Page:The Future of the Women's Movement.djvu/51

 (at what cost the life of the Brontës may show), but the world is not composed of exceptional women, and the mass of women have been degraded by the narrowness and irresponsibility of their lives. One is familiar with the idealistic assertion that no one can injure you except you yourself. It is a fine thing to hold to your sovereign will and force it to command your life, but who can look round on the world as it is and not see everywhere signs of how men and women degrade their fellows by cruelty, carelessness and greed? It sounds like cant to tell the girl and boy who have been reared in a slum and have never known decency that they need not have allowed themselves to be degraded. It sounds like cant to tell a woman she is not in subjection to men's law when this law does not allow that she is the parent of the child she has borne, and when men can at any time, and do, deprive her of the inviolability of her own body and of the right to earn an honest livelihood. No, it is not arguable whether women nearly all over the world (and certainly in England) are in subjection, and I do not intend to argue it. The only questions are, How came they so? Are the causes eternal and irremovable? Would it be well if they were removed?

I confess to a much higher regard for the honest brutalitarian than for the sentimentalist; for the man or woman who says candidly that women are subject to men because they are inferior to men, either physically, or intellectually, or both. Even among these there is a tendency to allow, with a