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NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
ISH’S CHARGE TO WOMEN.
BY
H. R. S. DALTON, B.A.,
AUTHOR OF
“the
education of girls”
AND
“religion and priestcraft.”
LONDON:
FREETHOUGHT PUBLISHING COMPANY,
28, Stonecutter Street, E.C.
PRICE
FOURPENCE.
�LONDON :•
PRINTED BY ANNIE BESANT AND CHARLES BRADLAUGH,
28, STONECUTTER STREET, E.C.
�PREFACE.
The following extract is the concluding portion of the same
book (second or prose volume) from which the author’s
former pamphlet, “ The Education of Girls,” was taken.
The asterisks mark omission of such passages as would
be likely to give the reader a false impression, when sepa
rated from the main work to which they belong and which
as intended for scholars.
��ISH’S CHARGE TO WOMEN.
I hold that all fundamental reforms must begin at the
foundation, not at the summit. The foundation of a State
is its masses, not its select few. The few may influence
the many to move, but move without them they cannot;
•or, if they do, the new position thus taken up is soon
found inharmonious and untenable. We cannot be just
in our estimation of historic despots, lay or ecclesiastical,
without recognizing the fact that the serfdom of any
people is in the last resort its own fault, after all, or
•at any rate is its own doing. No one can be king or priest
but by consent or submission of the masses over whom he
presides; the mode of bringing about that acquiescence
may be another matter; but there it is in any case, and is
indispensable to the existence of any domination, good or
bad. If you tell me that minds of high quality and culture
•easily lead the sheep-like plebs, as these in their turn govern
■domestic animals by virtue of human understanding—I
reply that the people are not born to be sheep-like, while
the lower animals cannot help being what they are. The
same kind of effort which creates an aristocracy, or the
more powerful aristocracy of talent, would, if exerted, at
least raise the masses to a capacity for self-government in
matters of routine ; so that the idea of a divine right to
govern despotically from above, is as one-sided and unphilosophic as the opposite extreme one, that the masses
■can act without organization. I do not say, mind you, that
the masses are to be expected to originate the ideas which
lead to change ; what I say is that no matter by whom pro
gress has been conceived, it must be executed by the mass
moving voluntarily under leaders, not by leaders trying to
move the unwilling mass.
As, then, little argument is needed to show that woman’s
influence in the home and in social gatherings is already
next to omnipotent in swaying the prejudices both of her
own and of the other sex, I may safely affirm that whatever
�ish’s charge to women.
changes are to be made in the old grooves of thought and'
feeling by the present adult generation—I mean apart from
the boundless resource at hand in a revolutionized training
of the young—must depend for their reality and permanence
on the hearty co-operation, if not the independent will, of
the female community at large. The emancipation of
women must be effected primarily by women themselves.
Since the opponents of woman’s emancipation are sofond of babbling the old ditty that her sphere is the home,
I will take them at their word; not, indeed, to the extent
of admitting that woman’s sphere ought to be anywise
restricted to the home, but to the extent of giving themcarte blanche to exaggerate her power there as they please.
I believe their most dilated expressions about, the sway
of woman’s secret influence will not much overshoot the
mark. And what is more, the men who are most perma
nently affected by it are those of strong character, because
the source of such strength lies in receptivity whereby they
consolidate the results of others’ experience. Hence the
rulers among men being themselves subtly and secretly
guided by women, it may be said with some truth that
women govern the world after all, though they are denied'
any formal acknowledgment of their sway.
How, then, women of our day, do you employ your
powers, such as they are ? I do not so much ask with what
motives you employ them, as with what results. The
motives may be generally conscientious; but are the results
generally beneficial ? What has your influence done toward
improving and ennobling mankind ? Has it produced in
ternational peace and concord ? Has it established internal
content with any people ? Has it removed the injustice of
the contrast between pauperism and wasteful superfluity ?
Has it uniformly discouraged all cruel sports—Spanish bull
fights, for example—wherein helpless- lower animals are the
sufferers ? Has it done anything which might not equally
well have been brought about in due time, had each com
munity consisted only of men ? I fear we shall find it hard
to prove that women have moved en masse toward many—
if, indeed, any—really humanizing events. Good and highminded women there are in abundance, scattered over the
world; but there are also good and high-minded men.
What I seek to discover is something special and peculiar
which has been wrought by women acting in a collective
�ish’s charge to women.
7
capacity; something which shows that, the man-breeding
office apart, this world would not have got on as well with
out them.
I believe we shall have a tremendous revolution; and
then order, the true and Divine Order, will emerge out of
the chaos. But all this does not. and cannot make the
present abuses tolerable; and it is my duty to place them
before you without gloss, however little grace and favour I
may win by so doing.
What are we to conclude from the obvious facts just noted ?
