instruction needful to the young, they hastened to count women out, and
to declare them “unfit for instruction.” And they, who in defiance of
this decision—kind-hearted nuns of the Catholic Church—established
schools for girls, were publicly stoned when they were met on the
streets. The early Christian fathers denounced women as “noxious
animals,” “painted temptresses,” “necessary evils,” “desirable
calamities,” and “domestic perils.” From the English Heptarchy to the
Reformation, the law proclaimed the wife to be “in all cases, and under
all circumstances, her husband’s creature, servant, and slave.” Herbert
Spencer, writing of English laws, in his “Descriptive Sociology of
England,” says: “Our laws are based on the all-sufficiency of man’s
rights, so that society exists to-day for woman only as she is in the
keeping of some man.” To Diderot, the French philosopher, even in the
eighteenth century, so persistently do the traditions of the past make
themselves felt, woman was only a “courtesan.” To Montesquieu, she was
“an attractive child,”—to Rousseau “an object of pleasure to man.” To
Michelet, nearly a century later, she was “a natural invalid.”
This subjection of woman to man, which has hindered her development in
normal ways, has created a contemptuous opinion of her, which runs
through the literature and legislation of all nations. It is apparent
to-day in unjust laws and customs, which disgrace the statute books, and
cause society to progress with halting step. There still exist different
codes of morals for men and women, different penalties for crime, and
the relations of the sexes to the government are dissimilar. In
marriage, the husband has control of the wife’s person, and, in most
instances, ownership of her earnings, and of her minor children. She is
rarely paid the same wages as man, even when she does the same work, and
is his equal only when punishment and the payment of taxes are in
question. All these unjust inequalities are survivals of the long ages
of servitude through which woman has passed, and which have not yet
ceased to exist. During their existence, says Mme. de Staël, “woman was
able to exercise fully but one of the faculties with which nature has
gifted her—the faculty of suffering.”
Born and bred under such conditions of injustice, and with arbitrary
standards of womanly inferiority persistently set before them, it has
not been possible for women to rise much above them. Here and there
through the centuries, exceptional women, endowed with phenomenal force
of character, have towered above the mediocrity of their sex, hinting at
the qualities imprisoned in the feminine nature. It is not strange that
these instances have been rare. It is strange, indeed, that women have
held their own during these ages of degradation. And as by a general law
of heredity “the inheritance of traits of character is persistent in
proportion to the length of time they have been inherited,” it is easy
to account for the conservatism of women to-day, and for the
indifference and hostility with which many regard the movements for
their advancement.
For a new day has dawned, and humanity is moving forward to an era when
oppression and slavery are to be entirely displaced, and reason and
justice recognized as the rule of life. Science is extending
immeasurably the bounds of knowledge and power. Art is refining life,
and giving to it beauty and grace. Literature bears in her hands whole
ages of comfort and sympathy. Industry, aided by the hundred-handed
elements of nature, is increasing the world’s wealth, and invention is
economizing its labor. The age looks steadily to the redressing of
wrong, to the righting of every form of error and oppression, and
demands that law and justice be made interchangeable terms. So humane a
spirit dominates the age in which we live, that even the brute creation
share in it, and we have hundreds of societies organized to prevent
cruelty to animals. It could not be possible but that women should share
in the justice and kindliness with which the times are fraught, and the
last quarter of a century has lifted them to higher levels. How has this
been accomplished?
While progress is the method of man, his early progress was
inconceivably slow. He had lived on the earth long ages before he knew
enough, or cared enough, to make a record of what he did, thought, felt,
hoped, or suffered for the benefit of posterity. The moment he began to
make a record of his daily life, history began. And history takes us
back, according to the popular conception, only five or six thousand
years—authentic history to a period much less remote. From the early
civilizations that flourished in the valleys of the Nile and Euphrates,
this age has inherited very little. What we possess that may seem a
transmission from that earlier time has been for the most part
rediscovered, or reinvented by the civilizations of the present.
