The Fortnightly Review: No. CCCCLXIII, New Series [‎633v] (157/239)

126
THE POSITION OF WOMEN.
dominance of the female in the first instance was overcome by the
predominance of the male in the evolutionary process of race
building, so surely will the present gradual but unmistakable rise
of the female continue for the benefit of the race until the right
and true relations of the sexes are established, in such a manner as
shall ensure the continued progress of the race along the lines of
least resistance, and in the way best calculated to perfect it. To
speak of the movement as a transitory wave already on the decline
seems due to an extraordinary inability to grasp the goal towards
w T hich the human race is inevitably creeping. It seems almost
incredible that a thinking being should consider that the minute
period, in proportion to the ages, during which we have been able
to register results, should be considered of sufficient length to
enable us to form a judgment either of approval or condemnation
of the effects of any given movement. The world’s duration has
been aptly compared to the hands of a clock in their twelve hours’
journey round the dial; eleven solemn hours having slowly struck
and the minute hand having begun its last hour’s round, not until
about twenty minutes to twelve did the prehistoric period cease,
at less than five minutes to twelve we entered upon our present
state of comparative civilisation ; and the Women’s Movement
has been barely as a single tick of the second hand. What fools
are rash enough to condemn a movement when the clock is still
slowly striking twelve, and the hands are again beginning their
eternal journey : this one second counting but its own infinitesimal
share in the march of eternity?
The “artificial nomad ’’ described by Lucas Malet may exist,
and her life be drear and loveless, but what movement has not had
its martyrs? If incidentally the movement produces a few
abnormal specimens it cannot be helped, but surely even they are
better than the alternately smirking or fainting female she has
superseded? And I enter my protest most strongly against the
view that the newest of the new women need necessarily be the
“sexless, homeless, unmaternal ” creature Lucas Malet paints.
I maintain that it is possible to feel the Zeit-geist surging through
one s inmost being, filling one with a desire to help forward in the
right direction this supreme movement initiated by the “ mysteri
ous influence, coming one knows not where, and sweeping over
the minds of nations as the wind sweeps over a field of wheat,’’
and yet be as truly and lovingly domestic as the most cosily old-
fashioned could wish.
Whether we approve or not, the movement is here. The task
nature has set herself through the subjection of women has been
fulfilled ; women’s unconscious mission, operating by natural laws,
has hitherto been to humanise the male. By the law of inter-