The death of this memorable woman, touchingly described by Falloux in a letter to Montalembert written at the time, was worthy of what had gone before it, of the preparations she had made for it, and of the glorious destiny to which she believed it the entrance. That "we are to seek G.o.d, not deludedly wait for him to seek us," was not more the maxim of her pen than of her practice. "I speak to others; but with whom do I converse, if it be not, O my G.o.d with thee?" To one of the group of tearful and venerating friends standing around her, she said, "Do not, my good friend, ask for me one day more, or one pang less." Without any decay of her faculties or waning of her moral force, bearing her sufferings with invincible patience and sweetness, maintaining a dignity of thought and speech comparable with that of the last conversation of Socrates, but with the triumph of a perfect Christian faith, she dropped what was mortal, and pa.s.sed immortally into the bosom of G.o.d. It was in September, 1857, and she was seventy-five years young. The great, dazzling, guilty Paris has loosed no purer or richer spirit for the skies. Her dust hallows the cemetery of Montmartre, where, in the coming days, many a pilgrim will go to look on her monument.
While Margaret Fuller was yet a little girl, in her father"s house, an elegant English lady came to pa.s.s a few weeks in Cambridge. Her beauty, with her repose and softness of manner, wrought like a strange spell on the idealizing spirit of the lonely and pa.s.sionate girl. She found the first angel of her life: heaven was opened; and the image of the fair stranger, who soon vanished beyond the sea, was an intoxicating vision in her brain, full of light and perfume, for many a year. In her later life, Margaret formed impa.s.sioned connections with a great many superior girls, who were drawn to her by an affinity for her overflowing powers of intellect, feeling, and aspiration. The last on the list of her friendships was the n.o.ble Marchioness Arconati, in Italy. The entire intercourse of these two women forms a chapter of devoted warmth and frankness. Through all her life, Margaret felt the necessity for intense relations of affection with the worthiest persons she met. One of her biographers says, "Her friendships wore a look of such romantic exaggeration that she seemed to walk enveloped in a shining fog of sentimentalism. Yet, in fact, Truth at all cost was her ruling maxim. Her earnestness to read the hidden history of others was the gauge of her own emotion."
This prayer was found among the papers written in her earlier life: "Father, I am weary. Re-a.s.sume me for a while, I pray thee. Oh, let me rest awhile in thee, thou only Love! In the depth of my prayer, I suffer much. Take me only awhile. No fellow-being will receive me. I cannot pause: they will not detain me by their love. Take me awhile, and again I will go forth on a renewed service. I sink from want of rest; and none will shelter me. Thou knowest it all. Bathe me in thy Love." Emerson says of her, "Her friendships, as a girl with girls, as a woman with women, were not unmingled with pa.s.sion, and had pa.s.sages of romantic sacrifice and of ecstatic fusion, which I have heard with the ear, but could not trust my profane pen to report." At the close of her life, amidst the ruins of Rome, she wrote, "I have been the object of great love, from the n.o.ble and the humble: I have felt it towards both. Yet I am tired out, tired of thinking and hoping, tired of seeing men err and bleed. Coward and foot-sore, gladly would I creep into some green recess, where I might see a few not unfriendly faces, and where not more wretches should come than I could relieve. I am weary, and faith soars and sings no more. Nothing good of me is left, except, at the bottom of the heart, a melting tenderness."
The d.u.c.h.ess of Orleans, that Helen of Mecklenburg who married the eldest son of Louis Philippe, was one of those women whose exalted charms of person, character, and manners glorify their s.e.x, fascinate all beholders, and win the enthusiastic devotion of their a.s.sociates.
She was the worthy grand-daughter of that n.o.ble d.u.c.h.ess Louise of Saxe-Weimar, wife of Carl August, the friend of Goethe and Schiller, of whom Napoleon said, "Behold a woman whom all my cannon cannot frighten." Through the checkered scenes of her brilliant and melancholy lot, her happy childhood; her dazzling nuptials; her enviable married life; the terrible shock of her sudden widowhood; the frightful scenes of the revolution, when, with her infant son by her side, she confronted the levelled muskets of the infuriated mob, and looked ma.s.sacre in the face, without the ruffle of a feature; the dismal days of exile, decline, and death, she bore herself with that sweet dignity, that spotless purity, that ineffable and sublime grace of wisdom and goodness which sometimes appear to lift the perfection of womanhood so nearly to the prerogatives of an angel. She had many friends of her own s.e.x, who cherished an idolatrous affection for her. One of these, the inseparable companion of her existence, has anonymously written a sketch of her life and character, a most charming and impressive tribute. This modest memoir instructively suggests far more than it betrays. The writer says of her adorable friend, "Life was interesting by her side. She captivated the imagination of every one. I know no other woman with whom I could converse for twelve hours together, without for an instant feeling void or weariness. I feel as if I had always something to say to her; for her interest never flags." It is singular that, of all the mult.i.tude who desire to enchain their friends, so few ever learn to practise the deep secret contained in this italicized clause, the innocent secret of a self-abnegating heart of love.
