Page:The Future of the Women's Movement.djvu/50

 woman to dedicate her specially to this task?" (To me it seems "degrading the sex" of man to suggest that he has no need to practise all these fine qualities, but that he will practise them vicariously through woman, who is to be dedicated specially to them.) The sentimentalists suggest that this willing service women have for centuries rendered to men, and been happy and good. The bold bad feminists have wantonly stirred up revolt, and peace and happiness will only return when they have been routed and the "awful rule and right supremacy" of man re-established.

I think we may dismiss without much argument the assertion that women are not in subjection, and indeed, sooner or later, the reactionary always gets tripped up on this ground. It is not possible to study our social institutions without coming to the conclusion that they are the result of the subjection of women and that many of them tend to perpetuate that subjection. It is inconceivable that women, of their free and enlightened will, would have chosen this position. That some women are found to maintain that it is not subjection and they like it, is only a proof of the mental and moral effects of subjection upon them. There is a brave spirit which declares that "Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage," and much of women's work has been done in that spirit. Exceptional women have triumphed over their prison