WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND THE HOME.
The tenth count in the Suffrage Declaration is: "He has usurped the
prerogative of Jehovah himself, claiming it as his right to assign for her
a sphere of action, when that belongs to her conscience and to her God."
In the "History of Woman Suffrage," the editors say: "Quite as many false
ideas prevail as to woman's true position in the home as elsewhere.
Womanhood is the great fact of her life; wifehood and motherhood are but
incidental relations."
The first legislation demanded by the Suffragists was that which called
for a change of the marriage laws, so as to admit of divorce, first for
drunkenness, and later for several other causes. In discussing the matter
in convention, Mrs. Stanton presented resolutions that declared, among
other things, "That any constitution, compact, or covenant between human
beings that failed to produce or promote human happiness, could not, in
the nature of things, be of any force or authority; and it would be not
only a right, but a duty, to abolish it. That though marriage be in itself
divinely founded, and is fortified as an institution by innumerable
analogies in the whole kingdom of universal nature, still a true marriage
is only known by its results; and like the fountain, if pure, will reveal
only pure manifestations. That observation and experience daily show how
incompetent are men, as individuals, or as governments, to select partners
in business, teachers for their children, ministers of their religion, or
makers, adjudicators or administrators of their laws; and as the same
weakness and blindness must attend in the selection of matrimonial
partners, the dictates of humanity and common-sense alike show that the
latter and most important contract should no more be perpetual than either
or all of the former."
In supporting these resolutions, Mrs. Stanton said, "I place man above all
governments, ecclesiastical and civil--all constitutions and laws." "In
the settlement of any question, we must simply consider the highest good
of the individual." Antoinette Brown Blackwell followed Mrs. Stanton with
a series of resolutions in which she opposed her, and defended the
sanctity of marriage. Wendell Phillips moved that neither series of
resolutions be entered on the journal. Mr. Garrison said they did not come
together to settle the question of marriage, but he should be sorry to
rule out Mrs. Stanton's resolutions and speeches. Miss Anthony said: "I
hope Mr. Phillips will withdraw his motion.... I totally dissent from the
idea that this question does not belong on this platform. Marriage has
ever been a one-sided matter. By it, man gains all, woman loses all.
Tyrant law and lust reign supreme with him; meek submission and ready
obedience alone befit her.... By law, public sentiment, and religion, from
the time of Moses down to the present day, woman has never been thought of
other than as a piece of property, to be disposed of at the will and
pleasure of man.... She must accept marriage as man proffers it, or not at
all."
The resolutions were carried and recorded, and are published to this day,
with added testimony to the same effect from a hundred Suffrage sources.
We turn back to trace one of the lines through which this teaching has
come down. The Suffrage leaders mention as special inspirers of their
movement besides Ernestine Rose (who seconded Mrs. Stanton's resolutions)
and Frances Wright, Margaret Fuller and Mary Wollstonecraft. In the
writings of those women we find the same sentiments set forth with
delicacy or vulgarity, according to the nature of the writer. Margaret
Fuller, in her Dial essay, published in 1843, "The Great Lawsuit--Man
Versus Woman, Woman Versus Man," says: "It is the fault of marriage, and
of the present relation between the sexes, that the woman belongs to the
man, instead of forming a whole with him. It is a vulgar error to suppose
that love--a love--is to woman her whole existence. She is also born for
Truth and Love in their universal energy. Would she but assume her
inheritance, Mary would not be the only virgin mother." Mary
Wollstonecraft believed that marriage consisted solely of mutual
affection, and that there should be no outward promise or tie to bind. If
love were to die, the heart should seek other affinity. The licentious
words of Frances Wright need not be repeated. With Mephistophelian
promptings, Ernestine Rose stood forever a-tip-toe, whispering in the ear
of the purer American feeling that would often have faltered. At the time
of the passing of Mrs. Stanton's resolutions she said: "But what is
marriage? A human institution, called out by the needs of the social,
affectional human nature for human purposes.... If it is demonstrated that
the real objects are frustrated, I ask, in the name of individual
happiness and social morality and well-being, why should such a marriage
be binding for life?... I ask that personal cruelty to the wife may be
made a State's-prison offence, for which divorce shall be granted. Wilful
desertion for one year should be a sufficient cause for divorce....
