The Populace Mind: II

Abstract

I would like, however, that sentimentality (which means sham) should be divorced from the women’s programme. It is an equality in certain economic and personal directions which is required. Absolute equality is an impossible dream, and would be a hideous reality. There are people who see in the coming of the women the dawn of a new era; an instant and tender radiance will be spread about the most work-a-day affairs, there will be glory in the heavens and the earth, and peace will reign in the market place, the Council Chamber and the home — all if women get the vote. I like and I respect these idealists; in many ways the tone of my mind lifts to them as to friends, but I do not look for any such sensational consummations. I am not able to see woman as the Guardian Angel or the Pure Influence or the Patent Conservator of Virtue. A woman, to my mind, is a female man and a man is a male woman, and each of them is capable (within certain physical limits) of what the other is capable of. I see woman as the helper and comrade of man, one with him at his work and his play, one with him in her appetites and her passions, his equal in eating and drinking, in being born and dying. I would like to get rid of the stained-glass woman: she has looked interesting and played the piano too long and too badly, and her legend has been a disastrous one for her sisters who have had no soft places to pose in, and who have been continually victimised by her mean pretensions.