Anything against woman’s untutored nature ? No. The
nature of woman is faultless; it is what women are made
that is corrupt and abominable, amn VJn
nnu>
in Corruptions Heis .? Nay. Her children,
theirs is the spot, perverse and crooked generation that they
are ! Women are capable of everything both for good and
evil; and it is evil that they are mostly reared amidst. And
so far, of course, the fault is not theirs individually; but it
is their fault individually as well as collectively, that when
they are called upon to rise, either by men ' or by other
women possessed of exceptional wisdom, they are deaf to
every appeal that ranges 'higher than petty personalities
which afford occasion for over-reaching and mean jealousy.
Esprit de corps, with the average female, means nothing like
the dignity of the female sex ; it means only the ephemeral
consideration one clique or party may succeed in gaining
over another, to go in its turn to the wall when new favourites
come into fashion. How easily, too, the warmest friendship
between women is cooled and changes into spite when one
of them happens to obtain a little worthless social triumph,
or still more when she wins a race for the condescension of
one of us sons of God ! The dear sweet angelic darling of
yesterday is the nasty detestable creature of to-day, as all
black now as she was all white then. I do not need to be
told that women, like men, must have their occasional
quarrels ; but a fit of anger and even a fierce resentment
prolonged until the cause is removed, are quite different
things from a systematic black envy which is called forth by
the success of a friend, and would rather hinder than helj?
many an acknowledged good work because it is associated
with a particular person and a rival.
In the face of such treachery in the camp, such untrust
worthiness of women in relation to each other, is it any
wonder that the female race has not yet shaken off its
�ISH S CHARGE TO WOMEN.
vassalage? Unity of purpose and of plan is needed to
effect the liberation ; and the only unity that I have observed
consists in a common consent to do nothing that may
efface personal importance for the general good.
I do
not deny that there are exceptions to be found, but they are
as one in a thousand. What, then, is the use of trying to
better those who virtually reply that they do not want to
be bettered? To what purpose is the multitude of philo
sophies and sciences and studies and arts to which many
of you, female friends, equally with us give both reverence
and practical attention, when as an answer to the urgent
representation that study ought, among other things, to
raise you to a position of utility where it will be possible
for your hidden capacities to come forth, you treat what
is said as though such notions were mere jugglers' tours de
force, or curiosities kept in a cupboard to be shown to
visitors and put back again when they have afforded amuse
ment ? For I will challenge any man who has woman’s cause
at heart—and I am thankful to believe that there do exist a
few such men at last—to broach opportunely any depart
ment of this great subject, say at a quiet evening or afternoon
party where there are young ladies to talk to—not some two
or three superior women gathered with difficulty out of the
society of a metropolis, but just chance acquaintances of
the average stamp—and I will ask you to imagine for your
selves what kind of response he will meet with or what
impression he will make. Immediately the strange novelties
of reform are propounded, the girls will glance into his face
to see if he is essaying a sally of humour at which they are
expected to laugh: and finding that he is not, they will
politely compliment him on his chivalrous and liberal feel
ings toward ladies, fancying that this stale old compliment
was what he was fishing for, of course. And then, as soon
as they get an opportunity to change the subject without
rude abruptness, they will lightly laugh it all off, as who
should say, £ Ah, these world-reforming ideas are very
romantic, and gentlemen can make very pretty speeches to
ladies upon them; but of course they wouldn’t do for real
life; we should all be unsexed and lose our chance of a
good match.’ I really do not apprehend having exaggerated
the case; the shallowness of the average young lady’s mind
is something that must be probed to be believed. The pro
cess is not without interest for the curious psychologist; he
need but press her a little toward first principles upon any
�ish’s charge to women.
9
topic whatever, even her favourite one, and he will soon find
that her first principles consist' in some great—or still
better, fashionable—person’s ipse dixit, which it has never
occurred to her to examine, far less to call in question. From
religion downwards—or perhaps I should say upwards
in this case—-the finished young lady does and thinks
almost everything that she does and thinks merely because
some one told her to do so ; and it does not much matter
to her who that some one was. Independent judgment is,
in the first place, beyond her capacity, and in the second,
as indecorous in her opinion as independent action would
be. So there she lives and moves and has her being, a
flaccid automaton of the Proprieties, an Elegant Pheno
menon, from whom both quantity and quality have been
successfully washed out; her very talent, if she has any,
having been trimmed and pared to avoid originality and to
produce indifferent copies of the work of some one with a
name. Such is the description of building we style a young
lady ; and of ladies not young it may be said that the de
parted grandeur of a youth like this leaves traces of its glory
in the midst of their decay.
These are not pleasant contemplations, but they have
to be faced; nor can I halt in the task to be performed
through fear of provoking the enmity of those I would serve.
