Revolted Woman: Past, Present, and to Come

She is upon us, the Emancipated Woman. Privileges once the exclusive rights of Man are now accorded her without question, and, clad in Rational Dress, she is preparing to leap the few remaining barriers of convention. Her last advances have been swift and undisguised, and she feels her position at length strong enough to warrant the proclamation that she does not merely claim equal rights with man, but intends to rule him. Such symbols of independence as latch-keys and loose language are already hers; she may smoke—and does; and if she does not presently begin to wear trousers upon the streets—what some decently ambiguous writer calls bifurcated continuations!—we shall assume that the only reason for the abstention will be that womankind are, generally speaking, knock-kneed, and are unwilling to discover the fact to a censorious world which has a singular prejudice in favour of symmetrical legs. Society has been ringing lately with the writings and doings of the pioneers of the New Woman, who forget that Woman’s Mission is Submission; but although the present complexion of affairs seems to have come about so suddenly, the fact should not be blinked that in reality it is but the inevitable outcome, in this age of toleration and laissez faire, of the Bloomerite agitation, the Women’s Rights frenzy, the Girl of the Period furore, and the Divided Skirt craze, which have attracted public attention at different times, ranging from over forty years ago to the present day. Several apparently praiseworthy or harmless movements that have attracted the fickle enthusiasm of women during this same period have really been byways of this movement of emancipation. Thus, we have had the almost wholly admirable enthusiasm for the Hospital Nurse’s career; the (already much-abused) profession of Lady Journalist; the Woman Doctor; the Female Detective; the Lady Members of the School Board; and the (it must be allowed) most gracious and becoming office of Lady Guardian of the Poor. Side by side, again, with these, are the altogether minor and trivial affectations of Lady Cricketers, the absurd propositions for New Amazons, or Women Warriors, who apparently are not sufficiently well read in classic lore to know what the strict following of the Amazons’ practice implied; nor can they reck aught of the origin of the Caryatides. Again, the Political Woman is coming to the front, and though she may not yet vote, she takes the part of the busybody in Parliamentary Elections, and already sits on Electioneering Committees. In this connexion, it should not readily be forgotten that Mrs. Brand earned her husband the somewhat humiliating reputation of having been sung into Parliament by his wife at the last election for Wisbech, and thus gave the coming profession of Women Politicians another push forward. The dull agricultural labourers of that constituency gave votes for vocal exercises on improvised platforms in village school-rooms, nor thought of aught but pleasing the lady who could sing them either into tears with the cheap sentimentality of Auld Robin Grey, melt them with the poignant pathos of ‘Way down the Swanee River’, or excite their laughter over the equally ready humour of the latest soi-disant ‘comic’ song from the London Halls. Think upon the most musical, most melancholy prospect thus opened out before our prophetic gaze! What matter whether you be Whig or Tory, Liberal or Conservative, Rotten-Tim-Healeyite, or a member of Mr. Justin MacCarthy’s tea-party, so long as your wife can win the rustics’ applause by her singing of such provocations to tears or laughter as The Banks of Allan Water or Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay, or whatever may be the current successor of that vulgar chant?