"So, in claiming for women the right to take a part in the man's half of life, the suffragists, I think, lose sight of what the woman's half is. In urging that they must have a hand in law-making and government and public life generally, they do not see that woman's peculiar work is pretty independent of laws and of government, is rather in private life. For it is just where the law cannot reach that woman is supreme. It is just in the finer, more personal and intimate relationships of life, which government cannot include, that woman finds her work waiting for her, which she alone can do—what Octavia Hill calls 'the out-of-sight, silent work.'
That woman is today neglecting this, her own part of the world's work, I think is everywhere apparent. Surely we do not need more laws; what we do need is more of the spirit which shall make people want to obey the laws which we have. What else does it mean when we say we cannot enforce the laws? The suffragists are clamoring for more laws, for more of the man-element in society; the anti-suffragists feel that it is the inner life and character, the mother's work, which everywhere needs strengthening...The outer restraint and penalty are little effective unless they are met by the inner desire to do right.
On points like these I believe the accent should be laid today. The pendulum is swinging too far away from the things which our mothers and grandmothers made their chief concern. What is called ‘the rise of woman,’ her new feeling of influence and power, are blessings only as they help her to do better and of freer choice the things which are in tune with Nature and with the need of the world."
-Anna H. Davis
From "The True Function of the Normal Woman" in Anti-Suffrage Essays by Massachusetts Women, 1916
