Page:The Future of the Women's Movement.djvu/197

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CHAPTER XV


SEX-ANTAGONISM

(2) Woman's Part

"They that have power to hurt, and will do none,
 That do not do the thing they most do show,
 Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,
 Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow,—

 They rightly do inherit Heaven's graces,
 And husband nature's riches from expense;
 They are the lords and owners of their faces,
 Others, but stewards of their excellence."


IF men have made the mistake of attempting to repress women, we must admit that women have taken their share of the sex war in attempting to get the better of men. Men have insisted that women shall live by their sex alone, and women have used their sex in every conceivable way to accomplish their ends. Men have drawn ring-fences round women and then twitted them with their narrowness. Men have had to bow to the necessity of women bearing and rearing children, but whereas this is a work requiring the broadest culture and the widest sympathies, men have for

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