The Parents' Review

A Monthly Magazine of Home-Training and Culture

The Revolt of the Daughters.

PRAXAGORA. "To the wise among you,
Remember the wise lesson of our play,
And choose me for my wisdom.
You, again, who love to laugh,
Choose me for my wit.
And so, an 't please you,
I bid you all to choose me for the crown."
Aristophanes.

"Thereupon she took
A bird's-eye-view of all the ungracious past;
Glaced at the legendary Amazon
As emblematic of a nobler age;
* * * *
Ran down the Persian, Grecian, Roman lines
Of empire, and the woman's state in each,
How far from just." --Lord Tennyson.

It is a far cry from Aristophanes to Tennyson; still, in spite of the two thousand years which have intervened, the lady Praxagora of the Athenian Ecclesiazusae claims blood relationship with her gentler sister, the Princess Ida, of the ideal Woman's College of the late Poet Laureate. The fact is, this is no new act in our world's drama; but because it is the first time in which a rôle has been assigned to our own generation, we are threatened with stage fright as though some new thing had happened to us, some new thing without precedent, and containing within itself the worst elements of finality: whereas the revolt of woman is as old as history itself, a revolt converted by the politic into intrigue, by the outspoken, the impatient or the impolitic, into open insurrection. Alas, one is unwillingly forced to own that more has been accomplished by the former method than by the latter, until woman's secret influence in all matters of life, morals, or manners has become a proverb. But now has come the question: Are women satisified with this attitude towards the events of their own country, and the world's development? Does the power thus wielded satisfy them? And, though in the first instance the question may have come from the revolutionary section, it is asked to-day not by them alone, but by those who in the immediate past would have stood in the front rank of the nameless rulers of the world. In the reply is involved the whole of what we understand as the "Woman's Question."

Interwoven with this question as a natural, though seemingly unforseen result, is that other question, with which much reading and more hearing have made us familiar:--the "Revolt," or, (as subsequently modified (!) by the giver of the title) the "Revolution" of the Daughters. Why this attitude on the part of the daughters should surprise one it is hard to see; we do not wonder that it should alarm. The pity is, that alarm has a tendency to breed panic, and panic invariably blindness--blindness and deafness, so that those who should see and hear, cannot see the relationship existing between the points at issue, and that, with much what is dissimilar, the two questions that of Woman's and Daughters' Rights are one and the same.

But what is the combination of the "Daughters" which deserves the name of "Revolt?" In the words of her to whom the movement owes its naming, it is a struggle for supremacy, a strike in which (for purposes of argument) the mothers are the employers, and the daughters the operatives. In short, it is a lock-out on the part of the mothers, a strike on the part of the daughters, a civil war between mother and daughter, which has for its battlefield the domestic hearth, and its organs the columns of the daily, weekly and monthly journals, in which daughters and mothers detail their intimate and private wrongs. "Freedom" say the daughters, "is what we want." "Freedom which involves separateness, another word for individualism, the 'note' of to-day. To be free to live one's own life, make one's own successes and mistakes, to take the responsibilities of one's own actions, keep one's own counsel, and be no longer in subjection, no longer in debt. This is what the movement apart means." One writer fears we are on the eve of a great social revolution, while another,--but why multiply quotations or definitions? The war is not ended, and the journals, the organs of the belligerents, are within easy reach in every reference library. The causes which have at last brought about this "cataclysm" are as variously stated as the fact is variously defined. It is, now the fear of the younger generation which "will one day come and thunder at our door," now it is the "lack of Wanderjahr," that culminating felicity in the education of the brother, but denied to that of the sister; again it is the "Higher Education," "University Extension to Women," "stupidity of the mothers," "the rotten state of society," "the admission of women, presumably mothers, into the region of active politics," "The Franchise." "With the loss of domestic duties and the cessation of domestic activities, the home naturally becomes monotonous and the girls refuse to stay in it, if they can in any way escape."

