Obvious printer errors have been repaired, but spelling has not been
standardized.
A WOMAN'S PHILOSOPHY OF WOMAN;
OR
WOMAN AFFRANCHISED.
AN ANSWER TO MICHELET, PROUDHON, GIRARDIN, LEGOUVÉ,
COMTE, AND OTHER MODERN INNOVATORS.
BY MADAME D'HÉRICOURT.
Translated from the last Paris Edition
[Illustration]
NEW YORK:
_CARLETON, PUBLISHER, 413 BROADWAY._
M DCCC LXIV.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by
G. W. CARLETON,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District
of New York.
R. CRAIGHEAD,
Printer, Stereotyper, and Electrotyper,
Carton Building,
_81, 83, and 85 Centre Street_.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 7
PREFACE 9
CHAP.
I. MICHELET 17
II. PROUDHON 33
III. COMTE 119
IV. LEGOUVE 134
V. DE GIRARDIN 155
VI. MODERN COMMUNISTS 167
VII. SUMMARY 201
PART II.
OBJECTIONS TO THE EMANCIPATION OF WOMAN 211
NATURE AND FUNCTIONS OF WOMAN 224
LOVE; ITS FUNCTIONS IN HUMANITY 248
MARRIAGE 270
SUMMARY OF PROPOSED REFORMS 294
APPEAL TO WOMEN 314
INTRODUCTION
TO THE AMERICAN EDITION.
The general interest evinced in the theories of Michelet and other
philosophers concerning the functions and province of woman, and the
lively opposition to these theories manifested in many quarters, have
called forth an American translation of the present work. This remarkable
book of Madame d'Héricourt on woman is conceded to be the best reply to
these philosophers extant. The work, intended by the author as "a
refutation of the coarse indecency of Proudhon, and of the perfumed
pruriency of Michelet, and the other false friends and would-be champions
of woman," has had a remarkable history. Published first at Brussels, it
was interdicted in France, and notice was given that all copies found
would be seized. Madame d'Héricourt appealed to the censorship to know
the reason of this interdiction, and was informed in reply that the
reason for such proceedings never was given. Not content with this, she
wrote to Napoleon III, enclosing a copy of the work, and called his
attention to the fact that a book by a French author could be suppressed
in France without any reason being given for it, and without any chance
being offered to the author to clear herself of the implied charge of
immorality. Immediately upon the reception of the letter, the Emperor
withdrew the interdiction.
Madame d'Héricourt is well known in France as an able contributor to
various philosophic journals, and also as a member of the medical
profession, in which she holds a high and respected position. Her
opinions are entitled to great weight, and will be welcomed as throwing
much light on the practical question of the sphere of woman, which is
becoming one of increasing interest. The better to adapt the book to the
American public, it has been slightly abbreviated in portions of local
interest, referring chiefly to French legislation. It has been well
received in England, as is testified by the following extract from the
_London Critic_, one of the ablest of the English critical journals:
"The work is calculated to do an immense service to French
society at the present time--just when the literature of the
country is on the verge of decay from the rottenness which is
eating to its very core. 'La Femme Affranchie' points out the
remedy to the social cancer which has gnawed away the vital
principle of domestic life in France, and caused that antagonism
between the sexes which foreigners behold with the most profound
amazement. Madame d'Héricourt's bold and nervous arguments
completely destroy the brutal commonplaces of Proudhon as regards
the moral and intellectual capacity of women. She takes him on
his own ground, and to his medical propositions returns medical
objections of far greater weight and power, being more competent
to judge the question, as she has passed examinations as
'Maitresse sage femme' of 'La Clinique,' and received her diploma
as medical practitioner many years ago."
AUTHOR'S PREFACE.
TO MY READERS.
Readers, male and female, I am about to tell you the end of this book,
and the motives which caused me to undertake it, that you may not waste
your time in reading it, if its contents are not suited to your
intellectual and moral temperament.
My end is to prove that woman has the same rights as man.
To claim, in consequence, her emancipation;
Lastly, to point out to the women who share my views, the principal
measures that they must take to obtain justice.
The word emancipation giving room for equivocation, let us in the first
place establish its meaning.
