Chapter VI: Woman as a Worker

“Hast thou for cooking a turn, little Lady Clarissa? in with them,
In with your fingers! their beauty it spoils, but your own it
enhances.
For it is beautiful only to do the thing we are meant for.”

_The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich_, ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH.

Woman suffers from laws which forbid. The forbidden fruit always seemed to me an unfair bunker. No woman could be expected to keep out of it. At all events, to try to cultivate Woman and Forbidden Apples in the same garden was rash and hazardous horticulture. Bluebeard understood the basic sense of that proposition, and it was full in harmony with the wicked irony of his way with women.

If it is not impious to say so, I have often thought that it is an unfortunate thing that our earliest statutes begin with the words “Thou shalt not.” Lawgivers, always searching for precedents, have imagined that it was an essential part of every law to tell you _not_ to do things. Nothing has been more detrimental to progress.

To my orthodox mind the sound view should be that the subjects where forbiddance is necessary are exhausted in the Ten Commandments, and that it smacks of profanity to continue adding to these unnecessarily. At all events, for women workers I am satisfied that the only way to amend the law is to strike out of it all those statutes, clauses, sections, and considered judgments which forbid a woman from trying her hand at any sort of work that she has a mind to.

That is the Free Trade solution of Woman’s work, and there is no other sane one. A free field and no favour. We may trust Woman, after a very short experience, to discover that the devil takes the hindmost, and if she can outwit the old gentleman so much the better for every one.

It is easy enough to say that Woman is naturally unfitted for this or that position; but why argue about it when it is so simple a matter to test it by experience? I have a strong belief that Man is naturally incapable of boiling a potato, but I have heard of exceptional men who could achieve this delicate task, and, except in time of famine, I would not have a law forbidding them to try their hand at it.

If, for instance, we take the various money-making occupations which the Law forbids Woman to undertake, we shall find among the precedents of history many notable cases where individual women have achieved considerable success in them when they have had the opportunity of making the attempt.

Surely we may allow that Queen Elizabeth was as able and untrustworthy as any statesman in modern Europe. In the matter of soldiering and generalship Joan of Arc made a certain name for herself; and, although women have small chance of going down to the sea in ships, do not let us forget that it was Grace Horsley Darling, the daughter of a lighthouse keeper on the Farne Islands, who started by her deeds of heroinism the idea of our life-boat system, of which she has remained the saintly patroness to this day.

Nor must it be forgotten that Shakespeare, in his portrait of Portia, has convinced all of us who are governed by reason that the task of stating bad law in eloquent periods to an indifferent judicial tribunal is one that may safely be left in the hands of Woman.

In the Churches of early days, priestesses were rulers of great influence, and throughout the history of nearly every ecclesiastical power women have had responsible positions. In the Salvation Army of to-day, a most successful organization, Woman has played a most important official part with notable success.

In voluntary religions the law can lay down no rule, but in a State Established Church all posts ought clearly to be open to man and woman alike. There is no duty cast upon an incumbent that could not just as well be performed by a woman as by a man.

In fact, in many country districts the active work of the parish is often entirely in the hands of the vicaress, and the vicar contents himself with his statutory duties and a certain amount of amateur magistracy and other country pursuits, or crams students, or grows roses, or becomes the learned antiquary of the district.

The arrangement is usually a sound one, but why should not the Woman who does the work have the honour of the title and the office? Indeed, it would be more seemly and honest that this should be so. Mrs. Proudie was not a figment of Trollope’s imagination. She was the real wife of a real bishop. To what good purpose is it that the Law refuses the position of Bishop to a Woman when she can attain all the power of it by marrying the man in the office?

People, and especially advanced people, speak of woman’s work as though it was a new thing, but as a matter of history you will find that Woman has always been the real worker in the human partnership.

If you have read the old sagas and folk tales with affectionate attention, or if you have acquired the rare habit of loafing slowly through the museums of the world with your eyes open, you will know that women were the first millers and weavers and potters and basket makers, that they tilled the first fields, dressed and tanned the earliest skins and hides, invented the primitive forms of baskets, and were the first carriers and transport brigade when the tribes took the road. In a word, all the peaceful arts necessary to the feeding, clothing and travelling of early man were originally woman’s work.

As time rolled on these things passed under the domain of man, who has always recognized that a cunning tendency to exploit the abilities of others for his own profit is a righteous quality worthy of the highest temporal reward.

