its 
 own ends, though it is certain to carry 
 with it half a dozen linked reforms, more 
 or less desirable. Given reason enough, you 
 ivhat see — specific and immediate need — and any 
 
 form /0SS2- rcform is inevitable, but in the absence of 
 sufficient reason it is as impossible to ac- 
 complish a reform as it is physically im- 
 possible (to use one of Mr. Mallock's illus- 
 trations) to knock a man down unless he 
 gives you a sufficient motive for doing so. 
 
 There is no doubting that reforms are 
 sometimes necessary ; that the world is full 
 of affairs which are not righteous, and that 
 many of them should be set straight ; just as 
 there is a restful certainty that these surely 
 will be set straight in their own ripe time. 
 But even so, no matter how desirable may 
 be the reform or how great the power of the 
 woman, it by no means follows that she — or 
 
 80
 
 Women and Reforms 
 
 you and I — are necessary to its establishment. 
 I have sometimes wondered whether we 
 women, conscientiously anxious as we are 
 not to play the shirk in all questions of se- 
 rious import, have not come to overrate the 
 responsibility of the individual in the sim- 
 ple possession of convictions and powers. 
 For it is not always inevitable, even in the 
 stern deductions of the moral world, that 
 because one has the ability to do fine things, 
 nothing remains but to be constantly about 
 their discharge. To be always living "at Living- " at 
 the top of ones voice does away both one's voice:' 
 with the logic and the distinction of the per- 
 formance. I like to think that each one 
 of us has a right, if she wishes it, to a sense 
 of unexpended power and to the rich self- 
 content that comes with it, just for their 
 own sweet sake, if she happens to prefer 
 these to a more ostentatious and ambitious 
 self-expression. And as for convictions, 
 perhaps an advance in ethics may some day 
 lead us to suspect that convictions were 
 meant to be serviceable mainly as springs of 
 action, and to govern us in our relations 
 
 8i
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 The neces- 
 sity/or 
 elevating 
 }>ioral 
 deportment. 
 
 with others, rather than for promiscuous 
 circulation among our friends — who may 
 also happen to have convictions of their 
 own. Possibly, too, we women have been 
 over-advised as to the peculiar responsibility 
 for morals which is generally supposed to 
 attend upon the possession of petticoats. 
 Whatever the Turveydrops of the moral 
 world may have to say about the necessity 
 for edifying moral deportment on the part 
 of " wooman, bewitching wooman," I have 
 never been able to see any indubitable in- 
 tent in nature herself toward binding them 
 over to any higher moral standards than she 
 does men. Both men and women seem to 
 me to be compounded of the same aver- 
 age morality, though with certain unlike 
 manifestations, largely the result of circum- 
 stances and opportunities. I see no spe- 
 cial cause for believing that the average 
 woman under like temptation would do very 
 differently from the average man — a belief 
 which is not lessened by Bishop Potter's re- 
 cent accusation before the Women's Auxil- 
 iary of the Civil Service Reform Associa- 
 
 82
 
 Women and Reforms 
 
 tion that they put their relatives into office 
 whenever they got the chance, "without 
 any evidence that they are fitted to fill the Bishop 
 
 r 11 T^ ■^^ Potter's a 
 
 places they applied for. Possibly women cusation. 
 were intended by their Creator to stand for 
 the reformatory interests of life, but I think 
 there is not, as yet, sufficient evidence 
 thereto either in the nature of things or of 
 women to warrant any special abrogation of 
 certain distinct and more familiar duties, in 
 favor of interests mainly moral. 
 
 And even if we had, as a sex, displayed 
 that special aptitude for managing public 
 affairs which has distinguished a few of us, 
 the greater part of us are, as the division 
 of labor adjusts things at present, either too 
 busy or too tired to undertake them. It 
 must be quite clear to those who are watch- 
 ing the trend of modern life with any inter- 
 est as to its results, that we women are taxing 
 ourselves to the point of physical distress 
 and mental superficiality. We are carrying 
 the heavy end of creation, and instead of 
 deprecating it, as we should, we seem to de- 
 
 83
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 sire to impress ourselves and the world at 
 large with the great virtue that consists in 
 getting tired. I wish, instead, we might arise 
 to such an appreciation of our physical worth 
 and dignity as would make us as much 
 ashamed of exhaustion (except under abso- 
 lute necessity) as we should be of any other 
 equally grave physical immorality. And as 
 for the extreme busy-ness in which we rather 
 glory to-day, what is to be said of it except 
 that it is no more worthy of respect than 
 any other departure from nature, and that it 
 argues not so much for general ability as for 
 the specific inabihty to exercise a wise and 
 The virtue propcr sclcction in the affairs of life ? In 
 
 oy selection. . . . ,. 
 
 some degree, also, it indicates a lessened 
 sense of personal dignity, in that we permit 
 ourselves to be whipped like slaves through 
 each day with the scourge of many duties. 
 
 I suppose the end of reform is the better- 
 ment of the world at large, and with that in 
 view it has always been surprising to me that 
 so little attention has been given to the part 
 played in this general betterment of creation 
 by mere happiness. I believe it is Mr. Ste- 
 
 84
 
 Women and Reforms 
 
 venson who says that the duty of being hap- 
 py is the most underrated duty in the world. 
 And in spite of all we may wish or assert to 
 the contrary, there is indubitable evidence 
 that our present hold, at least, on happiness 
 has much to do with physical well-being. I 
 suppose one of the reasons why the reform- 
 ers of the world have not been notably de- 
 lightful persons to live with, is because they 
 were either too busy or too tired to be hap- 
 py. And yet a happy man, and especially 
 a happy woman, is a radiating focus of re- 
 form, for such a person possesses that gentle 
 and diffused persuasiveness which leads us 
 into wilHng good endeavor, simply because 
 it displays to us the good taste of enjoying 
 fine behavior. 
 
 But however true this may be, there will 
 still be some women among us whose taste is a taste m 
 for the purple of heroic action \ who would 
 rather give themselves to public benefaction 
 than to private happiness, as also there will 
 be some whose splendid abilities will give 
 them to command both. For these there 
 
 85 
 
 heroism.
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 may be a not unfriendly suggestion in occa- 
 sionally recalling the remark of the sage Mr. 
 Birrell, that there is " a great deal of rela- 
 tivity about a dress-suit," so that to wear 
 any part of it without the rest is "provoca- 
 tive only of Homeric laughter. ' ' There is 
 also a great deal of relativity about reform, 
 and it is the failure upon the part of many 
 reformers to understand this which makes 
 the pathos and the humor and the satire of 
 so many reforming movements, in them- 
 selves noble and uplifting. 
 
 The social structure being not a thing of 
 mechanical parts, but a living growth, it is 
 impossible even to lop off an excrescence 
 without drawing blood from the whole body. 
 Tke penal- It is with rcforms as with everything else 
 ^rtforms. in the world that is an evolution and not 
 a manufacture — you cannot get one end, 
 which you may want, without getting the 
 other end, which you probably will not find 
 so desirable. It was, as Mr. Lowell says, 
 the inability of Don Quixote to discover for 
 himself what the Nature of Things really was, 
 or of accommodating himself to it if he had 
 
 86
 
 Women and Reforms 
 
 discovered it, which makes the work of 
 Cervantes an immortal commentary on "all 
 attempts to re-make the world by the means 
 and methods of the past and on the human- 
 ity of impulse which looks on each fact that 
 arouses its pity or its sense of wrong as if it 
 was or could be complete in itself, and were 
 not indissolubly bound up with myriads of 
 other facts both in the past and the present. 
 
 Don Quixote's quarrel is with the DonQuix- 
 structure of society, and it is only by degrees, rei. 
 through much mistake and consequent suffer- 
 ing, that he finds out how strong that struct- 
 ure is, nay, how strong it must be, in order 
 that the world may go smoothly and the 
 course of events not be broken by a series of 
 cataclysms. . . . 'Do right though 
 the heavens fall,' is an admirable precept so 
 long as the heavens don't take you at your 
 word and come down about your ears — still 
 worse, about those of your neighbors. It is 
 a rule rather of private than public applica- 
 tion, for, indeed, it is the doing of right that 
 keeps the heavens from falling." 
 
 87
 
 THE EVOLUTION OF 
 "WOMAN"
 
 THE EVOLUTION OF 
 -WOMAN" 
 
 WHEN God made man and pronounced 
 His work good, woman had also 
 been created, and was probably therefore in- 
 cluded in the Divine approbation. It is 
 well occasionally to recall this fact, since, to 
 any thoughtful observer of woman to-day, 
 this half-and-more of humanity which is not 
 man seems smitten as with an uneasy sense of 
 having, with considerable ostentation, to ac- Thejustiji- 
 
 ^ . , - . . - . . J , cation of 
 
 count for itself, to justify its creation, and to woman. 
 work out its own salvation, though without 
 any indication of that fear and trembling 
 which the Apostle deemed fitting in the case 
 of the elect. If, in the beginning, woman 
 ever shared with man that wholesome reluc- 
 tance to work which he is still natural enough 
 
 91
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 to manifest at times, it is fairly to be deduced 
 that she has got well over it ; if she ever pos- 
 sessed that gift of the gods — the gracious art 
 of idling — it lies now quite beyond the reach 
 An early of her hand. It would seem that she has 
 
 definition , , . , 
 
 o/work, forgotten that work was once designated a 
 curse and designed as a punishment. For, 
 such is the feminine appetite for being busy 
 to-day that, in spite of the fact that women 
 have always done more than half of the work 
 of the world without getting special credit 
 for it, they are now reaching out eager hands 
 for that share of the world's curse which has 
 hitherto fallen on the shoulders of men 
 alone. They are in the professions, in com- 
 merce, in trade, in politics, in finance, and 
 in men's attire. They own ships and run 
 them, they raise live stock on Western farms 
 and make fortunes, they speculate in stocks 
 and lose fortunes, they manage vast philan- 
 thropies. They are bakers, butchers, bar- 
 bers, artists, poets, sculptors, and lady man- 
 agers. There is probably no reason why 
 they may yet not be tailors and telegraph 
 linemen — the two trades which a thoughtful 
 
 92
 
 The Evolution of " Woman" 
 
 man has recently noted as the only ones in 
 which women are not at present busily em- 
 ployed. It is therefore not marvellous that 
 women should be engaged to-day (to quote 
 the language of one of the most brilliant lady 
 discoverers) in " celebrating as more im- 
 portant than the discovery of Columbus the 
 fact that the General Government has just 
 discovered woman." One must allow some- 
 thing certainly to the rapture of a sex that Thcdis- 
 has just been discovered. But the factisthat^ sex. 
 in all ages, and in all stages ofci vilization. 
 women have always done halt the wo rk of 
 the wo rld and carrie d half its responsibili- 
 ties. T heir present wonderful activity, which 
 a believer has called " lifting the sex out of 
 mere sex-hood into womanhood," has nothing 
 either new or wonderful about it — except her 
 way of phrasing it. The one point of dif- 
 ference is that while women were once con- 
 tent to do their work unostentatiously and 
 without asking special recognition for it, to- 
 day they manifest a disposition toward the 
 title roles, and the calcium light, and the 
 centre of the stage. 
 
