| <The Saturday Review 1866-68 articles reprinted in>
| <Modern Women and what is said of Them>
| <New York 1868>
| <The Future of woman>
| <pb n="319">
| Woman is a thing of accident and spoilt in the making says 
| the greatest of the schoolmen, but we are far from denying 
| her right to vindicate something more than an accidental 
| place in the world. After all that can be urged as to the 
| glory of self-sacrifice, the greatness of silent devotion, or 
| the compensations for her want of outer influence in the 
| inner power which she exerts through the medium of the 
| family and the home, there remains an odd sort of 
| sympathy with the woman who asserts that she is every bit 
| as good as her master, and that there is no reason why she 
| should retire behind the domestic veil. Partly, of course, 
| this arises from our natural sympathy with pluck of any 
| sort; partly, too, there is the pleasure we feel in a situation 
| which may be absurd, but which, at any rate, is novel and 
| piquant; partly, there is an impatience with woman as she 
| is, and a sort of lingering hope that something better is in 
| store for her.
| The most skeptical, in fact, of woman’s censors cannot help 
| feeling a suspicion that, after all, strong-minded women 
| may be in the right. As one walks home in the cool 
| night-air it seems impossible to believe
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| that girls are to go on for ever chattering the frivolous 
| nonsense they do chatter, or living the absolutely frivolous 
| lives they do live. And, of course, the impression that a 
| good time is coming for them is immensely strengthened if 
| one happens to have fallen in love. One’s eyes have got a 
| little sharpened to see the real human soul that stirs beneath 
| all that sham life of idleness and vanity, but the vanity and 
| the idleness vexes more than ever. If we come across Miss 
| Hominy at such moments, we are extremely likely to find 
| her a great deal less ridiculous than we fancied her, and to 
| listen with a certain gravity to her plea for the 
| enfranchisement of women.
| It is not that we go all lengths with her; we stare a little 
| perhaps at the logical consequences on which she piques 
| herself, and at the panorama of woman as she is to be 
| which she spreads before us, at the consulting barrister 
| waiting in her chambers and the lady advocate flourishing 
| her maiden brief; our pulse throbs a little awkwardly at the 
| thought of being tested by medical fingers and thumbs of 
| such a delicate order, and we hum a few lines of the <hi> 
| Princess </hi> as Miss Hominy poses herself for a Lady 
| Professor. Still we cannot help a half conviction that even 
| this would be better than the present style of thing, the 
| pretty face that kindles over the news of a fresh opera and 
| gives you the latest odds on the Derby, the creature of 
| head-achy mornings, of afternoons frittered on lounges, and 
| bonnet-strings, of nights whirled away in hot rooms and 
| chatter on stairs. There are moments, we repeat, when, 
| looking at woman as she
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| is, we could almost wish to wake the next morning into a 
| world where all women were Miss Hominys.
| But when we do wake we find the world much what it was 
| before, and pretty faces just as indolent and as provoking as 
| they were, and a sort of ugly after-question cropping up in 
| our minds whether we had exactly realized the meaning of 
| our wish, or conceived the nature of a world in which all 
| women ere Miss Hominys. There is always a little 
| difficulty in fancying the world other than we find it; but it 
| is really worth a little trouble, before we enfranchise 
| woman, to try to imagine the results of her 
| enfranchisement, the Future of Woman. In the first place, it 
| would amazingly reduce the variety of the world. As it is, 
| we live in a double world, and enjoy the advantages of a 
| couple of hemispheres. It is an immense luxury for men, 
| when they are tired out with the worry and seriousness of 
| life, to be able to walk into a totally different atmosphere 
| where nothing is looked at or thought about or spoken of in 
| exactly the same way as in their own.
| When Mr. Gladstone, for instance, unbends (if he ever does 
| unbend), and, weary of the Irish question, asks his pretty 
| neighbour what she thinks of it, he gets into a new world at 
| once. Her vague idea of the Irish question, founded on a 
| passing acquaintance with Moore’s Melodies and a wild 
| regret after Donnybrook fair, may not be exactly adequate 
| to the magnitude of the interests involved, but it is at any 
| rate novel and amusing. It is not a House of Commons view 
| of the subject, but then the great statesman is only
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| too glad to be rid of the House of Commons. Thoughtful 
| politicians may deplore that the sentimental beauty of 
| Charles I. and the pencil of Vandyke have made every 
| English girl a Malignant; but after one has got bored with 
| Rushworth and Clarendon, there is a certain pleasure at 
| finding a great constitutional question summarily settled by 
| the height of a sovereign’s brow.