Sarah Austin, one of the wisest and n.o.blest women of England, formed a reverential and ardent friendship for this matchless lady, in her adversity. How profound, how sacred this attachment was, is proved by the notice which, on the day the d.u.c.h.ess died, Mrs. Austin wrote, and sent to the press, blotted with tears; and also by the fuller sketch she afterwards prefixed to her English translation of the life of the d.u.c.h.ess from its French original. "Her character was always presenting itself in new and harmonious lights; her manners were indescribably refined and winning; her conversation never flagged, was never trifling, never pedantic, never harsh; it always kept you at an elevation which at once soothed and invigorated the mind. There was not in her nature the slightest tinge of the cynical skepticism or sarcastic contempt which chill the soul, and annihilate hope and courage. These are the weapons which vulgar minds oppose to misfortune, the bitter and poisonous plants which wrongs and calamities produce in poor and barren hearts; but her tender and magnanimous nature could bring forth nothing which was not good and generous. It was most affecting to watch the working of her transparent mind through its faithful index, her countenance, during conversation.
"The interest her great qualities inspired was raised, by pity for her cruel misfortunes, to a height which might almost be called a pa.s.sion. A veil of sadness overspread her sweet face; but behind this veil there was always such a beaming benignity, so lovely a concern for the welfare of mankind, such a high-hearted courage, that you left her cheered rather than depressed. It is to the extraordinary power she had of giving a high tone to the minds of others, joined to the unalterable sweetness of her daily intercourse, that I attribute the discouraged feeling common to those who mourn her loss. If her misfortunes were august, solemn, and terrible as a Greek tragedy, her heart was large, high, and strong enough to meet them. With all her gentleness, Christian and womanly patience, the most striking feature in her character was its moral grandeur.
"Greatness of mind and n.o.bleness Build in her loveliest, and create an awe About her, as a guard angelic placed."
Such a woman is the highest exemplar and benefactor of her s.e.x. A religious quality is evoked in the soul that contemplates her. Every impure feeling is struck dead with awe before her. The angelic serenity of her face is as if the smiles which others wear outwardly, with her had retreated inward, and hovered in perpetual play about the heart. By spiritual contact with her, other persons become angelic also. She teaches, by example, what a divine exaltation is sometimes reached through adversity and pain. The head, discrowned of earthly glory, is crowned with celestial beauty. When sufferings stimulate virtues, the thorn-wreath blossoms on our brow: when sacrifices feed faith, the cross which we clasp puts on wings and lifts us heavenward.
I have reserved, to close this chapter, a singularly romantic example of a pair of female friends, set forth by old Thomas Heywoode, in his "Nine Books of Various History concerning Women," published at London in 1624. A certain sinless maiden, called Bona, "who lived a retired life in a house of religious Nunnes, had a bedfellow, unto whom, above all others, she was tied, lying on her death-bed, and no help to be devised for her recovery." This Bona, being herself in perfect health, besought the Almighty, that she might not survive her friend; but, as they had lived together in all sanct.i.ty and sisterly love, so their chaste bodies might not be separated in death. As she prayed, so it happened. Both died on the same day, and were buried in the same sepulchre, being fellows in one house, one bed, and one grave; and now, no question, joyful and joint inheritors of one kingdom.
NEEDS AND DUTIES OF WOMAN IN THIS AGE.
IF one-tenth of the efforts which women now make to fill their time with amus.e.m.e.nts, or to gratify outward ambition, were devoted to personal improvement, and to the cultivation of high-toned friendships with each other, it would do more than any thing else to enrich and embellish their lives, and to crown them with contentment.
Their characters would thus be elevated, their hearts warmed, their minds stored, their manners refined, and kindness and courtesy infused into their intercourse.
Nothing else will ever add to society the freshness, variety, and stimulant charm, the n.o.ble truths and aspirations, the ingenuous, co-operating affections, whose absence at present makes it often so deceitful and repulsive, so barren and wearisome. The relish of existence is destroyed, the glory of the universe darkened, to mult.i.tudes of tender and highsouled persons, by the loathsome insincerity and treachery, the frivolous fickleness, the petty suspicions and envies, and the incompetent judgments, which they are constantly meeting. These superficial and miserable vices of common society disenchant the soul, and dry up the springs of love and hope.
They are fatal to that magnanimous wisdom and that trustful sympathy which compose at once the brightest ornaments of our nature, and the costliest treasures of experience. Ah, if, in place of them, we could everywhere meet the honest hand, the open heart, the serious mind, the frank voice, the upward eye, the emulous and helpful soul largely endowed with knowledge and reverence! Then one would never be troubled with that frightfully depressing feeling--the feeling that there is nothing worth living for. Verily, the most dismal of all deaths is to die from lack of a sufficient motive for living. And is it not to be feared that many in our age die this death?
The true remedy for the fierce, shallow war of society, or its faded and jaded hollowness, is to be found in generous friendships, begotten by a common pursuit of the holiest ends of existence. In the nurture of these relations, by every law of fitness and want, it belongs to women to take the lead. The realm of the affections, with its imperious exactions and its imperial largesses, is theirs.
