Page:The Woman Socialist - Snowden - 1907.djvu/40

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
24
The Woman Socialist

them and grovelling at the feet of the being who destroys them.

Let it not be understood from the foregoing that the holy office of motherhood is despised, that a well-ordered home is not a desirable and necessary thing, and that the rearing and educating of the nation’s future citizens is not the noblest of all work. No true woman would deny the great importance of these duties; nor that she, by reason of centuries of training at least, if not by reason of her sex, is peculiarly fitted to undertake them. And, far from shirking, she would glory in their doing, if the conditions of her labour bore any relation to the importance and dignity of the work.

The revolt of woman to-day is not against the work which Nature, confessedly, intended her to do. It is against the arbitrary limitations put upon her activities by men in matters educational, professional, social, and political which in increasing numbers she protests; and she justifies her rebellion completely when she points out that the sphere which is supposed to be peculiarly the sphere of woman is barred to innumerable women through no fault of their own,