Let me speak this once in my true person,
Though the fruit of speech be just this sentence,--
Pray you, look on these my men and women,
Take and keep my fifty poems finished;
Where my heart lies, let my brain lie also!
Poor the speech; be how I speak, for all things.
"Not but that you know me! Lo, the moon's self!
Here in London, yonder late in Florence.
Still we find her face, the thrice-transfigured.
* * * * *
What, there's nothing in the moon noteworthy?
Nay--for if that moon could love a mortal,
Use, to charm him (so to fit a fancy)
All her magic ('t is the old sweet mythos)
She would turn a new side to her mortal,
Side unseen of herdsman, huntsman, steersman,--
Blank to Zoroaster on his terrace,
Blind to Galileo on his turret,
Dumb to Homer, dumb to Keats--him, even!
* * * * *
God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures
Boasts two soul-sides,--one to face the world with,
One to show a woman when he loves her.
"This I say of me, but think of you, Love!
This to you,--yourself my moon of poets!
Ah, but that's the world's side,--there's the wonder,--
Thus they see you, praise you, think they know you.
There, in turn I stand with them and praise you,
Out of my own self, I dare to phrase it,
But the best is when I glide from out them,
Cross a step or two of dubious twilight,
Come out on the other side, the novel
Silent silver lights and darks undreamed of,
When I hush and bless myself with silence.
"O, their Rafael of the dear Madonnas,
O, their Dante of the dread Inferno,
Wrote one song--and in my brain I sing it,
Drew one angel--borne, see, on my bosom!"
Have you read it a hundred times before? Are you not grateful to me
for giving you an excuse to begin on the second hundred?
O women, since the heavens have been opened to reveal these points of
light, and you can infer somewhat the radiance which may wrap you
about with ineffable glory, will you be satisfied again with the
beggarly elements of a sordid world? Seeing on what heights a woman
may stand, will you lower to the level graded by generations of silly,
selfish, sensual male minds? Is it really worth while? If it is not a
good bargain to lose your own soul that you may gain the whole world,
what must it be to lose your soul and gain only a few stereotyped
phrases? If every other man that ever lived preached a crusade for
"stocking-mending, love, and cookery," and only these three whom I
have mentioned bore a different banner, would it not still be better
to shape your course by theirs? Is it not better to be worthy of the
respect and reverence of thinkers, than to receive the serenade of
sounding brass? Is it not better to heed the one true voice crying in
the wilderness, than to join in the uproar of the idolatrous mob that
shouts, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians!" When I lose faith in human
destiny, and am almost ready to say, "Who shall show us any good?" I
remember these utterances,--so lofty that one may say, not as the
fulsome courtiers of old time cried, but reverently and duly, "It is
the voice of God, and not of men,"--I recall these utterances, the
first so heartsome and overflowing that there is no thought for
niceties of phrase, but only one eager desire to pay an undemanded
tribute, only a warm, imperative urgency of expression; the second
inexpressibly mournful, but with such calm majesty of pain as an
ancient sculptor might have wrought into passionless marble, or a
Roman Senator folded beneath his mantle;--in the first, a man looking
from his happy earthly home, forward and upward to a happier home in
heaven; in the second, one gazing hopelessly from his waste places
down into darkness and the grave;--the first believing, "Because I
live ye shall live also"; the second sadly querying, "Man goeth to the
grave, and where is he?"--the first become as a little child through
faith; the second only as a pagan sage by reason;--the third heaping
up with ever unwearied and ever more delighted hand the brightest gems
of learning and fancy to adorn a beloved brow;--all turning at the
summit of their renown, at the point of their grandest achievement, to
do honor to a woman, the first two vindicating the intellect of
wifeliness, the last the wifeliness of intellect; all breathing a
magnanimity in whose presence no smallness can be so much as
named;--and I say there is more strength and courage to be gained,
more hope for the future and more faith in humanity to be gathered,
from such a glimpse than from the contemplation of five--what?
hundred? thousand? millions?--of ordinary marriages.
But to return to the question at issue,--Are these exceptional cases?
