THE REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT AMONG WOMEN. 169 



woman's structural development at any given time, and at the ear- 

 liest time, making the endurance of repression or the excess of siim- 

 uhition more hurtful to the childhood of girls than of boys. 



The pernicious doctrine that vvomen are made for sacrifice, with 

 the stimulus of making this sacrifice wholly acceptable 

 has been the root and front of all falsity in relations be- 

 tween the sexes. It begins in the family, teaching to the least 

 of them that brothers are to become whatever they can make them- 

 selves through their gifts and opportunities, and that sisters are to 

 become what is neither in the way of nor unacceptable to their 

 brothers. This subordination of one sex to the other teaches in- 

 feriority and breeds the pride of some sort of rivalry. The field of 

 this is soon found, there being much help to it; and the aim is 

 fixed to be a pleasure to the brother, as he is a power to her. If 

 this were all, little harm v/ould come of it; since, at its height of 

 art and purpose, it is the gift of God — this art of a woman ivliolly 

 pleasing a man. But the end being presented, with no incentive 

 bej^ond it, the aim soon touches its depth of demoralization, through 

 the notion that methods are of less consequence than results, and 

 forgetting the purpose of appearing to be what she is not. 



There is little room to doubt that this is a legitimate result of 

 early indirect training, and a fountain of that insincerity which is 

 so dark a shadow on female character. The affectation, instead of 

 the cultivation of gracious quality in the plastic years of childhood 

 often remains but an affectation, to the wormwoodand gall of other 

 lives and latest years. It is because of exceptional nurturing of 

 truth and womanly qualit}-, that society is saved from the full pen- 

 alty of the teaching that women are bound to please; and, pleas- 

 ing, it matters but little how. Grave as this charge seems, it is as 

 true as w4ien made a quarter of a century ago by that illustrious 

 friend of man, Horace Mann, that, "Through all time women have 

 been assiduoush' taught that the garniture of the body w^as more 

 precious than the vesture of the spirit; and in no age nor portion 

 of an age, in no country nor segment of a country, has w-oman 

 ever been elevated for her reflex power of elevating others." 



Under the conditions, it is not surprising that woman should 

 seize upon, material ornamentation as accessory to the purpose of 

 making the most of herself; or that, as the sense of her moral re- 

 sponsibility is lowered, she should rely more and more upon these 



