SE\WnE-G-M\RRffll



THE WOMAN QUESTION
IN EUROPE

A SERIES OF ORIGINAL ESSAYS



EDITED BY

THEODORE STANTON, MA.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY

FRANCES POWER COBBE



" If you would know the political and moral status of a people, demand what place
its women occupy." — L. Aim4 Martin, "On the Education of Mothers," Boole I.,
Chapter VI.

"There is nothing, I think, which marks more decidedly the character of men or of
nations, than the manner in which they treat women." — Herder, " Philosophy of History "
(French Edition), Vol. II., Book VIII., Chapter IV.



LONDON
SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE, AND RIVINGTON

Crown Buildings, Fleet Street
1884



I DEDICATE THIS WORK

TO MY MANY COLLABORATORS, AND, ABOVE ALL, TO MARGUERITE
BERRY, MY WIFE, WHOSE PARTICIPATION HAS NOT BEEN LIMITED TO
A SINGLE CHAPTER, BUT EXTENDS THROUGHOUT EVERY PAGE OF THE
VOLUME. T. S.



EDITOR'S PREFACE.



I BEGAN collecting the materials for this volume in the
winter of i88o-'8i. It was my wish to secure, in each
country of Europe, the collaboration of one or more
women, who, in connection with a literary training, had
participated, either actively or in spirit, in some phase of
the women's movement, — that remarkable social revolu-
tion now going on in old Europe as well as in young
America. With the exception of the chapter on Portu-
gal and a portion of the chapter on France, all the con-
tributions are from the pens of women.

One of the most distinguished Portuguese authoresses,
Mrs. Maria Amalia Vaz de Garvalho, had promised to
speak for her country, when a sudden illness interrupted
her work. Mr. Rodrigues de Freitas, the well-known
Portuguese publicist and republican, kindly came forward
to fill the gap.

The chapter on France differs materially from the
others, both as regards its form and its amplitude.
France, while accomplishing less than almost any other
country in the practical amelioration of woman's condi-
tion, has, in the field of ideas, always led the world.
What her thinkers and reformers have written and
spoken, other nations have put into practice. France has
already solved theoretically the woman question, as she
has all the other great problems of the nineteenth cent-



vi EDITOR'S PREFACE.

ury. Hence it is that so much space has been devoted
to this one country. It is hoped that the brief histori-
cal retrospect with which the chapter begins will explain
and complete the other chapters. It has been my en-
deavor, as far as possible, to have each separate topic
treated by a writer possessing special information on such
topic. It is therefore believed that the statements and
conclusions will be found trustworthy and important.

It will be noticed that England has the first place and
the lion's share of the volume. But, as it is in Great
Britain of all Europe that, on the whole, the most marked
progress has been made, especially in the direction of po-
litical rights, the summum bonum of the age, the largest
space and the post of honor justly belong to the Mother
Country.

In the arrangement of the chapters, I have striven to
observe an ethnological order. First comes Anglo-Saxon
England, followed by the Teutonic countries — Germany,
Holland and Austria ; then Scandinavia, embracing Nor-
way, Sweden and Denmark ; next the Latin nations —
France, Italy, Spain and Portugal ; then Latin-Teutonic
Belgium and Switzerland ; afterward the Slavonic States
— Russia, Poland and Bohemia ; and, finally, the Orient.

Hungary should have had its separate place in the Sla-
vonic group ; but, after repeated efforts, I was unable to
find a collaborator in that country, and the reader, unfort-
unately, must be contented with the few words devoted
to Hungarian women in the chapter on Austria. How-
ever, as Hungary is an integral part of the empire of the
Hapsburgs, much of what is said in the chapters given
to Austria and Bohemia applies equally well to Hun-
gary.

I have endeavored to make this volume on the Euro-



EDITOR'S PREFACE. yii

pean movement for women a storehouse of facts rather
than a philosophical study. The latter itself presents,
however, a theme of the deepest interest, and one which,
if I may be permitted to say so, might well be based on
the material found in the following pages. Exactness,
therefore, has been one of the chief cares of the editor.
In order to secure this end, the translated portions of this
work were, before being sent to the printer, submitted to
the authors in the English form. The first proofs, and,
in some cases, the second proofs also, were passed under
their eyes, and, in many instances, were carefully exam-
ined by third parties, natives of the countries treated
therein. It is hoped that, by this means, accuracy has
been secured, not only as regards the facts, but also in the
orthography of proper names, so often disfigured in pass-
ing through a foreign press.

