THE AVERAGE WOMAN.
IT was a very good saying of Miss Willard's at Lady Henry Somerset's meeting this day week, that if they could bring over "the average woman" to their side of the women's suffrage question, the average woman would be sure to bring "the average man" with her. We quite agree, but we hold the maxim to embody the same kind of wisdom as that prediction of our early childhood, "if the sky falls, we shall catch larks." No doubt we should; but the significance of the saying lies in this, that the sky does not know how to fall, is not, indeed, in any sense a roof at all, and being nothing but space apparently arched by the equal incapacity of the eye for penetrating further in any one direction than in any other, there is nothing really capable of falling. We suspect Miss Willard's proverb to be wisdom of much the same kind, If the average woman be converted, she will bring the average man with her. Doubtless. But can the average woman be converted? Does not the "average woman's" opinion on this subject depend on that of the average man ? Might you not just as well say, So soon as you can coax a smile out of the face which looks at you out of the mirror into which you gaze, you will smile yourself.' Of course you will, because the face in the mirror will not smile till you have already smiled. The average woman will bring the average man with her, because in matters of this kind the average woman's opinion is modelled on that of the average man. Just so on matters which primarily concern woman, the average man's opinion is a reflection of that of the average woman, and waits upon it. In Miss Mary E. Wilkins's lively tale of "Pembroke," she makes a man of very peculiar views,—not an average man by any means,—insist on baking a sorrel pie, and baking it without any butter or lard, or anything that is of animal origin in any respect. The result may be imagined. After violent exertion he succeeds in eating one or two tough bits of sorrel pie, but not in per- suading any one else to eat any. The crust of the sorrel pie is used to light the fires with, and no one, not even the man who originated and embodied this singular conception in a deed, inquires after the fate of the remainder. The average woman's opinion, willing as she is to follow the average man in things which chiefly concern man, is set immovably against this freak of imagination in a feminine matter on the part of a man who is very far from an average. It is her opinion which rules that of the average man in matters in which she and she alone is chiefly concerned. Cooking is her department, and she can no more yield to a caprice of his against her own judgment, than he could yield to a caprice of hers against his clear judgment. In some things man's judgment rules woman's. In other things woman's judgment rules man's. And you could no more determine arbitrarily to reverse this rule than you could determine arbitrarily that men should nurse the children, and women fight their battles.
Some one, however, will be sure to say, 'But why should not women's opinion be just as closely concerned with politics as men's opiniton P' Politics rule the State, and woman is just as essential to the State as man. We quite agree. Indeed, we maintain that woman's opinion in all that concerns women both does exert, and always will exert, just as much influence over politics as man's. But it will not take shape in matters military or naval or constabulary, except indirectly, through its influence over man's opinion, for in these matters it is he who is primarily concerned, and she does not give the law to him, but he to her. And so it is with all the executive part, all the actually fighting part of politics. No opinion is more influential than woman's, but it is influential by moulding man's, not by over- ruling it, not by directly controlling it. Just as in matters which concern the treatment and control of young children,
or the delicacies of cooking, man's opinion often prevails over woman's, but only by first convincing hers, not by overpowering it, so in the sphere in which men necessarily take the leading part, the sphere, as we may call it of physical force, and the administration of compulsory laws, woman's opinion often pre- vails over a man's, but never by overpowering and controlling it, only by first convincing it. In all the regions in which com- pulsory powers are the final sanction, man is necessarily the nrincipal agent, and must be convinced, not merely outvoted, for if he remained of the same opinion still, we may be very 'ere that the law, if it were opposed to his own opinion, would be practically a dead-letter. So too you might pass a hundred statutes as to the nursing and training of young children; but unless they expressed and embodied the opinions of the "average woman," none of them could be actually enforced. When you get to the execution of the law, you cannot really enforce it except with the full consent and con- currence of that sex by whose agency alone it can be carried out. Here is the folly of all attempts to reverse the laws of sex. The average man can no more overrule the average woman in matters in which she is' necessarily supreme, than the average woman can overrule the average man in matters where he has, and must have, the last word. And though if women once obtained the suffrage they might pass laws of which men heartily disapprove, these laws would be ignored and become dead-letters. Even if women bad, as of course they might have, the better opinion, they would find that better opinion far more influential, far more certain to obtain an easy victory, if it were left to its indirect influence, and were not clothed with the nominally compulsory power of a posi- tive statute. When physical force is needed in the last resort, it is a mistake, and a very mischievous mistake, to flourish the authority of the law over the unconvinced minds of those who can either execute it or leave it in abeyance. The osten- tation of authority, without the will to make authority felt, is at the bottom of a great deal of bad government.
Therefore, while we heartily agree with Miss Willard and the ladies who cheered her, that the average woman, whenever she is converted to approve of women's suffrage, will bring the average man with her, we are confident that the average woman will not easily be converted. And even if, in a few unimportant States, she is apparently converted, she will soon relapse into the old opinion that her true political in- fluence on the State, though large, is, and should be, indirect, and exerted in all ultimate matters through the average man, not over him. After all, the average woman will always feel that she is a woman. It is only very exceptional women, and not average women at all, who feel as if they were men, and ought to be able to compel where they cannot persuade. It is not the average man, but a very exceptional man, who can forget that he is a man, and fancy that he can only persuade, and cannot, in the last resort, compel. And neither the exceptional woman who wants to compel, nor the exceptional man who never thinks of anything beyond persuasion, is really likely to be exceptional in the degree of his general capacity. The really able woman has almost always the average woman in her, and much more of it than the masculine woman has of the average man. Look at the women who have been most famous in history. Joan of Arc was no masculine-minded woman, though she did the work of fifty able men. Even our own Queen Elizabeth,—one of the least amiable of her sex,— who was certainly a masculine woman in spite of her enormous vanity, and no doubt, under the exceptional circumstances of her reign, all the better Queen for her masculine character, is the exception that proves the rule. She was a Queen where a King was wanted, and she was a King with the advan- tage of having all her strength doubled in its effectiveness by the disguise of a sex to which at heart she never really belonged. But the same could hardly be said of any other of the greatest women of the world. Cleopatra, Zenobia, Mary Queen of Scots, Catherine of Russia, Maria Theresa, and almost any other great woman, bad or good, who can be named, has been great rather by the help of a superfluity of the average woman in her than by the deficiency of those qualities which belong to the average woman. The fact is that sex is as distinctive of the greater qualities of character in the woman as in the man. Great men, good or bad, are usually great through abundance of manliness, and great women, good or bad, are great through an abundance of womanliness. Then look at the women who
have been greatest in literature. They have been great in womanish and womanly qualities, as well as in the excep- tional qualities which made them notable. Who would think of any of the great women authors,—Madame de Steel, Miss Edgworth, Miss Austen, George Eliot, Mrs. Brown- ing,—as if they were great by their force of will, and not rather by the force of their feminine perceptions and feminine affections or passions. Depend upon it that it is not a mark of capacity to ignore one of the most characteristic of all qualities, the quality of sex. The average woman will certainly carry the average man with her, but it will be by first reflecting all that it is most natural for the average woman to reflect in the feelings and aims of the average man. No mistake can be greater than the mistake of supposing that it is a mark of special capacity to ignore the qualities of the sex in which you are born, and to confound the instincts of the two different sexes. Women will always exert their highest influence through that in them which is feminine, and men through that in them which is masculine.
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