The enlargement of the sphere of women : an essay in social biology / by C. Pitfield Mitchell.

  • Mitchell, Charles Pitfield.
Date:
1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The enlargement of the sphere of women : an essay in social biology / by C. Pitfield Mitchell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    of testimony wliicLi, I think, establislies the conclusion that upon this over-draught depends the terrible frequency of cancer in women. The liability of women to cancer of the sexual organs must be set down in part to that large aug- mentation of vitality which has attended the evolution of life in the associated state. The surplus forces of the organism have sought the easiest outlet. What is used up for species-maintenance is something over and above what is needed for self-maintenance. Now the wise remedy for this grievous affliction, which falls so mercilessly upon women, is a redistribution of the superabundant assets. The expend- iture of the excess should be in the opposite direction, that is, in the direction of self-advancing processes. And such redistribution of forces will correct other of the many evils which have succeeded the too narrowed devotion of women to the offices of maternity and its associated functions. Are we then to perceive in this a warrant for the political enfranchisement of married women, the cry for which may be regarded as the expression of a longing for relief from ills that are definitely felt but only vaguely intellectualized ? It does not appear to me that such is the indication of what has gone before. Within that sphere of women prescribed by the functions of their sex there is ample scope for a new order of activities. In the higher education of women, especially education in whatever tends to the more enlightened discharge of their serious and difficult responsibilities within the family and society, lies a practically inexhaustible field, one there is little likelihood women at large will become mistresses of in a generation. This, so competent to remove the disabilities imposed upon women by the severities of existence in the past, and so competent to check the growing evils of their present conditions, should also, as it seems to me, constitute tbe probation of women for political enfranchisement. If tbe latter should ever become, as I think it may, a consumma- tion desirable in the interests of women and the State, it will not be until there has gone on a very considerable extension of the vicarious performance of parental duties. And the extension must bo mainly in social area, for there