Yet let not the position be misunderstood. If instead of
what I now see when I look around in the world, I saw women
everywhere awake to their degradation, complaining bitterly
of their moral chains, and striving unanimously to cast
them off, with mean jealousies and petty rivalries for worth
less objects laid aside in presence of that great purpose,
just as the heterogeneous states of a federation waive their
differences in order to withstand a common enemy ; not a
hint would I then have breathed touching their acknow
ledged evils, which I should regard as already put away
by the earnest determination that they shall be. But when,
so far from perceiving such a mind in women, I find them
for the most part indolent and apathetic, and that, not
because their sympathies and interests are absorbed in some
other great problem demanding imperatively a prompt solu
tion, but merely because they find it less troublesome to
bow before idols than to ’ be valiant for any form of truth
upon earth, less irksome to submit to small trials and
feel small pleasures, to live in a sphere altogether small,
than to ennoble themselves by one serious effort; then I
�IO
.
ish’s charge to women.
am bound to say that it is not so much vice or crime which
can drag human nature down to the lowest depths, as this
vile, sneaking, pitiful weakness of character, which amalga
mates only with the worst side of experience, not having
energy to turn adversity to account, to make past pain an
instrument of present wisdom. All things in lower nature
either answer their purpose perfectly as they are, or struggle
onwards in gradual development to its accomplishment.
She alone who is the crown and archetype of nature wilfully
stands in her own light, and perpetuates her own and man’s
misery.
The purpose for which it is dispensed to us to be born
into this world is twofold—the formation of noble character
in the individual, and the furtherance of the race toward
development of the true Humanity, the stature of the fulness
of its own divinity. But . the attainment of either of these
objects of existence depends upon the part assigned to
each being played by each and not- shifted on to someone
else’s shoulders. It is folly, indeed, to refuse to learn from
others, but it is worse than folly never to achieve anything
oneself from which others may learn. He who does the
first may be a self-punishing egoist, but he who defaults in
the second is a cumberer of the ground. To dread being,
original, where originality means production of something
beautiful or useful, is to shun humanity itself; and yet it is
a patent fact that women as a class do systematically hide
under a bushel whatever gifts they possess ; or if they let
them appear, it is with timidity and uncertainty, caused,
not by a doubt whether what they originate be good of its
kind—such hesitation is sometimes desirable—but as to
what people will say, especially the people who lead to-day’s
fashions. There are plenty of brilliant original ideas to be ■
found among women, even as society has made women; but
there is a want of wholeness and consistency and moral
sinew when these ideas come to be definitely put forward,
which completely prevents them from forcing a place for
themselves in the current of actual life. The reason I take
to be that the head and the heart do not work together.
The woman’s heart is always trying to pull her aright; her
poor addled head is always sending her wrong.
Yet, moreover, in speaking thus confidently of the inherent
goodness of woman’s heart, let it be clearly understood that
I mean her innate feelings, not that mess of washy senti-
�ish’s charge TO WOMEN.
II
ments which has been inculcated upon her. These senti
ments only too often follow the lead of the head, and render
the woman to all intents and purposes little better than
heartless....... I assure you this is no ugly phantom of my
own conjuring up; I speak from personal knowledge, from
what I have actually seen of respectable and so-called reli
gious women; and if the majority here can plead not
.guilty to any charge of this sort, I cannot but think that
the chief reason is because they have never been tempted.
Often have I myself known the male as unwilling
to let himself down to the depth of 'feminine heartlessness
as he is unable, on the 'other hand, to. rise to the
heights of feminine goodness; often have I known her
who is bom the Saviour of mankind, and the form of heaven,
trying in vain to eradicate all truthfulness and tenderness
from the heart of him who is born in the opposite character
and form. It. is even so. One woman regards another
Simply as a weed which may be allowed to grow in peace
so long as she herself does not happen to covet its place;
when she does, it is to be torn thence by the root.
*
And
who are these heartless supplanters, once more ? Do they
belong to the “dangerous classes,” are they the companions
■of burglars and garotters ? No; they are the very same per
sons whose lady v. gentleman conduct is in the most un
exceptionable taste, and who, if you were to hint at a more
natural and less selfish and one-sided code of sexual
morality than the ecclesiastical one still in vogue, would dis
play by countenance and gesture the very latest thing out in
■shocked modesty, or perhaps quote an apostle against you.
Their reading of the duty towards one’s neighbour, how
ever, is so far original as to consist in this, that while a
woman who takes a fancy to a man may rightfully lacerate
another woman’s, deepest affections wholesale, and make
the rest of her life miserable, she must, still try to keep up
appearances so far as attainment of the object will allow.
Hearts maybe broken, but Society must not be scandalised.
Think not that I am taking too much upon myself in
■censuring the frailties of others, while I of course have other
frailties of. my own that are doubtless quite as bad in their
way. It is not your frailties, my friends, but rather your
* Dialogist Ish is haranguing a female audience from a platform.
Let us hope that the consciences of most of his hearers would acquit
them of this bitter and sweeping charge.
�ish’s charge to women.
12
fictitious virtues that I inveigh against. I will even go so
far as to say that were it not for these rotten “ virtues ” of
yours, your frailties would have remained mere momentary
impulses, to be overcome the next moment by a better
impulse. If only you had not been made’ such models of
Christian behaviour, it is probable you would have attained
something of real human worth, and the world would have
been a step nearer toward the knowledge of what a woman
can be.