Certainly no right or privilege should be withheld from women; but they ought to be careful not to mistake dangers or defects or vices for rights and privileges. It is simple blindness to fail to see that the distinctively feminine sphere of action is domestic life, and the inner life--not the brawling mart and caucus. The freedom and education of woman should be so enlarged that she can include, in intelligence and sympathy, all the interests of mankind. But, in action, we would rather coax men to withdraw from the gladiatorial strifes and shows of the world, than goad women to enter them.
And yet this statement needs qualification. There is much to be said on the other side. Woman is still generally regarded, on account of the transmitted opinions and usages of the past, as a mere appendage to man. The truth of the greatest importance to be considered is, that the element of humanity, not the element of s.e.x, is the supreme fact by which the question should be determined. Seen from the point of view of absolute morality, man is no more a child of G.o.d and an heir of the eternal universe, than woman. She has a personal destiny of her own to fulfil, irrespective of him, just as much as he has one, irrespective of her "The most important duty of woman," it has been said, "is to perfect man." Why so? No one would say that the most important duty of man is to perfect woman. And yet, why is it not just as much his duty to be her servant, as it is her duty to be his servant? It is a remnant of barbaric prejudice, preserved from the ages of brute force, which makes the difference in the estimate.
The first duty of every human being is self-perfection. The ideal of marriage is the mutual perfection of both parties. In its truest idea, marriage is an inst.i.tution for the perfecting of the race, by the perfecting of individual men and women through their co-operating intelligence and affection. To limit its end to the perfecting of the man alone, is the highest stretch of masculine arrogance. Is it not a just inference, that, if woman is as completely a human unit as man, she has an equal right with him to the use of every means of self- development in the fulfilment of her destiny? The foremost claim to be made in behalf of women, therefore, is liberty, as untrammelled a choice of occupation and mode of life, as free a range of individuality and spiritual fruition, as is granted to men. But would this really be an advance, or a retrogression? Many maintain that it would be subversive of the genuine progress of civilization, to abandon the prejudices and throw down the bars which have hitherto restrained women from a full share in the chosen avocations and ambitions of men. All improvement is marked, they say, by an increase of differences, greater separation and complexity of offices.
Therefore, to efface or lessen the social distinctions between the s.e.xes would be to reverse the order of development. Auguste Comte, who felt a strong interest in this subject, and had a deep insight into some of its data, says, "All history a.s.sures us, that, with the growth of society, the peculiar features of each s.e.x have become not less but more distinct. Woman may persuade, advise, judge; but she should not command. By rivalry in the selfish pursuits of life, mutual affection between the s.e.xes would be corrupted at its source.
There is a visible tendency towards the removal of women, wherever it is possible, from all industrial occupations. Christianity has taken from them the priestly functions they held under Polytheism. With the decline of the principle of caste, they are more rigidly excluded from royalty and every kind of political authority. Thus their life, instead of becoming independent of the Family, is becoming more concentrated in it. That Man should provide for Woman is a law of the human race--a law connected with the essentially domestic character of female life." There is a larger admixture of error in the foregoing representation, than is usual with this deep and original thinker on social ethics. It is true that differences increase with the progress of society; it is also true that similarity increases. There is both a minuter subdivision of functions, and a wider freedom of choice in the selection of their functions by individuals. In the rudest state, the relative condition and mode of life of whole cla.s.ses are rigidly fixed by their birth or by arbitrary violence. As science and art are developed, and wealth acc.u.mulated, the varieties of industry and of social rank are largely multiplied; liberty of choice is extended, and facility of change is increased. Once there was a royal caste, a priestly caste, a warrior caste, a servile caste; determined by blood, and unalterable. These invidious castes are now, for the most part, broken down, and their several functions comparatively open to all who, observing the conditions, choose to fulfil them. The most prevalent and obstinate of caste distinctions is that of s.e.x; the monopoly by man of public action, power, and honor; the exclusion of one-half of our race from what men regard as the highest social prerogatives, an exclusion which was no deliberate act, but a natural result of historic causes. Dr. Hedge says, with the clear vigor characteristic of his admirable mind, "As to the charge of exclusion, I think it would be quite as correct to say that women have combined to exclude men from the kitchen, the laundry, the nursery, as that men have combined to exclude women from the army or the navy, or the bar or the pulpit, or the broker"s board. I suppose the a.s.signment of either s.e.x to the cla.s.s of occupations which society, as now const.i.tuted, respectively devolves upon them came about in the beginning as naturally as the difference in costume which has always divided male and female. A sense of fitness, of natural affinity, determined each in its several way. There was no compulsion of the weaker by the stronger, and no formal allotment. Each following its own instincts arrived where it is. A tacit agreement settled this point as it has so many others of the social economy. Nor would any discontent with the present arrangement have arisen; had the family life kept pace with the growth of society." This exclusive usurpation of the public life by man--or rather, as we should say, this natural development and division--so organized by immemorial usage as to have become a second nature in both parties, is at last beginning to reveal its injustice, and to give way. In savage life, woman is little more than a bearer of burdens, a slave, and a drudge; as coa.r.s.e as man, and lower in rank and treatment. The man fishes, hunts, fights, plays, rests; putting every repulsive task exclusively on the woman. It is the brute right of the stronger, which very slowly yields to the refining influence of reflective sympathy.