But when in the course of time the old handicrafts pegged out, and skilled artists nimble in handiwork were no longer essential to human comfort, Woman--to put it in modern phrase--was “left.” The distaff gave way to the spinning wheel, the spinning wheel became a spinning jenny, and the motor power became steam or electricity in place of Woman. At last--in the Victorian era--which a few of us still hold in respectful memory--woman’s last glorious art, the art of the needle, disappeared, and the sewing machine threw out of domestic employment a vast number of home-keeping women. The word “spinster,” originally descriptive of an honourable craft, has become almost suggestive of idleness and reproach. To-day it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that the housewife’s power in the house depends mainly on man’s disability to cook his own food and sew on his own buttons. A satisfactory municipal restaurant supplying meals on the gas and water system by means of slot machines or otherwise, and a new American foolproof garment fastener in place of the button and buttonhole, and woman’s power in the household would be threatened with extinction.

Briefly put, these are the reasons why woman’s position towards the end of the Victorian era became a new problem. All the domestic work of the preparation of food supplies from farm and garden, the work of the laundry, the still room, the bakehouse and the brewhouse passed into outside machine factory hands, and the wives and mothers and daughters had little left for their energies but “shopping,” a charming pursuit when left to the unfettered discretion of idle minds, but not economical.

What to do with our girls? was a common topic of conversation among Victorian fathers and mothers, but you cannot expect the fossils of the older strata to take a very intelligent interest in the living movements of the alert fauna in the sea of life that washes above their heads. The fathers and mothers and grandfathers and grandmothers lamented over the unfossilized tendencies of the giddy young swimmers caught by streams of life that led they knew not where; and the true history of the evolution of woman’s work is not to be found in the wisdom of the written words of our forbears, but in the actual lives of the younger women themselves who refused to sit down at home and do nothing, and started out into the world in search of a new life and great adventures.

A book of biography will some day be written showing how, in each great branch of work where Woman has taken or is taking an honoured part to-day, the initiative was struck out and pressed home against the active opposition of professors, priests and parents by the pioneer heroinism of Woman herself. Such a volume could not be published in this generation because history cannot be written whilst it is in the making, but one can set out shortly the story of one woman’s achievements as typical of the life story of many a similar brave and honourable career.

To-day the work of women doctors is an acknowledged success. Their noble achievements in the great war are read with pride by their countrymen. Let one instance suffice, quoted from a daily paper of May, 1915, containing news from Serbia:--

“One English lady, Mrs. Hardy, who came alone, took charge single-handed of a surgical hospital of about 500 patients, and with the help of one woman, a Serbian lady doctor, turned it into a marvel of good order, and cleanliness without any other assistance. The Scottish hospital in charge of two lady doctors, Dr. Soltau and Dr. Holloway, was also a picture of cleanliness and comfort.”

When we read such things we should not rail at our fathers for their purblind refusal to temper the Law to modern social ideals, but rather search in our own up-to-date consciences to see if there is anything we can do to-day to repeal unnecessary laws of denial and give freedom to Woman to do good in the way that seems to her best.

Think what the medical service of Woman has meant to suffering humanity and humbly thank Providence for the courage of the pioneer women who made such deeds possible against the crass opposition of the leaner and more slippered pantaloons of early Victorian Harley Street.

Every one who is interested in Woman’s work should read the life story of Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, the first Woman doctor, as told by herself in her modest honourable and inspiring record, _Pioneer Work in Opening the Medical Profession to Women_.

It is good to know that she was an Englishwoman, though credit for the opportunity for her education must go to America. She was born in Bristol, February 3, 1821, the third daughter of Samuel Blackwell, a Bristol sugar refiner. Her father and mother and their eight children emigrated to America and remained for some years in New York, where they moved in the circle of William Lloyd Garrison and his friends, and Elizabeth obtained a good education at a New York day school. In 1838 her father moved with his family to Cincinnati, where he died after a short illness, leaving his widow and nine children entirely unprovided for.

Elizabeth and her sisters helped to keep things going by scholastic work and for several years she held different educational positions. At the age of twenty-five she seems to have been gradually drawn towards her real life work. The necessity to her of devoting herself to some absorbing occupation, and the call from sick women for medical help from one of their own sex, coupled doubtless with an intuition that she had the capacity within her to reach her goal, moved her to take active steps to become a doctor.

