| | | | The wonderful instinct which has always guided the Papacy | in distinguishing between forces that it may safely oppose | and forces before which it must surrender, has just received | a startling illustration in a scene reported too have taken | place at the Vatican a few days ago. Rome may refuse all | compromise with Italy, but even Rome shrinks from | encountering the hostility of woman. The Brief of October | last sounded, indeed, marvelously like a declaration of war; | even in a Pope it argued no little resolution to denounce the | , the of woman's attire. More worldly | critics would hardly have ventured to describe a piquant | chignon or a suggestive bodice as a ; it will be | long, at any rate, before censors of this class will meet with | the reward of a deputation and a testimonial from the fair | objects of their criticism. St. Peter, however, we are | adroitly reminded, after his miraculous delivery from | prison by an angel, found an asylum among women; and, | fresh from his troubles with the red shirts of Monte | Rotondo, the successor of St. Peter seems to have found | himself wonderfully at home among the flounces that | thronged the other day to his public audience at the | Vatican. A hundred ladies ~~ the presence amongst whom | of a number of English Catholics gives us a national | interest in the scene ~~ came forward to express their | gratitude for the censures of the Papal Briefs, and the | adhesion of their sex to the orthodox doctrines of the toilet. | The speech in which one of the fair deputation expressed | the sentiments of her fellows has been unfortunately | suppressed, but the letter of Pope Pius to the Bishop of | Orleans explains the secret of this dramatic reconciliation, | and the terms of the Concordat which has been arranged | between Woman and the Papacy. A common danger has | driven the two Powers to this fresh alliance. If Garibaldi | threatens the supremacy of the Holy See, the educational | reforms of M. Duruy menace the domestic tyranny of | woman. Woman sees herself in peril of deposition at home | by the same spirit of democratic and intellectual equality | which would drive the Pope from the Vatican. In presence | of such a peril, mutual concession becomes easy, and the | fair votaries pardon all references to their in | consideration of a Papal assault on the . | The motive of the Papacy, in opposing a system of | education which emancipates woman from the intellectual | control of the priesthood, and plunges her into the midst of | the doubts and questionings of skeptical man, is of course | plain enough. We feel no particular surprise when the | attendance of girls at the public classes of a Professor is | denounced as tending to . It is the adhesion of | woman to this view of the case which puzzles us a little at | first. We recall her aspirations after a higher training, and | her bitter contempt for the unhappy censors who venture to | remind her of certain primary truths respecting puddings | and pies. But the same problem meets us in other halls | than those of the Vatican. Everywhere woman poses | herself as a social martyr, as the victim of conventional | bonds, as reduced to intellectual torpor by the refusal of | intellectual facilities and intellectual distinctions, as | excluded by sheer masculine tyranny from the larger sphere | of thought and action which the world presents, as chained, | like Prometheus, to the rock of home by necessity and | force. It is only when some amiable enthusiast is taken in | by all this admirable acting, and ventures to propose a plan | for her deliverance, that one finds how wonderfully | contented, after all, woman is with her bonds and her | prison-house. The philosopher who comes forward with | his pet theory of the enfranchisement of woman, who | recognises the necessity for loosening the matrimonial tie, | for securing to woman her property and its responsibilities, | for leveling all educational differences and abolishing all | social distinctions between the sexes, only finds himself | snubbed for his pains. He is calmly assured that home is | the sphere of woman, and the care of a family the first of | woman's duties; the domestic martyr of yesterday roves | from Proverbs and the Princess | that marriage is the completion of woman, and that her | office is but to wed the

"noble music"

of her feminine | nature to the

"noble words"

of the nature of her spouse. | In a word, woman knows her own business a great deal better | than her friends. She does not believe in the intellectual | equality which she is always preaching about, and when M. | Duruy offers it a skriek of horror goes up from half the | mothers of France. What she does believe is that, in | seeking the educational Will-o'-the-Wisp, she may lose the | solid pudding of domestic supremacy, and domestic | supremacy is worth all the sciences in the world. Her | position, as the Vatican suggests, is a religious, not an | intellectual, one, and her policy lies in an alliance with the | priesthood, whose position is one with her own. So woman | makes her submission to the Papacy, and the Pope snubs | M. Duruy. | It is amusing to see how limited, after all, a man's power, | the power even of the stoutest of men, is in his own house, | and to watch the simple process by which woman | establishes the limitation. It consists simply in asserting a | specially religious character for her sex. She is never tired | of telling us that the sentiments and sympathies of the | feminine breast have a greater affinity for divine things | than the rougher masculine nature; that her instincts are | purer, more poetic, more refined; that her moral nature has | a certain bloom upon it which contact with the world has | brushed off from ours; that while we coarser creatures are | driven to reason out our spiritual conclusions, she arrives at | them by an intuitive process reserved for the angelic nature | and her own. And on the whole man accepts the claim. He | is bribed perhaps into allowing it by his own desire to have | something at home better and purer than himself. It is a | startling thing perhaps to say, but in ninety-nine homes out | of a hundred real humility of heart is to be found in the | husband, not in the wife. The husband has very little belief | in his own religion, in his unworldliness and spirituality; | but he has an immense belief in the spirituality and the | devotion of the being who fronts him over the | breakfast-table. He does not profess to understand the character | of her piety, her love of sermons, the severity with which she | visits the household after family prayers, or the extreme | interest with which she peruses the geographical chapters | of the Book of Joshua. But his incapacity to understand it | is mixed with a certain awe. He never ventures to disturb, | by