This is no place to recur to the now well ventilated
subject of sensual passions; but I cannot pass on without
saying thus much, that so long as women think it their duty
to cultivate flabbiness and imbecility under the names of
delicacy and innocence, it is really they, the chaste ladies,
who are accountable for whatever morbid abuses of the flesh
may exist in the world.
*
*
*
There are several morbid gratifications which are un
doubtedly injurious; and it is for these, I say, that the whole
race of women is to blame, just in proportion as they
truckle to the depositaries of effete superstition, and submit
to be locked up in the village pound of an ignorant and
corrupt prudery.
Another matter which also makes the few champions of
women’s cause among our sex despair is the puny, febrile,
baseless character of feminine resolution. To adduce an
example : many a good essay or article has of late years
been written in journals' and periodicals by women on
women’s rights and duties ; • productions so able, so graceful
and even scholarlike, so replete with combined sweetness
and strength, as to show clearly how women might, if they
chose, add [in their own persons the divine presence and
influence of womanhood to all those powers that are dis
tinctly human in men. But only let a leading newspaper
or other organ of public opinion print an illogical sour
critique against the newly come forward champion of
woman’s liberty, reproving her in the old set terms and
phrases of conventional pig-headedness, for want of modesty,
&c., &c., and we almost invariably see the hopeful volunteer
“ subside into her boots,” with apologetic explaining away
and deprecation of censure, instead of gladly seizing the
opportunity for an uncompromising and crushing reply.
�ish’s charge to women.
13
What can be done for a class so destitute "of back-bone
that it allows its dearest wishes to be snubbed down by
shallow critics, when it has, after all and in the last resort,
full power to enforce them 2 Want of self-assertion and selfreliance in the face of public prejudice casts a not-altogether
undeserved discredit upon the quieter virtues of kindness
and generosity which women exhibit so largely. A slave’s
virtues cannot be regarded quite as those of a freeman.
They may proceed from spontaneous goodness, but the
world is more likely to set them down as drilled habits or
the results of weakness rather than strength, the products of
compulsion and fear rather - than of love. The courage of
meek endurance may win approbation—especially from the
oppressor, whose interest it suits, of course—but it does not
win the great battles of life; it does not further mankind
toward happiness and unity. On the contrary, were there
no other virtues in the world than those which fashion
stamps as the Frauen-Zimmer virtues, the ornamental
qualities of the lady’s bower—the state of modern society,
bad as it is already, would then be far worse. Abject
superstition overhead; narrow selfishness around, broken
only by occasional idolatry of some favourite, the roc’s egg
of the season; thorns and briars of evil temper and suspi
cion and spiteful envy and hollow artifice and mean motives
and “ whatsoever loveth and maketh a lie,” besetting every
path underfoot—all that is noble and aspiring and progres
sive in these hard days of ours would be eliminated from
life, and the peace of hell which hateth all understanding
would have to be purchased by each one of us at the price
of degradation to be helpless sloths or murderous reptiles
before our time.
Another among the evil consequences of a false standard
of honour set up in female society is the vulgar snobbish
emulation of each class of social rank by that one just below
it in the scale. Women, having been educated to frivolity,
can seldom look upon works of any kind as honourable in
themselves. . They regard them as mere stepping-stones to
personal distinction and social consideration, as instruments
of mammon worship, to be cast aside when done with and
to be kept as much in the background as possible while
they are being used. Hence they do not care to excel in
their several stations, but each must needs trespass on the
station next above. For example, the maid-servant, having
�14
ish’s charge to women.
no conception of any more solid mental pleasure, stints
herself in the necessaries of health in order to buy a smart
bonnet or cloak and make herself look as much of a “lady”
as possible on Sundays and other holidays; often the un
becoming ill-assorted finery is a direct though bad imitation
of something worn by her own mistress. Of course she has
as much right to her own tastes as the mistress herself; but
that is no reason why either should be frivolous. Then
look at the mistress whom she apes. Probably she is a
lady properly so called, but of 'inconsiderable fortune and
therefore not justified in attempting the display, whether in
dress or other matters, which her neighbour the nobleman’s
wife or large proprietress can make without sacrifice. But
she must needs in her turn ape her titled or opulent neigh
bour and live at agony point in order to keep up a style
which may make her seem to hold a different position from
that she really does. And so on with each class in its way;
each resolves on seeming what it is not; and so long as
women act thus, is it to be expected that men should keep
themselves free from the taint ? Snobbishness, vulgarity,
hollowness, heartlessness, whatever is greasy and unclean in
polished morals will always remain prominent characteristics
of our civilization, so long as our women have no worthier
ambition than that of ephemeral peacock rivalry—a rivalry
in which the successful competitor gains little that is real,
except the spiteful envy and back-biting of the dear
sisters she has outstripped in the discreditable race. I fear
too that the women of England are more to blame than any
others for the spreading of this social ulcer. However it
may suit foreigners to have their jokes against England
about this or that, it is none the less a fact patent enough to
any one who will take the trouble to observe, that this
country exercises a deeper influence upon the ideas of the
epoch than any other in the world. This is not the place—
nor do I profess to be historian or anthropologist enough—
to inquire why it is so. What is more to the purpose is to
ask whether we whose example is secretly so powerful
abroad are taking care that that example shall be a good
one. Are we endeavouring honestly to colonize the lands,
so far as we may, with justice and truthfulness and
humanity ? Perhaps we are; but what success is the
endeavour likely to have, while the very source of justice
and rectitude and fellow-feeling remains by our own consent
and act a poisoned spring ? Bear this in mind, my
�ish’s charge to women.
