Page:The Feminist Movement - Snowden - 1912.djvu/28

 special mission. Women there have been like Madame Roland, who lost her life in that frightful cataclysm, the French Revolution, a woman who sought and occupied with dignity a place by the side of the men reformers. Women like Lady Mary Wortley Montague have forced on unwilling communities new ideas of a beneficent sort. The blue-stockings of the eighteenth century were the pioneers of women in literature, though individual women had contributed to literature before even their time. The anti-slavery women workers of the United States led the way in fields of social and political service hitherto little occupied by them.

But the banding together of masses of women of every race, colour, and tongue, of every age and condition, for the avowed object of persuading the male half of humanity to yield them equality of status, as half the race, is essentially a modern movement. At one time the movement in this country sought equality of educational and professional opportunity. The movement in Russia and Austria is still in that stage. In Great Britain the emphasis is at present laid on the question of the political enfranchisement of women; but the principle is the same as it was and as it will be when the army moves on to conquer new provinces.

At each success, be it noted, some of the