To emancipate woman is not to acknowledge her right to use and abuse
love; such an emancipation is only the slavery of the passions; the use
of the beauty and youth of woman by man; the use of man by woman for his
fortune or credit.
To emancipate woman is to acknowledge and declare her free, the equal of
man in the social and the moral law, and in labor.
At present, over the whole surface of the globe, woman, in certain
respects, is not subjected to the same moral law as man; her chastity is
given over almost without restriction to the brutal passions of the other
sex, and she often endures alone the consequences of a fault committed by
both.
In marriage, woman is a serf.
In public instruction, she is sacrificed.
In labor, she is made inferior.
Civilly, she is _a_ minor.
Politically, she has no existence.
_She is the equal of man only when punishment and the payment of taxes
are in question._
I claim the rights of woman, because it is time to make the nineteenth
century ashamed of its culpable denial of justice to half the human
species;
Because the state of inferiority in which we are held corrupts morals,
dissolves society, deteriorates and enfeebles the race;
Because the progress of enlightenment, in which woman participates, has
transformed her in social power, and because this new power produces evil
in default of the good which it is not permitted to do;
Because the time for according reforms has come, since women are
protesting against the order which oppresses them; some by disdain of
laws and prejudices; others by taking possession of contested positions,
and by organizing themselves into societies to claim their share of human
rights, as is done in America;
Lastly, because it seems to me useful to reply, _no longer with
sentimentality_, but with vigor, to those men who, terrified by the
emancipating movement, call to their aid false science to prove that
woman is outside the pale of right; and carry indecorum and the opposite
of courage, even to insult, even to the most revolting outrages.
Readers, male and female, several of the adversaries of the cause which I
defend, have carried the discussion into the domain of science, and have
not shrunk before the nudity of biological laws and anatomical details. I
praise them for it; the body being respectable, there is no indecency in
speaking of the laws which govern it; but as it would be an inconsistency
on my part to believe that blamable in myself which I approve in them,
you will not be surprised that I follow them on the ground which they
have chosen, persuaded that Science, the chaste daughter of Thought, can
no more lose her chastity under the pen of a pure woman than under that
of a pure man.
Readers, male and female, I have but one request to make; namely, that
you will pardon my simplicity of style. It would have cost me too much
pains to write in the approved fashion; it is probable, besides, that I
should not have succeeded. My work is one of conscience. If I enlighten
some, if I make others reflect; if I awaken in the heart of men the
sentiment of justice, in that of women the sentiment of their dignity; if
I am clear to all, fully comprehended by all, useful to all, even to my
adversaries, it will satisfy me and will console me for displeasing those
who love ideas only as they love women: in full dress.
TO MY ADVERSARIES.
Many among you, gentlemen, adversaries of the great and holy cause which
I defend, have cited me, evidently without having read me, without even
knowing how to write my name. To such as these I have nothing to say,
unless that their opinion matters little to me. Others, who have taken
the trouble to read my preceding works in the _Revue Philosophique_ and
the _Ragione_, accuse me of _not writing like a woman_, of being harsh,
unsparing to my adversaries, nothing but a _reasoning machine, lacking
heart_.
Gentlemen, I cannot write otherwise than as a woman, since I have the
honor to be a woman.
If am I harsh and unsparing to my adversaries, it is because they appear
to me to be those of reason and of justice; it is because they, the
strong and well armed, attack harshly and unsparingly a sex which they
have taken care to render timid and to disarm; it is, in short, because I
believe it perfectly lawful to defend weakness against tyranny which has
the audacity and insolence to erect itself into right.
If I appear to you in the unattractive aspect of a _reasoning_
_machine_, is, in the first place, because Nature has made me so, and I
see no good reason for modifying her work; secondly, because it is not
amiss for a woman that has attained majority to prove to you that her
sex, when not fearing your judgment, reasons as well, and, often, better
than you.
I have no heart, you say. I am lacking in it, perhaps, towards tyrants,
but the conflict that I undertake proves that I am not lacking in it
towards their victims; I have therefore a sufficient quantity of it, the
more, inasmuch as I neither desire to please you, nor care to be loved by
any among you.
