Married Women

From the Illustrated London News, June 1st 1918

LADIES’ PAGE.

ONE of the reasons that Mr. Gladstone gave for his steady opposition to Women's Suffrage was that "the woman's vote must lead to the woman's seat in Parliament".  That some women would try to make the one lead to the other might, indeed, be reasonably anticipated; and the sequence of events has not long tarried.  The lady still known at her own request as "Miss Mary MacArthur," though she is the wife of Mr. Anderson. M.P., has been formally adopted as the candidate of the Labour Party for a Midland borough.  It is by no means a necessary consequence that those having a right to vote should also have a right to stand for election, for the Church of England clergy have always been entitled to vote but ineligible for sitting in Parliament.  It might be thought that this particular candidate would meet with a further difficulty owing to her continuing as a married woman to use her maiden name.  This was settled, however, by Mrs. Fenwick Miller’s election to the London School Board under the same circumstances.

Her return was objected to on the ground that she had not been correctly described on the nomination paper; but the Law Officers of the Crown, to whom the question was referred as one relating to a public election, stated that there is no law in this country compelling a woman to take her husband's surname.  That lady, however, adopted the usual prefix for a married woman;  "Miss" Mary MacArthur, and another well-known follower of the example, "Miss" Violet Markham —sister of the late Sir A. Markham, M.P., and wife of Mr. Carruthers—have continued to use not only their maiden names, but also, what is another question, the prefix of "Miss," which is universally understood to mean that the person so addressed is not married.

All such social customs, however, are matters of habit, based on convention.  In Spain, married women continue to use their maiden names, with the husband's added—"Mrs. Smith and Jones," as we might say—and the children take both parents' names.  Scottish women's maiden names are invariably used in legal documents, and until recently they were often called by the same name after marriage as before.  To give only two instances where the sons of women so called became famous—Sir James Barrie, in his Life of his own mother, calls her "Margaret Ogilvie," never "Mrs. Barrie"; and Sir William Chambers, founder of the well-known publishing house, says of his grandmother, "According to an old custom in Scotland, she was, though married, known only by her maiden name, which was Margaret Kerr."  In Alsace it is usual for the family names of a married couple to be combined, and both spouses use the joint cognomen thus "Miss" MacArthur and Mr. Anderson would there be Mr. and Mrs. MacArthur-Anderson.

It is obviously socially convenient for man and wife, the father and mother of a family, to bear the same name; but, on the other hand, it is not only an extinguishing of the wife's individuality, but very disadvantageous to a woman who has made some reputation as a writer, painter, public worker, or who has taken a degree while single, and so on, to sink her identity on marriage; and it is so unpleasant to a father to see his name lost, by his heiress marrying, that we know that it is quite common for the husband of such an heiress to consent to take his wife's name.  A very striking instance of this being done for the sake of a great reputation instead of a vast fortune is that of the descendants of Sir Walter Scott.  His descendants in each generation have been females only, and the men who have married these ladies have taken the name of Scott, hyphened with their own (the Scott last), so that the great author's patronymic should not be covered and lost.  In English society, again, it is usual for the widow of a titled man to keep her deceased husband's name, for the sake of the title, on remarrying with a commoner.  It was not always the English custom even to call married and single women by a distinctive prefix.  In the eighteenth century every girl who had left the schoolroom was called "Mrs.," just as every man, married or single, is known as "Mr."

[Mary MacArthur had been involved from the start of the war in the Central Committee on Women's Employment, which promoted employment schemes for women who had lost their jobs due to the disruption to trade caused by the war. She was the Labour candidate in the Stourbridge constituency in the 1919 General Election, but was defeated.]

The Effect of the Women’s Vote

From the Illustrated London News, 23rd March 1918.

LADIES' PAGE.

MR. ASQUITH has, very naturally, expressed his full assurance that a large proportion of the new women voters will ally themselves with the Liberal Party.  Very likely he is right, for the curious franchise qualification devised for women is the neatest possible arrangement for minimising any special results from their votes.  Five out of every six of the new female electorate are qualified to vote merely as the wives of male electors; while the independent, self-supporting women, by the refusal to them of a lodger and service franchise, will be mainly still kept from the polls.  Now it is only reasonable to anticipate that most wives will vote, notwithstanding the secrecy of the ballot, under their husbands' influence and direction.  As Mrs. Seddon, wife of the famous Premier of New Zealand, said to me when I asked her if the wife's vote there had tended to cause "discord in the family"—which was a favourite bugbear of past discussions—"We find," said Mrs. Seddon, "that there is very apt to be a family vote.  When a husband and father is all that he ought to be, not only his wife, but his sons and daughters too, are likely to think as he does, and all go to vote on the same side."  The wife's vote, especially when she owes her possession of the right entirely to being her husband's wife, must be, in short, much of the nature of the old "faggot votes."  This is inevitably the case.

