THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN
767
I know it may be said that this large opportunity for women does not necessarily imply greater improvement on their part. It may be said that women in the future, as in the past, will still continue to live in the narrow routine of a circumscribed life; or, if their ambition takes a wider range, it is in the direction of richer apparel, daintier food and costlier living. It may be claimed, too, that in many cases the great advantage offered by the so-called modern improvements have only led to greater complexity of living and still greater perplexity, and that the added leisure furnishes opportunity for added frivolities. The justice of the claim is admitted, but at the same time I am right in refusing to admit that the latter class of women are the representative women of our time. On the contrary, it is the women who are making the absolute best of themselves and of their fortunate surroundings who are the truly representative women of our time. These evince the latent bent, the tendency of the masses, and the success possible to all. A tree is to be judged not alone by its fruits, but by its fairest fruits, because these show its possibilities, these show what the others might have been if earth and air and sunshine had been graciously disposed, and the noble-minded women who are availing themselves of the glad privileges of the present time are the truly representative women because they are those who are shaping the influences which are affecting the masses beneath them, and they are representative women also because all other women would desire the higher rational life if they only had a consciousness of the joy which the rational life alone can give.
If there be any fear lest this higher life, as we are pleased to term it, and these broader opportunities for women may lead them in time to the extreme of ignoring limitations of family life, and of preferring the more public career of business or a profession, so that family life would become distasteful to the extent that the welfare and perhaps even the existence of the race would be in danger, we can reassure ourselves with the fact that nature will take care of all that without any anxiety on our part, for “ nowhere is she so sensitive to encroachments as in those matters which lie at the foundation of life.” We may cheat, distort and circumvent her in other respects, but nowhere is she so keen, cunning, so absolute and imperative as in this determination for life, this will to live, as Schopenhauer expresses it. Nor need there be any fear lest these higher opportunities open to women shall take away their tenderness, their confiding trust, or any of these finer qualities which are usually termed “womanly;” for the grace which comes from strength is far more graceful than that which comes from languor; the tenderness which comes from efficient sympathy is no less tender because of its efficiency, and the trust which is based on a full recognition of all that love and trust and self-surrender imply is certain to be more permanent than the trust that is based on ignorance.
I know the sweet illusions that still adhere to the idea of chivalrous devotion on the part of man, and of clinging dependence on the part of woman, and this might be well perhaps if men were always strong and women always young and beautiful; yet even here it is questionable whether it were possible for a woman to find lasting happiness merely as a passive recipient of loving admiration, however ardent, for so long as a woman has a rational and spiritual nature, so long she fails of highest happiness if these are lost sight of. And further, grant that these conditions of devotion upon the part of man and clinging dependence on the part of woman could be permanent, it is questionable whether such a state would be’healthful to either mind or body, since this form of selfishness, like any other, is liable to die of its own excesses. Furthermore, the fates of the Juliets, the Ophelias, the Desdemonas, and of countless hosts of other women who were all that is gentle, sweet and confiding, does not lead to the belief that the fate of such women is at all enviable. On the other hand, the tragic consequences of all this emotional fervor, this unrestrained expression of feeling, especially when combined with artless simplicity and utter ignorance of what is worthy to be loved, which, strange to say, men and women are so slow to learn; for this frenzied emotion and intensity is still hallowed with the name of love, its dicta are regarded infallible, and that too in the most important concerns of life.