With each successive advance of society, it is not true that the distinction of s.e.x becomes more definite and more important; but it is true that the distinctive feeling of men towards women becomes less a feeling of scorn and authority--more a feeling of deference and homage. Woman is as distinct from man in the grossest barbarism as in the finest civility: only, in that, she is the degraded servant of his senses; in this, the honored companion of his soul. If, with the progress of society, the sphere of feminine life becomes more domestic, inward, individual, so also does that of man. His ideal life constantly encroaches more on his active life; his physical energies become less predominant, and his moral sympathies stronger.
Woman begins by being totally distinct from man in personality and estate, totally subjected to him in service. She goes on, with the improvement of civilization, to be ever freer from his authority, nearer his equal in status, more closely blended with him in personality and moral pursuits. They are not master and servant; but equals, responsible to one another for mutual perfection, each responsible to G.o.d for personal perfection. While, therefore, to efface the intrinsic characteristics of the s.e.xes would undoubtedly be a retrograde step, it is an impossible step, which no one proposes to take. It is proposed merely to efface those fact.i.tious characteristics, whose removal will clear away barriers and secure the more rapid improvement of all, by blending their culture, their liberty, and their worship--showing us men and women as equal units of humanity in its personal ends, but dependent co-adjutors in its social means.
The common destiny of a woman, as a representative of humanity, is the same as that of a man; namely, the perfect development of her being in the knowledge of truth, and in the practice of virtue and piety. Her peculiar destiny is wifehood and maternity. But if she declines this peculiar destiny of her s.e.x, or it is denied her, still her common human destiny remains unforfeited; and she has as clear a right to the unrestricted use of every means of fulfilling it as she could have if she were a man.
The good wife and mother fulfils a beautiful and a sublime office--the fittest and the happiest office she can fulfil. If her domestic cares occupy and satisfy her faculties, it is a fortunate adjustment; and it is right that her husband should relieve her of the duty of providing for her subsistence. But what shall be said of those millions of women who are not wives and mothers; who have no adequate domestic life--no genial private occupation or support?
Mult.i.tudes of women have too much self respect to be desirous of being supported in idleness by men; too much genius and ambition to be content with spending their lives in trifles; and too much devotedness not to burn to be doing their share in the relief of humanity, the work and progress of the world. If these were all happy wives and mothers, that might be best. But denied that function, and being what they are, why should not all the provinces of public labor and usefullness, which they are capable of occupying, be freely open to them? What else is it save prejudice that applauds a woman dancing a ballet or performing an opera, but shrinks with disgust from one delivering an oration, preaching a sermon, or casting a vote? Why is it less womanly to prescribe as a physician than to tend as a nurse?
If a woman have a calling to medicine, divinity, law, literature, art, instruction, trade, or honorable handicraft, it is hard to see any reason why she should not have a fair chance of pursuing it.
Of course, such must ever be the exceptional callings of women; but in proportion as those not otherwise more satisfactorily employed enter into them, we must believe that the burden on men, instead of being aggravated by the new compet.i.tion, will be shared, and thus lightened, and the best interests of society receive impulse. Is it not, then, a sound claim which demands for women a full initiation into all the n.o.ble realms and interests of humanity? Slavery and ignorance engender worse vices and more hopeless degradation than can result from the exposures of freedom and knowledge. Besides, freedom and knowledge are the guides to every form of n.o.bleness. They alone can fit women truly to exert their most sacred prerogatives. Those who have enjoyed the best means of knowing the truth say, that the Harems of the East are the hot-beds of every wicked quality whose seeds slumber in the heart of woman. Surrounded by rivals; incessantly watched by those cunning and merciless monsters, the eunuchs; knowing nothing of science, art, literature, or industry-- they must be devoured by animal pa.s.sion, by love of intrigue and deception, by jealousy, envy, and hatred. The true remedy for the melancholy stagnation or the frightful effervescence of their existence is not indeed to call them forth into a contest with men for the notice of society and the prizes of the world; but to give them their liberty, remanding them to their own consciences and the social sanctions of the great laws of right and wrong, to educate them to the highest point in every department of knowledge and sentiment, and to throw open to them the boundless field of private and public moral influence, with a fair chance for the achievement of happiness.
Therefore, while as perfect an education, and as absolute a liberty, are claimed for women as for men, they are to be adjured to remember that their conscious aims should be wisdom, goodness, spiritual force, delicacy, and harmony, with the consequent moral influence and contentment; and not the trophies of power, or the publicities of fame. And precisely the same duty holds with regard to men.
The effort to attain the highest graces of character, instead of plunging recklessly into the selfish ways of the world, is as truly obligatory for man as for woman.