She now consulted several medical men of her acquaintance as to the possibility of her becoming a doctor, and the answers she received were that there was no way of obtaining such an education for a Woman and that the idea was impossible of execution. Here indeed the matter might have rested, but that the idea of winning a doctor’s degree gradually assumed to her the aspect of a great moral struggle. It was the impossibility of the task that attracted Elizabeth Blackwell.

“This moral aspect of the subject was increased,” she tells us, “by a circumstance which made a very strong impression on me. There was at that time a certain Madame Restell flourishing in New York. This person was a noted abortionist and known all over the country. She was a woman of great ability and defended her cause in the public papers. She made a large fortune, drove a fine carriage, had a pew in a fashionable church, and though often arrested was bailed out by her patrons. She was known distinctively as a ‘female physician,’ a term exclusively applied at that time to those women who carried on her vile occupation.

“The gross perversion and destruction of motherhood by the abortionist filled me with indignation and awakened active antagonism. That the honourable term ‘female physician’ should be exclusively applied to these women who carried on this shocking trade seemed to me a horror. It was an utter degradation of what might and should become a noble position for women.”

I have set out this passage in her own words because it seems to me to contain a most interesting lesson for us in the history of social evolution. Here we have a semi-criminal carrying on a foul trade, tolerated and permitted by the medical, legal and magisterial hierarchy, and a clever girl of five and twenty, inspired by the foulness of the business, setting about without any help or encouragement from her elders to work a reform. To the sage wisdom enshrined beneath the Victorian top hat and underneath the professional frock coat of the period Elizabeth’s intentions and desires were absurd and impossible. The encouraging part of the story to one who, like myself, believes with child-like faith in miracles and fairy tales, is that from the moment she starts on her career, in spite of the enormous difficulties and opposition she encounters, one has no more doubt that she is going to win her prize than that Cinderella will marry the Prince at the end of the story.

There was certainly no broad and easy path to success. The first step Elizabeth Blackwell took was to return to school-teaching for a few years to save enough money to follow a college career, and at the same time to study Greek and such elementary learning as she could. It was not until 1847 that she began to seek an entrance to a medical school. One doctor after another told her that in his college or university the idea of allowing a woman to study medicine would never be permitted, and a good Quaker doctor, who was not unfriendly to her scheme, said to her, “Elizabeth, it is no use trying. Thee cannot gain admission to their schools, thee must go to Paris and don masculine attire to gain the necessary knowledge.” Later on he told her he had made further inquiries and that Paris was such a horrible place that she must give up her wish for a medical education. Upon which Elizabeth tells us, “I told the doctor that if the path of duty led me to hell I would go there; and I did not think that by being with devils I should become a devil myself,” at which the good doctor stared. Indeed it was just as well that he should stare, for unless Elizabeth could succeed in opening the eyes of the medical profession to the strength and earnestness of her intentions there was little chance of overcoming their opposition.

The great educational institutions of Philadelphia and New York remaining obdurate, Elizabeth wrote to twelve of the minor county schools, as they were called, for permission to study medicine. For many weeks there was no reply, and at length on October 20, 1847, the Dean of the Faculty of the medical department of the University of Geneva informed her of the following resolution of the entire medical class.

“Resolved--That one of the radical principles of a Republican Government is the universal education of both sexes: that to every branch of scientific education the door should be open equally to all, and therefore Elizabeth Blackwell was welcome to the classes and examinations and degrees of the Geneva University.”

It is interesting to find this example of good sense and right principle set by the professors and students of this smaller University to their wealthy exclusive and narrow-minded colleagues in Philadelphia and New York and thence across the ocean to the old-world school men of Oxford and Cambridge. The little governess of Philadelphia had won a great battle for educational freedom in this year 1847. From this time forward it was only a matter of time how soon or how long it was before all universities accepted the principle of universal education of both sexes. It may be that some of the more antiquated institutions partly out of mere conservatism and partly with a desire to protect the male students from undesirable competition, will hesitate for some time yet to fall into line. But gradually it must appear clear to their governors that a University that shuts its doors to large numbers of eager and hard-working students will not for very much longer receive public toleration. There are many signs that our universities will soon be called upon to put their house in order; for the social and political wisdom of professors and the capacity and possible activities of women will be quoted on the world’s exchange at entirely new values after the war.

