Transcription

"Blazing the Trail"
"Does The Modern Girl Think For Herself?" Is Answered
by Helen Keller

There has been much argument lately among women, young and old, as to whether the enlarged opportunities and innumerable avenues of adventure open to them that were closed to their grandmothers have stimulated independence and self-expression.

I asked a man I know, "Do modern women think for themselves?" He replied, "Very few women have thought in any age. It is the same now as it always was. Everything depends on the few." This answer faces both ways, and is not very satisfactory.

The gist of my personal observations is that, for the most part, American women imitate male psychology. They content themselves with doing what men do.

It seems to me, there is a field of enterprise which women have neglected, and in which they would meet with little or no competition from men -- namely civilizing themselves.

Why should women make of themselves caricatures of men? If they would only cultivate their own individualities, how much more useful they would be, and how much happier!

Would it not be worth while for women to make a stringent revision of their whole standard of values, and set off some of the stress on the claims of materialism and bring those of the other fundamental instincts into some kind of balance and harmony with them? Does the material life really offer enough to make it worth living even to those who dominate and shape it?

If women truly wish to promote a finer civilization, should they not take a quite different angle -- say the spiritual angle? For civilization is an affair of the spirit, and, in the realm of the spirit, organization and getting and spending money count for very little. I only ask whether women would not be happier if something of the sort happened within them.

If women's freedom and greater opportunities are to prove a blessing to humanity, they must work from an inner consciousness.

Then perhaps we should see the beginning of a humane and reasonable society -- a society which has work to do that is of real value, a mind unafraid to travel, even though the trail be not blazed, a genuine pleasure in the arts, now and then a sight of the eternal hills and a sense of the presence of God.