THE BATTALION.
11
they should be more at a loss tor self support than their sis
ters in other parts of the country? The difficulty does not lie
in the misfortune of the sex, but in the unfortunate fact that
prejudice and long estaulished custom have closed the doors
of remunerative employments, drawn a cordon around woman
and said to her not only in the south, but everywhere, “So
far shalt thou go and no father.” “Step beyond the line
which public opinion allows you and you forfeit the respect
of all good men.” And woman has passively acknowledged
the restrictions, for few will take the risks of doing violence
to established customs, for they would rather fall back upon
their power of suffering and endurance.
The self-sacrifice of woman is so great that, combined with
the love for father, husband, son, she will go into the valley
of death for them. She will cling to them when a wall wider
than death separates them from the rest of mankind. For
there is nothing that a woman holds dearer than these holy
relations, and there is no sacrifice too great for woman to
make for those holding these relations to her.
In her devotion to them she has submitted to restrictions
and been governed by prejudices that have narrowed her
sphere and curtailed her privileges, until now, as she shrink-
ingly stands behind the barriers that have been built up
around her, comes the plaintive cry “what may I do?” Wo
man is not today asking “what can I do? but “what may I
do?” What will public opinion allow me to do?” What can
I do and yet not lose my prestage as a woman?” Like the
goddess carved by an Athenian sculptor in the immovable
rock on the wild coast of the Egean sea, woman has long sat
unmoved inseparable from her hidden shrine.
The teeming, seething, struggling throng is close upon her
seclusion, and the demand is that she step out from the place
carved out by human hands and take her God-given liberty
with the moving throng.
New duties, new responsibilities are being laid upon wo
man. The moral reform movements of the day need the im
pulse of the highest type of womanhood.