USA > Illinois > Cook County > Chicago > The Congress of Women : held in the Woman's building, World's Columbian exposition, Chicago, U.S.A., 1893 : with portraits, biographies and addresses > Part 75
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But, " if it were done, then 'twere well it were done quickly." Now is the time for her to assert her moral and intellectual strength, her comprehension of the under- lying currents that should sustain the even flow of our prosperity, and also the quick- sands that will insidiously engulf it. She need not for this wait for the ballot-box. The demonstration of her high resolve will bring man into wondering appreciation, and he may ask woman as a favor to share the onus of government.
The basis of all reform, in whatever department of thought or action, is an increasing knowledge of truth, to which purity is the leader. The veriest misogynist pictures his ideal of purity in female form, and we all instinctively concede this attri- bute to woman; but to Icad man to truth, which will unveil all his errors, she must pre- serve to herself purity uncontaminated. It is her most powerful weapon. The story of the chaste Diana who, with merely a look, converted the sensual Actæon into a stag, torn to pieces by his own dogs, should be an ave in every woman's daily rosary, for it would give a basilisk power to her glance upon evil. The drinking-bout, the dice box, the betting pool, could all be denied admission to the festal or family board if the hostess willed it so; but Mrs. Rutherford B. Hayes is the only one who had the courage to publicly do so. It is a sad confirmation of the rapid growth of vicc, that in our standard lexicon of 1869 a "bookmaker" is defined as "one who writes and publishes book," or " compiles them," and in the one of 1889, the additional definition to " bookmaker " is given, "a professional betting man," with all the details of the process. It is safe to say, that if woman had ostracized the betting man, whether prince or loafer, from her society, he would have gained no significance in our diction- ary, which is a mighty umpire, especially for the rising generation.
It is first in the home that the reformatory processes begin, and from thence
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are carried into life's wide arena. When at the Fourth of July celebration, though her husband was not one of the orators of the day, Josiah Allen's wife looked up and with glowing pride observed that Josiah's " biled" shirt was the whitest of any man's there, is to me full of meaning. Pride that our men shall be the purest, the cleanest, and that our efforts in the home shall make them so, will effect the greatest reform; for, after all, it must come from within; the mere veneer of it in statutory enactments is nothing without the vital spirit.
Ever since woman led the way to that wonderful tree in Eden she has been con- scious that she is the leader of man; there is only fear of her conception of her position reverting to that crude one of a certain savage tribe, whose women, when sought in marriage, leap astride a horse and ride away furiously, the wooer in pursuit, and never . abate their speed till the wooer's swiftness elicits their approval, when they allow themselves to be caught. But whether in the forum, or in the clinic, or in the acad- emy, or in the pulpit, or in the legislative hall, or in the home, woman is the lode-star; and with the suffrage which Heaven from the first accorded her, she can will the world to sway which way she please; but her own mind and heart must be in consonance with all the virtues if she desire to bring about the reign of virtue; she must strive, and wait, and pray.
" Strive-yet I do not promise; The prize you dream of today Will not fade when you think to grasp it, And melt in your hand away; But another and holier treasure, You would now perchance disdain, Will come when your toil is over, And pay you for all your pain.
" Wait-yet I do not tell you; The hour you long for now Will not come with its radiance vanished, And a shadow upon its brow; Yet far through the misty future, With a crown of starry light, An hour of joy you know not Is winging her silent flight.
" Pray-though the gift you ask for May never comfort your fears, May never repay your pleading, Yet pray, and with hopeful tears; An answer, not that you long for, But diviner, will come one day; All souls will gratefully hear it, Then strive, and wait, and pray."
" KATHARINA" IN "THE TAMING OF THE SHREW. "*
By MRS. EMMA PRATT MOTT.