1-5
countrywomen: it is not merely the house or village or town
you each inhabit, not merely your own small fidgeting and
discontented circle, that suffers by your studied falsification
of the name and nature of Woman ; there is a great world
outsideTupon which your lives collectively and individually
work with occult but immense effect; and you are each
responsible to a far greater extent than you have any notion
of for the happiness or misery of entire mankind. • If, then,
you would not shrink from the task you are born into this
world to fulfil, you must alter your course and cast aside your
shams, though it be pain and grief to you; aye even if those
shams constitute the whole of your present religion and
nearly half of your present morality.
I would not, my hearers, that you should think I am too
swayed by passion to form a just judgment on these
matters. Nor am I conscious of ingratitude to the Past; I
do not forget that what is worn out and worse than useless
now, was once justly hailed as a deliverance and a blessing.
But I do refuse to admit the doctrine that expedients which
were good for a bye-gone age should necessarily hold good
for the present age. For instance, both Christianity and
Christian marriage have had their day. The Christian form
of hero-worship was a step in the direction of anthropomor
phism from the negative Judaism which was its immediate
predecessor; and as regards old heathendom, Christianity
was better than creeds which sanctioned human sacrifice and
torture. And Christian marriage, no doubt, came as a boon
to .races of women liable to be bought and sold by the
drove. But those times are gone, and we need not continue
to apply the remedies which belonged to them; if we do,
they become injuries instead of remedies, like a course of
medicine which is still persisted in after its work in the body
has long been done. Let us render the Past all the thanks
due to it, and then bow it out of the door. We do not
want it or its morals any longer; we are entering upon a
different dispensation. We are getting up from all-fours
upon our feet, and intend to walk without external props.
We require no St. This or St. That to tell us our duty or
supply us with canons of faith; the night of authority is past,
the sunrise of rational liberty is at hand; the ungrown
nations are beginning to foretaste their manhood, and they
will not longer submit to be tied with the leading-strings of
tradition. Let those who would so tie them beware ; they
�*6
ish’s charge to women.
make the attempt at their peril. An irreversible fiat has
gone forth against the old order of things. Delenda est
Carthago.
It rests with you, women of our generation, to overcome
the insanity of being ruled by a nightmare. You alone can
remove the dreamy incubus of these false and hollow morals
which have pinched and worried the masses of mankind
until crime and cruelty became the inevitable outlets of
suppressed heat; it rests with you to say,. Let there be light;
and the rays of liberty shall dart into every gloomy abode of
scowling hatred and murderous violence and pining misery,
turning the blackness of darkness into rainbow colours, and
the poisonous reek of disease into the zephyr of rejuve
nescent health. The philanthropists of centuries have
essayed in vain what you can accomplish in a few years if
you will; great men here and there have educated them
selves by long and painful ordeals, and when their steel
has been tempered at last, they have, in their own persons,
withstood the pressure and shocks of the current, and have
persuaded a sprinkling of lesser minds to stand by them as
against it; but you have the power, if you choose, to turn
the course of the current itself, so that vice will become
difficult and virtue easy, not indeed in the distorted sense
hitherto borne by those terms, but when virtue shall have
come to mean something that benefits oneself and others,
and vice the deliberate preference of morbid excitement to
sound and healthful' pleasures at hand. For, indeed, as
things are yet, it may really be a question whether “virtue ”
is not, on the whole, a rather worse evil than vice. It rests
with you, I say, to look back shortly from a position of dignity
and beneficence upon these grey cold days through which we
are passing, with a shudder at your former infatuation. Ele
vated to the divine throne, your birthplace, in matters spiritual,
and set free to live instead of vegetating and wasting away mil
dewed, in matters mundane—you will then, for the first
time in history, become sensible that a woman ought not to
be merely a well-dressed female biped; that she exists for
something more than to make a little show and a little fuss
in a little place and then vanish.
Strike with a will, and you will soon find out the strength
of your arm. You will soon find out what a pitiful weapon
the alleged superior strength of men is against the fixed
determination of woman to conquer by the power of sexual
�ISH S CHARGE TO WOMEN.
17
fascination J I mean, plainly, to reward those who will stand
by and advance her social and other rights, and punish all
those who oppose them, no matter how they stand related.
*
It is useless to disguise the fact that women can and must
enforce their rights. To trust in the generosity of the essen
tially selfish is like waiting for the sun to rise in the west;
those who will have to be deposed for woman’s elevation
are not likely to yield but under compulsion. The day for
that hope has passed; the crisis of your destiny is at hand,
•and the reserve must be called up.