| It is a relief too, now and then, to get out of the world of 
| morals into the world of woman; out of the hard sphere of 
| right and wrong into a world like Mr. Swinburne’s, where 
| judgment goes by the beautiful, and where red hair makes 
| all the difference between Elizabeth and Mary of Scotland. 
| Above all, there is the delightful consciousness of 
| superiority. The happiness of the blessed in the next world 
| consists, according to Sir John Mandeville, in their being 
| able to behold the agonies of the lost; and half the 
| satisfaction men have in their own sense and vigor and 
| success would be lost if they could not enjoy the delicious 
| view of the world where sense and energy go for nothing.
| Whether all this would be worth sacrificing simply to 
| acquire a woman who could sympathize with, and support, 
| a man in the stress and battle of life, is a question we do not 
| pretend to decide; but it is certain that the enfranchisement 
| of woman would be the passing of a social Act of 
| Uniformity, and the loss of half the grace and variety of 
| life. Here, as elsewhere, <p> "the low sun makes the color," 
| </p> and the very excellences of Miss Hominy carry her 
| aloft into
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| regions of white light, where our eyes, even if dazzled, get 
| a little tired with the monotony of the intellectual blaze.
| The result of such a change on woman herself would be 
| something far greater and more revolutionary. It is not 
| merely that, as in the ease of men, she would lose the sense 
| and comfort of another world of thought and action, and of 
| its contrast with the world in which she lives; it is that she 
| would lose her own world altogether. Conceive, for 
| instance, woman obliged to take life in earnest, to study as 
| men study, to work s men work. The change would be no 
| mere modification, but the utter abolition of her whole 
| present existence. The whole theory of woman’s life is 
| framed on the hypothesis of sheer indolence. She is often 
| charming, but she is always idle. There is an immense 
| ingenuity and a perfect grace about her idleness; the efforts, 
| in fact, of generations of cultivated women have been 
| directed, and successfully directed, to this special object of 
| securing absolute indolence without either the inner tedium 
| or the outer contempt which indolence is supposed to bring 
| in its train.
| Woman can always say with Titus, <p> "I have wasted a 
| day," </p> but the confession wears an air of triumph rather 
| than regret. A world of trivial occupations, a whole system 
| of social life, has been laboriously invented that the day 
| might be wasted gracefully and without boredom. A little 
| riding, a little reading, a little dabbling with the paint-brush, 
| a little strumming on the piano, a little visiting, a little
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| shopping, a little dancing, and a general trivial chat 
| scattered over the whole, make up the day of an English 
| girl in town.   Transplant her into the country, and the task 
| of frittering away existence, though it becomes more 
| difficult, is faced just as gallantly as before. Mudie comes 
| to the rescue with the back novels which she was too busy 
| to get through in the season; there are the flirtations to keep 
| her hand in, the pets to be fed, the cousins to extemporize, a 
| mimic theatre, the curate ~~ if worst comes to worst ~~ to 
| try a little ritualism upon. With these helps a country day, 
| what with going to bed early and getting up late, may be 
| frittered away as aimlessly as a day in town.
| Woman may fairly object, we think, to abolish at one fell 
| swoop such an ingenious fabric of idleness as this. A 
| revolution in the whole system of social life, in the whole 
| conception and drift of feminine existence, is a little too 
| much to ask. As it is, woman wraps herself in her 
| indolence, and is perfectly satisfied with her lot. She 
| assumes, and the world has at least granted the assumption, 
| that her little hands were never made to anything which any 
| rougher hands can do for them. Man has got accustomed to 
| serve as her hewer of wood and drawer of water, and to 
| expect nothing from her but poetry and refinement. It is a 
| little too much to ask her to go back to the position of the 
| sqaw, and to do any work for herself. But it is worse to ask 
| her to remodel the world around her, on the understanding 
| that henceforth
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| duty and toil and self-respect are to take the place of 
| frivolity and indolence and adoration.
