Ideala | Page 7

and every
evidence of strength, but serve no better purpose than to show which
way the wind blows."
This question of the position of women in our own day occupied her a
good deal.
"The women of my time," she said to me once, "are in an unsettled
state, it may be a state of transition. Much that made life worth having
has lost its charm for them. The old interests pall upon them.
Occupations that used to be the great business of their lives are now
thought trivial, and are left to children and to servants. Principles
accepted since the beginning of time have been called in question.
Weariness and distrust have taken the place of peace and content, and
doubt and dissatisfaction are the order of the day. Women want
something; they are determined to have it, too; and doubtless they
would get it if only they knew what it is that they want. They are
struggling to arrive at something, but opinions differ widely as to what
that something ought to be; and the result is that they have divided
themselves into three classes, not exactly distinct: they dovetail into
each other so nicely that it is hard to say where the influence of the one
set ends and the other begins. There are, first of all, the women who in
their struggles for political power have done so much to unsex us. They
have tried to force themselves into unnatural positions, and the
consequence has been about as pleasing and edifying as an attempt to
make a goose sing. They clamour for change, mistaking change for
progress. But don't let the puzzling dovetail confuse you. The people I

speak of are not those who have so nobly devoted themselves to the
removal of the wrongs of women, though they work together. But the
object of all this class is good. They wish to raise us, and what they
want, for the most part, is a little more common sense--as is shown in
their system of education, for instance, which cultivates the intellectual
at the expense of the physical powers, girls being crammed as boys (to
their great let and hindrance also) are crammed, just when nature wants
all their strength to assist their growth; the result of which becomes
periodically apparent when a number of amiable young ladies are let
loose on society without hair or teeth. But the thing they clamour for
most is equality. There is a great deal to be said in favour of placing the
sexes on an equal footing, and if social conventions are stronger and
more admirable than natural instincts--and doubtless they are--the thing
should be done; but the innate perversity of women make it
difficult--for, I know this, that whatever the position of a true woman,
and however much she may clamour for equality with men in general,
the man she herself loves in particular will always be her master.
"But such ridicule as this party has brought upon itself would not have
mattered so much had nothing worse come of it. Unfortunately, there
seems to be no neutral ground for us women: we either do good or
harm; and I hold that first class responsible for the existence of those
people who clamour for change of any kind, regardless of the
consequences. Their ideas, shorn of all good intention, have resulted in
the production of a new creature; and have made it possible for women
who have the faults of both sexes and the virtues of neither to mix in
society. The bad work done by the influence of this second class is only
too apparent. It is to them we owe the fact that there is less refinement,
less courtesy, less of the really good breeding which shows itself in
kindness and consideration for others, and, Heaven help us! even less
modesty among us now than there was some years ago."
"These are the women, too, who spend their time and talents on the
production of cleverly written books of the most corrupt tendency.
Their works are a special feature of the age, and are doubly dangerous
because they have the art of making the worst ideas attractive, by
presenting them in forms too refined and beautiful to shock even the

most delicate."
"Besides these two classes there is the third, which is more difficult to
define. It is the one on which our hope rests. The women who belong to
it are dissatisfied like the others, but they are less decided, and
therefore their dissatisfaction takes no positive shape. They also want
something, and go this way and that as if in search of it, but they are
not really trying for anything in particular. They do good and evil
indiscriminately, and for the same motive: they find