Are Women People? - Alice Duer Miller (uplifting book club books .TXT) 📗
- Author: Alice Duer Miller
- Performer: -
Book online «Are Women People? - Alice Duer Miller (uplifting book club books .TXT) 📗». Author Alice Duer Miller
Known to the world as a Woman of Charm,
Take all the conspicuous ladies of history,
Mix them all up without doing them harm.
The beauty of Helen, the warmth of Cleopatra,
Salome's notorious skill in the dance,
The dusky allure of the belles of Sumatra,
The fashion and finish of ladies from France.
The youth of Susanna, beloved by an elder,
The wit of a Chambers' incomparable minx,
The conjugal views of the patient Griselda,
The fire of Sappho, the calm of the Sphinx,
The eyes of La Vallière, the voice of Cordelia,
The musical gifts of the sainted Cecelia,
Trilby and Carmen and Ruth and Ophelia,
Madame de Staël and the matron Cornelia,
Iseult, Hypatia and naughty Nell Gwynn,
Una, Titania and Elinor Glyn.
Take of these elements all that is fusible,
Melt 'em all down in a pipkin or crucible,
Set 'em to simmer and take off the scum,
And a Woman of Charm is the residuum!
(Slightly adapted from W.S. Gilbert.)
A Modern ProposalSylvia, my dear, I would be yours with pleasure,
All that you are seems excellent to me,
Except your mother, who's much more at leisure
Than mothers ought to be.
Find her a fad, a job, an occupation,
Eugenics, dancing, uplift, yes, or crime,
Set her to work for her Emancipation—
That takes a lot of time.
Or, if the suffrage doctrine fails to charm her,
There are the Antis—rather in her line—
Guarding the Home from Maine to Alabama
Would keep her out of mine.
The Newer LullabyHush-a-bye, baby,
Feel no alarm,
Gunmen shall guard you,
Lest Mother should harm.
Wake in your cradle,
Hear father curse!
Isn't that better
Than Mother or Nurse?
The Protected SexThere, little girl, don't read,
You're fond of your books, I know,
But Brother might mope
If he had no hope
Of getting ahead of you.
It's dull for a boy who cannot lead.
There, little girl, don't read.
Warning to SuffragistsThey must sacrifice their beauty
Who would do their civic duty,
Who the polling booth would enter,
Who the ballot box would use;
As they drop their ballots in it
Men and women in a minute,
Lose their charm, the antis tell us,
But—the men have less to lose.
PartnersLady, lovely lady, come and share
All my care;
Oh how gladly I will hurry
To confide my every worry
(And they're very dark and drear)
In your ear.
Lady, share the praise I obtain
Now and again;
Though I'm shy, it doesn't matter,
I will tell you how they flatter:
Every compliment I'll share
Fair and square.
Lady, I my toil will divide
At your side;
I outside the home, you within;
You shall wash and cook and spin,
I'll provide the flax and food,
If you're good.
Partners, lady, we shall be,
You and me,
Partners in the highest sense
Looking for no recompense,
For, the savings that we make,
I shall take.
What Governments Say to WomenI
In Time of War
Help us. Your country needs you;
Show that you love her,
Give her your men to fight,
Ay, even to fall;
The fair, free land of your birth,
Set nothing above her,
Not husband nor son,
She must come first of all.
II
In Time of Peace
What's this? You've wed an alien,
Yet you ask for legislation
To guard your nationality?
We're shocked at your demand.
A woman when she marries
Takes her husband's name and nation:
She should love her husband only.
What's a woman's native land?
"Oh, That 'Twere Possible!"Oh, that 'twere possible
After those words inane
For me to read The Times
Ever again!
When I was wont to read it
In the early morning hours,
In a mood 'twixt wrath and mirth,
I exclaimed: "Alas, Ye Powers,
These ideas are fainter, quainter
Than anything on earth!"
A paper's laid before me.
Not thou, not like to thee.
Dear me, if it were possible
The Times should ever see
How very far the times have moved
(Spelt with a little "t").
The Times EditorialsLovely Antiques, breathing in every line
The perfume of an age long passed away,
Wafting us back to 1829,
Museum pieces of a by-gone day,
You should not languish in the public press
Where modern thought might reach and do you harm,
And vulgar youth insult your hoariness,
Missing the flavor of your old world charm;
You should be locked, where rust cannot corrode
In some old rosewood cabinet, dimmed by age,
With silver-lustre, tortoise shell and Spode;
And all would cry, who read your yellowing page:
"Yes, that's the sort of thing that men believed
Before the First Reform Bill was conceived!"
CAMPAIGN MATERIAL1. Because no woman will leave her domestic duties to vote.