It is man's own work if they are. Just as the elevation of one negro
from slavery to supremacy, from stupidity to intelligence, is an
indisputable proof that the elevation of the whole race is possible,
so the case of one such woman as those I have mentioned settles the
question for the whole sex. All may not attain the same heights, but
this shows that intellectuality is open to them without destroying
spirituality. Education, it seems, can do just as much for woman as
for men. As careful mental training makes a man large-minded, it makes
a woman large-minded. If it does not make a man narrow-souled and
shallow-hearted, it will not make a woman so. If it does not unfit a
man for manly duties, it will not unfit a woman for womanly duties. If
ignorance and petty interests and limited views make a man trivial,
obstinate, prejudiced, why is it not the same things which make a
woman so? It is not necessary to determine whether there is an
essential difference between the masculine and feminine brain or
nature. All the difference, both in quantity and quality, which any
one demands, may be granted without affecting this question of mental
culture. No matter whether it be strong or weak, large or small,
educate what mind there is to its highest capacity. If there is no
difference, it is so much gained. If there is a difference, each mind
will select from the material furnished that which is suitable for its
own sustenance. Violet and apple-tree grow side by side. If the soil
is poor they are both meagre; if the soil is rich, they both flourish.
From the same tract one gathers his golden and mellow fruit, the other
her glowing purple richness. You may put a covering over the violet
and stunt it into a pale, puny, sickly thing, or you may cultivate it
to an imperial beauty. But it will be a violet still. The utmost
cultivation will not turn it into an apple-tree. Every plant may have
a different taste and a different need from every other plant, but
they all want the earth. The tiny draughts of the slender anemone are
not to be compared with the rivers of sap that bear to the royal oak
its centuries; but oak and anemone each demands all the juice it can
quaff, and earth and sea and sky are alike laid under tribute to fill
the fairy drinking-cup of the one, as well as the huge wassail-bowl of
the other.
So with mind. The philosopher, the poet, the theologian, the chemist,
quarry in the same mine, and each brings up thence the treasure that
his soul loves. The same cloud sweeps over the farmer to refresh his
thirsty lands, over the philosopher to confirm his theories, over the
painter to tempt his pencil. The principle of selection that obtains
in the lower ranks of Nature will not fail us in her higher walks.
It is because law, logic, science, philosophy, have been so almost
exclusively in the hands of men, that they have accomplished such
puerile results. With all their beauty and power, they have left our
common life so poor, and vapid, and vicious, because only half their
lesson has been learned. But they bear a message from the Most High,
and when woman shall be permitted to lend her listening ear and bring
to the interpretation her finer sense, we shall have good tidings of
great joy which shall be to all people.
But what is to become of masculine domination and feminine submission?
O faithless and perverse generation! Do you indeed believe that it is
"natural" for woman to trust and for man to be trusted,--for man to
guide and woman to be guided,--for man to rule and woman to be ruled?
In whose hand, then, lies the power to change Nature? Is she so weak
that a little more or less of this or that, administered by one of her
creatures, can alter all her arrangements? The granite of this round
world lies underneath, and the alluvium settles on the surface. Do you
suppose that anything and everything you can do in the way of
cultivation will have power to upheave the granite from its hidden
depths and send down the alluvium to discharge its underground duties?
What bands hold in their place the oxygen and nitrogen? Who says to
the silex and the phosphorus, "Thus far shalt thou go, and no
farther"? And do you think that, if you cannot change the quantities
of these simple elements, whose processes are patent to the eye, you
can change the qualities of the most complex thing in the whole world,
which works behind an impenetrable veil? If you cannot add one cubit
to a woman's stature, nor make one hair of her head white or black, do
you think you can add or subtract one feature from her mind? Cease
with high-sounding praise to extol the womanly nature, while
practically you deny that there is any. Bring your deeds up to your
words. Believe that God did not give to bird and brake and flower a
stability of character which he denied to half the human race. Believe
that a woman may be a woman still, though careful culture make the
wilderness blossom like the rose,--and not only a woman, but as much
more and better a woman as the garden is more and better than the
wilderness. The distinctions of sex are innate and eternal. They
create their own barriers, which cannot be overleaped.
Do you think that, in the examples which I have given,--and perhaps in
others which your own observation may have furnished you,--there was
any unusual lack of harmony or adjustment? Do you judge, from the
testimony of their husbands, that Mrs. Hitchcock, or Mrs. Mill, or
Mrs. Browning were any more overbearing, any more greedy of authority,
any more ambitious of outside power, any more unlovely and
unattractive, than the silliest Mrs. Maplesap, who never knew any
"sterner duty than to give caresses"? He must have used his eyes to
little purpose who has failed to see that, in a symmetrical womanhood,
every member keeps pace with every other. If one member suffers, all
the members suffer. Power is not local, but all-embracing. Weakness
does not coexist with strength. A silly, shallow woman cannot love
deeply, cannot live commandingly. I believe that a woman of
intellectual strength has a corresponding affectional strength. An
evil education may have so warped her that she seems to be a power for
evil rather than for good; but, all other things being equal, the
sounder the judgment the deeper the love. The clear head and the
strong heart go together. A woman who can assist her husband in
geology, or revise his metaphysics, or criticise his poetry, is much
more likely to hold him in wifely love and honor, is much more likely
to enliven his joy and medicine his weariness, than she who can only
clutch at the hem of his robe. Her love is intelligent, comprehensive,
firmly founded, and not to be lightly disturbed. Weakness may possess
itself of the outworks, but is easily dislodged. Strength goes within
and takes possession.
