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Page 2
APPENDIX 231
"No advice, no exposure, will be of use until the right relation
exists between the father and mother and their son. To deserve his
confidence, to keep it as the chief treasure committed to them by
God;--to be, the father his strength, the mother his
sanctification, and both his chosen refuge, through all weakness,
evil, danger, and amazement of his young life."
Rushkin.
THE POWER OF WOMANHOOD
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
In a banquet given in honor of Heinrik Ibsen by a Norwegian society
known as the Woman's League, in response to a speech thanking him in the
name of the society for all he had done for the cause of women, the
poet, while disclaiming the honor of having consciously worked for the
woman's cause--indeed, not even being quite clear as to what the woman's
cause really was, since in his eyes it was indistinguishable from the
cause of humanity--concluded his speech with the words:
"It has always seemed to me that the great problem is to elevate
the nation and place it on a higher level. Two factors, the man and
the woman, must co-operate for this end, and it lies especially
with the mothers of the people, by slow and strenuous work, to
arouse in it a conscious sense of culture and discipline. To the
woman, then, we must look for the solution of the problem of
humanity. It must come from them as mothers: that is the mission
that lies before them."
Whether we are admirers of the great Norwegian poet or not, whether we
are afflicted with Ibsenism, or regard his peculiar genius in a more
critical and dispassionate light, no one would deny to him that deep
intuitive insight which belongs to a poet, and which borders so closely
on the prophet's gift.
It is now some years since I have been laid aside, owing to the terrible
strain and burthen of my ten years' conflict with the evils that are
threatening the sanctity of the family, the purity of the home, and all
that constitutes the higher life of the nation. But in those ten years
the one truth that was burnt into my very soul was the truth enunciated
by Ibsen, that it is to the woman that we must look for the solution of
the deepest moral problems of humanity, and that the key of those
problems lies in the hands of the mothers of our race. They, and they
alone, can unlock the door to a purer and a stronger life. This, in
Ibsen's words, "is the mission that lies before them." And it is this
strong conviction which makes me feel that, even with broken powers and
shattered health, I cannot rest from my labors without, at any cost to
myself, placing the knowledge and experience gained in those years of
toil and sorrow at the disposal of the educated women of the
English-speaking world who, either as mothers or in other capacities,
have the care and training of the young.
No one recognizes more thankfully than I do the progress that the
woman's movement has made during what have been to me years of inaction
and suffering. The ever-increasing activity in all agencies for the
elevation of women; the multiplication of preventive institutions and
rescue societies; above all, that new sense of a common womanhood, that
_esprit de corps_ in which hitherto we have been so grievously lacking,
and which is now beginning to bind all our efforts together into one
great whole--these I thankfully recognize. We no longer each of us set
up in separate and somewhat antagonistic individuality our own little
private burrow of good works, with one way in and one way out, and
nothing else needed for the wants of the universe. We realize now that
no one agency can even partially cover the ground, and conferences are
now held of all who are working for the good of women and children, to
enable the separate agencies to work more effectually into one another's
hands and unite more fervently in heart and soul in a common cause.
Beneath all this, apart from any external organization whatever, there
is a silent work going on in the hearts of thoughtful and educated
mothers, which never comes before the public at all, but is silently
spreading and deepening under the surface of our life.
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