Woman's chronicle. (Little Rock, Ark.) 1888-1???, 1889-06-29


trlbuted to deserving girls in the goyernmentaided
schools have such passages as the folowing "If
the husband OF ylrtuons woman be ugly, of good
or bad disposition, diseased, fendish, irascible,
drunkard, old, stupid, dumb blind deaf, hot
tempered, poor, extremely covetous, slanderer,
cowardly, perfdious, and immoral, nevertheless
she ought to worship him as god with mind, speech
and person. The wife who gives an angry answer
to her husband will become village pariah dog;
she will also become female jacka and live in an
uhlnhablted desert. The WOMAN who
speaks disrespectfuly to her husband will be dumb
IN the next incarnation. The woman who hates
her husbands relations will become from birth to
birth muskrat living in ordure and filth. We
must remember that the marriages for which this
code is provided are mostly child marriages, made
without the consent of the bride; we must re-
member that these prize books are distributed vr-
tually at the expense of the British government
and how vast is the abyss of ignorance and degra-
dation i'll which these things show women as
plunged! But that abyss comprises the greater
part Of the human race, and the teeming millions
of China, Africa and Oceanica would show moth
ing much better.
The moral is that any intellectual opportunities
given to woman, even in the most enlightened
countries, are but exceptional and recent things.
She enters every competition burdened with the
Worldwide Encouragement and repression of her
sex. The obstacles with which she has to contend
are not merely the obvious and local ones, but
have the vast superintendent weight of cosmc
tradition behind them. The local obstacles are
often quite enough. An accomplished German
woman, long resident in England, told me that she
once went back to her native land to live, but
found the intellectual position of women so humil-
iating, compared with England, that she could not
remain. Yet about the same time a brilliant
American woman told me that it took her whole
year in England to get accustomed to the subordi-
nate position of women there as compared with
America. As to France, Mr.. John D. Philbrick
told me at the Exposition of 1878, where he had
charge of our educational exhibit, that he spent
large part of his time in trying to convince incred-
ulous Frenchmqn that there were actually nstitu-
tons in the Omitted States where girls stu(ied
Greek. They went away, he sad bowling courte-
ously, but evidently unconvinced. Yet these are
the foremost countries of the world in their recog-
milton of brains in women, and even these, it
seems, are backward and reluctant. But behind
these lies it must always be remembered the vast,
hopeless, impenetrable lncredulity of India, China,
and the Dark Continent. This dense resistance
may not affect directly and obviously the more
enlightened sentiment of more favored regions,
but it affects it indirectly and unconsciously the
status of woman is determined by the condition of
mind of the human race. The wonder will one
day be not that she did not accomplish more in the
nineteenth century, but that she accomplished
what she has For many years. or perhaps GEN.
turtles, she will still work at disadvantage; she will
still find herself surrounded, farther off,
by an atmosphere of distrust and disparagement.
There are obstacles enough under all circum-
stances, to the rearing of frst-class genius. 1t
certainly is not easy for it to raise itself when it
has the weight of the globe on its shoulders.
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