I beg, however, the indulgence of the reader for any
errors which may be discovered in these pages; for, with
the editor on one side of the Atlantic, and the publisher
on the other, the difficulties of proof-reading have been
greatly increased. The double translation which some
of the essays have undergone may have occasioned a few
misconstructions. Without counting the English, the
contributions to this volume came to the editor in six dif-
ferent languages, viz., German, Italian, Spanish, Norwe-
gian, Polish and modern Greek. But, as has already been
said, the English text has been examined more than once
by the authors, who — a fact worthy of note, by the way —
are, with but two exceptions, conversant with the English
tongue.

My work has not been simply that of a translator, but
the more difficult one of an editor. The principal object
of this volume was, as has just been stated, to furnish



viii EDITOR'S PREFACE.

facts. The style in which these facts were to be pre-
sented was to be free from extravagance of every kind.
I did not wish to take as my guide Diderot, who says :
"When woman is the theme, the pen must be dipped
in the rainbow and the pages must be dried with the
dust of the butterfly's wing." Nor was the " vile-wretch-
man " spirit to prevail. But rather Horace's golden mean
was to be observed. In order to stick to facts and the
juste milieu, the editor greatly increased his labors. With
the exception of the biographical notices, and of the
English essays, to which I have added a few notes, no
chapter appears in its original form. Each has been sub-
jected to severe pruning, some having been abridged
one-half. In several chapters the order of the matter has
been changed, paragraphs have been remodeled, and new
sentences introduced. But in every case the English
'arrangement has received the final approval of the au-
thor. And I hasten to add that in every instance this
approval was cheerfully given, my collaborators readily
perceiving that in this way only could we hope to pro-
duce a work which would be homogeneous and, at the
same time, acceptable to a public three thousand miles
away, of whose character all foreign writers are more or
less ignorant.

Besides other matter, the editor is responsible for most
of the foot-notes. With the exception of those in the
chapter on France, all the foot-notes are signed with the
initials of their respective authors. In this chapter, those
not signed belong to the editor. It will be thought, per-
haps, that many foot-notes would more properly appear in
the body of the text than at the bottom of the page. But
as the text was the composition of a particular author,
additional matter could be added only in the form of



EDITOR'S PREFACE. i x

notes. Although continuity is thus often sacrificed, no
better plan suggested itself.

I have been considerably puzzled as to what titles of
address to use before names of persons. It would not do
to adopt a different method in each chapter as a new
country was taken up. The following rule has, therefore,
been observed : Except in the chapter on France, the
ordinary English forms have been employed in all cases.
It would have been more uniform to have done the
same throughout the whole volume, but such an expres-
sion as "Mrs. de Stael," for example, shocked the ear
too much to admit of such a practice.

I cannot close this preface without returning thanks to
a few at least of the many persons who have aided me in
the preparation of this volume. Mention is not made of
the various collaborators whose names appear at the
head of the chapters or in the notes thereto. Suffice it
to say, that without their generous aid this preface would
have no raison d'etre, — this volume would not exist.

The list is as follows : England — The Rev. W. H.
Channing, Mrs. Peter A. Taylor, wife of the member for
Leicester; Mrs. Katharine L. 'Thomasson, wife of the
member for Bolton; Miss Emily Faithfull, Mrs. Laura
McLaren, wife of the member for Stafford ; Mrs. Fanny
Hertz, Miss Caroline A. Biggs, Editor of the English-
women? s Review ; Miss Agnes Blatch, and Mrs. Stanton-
Blatch, B.A., who has read the larger part of the
proofs. France — Mme. Jules Favre, M. Gr6ard, Vice-
Rector of the Academy of Paris; M. Molinier, Professor
at the Toulouse Law School ; Dr. Nicholas Joly, corres-
ponding member of the Institute ; Mme. Caroline de
Barrau ; M. Joseph Fabre, deputy ; Mile. Verneuil, M.D.;
M. Alphonse Rodiere, Mme. Olympe Audouard, Mile.



X EDITOR'S PREFACE.