Habitual intemperance, or any other vice which makes the husband or wife
intolerable and abhorrent to the other, ought to be sufficient cause for
divorce." Essentially the same idea was repeated by Dr. Hulda Gunn in a
recent Suffrage meeting.
In asking for laws that carried out these claims, or some of them, Mrs.
Stanton said, in addressing the New York Legislature in 1854: "If you take
the highest view of marriage as a Divine relation, which love alone can
constitute and sanctify, then of course human legislation can only
recognize it.... But if you regard marriage as a civil contract, then let
it be subject to the same laws that control all other contracts. Do not
make it a kind of half-human, half-divine institution, which you may build
up but cannot regulate."
These doctrines--from those of Frances Wright to those of Mrs. Stanton and
Miss Anthony--were put forth in the name of social purity and true
marriage. A great body of Suffragists never have accepted them. They were
repugnant, in this form, to a majority who were demanding "equal rights."
In January, 1871, Mr. Hooker (husband of Isabella Beecher Hooker), said in
the New York Evening Post: "The persons who advocate easy divorce would
advocate it just as strongly if there was no Suffrage movement. The two
have no necessary connection. Indeed, one of the strongest arguments in
favor of Woman Suffrage is, that the marriage relation will be safer with
women to vote and legislate upon it than where the voting and legislation
are left wholly to men. Women will always be wives and mothers, above all
things else. This law of nature cannot be changed, and I know of nobody
who desires to change it." As he had just been referring to "persons who
advocated easy divorce," and who originated the Suffrage movement, his
statement that he knew of nobody who desired to change marriage seems
funny.
It was one of the matters remarked upon with satisfaction by Suffrage
leaders during our Constitutional Convention Suffrage campaign, that such
a large number of speakers advocated Suffrage because of its advantage to
the home. Mrs. Cora Seabury said: "Where woman is, homes naturally exist,
and not without her. The 'divine veracity in nature,' which in her case
has survived the chaos of ages and the varying civilization of six
thousand years, is not now to be disproved by an incident comparatively so
trivial as that of taking the ballot." Dr. Jacobi puts the idea in this
way: "Mr. Goldwin Smith declares that woman suffrage aims at such a
'sexual revolution' as must cause the 'dissolution of the family.' The
Suffrage claim does not aim at this; it seeks only to formulate,
recognize, and define the revolution already effected, yet which leaves
the family intact. The _Patria Potestas_ is gone. A man has lost, first,
the right to kill his own son, then the right to order the marriage of his
daughter, then the right to absorb the property of his wife. Nevertheless,
he survives, and the family, shorn of its portentous rights, bids fair in
America to remain the happiest of all conceivable natural institutions;
more profound than society, so immeasurably deeper than politics that the
fortunate wife, daughter, or sister is puzzled when the two are mentioned
in the same breath."
All these writers agree in demanding the ballot in order to make some
essential change in woman's condition. Some of them hold that this change
cannot be made unless the relations of wife and mother can be set aside
when the individual considers them detrimental; others hold that it can be
made and leave the relations intact; and one believes that this change is
already so far made, while the relations are still intact, that nothing
need be feared from further change. It reduces itself to matter of opinion
and prophecy on the part of those who agree with the early leaders that
essential change is needed, but do not agree with them as to the steps
necessary. The appeal must be to facts.
The originators of the movement ought to know what the movement meant. The
marriage laws were the first attacked, and are still being hammered at in
favor of divorce, although legislation has outrun their demand in changing
the outgrown laws in regard to property and contracts. Mr. Hooker said:
"The persons who advocate easy divorce would advocate it just as strongly
if there was no Suffrage movement." How can that be, when the women who
inspired the Suffrage movement, and who began it and still carry it on,
proclaimed this as a necessary part? But, this question aside, it may be
said that the marriage relation has been the most unsafe in the hands of
the women whose idea of equality either repudiates it outright or inveighs
against its present status. From the revolutionary and infidel portion of
France, from which it sprang, to the recently dead Oneida Community, who
but women who imbibed the doctrine that marriage was bondage, have
sustained the various forms of license which called itself freedom?