Thus you see, women of every stage and station in life,
it is to your better nature and your higher faculties that I
would appeal in order to awaken you to a sense of the
. evils you are fostering and to the ready modes of putting an
end to them. But it is also my duty to show, that if you
are determined to “keep the universal track which vain
persons have trodden,”+ vain will be found those tinsel de
fences of yours on which you rely for the conservation of a
tinsel society; your narrow prudishness, your regulated
■coyness, your paste-board dignity—not too dignified, how
ever, to stoop to any meanness—your stereotyped recipes
for-catching- eligible men in matrimonial toils, your creed
that marriage is a woman’s stimmum bonum to which she is
to sacrifice every sound quality with which she was born ;
vain, I repeat, will be these old bulwarks against the iron
mis,sites ready to be hurled at them, when the victims of long
imposture shall have found out the worthlessness of those
ia whose hard service they have groaned with unrewarded
patience, and shall have risen like one man to shatter their
chains and grind the forgers of them in the dust. You
■cannot win in such a struggle, but you can by thus taking
the wrong side aggravate all the miseries it may engender.
It is, then, a practical question, female friends, which you
at this day called upon to determine—no mere philosophic
■Speculation like the Sexual Symbol Theory, for example—
but a vital matter which concerns this world rather than the
■Other, at all events, in the first and foremost place. You
* This, of course, applies only to vindicating the rights of the female
The Dialogist does not mean that women would be
justified in making the home unhappy for the sake of any mere
private personal whim.
sex at large.
f jib* »nn 10m note ninon
[Job xxii., 15.]
dSv
nnstn
�13
ish’s charge to women.
have to choose between two positions for your sex at large,
and so for your individual selves as members of it, either of
which positions wholly excludes the other.
By the one you will be emancipated from the long term
of bondage which has dwarfed your minds and enervated
your constitutions ; you will be made to feel an independent
dignity instead of the menial one of belonging to a husband
—in theory at any rate—as a dog or horse might belong to
you; you will take your equal share in that humanizing
sense of responsibility which the holding a worthy office in
the human commonwealth and in that of your own country
begets; you will know what freedom means, that it is poor
freedom to be physically at large without having the soul
free from influences of superstition more imperious and
wayward and hurtful than any tyrant’s commands; and -in
this true freedom you will lift your heads up and away from
gazing upon the footprints of some historic hero and expect
ing the empty shadow of his name to support you in the
inevitable trials of life. You will become conscious of a
power for good over all the departments of human—aye of
animal—existence, very different from maudlin sentiment
and impotent benevolence that wishes well but does nothing.
You will see before you definite objects of a worthy ambi
tion, which your own talents and energies may win without
fear of being thwarted by bad laws and worse customs
established by men in their selfishness as against you. It
will be yours to command wars to cease in all the world,
and nations to adjust their differences by arbitration, so that
the miseries of wholesale maiming and bloodshed shall be
counted among the horrors of vanished night; and crime
under your wiser administration shall be reduced at all
events from being an organized system into an occasional
result of temporary passion. Above all, in this new posi
tion, your rightful place, you will be the recognized home
and source of each nobler human aspiration, and everything
great and good and beautiful that the whole world contains,
will be valued and admired in its relation to you. Your
special pleasures will no longer be confounded with mere
animal wants or with the coarseness of profane revelry•
they will be understood as constituting that Holy Place
which nothing unclean may come nigh. Thus known asthe prime source and final end of every keen physical
delight and the one worthy object of every sublime ideal
ecstasy, at the same time the'never-failing help and comfort
�ish’s charge to women.
19.
in what sorrow and-darkness may still remain—the king
doms of this world will have become the kingdoms of your
mercy and truth meeting together, your righteousness and
peace kissing each other. As the waters cover the sea,,
so will your knowledge cover the earth, its Saviour and
Love and Life.
Turn now to the other side, the alternative position.
According to this you will indolently suffer things to go on
as they are, even if you do not actively strive to keep them
so. As a matter of fact, you1 are no more able to prevent
the great final consummation, the “ one far off divine event
to which the whole creation moves,” and which consists in
*
the liberation and elevation of your sex, than you can stop
the next comet. But it is easy to conjecture what disastrous
results will accrue to yourselves in the meanwhile, if you
persist in suffering for a bad cause through moral cowardice
or perverse obstinacy. You will forfeit the good opinion of
those whose admiration you evidently value more than selfrespect ; their affections and esteem being transferred to
that class whon| you make outcasts and despise. You will
bring honesty and honour into discredit by showing that
they who clamour for those principles are themselves hollow
and vain; and narrow self-seeking will through your fault
reconimend itself as the only safe rule for the conduct of
life. You will give a. colouring of justice to the brutalities
brutal men commit against their wives or other women, if
they say, “ It’s all very well to preach about conduct to
women; but you’ll find, sir, if you try it, that to be kind to
a woman is only to feed a snake to bite you.”' By conde
scending to fight man, where you must or wish to fight him,
with weapons more ignoble than his own, you will still
insure, as you have hitherto done, the easy victory of his;
worse nature over his better and itsyet more easy victory over
you. . By your contrivance the name of “ old woman” will
remain the contemptuous epithet it always has been, and
that of young woman will only fare better because of the
sensual gratifications attached to youth, sensual gratifica
tions having no more of the spiritual in them, if so much,
as the coition of beasts of the field. By this perversity of'
yours, misunderstanding, the cause of so much otherwise
causeless hatred, will be perpetuated in the world, there
being no common ground for the sympathy of diverse
religions, philosophies and ethics ; so that no new light will.