2. Because no woman who may vote will attend to her domestic duties.
3. Because it will make dissension between husband and wife.
4. Because every woman will vote as her husband tells her to.
5. Because bad women will corrupt politics.
6. Because bad politics will corrupt women.
7. Because women have no power of organization.
8. Because women will form a solid party and outvote men.
9. Because men and women are so different that they must stick to different duties.
10. Because men and women are so much alike that men, with one vote each, can represent their own views and ours too.
11. Because women cannot use force.
12. Because the militants did use force.
Why We Oppose Pockets for Women1. Because pockets are not a natural right.
2. Because the great majority of women do not want pockets. If they did they would have them.
3. Because whenever women have had pockets they have not used them.
4. Because women are required to carry enough things as it is, without the additional burden of pockets.
5. Because it would make dissension between husband and wife as to whose pockets were to be filled.
6. Because it would destroy man's chivalry toward woman, if he did not have to carry all her things in his pockets.
7. Because men are men, and women are women. We must not fly in the face of nature.
8. Because pockets have been used by men to carry tobacco, pipes, whiskey flasks, chewing gum and compromising letters. We see no reason to suppose that women would use them more wisely.
Fashion Notes: Past and Present1880—Anti-suffrage arguments are being worn long, calm and flowing this year, with the dominant note that of woman's intellectual inferiority.
1890—Violence is very evident in this season's modes, and our more conservative thinkers are saying that woman suffrage threatens the home, the Church and the Republic.
1900—A complete change of style has taken place. Everything is being worn a l'aristocrate, with the repeated assertion that too many people are voting already.
1915—The best line of goods shown by the leading anti-suffrage houses this spring is the statement that woman suffrage is the same thing as free love. The effect is extremely piquant and surprising.
Why We Oppose Women Travelling in Railway Trains1. Because travelling in trains is not a natural right.
2. Because our great-grandmothers never asked to travel in trains.
3. Because woman's place is the home, not the train.
4. Because it is unnecessary; there is no point reached by a train that cannot be reached on foot.
5. Because it will double the work of conductors, engineers and brakemen who are already overburdened.
6. Because men smoke and play cards in trains. Is there any reason to believe that women will behave better?
Why We Oppose Schools for Children(By the Children's Anti-School League.)
1. Because education is a burden, not a right.
2. Because not one-tenth of one per cent. of the children of this country have demanded education.
3. Because if we are educated we should have to behave as if we were and we don't want to.
4. Because it is essentially against the nature of a child to be educated.
5. Because we can't see that it has done so much for grown-ups, and there is no reason for thinking it will make children perfect.
6. Because the time of children is already sufficiently occupied without going to school.
7. Because it would make dissension between parent and child. Imagine the home life of a parent who turned out to be more ignorant than his (or her) child?
8. Because we believe in the indirect education of the theatre, the baseball field and the moving picture. We believe that schools would in a great measure deprive us of this.
9. Because our parents went to school. They love us, they take care of us, they tell us what to do. We are content that they should be educated for us.
But Then Who Cares for FiguresAn argument sometimes used against paying women as highly as men for the same work is that women are only temporarily in industry.
Forty-four per cent of the women teachers in the public schools of New York have been more than ten years in the service, while only twenty-six per cent of the men teachers have served as long.
The Bundesrath of Germany has decided to furnish medical and financial assistance to women at the time of childbirth, in order "to alleviate the anxiety of husbands at the front."
How strange this would sound: "The Bundesrath has decided to furnish medical assistance to the wounded at the front, in order to alleviate the anxiety of wives and mothers at home."
When a benefit is suggested for men, the question asked is: "Will it benefit men?"
When a benefit is suggested for women, the question is: "Will it benefit men?"
Why We Oppose Votes for Men1. Because man's place is the armory.
2. Because no really manly man wants to settle any question otherwise than by fighting about it.
3. Because if men should adopt peaceable methods women will no longer look up to them.
4. Because men will lose their charm if they step out of their natural sphere and interest themselves in other matters than feats of arms, uniforms and drums.
5. Because men are too emotional to vote. Their conduct at baseball games and political conventions shows this, while their innate tendency to appeal to force renders them peculiarly unfit for the task of government.
The Logic of the LawIn 1875 the Supreme Court of Wisconsin in denying the petition of women to practise before it said:
"It would be shocking to man's reverence for womanhood and faith in woman ... that woman should be permitted to mix professionally in all the nastiness which finds its way into courts of justice."
It then names thirteen subjects as unfit for the attention of women—three of them are crimes committed against women.
Consistency("Vile insults, lewd talk and brutal conduct were used by the indicted men to frighten respectable women who went to the polls in
Comments (0)