 93
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 Difficult as it may be for us of to-day to re- 
 alize it, the actual truth is that each century 
 of the world's history has had its full share 
 of women as gifted, as dignified, and as im- 
 portantly if not as publicly engaged as the 
 women of to-day. Whenever there has been 
 a special gift, it has made itself manifest with- 
 out asking whether a man or a woman were its 
 exponent. There ha ve always been painters^ 
 and poets , and pli ilosoph ers, and law-g ivpry^j 
 and prophets, among women; there were 
 schol ars, there were even physicians — for 
 women were the first ph ysicians, and their 
 presence in the profession to-day is aresto^ 
 Remark- jj Oil rather ttianan innovation. Miriam the 
 ofthe"past. Hebrew, Sappho and Astasia, Elizabeth and 
 Mary and Lady Jane Grey in England, and 
 Victoria Colonna in Italy, and Catharine de' 
 Medici in France, are hardly to be con- 
 sidered as objects of patronizing comment 
 from the women of to-day, while LaviniaFon- 
 tana, painter in ordinary to Gregory XIII., 
 and Gentileschi, whose portraits of the Court 
 of Charles I, were remarkable, were possibly 
 as famous as any women painters of the Dres- 
 
 94
 
 The EvoluHon of "Woman 
 
 ent time. So, too, Serani, and Propertia de 
 Rossi, and Sister Plautilla, and Rachel Van 
 Pool, in their own day received as distin- 
 guished honors as will probably fall to most 
 women in what is now gallantly termed the 
 " woman's century." 
 
 One might go on with the list indefinitely, 
 if it were necessary to do so by way of estab- 
 lishing the truth that, as there have always 
 been exceptional men in the world, so there 
 have always been exceptional women to match 
 them, and that between these there has al- 
 ways been an equality of power and privi- 
 lege. So, too, one might go on indefinitely 
 to show that between the unexceptional 
 classes, between the commonplace, ungifted 
 man and the routine-loving, ordinary woman 
 there was, for more centuries than one might 
 guess, even during the feudal period in which 
 the legal equities of women were most Equality 
 
 J between 
 
 abridged, a community of niterests and con- wen and 
 tent which left no room for that unhappy 
 sex-consciousness which has wrought too 
 much mischief since. I am far from assert- 
 ing that the relations between men and 
 
 95 
 
 •women.
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 women in these times were those of ideal 
 justice, or even of justice at all. But they 
 belonged definitely to their times. They 
 were ' ' the result of both natural and sexual 
 selection, working upon the pagan ideal," in 
 which every woman was supposed to be un- 
 der the protection of some man, and thus to 
 be subordinated to him and represented by 
 him ; but with this there was between the 
 sexes neither rivalry in practical matters nor 
 an abnormal sex-consciousness in intellectual 
 affairs. The women were as shrewd, as busy, 
 as contented, and as unconscious of them- 
 selves as the men. While there were un- 
 doubted sex distinctions in work, as there 
 must always have been, these were such as 
 had established themselves upon perfectly ob- 
 vious and healthy lines, since neither sex had 
 discovered the inferiority of woman's mind as 
 now scientifically deduced from the weight of 
 her brain, the construction of her shoulder- 
 blades, and the fact that she buttons her gar- 
 ments "centripetally," while a man buttons 
 his ' ' centrifugally " — whatever that may mean. 
 These important deductions came later. 
 
 96
 
 The Evolution of "Woman" 
 
 sciousness 
 and the 
 Puritans. 
 
 I have always believed that the Puritan in- 
 fluence had much to do with developing the 
 sex-consciousness in woman, first, because Sex^on- 
 one sees it for the first time sharply mani- a'n7the 
 fest, both in men and women, in that period 
 of literary activity immediately following 
 the establishment of the Puritan influence in 
 England; second, because it is impossible 
 that so great a moral change as was wrought 
 by Puritanism could take place among any 
 people without aff'ecting greatly both the 
 character and the position of the women. 
 John Wallington, '< turner in East-cheap," 
 but no less a Puritan gentleman, leaves us a 
 portrait of his mother as that of the model 
 London housewife. He says : 
 
 " She was very loving and obedient to her 
 parents, loving and kind to her husband. 
 Very tender-hearted to her children, loving 
 all that were godly, much disHking the 
 wicked and profane. She was a pattern of 
 sobriety unto many ; very seldom was seen 
 abroad except at church; when others recre- 
 ated themselves at holidays and other times, 
 she would take her needle-work and say, 
 
 97
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 * Here is my recreation.' . . . God had 
 
 given her a pregnant wit and an excellent 
 
 memory. She was very right and perfect in 
 
 all stories of the Bible, likewise in all the 
 
 A model stories of the martyrs, and could readily turn 
 
 woman. to them ; she was also perfect and well-seen 
 
 in the English Chronicles, and in the descent 
 
 A of the Kings of England. She lived in holy 
 
 \ wedlock with her husband twenty years, 
 
 ■■^ wanting but four days." 
 
 Here is the Puritan's ideal woman — the 
 woman of the type that made the mothers 
 of this country — dutiful, chaste, pious, prac- 
 tical, sober-minded, narrow, knowing her 
 Bible and her English History, keeping with- 
 in her walls except when she went to church, 
 neglecting no duty in life, not even that of 
 hating the wicked as much as she loved the 
 righteous. 
 
 At the same time, there was an influence 
 second only to that of Puritanism in develop- 
 ing this sex-consciousness among women — 
 the presence of the exact opposite to the 
 Puritan woman — the woman of the Stuart 
 court, the product, as were the men about 
 
 98
 
 Court. 
 
 The Evolution of "Woman" 
 
 her, of an impassioned revolt against the 
 unnatural severity of the Puritans, among 
 tTiose whose blood still beat out the rhythm 
 of Shakespeare's time. She was clever and The -woman 
 full of affairs, she made or lost the fortunes °stuJrt 
 of public men as she chose, she was well- 
 informed in public matters, and was as gay 
 and witty and licentious as the Puritan wom- 
 an was chaste and decorous. It is incon- 
 ceivable that, with the opportunity so close 
 to him, and with the human nature not all 
 out of him, the male Puritan should not 
 have regarded her as the " awful example " 
 to which he pointed when he wished to 
 inculcate among the females of his house a 
 proper appreciation of the humble and mod- 
 est virtues which adorn her sex. That this 
 would help to intensify the sex-conscious- 
 ness already existing among the women of 
 the time is indisputable, for this particular 
 manifestation lay along the line of morals ; 
 and nowhere in all the kingdoms of thought 
 has sex-consciousness been from the first so 
 insistently, inconsistently, mischievously op- 
 erative as in the domain of morals. 
 
 99
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 Allowing, however, for a difference in 
 judgment in assigning the cause, it is a fact 
 The post- that the whole moral and intellectual atmos- 
 period!* phere of the period following the Puritan 
 influence was full of this subtle miasma. 
 With an eager craving for learning, the 
 brilliant women of that time exhibited a 
 diffidence in acknowledging it almost as rep- 
 rehensible as the masculine prejudice against 
 gratifying it. Mary Fairfax, reasoning that 
 it was unjust that women should have been 
 given a desire for knowledge if it were 
 wrong to acquire it, was, nevertheless, obliged 
 to teach herself Euclid and Greek by stealth, 
 and to depend upon her memory of Euclid 
 for original work at night, since candles 
 were wholly denied her. Mrs. Radcliffe 
 naively confesses, in one of her prefaces, that 
 she was always compelled, when writing, to 
 restrain her sense of humor to a degree con- 
 sistent with feminine propriety. Dr. John- 
 son, at his own suggestion, taught Fanny 
 Burney Latin, but was not willing to face 
 the public opprobrium sure to follow such a 
 heresy, and therefore enjoined her to say 
 
 lOO
 
 The Evolution of "Woman" 
 
 nothing about it — a caution she was quite 
 disposed to heec, >:hink^.r.g, says ]Mr. Seeley, 
 " it was an injury tc be considered a learned 
 person." Hannah Morn's fatlier, a, man of The 
 robust common-sense and much learning, o/some 
 
 /amous 
 
 but, nevertheless, so her biographer tells us, -women. 
 " remarked for his strong dislike of female 
 pedantry," undertook, at his wife's request, 
 to teach little Hannah Latin and mathe- 
 matics. After a short time he became 
 frightened at his own success and dropped 
 the mathematics, keeping on with the Latin 
 only at the passionate importunity of both 
 mother and child. That famous Doctor — 
 and donkey — Dr. Gregory, in his ''Legacy 
 To My Daughters," accepted as a standard 
 work on female propriety in the eighteenth 
 century, commended to girls who were so 
 unfortunate as to be robust by nature such 
 constant simulation of sickly delicacy as was 
 considered necessary to keep up the proper 
 feminine charm. It was he who cautioned 
 all women carefully to hide such good sense 
 and knowledge as they might possess — the 
 first being an undesirable attribute, as assum- 
 
 lOI
 
 Tlje Unquiet Sex 
 
 ing a superiority over the rest of the com- 
 pany j- -the second as .equally undesirable, 
 " becaiase men -generally look with a jealous 
 and- mailigaiaut eye on a w.omar, of great parts 
 and a cultivated understanding." Before 
 the deed, both the right and the ability to do 
 anything worth doing was denied to women, 
 and after the deed, such inordinate praise was 
 bestowed upon them as clearly indicated 
 Standards the subvcrsion of all real standards of criti- 
 "tiorkea/thy. cism to the fact of sex alone. Nowhere 
 was there the atmosphere of healthy uncon- 
 sciousness in which alone the best work of 
 either sex is possible. No wonder that the 
 robust mind of Mary Wollstonecraft turned 
 away from all this unreality with what she 
 called "a sickly qualm." No wonder 
 that, in her lawyer-like " Vindication," a 
 little later, all the force of her intellect 
 was put into one proposition — women were 
 created to be human beings first and women 
 second — a proposition which, like most gen- 
 eralizations, carries with it an over-state- 
 ment which it is easier to make than to 
 qualify. 
 
