Page:Lily Gair Wilkinson - Revolutionary Socialism and the Woman's Movement.djvu/24

 21 class interests, different mode of life, different outlook, and different aims of the women of the bourgeoisie are ignored.

It is true that for these women also the bonds of slavery still exist, but they are rather silken cords than the iron chains borne by working women. So soft indeed are these cords that the majority of women in the capitalist class are quite oblivious to their own degradation. The affluence in which they live acts as a narcotic. Wealthy women are surrounded by a sensuous and hypocritical "chivalry," which for the most part they blindly accept without detecting its falsity. They are content to have as their aim in life the buying and selling of themselves into that peculiar ornamental slavery and dependence which is the capitalist ideal of marriage. Capitalism creates its institutions in its own image, and it is therefore not surprising that marriage in the capitalist class should be a mere business contract, The strangely callous competition which characterises this "marriage market," gives to bourgeois marriages the human peculiarity of female rather than male rivalry. The male bird displays his brilliant plumage glittering in the sunshine to attract the female; but in bourgeois society it is the woman who adorns herself. She is brought up to think that her success in life is conditioned by the making of "a good marriage" (meaning a wealthy one), and this is indeed the road to success where the ideal in life is dependence and luxury.

Certainly there is a minority, and an increasing minority, which resents this state of things. While the majority remains lethargic and indifferent, the more energetic and thoughtful women of the bourgeoisie are striving to free themselves from this peculiarly insidious form of slavery. During last century a great advance was made in this way. Many women (and men also who held liberal opinions on this subject) agitated for "the emancipation of women"—by which, however, they only meant the emancipation of those belonging to their own privileged class. From the bourgeois point of view this is perfectly logical; the immediate interests of the women of the capitalist class lie in introducing whatever reforms of capitalist conditions may give them greater freedom and independence. Their degradation is in reality a degradation of sex, and it is very possible to lessen it under existing economic conditions.

But for working women it is a totally different matter. Capitalism has for them loosened the bonds of sex, only to rivet upon them the chains of wage-slavery. The attempt to win the adherence of