DOMESTIC RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT. 521 



disadvantages entailed by their constitutions, and so to equalize the 

 lives of the sexes as far as possible. 



In respect of domestic powei-, the relative position of women w ill 

 doubtless rise ; but it seems improbable that absolute equality with 

 men will be reached. Legal decisions from time to time demanded 

 by marital differences, involving the question which shall yield, are 

 not likely to reverse all past decisions. Evenly though law may bal- 

 ance claims, it will, as the least evil, continue to give, in case of need, 

 supremacy to the husband, as being the more judicially-minded. And, 

 simihirly, in the moral relations of married life, the preponderance of 

 power, resulting from greater massiveness of nature, must, however 

 unobtrusive it may become, continue with the man. 



When we remember that up from the lowest savagery civilization 

 has, among other results, brought about an increasing exemption of 

 women from bread-winning labor, and that in the highest societies 

 they have become most restricted to domestic duties and the rearing 

 of children, we may be struck by the anomaly that at the present 

 time restriction to indoor occupations has come to be regarded as a 

 grievance, and a claim is made to free competition with men in all 

 out-door occupations. This anomaly is traceable in part to the abnor- 

 mal excess of women ; and obviously a state of things which excludes 

 many women from tliose natural careers in which they are dependent 

 on men for subsistence justifies the demand for freedom to pursue 

 independent careers. That any hinderances standing in their way 

 should be, and will be, abolished must be admitted. At the same time 

 it must be contended that no considerable alteration in the careers of 

 women in general can be, or should be, so produced ; and, further, 

 that any extensive change in the education of women, made with the 

 view of fitting them for businesses and professions, would be mischiev- 

 ous. If women comprehended all that is contained in the domestic 

 sphere, they would ask no other. If they could see all that is implied 

 in the right education of children, to a full conception of which no 

 man has yet risen, much less any woman, they would seek no higher 

 function. 



That in time to come the political status of women may also be 

 raised to something like equality with that of men, seems a deduction 

 naturally accompanying the preceding ones. But such an approxi- 

 mate equalization, normally accompanying a social structure of the 

 completely industrial type, is not a normal accompaniment of social 

 types still partially militant. Just noting that the giving to men and 

 women equal amounts of political power, while the political respon- 

 sibilities entailed by war fell upon men only, M^ould involve a serious 

 inequality, and that the desired equality is therefore impracticable 

 while wars continue, it may be contended that though the possession 

 of political power by women would possibly improve a society in 

 which state-regulation had been brought within the limits proper to 