All the unloveliness and unwisdom which may have characterized the
"woman's movement," and of which men seem to stand in perpetual dread,
are but the natural consequence of their own misdoing. It was a
reaction against their wrong. Did women demand ungracefully? It was
because their entreaty had been scorned and their grace slighted.
Never,--I would risk my life on the assertion,--never did any number
of women leave a home to clamor in public for social rights unless
impelled by the sting of social wrongs, either in their own person or
in the persons of those dear to them. Every unwomanliness had its rise
in a previous unmanliness.
In a vile, nameless book to which I have before referred, I find
quoted the story of a rajah who was in the habit of asking, "Who is
she?" whenever a calamity was related to him, however severe or
however trivial. His attendants reported to him one morning that a
laborer had fallen from a ladder when working at his palace, and had
broken his neck. "Who is she?" demanded the rajah. "A man, no woman,
great prince," was the reply. "Who is she?" repeated the rajah, with
increased anger. In vain did the attendants assert the manhood of the
laborer. "Bring me instant intelligence what woman caused this
accident, or woe upon your heads!" exclaimed the prince. In an hour
the active attendants returned, and, prostrating themselves, cried
out, "O wise and powerful prince, as the ill-fated laborer was working
on the scaffold, he was attracted by the beauty of one of your
highness's damsels, and, gazing on her, lost his balance and fell to
the ground." "You hear now," said the prince, "no accident can happen
without a woman being, _in some way_, an instrument."
One might, perhaps, be pardoned for asking whether entire reliance can
be placed on testimony which is dictated beforehand on penalty of
losing one's head; but the anecdote indicates about the usual quantity
of sense and sagacity which is popularly brought to bear on the "woman
question," and we will let it pass. I have quoted the story because,
by changing the feminine for the masculine noun and pronoun, it so
admirably expresses my own views. As I look around upon the world, and
see the sin, the sorrow, the suffering, it seems to me that, so far as
it can be traced to human agency, man is at the bottom of every evil
under the sun. As the husband is, the wife is. The nursery rhyme gives
the whole history of man and woman in a nutshell:--
"Jack and Gill
Went up the hill
To draw a pail of water;
Jack fell down
And broke his crown,
And Gill came tumbling after."
Men have a way of falling back on Eve's transgression, as if that were
a sufficient excuse for all short- or wrong-coming. Milton glosses
over Adam's part in the transgression, and even gives his sin a rather
magnanimous air,--which is very different from that which Adam's
character wears in Genesis,--while all the blame is laid on "the woman
whom thou gavest to be with me." But before pronouncing judgment, I
should like to hear Eve's version of the story. Moses has given his,
and Milton his,--the first doubtless conveying as much truth as he was
able to be the medium of, the second expressing all the paganism of
his sex and his generation, mingled with the gall of his own private
bitterness; but we have never a word from Eve. That is, we have man's
side represented. But Eve will awake one day, and then, and not till
then, we shall know the whole. Meanwhile, it is well for men to go
back to the beginning of creation to find woman the guilty party. If
they stop anywhere short of it, they will be forced to shift the
burden to their own shoulders. A woman may have been originally one
step in advance of man in evil-doing, but he very soon caught up with
her, and has never since suffered himself to labor under a similar
disadvantage. I cannot think of a single folly, weakness, or vice in
women which men have not either planted or fostered; and generally
they have done both. But they do not see the link between cause and
effect, and they fail to direct their denunciation to the proper
quarter.
