What Women Want

It is my conviction that the evolutionary growth known as the Feminist Movement is gradually supplying to women the things they most need, and it is therefore with Feminism that this book deals and though I confess myself wholly partisan, my object has been rather explanation than propaganda. For of all the hopes and questionings, reconstructions and revolts of our age of changing ideals, there is no cause upon the merits of which the general public is more readily led astray than this of women. Even the name Feminism, by which for lack of a better term we call it, is somewhat misleading. I have tried to indicate a focus from which one may visualize the general causes, trend and value of the movement, and estimate its probable future course. The opinions here expressed are those which I have found to be held by the majority of feminists, and in no case have I discussed the views of a minority without pointing out the respects in which they differ from the main body. The views of a large body are never as dramatic as those of small groups of extremists. On the other hand, liberal-minded people lack the alarmist quality of the ultra-conservative, whose continual cry of “Wolf, wolf” makes the timid tremble at the approach of each and every progressive reform. So that though much is written by pioneers and by reactionaries, we hear less from the great body of women who are too busy working in some branch or other of progressive activity to have time to record their views on the feminist movement as a whole. In the midst of an enormous output of printed opinion, I have therefore thought that there might still be room for the views of a woman who represents, in parliamentary language, the center rather than the right or left in this controversy. Observation of one who, in addition to working extensively in the woman’s movement of England and America, has followed the routine of two exacting professions, and enjoyed the intimate enclosed life of marriage and maternity.