"shadowed hint"

of his own thoughts about | the matter, the

"simple views"

of his spouse. He | adroitly diverts the conversation of his dinner-table when it | drifts near to the fatal pigeons of Colenso. Sometimes he | bends to a little gentle deceit, and wins a smile of approval | by turning up at an early Litany, or by bringing home the | newest photograph of a colonial metropolitan. In one way | or another he practically acknowledges, like King Cnut, | that there is a bound to his empire. Over bonnet bills and | butchers' bills he may exercise a certain nominal control. It | is possible that years of struggle might enable him to alter | by half an inch the length of his wife's skirt, if fashion had | not shortened it in the interval. But over the whole domain | of moral and religious thought and action he is absolutely | powerless. Woman meets him, if he attempts any | interference, as Christian martyrs have always met their | persecutors, with outstretched neck and on her knees. She | prays for his return to better thoughts, and the whole | household knows she is praying for him. She listens to all | his remonstrances, professes obedience on every point but | the one he wants, and keeps her finger all the time on the | particular page of Thomas Kempis at which the | remonstrance found her. Before such an adversary, there is | no shame in a | | It is not that on all points of moral or religious life woman | professes herself above criticism; to the criticisms of her | religious teachers, for instance, we have seen her singularly | obsequious. Woman and the priesthood in fact understand | one another perfectly, and a tacit convention forces woman | to submit to censures so long as those censures are reserved | for one topic alone. To religion woman makes the sacrifice | of her dress. It is not that she seriously intends to make the | slightest amendment, or to withdraw before the | exhortations of her spiritual guide into poke bonnets and | print muslins. It is a sufficient mark of self-sacrifice if she | listens patiently to diatribes against butterfly bonnets, | trains, or crinolines, or even thanks her pastor for | describing evening costume as . The very | minuteness, in fact, of censures such as these, is a flattering | proof of the spiritual importance of even the most trivial | details in the life of woman. When Father Ignatius | informed mankind that the angels bent down from heaven | to weep over the flirtations of Rotten Row, the smallest | child on her pony felt her ride, and her chatter over the | palings, invested with a certain celestial importance. | Criticisms, too, so strictly reserved for the outside of the | platter, are an immense compliment to the inside, and it is | something to listen to half an hour of spiritual reproof, and | to be able to pass oneself triumphantly as a

"Fair Soul" |

after all. There is nothing revolutionary in a mere | border-skirmish, which leaves the field of woman's sway | not an inch the narrower. It is another matter when M. | Duruy calls on Hermione to come down from her pedestal | of worship and in the long run to abdicate. For equality of | education would, of course, even if it did nothing else, | make mince-meat of the spiritual pretensions of woman. It | would be impossible to preserve a domestic Papacy with a | more than papal weakness for dogmatism and infallibility, | if woman is to come down into school and share the | common training of men. If women are to be educated | precisely as men are educated, they will share the | reasonings, the scepticisms, the critical doubts of men. | There will be no refuge for praying sisters in that world of |

"simple views"

from which they come forth at | present furnished with a social and domestic decalogue | whose sacredness it impious to doubt or to dispute. In | other words, the power which woman now exercises will | simply crumble to dust. Whether she might gain a power | higher and more beneficial to the world and to herself, is a | matter which we are not now discussing. What is perfectly | certain is that such a power would not be the power she | exercises now. The moral censorship of woman over | woman, for example, would at once pass away. It rests on | the belief that women have higher moral faculties than | other beings, and that their treason to this higher form of | moral humanity which is exhibited in womanhood is a | treason of deeper dye than an offence against morality | itself. An erring sister sins against something greater than | goodness ~~ she sins against the theory of woman, against | the faith that woman is a creature who soars high above the | weakness of man and the common nature of man. Long | ages of self-assertion have penetrated woman with the | conviction of her worth; she is the object of her own | especial worship, and the sharp stinging justice she deals | out to social offenders is not merely a proof of the spiritual | nature of her rule, but the vindication of her self-idolatry. | Again, she would forfeit the peculiar influence which she is | every day exerting in a greater degree on the course of | religion and the Church. The hypothesis of a superior | spiritual nature in woman lies at the root, for instance, of | the great modern institution of sisterhoods, and of the | peculiar relation which is slowly attaching his Paula and his | Eustochium to every Jerome of our day. But the main loss | of power would lie in the family itself. It would be no | longer possible to front the political dogmatist of the | hearth-rug with a social and religious dogmatism as | brusque and unreasonable as his own. From sweeping | changes of this sort the very temper of woman, her innate | conservatism, her want of originative power, turns her | away. It is more comfortable to bask in the glow of Papal | sunshine, to figure in Allocutions from the Vatican as | ; and to let Monsieur Duruy and his insidious | Professors alone.