Shall we ever succeed? It is not worth while to ask ourselves a question which none can answer. Reasoning by analogy, we never shall. Hoping in the splendid possibilities of an unknown future, we may. But idle contention over what has been done already is not precisely the best method of advance. To wrangle for months over the simple and obvious statement that there have been no great women poets, is a lamentable waste of energy, and leads to no lasting good. To examine with fervent self-consciousness the exact result of every little step we take, the precise attitude of the world toward us, while we take it, is a retarding and unwholesome process. Why should an indefatigable philanthropist, like Miss Frances Power Cobbe, have paused in her noble labor to write such a fretful sentence as this?
“It is a difficult thing to keep in mind the true dignity of womanhood, in face of the deep, underlying contempt wherewith all but the most generous of men regard us.”
Perhaps they do, though the revelation is a startling one, and the last thing we had ever suspected. Nevertheless, the sincere and single-minded worker is not asking herself anxious questions anent man’s contempt, but is preserving “the true dignity of womanhood” by going steadfastly on her appointed road, and doing her daily work as well as in her lies. Neither does she consider the conversion of man to a less scornful frame of mind as the just reward of her labors. She has other and broader interests at stake. For my own part, I have a liking for those few writers who are admirably explicit in their contempt for women, and I find them more interesting and more stimulating than the “generous” men who stand forth as the champions of our sex, and are insufferably patronizing in their championship. When Schopenhauer says distinctly that women are merely grown-up babies, short-sighted, frivolous, and occupying an intermediate stage between children and men; when he protests vigorously against the absurd social laws which permit them to share the rank and titles of their husbands, and insists that all they require is to be well fed and clothed, I feel a sincere respect for this honest statement of unpopular and somewhat antiquated views. Lord Byron, it will be remembered, professed the same opinions, but his ingenuousness is by no means so apparent. Edward Fitzgerald’s distaste for women writers is almost winning in its gentle candor. Ruskin, despite his passionate chivalry, reiterates with tireless persistence his belief that woman is man’s helpmate, and no more. Theoretically, he is persuasive and convincing. Practically, he is untouched by the obtrusive fact that many thousands of women are never called on to be the helpmates of any men, fathers, brothers, or husbands, but must stand or fall alone. Upon their learning to stand depends much of the material comfort, as well as the finer morality, of the future.