Transcendentalism and Libertinism worked together, and both found women
who could be fitted to the task of destroying the home.
Mrs. Seabury avers that where woman is, homes will naturally exist. Homes
have not existed "naturally." There was a long, long time in human history
when not a dream of a home existed. From lawless individualism to tribal
life, from tribe to clan, from the clan, at last, through mighty
struggles, the family was evolved--the final grouping of the race--the
social unit. That point was not reached until man the savage, man the
rover, had consented to be bound, and bound for life, to one woman. It has
been one object of Christian civilization to hold man to this saving
compact. First to hold his spirit by affection for wife and child, and
next to hold his material interests for the sake of society. The work has
so well progressed that to-day the man's family is dearer to him than his
own life. He will live for them, and fight for them; and the women who
proclaim that man is woman's enemy, are the assassins of their own peace
and of the growing peace of home.
A proof that "women will not always be wives and mothers above all things
else," is to be found in the story of the women who have engaged in
intrigue from the days of ancient Egypt. A woman State senator-elect says:
"I am a Mormon, and believe in polygamy." The organizations that are first
to proclaim the so-called freedom of woman from the marriage bond, are the
same that would repudiate all government, human and divine.
But man has no more set the bounds of woman's life than woman has set
those of man's. It is false to say that man has "usurped the prerogative
of Jehovah," in assigning her a sphere of action. He has assigned neither
her sphere nor his own. Their spheres have been worked out from the
conditions that made them male and female. The ideal that faith could
picture was presented in the Old Testament, and when Christ said, "For the
hardness of your hearts Moses commanded to write a bill of divorcement,
but in the beginning it was not so," he spoke the ultimate word. Save for
adultery, the family was not to be broken, and the laws of modern life,
which grow freer in every other respect, are approaching nearer to this
model as society progresses, and most rapidly so in the most progressive
states.
There is a fine bit of unconscious humor in Miss Anthony's remark that
"Woman must accept marriage as man proffers it, or not at all." Man is at
present blinded by the belief that he must proffer marriage as woman will
accept it, or not at all. Society has lodged with her what Mrs. Stanton
calls "only the veto power." Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton apparently wish
the women to do the proffering, the accepting, and the rejecting. With so
insignificant a part assigned him, it would seem a pity that there should
be a sort of necessity for man to play in the marriage role at all. When
Suffrage leaders have so arranged matters that the bride retains her
maiden name, she can spend her summers in Europe and her winters in
Florida, while her husband works all the year round in New York to support
her, without her being subjected to the mortification of seeming to desert
the man whose name she bears.
You cannot teach this untruth to the girl without teaching it to the boy.
The struggle of civilization has been to teach that manhood was not the
great fact of man's life, and he has learned it through the chivalry and
tenderness that appealed to and developed his higher nature. But if once
he understands that woman does not hold herself in need of his chivalry
and tenderness, the husbandhood and fatherhood that now bind him to one
sacred vow of married love, and tame the savage within him, will not long
prevent him from seeing his own advantage in the new order.
Wifehood and motherhood 'incidental relations.' They are incidental!
Incidental not only to the continuance of the race in civilization, but to
all that is best and holiest in that continuance. The mothers of the
Rebellion say: "The love of offspring, common to all orders of women and
all forms of animal life, tender and beautiful as it is, cannot as a
sentiment rank with conjugal love. The one calls out only the negative
virtues that belong to the apathetic classes, such as patience, endurance,
self-sacrifice, exhausting the brain forces, ever giving, asking nothing
in return; the other, the outgrowth of the two supreme powers in nature,
the positive and negative magnetism, the centrifugal and centripetal
forces, the masculine and feminine elements, possessing the divine power
of creation in the universe of thought and action. Two pure souls fused
into one by an impassioned love. This is marriage, and this is the only
corner-stone of an enduring home."
The "homes" built solely upon this cornerstone have not endured in this
country. The children born under such principles are taken care of by the
"Community" in a building apart from that occupied by the "pure souls."