The prelude to this play, " The Taming of the Shrew," is one of the richest, raciest most delectable pieces of humor extant. This play has been called a perfect whirl- wind of the oldest, maddest freaks and farces imagin- able." Let us for a few moments attend to a brief study of the principal characters:
A rich gentleman of Padua has two daughters, one apparently all that is shrewish, and the other apparently all loveliness. Like other good parents, he of course desired to see them married. Kate, the shrew, must be married anyhow, and Bianca must have a fat estate for a husband, but he wisely denies the hand of the seeming angel to anyone until the seeming shrew shall have been disposed of, which sets the wits of the angelic Bianca's suitors at work to find a suitor for the shrewish Kate. Presently the very genius of whims and self-will appears as the suitor of Kate, in the person of one Petruchio, a rich gentleman of Verona, a friend to one of Bianca's suitors. Meanwhile the son of another rich gentle- man of Pisa visits Padua and is brought within the circle of Bianca's attractions. Lucentio sees Bianca, and the first sight is fatal. By a simple though skill- ful enough intrigue he wins her in the disguise of a tutor to her in classic lore, he being obliged to em-
MRS. EMMA PRATT MOTT.
ploy this method because Bianca's father has cut off all open approaches to her until ·he shall have disposed of her naughty sister. This forms a sort of under plot in the play, the interest turning upon the manner in which Petruchio woos and weds and tames the so-called frightful Kate. Both these girls are affected, their affectation pass- ing for sincerity. Kate puts on the show of what she has not, and Bianca puts off the show of what she has. The one purposely seems worse and the other better than she is. Kate, the shrew, too proud to be vain, will do nothing to gain friends, everything to serve them. Bianca, too vain to be proud, will do everything to gain friends and nothing to serve them. Bianca is fond of admiration and gets it. Kate envies her what she sees, but will not stoop or bend to get it. In a word, Kate is willful, Bianca selfish. The one affects shrewishness before marriage, the other conceals it until after marriage, for they do not so much change their real faces after marriage as to drop the masks which conceal them. We have all known men who were studiously wise, gentle and amiable in appearance, yet mean and selfish apart, and who appeared to be gentle and amiable because of their selfishness. Again we know men who rather study to be rough, rash, reckless and unkind, seemingly from mere disinterestedness, because they were more concerned for the good of others than for their favor, and
Mrs. Emma Pratt Mott is a native of Michigan. Her parents were Dr. and Mrs. Frank H. Pratt. She was educated in Boston and Elmira, New York. She married the Rev. Henry Elliott Mott, a Presbyterian minister of high standing and ability. Her principal literary works are magazine articles and journalistic work. Her profession is that of a Shakespearean Teacher. In religious faith she is Presbyterian. She is a graceful writer and speaker, a beautiful and accomplished woman, of great popularity as a social and literary leader in every community in which she sojourns. As a devoted and beloved wife. she is a model for the world, and a pillar of strength to her husband in his most noble work. Her present postoffice address is Buffalo, New York.
* The full title of the address as delivered was, "Katharina " in "The 'Taming of the Shrew' or The Rights of Men."
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more willing to do them a kindness than to have it known. The first will caress their friends and then desert them. The second will abuse their friends, and then imperil their lives to serve them. Kate belongs to that class of women who will never allow their husbands to govern them if they can help it, nor ever respect their husbands unless they do govern them; who, unsubdued, will do their worst to plague then, but who once subdued will do their utmost to please them. There seems to be a desire with some women to try to prove their husbands and to know them, whether they be what they call genuine pieces of manhood or not. Petruchio's treatment therefore rather reforms the conduct than the character of his wife, rather brings out the good which she seemed to want than to remove the bad which she seemed to have. After marriage there are no traces of the shrew in her conduct. One writer naively says, her sense of duty in the relation dissipates all her artificial life and straightens her behavior. All the materials of her closing speech are in her heart all the while, but she disdains to let them out, and it is not until Petruchio forces them out that she stands before us in her true character. Still the tender and considerate husband is all the while lurking under his affected willfulness. Some writers think that Petruchio falsifies himself more than Kate does because he has more to falsify. He is himself all truth, yet utters nothing but lies; full of kindness and good-nature, he will put on the garb of a fiend to do the work of a benefactor. "He will at any time say more and do fewer bad things than any other man in Italy." He now proceeds to work out of Kate what seems to others the plainest impossibility by the wildest contradic- tion. "Say that she rails; why then I'll tell her plain she sings." His outrageous humor reached at once its height when riding with his wife he visits her father, he meets old Vincentio, and requires him to salute her as a beautiful lady.
