this suggestion is that we must not consider woman as she
was, but woman "as she is becoming", as a creature of infinite
potentialities, as virgin ground.

It may be _petitio principii_ to say that, as woman has produced so much
that is fine, she would have produced very much more if she had not been
hampered by law and custom, derided by the male, but bad logic is often
good sense. This should commend itself to men who are no longer willing
to support the idea that women are inherently inferior to them, but who
are willing to give them an opportunity to develop in every field of
human activity. Thus and thus only, if man will readjust his views,
expel _vir_ and enthrone _homo_, can woman cease to appear before him as
a rival and a foe, realize herself in her natural and predestined role,
that of partner and mate.[8]

[8] Note: This chapter should be taken as the summary of an intellectual
position. Its points are considered in detail in the four chapters that
follow.

III

UNIFORMS FOR WOMEN

1

The change which has come over politics reflects closely enough the
change which has come about in the direction of man's desire. In times
of peace, diplomacy and the affairs of kings have given place to wages
and the housing of the poor; that which was serious has become pompous;
that which was of no account now stands in the foreground. And so it
is not absurd to suggest that one of those things which once made jests
for the comic paper and the Victorian paterfamilias has, little by
little, with the spread of wealth, become a problem of the day, a
problem profound and menacing, full of intimations of social decay, not
far remote in its reactions from the spread of a disease.

That problem is the problem of women's dress, or rather it is the
problem of the fashions in women's dress. Women have never been content
merely to clothe themselves, nor, for the matter of that, until very
recently, have men; but men have grown a new sanity, while women, if we
read aright the signs of the times, have grown naught save a new
insanity. We have come to a point where, for a great number of women,
the fashions have become the motive power of life, and where, for almost
every woman, they have acquired great importance. Women classify each
other according to their clothes; they have corrupted the drama into a
showroom; they have completely ruined the more expensive parts of the
opera house; they have invaded the newspapers in