The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1897-09-03
A WoMAN's ESTIMATE OF HER KIND
After Their Kind George Eliot Thinks
Women Fully Equal 10 Men.

Women Fully Equal 10 Men.
In writing, women will be wise to recog-
nize with Georgia Eliot the fact of sex in
literature, and realize that to write as
women is the Office they have to perform.
After their kind, in her opinion, women
can fully equal men. Probably woman's
kind in literature will always be found
to be the humber species, the lyric, and
especially the hymn, letter writing and
domestic novels. In art she will do well
to confine herself to the lower and no less
useful branches, decoration, and the vari-
Gus art industries; in music and drama
she must be content with being indis-
putably a finer interpreter a man. In
teaching, philanthropy, and medicine she
can take an honorable place and in re-
ligious work apart from the vexed ques-
ton of preaching) she will be universally
welcomed. In the sciences of invention
and discovery she had best not hope for
great achievement, but be satisfied with
a large arena of usefulness in assisting
and carrying out the creations OF men.
For it is in this subordinate relation that
women can probably find their truest and
widest sphere, that of influence. 1t is the
modern fashion to decry this power as
degrading; none the less it is a vitality
important factor in human affairs. Buckle
declares that in the modern world the
spread of civilization and the influence
of women lave been commensurate Not
only on morals, he tells us, but on knowl-
edge has this influence been of
Importance, for it is women who encour-
age in men those processes of deduction
and imagination which are foreign to the
male nature. To the same secret but
beneficent agency Mill ascribes the aver
sion of the world nowadays to war and
its addiction to philanthropy. In what
ever field of me.nta activity we look
women have from all time been the great
inspirers and moulders of men. No one
can mention Barak, Pericles. Dante or
Petrarch without thinking simultaneously
of Deborah, Aspasia. Beatrice, or Laura.
The finest compositions by Beethoven,
Schumann n Chopin would probably
never nave been written but for the woni-
en- to whom they are dedicated, and the
paintings of Andrea del Sarto and Titan
show almost too plainly the earthly and
feminine sources of their inspiration. The
French Academy owes its birth to the
female purists assembled in he Hotel de
Rambouillet, and indeed throughout the
history of French literature women seem
to have abided by the famous advice OF
Lebrun: Inspire, do not write" In the
various salons of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, literary, political,
philosophical, semi-religious, or who'll
revolutionary, a new French literature
and philosophy, and above all, the spirit
of a terribly new political age, may be
said to have been Graded. Club have
now arisen to draw men away from ladies,
drawing-rooms, and the power of the
press has eclipsed hat of any social
circle, but none the less can women ex-
pect n claim a vital if subordinate or
indirect share in all the activities of men.
TIC those who are not contented with
this, we can only say: Take. your own
way. You are probably as well fitted as
a man at least to acquire learning.
all opportunities are now open to you.
But if in achievement you fail to attain
the highest rank, do not be surprised, but
look with more tolerant respect on the
women who are satisfied to be and con-
fess themselves the Intellectual interiors
of men.-North American Review for Sep
TENDER