To the Greek civilization we are indebted for a marvelous development of
the beautiful in art. And when our art students have exhausted all
modern instruction, they are compelled to go back thousands of years,
and sit down at the feet of the dead Greeks, and learn of them, through
the mutilated remains of their masterpieces. To the Roman civilization
we owe a wonderful development of law. The Roman code of laws is to-day
the basis of the jurisprudence of the civilized world. Very little more
than these survivals of the Greek and Roman civilizations have come down
to us. For the barbarian hordes of the North and the East crushed out
the life of the “Eternal City,” pillaged what they did not destroy of
its treasures, despoiled the cities in its vicinage, and ground to
powder its boasted greatness and its strong arm of power. The phenomenal
dark ages set in, and for a thousand years the world groped in ignorance
and darkness, and very little progress was made in any direction.
But civilization is not artificial, but real and natural. It is to the
race what the flower is to the bud, and the oak tree to the
acorn,—growth, development. Again the divine in man asserted itself, and
again there came into the world a quickening spirit. Four great events
occurred, of world-wide importance, each following quickly its
predecessor, and an impetus was given to humanity which has never spent
itself, but has steadily gained in power and momentum. The revival of
classical learning had a powerful influence upon woman as well as man.
The invention of the art of printing enabled the race to retain whatever
knowledge it acquired, whereas, before, it lost as fast as it gained.
The discovery of this continent opened a new world and limitless
possibilities to the pent-up, struggling spirits of the East, longing
for a larger and better life than was possible under the depressing
conditions of that day. While the great Reformation, begun by Luther,
released both men and women from the almost omnipotent control of the
Church. Demanding the right of private judgment in matters of religion,
it wrought out a great development of religious liberty, which has been
succeeded by a greater outcome of civil freedom.
These four events, occurring almost simultaneously, were the precursors
of our present civilization. They kindled the souls of men into a flame
which has burned steadily to this hour. The development of the present
day dates from them, and the civilization begotten by them is endowed
with earthly immortality. It abounds in the elements of perpetuity,
which the earlier human growths by the Nile and Euphrates never
possessed. Slavery has almost entirely disappeared from the world under
its influence. Liberty has infected all races with its divine contagion,
and has driven from the western hemisphere every crowned head. Laws and
law-makers, trade and commerce, public and private life, church and
state are examined by the highest ethical standards. And through the
last three centuries, there has rung out a growing demand for human
rights, and human opportunity, which has now culminated into a mighty
and imperious demand that cannot be much longer denied. It is the
people’s hour. In this trumpet call for right and justice are heard the
multitudinous voices of women, who have caught the ear of the world, and
to whose banner are daily flocking new recruits, and at last the woman’s
hour has also come.
During the centuries that preceded the Christian era, and for centuries
after, there were, here and there, in many countries, eminent women who
came into possession of power and privilege; sometimes they were used
wisely, and sometimes wickedly. But there were others, on whose
histories women will always dwell with fresh delight, and refuse to
believe the innuendos of contemporary writers concerning them. We read
of Aspasia, the preceptress of Socrates, the wife of the great Pericles
of Athens, and the friend of the Greek philosophers. Summoned for trial
before the Greek Areopagus, she was charged with “walking the streets
unveiled, sitting at table with men, disbelieving in the Greek gods,
believing only in one sole Creator, and with entertaining original ideas
concerning the motions of the sun and moon.” She was in advance of her
time, and the age could not understand her.
