The Unconquerable Spirit of Woman

History preserves the names of a handful of men who overcame the hardships of life and reached the summit of glory in spite of their infirmities, thanks to their spiritual courage and to the presence within them of a living ember of an unconquerable spirit. There are illustrious names whose bearers reached the peak of glory despite the bodily ailments they suffered: there is Homer the Greek, who despite his blindness left to posterity and the generations the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" as an immortal heritage; and there is the English poet Milton, who wrote "Paradise Lost" and his masterly poems after he had lost his sight. In our Arab history stands out Abu al-'Ala' al-Ma'arri, author of the "Epistle of Forgiveness," that splendid gem which he wrote while hostage to his two prisons. And among contemporaries shines the name of Dr. Taha Husayn, who has gleamed in the sky of Egypt and the world of the Arabs, for he was able, by the light of his inner sight, to overcome the darkness of his eyes.

It is no secret that when hardships fall and adversities blow, people divide into three parties. One party collapses before hardship and crumbles beneath the hammers of the days and the harsh blows of fate. A second party flees the field and retreats before adversity, taking refuge in an ivory tower or holing itself up in a secluded hermitage. And the third party — a minority, alas — find in hardship that which kindles the fire of resolve, tempers character, and quickens the spirit of courage and daring; you see them, despite their infirmities and their adversities, mastering their circumstances and rising above the crises that surround them.

Yes, we often hear of those pioneers among men, of that band of adventuring heroes who have been entered in the register of the immortals. Yet only rarely do we hear of women who have recorded such a spirit of courage and daring as men have recorded. They existed in the past, and they exist — thank God — in our midst now; and here is a company of them who have cut their way through to a life of glory, eminence, and triumph. No wonder: every nation has its great women and its immortal heroines. Space would fail me were I to attempt to count the names of those who have gleamed in the sky of glory, and of those who have played the roles of their lives with unconquerable spirits and unbending souls. I shall confine myself to mentioning three of them, plucked from different lands and disparate ages.

Let me begin with Madame Curie — that diligent student and discoverer of the element radium, the marvel of the twentieth century. The page of her life is filled with courage and intelligence, and teeming with every color of daring and steadfastness. However we turn that life over, we touch the qualities of nobility and heroism: in her mind, scientific thought; in her heart, the genius of lofty feeling; and in the story of her life, immortal stands of sacrifice and struggle. She spent four years with her husband Pierre Curie in a laboratory exposed to the rains and the blasts of heat, carrying out experiments, refining stones, and smelting materials. She performed hundreds of experiments and treated thousands of tons of pitch until at last she arrived at that elixir whose discovery astonished the world, for it paved the way for momentous discoveries that led to the discovery of atomic energy, which has changed the features of modern history palpably.

Let me mention in second place Babushka, or "the little grandmother," as the Russian peasants called her in the days of the tsars. The heart of that lady was wide enough to embrace all her countrymen: wide enough to love forty million Russian peasants who groaned under the weight of ignorance, poverty, and oppression. For the sake of those tormented ones of the earth Babushka suffered what she suffered of pain, and bore what she bore of hunger, homelessness, prison, and exile. Her life was a chain of tragedies, for she spent most of the years of her life banished in the vast wastes of Siberia. Yet despite those adversities that stormed in her face she remained bright of countenance, working and sacrificing for the sake of those tormented ones. Her spirit went forth to its Creator from a village near the city of Prague, when she was ninety years of age, carrying to Him her complaint of man's injustice to his brother man.

I close with the mention of a lady who is still living, and who has lived in the prison of her bodily infirmities, for as a child she lost hearing, sight, and speech. Despite these infirmities we see her traversing the countries of the inhabited earth, working to lighten the pains of humanity and to rescue that broken portion of mankind, through her testimony and her service. This lady is Helen Keller, the American, the woman of the great heart. The days will record her name as a heroine and a fighter despite her infirmities and her bodily defects, and Helen Keller will remain an example to be followed in ages of failing resolve and of the spread of despair and despondency.

We may well wonder at human creatures whose resistance to hardship is less than that of certain fish and shells. There are fish that cross vast distances, resisting the violent currents, to lay their eggs in the rivers, thereby ensuring survival for their young against the beasts of prey of the sea. And there is a kind of shellfish in which, if grains of sand or bubbles of air disturb it, certain glands are set to work and, with their secretions, surround the intruding body with a precious pearl. Is it not, then, within the power of the man of firm character to scatter pearls from the strength of his resolve and his endurance in the face of adversities and in the midst of calamities?

And here the painter Frederick Watts's picture of "Hope" reminds us of what we are able to do. The girl in that immortal picture sits upon the globe of the earth, blindfolded, playing upon a lyre whose strings are all severed save one that has not been cut. Yet in spite of this she has remained all hope, striking upon it with her slender fingers to draw from the remaining string some melodies and airs. Even so, the human being who believes in the unconquerable spirit creates sweetness from the brine of life, and ease from its hardship. How splendid it would be to see our women in these lands living with a spirit that shall not be conquered — and how sweet to see them overcoming every hardship and subduing every difficulty!