Hubertine Auclert, M. Desmoulins, of the Paris Municipal
Council; Mme. Griess-Traut and M. Paul Dubuisson.
Germany — Mrs. Louis Otto-Peters. Italy — Mrs. Chris-
tine Lazzati-Rossi, Mrs. Ernesta Napollon, and Mr.
Charles Francois Gabba, Professor at the University of
Pisa. Spain — Mr. Fernando G. Arenal and Miss Theres
Roaldes. Portugal — Mr. Antonio da Costa. Belgium —
Mr. Jules Pagny. Switzerland — Mr., Mrs., and Miss Z.
Milkowski. Denmark — The Baroness Astrid Stampe-
Feddersen and Mr. Fredrick Bajer, member of the Danish
Parliament. Norway — Mr. H. E. Berner, member of the
Norwegian Parliament, and Miss Charlotte Jacobsen.
Holland — Mr. R. C. Nieuwenhuys, of Deventer. Poland —
Mrs. M. Abdank-Abakanowiez. Russia — the late Ivan
Tourgueneff and Mr. Pierre Lavroff. Bohemia — Mrs.
Charlotte Garrigue Masaryk. Greece — Mr. A. R. Ran-
gab£, Greek Minister at Berlin and Dr. X. Zographos.
United States — Mr. Theodore Tilton, Mrs. Laura Curtis
Bullard and Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton.



Theodore Stanton.



59, RUE DE CHAILLOT, PARIS,
December, 1883.



CONTENTS.



PAOB

Introduction **"

CHAPTER I.

England x

I. The Women's Suffrage Movement 1

II. The Women's Educational Movement 3°

III. Women in Medicine 6 3

IV. The Industrial Movement 9©

V. Women as Philanthropists Io8

CHAPTER II.

Germany *39

I. A General Review J 39

II. The National Association of German Women 153

CHAPTER III.
Holland 161

CHAPTER IV.
Austria 175

CHAPTER V.
Norway 189

CHAPTER VI.
Sweden 199

CHAPTER VII.
Denmark 221



Xli CONTENTS.

CHAPTER VIII.

PAGE

France 234



CHAPTER IX.

Italy 310

I. A General Review 310

II. The Educational Movement 320

CHAPTER X.
Spain 330

CHAPTER XI.
Portugal 354

CHAPTER XII.
Belgium 364

CHAPTER XIII.
Switzerland 374

CHAPTER XIV.
Russia 390

CHAPTER XV.
Poland 424

CHAPTER XVI.
Bohemia 44&

CHAPTER XVII.
The Orient 457



INTRODUCTION.



BY FRANCES POWER COBBE.

[Miss Frances Power Cobbe, daughter of Charles Cobbe, D.L., of New-
bridge House, Co. Dublin, was born in 1822, and is the author of the follow-
ing works : " An Essay on Intuitive Morals," " Religious Duty," " Broken
Lights," " Darwinism in Morals," "The Hopes of the Human Race," " The
Duties of Women," " The Peak in Darien," etc. Of late Miss Cobbe has
devoted herself almost exclusively to the work of the Victoria Street Society
for the Protection of Animals from Vivisection, of which she is the found-
ress and Honorary Secretary.]

There have been many movements in the world — some
of them recorded in history as portentous events, others
forgotten within a few years of their occurrence — which
may each be compared to a wave on the surface of the
Mediterranean. From the insignificant ripple to the wave-
high billow flecked with foam and breaking in cataracts,
they have arisen only to subside to their original level,
leaving the boundaries of land and sea where they have
stood for a thousand years. There are other movements,
on the contrary, which resemble the tides of the Ocean,
wherein each wave obeys one uniform impetus, and car-
ries the waters onward and upward along the shore.

Of all the movements, political, social and religious, of
past ages there is, I think, not one so unmistakably tide-
like in its extension and the uniformity of its impulse, as
that which has taken place within living memory among
the women of almost every race on the globe. Other agi-



x i v INTRODUCTION.

tations, reforms and revolutions have pervaded and lifted
up classes, tribes, nations, churches. But this movement
has stirred an entire sex, even half the human race. Like
the incoming tide, also, it has rolled in separate waves,
and each one has obeyed the same law, and has done its

\ part in carrying forward all the rest. The waves of the
Higher Education of Women all over the world ; the
waves which lifted women over the sand-bars of the med-
ical and (in America) of the legal and clerical professions ;
the waves which seated them on the School Boards and
Boards of Guardians of the Poor ; the wave which gave
them the English Municipal Vote ; the wave which re-
stored to Married Women a right to their own property ;

| every one of these waves, great and small, has been rolled
forward by the same advancing tide.