It only needs to trust nature! Learn that women crave to pay homage as
strongly as men crave to receive it. The higher women rise the more
eagerly will they turn to somewhat higher. It cannot be sweeter for a
man to be looked up to than it is for a woman to look up to him. Never
can you raise women to such an altitude that they will find their
pride and pleasure in looking down. Women want men to be masters quite
as much as men themselves wish it; but they want them first to be
worthy of it. Women never rebel against the authority of goodness, of
superiority, but against the tyranny of obstinacy, ignorance,
heartlessness. The supremacy which a husband holds by virtue of his
character is a wife's boon and blessing, and she suns herself in it
and is filled with an unspeakable content. It is the supremacy of mere
position, the supremacy of inferiority, that galls and irritates; that
breaks out in conventions and resolutions and remonstrances, in
suicide and insanity and crime. "The women now-a-days are playing the
devil all round," I heard a man say not long ago, in speaking of a
woman hitherto respectable, who had left husband and children and
eloped with some unknown adventurer. And I said in my heart, "I am
glad of it. Men have been playing the devil single-handed long enough,
I am glad women are taking it up. _Similia similibus curantur_."
Things must, to be sure, be in a very dreadful condition to require
such "heroic treatment," but things are in a very dreadful condition,
and if men will not amend them out of love of justice and right and
purity, I do not see any other way than that they must be forced to do
it out of a selfish regard to their own household comfort. Let my
people go, that they may serve me, was the word of the Lord to
Pharaoh, but Pharaoh hardened his heart and would not let the people
go. Not until there was no longer in Egypt a house in which there was
not one dead did the required emancipation come. Then with a great cry
of horror and dread were the children of Israel sent out as the Lord
their God commanded. Let my people go, that they may serve me, seems
the Lord to have been saying these many years to the taskmasters of
America; but who is the Lord, the taskmasters have cried, that we
should obey his voice to let Israel go? We know not the Lord, neither
will we let Israel go. Now on summer fields red with blood, through
the terrible voice of the cannonade bearing its summons of death, we
are learning in anguish and tears who is the Lord; and if men choose
not to do justly and love mercy and walk softly with women, it is
according to analogy that women shall become to them the scourge of
God. The very charities, the tendernesses, the blessing and beneficent
qualities against which they have sinned shall become thongs to lash
and scorpions to sting,--and all the people shall say amen!
I am so far from being surprised when women occasionally run away from
their husbands, that I rather marvel that there is not a hegira of
women; that our streets and lanes are not choked up with fugitives. I
do not believe in women's leaving their husbands to live with other
men; it is infamy and it is folly: but I do believe most profoundly in
women's leaving their husbands. It may be their right and their duty.
I think there is not the smallest danger in the state's putting all
possible power of this nature into the hands of women; because a
woman's nature is such that she will never exercise this power till
she has borne to the utmost, cruelty, malignity, or indifference; and,
in point of morality, indifference is just as good ground for
separation as cruelty. Love is the sole morality of marriage, and a
marriage to which love has never come, or from which it has departed,
is immorality, and a woman cannot continue in it without continually
incurring stain. I do not think she has a right to marry again; not
even a legal divorce justifies a second marriage; but she has a right
to withdraw from the man who imbrutes her. If the law does not justify
such action, she is right in taking the matter into her own hands.
There is no power on earth that can make a woman live with a man, if
she chooses not to live with him, and has a will strong enough to bear
out her choice; and when she finds that she ministers only to his
selfishness, when she discovers that her marriage is no marriage at
all, but an alliance offensive to all delicacy and opposed to all
improvement, she is not only justified in discontinuing it, but she is
not justified in continuing it. The position which a woman occupies in
such a connection is fairer in the eyes of the law, but morally it is
no less objectionable than if the marriage ceremony had never taken
place. A prayer and a promise cannot turn pollution into purity.
Is this a movement towards violating the sanctity of marriage? It is
rather causing that marriage shall not with its sanctity protect sin.
When a slaver, freighted with wretchedness, unfurls from its masthead
the Stars and Stripes, that it may avoid capture, does it thereby free
itself from guilt, or does it desecrate our flag? Who honors his
country, he who permits the slave-ship to go on her horrible way
protected by the sacred name she has dared to invoke, or he who scorns
to suffer those folds to sanction crime, tears down the flag from its
disgracing eminence, unlooses the bands of the oppressor and bids the
oppressed go free?
But are there not inconstant, weak women, who would take advantage of
such power, and for any fancied slight or foolish whim desert a good
home and a good husband? Well, what then? If a silly woman will of her
own motion go away and live by herself, I think she pursues a wise
course and deserves well of the Republic. I do not believe her good
husband will complain. On the contrary, he would doubtless adopt a
part at least of the Napoleonic principle, and build a bridge of gold
for his fleeing spouse. Such power will never make silly women, though
it may possibly render them more conspicuous, and that will be a
benefit. The more vividly a wrong is seen and felt, the more likely is
it to be removed. The remedy for the mischief which Lord Burleigh's
she-fool may do is, not to bind her to your hearth, but to keep her
away from it altogether; and better than a remedy, the preventive is,
so to treat women that they shall not be fools. If the ways of male
transgressors against women can be made so hard that they shall, in
very self-defence, set to and mend them--Heaven be praised!