We linger over the sad story of Hypatia, whose father, Theon the
younger, was at the head of the Platonic school at Alexandria at the
close of the fourth century. He was also the commentator on Ptolemy, and
the editor of “Euclid,” adding here and there a demonstration of his
own. All that he knew he imparted to his daughter, and Hypatia occupied
a position unparalleled in ancient or modern times. Before she had
reached her twenty-seventh year she had written a book on “The
Astronomical Canon of Diophantes,” and another on “The Conics of
Apollonius.” One of her enemies, the historian Socrates, tells us that
when she succeeded her father in the Platonic school derived from
Plotinus, and “expounded the precepts of philosophy,” studious persons
from all parts of the country flocked to hear her, and that “she
addressed both them and the magistrates with singular modesty.” But
alas! she paid the penalty of her great superiority. And because she was
suspected of having “an influence in public affairs,” and was deemed
“worthy to sit in the councils of church and state,” she was brutally
murdered by a savage mob, that regarded superiority in a woman as an
arraignment of inferiority in men.
We are familiar with the story of Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, who reigned
A.D. 267, of whom reluctant history tells us that she was a woman of
great courage, high spirit, remarkable beauty, and purity of moral
character. Her literary acquirements were unusual, and she spoke Latin,
Greek, and the Oriental languages with fluency; while in the
administration of her government she combined prudence, justice, and
liberality, so that nearly the whole of the eastern provinces submitted
to her sway.
It is a matter of history that 320 B.C., Martia, Queen of London, first
formulated the principles of the English common law in her judgments and
enactments. Her “Martian Statutes” outlived the Roman, Anglo-Saxon, and
Norse invasions. Holinshed, who is regarded as good authority, says that
Alfred the Great, after twelve hundred years, revived her Briton laws,
and enforced them among Anglo-Saxons and Danes. Two centuries later,
they were again re-enacted under Edward the Confessor, and a century
after they were again re-enacted by Stephen. The earliest laws of Great
Britain, therefore, the substance of which has been in force twenty-two
hundred years, were made by a woman.
Tacitus says of the Britons that sex was ignored in their government.
Cæsar says that women had voice in their councils, and power in their
courts, and often commanded in war. Plutarch says that women, among the
Britons, took part in deciding on war and peace, as members of the
councils, and that differences with their allies were decided by the
women.
Until the time of the Reformation, Catholicism was the state religion of
Britain, and nunneries were established and regulated by law. The
Superiors were elected by the nuns and represented their constituents in
the Wita, or legislative council; and in this way the right of women to
representation in governments was recognized. The Domesday Book,
compiled under William the Conqueror, in 1070, enumerated the
inhabitants of each village who were entitled by existing Saxon law to
vote for local officers, and included many women. Women were chosen
members of many Saxon local assemblies by their own sex, and shared
authority as members.
It has never been questioned that women have the right to vote in
secular corporations where they are stockholders. It has been taken as
settled that women have a right to vote in the enactment of corporation
statutes, in deciding who shall be intrusted with the powers conferred
on the corporation by law, and in electing persons to administer those
powers. Women have always shared control of the immense Bank of England,
with its enormous power over the currency and fortunes of the world. In
still more important corporations this has been the case. “Women were at
liberty to take part as stockholders with full powers to vote on all
questions in the ‘Virginia Company,’ which peopled Virginia, and in the
company which populated part of New England, and for a time governed it.
The same was true of the Hudson’s Bay Company, which for centuries ruled
half North America. It was also true of the East India Company, which
for about the same time ruled absolutely one of the greatest empires of
earth.”
When the barons wrested Magna Charta from King John, one of the rights
for which they contended, and forced him to grant, was the right of
women to a vote in the House of Lords. He was compelled to summon to
that House all earls, barons, and others who held lands directly from
the king, and he summoned to the very first Parliament the countesses of
Pembroke and Essex. In the reign of Edward I., ten ladies were summoned
as entitled to seats. There is conclusive evidence that during the first
three reigns of the existence of Magna Charta, women had a right to a
voice in the English government, and exercised it.
