FEMMES SAVANTES 



3110 



FENCE 



political power has been won in the 

 Anglo-Saxon, Teuton, and Slav na- 

 tions, women are considering how 

 that power shall be used to secure 

 the necessary legal and social re- 

 forms. The status and the ambi- 

 tions of women differ widely even 

 in advanced and modern civilized 

 countries, but the stages of the 

 feminist movement in each racial 

 group are fairly well denned. 



Scandinavian women have long 

 had equal educational advantages 

 with men ; they early acquired poli- 

 tical power, and are determined to 

 secura absolute equality in profes- 

 sional and industrial life, and inde- 

 pendence, as nearly as may be, in 

 marriage and family life. There is 

 no suggestion that a woman should 

 abandon her profession when she 

 marries, and so place herself in de- 

 pendence on her husband. 



In Great Britain feminist ideals 

 tend more and more towards the 

 Scandinavian, but with a differ- 

 ence due probably to temperament 

 and education. The English femin- 

 ist claims equal pay for equal work, 

 an adjustment of the marriage 

 laws, equal partnership and give 

 and take between the sexes, but she 

 clearly wishes to develop on her own 

 lines, not on masculine lines. She 

 is inclined to think that the Scandi- 

 navian development takes too little 

 account of sex. Olive Schreiner's 

 work, too little acknowledged, has 

 had great influence on English 

 women in this connexion. 



The German feminist moves 

 rather slowly in the direction of 

 her Scandinavian sisters, but in 

 Czecho-Slovakia women have leapt 

 at one stride into full political ac- 

 tivity. In the Latin countries the 

 ideal of domestic and social life is, 

 and always has been, very different, 

 and this is no doubt the reason 

 why the demand for suffrage has 

 not been insistent. The French- 

 woman still, in the main, exercises 

 her power indirectly. It is remark- 

 able that in France, where the au- 

 thority of the mother, and even of 

 the grandmother, is very great in 

 the family, and where women of 

 the lower middle class are con- 

 spicuous for successful and often 

 equal share in their husband's busi- 

 ness, women should so long have 

 submitted to the injustice of the 

 Code Napoleon, which leaves them 

 legally in the position of minors, 

 and with virtually no personal lib- 

 erty before the law. But even in 

 France, and more slowly in the 

 two other great Catholic countries 

 of Europe, Italy and Spain, women 

 are beginning to demand greater in- 

 dependence and a voice in public 

 affairs. 



The social and political unrest in 

 the Middle and Far East is having 



its repercussion on women. In Is- 

 lam, women are beginning to resent 

 their immemorial position of ser- 

 vitude ; they are demanding edu- 

 cation and the right to come into 

 the open. In non-Mahomedan 

 India, women are demanding and 

 receiving a better education and a 

 better industrial position. They 

 also look for a change in the mar- 

 riage law. Similar movements are 

 taking place all over the East. 



American women, like their Eu- 

 ropean sisters, have received the 

 vote. Feminist propaganda has in 

 some ways a less favourable soil to 

 work on. There is to a great extent 

 co-education, there is less pressure 

 on women to earn their own living, 

 and divorce is less difficult than in 

 Europe. And because of these con- 

 ditions there is less incentive to 

 violent discontent. It remains to 

 be seen on what characteristic lines 

 American feminists will move. 



Margaret Bryant 



Femmes Savantes, LES (The 

 Learned Women). Five-act com- 

 edy by Moliere, first acted at the 

 Palais-Royal, Paris, March 11, 

 1672. In it Moliere returns to the 

 theme of feminine affectation less 

 seriously treated in his Les Pre- 

 cieuses Ridicules. The easy-going 

 bourgeois Chrysale is at the mercy 

 of a wife and one of his two daugh- 

 ters. The wife has more pretence 

 to learning than knowledge or in- 

 telligence, and the elder daughter, 

 Armande, is like her mother, who 

 is abetted by an old maid, Chry- 

 sale's sister. Clitandre, suitor to 

 Armande, is rebuffed, and turns to 

 her more simple-minded sister Hen- 

 riette, whom the mother wishes to 

 marry the parlour-poet Trissotin. 

