WOMAN AND FREEDOM IN WHITMAN 383 



men greater than man, we may admit, through their divine 

 maternity, always their towering emblematical attribute 

 but great, at any rate, as man, in all departments; or rather 

 capable of being so, as soon as they realize it, and can bring 

 themselves to give up toys and fiction, and launch forth, as 

 men do, amid real, independent stormy life." 



The physical inequality of woman is one that Whitman 

 would wipe out. His lines repeat themselves again and again, 

 urging women on to robustness. He deprecates dyspeptic 

 womanly amours. He calls for the "athletic American ma- 

 tron speaking in public to crowds of listeners." In jubilant 

 song he announces the " horsewoman's joys." He encourages 

 woman to fill her being with the great world ideas, " events 

 and revolutions," sweeping in waves of immense passion 

 across the earth. 



Something of this spirit has filtered its way to-day into 

 France. Woman's physical inequality is to be met by espe- 

 cial attention to the culture of her physique, and as a part of 

 the solution of the sex problem, as well as the problem of 

 society, the indispensableness of woman standing with man as 

 physical peer is recognized. 



Whitman urges both women and men to action; he tells 

 them: "As for you, I advise you to enter more strongly into 

 politics always inform yourself; always do the best you 

 can; always vote. Disengage yourself from parties." Whit- 

 man exults in independence. "What is independence? Free- 

 dom from all laws or bonds except those of one's own being, 

 controll'd by the universal ones. To lands, to man, to woman, 

 what is there at last to each but the inherent soul, nativity, 

 idiosyncrasy, highest poised, soaring its own flight, following 

 out itself?" 



Whitman is not blind to the fact that these States are not 

 true to what he believes the real spirit of their constitution to 

 be, "for all this hectic glow and these melodramatic scream- 

 ings." He sounds the alarm, and cautions political and busi- 

 ness readers "against the prevailing delusion that the estab- 

 lishment of free political institutions and plentiful intellectual 

 smartness, with general good order, physical plenty, indus- 



