1859 to 1869, the increase of crime among women has been much greater
than among men, Miss Catherine Beecher remarks: "But turning from these
(the criminal class) to the daughters of the most wealthy class, those
who have generous and devoted aspirations also feel that for them, too,
there is no opening, no promotion, no career, except that of
marriage,--_and for this they are trained to feel that it is disgraceful
to seek. They have nothing to do but wait to be sought. Trained to
believe marriage their highest boon, they are disgraced for seeking it,
and must affect indifference._
"Meantime to do anything to earn their own independence is what father
and brothers would deem a disgrace to themselves and their family. For
women of high position to work for their livelihood, in most cases
custom decrees as disgraceful. And then, if cast down by poverty, they
have been trained to nothing that would earn a support, or, if by chance
they have some resource, all avenues for its employment are thronged
with needy applicants."
This is but a very mild statement of the social fictions under which
woman is now suffering in mind, body, and estate; but it is valuable as
coming from a witness who hopes that some less radical remedy than
female suffrage will be found for existing evils. If the remedy lies
with woman herself, as all admit, how can we expect her to act
efficiently until she is a modifying force in legislation?
PAGE 65.
"_Unions, no priest, no church can sanctify._"
"The most absurd notions," says J. A. St. John, "have prevailed on the
subject of matrimony. Marriage, it is said, is a divine institution,
therefore marriages are made in heaven; but the consequence does not at
all follow; the meaning of the former proposition simply being that God
originally ordained that men and women should be united in wedlock; but
that he determined what particular men and women should be united, every
day's experience proves to be false. It is admitted on all hands that
marriage is intended to confer happiness on those who wed. Now, if it be
found that marriage does not confer happiness on them, it is an
undoubted proof that they ought not to have been united, and that the
sooner they separate the better; but from accepting this doctrine some
persons are deterred by misrepresentations of scripture, others by views
of policy, and others again by an entire indifference to human
happiness. They regard men and women as mere animals, and, provided they
have children, and rear them, nothing more."
"It is incredible," says Milton, "how cold, how dull, and far from all
fellow-feeling we are, _without the spur of self-concernment_!"
PAGE 72.
"_Behold the world's ideal of a wife!_"
"All women," says John Stuart Mill, "are brought up from their very
earliest years in the belief that their ideal character is the very
opposite to that of man; not self-will and self-government by
self-control, but submission and yielding to the control of others....
What is now called the nature of women is an eminently artificial
thing,--the result of forced repression in some directions, unnatural
stimulation in others."
The cowardice that is looked upon as disgraceful in a man is regarded by
many as rather honorable than otherwise in a woman. False notions,
inherited from chivalrous times, and growing out of the state of
subjection in which woman has been bred, have generated this
inconsistency. The truth is that courage is honorable to both sexes; to
a Grace Darling and an Ida Lewis, a Madame Roland and a Florence
Nightingale, as well as to a Bayard and a Shaw, a Napoleon and a
Farragut.
PAGE 73.
"_That moment should the intimate relations
Of marriage end, and a release be found!_"
In the United States the action of certain State legislatures, in
increasing the facilities for divorce, has been a subject of alarm among
persons bred under the influences of a more conservative system. It
would be difficult to show as yet whether social morality is harmed or
helped by the increased freedom. Nothing can be more deceptive and
unsatisfactory than the statistics offered on both sides of the
question. It is generally admitted, we believe, that in those countries
where divorce is most difficult, the number of illegitimate births is
largest, and the reputation of married women is most questionable. In
the nature of things, much of the prevalent immorality being furtive and
clandestine, it is impossible to estimate the extent of the evils
growing out of illiberal laws in relation to matrimony. In any
legislation on the subject women should have a voice.
PAGE 80.
"_Unlike the Church, I look on marriage as
A civil contract, not a sacrament._"
Kenrick here refers of course to the Catholic Church, whose theory of
marriage, namely, that it is a sacrament and indissoluble, when once
contracted according to the forms of the Church, still influences the
legislation and social prejudices of Protestant communities in respect
to their own religious forms of marriage. It was not till the twelfth
century, and under the auspices of Pope Innocent III., that divorce was
prohibited by the civil as well as the canon law. But it is only a
marriage between Catholics that is indissoluble under the Catholic
system. In the case of a marriage of Protestants, the tie is not
regarded as binding. A dissolution was actually granted in such a case
where one of the parties turned Catholic, in 1857, by the bishop of Rio
Janeiro, who pronounced an uncanonical marriage null and void. Modern
legislation in establishing the validity of civil marriages aimed a
severe blow at ecclesiastical privilege.
To Rome and not to the Bible we must go for all the authority we can
produce for denying that marriage is simply a civil contract. The form,
binding one man to one woman, had its origin outside of the Bible. Up to
the time of Charlemagne in the eighth century, polygamy and concubinage
were common among Christians and countenanced by the Church. Even Luther
seems to have had somewhat lax, though not unscriptural, notions on the
subject. When Philip, landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, wanted to take another
wife, and threatened to get a dispensation from the Pope for the
purpose, Luther convoked a synod, composed of six of his proselytes, who
declared that marriage is merely a civil contract; that they could find
no passage in the Holy Scriptures ordaining monogamy; and they
consequently signed a decree permitting Philip to take a second wife
without repudiating his first.
In that reconstruction of laws, threatened by the movement in behalf of
female suffrage, it is not probable that the patriarchal institution of
polygamy will be regarded otherwise than as debasing to both sexes; but
perhaps a greater latitude of divorce will be sought as not inconsistent
with public morality. Looking at the question abstractly, and apart from
all religious and social prejudice, it certainly seems the height of
cruelty and absurdity to compel parties to keep up the relations of man
and wife when one of them feels towards the other either a physical
repugnance or a moral dislike. The impediments often raised by our
courts in the way of divorce are gross relics of barbarism, and will be
abolished by a higher legislative morality.
