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- 