It is well to read of Miss Blackwell’s difficulties if only to appreciate the courage and steadfastness which enabled her to win through. At the dinner table of her boarding-house a doctor’s wife refused to notice her, and ladies in the street stopped to stare at her as at some curious animal. The rougher medical students, after some small demonstrations, behaved admirably to her, and to them and to her teachers she testifies her gratitude. On January 23, 1849, there is the following entry in her journal: “After the degree had been conferred on the others I was called up to the platform. The President rose as I came on the stage, and going through the usual formula of a short Latin address presented me my diploma. I said, ‘Sir, I thank you, it shall be the effort of my life, with the help of the Most High, to shed honour on my diploma.’”

How well she was enabled to fulfil her prayer remains on record. We cannot follow here her career of study in Europe, hindered by the snubs and boycotting of many doctors, cheered by the kindly encouragement of a nobler few. The story of her life of sacrifice in the Paris Maternité which ended in the loss of the sight of an eye from purulent ophthalmia, destroying all her hopes of practical work in surgery, is a tragedy worthy to be read in her own brave words.

She went on her mission quietly and bravely without complaint against the folly and malice of her opponents, calmly reminding them that “a work of ages cannot be hindered by individual feeling, and a hundred years hence women will not be what they are now.” Her own success of achievement was indeed great, but it was in the inspiration of others and by the example of her career that her name will remain blessed. As the older friend and adviser of Florence Nightingale and Mrs. Garrett Anderson and many another woman worker, she did a great work for the cause she loved. Though the world she lived in took an evil delight in seeking to make her burden too heavy to be borne, yet I make no doubt that posterity will canonize her as a saintly type of professional woman.

Every experience we have had as yet of permitting Woman to undertake the work she desires to do, unhampered by the Law, has been a reasonable success, and has certainly not brought about the social disasters that Mrs. Grundy and her friends have so continuously prophesied. After all when there has been anything approaching the regulation of woman’s work on the principles of Free Trade, women have taken their rightful place with reasonable modesty and without destroying altogether the occupations and remuneration of the timid man who craves for the protection of the law.

Marlborough’s armies had no women nurses and no Red Cross Society. It was a woman, Florence Nightingale, who raised her lamp to light the women of the world on this path of mercy. Fair play to mere man: when he understood the proposition he weighed in with cash and organizing energy to make it a success.

One would have thought that the experience of the enormous improvement that the nursing profession has made since the days of Sairey Gamp and Betsey Prig would have convinced mankind that Woman was capable of dealing with the sick and wounded, not only with enthusiasm and sympathy, but with an ability and insight that could be encouraged by suitable education to fit some women for the higher branches of medical work.

Nursing to-day is as important a branch of doctoring as any other. It is hard, uncongenial, distasteful work, and not over well paid, so it is left almost wholly in the hands of women. But there is no law hindering a man from taking to it if he pleases, and some few do with success. In the same way there should be no Law preventing Woman from entering the higher branches of the medical profession if she is able and willing to do so.

The beauty of the principle of Free Trade is not that it makes a different world or a better world, but only that it enables the world to be just as good as the men and women of their day are capable of making it.

The education of Woman was bound to bring about a demand for forbidden apples, and the Law of Apples will have to be repealed. You cannot allow a woman to learn Law and Medicine, and Theology and Engineering, and go peddling about with her knowledge on some little nine-hole social course which no self-respecting man would play over.

Only if Woman is to come into the field and contest with Man she must play under the same rules and drive off the same tees. Where she has done so, in Literature and Art, for instance, she has done well, but she has not driven Man into the workhouse, and there is still room in these fields for men of industry and cunning.

As Thomas Huxley wrote fifty years ago: “Let women if they so please become merchants, barristers, politicians. Let them have a fair field, but let them understand as the necessary correlative that they are to have no favour. Let Nature alone sit high above the lists, ‘rain influence and judge the prize.’”

I do not understand those who fear that if the Law withdraws its veto from Woman’s right to work there will be a revolution. There will be a small enrichment of service in the older professions, but the world will roll on in much the same old way.

Man will continue to earn the money and Woman to spend it, just as in primeval times Man hunted and killed the deer and Woman cooked it and handed round the shares to the family and converted the skin into a dress-piece. You may pass Laws until the Crack of Doom, but that little arrangement began at the beginning of things and came to stay.

The Woman is born to rule, and her methods of rule are predestined for her. Singing at her distaff and rocking her cradle she must for ever govern her household and the world with her pleasant sway, and good easy man must content himself with the proverb: “Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing, and obtaineth favour of the Lord.”