WHY MARIE CORELLI IS NOT A “SUFFRAGETTE.”

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXI, Issue 8737, 11 February 1907, Page 1

WHY MARIE CORELLI IS NOT A “SUFFRAGETTE.”

“I love my own sex,” writes Mias Marie Corelli, in a remarkable article, entitled “Man’s War Against Woman,” which forms the most striking feature in the Christmas number of the Rapid Review. “ Man, writes Miss Corelli, “ looks upon the Apple of Life as his property—and if he gives woman a small bad quarter of it (often made bitter by a bruise or a worm) she is to think herself flattered and favoured. He has always been a law unto himself. Ar.d he makes laws for her which sue has to accept. Whatever she does—save and only the bearing of children—is distinctly wrong. Nevertheless, Miss Corelli, is not in favour of the enfranchisement ef women. After pointing out that she has a good claim to a vote as a ratepaying, taxpaying householder, she continues ;—“Why then do I not insist on this denied ‘ right ’ —this political privilege of voting ? Why ? Because, frankly t and honestly Ido not want it. Again, why ? Because, to my mind, the very desire for a vote on the part of woman is an open confession of weakness—a proof that she has lost ground, and is not sure of herself. For if she is real woman—if she has the natural heritage of her sex, which is the mystic power to persuade, enthral, and subjugate man, she has no need to come down from her throne and mingle in any of his political frays, inasmuch as she is already the very head and front of Government. Let those who will laugh at, or sneer, down the statement, the fact remains that a man is seldom anything more than" a woman’s representative.” In ° Miss Corelli’s opinion, women suffragists are rapidly destroying the sacrednoss of womanhood. “I wonder,” she says, “whether my ‘suffragette’ sisters realise wha*’ ‘rights’ they are losing—what priceless privileges they have already lost, in their recent attempts to neutralise their sex ? To begin with, they have, for the sake of a mere political chimera, sacrificed their actual birthright—the right to claim men’s devout reverence, faith, and loyalty, it can but seem utter nonsense to a sane, sound, strong man to talk of reverence, faith, and loyalty to ladies who brandish umbrellas and scream for ‘ woman’s suffrage’ so violently that they have to be taken in hand by the police. Romance flies from such a scene. Of all the ‘ rights’ which woman may and should claim for her due and proper recognition as a working, bread-winning force in the world, the right to vote seems to ms the most useless and unnecessary, and the one most likely to involve a loss to her of all true womanly power, reserve, and dignity. I should be very sorry to see a crowd of women hustling each other at the polling-booths. If, by any chance, they should piesent the same tousled and infuriated aspect which distinguishes them on a ‘remnant sale day 1 at a fashionable draper's, the spectacle would not only be ludicrous but degrading—sufficiently so indeed to bring the country to positive shame, and make us the laughing stock of the civilised world.”