ABSTRACT
The revolution brought about by the emancipation of women has, like all revolutions, created derangements in a hitherto orderly world. So long as the divinely or naturally appointed authority of patriarchal principles went undisputed, things went on smoothly. Women were the most fervent upholders of those principles. They were duly pure, exquisitely shockable, conscientiously tender and submissive, religiously dutiful, angelically patient, and everything went merrily as a marriage bell. There were, no doubt, abundant tragedies and miseries, crushed lives, loveless homes. But those tragedies and sufferings were set down to the natural cruelty of life; they were endured by women in the spirit of patient fortitude with which, with the invaluable aid of the comforts and consolations of religion, one submits to life’s hardships. That heroic fortitude, that Griselda-like patience, that divine sweetness which constituted the supreme charm of the ideal Victorian woman, have of necessity become more rare, and are likely to become rarer. Such is the inevitable result when the words “justice” and “right” come to be uttered more often than the word “duty.”