Brazen impudence, unprincipled greed, ignorance, cruelty, are vices in him too; modesty, patience, obedience, cleanliness, and aspiration, are virtues in him too. If those vices were to receive a new development, these virtues a new check, by setting before women the higher industries and prizes of society, it would be an immense evil. But is it not probable that such a course will do more to elevate than to degrade, by a larger diffusion of the moral stimulants and restraints of life more closely a.s.similating the s.e.xes in their diversity, interchanging their respective traits for mutual advantage, and speeding them forward in the common race? The two most p.r.o.nounced feminine characteristics are tenderness and purity; masculine, courage and knowledge. Humanity will not be perfected, either in individual character or social destiny, by the greater separate enhancement of these in the s.e.xes, but only by their balanced diffusion in both, making the women wise and courageous, the men tender and pure.
It is necessary to see more clearly the grounds on which women, as a cla.s.s, have hitherto been excluded from public activity and authority, in order properly to understand the justice or the injustice of that exclusion. And, in studying the origin of customs and opinions now prevalent, it is as much our right to do it with freedom, as it is our duty to do it with reverence. Many persons forget that the highest question is, what ought to be? and not, What has been or is? Usages frequently endure after their utility has ceased, after their propriety has gone. The true ideal of human conduct is not to be seen in the imperfections of the past, but to be constructed from the perfections of the future. The fact that a thing has always been, is an historic justification of it for bygone time, but not a moral justification of it for coming time. This requires intrinsic and enduring reasons--reasons of right and use. While the exclusion of women from public life has been natural in the ages behind us, it is a distinct inquiry whether such an exclusion be either obligatory or expedient now.
History demonstrates that the male s.e.x has greater muscular strength, with its natural accompaniments, than the female. The more differentiated and largely supplied nervous structure, connected with the offices of maternity, detracts so much from the amount of force furnished for the muscles and the will. In the rudeness of the primitive state, it is an unavoidable result of the superior muscular power of man that woman is his subject. But the more p.r.o.nounced nervous system of woman gives her certain spiritual advantages. Her greater sensibility, her greater seclusion, with its relative stimulus of solitude and meditation; the closer endearments of maternity--develop her affections in a higher degree than his. Hence arises a tendency to refinement, elevation, influence, on her part--a tendency, to which, in proportion to his moral susceptibility, he responds with sympathy, respect, and veneration. Every step of social progress has been marked by a softening of the tyranny of man and a lifting of the position of woman--an approximation towards an equal companionship. First the tool of his will, next the toy of his pleasure, then the minister of his vanity, she is at last to become the free sharer of his life, the friend of his mind and heart. In the first of these stages, no question of right was consciously raised: the brute preponderance of strength decided all. In the last stage, there will be no question in debate, no exercise of executive authority on either side; all being settled by a spontaneous harmony of privileges and renunciations on both sides. But in the intermediate stages, covering the whole historic period thus far, man has sought to justify himself in monopolizing authority.
The first argument of the master was the argument, prompted by the unneutralized selfish instincts, that the mere possession of power to rule, gives the right to rule. Muscular superiority is, by intrinsic fitness and necessity, divinely installed to reign. Woman, as "the weaker vessel," must obey. Such a mode of thought was unavoidable, and had its legitimate ages of sway. But no moralist would dream of adopting it, after the conscience has advanced to the stage of general principles, has risen into the region of disinterested sympathy or justice. No one would now consciously employ this argument to maintain the subjection of women; yet in mult.i.tudes, below the stratum of their conscious thoughts, it blindly upholds that subjection. A single consideration is enough to show the logical absurdity of the a.s.sumption. If men are ent.i.tled to the exclusive enjoyment of political privileges, simply because they have more physical might, then, by the same principle, among men themselves, the weak should be subject to the strong. But the very purpose of law, the moral essence of civilization, is to rectify the natural domination of strength, and bring all before a common standard.
The argument from intellectual inferiority is as vacant as that from muscular inferiority. In the first place, it is an open question whether women, as a whole, are inferior in mind to men. Many intelligent judges firmly believe, that, taken as a whole, they are superior. Cornelius Agrippa wrote a book in 1509, ent.i.tled "The n.o.bility of the Female s.e.x, and the Superiority of Woman over Man."
Lucretia Marinella published a book at Venice, in 1601, undertaking to prove the superiority of her s.e.x to the other. A book ent.i.tled "La Femme Genereuse," an attempt to demonstrate "that the women are more n.o.ble, more polite, more courageous, more knowing, more virtuous, and better managers than the men," was published at Paris, in 1643.
Madame Guillaume also published at Paris, in 1665, a work called "Les Dames Ill.u.s.tres," devoted to the proof of the proposition that the female s.e.x surpa.s.ses the masculine in all kinds of valuable qualifications. Mrs. Farnham devotes her book "Woman and her Era,"
published in New York in 1864, to the support of the same thesis, with new arguments and ill.u.s.trations. That woman is intellectually superior to man, was likewise the opinion of Schopenhauer, an exceedingly strong and independent thinker. The supreme examples of genius have indeed been furnished by men; but this is no disproof of the opinion, that the average height and quickness of feminine mentality are above the masculine average.