' Tell me, sweet Kate, and tell me truly true, Hast thou beheld a fresher gentlewoman?"
Thus do we see, as if by magic, Kate the cursed presently become the most loyal of wives. We have not a grain of pity to spare for Kate, who is better pleased to find a conqueror than to be the conqueror. On the whole it is satisfactory to her to dis- cover that there is at least one man of force and spirit in the world, and to know that he, and no other, has chosen her for his wife; and so Kate transfers all her boldness to the very effrontery of obedience. Behind her delightful sauciness lie warmth and courage at heart. Strange that Shakespeare should have known so long ago that which most people still find so hard to learn. We behold in the great bard's wonder- ful magic mirrors that his heroines are more perfectly feminine than any woman could have found it in her heart or brain to make them. Woman, as she resembles man, was of less consequence to Shakespeare than woman in herself. Shakespeare says: " Here woman stands, the modern world stooping at her feet will have to yield some of the reputed exclusiveness of men, but only such traits of it as Imogene, Cordelia, Beatrice or Portia will elect." In dealing with married love Shakespeare, ever true to nature, gives it no rhapsodies or flowers of speech. It may be a love that over- whelms a man's whole nature, as with Othello, when he exclaimed after an enforced absence, and looking into his wife's face:
" If it were now to die, 'twere now to be most happy."
Or Brutus, comforting his wife when she desires to know the secret that is oppress- ing him:
"Am I yourself but as it were in sort of limitation, To keep with you at meals, comfort your bed, And talk to you sometimes? Dwell I but in the suburbs Of your good pleasure? If it be no more, Portia is Brutus' harlot, not his wife."
and his answer is full of profound, earnest, sad truth: (35)
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" You are my true and honorable wife, As dear to me as are the ruddy drops That visit my sad heart."
Here is true, consistent, reasonable love. It does not worship the ground she walks upon. It does not desire to kiss the glove she wears. He, the Shakespeare husband lover, despises the ground, and would throw the glove into the fire. But Othello, in that moment of fury, would willingly die, and Brutus would give his life for his wife. This love in the married life, as represented by Shakespeare, is the real. It has grown out of companionship and friendship, and passion only plays a super's part, says his lines and departs. "My husband is my friend," is the grandest exclamation of Shakespeare's married love. The great and noble friendship between husband and wife which, like sun rays, serve to reveal the black and bloody canvas of human his- tory, become fewer and fewer as the progress of the age teaches us the art of a greater selfishness, and teaches us to laugh where once we wept, and never weep at all. Petruchio had the right which was accorded husbands in those days to resort to the English custom of selling wives whenever considered shrews, but the thought never once suggested itself to him, for he loved Katharina, and endeavored to let her sce herself in an exaggerated form, and thus become disgusted with such conduct. But as late as April 7, 1832, at Carlisle, England, occurred an example of wife selling. One Mrs. Thompson was eloquently shuffled off at auction, her husband being the auctioneer, and this is his speech:
" Gentleman, I have to offer to your notice my wife, Mary Ann Thompson, other- wise Williams, whom I mean to sell to the highest bidder. Gentlemen, it is her wish as well as mine to part forever. She has been to me only a born serpent. I took her for the comfort and the good of my house, but she became my tormenter, a domes- tic curse. Gentlemen, I speak truth when I say may God deliver us from troublesome wives and frolicsome women. Avoid them as you would a mad-dog, a roaring lion, a loaded pistol, cholera, Mt. Etna, or any other pestilential thing in nature. Now I have told you the dark side of my wife and shown you her faults and failings. I will intro- duce the bright side and explain her qualifications and goodness. She can read novels and milk cows. She can laugh and weep with the same case that you take a glass of ale. Indeed, gentlemen, she reminds me of what the poet said of women:
"'Heaven gave to women the peculiar grace To laugh, to weep, to cheat the human race.'