"Whoso," says Milton, "prefers either matrimony or other ordinance
before the good of man and the plain exigence of charity, let him
profess Papist or Protestant or what he will, he is no better than a
pharisee, and understands not the gospel; whom, as a misinterpreter of
Christ, I openly protest against." And, in another passage, he rebukes
those who would rest "in the mere element of the text," as favoring "the
policy of the Devil to make that gracious ordinance (of marriage) become
insupportable, that what with men not daring to venture upon wedlock,
and what with men wearied out of it, all inordinate license might
abound."
Mr. J. A. St. John, editor of the Prose Works of Milton, remarks in
reference to the marriage law as it now stands in England:--
"_Having been invented and established by men, it is calculated to bear
with extreme severity on women_, who are daily subjected to wrongs and
hardships which they would not endure, were the relief of divorce open
to them. Those who take a different view descant upon the encouragement
which would, they say, be given to immorality were divorce made easy.
But the contrary is the truth.
"It is in behalf of morals, and for the sake of imparting a higher tone
to the feelings of society, that the present unnatural system should be
abolished. Where, what Milton calls, an unconjugal mind exists, there
must be unconjugal manners; and to what these lead no one need be told.
Where marriage is indissoluble, people presume upon that fact to
transgress its laws, which they would not do were it legally
practicable to obtain immediate redress.
"However, there is a great indisposition in mankind to innovate in
legislation; and they had generally rather be miserable according to
rule than free and happy on a novel principle.... Whenever it clearly
appears that man and wife can no longer live together in peace and
harmony, their separation would be far more beneficial to themselves and
favorable to morals, than their compulsory union. Milton's notions of
married life are highly flattering to women, whom he evidently
contemplates as the equal companions of men."
PAGE 156.
"_Give her the suffrage._"
In one of his pamphlets in behalf of women's suffrage, Professor F. W.
Newman of England, a man of widest culture and noblest sympathies, and
always among the ablest and foremost in good works, remarks: "It is
useless to reply that women have not political knowledge. Hitherto they
have had little motive to acquire it. But how much of such knowledge
have those male voters had, whom, for two hundred years past, candidates
for the place of M. P. have made drunk in the tippling-houses? The
arguments used against female suffrage simply show that there is nothing
valid to be said. Women have, _prima facie_, the same right as men."
PAGE 160.
"_Not by evading or profaning Nature_."
In his recent "History of European Morals," Mr. Lecky, referring to the
fact that the prevalent doctrine is, that the very highest interest of
society is not to stimulate but to restrain multiplication, diminishing
the number of marriages and of children, presents the following
comments:--
"In consequence of this belief, and of the many factitious wants that
accompany a luxurious civilization, a very large and increasing
proportion of women are left to make their way in life without any male
protector, and the difficulties they have to encounter through physical
weakness have been most unnaturally and most fearfully aggravated by
laws and customs which, resting on the old assumption that every woman
should be a wife, habitually deprive them of the pecuniary and
educational advantages of men, exclude them absolutely from very many of
the employments in which they might earn a subsistence, encumber their
course in others by a heartless ridicule or by a steady disapprobation,
and consign, in consequence, many thousands to the most extreme and
agonizing poverty, and perhaps a still larger number to the paths of
vice.
"At the same time a momentous revolution, the effects of which can as
yet be but imperfectly descried, has taken place in the chief spheres of
female industry that remain. The progress of machinery has destroyed its
domestic character. The distaff has fallen from the hand. The needle is
being rapidly superseded, and the work which, from the days of Homer to
the present century, was accomplished in the centre of the family, has
been transferred to the crowded manufactory."
The necessity of those reforms which many noble women are now urging
upon public attention is clearly set forth in eloquent facts like these.
PAGE 198.
"_Is against nature._"
A curious instance of the temerity with which flagrant errors are
pressed into the service of criticism is presented in some remarks in
the _N. Y. Nation_. "There is probably," it says, "no incident of
woman's condition which is more clearly natural than her passivity in
all that relates to marriage. In waiting to be wooed, she not only
complies with one of the conventional proprieties, but obeys what
appears to be a law of sex, _not amongst human beings only, but among
all animals_."
These remarks have been adopted by many American journalists, and have
been accepted perhaps by many readers as settling the whole question
with scientific accuracy and force, so far as analogies drawn from the
habits of the lower animals can settle it. But if the critic, while
buttering his daily bread or putting cream into his daily coffee, had
acquainted himself with the habits of the useful animal to which he is
indebted, he would never have been guilty of so prodigious a blunder. So
far from passively "waiting to be wooed," the cow, when the sexual
impulse is awakened, will disturb the whole neighborhood by her
bellowings. Should the critic reply that this is because she is kept in
an unnatural state of restraint, such reply would add only additional
force to the contradiction of the argument which he would offer.
Other examples in abundance, in confutation of his assumption, could no
doubt be furnished. But even were that assumption true, we might
sometimes be led to rather awkward results if we were to take the habits
of the lower animals as authoritative. Certain animals have not
infrequently an eccentric habit of destroying their offspring. Some of
our Chinese brethren, borrowing a hint perhaps from the brute creation,
are said to think it no sin to kill such female children as they have no
use for. We hope that no enterprising critic will recommend such a
solution as this of the woman problem.
THE END.
Cambridge: Electrotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co.