We constantly see it assumed, in arguments against any step in the
elevation of woman, that her position is a thing fixed permanently by
nature, so that there can be in it no great or essential change. Every
successive modification is resisted as "a reform against nature;" and this
argument from permanence is always that which appears most convincing to
conservative minds. Let us see how the facts confirm it.
A story is going the rounds of the newspapers in regard to a Russian
peasant and his wife. For some act of disobedience the peasant took the law
into his own hands; and his mode of discipline was to tie the poor creature
naked to a post in the street, and to call on every passer-by to strike her
a blow. Not satisfied with this, he placed her on the ground, and tied
heavy weights on her limbs until one arm was broken. When finally released,
she made a complaint against him in court. The court discharged him on the
ground that he had not exceeded the legal authority of a husband.
Encouraged by this, he caused her to be arrested in return; and the same
court sentenced her to another public whipping for disobedience.
No authority was given for this story in the newspaper where I saw it; but
it certainly did not first appear in a woman-suffrage newspaper, and
cannot therefore be a manufactured "outrage." I use it simply to illustrate
the low-water mark at which the position of woman may rest, in the largest
Christian nation of the world. All the refinements, all the education, all
the comparative justice, of modern society, have been gradually upheaved
from some such depth as this. When the gypsies described by Leland treat
even the ground trodden upon by a woman as impure, they simply illustrate
the low plane from which all the elevation of woman has begun. All these
things show that the position of that sex in society, so far from being a
thing in itself permanent, has been in reality the most changing of all
factors in the social problem. And this inevitably suggests the question,
Are we any more sure that her present position is finally and absolutely
fixed than were those who observed it at any previous time in the world's
history? Granting that her condition was once at low-water mark, who is
authorized to say that it has yet reached high tide?
It is very possible that this Russian wife, once scourged back to
submission, ended her days in the conviction, and taught it to her
daughters, that such was a woman's rightful place. When an American woman
of to-day says, "I have all the rights I want," is she on any surer ground?
Grant that the difference is vast between the two. How do we know that even
the later condition is final, or that anything is final but entire equality
before the laws? It is not many years since William Story--in a legal work
inspired and revised by his father, the greatest of American jurists--wrote
this indignant protest against the injustice of the old common law:--
"In respect to the powers and rights of married women, the law is by
no means abreast of the spirit of the age. Here are seen the old
fossil footprints of feudalism. The law relating to woman tends to
make every family a barony or a monarchy, or a despotism, of which
the husband is the baron, king, or despot, and the wife the
dependent, serf, or slave. That this is not always the fact is not
due to the law, but to the enlarged humanity which spurns the narrow
limits of its rules. The progress of civilization has changed the
family from a barony to a republic; but the law has not kept pace
with the advance of ideas, manners, and customs. And, although
public opinion is a check to legal rules on the subject, the rules
are feudal and stern. Yet the position of woman throughout history
serves as the criterion of the freedom of the people or an age. When
man shall despise that right which is founded only on might, woman
will be free and stand on an equal level with him,--a friend and not
a dependent."[1]
We know that the law is greatly changed and ameliorated in many places
since Story wrote this statement; but we also know how almost every one of
these changes was resisted: and who is authorized to say that the final and
equitable fulfilment is yet reached?
[Footnote 1: Story's _Treatise on the Law of Contracts not under Seal_, §
84, p. 89.]