Woman's chronicle. (Little Rock, Ark.) 1888-1???, 1890-11-08
Female Lecturers.
Kate Fields Washington.I


cast upon a man is that of unmanlness The
worst accusation which can be brought against
woman is that of unwomanliness. think woman
of sensibilty had rather starve than live by what
conscience tells her is unvomanly. say | think,
because, until fully tested, we know not to what
false gods we may bow down. There is the pretty
myth Of the ermine that, when hunted, had rather
be caught and killed than escape by going through
mire and soiling its beautiful skin; but it is only
myth, they say
The prejudice against female lecturers will dis
appear as soon as women on the platform cease to
be novelty. Every step forward taken by women
has been over burning ploughshares, and we can
always look back to time when the occupation
most advocated by our fastdious friends was,
above all others, the most compromising to wom-
anhood Old though the drama be, it is only
within couple of centuries that women have stood
behind the footlghts. Boys in fardingaes were
Shakespeare's heroines. Handsome as Edward
Kynaston may have been,
"a mans man for a that;'
and to have had performance delayed, as hap
pened in Charles Seconds time, because, forsooth,
the Queen was not shaved! strikes us as absurdly
homogeneous
When Harriet Hosmer first went to Rome, she
was regarded as lusus nature. No words could
express the horror felt by many good people to-
ward woman who had stepped so far out of her
sphere as to 60 to Italy and set up studio of her
own! But, as one extreme always begets another
now every silly girl who pinches clay and makes a
tolerable bas-relief is called genius, and straight
way begins where Michael Angelo left off
Thirty years ago every female human being
taller than an infant was called unwomanly if she
wore round hat Now, round hats are poised
over the most fashionable noses, sometimes at
angles which would drive Euclid wild. Lecturing
to-(ay occupies the position formerly accorded to
round hats. Ten years hence, society will draw
the line "unwomanly" at women who having too
much honest pride to hang as burdens about the
necks of friends and relatives, take up active bust
ness and dare to make as much money as their
brothers. Evidently society would 60 to pieces
did it not insist upon drawing the line somewhere.
To my conscience it is vastly more unfeminine
TO make conquests of men merely for the sake of
"scalps," to SANDER, to sit in the parlor and let
the cook overdo or underdo everything edible in
the kitchen, to feed children on pastry and hot
bread to consign little ones to incompetent nurses
than it is to lecture. Yet the dear creatures who
indulge in these sins are rarely called unwomanly
After all, the prejudice against occurring arises
in great part from the fact that woman on
the platform advocates her own ideas, snd until
recently it has been popularity believed that my sex
had no idess-to speak of. singer interprets
some male composer; reader colors the fanciful
drawings Of master; an actress illustrates the
dramatic poets genius, but lecturer thinks for
herself and employs the egotistic pronoun "I.'
This is the objectionable sin. 1.-The delicacy Of
the sex" says that garrulous biographer Boaden,
"while it becomes accustomed to repeat the senti-
ment of others, shrinks from the seeming bold
ness Of publicly uttering its own. But there was
male dignity in the understanding of Mrs. Sid
dons that raised her above the helpless timidity of
other women"
This is amusing. Why, ga male dignty?' Did
not Mrs. Sddons belong essentially to her own
sex? Was she peculiar, except in being greater
M To-