 I02
 
 The Evolution of "Woman" 
 
 Meantime the same state of affairs was 
 establishing itself in our own country. The 
 women of the Colonies, both north and south, The 
 
 women 
 
 were by no means a set of incapables. 1 hese o/t/u 
 
 A»ierzca>. 
 
 had brought with them the accomplishments Colonies. 
 of the women of Shakespeare's time, and the 
 intellectual restlessness of the periods follow- 
 ing. They not only spun, and wove, and 
 cured the meat, and made the clothing for 
 the family, shoes and hats included, but 
 they discussed theology and state-craft with 
 the men, they kept the dame schools and the 
 family records, and if the spelling and pen- 
 manship of these last impress one to-day 
 with an air of untrammelled originality, in 
 those days, at least, they conformed entirely 
 to the best masculine standard. As soon as 
 there was a literary market in America, the 
 women rushed into it as fast as the men did. 
 Hawthorne, Poe, Drake, Cooper, and Hal- 
 leck are offset by Emma Embury, Mrs. Whit- 
 man, Hannah Gould, Mrs. Child, and Mar- 
 garet Fuller. The fact that the women of 
 that time were shut out of the high schools 
 has been much more emphasized than the 
 
 103
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 fact that without any intellectual training, 
 and with only such opportunities as they 
 could make for themselves, their work is 
 quite worthy to be compared with the best 
 of men. The truth is, the value of mere 
 education is, and always has been, enor- 
 mously overrated in comparison with the 
 value of that original endowment of brains 
 and character which is a gift of birth, and 
 quite as often a gift to women as to men. 
 The American women of the earlier times 
 were as truly the intellectual peers of the 
 men of those times as the average American 
 woman to-day is the superior in education 
 and culture of the average man. 
 
 I am far from thinking that the position 
 
 of the American women at that time was 
 
 ideal, or that there was not room for such 
 
 The warring protest against her legal disabilities 
 
 re»i07>al 
 
 of legal as was made by certain just men and brave 
 
 disabilities. 
 
 women. But all these mjustices were not so 
 much oppressions as survivals — survi_yals_,of 
 a condition of society in which woman was 
 ceffalnly subordinated to man. Still, since 
 this subordination was rooted in the greater 
 
 104
 
 The Evolution of "Woman" 
 
 strength of man, and was, no doubt, the wisest 
 and safest provision in a moving civilization, 
 it hardly seems worth our while to arouse 
 sex-antagonism by hunting for discreditable 
 motives in the riiatter, when those at hand 
 are both creditable and sufficient. 
 
 Great, indeed, was the accomplishment of 
 these men and women in removing many of 
 the legal disabilities of women, and thus 
 breaking the entail that had given the world 
 to man; but other influences have been 
 stronger. So inevitable was the change in The change 
 the position of women from the hour of the o/ women 
 
 ^ ivas inevi- 
 
 invention of the power-loom and the steam- tabu. 
 engine, that they would have arrived at their 
 present place of opportunity — though not so 
 speedily, perhaps — if these earnest reformers 
 had never spoken a word of protest and en- 
 treaty. The typewriter alone has done more 
 for women than the ballot ever will, and the 
 mower-and-reaper, by reducing to one-tenth 
 the number of men employed on the farms, 
 has lightened their labor as no legislation 
 could lighten it. The enormous increase of 
 wealth, and the leisure which wealth buys, 
 
 105
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 What the 
 Civil I Far 
 did /or 
 women. 
 
 the multiplication of periodical literature, 
 and the easy access to good books, the 
 founding of colleges for girls and of hundreds 
 — nay, thousands — of women's clubs and 
 Chautauqua circles, the marvellous political 
 concessions made by men in the last twenty 
 years, all these have been wonderful factors 
 in putting power into the heads and hands 
 of women. And, too, there was the Civil 
 War. In this, the ethical and humanitarian 
 question involved was such as to appeal di- 
 rectly to women. Almost before they knew 
 it they found themselves thinking and speak- 
 ing and writing on public questions. The 
 remarkable success of the Sanitary Commis- 
 sion — which embraced ten or twelve thou- 
 sand bands of inexperienced women, all over 
 the country, in a gigantic business and phil- 
 anthropic enterprise involving millions of 
 dollars, at a time when the credit of the 
 country was most unstable, and when not 
 even the shrewdest statesmen could predict 
 the turn of to-morrow — taught the women 
 of the country what they could do in a bus- 
 iness and executive way. The work of the 
 
 io6
 
 The Evolution of "Woman" 
 
 women-nurses and women-physicians in the 
 hospitals gave them the first knowledge of 
 their power in philanthropy. It is not fanciful 
 to adduce as still another factor in hastening 
 the independence of women, the loss of hun- 
 dreds of thousands of men in the war. Every 
 death meant the loss of a protector to at 
 least one v,-oman, usually to more. If there 
 were children dependent upon her, this often 
 meant to the mother a necessary entrance 
 into the world, to do whatever work was 
 most instantly available ; while the death of 
 every one of the gallant young fellows who 
 kissed their sweethearts' lips and went out to 
 die on the battle-field, robbed one woman's 
 life of the absorbing interests of love, which 
 gone, she turned, as women do, '' when love 
 is done," to the intellectual and philan- 
 thropic life for what consolation it could 
 give. 
 
 Through such complex influences, and many a ■woman's 
 
 . -world is as 
 
 others, has it come about that to-day, m this tuide as a 
 
 country, a woman's work is as wide as a 
 man's. Whether we are personally convinced, 
 
 107 
 
 tnan s.
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 or not, of the economic value and of the so- 
 cial propriety of her participation in all the 
 work of the world, we must admit that there 
 seems to be nothing a woman may wish to 
 do that she has not the fairest chance at trying. 
 Best of all, she may, if she chooses, do her 
 work — as competent and even as remarkable 
 work as she is able to make it — without at- 
 tracting special notice because of her sex. 
 And she may take the rewards of this work, 
 if she will, in just the healthy, unconscious, 
 matter-of-fact way in which men assume that 
 the world belongs to those who can take it, 
 and proceed to take it, making no more ado 
 about the matter. But, strange to say, this 
 is precisely what the woman of to-day does 
 not wish to do. The ' ' stern realities of 
 life" — that phrase so serviceable to men in 
 talking to undergraduates and women — have 
 not taken the sex-nonsense out of her head. 
 She is the victim of a sex-consciousness as 
 acute and distressing as that of Fanny Burney's 
 time, although she wears it as the queen wore 
 her rjie, "with adifference." WhereasFanny 
 Burney and her friends dissembled, with the 
 
 io8
 
 The Evolution of "Woman 
 
 most shocking modesty, their intellectual gifts 
 and graces, the clever woman of to-day is 
 moved to make some special ostentation of 
 them, as if their possession were a matter of 
 dispute or surprise. She makes much of the Modem 
 present activity among women, but the tact scious«ess. 
 which she emphasizes is not the quality of the 
 work, which is the only thing worth com- 
 ment, but the difficulties overcome in doing 
 the work, and the fact that the worker wears 
 skirts instead of trousers, which considerations 
 have no bearing whatever on the case. Fol- 
 lowing the goading of this latter-day sex- 
 consciousness, she and her kind have accom- 
 plished the differentiation and classification 
 of that species known as Woman — with the 
 solemnity of the capital letter. Woman 
 may be defined as women raised to the «"" 
 power. She is a species of high, and heroic, 
 and " emancipated" womankind, as service- 
 able to the sex for the purposes of rhetorical 
 and impassioned address as that gentle and 
 vapid species, " the fair sex," is to men for 
 after-dinner gallantry. She is wise with the 
 wisdom of clubs and conventions, and strong 
 
 109
 
 T})e Unquiet Sex 
 
 The ez'ohi- 
 Hon of 
 "■ Woman: 
 
 Some 
 aspects o/ 
 *' Woman." 
 
 in her inheritance of instincts. There is noth- 
 ing of which she is not sure, except that man 
 was designed by nature to be her helper ; and 
 there is nothing which she will not do for 
 the good of her own species, except do noth- 
 ing. She believes devoutly in a Hereafter 
 for her kind, compared with which the oppor- 
 tunities of the Here-now are as shadows in 
 the night. And about all these things she 
 has altogether too much to say. The wide- 
 awake editor insistently presents considera- 
 tions of public affairs from " The Woman's 
 Page " and " Her Point of View," as if the 
 structure of the feminine brain were such as 
 to necessitate a woman's looking at things 
 in an inverted and peculiar way, as Timothy 
 Tittlebat saw the landscape, looking through 
 his legs. 
 