"She can make butter and scold the maid, and she can sing Moore's melodies, and make her frill and cap. She can not make rum, but she is a good judge of its quality from long experience. I therefore offer her, with all her perfections and imperfections, for the sum of fifty shillings."
It is marvelous that there could have been found any man with courage and valor enough to buy, but such there was by name Henry Mears, who, after an hour s hag- gling, offered twenty shillings and a Newfoundland dog. They then parted in perfect good temper, Mears and the shrew and Mr. Thompson and the dog. Petruchio could have exercised his right also to the use of the bride or brank, which being put upon the offender by order of the magistrate, and fastened with a padlock behind the ear, she is lead in it around the town by an officer to her shame, nor is it taken off until the woman begins to show external signs of humiliation. The character of Petruchio is not so uncommon, and the world is full of Katharinas. Katharina's closing speech is at once elegant, eloquent, poctical and truc. It is worth all volumes on household virtues.
What kind of a man is our modern Petruchio? A sensible fellow with practical ideas to suit his wife, who fancies that men are in danger in their turn of losing some of their rights. He is like the majority of young men in this country, well-meaning, industrious, hoping to make a moderate fortune because a good citizen, husband and father, and go through life creditably and honorably. He says: "What is my wife to
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be to me and I to my wife?" Since I began to listen to the story of woman's wrongs and woman's rights, the world is turned topsy-turvy. I am morally sea-sick. 'Tis a state of transition with women, answers this modern American Katharina, with her pale, striking features, a skin like dough, gray, thoughtful eyes, her chest flat, her movements and her whole bearing full of unrest, and these hinting subtly at suppressed powers, and whether she condemn a philosophy or dismiss a lover to arrange her hair, it is done alike with the same careless air of superiority. This modern Kate grows courteously satirical when she talks of her grandmother's days, but one notices that this same charming woman on examining some old ivory miniature grows annoyed to find the features of those last century dames as refined as their own, and the vehicle of as subtle and strong minds. "Strange," says the nineteenth century woman, as she puts them away, " that these faces could have been content with a life of serfdom- mere housekeepers." "But, Kate," says our modern Petruchio, "men are mulish; these same domestic women are here in the nineteenth century. They won't die out; they won't be weeded out. This domestic woman is a great stumbling block in your modern woman's way. Man treats you precisely as the Chinese would were you a missionary, would receive your new spiritual deity-that is to say, with all politeness, with uplifted hands and drooping eyes of adoration, and then go home and plump on their knees before their own private little gods behind the kitchen door. This same old-fashioned domestic woman lives and moves and has her being in her home! Really, Kate, how long is this transition to last? Whose fault is it that it lasts so long?" "Petruchio, as you are one of those men who come in with the mob at the end of a reform, I advise you to shut your ears to the tumult, and attend only to your business." "But how can I shut my ears? The air is filled with the protests of women. Do tell what it is they want. What is it that they do not want? What is it that is needed in the right training of girls that is not needed just as imperatively in the right training of boys? What makes the difference then between the position in the world of young men and young women when we men have always granted, and always will, that neither sex is naturally the superior nor the inferior of the other in essentials?"
" The difference," says Katharina, " lies wholly in the idea that underlies the teaching of each, for from the day the boy chips the shell until he dies he is taught, he breathes it in the air, he learns it by perpetual hard experience, that she is to be taken care of all her days. Nearly every girl in our fashionable boarding schools and in our public schools has the day, when the prince will arrive and carry her off, fixed in her horizon like the light to which the mariner steers. What marriage means, what it im- plicates of duty to herself, to her husband, and to her possible children, she never thinks, nor is she required to think."