Be advised by me, gentlemen; break yourselves of the habit of confounding
heart with nerves; cease to create an imaginary type of woman to make it
the standard of your judgment of real women; it is thus that you pervert
your reason and become, without wishing it, the thing of all others the
most hateful and least estimable--tyrants.
TO MY FRIENDS.
Now to you, my friends, known and unknown, a few lines of thanks.
You all comprehend that woman, as a human being, has the right to develop
herself, and to manifest, like man, her spontaneity;
That she has the right, like man, to employ her activity; that she has
the right, like man, to be respected in her dignity and in the use which
she sees fit to make of her free will.
That as half in the social order, a producer, a tax-payer, amenable to
the laws, she has the right to count as half in society.
You all comprehend that it is in the enjoyment of these various rights
that her emancipation consists; not in the faculty of making use of love
outside a moral law based on justice and self respect.
Thanks first to you, Ausonio Franchi, the representative of Critical
Philosophy in Italy, a man as eminent for the profundity of your ideas as
for the impartiality and elevation of your character; and who so
generously and so long lent the columns of your _Ragione_ to my first
labors.
Thanks to you, my beloved co-laborers of the _Revue Philosophique_ of
Paris, Charles Lemonnier, Massol, Guepin, Brothier, etc., who have not
hesitated to bring to light the question of the emancipation of my sex;
who have welcomed the works of a woman to your columns with so much
impartiality, and have on all occasions expressed for me interest and
sympathy.
Thanks to you, in particular, my oldest friend, Charles Fauvety, the
indefatigable searcher after truth, whose elegant, refined and limpid
style is solely and constantly at the service of progressive ideas and
generous aspirations, as your rich library and your counsels are at the
service of those who are seeking to enlighten humanity. Why, alas! do you
join to so many talents and noble qualities the fault of always remaining
in the background to give place to others!
Thanks to you, Charles Renouvier, the most learned representative of
Critical Philosophy in France, who join to such profound doctrine, such
acute perception and such sureness of judgment; I would add, such modesty
and unpretending virtue, did I not know that it displeases you to bring
you before the public.
It is from your encouragement and approbation, my friends and former
co-laborers, that I have drawn the strength necessary to the work I am
undertaking; it is just, therefore, that I should thank you in the
presence of all.
It is equally just that I should publicly express my gratitude to the
Italian, English, Dutch, American and German journals that have
translated many of my articles; and to the men and women of these
different countries as well as of France, who have kindly expressed
sympathy for me, and encouraged me in the struggle which I have
undertaken against the adversaries of the rights of my sex.
To you all, my friends, both Frenchmen and foreigners, I dedicate this
work. May it be useful _everywhere_ in the triumph of the liberty of
woman, and of the equality of all before the law; this is the sole wish
that a Frenchwoman can make who believes in the unity of the human
family, as well as in the legitimacy of national autonomies, and who
loves all nations, since all are the organs of a single great
body,--Humanity.
CHAPTER I.
MICHELET.
Several women have sharply criticised Michelet's "Love."
Why are intelligent women thus dissatisfied with so upright a man as
Michelet?
Because to him woman is a perpetual invalid, who should be shut up in a
gynæceum in company with a dairy maid, as fit company only for chickens
and turkeys.
Now we, women of the west, have the audacity to contend that we are not
invalids, and that we have a holy horror of the harem and the gynæceum.
Woman, _according to Michelet_, is a being of a nature opposite to that
of man; a creature weak, _always wounded, exceedingly barometrical_, and,
consequently, unfit for labor.
She is incapable of abstracting, of generalizing, of comprehending
conscientious labors. She does not like to occupy herself with business,
and she is destitute, in part, of judicial sense. But, in return, she is
revealed all gentleness, all love, all grace, all devotion.
_Created for man_, she is the altar of his heart, his refreshment, his
consolation. In her presence he gains new vigor, becomes inspirited,
draws the strength necessary to the accomplishment of his high mission
as worker, creator, organizer.
He should love her, watch over her, maintain her; be at once her father,
her lover, her instructor, her priest, her physician, her nurse, and her
waiting-maid.
When, at eighteen, a virgin in reason, heart and body, she is given to
this husband, who should be twenty-eight, neither more nor less, he
confines her in the country in a charming cottage, at a distance from her
parents and friends, with the rustic maid that we just mentioned.