 In recent issues of Poole's " Index " I find 
 whole pages devoted to Her consideration. 
 She is discussed as a Smuggler and as a School 
 Director, as a Detective and as a Drunkard, 
 as a Public Servant and as a Guardian Angel, 
 as a Tactician and as a Merchant, as a Man- 
 nish Maiden and as a Sceptic. Somebody 
 
 no
 
 T})e Evolution of "Woman 
 
 finds things to say about ' ' Women as Wom- 
 en," somebody else retorts with "Women 
 as They Are Supposed to Be," and still 
 another gives the tail of the argument a last 
 and, presumably, authoritative twist in the 
 discussion of ' ' Women as They Are. ' ' 
 
 Nor, when ink fails her, does interest flag. 
 She goes into councils and congresses for 
 the purposes of self-celebration, and, an- 
 nouncing as her motto " Not Women, but 
 Woman," restricts her study of the world's 
 interests to such aspects as are either direct- 
 ly affecting women, or directly affected by 
 them. Into the ' ' Woman ' ' side of all these 
 subjects she burrows, with beautiful uncon- 
 sciousness that by so doing she is defeating 
 the very purpose for which these women's 
 gatherings are called, namely, " the ameli- 
 oration of the condition of women." 
 
 Whatever amelioration the condition of ''The 
 
 ameliora- 
 
 women may need to-day, it is not to be ac- Uon o/tiu 
 
 condition of 
 
 complished by going into rhetorical or ex- -women." 
 ecutive session about it. The individual 
 wrongs from which individual women are 
 suffering are not, alas ! to be righted by 
 
 III
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 papers in congresses, and the sex-wrongs 
 from which all women are supposed to be suf- 
 fering are only aggravated by being made the 
 subject of excessive consideration. Take, for 
 example, the one wrong of which women 
 complain with most sharpness and most jus- 
 tice — unequal payment for equal work. Any- 
 thing that helps to emphasize the fact that 
 women are new-comers in any field of work 
 tends directly to lower the wages of that work; 
 anything that helps to arouse the prejudices 
 of men, and so keeps up unfair discrimina- 
 tion against women-workers, tends directly 
 to depress wages ; anything that serves to 
 obtrude the fact that women are not equal 
 to men in units of horse-power is sure to 
 Nature's lowcr wages. The fact is that, since nature 
 
 argument i i r i i i rr > 
 
 in the mat- hersclf has had some arguments to offer m 
 the matter, women-workers are at a consid- 
 erable physical disadvantage in comparison 
 with men, and the less they say about it the 
 better. 
 
 So it is with other favorite themes of dis- 
 cussion among women. The less said, for 
 example, in declaration of women's rights 
 
 112
 
 TJoe Evolution of " Woman " 
 
 and in glorification of her acliievements the 
 better for both rights and achievements : for 
 to declare a right implies a question of it, 
 and ostentatiously to parade ability is not 
 to dignify it. The strongest assertion of a 
 right is the assumption of it, and the only 
 proof of equality of work is equality of work. 
 Now, all these and many other things like 
 them are the stuff of which women's congres- 
 sional discussions are made, and they all 
 serve charmingly to keep alive that intangible 
 something called the "Woman Question," of is there a 
 which men are already very tired, and of Question)' 
 which women ought to be. For men have 
 risen, with the wonderful multiplication with- 
 in the last few years of powers and activities 
 common to both sexes, to recognize the fact 
 that, since work is a neuter noun, where 
 woman the worker is concerned, the chiv- 
 alry of disregarding her sex is greater than 
 the chivalry of recognizing it. Both men 
 and women were equally culpable in the 
 sex-consciousness of two centuries ago. To- 
 day it is women, and not men, who are 
 responsible for it. 
 
 "3
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 It is easy to recall the national illustration 
 of this at the time of the World's Fair, when, 
 quite ignoring the fact that the World's Fair 
 was an exhibition not of workers but of 
 work and of its results, the women of the 
 country rapturously segregated their exhibits 
 in a building designed by a woman, built by 
 a woman, decorated by women, and matron- 
 ized by "lady managers." Now, if the 
 work of women, judged by the standards of 
 work alone, was of sufficient dignity and 
 gravity to entitle it to recognition in a rep- 
 Tke segre- rcscntative exhibition like this, then, by all 
 womeJ{ means, it should have been put in its proper 
 place, alongside the work of men, to win 
 acknowledgment on its merits alone. The 
 fact that it was the work of a woman had no 
 more real significance than the color of the 
 hair, or the shape of the face, of the woman 
 who did the work. To make a separate ex- 
 hibit of women's work does no honor to 
 women, no matter how good the work may 
 be, for it seems to make a marvel of what is 
 no marvel at all, namely, that women are as 
 capable as men in most things, more capa- 
 
 114 
 
 ■work
 
 The Evolution of "Woman' 
 
 takes. 
 
 ble than men in many things, and utterly 
 incapable of a few things that men do very 
 well. Since, therefore, a clever woman is and iu mis- 
 hardly to be regarded as a precocity or 
 monstrosity, like a trained monkey or a 
 "dog walking on his hind legs," the fact 
 that she has painted a remarkable picture, or 
 embroidered a wonderful tapestry, or in- 
 vented a churn operated by electricity, or 
 chiselled a piece of marble into poetic form, 
 offers no warrant for segregation on the part 
 of women-workers such as this exhibition 
 displayed. Even the imposing collection of 
 books, written exclusively by women and 
 kept with such devotional spirit in the 
 library in the woman's building, had no sig- 
 nificance, unless one sees a fine humor about 
 it all ; for if this collection were not worth 
 making for its intrinsic value, it certainly 
 does not redound to the glory of womankind 
 that it should have been made for any other 
 reason. If the genius of the writer and the 
 understanding of the people be not enough 
 to keep a book from perishing, no antiseptic 
 of sex can do so.
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 The fact that the "Woman's Exhibition" 
 misrepresented clever women by representing 
 them as precocities is not the only objection 
 to it. It is impossible that any display of ma- 
 terial results, such as was there offered, should 
 do justice to the most important and influ- 
 ential work of women. For this work deals 
 The real with things Spiritual, and not with things 
 '^uomen. temporal. It is social — in the broad sense 
 of the word — and is what the short-sighted 
 economists call unproductive. For, with all 
 their wide opportunities for work outside the 
 home, the majority of women elect the work 
 that keeps them within its walls. They 
 neither paint pictures, nor carve statues, nor 
 write books, nor make inventions, but they 
 rear their sons in the ways of upright men 
 and teach their daughters the glory of woman- 
 liness. They are the friends and counsellors 
 of their husbands. They do the 
 
 "little kindnesses 
 Which most leave undone, or despise, 
 For naught that sets one heart at ease, 
 And giveth happiness or peace, 
 Is low-esteemed in their eyes." 
 
 ii6
 
 do) 
 
 The Evolution of " Woman " 
 
 These are the women who have what is 
 asked for in the wisdom of the old hymn, 
 " a heart at leisure from itself to soothe and 
 sympathize." And can there be a more 
 heavenly freedom than this freedom of mind Real free- 
 and heart from themselves ? For, after all, I 
 suspect, it is never life that we tire of, but 
 only ourselves ; the little, petty, tiresome, 
 egotistic selves to which we are bound and 
 with which we drag along a tormented and 
 retarded living. This is not sentiment only ; 
 it is a great spiritual truth that the individ- 
 ual never reaches its fullest development until 
 it ceases to care for self-expression in desir- 
 ing to show forth that something beyond 
 itself which is the Universal Self. More- 
 over, the growth of the individual is best ac- 
 complished by the same carelessness of self — 
 a trustful carelessness, after all, since it leaves 
 the matter of growth where it belongs, with 
 Nature, because it knows that growth is her 
 affair, not ours. When the individual seeks 
 too anxiously to work out his own devel- 
 opment and perfection, nature steps aside 
 and lets him do the work. The result is an 
 
 117
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 Differen- 
 tiation is 
 not progres- 
 sion. 
 
 artifice, not the type; decadence, not pro- 
 gression. For, just as we may throw any 
 part of the organism out of health by con- 
 centrating attention upon it, so, by self-con- 
 sciousness we may over-individualize our- 
 selves into the decadent, who understands 
 and is happy only in differentiation. The 
 instinct of children is better wisdom; noth- 
 ing makes a child so unhappy as to be in 
 some way unlike his playmates in those ex- 
 ternals which he understands ; a difference 
 in his clothes, in his speech, in the way his 
 hair is cut, gives him the most acute dis- 
 tress. He seems to have a glimpse of the 
 truth that the universal is the normal, that 
 the type is the only thing that endures ; if 
 there were words for his wisdom, he would 
 perhaps tell us that self-consciousness is the 
 creaking of machinery that is out of order. 
 