" It seems strange to me, Kate, that women will submit to live with us men when they are feeling that we are depriving them of their rights, and that man is the enemy of woman's best advancement. If we were told the history of any race which for three thousand years had lived in daily intercourse with another with a chance for the same culture, with the same language, seated side by side in perfect social equality, and which had yet remained in a state of subjection, debarred from rights which they had held to be theirs, we should be apt to decide sharply enough that the rights are not fitted to them by nature, or that their cowardice and hesitation to grasp their rights deserved the serfdom. There have been women soldiers, judges, merchants in every country and in every age, women who were leaders in the state in war or in intrigue, and the readiness with which the ground was ceded to them, the applause with which their slightest merit was welcomed, proved how easily climed was the path they trod, and how accessible to every woman if she had chosen to climb it. It was not altogether the fault of the obdurate rock that it hid for so many years the gifts of manhood from the boy Theseus, but his own flaccid muscles and uncertain will which failed to over- turn it. When the hour came to use them, the rock was put aside, the golden sandals and magic sword, which were to make his path easy and clear to him, lay underneath."
" The transcendental inspiration you men have in guessing why God ever made
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woman, the knowledge you have of the secret of our power, is appalling. We have been told by our self-appointed advisers how we may become charming, and in what way we are in danger of losing our charms. That we are the last and most perfect work of God, sprung from the rib of Adam, nearest the heart, we are told, and at length after six thousand years of tuition we are flattered with having risen to an equality with man. The efforts to equalize with man's woman's wages, to multiply her oppor- tunities, to claim her interests in the politics of human rights, to secure her alleviating presence in the rude scenes of republicanism, these, Petruchio, are of small conse- quences to men."
"You have sprung so many points on me, Kate, I can only hope to see one at a time. I wish I might answer you as a man who honors woman and longs for her noble power in all that man holds dear. Let us look at equal rights first. The assertion that the sexes are equal is true if rightly understood, but the way the word equal is often used it does not convey the exact truth and leads to confusion. When we say that five dollars in gold is equal to five dollars in silver, we do not mean that there is cquality of weight, but of value. The statement that Napoleon was equal to Milton is true. An examination of the two brains would show a difference of mental organization so that in some respects one would be found superior to the other, and at the same time inferior in other points, but the value of mental endowments in one would be equal to that of the other. The only kind of equality that can be said to exist between the sexes is that which exists between objects that are unlike. If in addition to what woman can do now, she could compete successfully with men wherein they have the pre-eminence, she would not be his equal, but his superior. There is no danger of this, as God has provided a regular system of compensation, so that when one person covets that he has not with the idea that it is better than that actually possessed, he loses the old in acquiring the new. It is not desirable that husband and wife should stand on different planes, so that the mind of one is so far above the other that there is no point of contact; but if their minds are on the same level, the blending of these diverse characteristics produces a union which can not be readily sundered. If men and women were alike this world would resemble the monotonous plane whereon there is a superabundance of a certain kind of equality. The aggressive and tedious assertions of woman's ability to do this, that or the other work in the world are superfluous, or would be so but for modern myopia. In the outer world of fact, of demonstration, of volition, tangible proofs and causalities and material processes, man is supreme, while in that more subtle sphere where lie spiritual convictions which overtop our actual life, and lead up from grossness to glory, woman is the priestess. Are these two spheres independent of each other? Are they not conjoined indissolubly? It is a mistake, and takes from us men one of our supreme rights, that which places antag- onism between the two. There should be between them harmony as sweet as that which moves the concentric rings of Saturn, which I viewed the other night. Untaught by the presence and inspiration of woman, we men would soon become cold, dry petrifactions, constantly obeying the centripetal force of our lives and ending by alluring self. And I take it, without man's firmness and strength, woman, in whom the centrifugal force is stronger, would remain a weak, vacillating creature, without self-poise. Cultivate her intellect and his heart, and the healthy action and reaction consequent upon such a balance of forces, you have the true relationship established between the sexes-the relationship which the Creator pronounced good. Do not misunderstand me, Kate. I say, let woman, if she will, measure the stellar distances, study mechanical principles or the learned professions, make a picture or write a book, and there are women, not a few, truc and noble, who have done all this, but let her never for such as these abdicate her own nobler work, neglecting the greater for the less. If a woman has a special gift let her exercise it. If she has a particular mis- sion let her work it out. Few women, though, are of this elect class, just as few men are. But I would have woman never forget that it is not for what they may possibly add to the sum of human knowledge that the world values them primarily. That
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