The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis
108
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English
Documents
2010
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108
pages
English
Ebook
2010
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The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons by Ellice Hopkins This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis Author: Ellice Hopkins Release Date: June 13, 2005 [EBook #16047] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE POWER OF WOMANHOOD ***
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THE POWER OF WOMANHOOD
OR MOTHERS AND SONS
A BOOK FOR PARENTS, AND THOSE IN LOCO PARENTIS
BY
ELLICE HOPKINS
AUTHOR OF " LIFE AND LETTERS OF JAMES HINTON,"
"WARS AMONG WORKINGMEN," ETC.
Sow an act, and you reap a habit: Sow a habit, and you reap a character: Sow a character, and you reap a destiny.
NEW YORK E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 31 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET 1901
C OPYRIGHT, 1899
BY
E.P. DUTTON & CO.
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
PREFACE
This little book has been written under great physical disabilities, chiefly while wandering about in search of health, and consequently far from the libraries which would have enabled me to give proper references to all my quotations. Often for a whole year I have been unable to touch it; but again and again I have returned to my task, feeling it worth any risk to mind or body if only in the end its words might prove of some service to the educated mothers of England and America. Under these circumstances, I know I may plead for indulgence as to any defects its pages may present. But now that, after six years, I have realized the pretty Eastern proverb, "By patience and perseverance, and a bottle of sweet-oil, the snail at length reaches Jerusalem,"—now that by God's unfailing help I have finished my difficult task, I can but commit the book into the hands of the women who have
implanted in me, next to my faith in God, faith in the "Power of Womanhood," and whose faithful adherence and co-operation remain the deepest and most grateful memory of my life. Most of the ordinary means of circulation are closed to a book of this nature. The doors of circulating libraries are for the most part shut; notices in papers for the general public are necessarily few; nor can I any longer hope, as I once did, to visit America, and give it a wide circulation by my own efforts. I can but stretch out my hands to my many dear unknown friends in America,—hands which have grown too weak to hold the sword or lift the banner in a cause for which I have laid down my all,—and ask any mother who may find help or strength in this book to help me in return by placing it in the hands of other mothers of boys she may know, especially,—I would plead, —young mothers. Do not say they are too young to know. If they are not too young to be the mothers of boys, they are not too young to know how to fulfil the responsibility inherent in such motherhood. They at least can begin at the beginning, and not have occasion to say, as so many mothers have said to me, with tears in their eyes, "Oh, if I could only have heard you years ago, what a difference it would have made to me! But now it is too late." Enable me thus, by your aid, to do some helpful work for that great country which I have ever loved as my own; and which with England is appointed in the Providence of God to lead in the great moral causes of the world. If, indeed, each mother whom, either by word or deed, I may have helped would do me this service of love now that I am laid aside, not yielding to the first adverse criticism, which is so often only a cry of pain or prejudice, but patiently working on at enlightening and strengthening the hands of other mothers in her own rank of life, what vital work would be done:—work so precious in its very nature, so far-reaching in its consequences, that all the travail and anguish I have endured, all the brokenness of body and soul I have incurred, would not so much as come into mind for joy that a truer manhood is being born into the world, even the manhood of Him who— "Came on earth that He might show mankind What 'tis to be aMAN: to give, not take; To serve, not rule; to nourish, not devour; To help, not crush; if needs, to die, not live." 2 BELLE VUE GARDENS WALPOLE R OAD, BRIGHTON, N OV. 1, 1899.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I—INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER II—"WHY SHOULD I INTERFERE?" CHAPTER III—FIRST PRINCIPLES CHAPTER IV—THE SECRET AND METHOD
CHAPTER V—EARLY BOYHOOD CHAPTER VI—BOYHOOD AND SCHOOL LIFE CHAPTER VII—EARLY MANHOOD CHAPTER VIII—THE INFLUENCE OF SISTERS CHAPTER IX—THE MODERN WOMAN AND HER FUTURE CHAPTER X—NATIONAL AND IMPERIAL ASPECTS CHAPTER XI—THE DYNAMIC ASPECT OF EVIL CONCLUSION APPENDIX
"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." R USHKIN.
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. But when all this is thankfully recognized and acknowledged, I still cannot help questioning whether the mass of educated women have at all grasped the depth and complexity of the problem with which we have to grapple if we are to fufil our trust as the guardians of the home and family, and those hidden wells of the national life from which spring up all that is best and highest in the national character. Nay, I sometimes fear lest even our increased activity in
practical work may not have the effect of calling off our attention from those deep underlying causes which must be dealt with if we are not to engage in the hopeless task of trying to fill a cistern the tap of which has been left running. This absorption in the effect and inattention to the cause is to a certain degree bred in us by the very nature of the duties that devolve upon us as women. John Stuart Mill has compared the life of a woman to an "interrupted sentence." The mere fact that our lives are so interrupted b
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