But the crown and completion of the progress must be
the attainment of the Political Franchise in every country
wherein representative government prevails, and till that
point be reached, there can be no final satisfaction in any
thing which has been achieved. It has been repeated till it
has become a commonplace, that " the Suffrage is the key
of woman's position." Obtaining it, every privilege she
can reasonably desire must follow. Failing to obtain it,
nothing, — not even such installments of her rights as she
has hitherto enjoyed, — is secure. An easily-raised storm
of prejudice and selfishness, whether of trade or party or
sect, passing over the masculine population, might sweep
away her few privileges, while she remained helpless and
unable to protect them by a single vote. On a small
scale such confiscations of the rights of women in trades
and other matters have occurred again and again. The
sufferers had no appeal from injustice, and, because they
were unrepresented, their wrongs were overlooked.

\



INTRODUCTION. XV

The most difficult problem in that great branch of
Ethics which we call Politics regards the place which
ought to be assigned under each constitutional govern-
ment to alien races of men. The system of Representa-
tion itself, with Trial by Jury and the whole scheme of
civil and political liberty, as we, in our day, understand
it, has grown up through a thousand years of

" Freedom slowly broadening down
From precedent to precedent,"

among our law-abiding Anglo-Saxon race ; and either the
hasty adoption of it by other nations with different
tendencies and untrained to self-government, or else the
sudden admission of aliens in large numbers to a share
in the working of our own machinery, are experiments
fraught with difficulty and danger. In the Greek, Italian,
French and Spanish Chambers we see examples of the
first ; and, in the Irish Parliamentary " Obstruction " and
misuse of the jury system to defeat justice, of the second.
Noble and righteous as was the act by which the govern-
ment of the United States extended the suffrage to the
emancipated negroes, the perils of such a step could
scarcely have been encountered by any sane statesman
had the lately freed slaves borne a much larger propor-
tion to the whole white population of the Republic ; and
not even American democracy will contemplate for many
a year to come following up this heroic act by enfranchis-
ing Chinese immigrants ; nor English radicalism ask for
the admission of Hindoos to a share in the Legislative, —
scarcely even in the Executive, — government of India.

Statesmen, even of the broadest views, may not only be
pardoned, but praised, for hesitating and taking time for
deep consideration, when it is proposed to introduce a



xvi INTRODUCTION.

new element into the constitution of their country. In
my humble judgment, as a Conservative, there has been
culpable recklessness on the part of those who, to serve
party interests, have, in England, thrown open the gates
of our sacred " polis " to a rabble of " illiterates," and in
America have admitted hordes of immigrants to the bal-
lot-box, before it was possible for them to acquaint them-
selves with American politics, or to imbibe American
principles.

These considerations should induce women, and their
generous advocates, to regard without impatience all op-
position to their claims to the suffrage which they believe
to be honestly intended and grounded on patriotic
anxiety lest the introduction of a new force should dis-
turb the working of the machine of State. They should
teach them also to frame their arguments with the para-
mount object of allaying the fears and encouraging the
confidence of such worthy opponents, who, when once
convinced that the enfranchisement of women will tend
to the stability and prosperity of the State, and to the
maintenance of social order and religion, will become the
most earnest advocates of the measure. The difference —
nay, rather the contrast — should likewise be insisted on
between proposals to admit the dregs of a population to
the franchise, and those to admit the mothers, daughters
and sisters of the men who already exercise it ; and again,
between proposals to admit aliens of another race, and
those to admit women who have the same hereditary ten-
dencies, attachments, creeds and interests ; and who are
the inevitable partakers of the nation's prosperity, and
the deepest sufferers by its disasters, or misrule. In short,
it ought to be the care of the advocates of women to
point out that not a single one of the reasons for caution



INTRODUCTION. Xvii

in the case of the admission of aliens affect their claims ;
while there exist a multitude of valid reasons, why, being
by nature part of the nation, they should also be, by law,
citizens of the State ; bringing with them, not an element
of weakness and disintegration, but a completer union,
and a contribution to the nation's counsels of some-
thing more than " mother-wit," even of mother-wisdom.
The man is not to be envied who can view the strug-
gle of women for political rights with contempt or in-
difference. That those struggles may not always have
been guided by infallible taste and wisdom, and that they
have often been met — for lack of sensible argument — with
silly derision, need not blind us to the fact that they con-
stitute one of the bravest battles, one of the most pa-
thetic movements, the world has ever seen. Other strifes
have been carried on between rival races, rival classes, rival
sects; but here we have only the patient, persistent ap-
peal of daughters to fathers ; of sisters to brothers ; of
wives to husbands ; of the women, who make the charm
of society, to the men who call them friends. There are
no " garments rolled in blood " in the battle of these war-
riors. The combatants command neither cannon nor bay-
onets. They cannot even break down iron palings, like
the populace of London, when the rights they demanded
were withheld; or threaten dynamite and petroleum like
Nihilists and Fenians. They have not the minutest polit-
ical influence at their disposal wherewith to coerce their
opponents. Never was there a case of such pure and sim-
ple Moral Pressure, — of an appeal to justice, to reason, to
men's sense of what is due, and right, and expedient for
all. When the time comes to look back on the slow, uni-
versal awakening of women all over the globe, on their
gradual entrance into one privileged profession after



