The Artist and Her Critics
Not everyone agreed with O'Neill's ideas about women's rights. Some people, including some women, were afraid that equal rights would cause women to pick up all of the bad habits men had as well. According to Ralph McCanse, O'Neill's "views about women’s rights and privileges were
denounced as anarchistic, atheistic and savoring of “free love” by the
conservatives of the day."
Rose O’Neill, artist, poet and composer as well as a very beautiful woman, has come forth in a strong indictment against man and his treatment of women . . . There has been altogether too much talk of that kind during the last ten years. There have been too many women parading through the world, talking about the necessity for women to ‘develop herself’ along the lines of least resistance, and to ‘express her own individuality’ even if it necessitated her flinging to the winds all domestic, social and moral obligations . . . The world and the race is never to be bettered by the type of woman who displays her ideas with a perpetual cigarette and the annual divorce . . . Woman will never show herself man’s superior by adopting his vices and his licenses and calling them ‘liberty’ and emancipation from ‘moral shock’.
- Ella Wheeler Wilcox (syndicated article, May 28, 1915), from Ralph McCanse, unpublished manuscript