WOMAN IN POLITICAL
EVOLUTION

BY
JOSEPH McCABE

LONDON:
WATTS & CO.,
17, JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.C.
1909

Chap.
I.	Is the Subordination of Woman the Price of Empire?
II.	Woman Before Civilisation
III.	Woman in Ancient Egypt and Assyria
IV.	Woman in Ancient Greece
V.	Woman in Ancient Rome
VI.	The Dark Age of Feminism
VII.	Renaissance and Revolution
VIII.	The Struggle in the Nineteenth Century
IX.	The Moral Base of Enfranchisement

	Footnotes

WOMAN IN POLITICAL EVOLUTION

CHAPTER I.
IS THE SUBORDINATION OF WOMAN THE PRICE OF EMPIRE?

The distinct aim which emboldened the author to add one more essayto the large class of works that deal with woman’s positionthroughout the ages was twofold. It seemed, in the first place, thatthere was a lack of connecting principle in the series of detachedsketches that usually make up a work of the kind; that a continuous,panoramic view of human history would reveal such a principle, andone of very great importance for the proper appreciation of thepresent woman-movement. It has been possible to trace the action ofa consistent law through all the historic spasms of feministagitation, and to show that that law has reached a stage of finaland irresistible pressure in our time. The underlying principles ofthe present movement are too rarely noticed, and a clear enunciationof them may contribute a little to the proper understanding of thestruggle.

The second aim was to meet a serious concern that is expressed bythoughtful observers, when they note that the woman-movement is oneof a score of agitations that ruffle the whole surface, and evenstir the depths, of modern life. We have passed through a century ofrevolutions, yet we seem as far as ever from the peace that each onehad promised to bring. Nations that had slept undisturbed throughthe political storms that shook Europe during three generations arenow waking to revolt; classes that had witnessed the upheavals ofthe nineteenth

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WOMAN IN POLITICAL
EVOLUTION

CONTENTS