But what of the Bible? Is not the permanency of the marriage
connection inculcated there? No more than I inculcate it. I certainly
do not see it enforced in any such manner as to weaken my position.
Its permanency is assumed rather than enjoined; but a basis of
essential oneness is also assumed, which is the sufficient, the true,
and the only true and sufficient basis. "Therefore," says Adam, "shall
a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife:
and they shall be one flesh." But if, instead of cleaving to his wife,
a man cleaves away from his wife, and instead of being one flesh, the
twain become twain,--I do not see that Adam has anything to say on the
subject. I suppose Eve looked so lovely to him, and he was so delighted
to have her, that it never occurred to him to make any provision
against the contingency of his abusing her. I have not made any
especial research, but I do not remember anything in the precepts or
examples of the Bible that enjoins the continuance of association in
spite of everything. In principle it is presumed to be perpetual, but
in practice the Bible makes certain exceptions to perpetuity,--lays
down rules indeed for separation. "What God hath joined together let
not man put asunder," says our Saviour, which surely does not mean
that what greed or lust or ambition has joined together woman may not
put asunder. When a young man and a maiden, drawn towards each other
by their God-given instincts, have become one by love, no mere outside
incompatibility of wealth or rank, or any such thing, should forbid
them to become one by marriage. For what God hath joined together let
not man put asunder. But the God who would not permit an ox and an ass
to be yoked together to the same plough, never, surely, joined in holy
wedlock a brute and an angel; and if the angel struggles to escape
from the unequal yoke-fellow to whom the powers of evil have coupled
her, who dare thrust her back under the yoke with a "Thus saith the
Lord"? Christ himself does not pronounce against the putting away of
wife or husband, but against the putting away of one and marrying
another. St. Paul's words regarding the Christian and the idolater can
hardly be applied in our society, but so far as they can be applied
they confirm my views. "Let not the wife depart from her husband," he
says, and immediately adds, "_but and if she depart, let her remain
unmarried_, or be reconciled to her husband." Precisely. For no
trivial cause should the wife give her husband over to be the prey of
his own wicked passions; but if he is so bad, if he so degrades her
life that she must depart, let her remain unmarried.
It may be said that the interests of children would be compromised by
this mode of procedure. But the interests of children are already
fatally compromised. The interests of children are never at variance
with those of their parents. If it is for the interest of the mother
to leave her husband, it is not for the interest of her children that
she should stay with him. Whatever mortification or disgrace might
come to a few children would not be the greatest harm that could
happen to them, and in the end all children would be the gainers.
"I hold that man the worst of public foes
Who, either for his own or children's sake,
To save his blood from scandal, lets the wife
Whom he knows false abide and rule the house."
True. For "man" put "woman," and for "wife" "husband," and it will be
no less true. Of one thing be sure. The interests of children need not
block the wheels of legislation. The mother will take them into as
earnest consideration as any assembly of men. If they are not safe in
her hands, they will not be safe in any hands.
Furthermore notice, the chief stress of Scriptural prohibition is laid
on men. The rules and restraints are for men. Very little injunction
is given to women. The Inspirer of the Bible knew the souls which he
had made, and for the hardness of men's hearts hedged them about with
restrictions, and for the softness of women's hearts left them chiefly
to their own sweet will. The great Creator knew that women would never
be largely addicted to leaving their husbands for trifling causes, nor
indeed are serious causes often sufficient to produce such results.
The rack and wheel and thumb-screw of married life are generally less
powerful than the patience of the wifely heart. But his Maker knew,
too, the inconstant nature of man, and bound him with the strictest
charges. I am entirely willing to abide by the Bible. Let the state
abide by it too, and give to women the legal power to save themselves.
There is no danger that they will abuse it. They will even use it only
to correct the most fatal abuse.
But what, then, becomes of the marriage vows? Shall all their
solemnity vanish as a thread of tow when it toucheth the fire? No; but
I would have the marriage vows themselves vanish. They are heathenish.