Granting, however, that women have less spiritual force than men, they certainly have greater fineness. Their smaller volume of power is compensated by their greater delicacy and tact, their more sensitive moral capacity: the power of self-sacrifice is surely higher than the power of self-a.s.sertion. The examples of queens, from Semiramis to Domna, from Zen.o.bia to Catherine; of philosophers and scholars, like Theano, Hypatia, and Olympia Morata; of founders of orders and inst.i.tutions, organizers and leaders of great enterprises, like Clara and Chantal; of actresses, like Siddons; of singers, like Malibran; of scientists, like Somerville; of heroines, like Charlotte Corday and Joan of Arc; of mystic prophetesses, like Kriidener; of religious thinkers, like Sarah Hennell; of novelists, like Madame Dudevant and Marian Evans; of artists, teachers, martyrs, saints--a host whose faces shine on us out of history, have abundantly vindicated for their s.e.x, so far as force of will, intellect, imagination, and pa.s.sion is concerned, the right of eminent domain in the whole empire of human experience. Besides, admitting the courage, knowledge, skill, and energy of average men to be greater than those of average women, the difference in their respective opportunities and training would go far towards explaining it. Women, as a cla.s.s, have been excluded from a thousand lists and stimulants, under whose influences men have been sedulously educated. And, finally, even if we confess the hopeless inferiority of woman to man in some of the highest departments of action, that is no reason for denying her the chance to go as far as she can. If her mental victories must be lower and narrower than his, still she should enjoy the stimulus of the struggle, as one means of aiding the fulfilment of her human destiny.
Because one can do more than another, shall he compel the other to do nothing?
When the untenableness of muscular or mental power, as a ground for holding women in an inferior position, becomes obvious, the next support man conceives for his exclusive appropriation of authority, is the belief that he is exclusively the representative and vicegerent of G.o.d on earth; that woman is placed in subordination to him by the direct command of G.o.d. In the Hindu law we read, "The husband of a woman is her deity;" and in the Ramayana, "A husband is the G.o.d of his consort." The New Testament says, "Man is the head of the woman, but the head of the man is G.o.d;" "Man is the glory of G.o.d, but woman is the glory of man. For the man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man." The Apostle likewise declares, "I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve." This position of the Apostle was based on the Hebrew account of the creation of the first woman from the rib of the first man, and of the sentence of G.o.d upon her in consequence of her sin in eating the apple: "Thou shalt be subject to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." Few persons have a conception of the extent to which this representation has moulded the opinions and feelings of the Christian world. The origin of the view is obvious: the desire of the stronger for homage, and the willingness of the weaker to reflect that desire in their conduct. Is it a sound view? or is it a fallacy and a superst.i.tion?
or is it a mixture of truth and error?
For those who believe in the infallibility of every word of Scripture, the subject is taken out of the province of natural reason, conscience, and expediency; and there is nothing to be said.
They hold by the current tradition as the explicit will of G.o.d. But, at the present day, there is an increasing proportion of persons who look on the Hebrew narrative of the origin and earliest experience of our race in the garden of Eden, as a legend, similar to kindred narratives in other literatures. They are led, by teachings of philosophy and science which they cannot resist, to the conclusion, that the Almighty did not produce the human species by an arbitrary and wholly exceptional interposition; but created them just as he did the other species--through a law of development. It seems to them incredible, that man and woman were made separately, in succession, the latter exclusively for the former. They are obliged to suppose that man and woman were created simultaneously--the differentiation of s.e.x having gone on in the lower types for incomputable ages, causing humanity to appear in its earliest rise as male and female. So, instead of saying, "The man was not made for the woman, but the woman for the man," they would affirm, "The man and the woman were equally made for each other, to advance hand in hand to perfection." Those who a.s.sume this scientific point of view, will see that the question of the rights of woman, and her true relation to man, is to be decided purely by a philosophical mastery of the expediency and inexpediency, the essential right and wrong, in the facts of the case. The question of the eligibility of woman to public life and political prerogatives has nothing to do with her comparative personal weakness; nothing to do with any supposed rule, given in an ancient revelation; nothing to do with any supposition that man was the first to be created and the second to sin, woman the second to be created and the first to sin. Did priority of creation confer authority to govern, then man should obey the lower animals; for they were made before he was. Even Apostolic logic sometimes limps. The question can be understood only by a correct perception of the will of G.o.d, as indicated in the nature and destiny of progressive humanity composed of male and female.