xviii INTRODUCTION.

another, on the attainment by them of rights of person
and property, and, at last,on their admission to the full
privileges of citizenship, it will be acknowledged that of
all the " Decisive Battles of History," this has been, to
the moralist and philosopher, the most interesting ; even
as it will be (I cannot doubt) the one followed by the
happiest Peace which the world has ever seen.

I feel myself honored in being called on to introduce
a worthy and adequate record of this great contest to
the public of England and America.



CHAPTER I.
ENGLAND.



I. THE WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT.



BY MILLICENT GARRETT FAWCETT.



[Mrs. Fawcett is a daughter of Mr. Newson Garrett, of Aldeburg,
Suffolk, where she was born in 1847. In 1867 she married Mr. Henry
Fawcett, then Member for Brighton, and now Member for Hackney and
Postmaster General in the present Administration (1883). Mr. Fawcett is
also Professor of Political Economy in the University of Cambridge; and
Mrs. Fawcett was led, through reading to her husband, who is blind, to
study the same subject. She published in 1870 her " Political Economy for
Beginners," and a year or two later " Tales in Political Economy." Mrs.
Fawcett has also written a novel, "Janet Doncaster," and is joint author with
her husband of a volume of essays and lectures on political and social sub-
jects. She was one of the earliest among lady speakers and lecturers in
England on behalf of the political enfranchisement of women, and she has
also frequently lectured on other political, literary and economic subjects in
many of the principal towns of Great Britain and Ireland. Many members
of Mrs. FawcetCs family have taken an active part in promoting the removal
of the disabilities of women. Her eldest sister, the late Mrs. J. W. Smith,
was the secretary of the first society formed in London to promote women's
suffrage ; another of her sisters is Mrs. Garrett-Anderson, the well-known
physician ; a third, Mrs. Cowell, was for several years a member of the
London School Board ; and her cousin, the late Miss Rhoda Garrett, an
excellent speaker and lecturer on behalf of women's suffrage, was also well
known in artistic circles as a designer and decorator.]

It is very difficult in tracing the history of any great
social movement to point to one particular date and say,

x



2 WOMAN Q UESTION IN E UROPE.

on this day or in this year the movement began. The
claim of women for education, for political enfranchise-
ment, for social and industrial freedom, is one that is gen-
erally regarded as essentially modern. But it owes its
origin in England to a date at least as far back as 1792,
when Mary Wollstonecraft published her " Vindication of
the Rights of Woman." Another weighty blow was struck
for women in 18 10, when Sydney Smith published his
well-known and witty essay urging the claim of women to
a sound literary education. Shelley's name must also be
recorded as among those of the earliest of our friends. As
late as the first thirty years of this century, the movement
must be regarded as one of the results of the upheaval of
the human mind of which the French Revolution was the
most portentous manifestation. The awakening of the
democratic spirit, the rebellion against authority, the pro-
clamation of the rights of man, were almost necessarily
accompanied by the growth of a new ideal concerning the
position of women, by the recognition, more or less de-
fined and conscious, of the rights of women. The growth
of this movement and its adaptation to the practical spirit
of the nineteenth century are to a very large extent due to
the life-long advocacy and guidance of the late John Stuart
Mill.* Not only in his book on the Subjection of Women,

* An English lady, whom I shall have occasion to quote several times in
the foot-notes to this essay, writes me as follows : The train of events which
led to John Stuart Mill's conversion to the cause of Women's Suffrage is wor-
thy of note. The vague enthusiasm for the Rights of Man which convulsed
society in Europe, at the end of the eighteenth century, soon assumed in
England a more practical shape. Bentham, the father of modern Radicalism,
published his philosophical essays upon Government, and founded a school
of followers called Philosophic Radicals, who exercised a marked influence