WOMAN IN THE NEW ERA
BY C. DESPARD
THE woman's question—woman as she is, woman as she will be! That is my subject; and I want, at the outset, to get away from woman as the individual, more or less pleasing, more or less aggravating, more or less useful. I want to study woman in the abstract: the great woman-principle in life, in thought, and in action.
To go as far back as is possible in the twilight of our knowledge, we shall find the mother as well as the father in all the ancient cosmogonies. Witness the mysterious Isis of Egypt, Athene-Pallas of Greece, Juno of Rome. Catholicism also, which bears traces of the old pagan world, through conquest of which she gained her dominion, has her Virgin-Mother—her Queen of Heaven, her Divine Consolatrix; and all who know anything about the history of the Middle Ages will be aware of the effect of this aspect of religion on society. Abbesses, in those days, sat at State-Councils; ladies of high degree possessed the right of sending their chosen delegates to Parliaments, and holy women, like St. Theresa, and St. Catherine of Siena, were consulted on public matters
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