 In any gathering of women for Woman's 
 sake, the phrase " the emancipation of Wom- 
 an " sounds like a recurrent Wagnerian motif 
 through all the storm and stress. But the 
 real emancipation of Woman will come only 
 when she is emancipated from herself. 
 
 ii8
 
 THE CASE OF MARIA
 
 THE CASE OF MARIA 
 
 M' 
 
 Y friend Mrs. Talbot recently became 
 the proud and happy mistress of a 
 most perfect maid. She was trim, respect- 
 ful, not too pretty, quiet, and exquisite in Theregui- 
 the performance of all her duties. For perfect 
 weeks Mrs. Talbot's drawing-room had an 
 air of radiant cleanliness ; the brasses shone 
 like gold, no breath nor film of dust clouded 
 the deep pools of color in the mahogany, 
 while the subtle blending of respect and ap- 
 preciation in Maria's table-service was such 
 as to set the most timid guest at ease. As 
 time went on there appeared no unpleasant 
 train of social-minded friends, or relatives 
 with alarming and recurrent diseases. Maria 
 seldom went out, and took her mistress's in- 
 terests on her shoulders in a capable and 
 motherly way. The problem of living seemed 
 
 121
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 solved at last ; and Mrs. Talbot made whole 
 the shattered remains of her faith in human 
 nature and assumed the complacent air of 
 one whose virtues have finally met their just 
 reward. But Mr. Talbot was sceptical, and 
 was heard openly to declare that the situa- 
 tion was quite beyond belief, and that he ex- 
 pected the entire Talbot family would be 
 found strangled in their beds some fine morn- 
 ing. For four months this state of bliss en- 
 dured. Meanwhile a certain joyous indif- 
 ference on the part of Mrs. Talbot to the 
 sufferings of others was a sad trial to her less 
 fortunate friends. Then the blow fell. 
 For several evenings the sound of a banjo, 
 
 Playing ike not played by Marion Talbot's accomplished 
 
 banjo is not i i /- ■> ^ • ■< • 
 
 oneoftium. fingcrs, souudcd up from the kitchen mto the 
 drawing-room. It was no light, pleasing 
 tinkle, either, but the solid, deliberate, two- 
 toned plunkings of an instrument with un- 
 tuned strings swept by unaccustomed fingers. 
 It was Maria. Maria had bought a banjo 
 and was practising o' nights ; moreover, 
 Maria was asking to go out once a week to 
 take a lesson of a " professor." Mr. Talbot 
 
 122
 
 The Case of Maria 
 
 laughed and advised compromise, but Mrs. 
 Talbot and Miss Talbot were firm. Banjo- 
 playing by the parlor-maid was not compati- 
 ble with the dignity of the family. Maria's 
 services were quite perfect, without including 
 any knowledge of musical instruments. " I 
 play the banjo myself," cried Miss Talbot, 
 hotly, "and, besides, how ridiculous we 
 should become in everybody's eyes if we were 
 continually kept explaining to our friends 
 that we had a superior kind of parlor-maid 
 whom we allowed to play the banjo in the 
 evening ! ' ' 
 
 Mrs. Talbot interviewed Maria ; then wept 
 the tears of one who feels herself to be in- 
 
 deed the plaything of fate, for it was aut Ant banjo 
 
 • 1 in- • -r. 1 aut nullus. 
 
 banjo, aut fiidlus with Maria. By much sav- 
 ing and self-denial (she supported a mother 
 and two sisters out of her wages), she had at 
 last accomplished the dearest hope of her life, 
 and was in no mind to be thwarted now. 
 So Maria went, dangling the banjo-case re- 
 spectfully but firmly. And the Talbots be- 
 came as the rest of us once more. 
 
 It is only women who are capable of up- 
 
 123
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 holding principles by such heroic sacrifices 
 as these. I suspect, too, it is only women 
 who are able to discern the existence of a 
 principle inimical to society in such a situ- 
 ation ; for while Mrs. Talbot and Marion 
 were unanimous and unequivocal in their re- 
 Mr. Talbot scntmcnt, Mr. Talbot was openly perplexed, 
 ^pieZd. and betrayed secret sympathies with Maria. 
 He seemed to catch an occasional sniff of a 
 principle somewhere, latent but violated, and 
 it made him uneasy. " There is something 
 wrong," he declared, "when a girl, simply 
 because she engages to do certain duties in a 
 house, is not allowed the gratification of her 
 single impulse toward an elevation of mind 
 or taste. I should like to see myself setting 
 up a rule to prevent my men playing the 
 banjo after mill hours — or the jews-harp, 
 either.' ' ' ' Then, ' ' asked Mrs. Talbot, lofti- 
 ly, "do I understand that you would accept 
 the organization of a brass band among our 
 domestics, for evening rehearsals in the 
 kitchen ? ' ' Men are notoriously averse to 
 the argunientum ad hominem, therefore the 
 conversation languished at once. It was a 
 
 124
 
 The Case of Maria 
 
 great pity, because probably Mr. Talbot's in- 
 tellect, progressing toward the next step of 
 the proposition, would have hit upon what 
 seems to me the kernel of the whole difficulty 
 in this seemingly hopeless, inextricable, deli- 
 cately complicated problem — the labor ques- 
 tion in our kitchens. 
 
 For that is what it really is, call it what 
 you will — "the housekeeping problem," 
 *' domestic service," or "the servant ques- The labor 
 tion." It is no special and peculiar problem our kUch- 
 
 which attends naturally upon the existence 
 of a home, as fungi spring up in a favorable 
 soil. It is an integral part of that great la- 
 bor question which is going to remain with 
 us, "until we have shaken off the dead 
 hand of feudalism which still presses with 
 crushing weight upon the people through 
 almost all the form sand institutions of the 
 present day society." And it is more hope- 
 less and distressing at the present day than 
 any other form of the labor problem, be- 
 cause it conforms least to the natural laws 
 which are allowed to regulate, more or less 
 freely, labor outside the home. 
 
 125 
 
 ens.
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 I have no mind to harrow up the minds of 
 my readers with any explication of the miser- 
 ies and mysteries that confront the average 
 Definition housckecper in the daily maintenance of a 
 
 of a, hero- 
 ine, simple but comfortable existence for her fam- 
 ily ; as for herself, an existence at all seems 
 a struggle which at times she would gladly 
 give over. One might define a heroine as 
 the average American woman who does her 
 own housekeeping. But some hint of the 
 unnatural and unhappy state of affairs exist- 
 ing at present may be deduced from the con- 
 sideration of two economic facts. First, 
 woman is, by nature, the home-founder and 
 the home-maker. This is not intended as 
 an assertion of personal belief, but as a state- 
 ment of scientific fact. It was woman — not 
 man — who opened the industrial world \ it 
 was woman who made the first rude dwell- 
 ings, and dressed skins, and wove textiles 
 for clothing. It was woman, and not man, 
 who made the first fire, and the first utensils 
 for cooking, and the first rude tools for in- 
 dustrial ends. All her activities clustered 
 about the hearth and ministered to the 
 
 126
 
 The Case of Maria 
 
 home. If the woman and the work had not 
 reacted upon each other so that, to-day, 
 women should be by nature home-makers 
 and home-lovers, there are still depths for 
 the scientists to sound in the working of 
 heredity and of natural selection. And yet, 
 — here is my second fact — the enormous 
 piles of stone and brick rapidly filling the 
 choice plots of ground in our large cities 
 and shutting out the light of heaven with 
 their gabled tops, are mute if not magnifi- 
 cent witness to the fact that the investment 
 of capital is all against the perpetuation of 
 the separate home. The shrewd modern in- The opinion 
 vestor is willing to put hundreds of thou- ''fri\'nvef-' 
 sands against hundreds of dollars that (for 
 his lifetime at least) women are going to 
 prefer the ease of the apartment hotel to the 
 separate house, with its privacy, its o^^^l 
 table, and — alas — its own service. 
 
 I do not believe that this new economic 
 recognition of a serious change in certain 
 social conditions means that the constitution 
 or the tastes of women have undergone any 
 radical change, but only that the matter 
 
 127 
 
 tor.
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 neivspapers 
 say 
 
 of founding a home has become so difficult 
 and so complex that ordinary strength and 
 courage fail before it. The love for the 
 home is as abiding as ever, but the conduct 
 of the home is a problem that seems yearly- 
 more hopeless of solution ; so, many a wom- 
 an, hiding her defeat under a brave front 
 of preference, sells her house, stores her de- 
 feated household gods, and retreats into the 
 hired splendors of the apartment hotel. 
 What the Then the newspapers and reviews have long 
 articles written, proving that the increase of 
 wealth and the modern love of luxury and 
 display are doing away with all disposition 
 toward that simple domestic life which was 
 the intent of the founders of the republic, 
 and which must ever be the bulwark of de- 
 mocracy. 
 
 Despite the popular theory which origi- 
 nates the housekeeping problem in the con- 
 fusions and perplexities of the present social 
 condition, the truth is that the labor problem 
 in the home is older than this generation, 
 older than this country, and is, in fact, ex- 
 actly as old as human nature itself. There 
 
 128
 
 The Case of Maria 
 
 is a great deal of very comforting reading for 
 housekeepers in Mrs. Earle's " Colonial 
 Dames and Goodwives," where good Chris- 
 topher Marshal, a well-to-do Quaker of Tkegues- 
 Philadelphia, has kindly preserved for us neZ^onef'^ 
 some record of his wife's afflictions with 
 " the girl Poll " and one Antony, a " char- 
 acter worthy of Shakespeare's comedies." 
 A generation later Mrs. Trollope found other 
 delicious episodes to record, when she turned 
 her keen English eyes on " the great experi- 
 ment " in this country, with Charlotte and 
 Nancy as its special exponents. Nor does 
 the present situation in England appear to 
 be any less desperate than our own, if one 
 may judge from the way in which the Eng- 
 lish mistresses are rushing into hysterical 
 print in the "ladies' newspapers" to dis- 
 cuss these ' ' tyrants. ' ' Says one writer : 
 "They invade our drawing-rooms and bou- 
 doirs, and as surely as two or three women 
 are gathered together, so surely will domes- 
 tic service be one of the inevitable topics of 
 conversation. As to taking up a newspaper 
 or a magazine without meeting that domestic 
 
 129
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 old woman of the sea — it is a sheer impossi- 
 bility." 
 
 The problem, you see, is not peculiar to 
 the complexity of modern living, nor even 
 norpecui- to a couHtry whcre political institutions of 
 ^^untry" theoretical equality are based on a state of 
 most glaring social inequality. It is to be 
 found wherever the relations of dom.estic 
 service are established, and it has been, and 
 is, universally a problem, because its con- 
 ditions cross-cut the first instincts of that 
 perdurable human nature, which is in us 
 now as it was in the beginning, and ever 
 shall be, world without end. The relation 
 is fundamentally wrong, and where prin- 
 ciples are wrong, details can never be ad- 
 justed. 
 
 The confusion begins when Maria and her 
 mistress meet in that wonderful arena of 
 ignorance and misunderstanding — the intel- 
 ligence office. 
 
 The mistress does all the talking. 
 