John Stuart Mill declares that “the list of women who have been eminent
rulers of mankind swells to a great length, when to queens and empresses
there are added women regents, and women viceroys of provinces.” “It is
a curious consideration,” he continues, “that the only things which the
existing laws exclude women from doing, are the things which they have
proved they are able to do. There is no law to prevent a woman from
having written all the plays of Shakspere, or composed all the operas of
Mozart.” But it is almost everywhere declared that women are not fit for
power and cannot be made so, and that they cannot take any part in civil
government. The laws have been cunningly framed to prevent their taking
the first step in this direction, and a public sentiment has been
created as the bulwark of the law. “And yet,” says Mill, “it is not
inference, but fact, that a woman can be a Queen Elizabeth, a Deborah, a
Joan of Arc,”—an Isabella, a Maria Theresa, a Catherine of Russia, a
Margaret of Austria.
“If a Hindoo principality is strongly, vigilantly, and economically
governed,” continues this earnest friend and student of woman, “if order
is preserved without oppression; if cultivation is extending, and the
people prosperous, in three cases out of four that principality is under
a woman’s government.” And he tells us “he has collected this fact from
a long official knowledge of Hindoo governments.” “There are many such
instances,” he continues. “For though, by Hindoo institutions, a woman
cannot reign, she is the legal regent of a kingdom during the minority
of the heir. And minorities are frequent, the lives of the male rulers
being so often prematurely terminated through the effect of inactivity
and sensual excesses. When we consider that these princesses have never
been seen in public, have never conversed with any man not of their own
family except from behind a curtain, that they do not read, and if they
did there is no book in their language which can give them the smallest
instruction in political affairs, the example they afford of the natural
capacity of women for government is very striking.”
It was not, however, until the fifteenth century that there was a marked
tendency to recognize the general equality of women with men. During the
days of feudalism, it was debated, very earnestly, whether women should
be educated or not, and it was generally believed that a knowledge of
letters would put into their hands an additional power to work evil.
Nevertheless, at all periods, whenever and wherever we can trace a
literature, we find women shining in it. Feudalism may be considered to
have perished at the beginning of the fifteenth century, and a new
period of transition had arrived, to which historical writers have given
the name of “The Renaissance.”
In 1506, Cornelius Agrippa, eminent in the literary society of his time,
wrote a book not only to prove that men and women are equals
intellectually, but that woman is superior to man. In 1552, another work
of similar scope appeared, based on the Platonic philosophy, the purpose
of which was a defense of woman’s superiority. In 1599, Anthony Gibson
sent into the world a third volume, again reiterating “the superiority
of women to men, in all virtuous actions, no matter how fine the quality
of men may be proved to be.” At the same time books were also being
published by other vigorous writers of the day, who stoutly denied to
women the possession of reason, and maintained their eminence in
iniquity only.
In 1696, Daniel Defoe contended for the better education of women,
declaring his belief that if men were trained in the same deplorable
ignorance as women, they would be vastly more incompetent and degraded.
In 1697, Mary Astell “distinguished for literary and theological
labors,” wrote a letter in “Defense of the Female Sex,” which passed
through three editions. An appeal to women written by the same author,
entitled, “A Proposal to Ladies for the Advancement of their True
Interests,” advocated their general education, and besought their
co-operation in some worthy educational scheme. It so wrought on Lady
Elizabeth Hastings, a wealthy noble lady, that she immediately offered
ten thousand pounds for the establishment of a college for women. It was
a grand proposition, and would have been carried out but for the
opposition of the bigoted Bishop Burnet.
At that time Italy led all other nations in literary activity, and then,
as now, was remarkable for her pride in her learned women. Lucrezia
Morinella of Venice wrote a work entitled, “The Nobleness and Excellence
of Women, together with the Faults and Imperfections of Men.” The
University of Bologna, which admitted women as students, and conferred
degrees upon them as early as the middle of the thirteenth century, at
last elevated them to professorships, where they taught law and
philosophy, physiology and anatomy, Latin and Greek. The annals of
Italian literature, scholarship, and art, are radiant with the names of
women who distinguished themselves in various departments, and were
honored by the men of that day, who proudly testified to their abilities
and achievements. Women of France and Italy interested themselves in
medical science, and we read of a woman who lectured in the sixteenth
century on obstetrics “to large classes of both sexes.”