When the Married Woman's Property Act was under discussion, a great Judge said that he believed it would make no difference, for there hardly existed wives who could not be "either kissed or kicked" out of their money!  This may, at any rate, be the case with the wife's vote.  Indeed, wives will frequently even regard the vote, coming to them solely because they are their husbands' wives, as something over which a sort of marital right of control justly exists.  Lawyers call the jewels with which a man supplies his wife "paraphernalia"—not as her own actual property, to dispose of in her lifetime and to bequeath at her death as she wills, but as still the husband's legal possession, which the lady may call her own, but which she only has and wears at his pleasure and for his honour and glory.  The vote, coming in the same way, will be morally regarded by many dutiful wives, and perforce by others under pressure from masterful husbands, as "paraphernalia."  Then, political ignorance and irresponsibility about politics have been hitherto cultivated in women; is it reasonable to expect a generation brought up under that influence to develop initiative and courageous independence?  Or is it not probable (as it is, in fact, true) that the average wife will say that her husband understands such matters more fully than she does, and that she had better simply adopt his opinions and act by his directions?  Such was, no doubt, the expectation with which the vote has been given to wives and refused to a large proportion of the self-dependent women.  We must not look for any vast immediate results, therefore, from the enfranchisement of five million married women.  Still, evolution can be very rapid, and it may prove wonderfully soon that wives will gain individual judgment and conscience in the use of their new power in the State. 

Representation of the People

From the Illustrated London News, 26th January 1918.

LADIES' PAGE.

It has taken just half a century of effort to get sex removed from the disqualifications for citizenship.  Fifty completed years precisely have passed since John Stuart Mill first challenged a vote of the House of Commons on the equal right of women to the franchise.  From that date to the present, women have carried on an unceasing propaganda in favour of the equality of their sex in representation as well as in taxpaying and obedience to the laws made by Parliament.  In the meantime, many things bearing on the subject have happened.  The Married Women's Property Act was an important step.  Several of the States of the American Union have fully enfranchised their female citizens, beginning with Wyoming in 1870, and now including wealthy and leading States such as Colorado and California; and in every case the change has proved able to gain the approval of the leading men and of the people as a whole.  Then our own Australasian colonies followed suit, beginning with New Zealand in 1894, and culminating in the Confederation of Australia in 1906, and just recently a part of Canada.  The admission of women to higher education, and the brilliant success many of them gained in abstruse subjects, such as mathematics, is another notable fact that has helped in changing opinion.  But finally, of course, the part taken by women in this terrible war is the immediate reason for the general agreement now expressed that we ought to be recognised as citizens sharing in the corporate life of the nation.  As the Archbishop of Canterbury said, in the House of Lords debate, the vote is not being given as a reward for the work done by women—for it is not a privilege so much as a trust to fulfil—but as a recognition of the ability and devotion that they have shown and that have proved them to be a valuable portion of the nation's forces.

The Lord Chancellor, opposing the enfranchisement, suggested that women voters will be more ready than men to make “an inconclusive and hasty peace, throwing away all for which we had fought.”  As George Eliot said wittily, “Prophecy is the most gratuitous form of error,” and any assumptions as to what women will do with the vote are necessarily of that order.  But, as the old herbalists believed that the bane and the antidote always grew near one another, the next page of the Times to that recording Lord Loreburn's prophecy bore its contradiction, in the record from Canada as to the recent election there in which the one and only question was conscription— “the appeal for reinforcements for the Canadian army.”  We are told by the impartial Times correspondent that “possibly 400,000 women voted, of whom at least 70 per cent. cast their ballot for the Union candidates.  The appeal to support the men in the trenches was very influential with the women.  They were better organised than the men voters, and their speakers were very effective.”  Nor did it, in fact, need this last-hour proof that women are willing to give the sacrifices necessary in a righteous and defensive war, for every one of the splendid New Zealand boys whom we have seen in our midst was brought up by a voting mother, and, when the need of the Empire arose, those mothers not only voted their money, but gave their darling sons to the war in a manner that alone should have defended women from Lord Loreburn's imputation.  New Zealand was the first of our Colonies, before the war, to vote the cost of a battle-ship to the Imperial Navy, and in the war her contributions have been exceptional.