 I am aware that certain dogged writers of 
 humor are in the habit of making this appear 
 
 130
 
 The Case of Maria 
 
 quite otherwise, but my own observations 
 bear out my statement. Maria usually man- Maria and 
 ages to stipulate for her " every other Sun- eVinthefn- 
 day" and her "■ every other Thursday," but offi'd^"'^' 
 for the rest, she gives herself unquestioning, 
 unbargaining, into the employ of an unknown 
 mistress, who seldom informs her definitely 
 just what is expected of her, and who coldly 
 repels any attempt on Maria's part to find 
 out for herself. Yet I have never been able 
 to understand why, in a contract supposed 
 to be of equal interest, all the right to self- 
 satisfaction should be on one side. I see no 
 reason why Maria should not ask questions 
 of Mrs. Talbot, as well as Mrs. Talbot of 
 Maria. Nor have my own experiences led 
 me to believe that in such an encounter 
 Maria is not as likely to behave herself with 
 propriety and respect as Maria's employer; 
 and so far from decrying the disposition on 
 the part of a servant to ascertain somewhat 
 definitely beforehand just what is expected 
 of her, I regard it as quite worthy of respect 
 and attention. " Do you allow servants to 
 ask you questions in an intelligence office ? " 
 
 131
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 — some Mrs. Talbot is going to spear me with 
 this question. 
 
 Dear madam, I urge them to do so. and 
 I find that my self-respect is not half as much 
 involved in the consequent catechising as my 
 One's sense scnse of humor. Linda Olsen once asked 
 Ynvoived. me if I was an "easy mad lady," with a dis- 
 arming dimple in either pink cheek. But 
 what would you ? I had just asked her if 
 she had a '' beau " — the single word which, 
 it seems, covers all tender relations, in good 
 Swede-English. 
 
 " But you had to know about that," says 
 Mrs. Talbot, ''if you were going to take 
 her into your home." Indeed I did. I 
 trust that nothing but the severest necessity 
 could have induced me to such an un- 
 warranted impertinence. But I am sorry 
 I had to. 
 
 Now, supposing Mrs. Talbot to have satis- 
 fied herself fairly that Maria is a possibility 
 — a wise woman never affirms more to her- 
 self — and Maria to have entered upon her 
 new labors. Mrs. Talbot is kindly, and 
 Maria has privileges which are intended to 
 
 132
 
 The Case of Maria 
 
 make her very grateful ; but the truth is 
 Maria has no liberty. She wears the clothes 
 her mistress prescribes ; she sees her friends 
 when and where her mistress allows ; she 
 eats, sleeps, and moves always under direc- Maria is 
 
 ahvays un- 
 
 tion. And she does this for twenty-four derdirec- 
 
 hours out of the twenty-four ! She may not 
 always be under orders, but she is always 
 under authority. Just here lies the differ- 
 ence between organized labor outside the 
 home and organized labor within it. In the 
 former, are provided such conditions and 
 terminations of his labor as give the man 
 some chance to emerge from the worker. 
 The poorest puddler in the mill may have his 
 own hours, his home, his family, his associ- 
 ates, his pipe, his glass of beer. Maria has 
 nothing. She has neither home, nor family, 
 nor associates, in any real sense. She has 
 no hour in the day that she can count upon 
 as being wholly, entirely, inevitably her 
 own, beyond the sudden call of duty. She 
 may not even have her banjo. 
 
 Now, I am not going to write myself 
 down so incapable a housewife as to say that 
 
 133 
 
 Hon.
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 I should have decided differently from Mrs. 
 Talbot in the momentous matter of the ban- 
 jo. I, too, should have put ashes on my 
 head and bade Maria go, if play she must ; 
 but I think I should have grace given to 
 me to see, even in that bitter hour, that 
 Maria was no transgressing culprit, but an 
 A case of equal martyr with myself, and that both of 
 
 double mar- . . - • r i 
 
 iyrdom. US wcrc the victmis of certain false econom- 
 ic conditions which brought it about that 
 Maria's ideas as to the pursuit of happiness 
 for herself, were incompatible with my ideas 
 as to my pursuit of happiness for myself; 
 and that I, being in the position of advan- 
 tage (economically, not ethically, you un- 
 derstand), had my way. The ethics of the 
 situation were perfectly sound. For cer- 
 tainly the proposition is true that no soci- 
 ety, or class of society, can be founded on 
 any permanent basis so long as any elevating 
 aspiration is held to be reprehensible ; hu- 
 man progress has been entirely a matter of 
 individual aspiration. Just as certainly is it 
 true that if Maria chose to voice the yearn- 
 ing of her soul to higher things, in the 
 
 134
 
 The Case of Maria 
 
 plunking of the banjo (grotesque as that was, 
 and no doubt a waste of time and money be- 
 sides), her right to express herself in this 
 way was as undoubted as the right of Mrs. 
 Talbot to pierce the misty "Twilight of the 
 Gods," if her aspirations carried her so far. 
 But, you see, the practical outcome of it all 
 was that Maria's aspirations interfered with 
 the comfort of the family. Therefore, Ma- 
 ria's relations to the family ceased. The 
 flaw was economic, since all possible pro- 
 vision was made for the independence of 
 the employer, and none whatever for the in- 
 dependence of the employe. Maria should 
 have had some chance at her own idea of 
 life and at the things that are more than Maria 
 
 . ■••■. 1 111 fr 1 should have 
 
 life — that is, Maria should have a life and a an/eout- 
 
 chance to live it, outside the family home, 
 where the comfort of a Talbot would in no 
 way interfere with her aspirations. 
 
 Not long ago there came into my hands, 
 as the result of one of the popular " discus- 
 sions" in the daily newspapers, over one 
 thousand letters from working women all 
 
 135 
 
 side.
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 over the country. The question asked was, 
 A popular " Is the shop or factory preferable to domes- 
 
 newspaper 
 
 discussion, tic service, and why ? ' ' The answers, Hke 
 the question, may have been somewhat un^ 
 grammatical, but they were interesting and 
 most significant. Two-thirds of the writers 
 advocated the greater desirability of factory 
 or shop work, and the reasons given therefor 
 were summed up as follows : 
 
 Working hours are fixed in factory and 
 shop work, and extra work is paid for. 
 
 The worker is in the way of advancement, 
 if capable. 
 
 She receives orders from one person. 
 
 Outside her working hours, the worker's 
 life is no concern of her employers. She has 
 entire liberty to see her friends when and where 
 she Hkes; she can read, study, improve herself 
 in any way she chooses ; she can go out when 
 she likes and come in when she likes. 
 
 She does not lose caste through her em- 
 ployment. 
 
 All these are intelligent, wholesome, hu- 
 man reasons, and altogether to the credit of 
 the girls who gave them. 
 
 136
 
 The Case of Maria 
 
 On the other hand, the house-workers set 
 forth their advantages as follows : 
 
 Their work is more healthful than factory 
 or shop work. 
 
 More money can be saved. 
 
 House-workers do not lose caste in the 
 mind of any sensible person. (This some- 
 what hysterically.) 
 
 Given a good mistress, they have a better 
 home, kinder treatment, and as many priv- 
 ileges as any other workers. 
 
 All of which is undoubtedly true, but the 
 last statement begs the entire question. The 
 rights and privileges of any class of workers 
 ought not to be a matter of entire com- 
 plaisance on one side, and of dependence on 
 the other, and domestic service should be no 
 exception. The fact that it is an exception 
 is, I believe, what is keeping the most in- 
 telligent class of girls out of our homes, thus 
 constantly levelling downward the compe- 
 tence and desirability of the serving-class. 
 I have read many papers on the domestic 
 situation, written by many mistresses, and 
 nearly all of them relegate the millennium of 
 
 137
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 housekeeping to that glorious but dim future 
 Tke muien- when we are all alike to discover the dignity 
 ^housekee/- of household labor, and the possibility of its 
 wonderful elevation to a science and an art. 
 But no labor is dignified unless the dignity 
 of the worker be preserved, and no worker 
 can retain his dignity if his individual lib- 
 erty is entirely ignored. This, I think, is 
 at base the reason why domestic servants 
 lose caste — a fact which most mistresses are 
 sturdy to deny, but which they may as well 
 admit, since the domestics themselves accept 
 it. "I can't let him come and see me, 
 ma'am," said my Amelia, naively, in ad- 
 mitting the tender relation. " He don't 
 know I am a living-out girl. He couldn't 
 have me, if he did. His folks wouldn't let 
 him." 
 
 Human nature has wonderfully sly ways of 
 getting at the truth of things, and the subtle 
 sense of disapproval which is at the bottom 
 of the recognition of social loss in domestic 
 service comes, I believe, from a subcon- 
 scious but acute recognition of the fact that 
 at present it demands a greater giving up of 
 
 X38
 
 The Case of Maria 
 
 personal liberty than is consistent with per- 
 sonal dignity. No wonder the American 
 girl who goes out to service is nearly as ex- 
 tinct as the buffalo ! The American girl has ivhy 
 
 . A til erica 
 
 the disadvantage of brains. She sees things e^ru are 
 
 ° _ not in set 
 
 clearly, directly, without reference to tradi- ^''ce. 
 tion or twaddle. She knows that domestic 
 service, although the best paid, is the most 
 undesirable work she can undertake, because 
 it brings with it none of the human rewards 
 that are better than money. Not one of the 
 considerations which impel girls to choose 
 shop-work, comes in to make her work dig- 
 nified and in conformity with the laws of 
 human nature. As things are now, if I 
 were a working-girl, as I am an American, 
 I would never go out to service ; never, 
 never, never ! 
 
 And neither would you, if you were to 
 tell the honest truth. 
 
 In a most sincere and convincing paper, 
 in an equally sincere and helpful little book 
 by Ethel Davis, is a paragraph into which is 
 compressed so much truth, historical and so- 
 
 139
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 ciological, and so much practical good 
 sense, that I want to transcribe it here. 
 
