In the last century the bitter satirist, Charles Churchill, wrote a verse
which will do something to keep alive his name. It is as follows:--
"Women ruled all; and ministers of state
Were at the doors of women forced to wait,--
Women, who we oft as sovereigns graced the land,
But never governed well at second-hand."
He touches the very kernel of the matter, and all history is on his side.
The Salic Law excluded women from the throne of France,--"the kingdom of
France being too noble to be governed by a woman," as it said. Accordingly
the history of France shows one long line of royal mistresses ruling in
secret for mischief; while more liberal England points to the reigns of
Elizabeth and Anne and Victoria, to show how usefully a woman may sit upon
a throne.
It was one of the merits of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, that she always pointed
out this distinction. "Any woman can have influence," she said, "in some
way. She need only to be a good cook or a good scold, to secure that. Woman
should not merely have a share in the power of man,--for of that omnipotent
Nature will not suffer her to be defrauded,--but it should be a _chartered_
power, too fully recognized to be abused." We have got to meet, at any
rate, this fact of feminine influence in the world. Demosthenes said that
the measures which a statesman had meditated for a year might be overturned
in a day by a woman. How infinitely more sensible then, to train the woman
herself in statesmanship, and give her open responsibility as well as
concealed power!
The same demoralizing principle of subordination runs through the whole
position of women. Many a husband makes of his wife a doll, dresses her in
fine clothes, gives or withholds money according to his whims, and laughs
or frowns if she asks any questions about his business. If only a petted
slave, she naturally develops the vices of a slave; and when she wants more
money for more fine clothes, and finds her husband out of humor, she
coaxes, cheats, and lies. Many a woman half ruins her husband by her
extravagance, simply because he has never told her frankly what his income
is, or treated her, in money matters, like a rational being. Bankruptcy,
perhaps, brings both to their senses; and thenceforward the husband
discovers that his wife is a woman, not a child. But for want of this whole
families and generations of women are trained to deception. I knew an
instance where a fashionable dressmaker in New York urged an economical
young girl, about to be married, to buy of her a costly _trousseau_ or
wedding outfit.
"But I have not the money," said the maiden. "No matter," said the
complaisant tempter: "I will wait four years, and send in the bill to your
husband by degrees. Many ladies do it." Fancy the position of a pure young
girl, wishing innocently to make herself beautiful in the eyes of her
husband, and persuaded to go into his house with a trick like this upon her
conscience! Yet it grows directly out of the whole theory of life which is
preached to many women,--that all they seek must be won by indirect
manoeuvres, and not by straightforward living.
It is a mistaken system. Once recognize woman as born to be the equal, not
inferior, of man, and she accepts as a right her share of the family
income, of political power, and of all else that is capable of
distribution. As it is, we are in danger of forgetting that woman, in mind
as in body, was-born to be upright. The women of Charles Reade--never by
any possibility moving in a straight line where it is possible to find a
crooked one--are distorted women; and Nature is no more responsible for
them than for the figures produced by tight lacing and by high-heeled
boots. These physical deformities acquire a charm, when the taste adjusts
itself to them; and so do those pretty tricks and those interminable lies.
But after all, to make a noble woman you must give a noble training.