mong women is absurd. It already
exists widely, though unused or directed into channels of waste. Of
this I am convinced. The thing that has been rare is opportunity. The
fact that some few women have struggled up out of obscurity does not
so much show that they possessed a special masculine superiority as
that they have been less inextricably bound down than others by the
conventional bonds of a man-ruled society. I believe that this could
be proved in the case of every woman who has attained to fame. And
there is another point. The women who have succeeded in bursting these
bonds have, in most cases, done so at such great cost of energy and
fighting, that their work is rendered crude and often valueless.
Self-assertion can never be the best preparation for achievement. All
this narrows the mental horizon and tends to make the results gained
superficial and unenduring. We have here the explanation of much that
has been, and still is, futile in women's efforts.

The face of the world, however, is changing for women. It may be that
the future will reveal creative ability in them as yet unsuspected. It
is not safe to prophesy, and no one can say, as yet, just in what
direction women will develop. It may prove that their special
qualities will not find expression in the realm of imagination, but
will be turned to diplomacy and to administration and financial work.
I simply affirm that what women can or cannot do is as yet unproved.
Throughout the ages of patriarchal faith one ideal of womanhood has
been impressed upon the world, which is only now being shaken--the
ideal of self-repression and submission to the will of man, of
society, and of God. Women's minds have reflected only the minds of
men. I think that much of the failure of women's work arises from the
arrogance of men, who have always preferred the flattering image of
woman in their own minds to woman herself. Woman has had to accept
this. She could only realise herself through man, not with man, while
he has been able to realise himself, either with her help or without
her.

There is a wide difference between the mental and social attitudes of
men and women. Men have been responsible to society at large for their
work and conduct, woman's outlook has been much narrower; she has been
responsible to men, and has only touched outside life through them.
In this way women have developed on wrong lines. It is significant,
for instance, how many women have written bo