They are a relic of barbarism. I have never studied into their origin,
but there is internal evidence that women had neither part nor lot in
framing them. The whole matter is one of those masculinities with
which society has been saddled for generations,--one of the bungling
makeshifts to which men resort when they are left to themselves, and
have but a vague notion of what it is that they want, and no notion at
all of how they are to get it. Look at it a moment. Here is the whole
world lying before man, waiting for him to enter in and take
possession. Woman desires nothing so much as that he should be monarch
of all he surveys. She acknowledges him to be in his own right, she
implores him to be by his own act, king. The greatest blessing that
can fall upon her is his coronation. It is only when the king is come
to his own that woman can enter into her lawful inheritance. So long
as he keeps his crown in abeyance, so long as he tramples his
prerogatives under foot, she too misses the purple and the throne.
What does he do? Instead of wearing his dignities, and discharging his
duties, he goes clad in rags, he dwells with beggars, he deals in
baubles, and depends for allegiance upon a word! With all his power
depending solely upon himself, with love and life awaiting only his
worthiness, with a devotion that knows no measure standing ready and
eager to bless him, all the dew of youth, all the faith of innocence,
all the boundless trust of tenderness, all the grace and charm and
resource of an infinitely daring and enduring affection,--he turns
away from it all and claims the coarseness of a promise! He does not
see the invincible strength of that subtile, impalpable bond which God
has ordained, but trusts his fate to a clumsy yet flimsy cord which
himself has woven, which his eyes can see and his hands handle, and in
which therefore he can believe, no matter though it parts at the first
strain.
Does it? Did a person ever change his course out of respect to his
marriage vows? I do not mean his marriage or the marriage ceremony,
but simply the promises: to love, honor, and cherish on the one side;
to love, honor, and obey on the other. Did a man's promise ever fetter
his tongue from uttering the harsh word? Did a woman's promise ever
induce her to heed her husband's wishes? I trow not. The honor and
love which a husband or wife do not spontaneously render, they will
seldom render for a vow. If the vital spark of heavenly flame remains,
the promise is of no use. If it is gone out, the promise is of no
power. A solemn declaration of facts, a solemn assertion, calling upon
God and man for witness, would, it seems to me, be equally efficient,
and much more moral, than the present form of promise. Power over the
future is not given to any of us, but we can all bear witness of the
present. The history of this war goes to show that oaths of any sort
are of but little use,--mere wisps of straw when the current sets
against them,--and that Christ meant what he said when he said, "Swear
not at all." But, however the case may stand regarding facts, there
can be but one opinion regarding feelings. To swear to preserve an
emotion or an affection is to assume a burden which neither our
fathers nor we are able to bear. And to take an oath which one has no
power to keep, has a tendency to weaken in men's minds the obligation
of oaths. If there must be swearing, we should act on Paley's hint,
and promise to love as long as possible, and then to make the best of
the bargain.
That part of the marriage contract which relates to obedience deserves
a separate attention. What is meant by a wife's obedience? Shall an
adult person of ordinary intelligence forego the use of her own
judgment and adopt the conclusions of another person's? Is that what
is meant?
To the law and to the testimony again. In the beginning nothing is
said of obedience or lordship. There is no subordination of man to
woman or woman to man. They are simply one flesh. God created man in
his own image; male and female created he them. And God blessed
_them_, and said unto _them_, have dominion, &c. Eve was to have
dominion precisely like Adam, so far as we can see. But in the fall
she forfeited it, and the curse came: "Thy desire shall be to thy
husband, and he shall rule over thee." When the king was shorn of his
power, the queen was dethroned. That settles the question, does it
not? Not at all. God so loved the world, that, when the fulness of the
time was come, he sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the
law, to redeem them that were under the law. Christ hath redeemed us
from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us. So then,
brethren, we are not children of bondwomen, but of free women!
If you do not believe the Bible, the curse is of no account. If you do
believe the Bible, the curse is taken away. Now then where are you?
But St. Paul is brought in here with great effect by the defenders of
the old _regime_. St. Paul, living under the new dispensation, became
its exponent, reduced it to a system, and must be considered authority
regarding its meaning and design. The curse had been as completely
taken away then as now, yet he says: "Wives, submit yourselves unto
your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of
the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church.... Therefore as
the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own
husbands in everything." Can anything be stronger or more explicit?
Nothing. But if you take St. Paul, take the whole of him. Accepting
for wives the injunction of submission, accept it also for yourselves;
for in the preceding verses he says, "Be filled with the spirit,
_submitting yourselves one to another_ in the fear of God." The same
word is used to indicate the relations proper between husband and wife
and between friend and friend. If, then, according to St. Paul, the
wife must absolutely obey her husband, her husband must just as
absolutely obey his wife, and both must obey their next-door neighbor.