Why this sequestration in the midst of the nineteenth century, do you
ask?
Because the husband can have no power over his wife in society, and can
have full power over her in solitude. Now, it is necessary that he should
have this full power over her, since it belongs to him to form her heart,
to give her ideas, to sketch within her the incarnation of himself. For
know, readers, that woman is destined to reflect her husband, more and
more, until the last shade of difference, namely, that which is
maintained by the separation of the sexes, shall be at last effaced by
death, and unity in love be thus effected.
At the end of half a score years of housekeeping, the wife is permitted
to cross the threshold of the gynæceum, and to enter the world, or _the
great Battle of Life_. Here she will meet more than one danger; but she
will escape them all if she keeps the oath she has taken _to make her
husband her confessor_.... It is evident that Michelet respects the
rights of the soul. The husband, who at this epoch has become absorbed in
his profession, has necessarily degenerated, hence there is danger that
the wife may love another; may become enamored, for instance, of her
young nephew. In the book, she does not succumb, because she confesses
everything to her husband; still it may happen that she succumbs, then
repents, and solicits correction from her lord and master. The latter
should at first refuse, but, if she insists, rather than drive her to
despair, Michelet--who would on no account drive a woman to
despair--counsels the husband to administer to his wife _the chastisement
that mothers infliction inflict on their darlings_.
There must be no separation between the husband and wife; when the latter
has given herself away, she is no longer her own property. She becomes
more and more the incarnation of the man who has espoused her;
fecundation transforms her into him, so that the children of the lover or
of the second husband resemble the first impregnator. The husband, being
ten years older than the wife, dies first; the woman must preserve her
widowhood; her rôle henceforth until death is to fructify within her and
about her the ideas which her husband has bequeathed, to remain the
center of his friendships, to raise up to him posthumous disciples, and
thus remain his property until she rejoins him in death.
In case the husband survives, which may happen, the author does not tell
us whether he should re-marry. Probably not, since love exists only
between two; unless Michelet, who reproves polygamy in this world, admits
it as morality in the life to come.
You see, my readers, that in Michelet's book, woman is created for man;
without him she would be nothing; he it is who pronounces the _fiat lux_
in her intellect; he it is who makes her in his image, as God made man in
his own.
Accepting the Biblical Genesis, we women can appeal from Adam to God; for
it was not Adam, but God, who created Eve. Admitting the Genesis of
Michelet, there is no pretext, no excuse for disobedience; woman must be
subordinate to man and must yield to him, for she belongs to him as the
work to the workman, as the vessel to the potter.
The book of Michelet and the two studies of Proudhon on woman, are but
two forms of the same thought. The sole difference that exists between
these gentlemen is, that the first is as sweet as honey, and the second
as bitter as wormwood.
Nevertheless, I prefer the rude assailant to the poet; for insults and
blows rouse us to rebel and to clamor for liberty, while compliments lull
us to sleep and make us weakly endure our chains.
It would be somewhat cruel to be harsh to Michelet, who piques himself on
love and poetry, and, consequently, is thin skinned; we will therefore
castigate him only over the shoulders of M. Proudhon, who may be
cannonaded with red-hot shot; and we will content ourselves with
criticising in his book what is not found in that of Proudhon.
The two chief pillars of the book on Love are,
First, that woman is a wounded, weak, barometrical, constantly diseased
being;
Second, that the woman belongs to the man who has fructified and
incarnated himself in her; a proposition proved by the resemblance of the
children of the wife to the husband, whoever may be the father.
Michelet and his admirers and disciples do not dispute that the only good
method of proving the truth of a principle, or the legitimateness of a
generalization, is _verification by facts_; neither do they dispute that
to make general rules of exceptions, to create imaginary laws, and to
take these pretended laws for the basis of argument, belongs only to the
aberrations of the Middle Age, profoundly disdained by men of earnest
thought and severe reason. Let us apply these data unsparingly to the two
principal affirmations of M. Michelet.