In England, there was the same mental quickening among women, as on the
continent. Queen Elizabeth ascended the throne, and found herself
immediately confronted with perplexities, embarrassments, and anxieties.
She was obliged to face religious bigots at home, and unscrupulous kings
abroad; her people were rent with differences of religious belief, were
rude, ignorant, and inert; her noblemen were factious, her exchequer
empty, her parliaments jealous of her; there was neither army nor navy,
and the nation was poor and embarrassed with debt. But her stout heart,
strong will, and wise head were soon felt in every part of her kingdom.
The Reformation begun by Luther had stimulated England to great
activity, had loosened the hold of the church upon both men and women,
and the way was being prepared for that grand development of religious
and civil liberty which has since followed.
During the Elizabethan era, the great ideas were born which immediately
underlie our present civilization. Government, religion, literature, and
social life were then discussed as never before, earnestly, and by great
thinkers, and reforms were inaugurated that lifted the world to a higher
level. Not only was the age enriched by great men of marvelous political
wisdom, financial skill, comprehensive intellect, and original genius,
but there were noble women in England, who, holding high social
position, devoted their leisure and their wealth to studious pursuits,
and emulated the superior men of the day. How grandly they illuminated
the circles that gathered about them, while the majority of their sex
wasted their time in frivolous pursuits!
It was in the midst of this intense intellectual ferment, and as the
result of it, that the settlement of our country began. While the Church
of England had emancipated itself from the Papal power at immense cost
of life and treasure, and after generations of conflict, it had not
learned the great law of religious freedom. Our forefathers made war on
the divine right of bishops, and the authority of the church to control
their consciences, and were driven by persecution to America. Here they
prospered, were subject to Great Britain, and for a time were contented.
But when in America they were denied the rights granted to Englishmen
living in England, their discontent became general, and the Declaration
of Independence and the War of the Revolution followed. They were not
hot-headed philosophers, crazed by the theories of the French
revolution, as many to-day would have us believe. The “glittering
generalities” of the Declaration of Independence, as Rufus Choate
sneeringly called the immortal principles of our great charter of
liberty, were not deductions from Rousseau, Voltaire, or any other
French philosopher. They were simply the reiteration of the rights of
English citizenship, expanded and adapted to the exigencies of the new
world in which the colonists had planted themselves. For the American
civilization is only a continuation of the English civilization, under
new conditions—some of them more favorable, and others less so. Before
there was a revolution in France, or a democracy in France, Jefferson’s
most democratic words had been spoken in America. And all the facts go
to show that if there was any learning from each other in political
science, between him and the French philosophers, they were the pupils,
and not Jefferson. They were men of untarnished moral character;
religion and patriotism were to them synonymous terms, and their love of
liberty developed into a passion. The world has never seen grander, more
versatile, nor more self-poised men, than the founders of our nation.
What of the women associated with these heroes? “The ammunition of the
Continental soldiery in the war for freedom came from the pulpit, and
the farmer’s fireside,” said one of the orators on a recent centennial
occasion. The men of the Revolution had no cowardly, faint-hearted
mothers and wives to hang about their neck like millstones. Their women
were as heroic in fiber as themselves. Patriotic mothers nursed the
infancy of freedom. They talked with their children of the wrongs of the
people, and of their invaded rights, and uttered their aspirations for a
better state of things in language of intensest force. Sons and
daughters grew sensitive to the tyranny that oppressed their parents,
and as they came to maturity burned with a desire to defend their rights
to the utmost.
During the French and Indian wars of the country that preceded the war
of the Revolution, women learned to rely on themselves, became experts
in the use of fire-arms, and in many instances defended themselves and
their children. They were fired with the same love of liberty as the
men—they were equally stung with the aggressions of the British
government, and as resolute in their determination to resist them. They
encouraged them to enter the army, cheered them when despondent, toned
them to heroic firmness when wavering, and cheerfully assumed every
burden which the men dropped to repel the invaders of their country and
their homes.