 The denouement, in which Hen- 

 riette and Clitandre are united, is 

 brought about by Chrysale's bro- 

 ther Ariste, who exposes the mer- 

 cenary character of Trissotin. 

 Moliere acted the part of Chrysale. 

 Trissotin is usually accepted as a 

 caricature of the Abbe Cotin, the 

 feeble pettiness and pretentious- 

 ness of whose verses Moliere 

 regarded as fair game for satire. 



Femoral Artery (Lat. femur, 

 thigh). Main artery of the thigh 

 running from the groin to a point 

 rather above the knee, where it be- 

 comes the popliteal artery and is 

 continued down the leg. It gives 

 off numerous branches, which sup- 

 plythe muscles and skin with blood. 



Femur OR THIGH-BONE. Longest 

 bone in the human body. Above 

 it articulates with the pelvis to 

 form the hip- joint, and below with 

 the patella (knee-cap) and tibia to 

 form the knee-joint. The superior 

 extremity consists of a rounded 

 eminence, the head, which fits into 

 the acetabulum or socket of the 



pelvis, the neck, which is set at 

 about an angle of 125 with the 

 shaft of the bone, and two bony 

 prominences known as the greater 

 and lesser trochanters, which serve 

 for the attachments of muscles. 

 The shaft of the femur is somewhat 

 convex forwards, and in the cen- 

 tral third of the posterior surface 

 bears a prominent ridge, the linea 

 aspera, to which muscles are at- 

 tached. The inferior extremity 

 broadens out into two expansions, 

 the internal and external tuber- 

 osities, which terminate in two 

 smooth rounded articular eminences 

 known as the condyles, separated 

 from each other by a deep depres- 

 sion, the inter-condylar notch. 



Fracture of the shaft of the 

 femur is a common accident. If 

 due to indirect violence the frac- 

 ture is usually oblique, if due to 

 direct violence more or less trans- 

 verse. Unless complicated by 

 serious damage to the soft parts, 

 the fracture usually unites in from 

 6 to 8 weeks, though the leg should 

 not be made to bear the full weight 

 of the body for another two 

 months. Fracture of the neck of 

 the femur is most often met with 

 in elderly persons, whose bones 

 have become weakened by atrophy. 

 The condition is always serious in 

 aged persons, owing to the diffi- 

 culty of getting the broken frag- 

 ments to unite, and to the risk of 

 pneumonia supervening, which is 

 always present when it is necessary 

 to keep an elderly patient in bed 

 for any considerable length of 

 time. See Hip- joint ; Knee-joint. 



Fen. Anglo-Saxon word for 

 marshy or boggy land. The district 

 of this nature in Cambridgeshire, 

 Norfolk, Huntingdonshire, and Lin- 

 colnshire is known as the Fens. 

 The will o' the wisp is sometimes 

 called the fenfire, while fenberry is 

 another name for the cranberry. 

 See Fens. 



Fence. Device used on farms 

 for boundary purposes, to prevent 

 stock from wandering and as a 

 wind-screen. The proper establish- 

 ment and maintenance of fences is 

 costly ; they often waste valuable 

 ground, and neglected hedges in 

 particular harbour vermin and 

 weeds, the latter often serving to 

 maintain insect and fungoid pests. 



Turf fences, chiefly consisting 

 of mud and stones, are cheap and 

 fairly durable if properly drained 

 and protected from the rain by 

 coping-stones. Walls, usually of 

 the dry sort, without cement or 

 mortar, are much favoured where 

 suitable flat stones are available. 

 They last for many years if care- 

 fully built, but after 50 years or 

 more they are liable to get out of 

 plumb, and fall after winter frosts. 



