>>11219430The only advisable solution lies in the direction not of changing woman —that would be suicidal to the species—but in limiting her power, in controlling her influence. Feminism, therefore, which aims at the opposite ideal, is wrong—wrong to the root. There must be a revulsion of feeling, or we perish. Woman must be redefined. Her sphere must once again be delimited and circumscribed, if her vital and precious instincts are not, in their effort to extend out of bounds, to drag us steadily down into the abyss. If woman were happier as she is, than with her influence controlled, if feminism had brought bliss instead of anguish to millions of women, there might be one remaining argument—a purely hedonistic one—in favour of this nineteenth-century madness. But seeing that this is not so, in view of what everyone now knows and can see and feel with his own unassisted senses, that woman has grown every day more wretched, more neurotic and more sick with every advance that feminism has made, the last and only possible word remaining in its favour, the plea even of hedonism, is shown to be as inadmissible as the rest. When, therefore, we read in the old canon of the Brahmins, ‘He who carefully guards his wife, preserves the purity of his offspring, virtuous conduct, his family, himself and his means of acquiring merit’; when we read, ‘Day and night women must be kept in dependence by the males of their families … her father protects her in childhood, her husband protects her in youth, and her sons protect her in old age, a woman is never fit for independence’, we shall surely be taking a very heavy onus of responsibility upon our shoulders if we declare this policy madness and our own wisdom.
