NOTEBOOK OF A FEMINIST

Probation

Emile Faguet once noted, to the advantage of women, that they committed fewer crimes than men. And here is equality, in this again, tending to manifest itself. For quite a long time the passion murders committed by women have multiplied; on many sides, there are now reports of unfaithful cashiers; and — what a horror! — a feminine trio of Apaches begins to crack down on Paris by night. This is nothing to brag about either as a woman or as a feminist.

But we are not one of those apostles who, reversing prejudice, claim that nature has made woman superior to man; this is usually the opinion of too benevolent gentlemen, witness Faguet and, four centuries before him, this Corneille Agrippa who celebrated in Latin "the preeminence of the female sex over the other sex". In our opinion, Mother Nature has equitably distributed her gifts and her evil spells between the two halves of humanity; and, when such a disposition seems more developed on one side than on the other, it depends on the education and the conditions of existence. Here we find further proof.

Formerly, women murdered less than men because they were taught that only man had the right of life and death over his neighbour, themselves included; as there were no cashiers at all, there could be no unfaithful ones; and, in the accession of women to the Apache career, we must see, assuredly, a result of the progress of female physical culture.

Alas! alas! will feminine emancipation double the sum of the sins of the world? It is high time to ward off this cataclysm. You know that we call "supervised freedom" the regime of guilty children that justice returns to their families without ceasing to have an eye on them. In granting freedom to women, they must be taught, through new moral disciplines, to watch over themselves, to teach them the virtues of freedom as they were imposed on them those of servitude. Only, they must also be taught to men, otherwise, given the contagion of example, nothing will be done.

JANE MISME