THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
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about. It cannot be avoided, for it is the natural result of the modern woman’s deepening experience of life. It is the knowledge of the realities of the world. It is this knowledge which mostly estranges woman from man. It comes to a woman who has come to know by direct personal experience what this world actually is like; what she may meet with, in spite of being a lady, when trying to make her wav by herself and going out unprotected by a great name or a chaperon.
A woman comes to realize that there are two moral standards, and that what is morally wrong with her is allowed to men. A woman that has looked into the depths of society and understood its sham and shame, such a woman is not likely to consider men as her superiors nor to be satisfied with the world’s standards from her own experience; her own reflection, a quiet, concentrated and very earnest protest, is rising. Taking into account her character, how could it be otherwise?
But considering the views of the German husband, this state of affairs can but displease him. For women leading independent lives, holding certain decided views of their own, women with ideas and principles, women that, before they got married, have brushed their own wings and fought their way in the world; women judging men and asking them to account for various very unpleasant things of the world—such women are, in Germany at least, a very great and startling innovation, and therefore, I repeat, their marriage prospects are bad ones. Things will not always remain like that. The modern woman is superiorly organized. The weather all over Europe is black, and times of storm and stress are always favorable to the rising types. Let the modern woman stand the test of our troubles to come, and she will see her claims admitted; let her exemplify the survival of the fittest, and she will be respected; let her be that woman and she will be desired. Until the time come when the modern woman shall meet the modern man, we have to work to sow and plant with a never- resting hand that there should grow great characters for the world, characters able to grapple with the great problems at issue; it is character we want. Walt Whitman says, “Have great men and the rest will follow.”