It is a principle in biology that _no physiological condition is a morbid
condition_; consequently, the monthly crisis peculiar to woman is not a
disease, but a normal phenomenon, the derangement of which causes
disturbance in the general health. Woman, therefore, is not an invalid
because her sex is subject to a peculiar law. Can it be said that woman
is wounded because she is subjected to a periodical fracture, the
cicatrice of which is almost imperceptible? By no means. It would be
absurd to call a man perpetually wounded who should take a fancy to
scratch the end of his finger every month.
Michelet is too well informed to render it necessary for me to tell him
that the normal hemorrhage does not proceed from this wound of the ovary,
about which he makes so much ado, but from a congestion of the gestative
organ.
Are women ill on the recurrence of the law peculiar to their sex?
_Very exceptionally, yes_; but in the indolent classes, in which
transgressions in diet, the lack of an intelligent physical education,
and a thousand causes which I need not point out here, render women
valetudinarians.
_Generally, no._ All our vigorous peasant women, our robust laundresses,
who stand the whole time with their feet in water, our workwomen, our
tradeswomen, our teachers, our servant-maids, who attend with alacrity to
their business and pleasures, experience no uncomfortableness, or at
most, very little.
Michelet, therefore, has not only erred in erecting a physiological law
into a morbid condition, but he has also sinned against rational method
by making general rules of a few exceptions, and by proceeding from this
generalization, contradicted by the great majority of facts, to construct
a system of subjection.
If it is of the faculty of abstracting and generalizing that Michelet, as
he employs it, robs woman, we can only congratulate her on the
deprivation.
Not only is woman diseased, says Michelet, in consequence of a biological
law, but she is always diseased; she has uterine affections, hereditary
tendencies, which may assume a terrible form in her sex, etc.
We would ask Michelet whether he considers his own sex as always diseased
because it is corroded by cancer, disfigured by eruptions, tortured as
much as ours by hereditary tendencies; for hereditary tendencies torture
it as much as ours, and it is decimated and enfeebled far more fearfully
by shameful diseases, the fruits of its excesses.
Of what, then, is Michelet thinking, in laying such stress on the
diseases of women in the face of the quite as numerous diseases of men?
The wife should never be divorced or re-marry, because she has become the
property of the husband. This is proved by the fact that the children of
the lover or of the second husband resemble the first husband.
If this is true, there are no children that resemble their mother.
There are no children that resemble the progenitors or collateral
relatives of their parents.
_Every child_ resembles the first that knew his mother.
Can you explain, then, why it is that so often he does _not_ resemble
him?
Why he resembles a grandfather, an uncle, an aunt, a brother, a sister of
one of the parents?
Why, in certain cities in the south of France, the inhabitants have
preserved the Greek type, ascribed to the women, instead of that of their
barbaric fathers?
Why negresses who conceive from a white, bring into the world a mulatto,
oftenest with thick lips, a flat nose, and woolly hair?
Why many children resemble portraits which had attracted the attention of
the mother?
Why, in fine, physiologists, impressed by numerous facts, have thought
themselves justified in declaring woman _the preserver of the type_?
In the face of these undeniable facts, I ask you, yourself, what becomes
of your theory?
It returns to the domain of chimeras.
Some think that woman possesses a plastic force, which makes her mould
her fruit after the model which love, hate, or fear has impressed within
her brain; so that the child thus becomes merely a sort of photograph of
a cerebral image of the mother.
By the aid of this theory, we might explain the resemblance of the child
to the father, to the first husband, to beloved relatives or to friends,
either living or dead; but it would be impossible, thereby, to explain
how a woman can reproduce in her child the features of a progenitor of
her husband or of herself, whose portrait, even, she has never seen; or
how, in spite of her wishes, the child resembles no one that she loves,
etc. Let us keep a discreet silence; the laws of generation and of
resemblance are unknown. If we succeed in discovering them, it will be
only by long and patient observation, with the aid of judicious
criticism, and an honorable determination to be impartial. Laws are not
created, but discovered; ignorance is more healthful for the mind than
error; to make general rules of _a few_ facts, without taking into
account facts more numerous by thousands which contradict them, is not to
form a science, but a system of poetical metaphysics; and these
metaphysics, however gracefully draped they may be, are opposed to
reason, to science, and to truth.