The "institutional" bringing up of children was lately advocated in this
city by Mrs. Stanton Blatch at Suffrage meetings.
The virtues that the Suffrage leaders denounce as "apathetic" are those
that Christ signalized as the heavenly virtues, and are those which heroes
emulate, whether they be women or men.
Dr. Jacobi says the Suffrage movement, "aims only to regulate and define
the revolution already effected, and which leaves the family intact." I
think it has been proven from words and acts that it does aim at just such
a "sexual revolution" as threatens the family with dissolution. It aimed
to accomplish this by every means in its power, by an industrialism which
it desired should make woman independent of man, by divorce laws, and by
the use of the ballot. Who has shorn man of all his portentous rights? Man
himself, through the influence of woman. Is it likely, then, that he was
taking steps in the direction of the destruction of his own home? He was
endeavoring to build it on those sure foundations that make it what it is.
He can build if woman occupies, but he cannot both fight for the home and
against it. Circumstances, and not Suffrage cries, have forced or enticed
woman into the trades and professions. She has gone farther afield for her
work, partly because the Aegis of home is more broadly spread than it
formerly could be on account of the very strength of the marriage tie,
which makes honor, home, and woman more secure. So far as she has gone to
help the home, and because of love of it, such causes have not hurt the
family life, and will not. But when we come to Suffrage we have met a
different matter. The vote is not an affair of feeling or opinion, like
religious belief. The fact that the men of the family are the natural
defenders of law, and the women are not, is seen at close quarters in the
home, and in case of opposite votes and any serious resulting action, the
father and son must stand in the attitude of actual physical as well as
political antagonism to the mother and daughter. If it came to an issue,
man would have to decide whether he would defend his own opinion,
expressed in his ballot, or the opposite opinion expressed by his wife in
her ballot. And the mere suggestion of difference in family opinion, final
action upon which could only be taken by a resort to that in which the men
must always be superior, would not only endanger family life and peace,
but would develop a fatal inequality between the sexes. If the women of
the family vote with the men, they only double the vote and the expense,
without changing the result; if they vote against the men, they stand in
the ridiculous attitude of opposing them where they cannot do more than
pull hair, or inviting a revolution which they cannot stay.
As to the possibility of this, there are a few striking and suggestive
facts at hand. The sound judgment and law-abiding element of this country
expressed itself in no uncertain tones at the late election. After the
defeat of Mr. Bryan, he was given a tremendous demonstration of approval
at Denver, in which the women played a conspicuous part. Mrs. Bradford
said: "The women tried to welcome you to the White House. When a few more
stars have been added to the Equal Suffrage banner, the women _will_
welcome you to the White House." Mrs. Patterson, President of the Equal
Suffrage League, said in seconding the address of welcome: "Women of
Colorado, I present to you the first president of the twentieth century--
William Jennings Bryan." An invalid of whom I know, travelled from
California to her home in Colorado in order to cast her vote for Bryan,
while her husband cast his for McKinley in California. Mrs. Cannon, of
Utah, was elected on the Free-Silver ticket, against her husband on the
Gold-Standard ticket. Mrs. Cronine, a Populist member of the legislature
of Colorado, is reported as saying: "It hurt my husband, a lifelong
Republican, to see me vote against his party and carry both our children
with me." Should there be political disturbance in Colorado and Utah, in
1900, here are three husbands on record who might be called upon by the
United States authorities to put down by force, perhaps to kill, those
whose lawlessness their wives had instigated and abetted. In one instance
the man's own sons may fight against him, impelled to do so by the lessons
taught by their mother. It requires no stretch of fancy to see the
possibility of civil war brought to the doors of every home, when women
vote. And the occasion that would bring it would not be the saving of the
Nation's life, but its overthrow; not freedom for an oppressed class, but
mingled bondage and license for a sex now free; not the preservation of
home, but its destruction. The Suffrage women who here among us are
talking so foolishly about arbitration and universal peace, seem to have
no conception that with their next breath they are endeavoring to
establish the conditions for the most horrible of conflicts--that of Sex.
So far from the "taking of the ballot" being "trivial," it is the most
serious and dangerous business in which a woman can engage.