| The great passion which knits the two sexes together 
| presents a yet stronger difficulty. To men, busy with the 
| work of the world, there is no doubt that, however 
| delightful, love takes the form of a mere interruption of 
| their real life. They allow themselves the interval of its 
| indulgence, as they allow themselves any other holiday, 
| simply as something in itself temporary and accidental; as 
| life, indeed, grows more complex, there is an increasing 
| tendency to reduce the amount of time and attention which 
| men devote to their affections. Already the great 
| philosopher of the age has pronounced that the passion of 
| love plays far too important a part in human existence, and 
| that it is a terrible obstacle to human progress.
| The general temper of the times echoes the sentence of Mr. 
| Mill. The enthusiastic votary who has been pouring his 
| vows at the feet of his mistress consoles himself, as he 
| leaves her, with the thought that engagements cannot last 
| for ever, and that he shall soon be able to get back to the 
| real world of business and of life. He presses his beloved 
| one, with all the eloquence of passion, to fix an early day 
| for their union, but the eloquence has a very practical 
| bearing. While Corydon is piping to Phyllis, he is anxious 
| about the engagements he is missing, and the distance he is 
| losing in the race for life. But Phyllis remains the nymph of 
| passion and poetry and romance.
| Time has no meaning for her; she is not neglecting
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| any work; she is only idle, as she always is idle. But love 
| throws a new glory and a new interest around her 
| indolence. The endless little notes with which she worries 
| the Post-Office and her friends become suddenly sacred 
| and mysterious. The silly little prattle hushes into 
| confidential whispers. Every crush through the season 
| becomes the scene of a reunion of two hearts which have 
| been parted for the eternity of twenty-four hours. Love, in 
| fact, does not in the least change woman’s life, or give it 
| new earnestness or a fresh direction; but it makes it 
| infinitely more interesting, and it heightens the enjoyment 
| of wasting a day by a new sense of power. For that brief 
| space of triumph Phyllis is able to make Corydon waste his 
| day too. The more he writhes and wriggles under the 
| compulsion, the more lingering looks he casts back on the 
| work he has quitted, the greater her victory.
| He cannot decently confess that he is tired of the little 
| comedy in which he takes so romantic a part, and certainly 
| his fellow actress will not help him to the confession. By 
| dint of acting it, indeed, she comes at last to a certain belief 
| in her role. She really imagines herself to be very busy, to 
| have sacrificed her leisure as well s her heart to the object 
| of her devotion. She scolds him for his backwardness in not 
| more thoroughly sacrificing his leisure to her. Work may be 
| very important to him, but it is of less importance to the 
| self-sacrificing being who hasn’t had one moment to finish 
| the third volume of the last sensational novel since she 
| plighted her troth
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| to this monster of ingratitude! Of course a man likes to be 
| flattered, and does as much as he can in the way of 
| believing in the little comedy too; in fact, it is all amazingly 
| graceful and entertaining on the one side and on the other. 
| Our only doubt is whether this graceful and entertaining 
| mode of interrupting all the serious business of life will not 
| be treated rather mercilessly by enfranchised woman. How 
| will the enchantment of passion survive when the object of 
| our adoration can only spare us an hour from her medical 
| cases, or defers an interview because she is choked with 
| fresh briefs! One of two results must clearly follow. Either 
| the great Westminster philosopher is right, and love will 
| play a far less important part than it has done in human 
| affairs, or else it will concentrate itself, and take a far more 
| intense and passionate character than it exhibits now.
| We can quite conceive that the very difficulty of the new 
| relations may give them a new fire and vigor, and that the 
| women of the future, looking back on the old months of 
| indolent coquetry, may feel a certain contempt for souls 
| which can fritter away the grandeur of passion as they 
| fritter away the grandeur of life. But even the gain of 
| passion will hardly compensate us for the loss of variety. 
| All this playing with love has a certain pretty independence 
| about it, and leaves woman’s individuality where it found 
| it. Passion must of necessity whirl both beings, in the unity 
| of a common desire, into one. And so we get back to the 
| old problem of the monotony of life. But it is just this 
| monotonous identity to which
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| civilization, politics, and society are all visibly tending. 
| Railways will tunnel Alps for us, democracy will 
| extinguish heroes, and raise mankind to a general level of 
| commonplace respectability; woman’s enfranchisement 
| will level the social world, and leave between sex and sex 
| the difference ~~ even if it leaves that ~~ of a bonnet.