CHAPTER XIII
THE WOMAN'S WOMAN: A PERSON
"… And, if we think of it, what does civilisation itself rest upon—and what object has it, with its religions, arts, schools, etc., but rich, luxuriant, varied Personalism? To that all bends, and it is because toward such result Democracy alone, on anything hke Nature's scale, breaks up the limitless fallows of humankind, and plants the seed, and gives fair play, that its claims now precede the rest."—Walt Whitman, Democratic Vistas.
IN the last chapter mention was made of the tyranny of an ideal. Man thinks of the qualities he finds desirable in a woman and compounds an ideal woman out of these qualities, and then proceeds to call "unsexed" the real women of flesh and blood who do not conform or pretend to conform to this ideal. The older women have very naturally helped him to maintain these ideals; they were reared in them, and they have feared lest it might be difficult to find provision for their daughters, unless they kept the daughters strictly to the dedicated ways. They were wrong, as timid people nearly always are wrong. The free woman, with a character and a will of her own, is not only happier and more useful, but. she is proving herself
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