The home is not a natural institution unless it is maintained by natural
means, and woman suffrage and the home are incompatible. John Bright, in
reply to Mr. Theodore Stanton's question why he opposed suffrage, said, "I
cannot give you all the reasons for the view I take, but I act from the
belief that to introduce women into the strife of political life would be
a great evil to them, and that to our own sex no possible good could
arise. When women are not safe under the charge or care of fathers,
husbands, brothers, and sons, it is the fault of our non-civilization, and
not of our laws. As civilization founded on Christian principles advances,
women will gain all that is right for them to have, though they are not
seen contending in the strife of political parties. In my experience I
have observed evil results to many women who have entered hotly into
political conflict and discussion. I would save them from it."
How true this is, and how wise are the fears expressed by Mr. Bright, we
realize afresh at every study of the exciting campaign of November, 1896.
The Woman's Journal, the Suffrage organ, published a letter from its
California correspondent descriptive of the work of their women in
watching the count on the Suffrage amendment. One woman who felt "terribly
blue" says that a man patted her on the shoulder and told her to keep up
her courage, and she says: "It broke me up, I can tell you, for I never
could stand sympathy. If people will let me alone, I can grit my teeth and
stand it, but when they say kind things to me I go to pieces. However, as
I was bound I would not show those men how badly I felt, and give them a
chance to say women were hysterical, I smiled weakly--very weakly, I'm
afraid--but still it was a smile and passed as such. Then I began to get
sick--ye gods! how sick! The excitement in the booth stopped, but there
was an excitement in my head that had not been there before! Everything
got black and began to go round. They could have counted us out a dozen
times, and I should never have known the difference." Again the
correspondent says: "Mrs. W. was so tired that she broke down." "Mrs.
Babcock waxed eloquent, and had the meeting in tears. Miss Shaw said she
wanted to speak of one who had been forgotten, because she came here
before any of the rest, and worked so hard that she had ruined her health,
and lay pale and white on her couch at home. She stood there, and the
tears rolled down her cheeks, and she didn't try to wipe them away. Every
one was crying. Mrs. Blinn said, 'I cannot speak. I feel too much to say
anything,' and then she broke down and cried. Mrs. McCann soon had
everybody crying about Miss Hay, and when Miss Hay got up she was crying
too. So we had a very weepy morning, you see." In describing the departure
of Miss Anthony and Rev. Anna Shaw for the East she says: "Oh, it was
awful! awful! The whole thing was like a funeral."
With the steady improvement in machinery and in education, the wife and
mother can be more and more relieved of work. But the home depends as much
as ever upon her love, her skill, her care. She now has means, which
science has just taught the world, of learning how to provide, on proper
principles, for children, how to dress sensibly, cook wholesomely, make
the home sanitary. Nursing is a fine art now, and comforts can be placed
within the reach of every invalid, if the mother knows how to do it. If
home is to be hospitable, and a centre of social influence, all the
artistic and homely powers are demanded. If the family is to be well-
dressed, the mother must attend to it. If home is to be beautiful, the
mother and daughter must make it so. In these days, there is little need
of slaving; and there is a glimpse ahead of leisure for thought and self-
culture such as men would find it hard to make. The long and enforced
retirement of maternity may prove a time for most valuable improvement. In
our social life there is too little culture that is the result of
absorption by a quiet process of mental assimilation. The place where this
can be best achieved is in the home. The danger of our fascinating modern
life, with its endless calls and opportunities outside, lies in the strain
it puts upon systems that are far more delicately organized than man's.
Nature meant that women should have periods of quiet. Let us honor our own
natures, exalt our own opportunities, love and lead our own lives, and so
bless the world and the Republic through perfected homes.
I have considered this question mainly from the view-point of the wife and
mother; but the home relations are vastly broader. In regard to their
whole scope, some of the Suffrage leaders have uttered this dictum: "The
isolated household is responsible for a large share of woman's ignorance
and degradation." If this declaration does not mean that the Suffrage
movement aims to tear down the individual home, it means nothing. The
world must judge which system is responsible for the larger share of
woman's ignorance and degradation.