And that brings me back to the _raison d’être_ of this story. The _Nineteenth Century Magazine_ has been guilty of condoning, if not of instigating, an atrocity. It has published a rigmarole, signed by a great many _ladies_, to the effect that Woman’s Suffrage is not wanted by _women_, and, indeed, would hardly be accepted if it were offered to them. The principal signatories are in comfortable circumstances; have no great cares upon their shoulders; they plume themselves upon occupying prominent positions in society; it is to their interest to uphold the political principles of the men whose privilege it is to support them; they do not see that life need be made any brighter for them, therefore they conspire to prevent every other woman from emerging from the ditch in which she grovels.
Of course the other woman may be ambitious, or industrious, or miserable, or oppressed; but that has nothing to do with the fine ladies, whose arguments are as feeble as their hearts are callous, and whose principles are as unjustifiable as their selfishness is reprehensible.
“We have all we want,” say these fair philanthropists, “and we intend to use our best endeavours to make other women regard their circumstances in the same light. They must be taught to duly acknowledge the reverence they owe to MAN and GOD. If we cannot persuade them that things are as they ought to be, we will take effectual means to prevent their further progress towards the emancipation some of them are treasonably preaching. Their morals we will leave to the priesthood to coddle and terrorise, but we must make them understand that MAN always was, always must, and always will be, of paramount power and wisdom in this world. Woman was but made from the rib of a man, and ought to know from this fact alone that she can never be his equal,” and so on _ad nauseum_.
It would be wonderful if I, being a _woman_, did not feel indignant when being confronted with these and similar _crushing_ arguments, which, if not all aired in the _Nineteenth Century_, are quite as strong as any which the deluded signatories have to advance in support of the despicably unwomanly attitude they have adopted.
Only a rib, forsooth! How do they know that woman was made out of nothing better than a man’s rib? We have only a man’s word for that, and I have proved the falsity of so many manly utterances that I would like some scientific proof as to the truth or falsity of the spare-rib argument before I give it implicit credence.