Observe also the manner of the control and the submission,--"as unto
the Lord." The husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the
head of the church. The wife is to be subject to the husband, as the
church is subject to Christ. Why, this is just what I want. Not a wife
in Christendom but would rejoice to recognize her husband to be her
head as Christ is the head of the church. Only let husbands follow
their model, and there would be no more question of obedience. Quote
St. Paul against me? St. Paul is my standard-bearer! If you had only
obeyed St. Paul, I should not be fighting at all. The world would go
on so smoothly and lovingly that I should never be required to stir up
its impure mind by way of remembrance, but should be occupied in
writing the loveliest little idyls that ever were thought of. It is
the flagrant disregard and violation of Paul's teachings that brings
me unto you with a rod instead of in love and the spirit of meekness.
I want no higher standard than was set up by Paul.
Men reason very well so long as they confine their reasoning to pure
mathematics, but when they attempt to apply their logic to practical
life, they are at fault. They find it difficult to make allowance for
friction. They do not observe, and they do not know what to do with
their observations when they have made them. Consequently, though
their arguments look very well, they do not stand the test of
experiment. Nothing can be more charming than this implicit trust
which men so love and laud, this unhesitating submission of the fond
wife,--the "God is thy law, thou mine" of Milton (which most men
evidently believe is to be found in all the Four Gospels and most of
the Epistles). Yet its only practical justification would be the
infallibility of men. But in actual life men are not infallible. They
are just as likely to be wrong as women. The only obedience
practicable or desirable is the adoption of the wisest course after
consultation. Practically, there is seldom much trouble about this
matter; but there is none the less for all the theories and all the
vows of obedience. Yet we have it from good authority, that it is
better not to vow than to vow and not pay.
When I see the strenuousness with which man has ever enjoined upon
woman respect for his position and submission to his will, the
persistence with which he has maintained his superiority and her
subordination, the compensatory and unreasonable, inconsequent homage
which he awards to those who acquiesce in his claims, I seem to be
reading a new version of an old story. Man takes woman up into an
exceeding high mountain, and shows her what seems to her dazzled eyes
all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them, and says unto
her, "All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and
worship me." But as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall
be,--"Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou
serve." For many generations the world has reaped a bitter harvest
from worshipping and serving the creature more than the Creator. Eve's
desire was to the man, and he ruled over her consequently, and she
brought forth a murderer. The virgin-mother rejoiced primarily in God,
and that Holy Thing which was born of her was called the Son of God.
For six thousand years the works of the flesh have been manifest,
which are these: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness,
idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife,
seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and
such like. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace,
long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.
When women begin to talk of right, men begin to talk of courtesy. They
are very willing that women should be angels, but they are not willing
that they should be naturally-developed women. They like to pay
compliments, but they like not to award dues. One great article of
their belief is, that
"A woman ripens like a peach,
In the cheeks chiefly,"
and the rod perpetually held over any deeper ripening is the not
always unspoken threat of a forfeiture of masculine deference. From
those who want what they have not shall be taken away that which they
have. Very well, take it away. No thoughtful woman desires any homage
that can be given or withheld at pleasure. The only reverence, the
only respect, which has any value, is that which springs from the
depths of the heart spontaneously. If the politeness which men show to
women, and for which American men are famous, does not spring from
their own sense of fitness, if it is a kind of barter, a reward of
merit, let us dispense with it altogether. Sometimes I almost fear
that it is so. Sometimes I am half inclined to believe that men are
kind and courteous chiefly to those who are independent of them. In a
railroad-car, not long since, I saw a woman, hard-featured,
coarse-complexioned, ignorant, rude, and boisterous, engaged in an
altercation with the conductor regarding her fare. The dozen men in
the vicinity leaned forward or looked around with intent eyes,
and--must I say, smiling? no--grinning faces, and saluted each fresh
outburst of violence with laughter. Could a true courtesy have found
amusement, or anything but pain, in such an exhibition? The woman was
most unwomanly, but she was a woman. That should be enough, on your
principles. She was a human being. That is enough, on mine.
In "Our Old Home," Hawthorne--O the late sorrow of that beloved
name!--has most tenderly told the story of Delia Bacon. When her book
was published, we are informed, "it fell with a dead thump at the feet
of the public, and has never been picked up. A few persons turned over
one or two of the leaves, as it lay there, and essayed to kick the
volume deeper into the mud.... From the scholars and critics in her
own country, indeed, Miss Bacon might have looked for a worthier
appreciation." But, "If any American ever wrote a word in her behalf,
Miss Bacon never knew it, nor did I. Our journalists at once
republished some of the most brutal vituperations of the English
press, thus pelting their poor countrywoman with stolen mud, without
even waiting to know whether the ignominy was deserved. And they never
have known it to this day, nor ever will."