........

Of course, the vote is now given on different terms from those on which we have always asked for it. Our claim has always been “Votes for women on the same qualification as they are given to men.”  I still believe that this would have been a much better basis.  It would have enfranchised all women paying taxes on their own account, who would have been mainly single or widowed, but including some married women in business or owning property; but the whole number would have been far less than will come in by the present arrangement.  The absurd restriction of women's votes to persons over thirty years of age would also not have had to be devised, as the only scheme for somewhat lessening the flood of new and inexperienced electors.  However, the working men objected to the preponderance of propertied and well-educated women amongst those who would have been enfranchised “on the same terms as men”; and the present change, illogical as it is, at least removes being of the female sex from the list of disqualifications for voting, where it previously stood with lunacy, crime, pauperism, and childishness. —FILOMENA.

[The Representation of the People Act of 1918 granted the vote to women over the age of 30 who met a property qualification.  The same Act gave the vote to all men over the age of 21. It became law in February 1918.

Until the Married Woman’s Property Act of 1870, and later extensions, married women effectively could not own anything – it belonged to the husband. The acts allowed her first to control any money she earned, and then to keep any property she had before her marriage, and any that she inherited during the marriage.]

Women’s Views

From The Illustrated London News, 15th December 1917.

LADIES' PAGE

Both Canadian and Australian women have been voting in London for the respective Parliaments of their own countries.  The one subject upon which the women, as well as the men, are being called upon to pronounce their opinion as voters is the employment of conscription to maintain the respective Colonial forces at the front in adequate numbers.  Australian women have had full and equal Parliamentary suffrage for a good many years; the Canadian women's vote is new, a recognition of the value of the patriotic services that they have rendered to the defence of their country, as English-women's coming franchise is also to be regarded.  As the Colonial women voters in this country are those who have come over to serve as Army nurses, there can be little doubt that their votes will be cast in favour of the cause to which they are giving their lives.

There is, however, a great fallacy in assuming, as is often done, that in a general way there is a sex-cleavage of opinion.  Women differ amongst themselves on all possible subjects of debate, precisely as men do; and the reasons for the differences are the same in kind. Our family training and tendencies — that is to say, the kind of views expressed, while the youthful mind is pliable and responsive, by those whom we are trained to respect and by nature love and desire to please; the company into which we are thrown; the character of our own organisation, whether robust, active and daring, or the reverse — all the conditions of life, in short — mould our minds and modify our opinions, whether we be men or women. Sex, very probably, is one factor, but not one that over-rides all others in the formation of opinions. Every day we may see illustrations of the great differences of opinion amongst women, even about what may be called specially women's questions.  Such a diversity is now being displayed over the new law proposed about the remarriage of separated persons: after they have been parted for three years, it is suggested, either of them shall be able to claim a full divorce without needing the consent of the other. There are in this country several hundreds of thousands of such separated husbands and wives, some apart under voluntary deeds, many more by magistrates' orders. Though their marriages are practically at an end permanently, and all the purposes of marriage as set forth in the Book of Common Prayer are abrogated, these people can never marry again in each other's lifetime as the law now stands.

A strong committee has been formed to press this alteration on Parliament; but an equally ardent and vigorous objecting committee has also been constituted under Church of England auspices; and on both these committees there are many women of light and leading.  It is obviously one of those perplexing cases where the most just and personally unprejudiced mind may find something to be urged on both sides.  But the Church-woman, regarding marriage as a sacrament—or at least an inalienable, a necessarily life-long tie — can admit of no excuse for the proposal; while the more worldly woman's mind sees nothing but the cruel disadvantage to a woman of being legally tied to a man who is no longer really a husband and protector, yet whose name of husband prevents the chance of the unfortunate wife finding happiness in another marriage.  Even the women concerned do not agree upon the proposal.  "I feel that nobody has any right to make me a divorced woman when I have been true to my marriage vow in letter and spirit," says one separated wife; while another bemoans in agony of soul the cruel state of the law that certainly makes it difficult for her to get employment, perhaps shuts her out from accepting another husband, and so debars her, though faultless, from having the joys of motherhood and settled social position.  On the other hand, if a man may so behave as to force his wife to separate from him, and then he may divorce her after three years, where are we?  So even on such a subject there is no "woman's party."