What, then, is the will of G.o.d, so indicated? Regarded as the two halves of humanity, men and women are alike and equal. Their unlikeness, when regarded as male and female, cannot destroy this primary and fundamental equality, or vitiate any of the rights it involves. Consequently, whatever belongs to humanity proper, belongs equally to men and to women. Woman has an equal claim with man to every thing permanently connected with the fulfilment of the human destiny; that is, the full and harmonious exercise of the faculties of human nature. The division into male and female, affecting not their equality of rights, merely gives special fitnesses and duties to each. Unquestionably, the higher nervous development and maternal offices of woman relatively fit her for tenderness and domesticity: the coa.r.s.er muscular development and adventurousness of man relatively fit him for hardihood and publicity. But this can furnish no ground for subjecting one, and enthroning the other. It is a reason for their equal co-operation in a.s.similating each other"s best qualities for their mutual and common perfection. Every thing that is good should be granted to both: whatever is evil should not be sought by either.
The true social desideratum at last is, not that women, equally with men, a.s.sume the exercise of authority; but that men, equally with women, forego the exercise of authority. The genuine perfection of humanity, instead of being the enforced obedience of one half to the other half, is the spontaneous obedience of both halves to the law of G.o.d. The incomplete statement of Paul, "I suffer not a woman to usurp authority," is supplemented by the far deeper word of Christ, "Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them. But it shall not be so among you: whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant." This is the ideal of the future--that man shall no more have authority to command than woman, everybody doing right voluntarily, under the intrinsic sway of morality. Politics is the reign of force by legislative sanctions: morality is the reign of affection by social sanctions. The latter is pre-eminently the sphere of woman. Is it her sole sphere, or is she also called to enter the other sphere?
One thing is clear; namely, that it is unjust for the laws to discriminate against women on account of their actual exclusion from political power. They ought to have the same legal rights as men to earn, hold, and control property. Since they have the same interest as man in the laws they live under, they are ent.i.tled, in some way, either by their own voice or through others, to the same consideration in the framing and execution of those laws.
Shall we go still further, and say that they ought to take an equal part with men in the caucus, at the ballot-box, in the senate, at the bar, on the bench, and elsewhere? If universal suffrage be the true theory of government, then, logically, women are ent.i.tled to vote; because they, equally with men, represent humanity. Every a.s.serted disqualification, on the ground of ignorance or preoccupation, is sophistical; because the same plea would disqualify four-fifths of the men too. If a government of all by all be the true theory, it is a wrong to exclude women. If they are not fully qualified, they ought to become qualified; and the only way to qualify them is to confess their claim and begin their education. Either all should vote, or merely those who are fitted: if merely those who are fitted, then thousands of men would be shut out, thousands of women admitted.
The plea for the admission of women to political activity is often met by the a.s.sertion, that they do not themselves wish it; that the best women revolt with profound distaste from every thing of the sort. But is this distaste a veracious instinct? or is it a prejudice, owing to the ideal of feminine character and life, which they have been educated to admire? Men have coveted a monopoly of executive power, and held up pa.s.sive obedience as the fittest type of womanliness. Women, as a general rule, partake the prejudices, and like to flatter the vanity, of the stronger s.e.x. The question is not, What do women desire? but, What ought they to desire? What is right and best for them? The question must not be decided by any thing extrinsic or accidental, any prejudices or fortuitous a.s.sociations.
Every measure of intrinsic justice should be sustained despite of the incidental evils which may be feared. The opinion that women would be demoralized by voting, is no reason for withholding that right from them, if it be a right. To become egotistic, clamorous, corrupt, and brazen, is not a necessary accompaniment of political life; but is the personal fault of those who become so, and just as much a vice in men as in women, just as good a reason for recalling those from the ballot-box, as for withholding these. There is no incompatibility between the different realms of duty or of privilege.
What would be the effect of female voting? The physical womanliness of woman essentially consists in wifehood and maternity. This, of course, cannot be changed by any enlargement of her domain of interests and activities. Her moral womanliness consists in modesty and self-denial, the preponderance of disinterestedness over egotism.
Now, is there any real likelihood that the a.s.sumption by women of the elective franchise, with its accompaniments, will destroy this type of womanhood, universally acknowledged as the ideal of womanly beauty and excellence? Is it not too well established in the authority of the most cultivated souls, to be so easily shaken? It is the true type, which, developed out of the historic progress in social conditions, cannot be lost, but must be more confirmed and glorified by the continued action, in the future, of the same causes which have already produced it. Not the destruction of the most exalted moral type of feminine character, rather its extension to masculine character, is what is to be looked for in the changes of the future.
The greater the number of types of character exhibited to the public, and the greater the facility of comparison between them, the more sharply defined, and the more clearly recognized, will the best one be. Will not a pure and n.o.ble woman, eminently fitted by her wisdom and virtues for social influence, entering the political arena, set an example there, adapted to make men revere her, a.s.similate to her, and become themselves more modest, self-sacrificing, and incorruptible? On the other hand, when she is unfitted and unworthy, will not the reflection, in her, of their own vices of exasperated rivalry, pride, and tyranny, appear doubly detestable? Then the ideal, so far from being injured, would rather be improved--manly responsibilities making the women less timid and foolish, contact with womanly sentiment making the men less coa.r.s.e and reckless. How well this conclusion is sustained by sound probabilities, deserves to be carefully weighed. No one should dogmatize on it.