Is this courtesy? Is this the lofty manhood which women are to bow
down and worship? To such as these is it that women are to say, "What
thou bid'st, unargued I obey"? Men may promise all the kingdoms of the
earth and the glory of them, and women may make never so persistent
efforts to bow down and enter into possession; but the worship will
never be heartsome, nor the title ever secure. Never will the human
mind, whether of man or woman, rest in that which is not excellent. So
long as men are unworthy of fealty, they may forever grasp, but they
cannot retain it. Their empire will be turbulent and their claim
disputed. They will have a secure hold on woman's respect only so far
as character commands it. Feudalism was better than barbarism, and the
nineteenth is an advance on the fifteenth century. But the inmost germ
of chivalry has not yet flowered into perfect blossom. By the
restiveness of woman under the tutelage of man may he measure his own
short-comings. It is not necessary that men should be renowned, but
they should be great. Fame is a matter of gifts, but character is
always at command. Not every man can be a philosopher, poet, or
president, but every man can be gentle, reverent, unselfish, upright,
magnanimous, pure. In field and wood and prairie, standing behind the
counter, bending over lapstone or anvil, day-book, ledger, or graver,
a man may fashion himself on the true heroic model, and so
"Move onward, leading up the golden year;
For unto him who works, and feels he works,
The same grand year is ever at the doors."
In that grand year courtesy shall be recognized as the growth of the
soul and not of circumstance. A man shall bear himself towards a
woman, not according to what she is, but to what himself is. He shall
dispense the kindnesses of travel, assembly, and all manner of
association, not only to the good and the gentle, but also to the
froward; and he will do it, not because he thinks it best or right,
but because he cannot do otherwise, without working inward violence
upon himself. If a woman show herself rude or unthinking, or if in any
way she transgresses the laws of taste, propriety, or morality, he
shall not, therefore, consider himself at liberty to utter coarse
jests or coarse rebuke, to cast free looks, or disport himself with
laughter. It shall not be possible for him to do so; but he shall
rather feel in his own heart the thrill and in his own blood the
tingle of degradation, and gravely and sadly will he
"Pay the reverence of old days
To her dead fame;
Walk backward with averted gaze,
And hide the shame."
Nor shall his deference be confined to woman, but man to man shall do
that which is seemly. For all poverty, loneliness, helplessness,
repulsiveness, and every form of weakness and misfortune, especially
for those worst misfortunes that come from one's own imprudence or
misdoing, he shall have sympathy and help. Then, indeed, "shall all
men's good be each man's rule." Then between man and woman shall be no
mine and thine, but Maud Muller's dream shall be fulfilled, and joy is
duty and love is law.
Much of our classification of qualities into masculine and feminine,
all assignment of superiority or inferiority to one or other of the
sexes, seems to me to be founded on a false conception.[5] No virtue,
scarcely a quality, is the prerogative of man or woman, but manly and
womanly together make the perfect being. A man who has not in his soul
the essence of womanhood, is an unmanly man. A woman who has not the
essence of manhood, is an unwomanly woman. It is woman in
man,--gentleness, guilelessness, truth, permeating strength and valor,
that gives to man his charm: it is man in woman,--courage, firmness,
fibre, underlying grace and beauty, that give to woman her
fascination. A brutal man, a weak woman, is as fatally defective as a
coward or an Amazon. God made man in his own image; God made man male
and female. God, then, is in himself type of both male and female, and
only in proportion as all men are womanly and all women manly, does
each become susceptible of the love and worthy of the respect of the
other. Neither is the man superior to the woman, nor the woman to the
man, but they twain are one flesh.
[5] This paragraph was written with a partial reference to
Mrs. Farnham's "Woman and her Era," of which book I had at
the time but a very general notion, derived from one or two
newspaper notices. Since then the appearance of an unclean
criticism in the "Publishers' Circular" induced me to
suspect that the book must embody some unusual excellence,
or it could not have forced a fallen soul thus to foam out
its own shame. From such a brief glance as I have been able
to give to "Woman and her Era," while these pages are going
through the press, I infer that, a little hidden from common
eyes under a somewhat appalling mass of metaphysical and
other learning, are collected a greater number of valuable,
timely truths than I have met in any other book on this
topic. Not agreeing to all her opinions, one can but rejoice
in the sagacity which most of them display, and in the good
temper and just spirit which characterize all.