Feminism a TreeBy Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale(Well-known English actress. Author of “What Women Want,”[1]from which the following is taken.)
By Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
(Well-known English actress. Author of “What Women Want,”[1]from which the following is taken.)
... Feminism is a tree, and woman suffrage merely one of its many branches. Some of these branches are essential to the life of the tree, others are not. Some grow strong and put forth shoots in their turn, others blossom prematurely, wither young, and drop from the trunk. Meanwhile the tree towers up into the sun with its crown of sturdy growths, and its abortive shoots lie forgotten in the shadow below, leaving hardly a scar upon the great stem to mark their death. Only few people see this tree as a unit. All who do know that woman suffrage is one of its essential growths. But the majority still concentrate their gaze upon one branch or another, whichever seems to them most fair, and the parent tree is lost to sight amid the multiplicity of its offspring’s leaves. Suffrage has rallied to its march thousands of conservative women who are indifferent, or even opposed, to some newer branches of the tree, while those who are absorbed in certain later and eccentric growths are sometimes amusingly contemptuous of the older limbs. They forget that the topmost crown could not flourish if the wide boughs below did not help the tree to breathe. They are sometimes, too, indanger of forgetting that if the great roots of the trees were not anchored deep in the soil of woman’s nature itself, in her motherhood, her strong tenderness, and her service, the whole growth would perish.
[1]Frederick A. Stokes Co.
[1]Frederick A. Stokes Co.
[1]Frederick A. Stokes Co.