In determining how far, if at all, women had best enter into the sphere of public life, and take part in the functions of government, there remains another consideration, which will be decisive with many minds. It is drawn from the difference between those things which are in themselves good, and therefore enduring parts of human life, and those things which are merely provisional means to good--means necessitated by existing evils, but destined gradually to lessen, and finally to pa.s.s away. Were political government an intrinsic and permanent end, an essential good of humanity, all, or at least all who are qualified, should share in it; because every human being has a right to a portion in every thing which is indispensable to the completion of the human destiny. Liberty, culture, and work are intrinsic and eternal elements of the human lot: women, therefore, have as clear a claim to these as men. But government is not a good in itself, is not an end. It is an evil attendant on human wickedness, a means devised to prevent severer evils; an element of decreasing proportions and of temporary duration. It is an artifice which we wish to see lessen as fast as is safe, and to disappear as soon as is possible.
Take the example of war. War is an evil, a transient incident in the fortunes of humanity; therefore the fewer who take part in it, the better. Women, being out of it, had best keep out of it. No one desires to have women become soldiers. Mental and physical labor will, as long as the world lasts, be a necessary part of the experience of humanity; therefore men and women properly have a joint heritage in its exactions and its privileges. But government is a pa.s.sing phase in the evolution of the social system: when men are perfected, it will vanish in spontaneous obedience. War or crude violence universally governed in the primitive society. Little by little, this barbaric reign of force was encroached upon and superseded by politics, the forms of statesmanship and legislation.
Then, little by little, the realm and rule of politics began to shrink before the increasing sway of conscience, reason, and sympathy, the personal law of justice and love, the intrinsic motives appropriated by the private heart from society and religion. As war has been narrowing and receding before politics, politics in turn must narrow and recede before morality. The less need a nation has of governmental interference for the securing of justice, the better off that nation is. The smaller the number of persons engaged in working that political mechanism, which is never productive, but merely regulative, the better it would seem to be for the people. We do not desire ever to see a woman occupy the office of a hangman, nor of a prosecuting attorney, nor yet of an electioneering politician; because, these being transient accompaniments of an imperfect society, the desideratum is to have concentrated on them the interest and energy of the smallest number competent to secure the needful results of order. He who believes that a universal devotion to politics would most speedily achieve the end of politics, namely, the supersedure of its whole machinery by the arrival at a self- rectifying observance of the conditions of private and public welfare--must advocate the bestowment of legislative and other public functions on women. Let all take part in voting and governing, for the sake of more quickly reaching the time when none shall vote or govern, but every one be a law unto himself. On the contrary, he who believes that a universal rush into public life, forensic controversy, party and personal rivalry, would exasperate the interest, and prolong the dominion, of politics, must earnestly recommend women to abstain from the struggle. Whatever logical right they may have, he will think it best that they abandon that right, and devote their zeal to the sphere of morality, whose elements are the eternal concern of all humankind. A wider outbreak of plots and cabals, an enlargement of the chase for notoriety and the scramble for office, a more virulent division of neighbors and of families, a new lease for the spirit of ambition and partisanship, would be an evil of the deadliest fatality. Being out of politics, which is the transient sphere of some, is it not best that woman keep out of it, and devote herself to morality, which is the permanent sphere of all?
Here is furnished an honorable ground on which she may be, not shut out of, but excused from, the province of government.
What is the ideal of perfect society? Is it a state where there is a universal contention for notice, power, and honor? Then let women enter that contest now. Is it a state where each is content with the personal fruition of his own powers, in harmony with the same enjoyment by all others? Then let women, by setting such an example of abstinence from the public realm of politics, draw men also to their true happiness, in "the realm of home and morals."
Turning from the authority of history to the authority of moral science, there is no reason for the enslavement of woman to man. This is not yet fully seen, because the historic type of woman as pure subject, of man as pure sovereign, has sunk so deeply into the imagination of both s.e.xes. The Gentoo Code declared, "A woman ought to burn herself alive on the funeral pyre of her husband." Body and soul, she was a mere appendage to him. The Mosaic Code declared a woman unclean eighty days after bearing a female child, but only forty days after bearing a male child. One of the laws of Solon forbade the Greek fathers and brothers from selling their daughters and sisters as slaves; showing that such an infamous custom had been prevalent. The pa.s.sage of thousands of years had brought a degree of physical emanc.i.p.ation to woman; but she still remained mentally servile, when Catharine Parr said to her husband, Henry VII, "Your majesty doth know right well, neither I myself am ignorant, what great imperfection, by our first creation, is allotted to us women, to be appointed as inferior and subject unto man as our head; and that, as G.o.d made man in his own likeness, even so hath he made woman of man, by whom she is to be governed." This type of unquestioning subjection and obedience is depicted by Chaucer, after Boccaccio, in his "Griselda," and by Tennyson in his "Enid." The husbands of these most lovely and womanly of women try their temper, and their subjectedness, by the most capricious, and the most cruel, tests.
They submit to every thing with unmurmuring sweetness and humility.