�20
ISHS CHARGE TO WOMEN.
■ever be able to appear as light to all, nor will aught be meat
for one soul without being poison for others ; conflict, con
flict everywhere will be the normal state of the inhabitants
of the earth, there being no judge to set the opponents
right. Your rule will not be a rule of right, but of cunning
inspired by malignity against each other; and it will be con
stantly over-ruled by the decision of men whom you gra
tuitously make judges in their own cause. Discontent,
beginning in your own hearts and homes, will grow louder
and louder as it pervades all classes and expresses itself in
various forms of unreason and disorder, until all are ready
for an outbreak which will inundate the privileges of classes,
and necessitate a painful reconstruction of society from its
slowly settling foundations. Thus at every turn scorn and
contumely will meet you; the God of your faith will prove
a liar, and the men you idolize will sneer at you and turn to
those other women whom you set at naught. Heavenly aid
a mockery, and trust in man a disappointment, there will
remain for you no refuge but the hell of your own concoct
ing, where womanhood and manhood melt away alike.
tK-
Rouse yourselves, then, women, from your criminal supine
ness, and take your destiny into your own hands, and be
truly women and not “ dumb driven cattle ” without the
cattle’s good qualities. The time is ripe for your united
action ; action that is not united may accomplish a little, but
not what the exigencies of the case demand. Make common
cause for the assertion of your rights social, political, pro
fessional, and religious; if assertion be not sufficient to
obtain them, make common cause for coercion in that way
you can coerce. Try and look at the matter seriously and
■act in it seriously ; do not treat it as a new sensation, which
is to have a season’s run and be done with, lest haply the
next great season’s sensation be one you will not like at all.
Strive, above all things, to cast that slough of yours, that
worst and most hideous part of undeveloped feminine
■character, your mutual jealousy and envy. When men are
�ish’s charge TO WOMEN.
21
jealous of each other—well, they are fools for their pains
*
and that is ail; having no unborrowed spiritual worth, they
cannot throw such away by misconduct. But you who have
and are the very spiritual gold, and yet tarnish it by thwart
ing and hating one another, especially when you do this in
reference to rivalry for the admiration of some particular
man or men, are guilty of profaning the Sanctuary itself, so
that they who approach it in order to be cleansed become
but doubly defiled.
Rouse yourselves and doubt not your capacity to work
OUt your own perfect regeneration and ours. The evidences,
of your capacity are plentiful, and are daily increasing, as a
Slightly more liberal education brings them out. No candid
observer can fail to remark how, when a woman does take
Up a thing in good earnest, she accomplishes it with a
finish &nd grace unattainable by men, though her work may
as yet lack that weight and depth which a man derives
from his advantageous mental training both of private study
and of public association.
This training, then, is one of the things you have to
insist upon, my friends, if you would choose the upward
path ; and there is now no middle course between going up
and going down. The age is in a transition state; old land
marks are crumbling away, and new ones are not yet set up;
the mariner has lost his former chart, and another is not
-provided for him; the light in the compass binnacle hasgone out, and there is no pilot across the waves of this
troublesome world. The portents of the latter day come
thick upon us in the ever louder refusal on all sides to bow
to the old ipse dixits ; the spirit of independence is breaking
out violently, and is only here and there moderated by
breadth of view. International associations, trade unions,,
strikes, democratic forces of every kind, reasonable and
unreasonable, are surging to the front; and though with
Anglo-Saxon peoples they may rarely lead to serious riotsz
their operation is all the more sure for being comparatively
Steady and quiet. The so-called conservative section of
society has not its heart in the defence of that which it
defends; while the opposite party is not exactly certain what
it is clamouring for, but would rather “ go it blind ” in the
direction of any smash than stifle and stagnate longer under
our fathers’ regime.
Yours, women, yours alone is the healing hand that can
allay all this fermentation ; not, indeed, in the way of arrest-
�22
xsh’s charge to women.
ing the great changes that are to come about, but so as to
prevent animosity and injustice between the classes affected
by them, and all classes must be affected in their turn.
Learning, in the first place, to look upon each other with
different eyes from what has hitherto been, your first thought
will not be that of shining at each other’s expense, but of
.grouping together to form a beautiful and efficient whole.
