WIFE-BEATING.
[TO TER EDITOR OF THE "SPROTATOR.I SRI,—In the Spectator of December 22, Miss Cobbe very properly 'calls attention to a single paragraph taken from the Times of the 18th, in which are recorded three violent assaults by men upon their wives, two of which were likely to end fatally; for very possibly without such special direction we should have passed them over unheeded, our daily papers and our war correspondents making us only too familiar with horrors ; and she has done us good service if for a moment she has made us think upon what is really going on about us, at a time, too, when we are inclined to gloss over evils with a show of universal rejoicing and large-heartedness. Yes it is right that wo should be forced to think over the con- dition of our women, but whether the questions Miss Cobbo puts to her countrymen suggest the true remedy is the point I wish to consider. She makes it an entirely political question, and at once —perhaps necessarily—becomes unjust ; for surely men feel no leas keenly than women these vile outrages, which disgrace men and women alike ; and Miss Cobbe's questions, put with such unsparing severity, and attributing to men alone the re- sponsibility, will not, or need not, make them wince for if, as Miss Cobbe, I think, elsewhere allows, men's and women's interests are really one, and their true relation towards each other that of alliance, not conflict, all our remedial measures should be guided by this idea ; but to bring political passions into our homes and amongst our women is to strengthen con- filet and aggravate their condition, for if men and women are to stand towards each other in the position of rivals and com. petitors, there can be but one result,—hopeless struggle and in- evitable defeat for our women ; this is appointed to women by
Nature, if woman abandons her true position, which is to be the helpmate of man and the mother of the race. And now I come to my true point and real remedy,—a man must have a decent and a real home, and a wife or daughters there supplying his real home wants, not labouring in a factory or elsewhere to add to his money earnings ; such a home would become the publican's enemy far more destructively than Mr. Chamberlain or any sort of Gothenburg system, for a man would look upon it as his rest, and appreciate his hearth there too well to be tempted to put his wife upon its fire, and his lamp would suggest other uses than that of an aggressive weapon. Our crime and our brutality and our disgraceful infant mortality have their origin in the want of homes for our mon and women, and the consequent temptation of the tavern ; and to redress this we must withdraw our women from the labour market, refusing her, too, a political arena, but placing her where Nature intended, where her power would indeed become her heaviest responsibility, rather than the want of it or of "constitutional rights" her wrong.—I am, Sir, &c., F.
Previous page