 " From the eighth to the fourteenth cen- 
 tury men grappled with these same difificul- 
 Tke history tics In the relations between the nobility and 
 
 ■zvkich is re- , . . . , , , 
 
 Peatiagit- the tradcs, beginning the struggle a thou- 
 
 self. 
 
 sand years before women are ready to ac- 
 knowledge that such difficulties have a right 
 to exist. In the time of Charlemagne every 
 noble of importance had within his personal 
 control artisans of all trades needed to sup- 
 ply his daily wants. Each chateau was a 
 miniature city, within the precincts of which 
 dwelt armorers, carriage-builders, saddlers, 
 spinners, carpenters, and other laborers. 
 Many of the relations between these workers 
 and the seigniors who protected, controlled, 
 and supported them in exchange for their 
 services, were the same as between the 
 household servants and their employers of 
 to-day, and the desire for personal freedom 
 and the opportunity to develop their in- 
 dividuality grew fierce and bitter on the 
 part of the artisans. In those feudal sur- 
 roundings the power of the nobility was 
 
 140
 
 The Case of Maria 
 
 strong, and the fight for freedom which was 
 begun at that time lasted six hundred 
 years. Through the clever use of the one 
 liberty that these workmen possessed — that 
 of choosing their own masters — and the or- 
 ganizing of guilds, they slowly won their 
 personal independence in spite of the power- 
 ful resistance of the nobility. Besides the 
 arguments of arms and oppression, they had 
 to fight those we now hear advanced in 
 favor of the condition of domestic service. 
 They could have better homes, better pro- 
 tection, and the assistance of the class in 
 power, if they remained in the chateau. 
 They preferred hunger, oppression, and suf- 
 fering with the freedom to struggle for a po- 
 sition that would secure to their children or Thcpur- 
 their children's children the precious right piness. 
 to the ' pursuit of happiness.' " 
 
 Out of this, as we think of it, emerges 
 this truth : We women have been weary- 
 ing ourselves in the rush after a superficial 
 knowledge of many things, and particularly 
 of the subjects that have specially engaged 
 the attention of men, in order that we might 
 
 141
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 become their political peers and reform their 
 political abuses. Yet in the management of 
 the one kingdom that has been ours from the 
 beginning, we are harking back to the Mid- 
 dle Ages and the institutions which modern 
 society cast aside long ago. Like the king in 
 Queens who the story, our queens want to "go out govern- 
 
 gO out P'OV- •■LIT 
 
 ernini. \Xig by the day or week," while the kingdom 
 that has always been theirs rests in its prim- 
 itive state of anarchy and disorganization. 
 
 All the more to be deplored is this con- 
 dition of affairs, because we are never done 
 talking about it. We have been fond of 
 presenting ourselves (with that taste for 
 mart}Tdom Avhich most good women pos- 
 sess) as the helpless creatures of a condition 
 already hopeless, and passing on into de- 
 spair. Yet we have never given the situation 
 the small amount of quiet thought necessary 
 to discover that the solution of the problem 
 lies, not in the endless adjustment and re- 
 adjustment of personal and sentimental de- 
 tails, but is to be accomplished by the pa- 
 tient, careful study of that political economy 
 and sociology with which we have been 
 
 142
 
 The Case of Maria 
 
 reason 
 why women 
 shoul, 
 vote. 
 
 wrestling for the sake of outside reforms. 
 It might appear to a profane observer of the 
 situation, that, until women shall have given One 
 
 iv/iy ivoyn 
 
 evidence of some small political sagacity, shouldn't 
 some desire for reform, and a very little ca- 
 pacity for organization in that department of 
 the world's sociology with which the home 
 is concerned, there is no glaring injustice in 
 denying them a share in the government of 
 the country. 
 
 It is not to be denied that the labor 
 
 problem in the home is peculiarly difficult 
 
 and complicated, since its conditions vary 
 
 somewhat with the habits and requirements 
 
 of each household ; but that it is anything 
 
 more than difficult — that it is unsolvable — I 
 
 do not for a moment believe. The trouble 
 
 is that each mistress insists upon looking 
 
 at it as an aggregation of individual cases, 
 
 amorphous and meaningless as a snow-bank, 
 
 instead of understanding that were a few 
 
 fundamental principles of economics ap- 
 
 pHed, the entire situation would fall into 
 
 structure and significance. 
 
 143
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 When I first began to think upon this 
 subject, I found myself settling steadily 
 toward two conclusions : first, that the 
 existing antagonism between mistress and 
 The begin- maid had its origin, not in natural ill-will 
 lagfnfsmT nor in class antagonism, but in wrong eco- 
 nomic conditions ; second, that the funda- 
 mental economic wrong was in the housing 
 of the employed with the employers — with 
 the constant action and reaction of the one 
 class upon the other. After ten years' think- 
 ing upon the subject, I still think so. The 
 entire situation must be " hatched over and 
 hatched different," after Mrs. Poyser's radi- 
 cal methods of reform. The housewife is 
 distinctly in competition to-day with other 
 employers of labor. Why not take a leaf 
 out of our enemy's book, and secure for our 
 own employes the advantages that other la- 
 bor offers? Given this change, nearly all of 
 the advantages claimed by the shop or fac- 
 tory girls for their work would be secured. 
 Working hours would be fixed, and extra 
 work would be paid for. Outside of work- 
 ing hours the girl would have that right to 
 
 144
 
 The Case of Maria 
 
 live after her own ideas of happiness, which 
 should be hers as much as ours. She could 
 have that intercourse with her own class Therightto 
 
 ,., 1 T-T ,.,..,, happiness. 
 
 which can never be denied to the individual 
 without loss, and, having equal liberty with 
 other classes of workers, she would no longer 
 lose caste. 
 
 I am not so filled with the new wine of 
 theory as to believe that such readjustment 
 of the family living as would be required 
 by so radical a change in domestic service 
 could be easily brought about. It would 
 require, first of all, careful study and prep- 
 aration ; second, cautious and concerted ex- 
 ecution on the part of mistresses ; and third, 
 fourth, and fifth, intelhgence. But why not 
 make ourselves and our own needs the ob- 
 jects of some of our reformatory and philan- 
 thropic zeal for a little while? Why not 
 put this in our list of ' ' Things to be Tried ' ' 
 along with " Municipal Reform " and ''Anti- 
 Vivisection " and ''Flower Missions" and 
 ' 'Health Protection ? ' ' Surely no class of the 
 poor need attention more than the poor 
 mistresses, and no condition of municipal 
 
 145
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 mismanagement is more notorious or more 
 desperate than the mismanagement of our 
 kitchens. 
 
 In many ways the times are ripe for such 
 an experiment. The number of finished 
 products brought daily into our homes, as 
 the result of outside labor, is constantly in- 
 creasing. No mistress, however conserva- 
 tive and hearth-bound, now disregards the 
 advantage and propriety of having her laun- 
 dry "done out" and much of her baking 
 brought in. She buys a great deal of the 
 family clothing ready-made, and takes no 
 The advan- Tcproach to hcrself thcrcfor. She ''sends 
 peseni. '^ out " for a cook by the hour, and a second 
 waitress for her dinners ; perhaps her win- 
 dows are cleaned, her silver polished, and 
 her bric-a-brac dusted by outsiders. Her 
 charwoman is always an outsider, as is, of- 
 ten, her furnace-man, her gardener, and her 
 coachman. The substitution of gas and 
 electric cooking for the old-fashioned range, 
 by giving us better results with less time and 
 labor, makes the possibility of organizing 
 
 146
 
 The Case of Maria 
 
 South. 
 
 domestic labor immeasurably greater. I 
 believe changes can be made by which the 
 cook, the waitress, the nurse, and even the 
 maid-of-all-work may go out of our homes 
 after a fixed number of hours, and be free to 
 live their own lives, while the lighter ser- 
 vices of the evening can be provided for, if 
 desired, by a single servant whose days are 
 her own. In the South, the colored house- The ar- 
 servants still have their own quarters outside /^X"'^"' 
 the homes of their employers, just as they did 
 in the days of slavery. 
 
 The following quotation from a letter re- 
 ceived very recently from a Southern mis- 
 tress, may help to make it clear that this 
 arrangement is not regarded by them as al- 
 together unfortunate : 
 
 "In the Texas town, our colored cooks 
 all went home at night to their own cabins. 
 There they played the banjo, entertained 
 their friends, held revival services, and 
 sometimes fought among themselves, with a 
 freedom which would not have been possibfb 
 in the home of the ' white lady,' but which 
 was very essential to their happiness. . . . 
 
 147
 
 Tlje Unquiet Sex 
 
 My cook never missed coming in the morning 
 to her work for three years, except one day 
 when she was really ill, although she suffered 
 a great deal from her fear of ghosts when she 
 came before daylight in the winter-time. I 
 could keep her over her time when necessary, 
 by giving her a trifle extra and allowing 
 her to provide an escort to see her safely 
 home. ' ' 
 
 It is not the purpose of this paper to do 
 more than suggest the general lines along 
 which it seems to be profitable to direct our 
 attention. Therefore I have left untouched 
 the innumerable questions and objections 
 which will spring up for discussion — and 
 disagreement — in the mind of every house- 
 keeper who reads this paper. But I believe 
 that I see a great many of the objections, 
 and I do not find them insuperable, nor, in- 
 deed, in many cases, nearly so hard of set- 
 tlement, as the difficulties which are con- 
 stantly bubbling up out of the uneasy waters 
 now. 
 A valid ob- There is, however, one objection sure to 
 suggest Itself which does seem very real at 
 
 148
 
 The Case of Maria 
 
 first thought ; that is, that servants, in most 
 cases, have no homes to go to, or else the 
 homes are so poor and unhealthful as to 
 make it undesirable that they should come 
 daily into our homes from them. This is 
 perfectly true of the class of foreign or igno- 
 rant servants with whom we are at present 
 struggling, but it seems to me altogether 
 practical to believe that the greater desira- 
 bility of domestic service which would be 
 brought about by putting it on a plane with 
 other labor, would bring into it just the class 
 of intelligent, home-reared girls most to be 
 desired. More than that, if the large serv- 
 ing class in our country were in permanent 
 need of decent, cheap living-quarters, capital 
 would drift that w^ay. A movement in one a new 
 
 investment 
 
 of the largest working-woman's associations /or capital. 
 in this country is just now by way of com- 
 passing such an end. In this association is 
 a special club, formed only of domestic ser- 
 vants, the purpose of which is both intellect- 
 ual and social. It has meetings for the dis- 
 cussion of questions relating to their work 
 and their interests, it has organized a mutual 
 
 149
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 benefit society for the assistance of members 
 who are ill or unemployed, and it is looking 
 forward to the establishment of a respectable, 
 cheap boarding-house for servants, by means 
 of which may be avoided the present crowd- 
 ing of unemployed workers in the unclean 
 and unhealthful tenements that now serve as 
 their retreat when they are not in situations. 
 This disposition on the part of house- workers 
 to organize for themselves, wherever they see 
 the desirability, is very hopeful, and not a 
 little touching, when one stops to reflect up- 
 on their slender equipment in training and 
 money. 
 