Here—in the mutual love of women—may be realised the
enjoyment of passions neither degrading nor defiling. It
may be, however, that no such stimulant is needed to awaken
women to a sense of their mutual obligation ; and in any
-case when once they are awakened, the keen wits heretofore
so sharp to create and foster unworthy class jealousies and
estrangement, will be as ready and able to cement cordiality
•and good understanding. Classes will not revile one another
when each and all have felt the sweet feminine influence
from each; bitterness will be short-lived as the hoar-frost
melting before the morning sun. By the advent of woman’s
reign on earth as in heaven will then be realised what a
■contemporary poet has made the answer of Liberty—
“ Liberty ! what of the night ?
I feel not the red rains fall;
Hear not the tempest at all,
Nor thunder in heaven any more :
All the distance is white
With the soundless feet of the sun ;
Night, with the woes that it wore
Night is over and done.”*
The time for that great change is coming near, and those
who refuse to join in the movement once fairly afoot, will
dimply be swept away by it. They will have to go in the
same direction after all, only with a bad grace and without
'claim for consideration.
They will be self-appointed
martyrs in an utterly thankless cause, that can neither
•defend the ramparts of the past nor lay any foundation for
the future. They will lose what they have and receive
nothing ’in its stead, or nothing which they are able to
appreciate. Ambition with them having proved a delu
sion and affection become a smouldering ruin, their latterday judge will be their own heart, and one to pronounce
their doom.
Women, can you hesitate between these opposite courses,
* Swinburne’s “ Songs before Sunrise.”
“ A Watch in the Night.”
�ish’s charge to women.
23
the upward and the downward path ? The voice of the age
is rising loud around you, the looks of the age are growing
fixed upon you ; the decisive hour of your .destiny is striking,
and il it is a knell which summons you to heaven or hell.”
By all you hold most dear in this life and all you most hope
for in worlds to come; by the loves you trust to continue,
the griefs you wait to put away; by the noble ambitions,
the refined tastes, the pure and properly human joys you
would develop instead of losing ; by everything which now
or hereafter may constitute the happiness of you and yours
-out of the deep we call to you to obliterate the disgrace
of your woeful past, and no more to let the name of your
-sex be a jeer in the mouths of thoughtless men, a bye-word
for what is weak and pitiful. You and you alone by your
-energy—your combined energy, undistracted by mean jea
lousies of each other—can at once make this world better
•and happier than it is, and can raise us all to a clearer
insight and a firmer faith respecting what is to follow. On
the other hand, you and yo.u alone will be the responsible
authors of greater anguish than mankind has yet endured,
if you continue to prostitute yourselves to falsehood and its
votaries, and idly fold your saving hands, and while cower
ing before the ills which your own apathy keeps alive, list
lessly repeat silly commonplaces to the effect of saying,
Peace, peace, when there is no peace.'
Choose ye this day whom ye will serve ; the God whose
•express image ye are, and who in your persons only can be
worshipped and loved; or that vain deluded “world ” which
has no personality but yet enough reality to continue what
it has ever, been, the means of your distortion and degrada
tion and bitter wrongs and woe.
&
-5^
^4.
There shall be quiet and safety for evermore among all
the inhabitants of the earth, when she who is born’ their
perfection and crown, their God and Giver of Life/ their
Comforter, shall come to the knowledge of herself and her
power, and shall arise and cast aside these unclean graveclothes under whose weight she has lain so long. In that
sunrise of everlasting peace shall the night of woe and dis
cord be remembered.no more; nation shall not rise up
against nation, nor kingdom against kingdom; they shall
not waste their precious substance any more in preparation
for misery and blood.
They shall not call bloodshed
glory, nor make trophies of their fellow-creatures’ pain, nor
�24
ish’s charge to women.
be thoughtless and cruel toward the creatures below, as.
though these, forsooth, had no kinship with us, no feelings
as keen as ours. The sweet Holy Spirit of Woman, the
Risen Saviour, shall lighten all dark and noisome corners,
of existence with such rays as it has nowhere yet shed. As
for the old false gods with their fiendish creeds, they shall
be as forgotten filth by the wayside; and the True God
nigh, in recognition of Herself, shall never again stoop,
down to that reeking refuse, nor look away from her own
sex for the joys of heaven.
Acknowledged universally as the physician of- body and
mind, their chief refuge and stay in trouble, their sole object
of worship in health; as the only confessor to whom theheart’s secrets may be laid bare, and in whose hand is theonly power to absolve; as the healer and purifier and sanc
tifier, the dispenser of blessings and author of good, the
rewarder of virtue and talent; as the main theme of science
and philosophy, the final aim of art’s highest ideals; as the
source, end and eternal paragon of wisdom, beauty and love
—to her alone shall belong all praise, might, majesty,,
dominion and glory, in all worlds for ever and ever.
�
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Ish's charge to women
Creator
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Dalton, Henry Robert Samuel
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 24 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: "The following extract is the concluding portion of the same book (second or prose volume) from which the author's former pamphlet "The education of girls" was taken."--Preface. Date of publication from KVK. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
Publisher
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Freethought Publishing Company
Date
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[1878]
Identifier
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N185
Subject
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Women's rights
Education
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Ish's charge to women), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
NSS
Women
Women-Education-Great Britain