And now what of these charges? The above, which are a mere handful gleaned from the "organs" of both camps impartially, point to the existence of a wide-spread disaffection. As we read the reports of its progress from day to day we do not need that one should name it, but feel inclined to exclaim with the bewildered Bourbon, "This is a revolt," prepared also for the reply, "Sire, it is a revolution." Granted that it is so, what ought to be the attitude of a wise government towards it? Surely, frst of all, and before all, it behoves those who rule to treat these things with serious, patient gravity, for the malcontents are serious even in their foolishness, even when that foolishness finds expression in flippancy. Hence the Government should be open eyed, sympathetic, alert, capable of reading the signs of the times afar off. To be "surprised" ought to be regarded as misfortune and a sign of weakness. Had such a paragraph as the following been impossible--it comes from a member of the Governement--much that has happened and much that has yet to happen, might also have been impossible. "It has come quickly, and without premonitory symptoms, for no note of discord has been struck hitherto to warn us of the impending 'strike.' To us unsophisticated mothers, living happily in blind ignorance of the passionate discontent burning in the bosoms of our daughters, the announcement of an organized series of 'mothers' meetings,' to protest against the movement, comes as a cruel surprise, for apparently the strike is developing rapidly, and increasing in supporters, and we are totally unprepared with any organization to resist its onslaught." The wonder is, not that this thing exists, but that the outbreak has been so long delayed. But so it ever is as all history teaches us. There is scarcely any society evil, indicated or painted full length by the most impassioned of our late women writers which we cannot find in our Thackeray; yet how was it that ears were deaf and hearts untouched then? First, I think because Thackeray spoke in parables, a form of teaching proverbially slow of interpretation; and, secondly, because, as the question is primarily a woman's question, women's hearts and women's hands must do the work. And the work of exposure has been done: a disagreeable task, and worse than disagreeable: one, after all the pain, of doubtful benefit. But the task is done, and we now know the worst in plain modern nineteenth century English. The "daughters" have eaten of the tree of knowledge, of good and of evil,--let us not froget that it is good as well as evil,--and are as gods, but very human withal; and whether we realize it or not, most eager to be taught how to use the new-found quality, "freedom," or "knowledge," or by whatever name we call it. Seeing these things are so then, where lies the help? Is it necessary for us to repeat the history of the various revolutions all the world over? I think not, chiefly because these "revolutionists" are not insurgents, and the government,--the healthier section of it at all events,--knows it. The "daughters" are not "Dodos": there are "Dodos" in their ranks, but they are harmless if wisely governed. The fact is we fear the creators of our literary Dodos more than their creations.

But to turn to a brighter aspect. One writer, some months ago, sounded what I believe to be a true rallying note, above the din of offensive and defensive warfare, fearlessly writing down the present episode as neither a revolt nor a revolution, but an evolution. If this is so then, and I most heartily believe it, there may be anxiety, but there need be no fear, much less panic. Science tells us that evolution is aided, guarded, modified by envornment, and in this case the environment is what I have called the government,--a government formed of parents and parents' auxiliaries, teachers. With this government, I maintain, rests the whole solution of the difficulty; a government which does not deny the gravity of the situation; a government open-eyed, sympathetic and fearless, utterly fearless; and, because all this, sane, unhurrying and unhurried.

But a word in closing about one component part of this government,--I mean the paternal. It is a significant fact that, although not wholly ignored, one searches almost in vain through the bulky mass of evidence on both sides for any reference, except an unpleasnt one, to the part played by the father of the family. Surely there is something wrong here. We hear much of brothers as comrades for their sisters, and this attitude of brother towards sister given as one of the solutions of the problem before us, and that it goes a long way towards it no one who has any knowledge of the subject under discussion denies; but who can guess at the boundless influence upon the feminine nature of his daughter of a father's larger, more fearless, outlook on life? For, after all, half a woman's faults arise from want of that manly virtue,--courage; and nowhere can a daughter gain this quality so well as by daily companionship--comradeship at its highest--with her father. A girl accustomed to test men and things by the standard of her father's life needs no better "safeguard," requires no surer clue by which to thread her way through the mazes of this labyrinth which we call Life; or, to be up to date--Society.

One word more and I have done. The longer I study this important subject, the more I am convinced that the issues of it are in the hands wherein the governing power reposes. It is useless to ignore the episode, which for want of a better word we must continue to style the Revolt of the Daughters; it is worse than useless to fill the columns of the magazines and newspapers with querulous complaints agains the "rebellious daughters," or blind panic-stricken denial of an obvious fact. On the one hand let us not exaggerate its importance, and on the other let us not ignore its existence; but calmly, and with some sense of wholesome humour (not ridicule) face the situation. I hold, from long and wide experience, that the "daughters," even the "Dodos," are teachable. Eager they may be for a wider life, restless they are with the restlessness of growth, but obstinately, obdurately rebellious, never!

Typed by Brandy Vencel, Nov. 2024