 With the organization, some four years 
 
 ago, of the National Household Economic 
 
 Association, the greatest encouragement was 
 
 given that, at last, definite and constructive 
 
 Tke ideas were to be brought to bear upon the 
 
 Household chaos of the situation. And much has been 
 
 Association, already accomplished. Now if the women's 
 
 clubs of this country could be led to take up 
 
 the study and adjustment of the problem, 
 
 with the sincerity and sagacity and spirit of 
 
 150
 
 The Case of Maria 
 
 co-operation which characterize their work 
 in other ways, in two or three years they 
 would be able to formulate a set of princi- 
 ples for domestic labor that would serve as 
 a solid framework for details. 
 
 There have been, it is true, for several 
 years tentative and sporadic organizations of 
 mistresses in different places here and there 
 all over the country ; but the attention of 
 these housekeepers' clubs has been mainly 
 directed to the philanthropic side of the 
 question, that is, to the training of servants 
 themselves by means of training-schools. All The 
 of which is helpful and hopeful, to be sure, training 
 
 even primarily essential when capacity and 
 intelligence among servants are at their 
 lowest, as they are to-day. But I am by no 
 means certain that such means are anything 
 more than temporary scaffolding by which 
 the main structure is to be helped and up- 
 held. For the true economic principle is 
 that the training and equipment of the em- 
 ploye are his own affairs. Unless the work 
 attracts the worker enough to generate an 
 impulse toward self-preparation, there would 
 
 151 
 
 schools.
 
 T}}e Unquiet Sex 
 
 seem to be a waste of expenditure in at- 
 tempts on the part of anyone else to make 
 the path plain and easy. Training-schools 
 of course there must be, else how shall girls 
 receive their training ? But they should be, 
 in the end, like the training-schools for 
 nurses, conducted on business principles — 
 not philanthropy. The servants of this 
 country pay annually into the intelligence 
 offices three millions of dollars. It might 
 seem possible to make a training-school 
 something better than a philanthropic insti- 
 tution, if some of this misspent money could 
 be attracted toward a paying investment of 
 adequate self-preparation for their work, on 
 the part of servants. 
 
 The Social Science section of the famous 
 ivork Civic Club of Philadelphia has recently 
 
 Civic Club, drawn up and put up in the hands of all its 
 members what it calls ' ' A Standard of Work 
 and Wages in Household Labor," to which 
 standard it is expected that all its members 
 will adhere. For certain wages, ranging 
 from three dollars and a half to four dol- 
 lars a week, certain definite requirements are 
 
 152
 
 The Case of Maria 
 
 set down, in the case of cooks, waitresses, 
 chambermaids, laundresses, seamstresses, 
 children's nurses, and general houseworkers. 
 For example, a cook asking the wages just 
 specified is required to show a proper knowl- 
 edge of the sink and drains, the kitchen, 
 cellar, and ice-chest, and the kitchen uten- 
 sils. She must understand the making of 
 bread, biscuit, muffins, griddle-cakes, soup 
 stock, and plain soup. She must know how 
 to cook meats in the four elemental forms 
 known as broiling, boiling, frying, and roast- 
 ing, and how to dress and cook poultry and 
 fish, to prepare eggs, oysters, vegetables, fruit 
 (fresh and tinned), tea, coffee, and plain des- 
 serts. 
 
 Here is something definite for both em- 
 ployer and employe. Instead of leaving 
 everything vague and in the air at the time a precise 
 
 ... , dejiniiion 
 
 of employment, it gives the cook an oppor- of duties. 
 tunity of finding out precisely what duties 
 go with the situation, and it gives the mis- 
 tress the right to exact from an unwilling or 
 ill-prepared servant the last letter of the 
 agreement. 
 
 153
 
 TJje Unquiet Sex 
 
 A further provision is made, in case any 
 of the outhnes of the " good, plain cook " 
 presented in these requirements are ob- 
 scured or lacking. The employer agrees to 
 furnish instructions in the points of failure, 
 the employe sharing half the expense of such 
 instructions. All of this seems fair, and defi- 
 nitely helpful, and paves the way to still 
 greater clearness and exactness of under- 
 standing. 
 
 But the final emancipation of both em- 
 ployer and employe, and the settlem.ent of 
 the housekeeping problem, must come 
 ivork/or through wider and co-operative organiza- 
 a'ubs. tion. A single club has only the unit value. 
 
 Hundreds of women in scores of clubs, all 
 working under the general organization of 
 the National Association, taking up its pre- 
 scribed course of study and thinking tow- 
 ard the same ends of clarification and re- 
 construction, with a calm allowance for ex- 
 periment, selecting carefully and after ample 
 test, such principles as seem to them sound 
 and secure, and rejecting everything that is 
 
 154
 
 The Case of Maria 
 
 unjust; tenacious of their own rights but 
 jealous also of the rights of others — such an 
 organization as this would work amazing 
 advances in an incredibly short time. One 
 small club of this kind was established sev- 
 eral years ago in a Western town. After the 
 first winter spent in the study of domestic ii-'orAe/ 
 
 . one M est- 
 
 service and of co-operative housekeeping, em dub. 
 the members of the club became convinced 
 that the husband of one of them understood 
 the situation, when he declared they had got 
 hold of the tail of an unusually large and 
 lively idea, and that it would probably af- 
 ford them mental exercise for some time to 
 come. Whether the club is still in exist- 
 ence I do not know, but this I do know 
 (because one of the leading spirits of the 
 club afterward put the declaration into 
 print), that the longer these women studied 
 this question the more they understood that 
 they ' ' were confronted with a problem hav- 
 ing moral and social factors as well as eco- 
 nomic ones," and that "this problem was 
 fully as important as interstate commerce, 
 trades-unions, or any of the other questions 
 
 155
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 which the modern economist puzzles his 
 brains over." Each member of this club 
 became also convinced that " while working 
 with one hand with the service question as 
 it now is, she must make ready with the 
 Radical other for a change more radical than any- 
 Vmptnding. thing that housekeeping has known for cen- 
 turies." 
 
 Now, it seems fairly clear to me that prep- 
 aration for changes so fundamental and so 
 sweeping as the problem requires must come 
 from the informed and thinking side — that 
 is, from the mistresses. In a certain blind, 
 groping way the domestic workers are trying 
 to work out the situation for themselves ; as 
 I have said, they organize when and where 
 they can, and when they cannot organize, 
 they still manifest, by the very resentment 
 and intolerance which are the chief burdens 
 the mistress has to bear, an under-sense of 
 something that must be adjusted. But the 
 remedy lies deeper than their minds are able 
 to go ; in that the flaw is economic and is 
 only to be apprehended and remedied through 
 the application of economic and sociological 
 
 156
 
 The Case of Maria 
 
 laws, the minds that are best able to apply 
 them must develop them. 
 
 One underlying trouble is that in many Training 
 cases the mistress herself is so ill-mformed as tresses, 
 to the details of the work she sets about 
 superintending. I thoroughly believe with 
 Miss Griswold (in her recent argument that 
 one way of solving the servant problem is 
 to train the mistresses), that ''good mis- 
 tresses are needed far more than good ser- 
 vants." "It is no wonder," she says, 
 '* that our women take little pleasure in 
 what they do so badly, and grow weary and 
 disheartened when wrestling daily with a 
 problem they cannot solve. But let them 
 once take a more serious view of their house- 
 hold duties, and be better trained for them, 
 and housekeeping will cease to be the trial 
 and bugbear it now is. They will find an 
 interest and pleasure in their work such as 
 they had never known before. ' ' 
 
 Without a fundamental knowledge of the 
 working and the needs of each department To under- 
 
 stand the 
 
 of household industry, how are women to work at 
 
 first hand. 
 
 undertake that systematic instruction of ser- 
 
 157
 
 The Unquiet Sex 
 
 vants which is a necessity nowadays in every 
 well-ordered home ? and, more than all, how 
 are they to evolve the great general socio- 
 logical principles that underlie, and are at 
 present quite buried by, the mass of con- 
 fusing details? 
 
 It seems strange enough that we women 
 do not realize the tremendous gain there 
 would be to ourselves in taking hold of this 
 problem with concerted determination to get 
 at some solution of it. "Besides being 
 aware," as Miss Griswold says, "of effi- 
 ciently fulfilling our destinies (and I believe 
 our moral satisfaction in this knowledge 
 would do our nerves more good than the 
 rest-cure) we should be free in a well-ordered 
 household from many of the petty annoy- 
 ances caused by the shortcomings of ill- 
 trained servants, the countless worries and 
 complications that beset us would be les- 
 sened, and we should have more strength 
 and more time for other occupations." 
 
 And if it should happen that by a little 
 patient, humble, faithful study of this neg- 
 lected subject we women were to find in its 
 
 158
 
 The Case of Maria 
 
 development an antidote for the ambitious 
 superficiality of our intellectual tastes, and a 
 conviction that it might be as well, after all, 
 to plant our first laurels by our own fireside — 
 why that, too, might be something of a 
 gain. 
 
 159
 
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