Now all that is left of the Invisible Lady among ourselves is only the remnant of this absurd tradition.  In the seaside town where I write, ladies of fashion usually go veiled in the streets, and so general is the practice that little girls often veil their dolls.  They all suppose it to be done for complexion or for ornament; just as people still hang straps on the backs of their carriages, not knowing that it is a relic of the days when footmen stood there and held on.  But the veil represents a tradition of seclusion, whether we know it or not; and the dread of hearing a woman speak in public, or of seeing a woman vote, represents precisely the same tradition.  It is entitled to no less respect, and no more.

Like all traditions, it finds something in human nature to which to attach itself.  Early girlhood, like early boyhood, needs to be guarded and sheltered, that it may mature unharmed.  It is monstrous to make this an excuse for keeping a woman, any more than a man, in a condition of perpetual subordination and seclusion.  The young lover wishes to lock up his angel in a little world of her own, where none may intrude.  The harem and the seraglio are simply the embodiment of this desire.  But the maturer man and the maturer race have found that the beloved being should be something more.

After this discovery is made, the theory of the Invisible Lady disappears.  It is less of a shock for an American to hear a woman speak in public than it is for an Oriental to see her show her face in public at all.  Once open the door of the harem, and she has the freedom of the house:  the house includes the front door, and the street is but a prolonged doorstep.  With the freedom of the street comes inevitably a free access to the platform, the tribunal, and the pulpit.  You might as well try to stop the air in its escape from a punctured balloon, as to try, when woman is once out of the harem, to put her back there.  Ceasing to be an Invisible Lady, she must become a visible force:  there is no middle ground.  There is no danger that she will not be anchored to the cradle, when cradle there is; but it will be by an elastic cable, that will leave her as free to think and vote as to pray.  No woman is less a mother because she cares for all the concerns of the world into which her child is born.  It was John Quincy Adams who said, defending the political petitions of the women of Plymouth, that “women are not only justified, but exhibit the most exalted virtue, when they do depart from the domestic circle, and enter on the concerns of their country, of humanity, and of their God.”

SACRED OBSCURITY

In the preface to that ill-named but delightful book, the “Remains of the late Mrs. Richard Trench,” there is a singular remark by the editor, her son.  He says that “the adage is certainly true in regard to the British matron, Bene vixit quae bene latuit,” the meaning of this phrase being, “She has lived well who has kept herself well out of sight.”  Applying this to his beloved mother, he further expresses a regret at disturbing her “sacred obscurity.”  Then he goes on to disturb it pretty effectually by printing a thick octavo volume of her most private letters.