Woman, in Mrs. Gilman's view, must not be content with Hendom: the sky is her province, too. Of all base domesticity, all degrading love, she is the enemy. She gives her approval only to that work which has in it something high and free, and that love which is the dalliance of the eagles.
A few months ago it was rather the fashion to reply to some political verses by Mr. Kipling which assumed to show that women should not be given the ballot, and which had as their refrain:
The female of the species is more deadly than the male!
But it seems that no one pointed out that this fact, even in the limited sense in which it is a fact in the human species, is an argument for giving women the vote.
For if women are, as Mr. Kipling says, lacking in a sense of abstract justice, in patience, in the spirit of compromise; if they are violent and unscrupulous in gaining an end upon which they have set their hearts, then by all means they should be rendered comparatively harmless by being given the ballot. For it is characteristic of a republic that its political machinery, created in order to carry out the will of the people, comes to respond with difficulty to that will, while being perfectly susceptible to other influences. Republican government, when not modified by drastic democratic devices, is an expensive, cumbrous, and highly inefficient method of carrying out the popular will; and casting a vote is like nothing so much as casting bread upon the waters. It shall return--after many days. By voting, by exercising an infinitesimal pressure on our complex, slow-moving political mechanism, one cannot--it is a sad fact--do much good; but one cannot--and it should encourage the pessimistic Mr. Kipling--one cannot, even though a woman, do much harm.
This is not, however, a disquisition on woman suffrage. There is only one argument for woman suffrage: women want it; there are no arguments against it. But one may profitably inquire, What will be the effect of the emergence of women into politics upon politics itself? And one may hope to find an answer in the temperament and career of certain representative leaders of the woman's movement. Let us accordingly turn to the accredited leader of the English "votes for women" movement, and to the woman in the American movement who is best known to the public.