FullReads

This is, doubtless, a most important concession. For if it be allowed to be true of woman’s capacity for learning, it ought to be–and I believe will be–allowed to be true of all her other capacities whatsoever. From which fresh concession results will follow, startling no doubt to those who fancy that the world always was, and always will be, what it was yesterday and to-day: but results which some who have contemplated them steadily and silently for years past, have learnt to look at not with fear and confusion, but with earnest longing and high hope.

However startling these results may be, it is certain from the books, the names whereof head this article, that some who desire their fulfilment are no mere fanatics or dreamers. They evince, without exception, that moderation which is a proof of true earnestness. Mr. Mill’s book it is almost an impertinence in me to praise. I shall not review it in detail. It is known, I presume, to every reader of this Magazine, either by itself or reviews: but let me remind those who only know the book through reviews, that those reviews (however able or fair) are most probably written by men of inferior intellect to Mr. Mill, and by men who have not thought over the subject as long and as deeply as he has done; and that, therefore, if they wish to know what Mr. Mill thinks, it would be wisest for them to read Mr. Mill himself–a truism which (in these days of second-hand knowledge) will apply to a good many books beside. But if they still fancy that the advocates of ‘Woman’s Rights’ in England are of the same temper as certain female clubbists in America, with whose sayings and doings the public has been amused or shocked, then I beg them to peruse the article on the ‘Social Position of Women,’ by Mr. Boyd Kinnear; to find any fault with it they can; and after that, to show cause why it should not be reprinted (as it ought to be) in the form of a pamphlet, and circulated among the working men of Britain to remind them that their duty toward woman coincides (as to all human duties) with their own palpable interest. I beg also attention to Dr. Hodgson’s little book, ‘Lectures on the Education of Girls, and Employment of Women;’ and not only to the text, but to the valuable notes and references which accompany them. Or if any one wish to ascertain the temper, as well as the intellectual calibre of the ladies who are foremost in this movement, let them read, as specimens of two different styles, the Introduction to ‘Woman’s Work, and Woman’s Culture,’ by Mrs. Butler, and the article on ‘Female Suffrage,’ by Miss Wedgewood, at p. 247. I only ask that these two articles should be judged on their own merits–the fact that they are written by women being ignored meanwhile. After that has been done, it may be but just and right for the man who has read them to ask himself (especially if he has had a mother), whether women who can so think and write, have not a right to speak, and a right to be heard when they speak, of a subject with which they must be better acquainted than men–woman’s capacities, and woman’s needs?

If any one who has not as yet looked into this ‘Woman’s Question’ wishes to know how it has risen to the surface just now, let them consider these words of Mrs. Butler. They will prove, at least, that the movement has not had its origin in the study, but in the market; not from sentimental dreams or abstract theories, but from the necessities of physical fact:–

‘The census taken eight years ago gave three and a half millions of women in England working for a subsistence; and of these two and a half millions were unmarried. In the interval between the census of 1851 and that of 1861, the number of self-supporting women had increased by more than half a million. This is significant; and still more striking, I believe, on this point, will be the returns of the nest census two years hence.’