Michelet will pardon me this short lesson in method. I should not presume
to give it to him, were not men repeating, like well-trained parrots,
after him and Proudhon, that woman is destitute of high intellectual
faculties, that she is unsuited to science, that she has no comprehension
of method, and other absurdities of like weight.
Allegations such as these place women in a wholly exceptional position,
with respect to courtesy and reserve: they owe no consideration to those
who deny them these; their most important business at the present time is
to prove to men that they deceive themselves, and that they are deceived;
that a woman is fully capable of teaching the chief among them how a law
is discovered, how its reality is verified, how, and on what conditions
we have a right to believe, and to style ourselves, rational, and
rationalists.
Before concluding, let us dwell on a few passages of the book on Love. I
am curious to know what woman Michelet addresses when he says:
"Spare me your elaborate discussions on the equality of the sexes. Woman
is not only our equal, but in many points our superior. Sooner or later
she will know everything. The question to decide here is, whether she
should know all in her first season of love.
Oh, how much she would lose by it! Youth, freshness, poetry--does she
wish, at the first blow, to abandon all these? Is she in such haste to
grow old?"
Pardon me, sir; you have already decreed that _there are no longer any
old women_; nothing, therefore, can make woman grow old.
"There is knowledge of all kinds," you say; "likewise, at all ages, the
knowledge of woman should be different from that of man. It is less
science that she needs, than the essence of science, and its living
elixir."
What is this _essence_, and this _living elixir_ of science? Poetry
aside, can you, in exact and definite terms, explain to me what they
mean?
Can you prove to me, a woman, that I desire to possess knowledge
differently from you?
Take care! disciple of liberty, you have not the right to think and to
wish in my place. I have, like you, an intellect and a free will, to
which you are bound, by your principles, to pay sovereign respect. Now I
forbid you to speak for any woman; I forbid you in the name of what you
call _the rights of the soul_.
"You by no means deny," you say, "that, strictly speaking, a young woman
can read everything, and inform herself of everything; can pass through
all the ordeals to which the mind of man is subjected, and still remain
pure. You only maintain," you add, "that her soul, withered by reading,
palled by novels, living habitually on the stimulus of play-houses, on
the aqua-fortis of criminal courts, will become, not corrupted, perhaps,
but vulgar, common, trivial, like the curb-stone in the street. This
curb-stone is a good stone; you have only to break it to see that it is
white within. This does not hinder it from being sadly soiled outside, in
every respect as dirty as the street gutter from which it has been
splashed.
"Is this, madam, the ideal to which you lay claim for her who should
remain the temple of man, the altar of his heart, whence he daily
rekindles the flame of pure love?"
A truce to imagery and oratorical outbursts; none of us demand for woman
any degradation whatever. There would be no need for us to demand what
you censure, since it is thoroughly authorized and practised. I by no
means wish to accuse you of bad faith, of want of reflection, and of too
much moral tolerance; yet let us strip off your poetic mantle, and
translate your thought into prose; the drapery will no longer make us
forget the idea.
When instruction has been demanded for the people, has any one ever taken
it into his head to fancy that the point in question was to make them
read novels, to swell the attendance on criminal courts, and to multiply
theatres?
No, you will say.
What authorizes you, then, to believe that those who demand a solid
education for woman, are seeking that of of which you, on your part, do
not dream for the people?
On the other hand, do you cultivate the intellect of man by novels,
theatres, and spectacles of criminal courts? Is it in these things that
his knowledge consists? No, you will say. What is there, then, in common
between that which you censure, and the knowledge that we desire for
woman; and why attribute to us absurd ideas, that you may have the
pleasure of wrangling with phantoms?
All your fine ladies are nurtured on novels, plays, and judicial
excitements; yet they are neither vulgar, nor trivial, nor comparable to
curb-stones sullied by the mud of the streets; what you tell them,
therefore, is no more true than kind.
But if you pay them doubtful compliments, which they do not deserve, you
absolve them too easily, in turn. Listen to our principles, that you may
not run the risk of appearing unjust with respect to us.
Corruption in our eyes, is not merely the want of chastity, or the
shameful suit of gallantry, but all habitual improper sentiment, all
weakening of the moral sense, and we absolutely condemn everything which
has power to lessen the sensibility of the soul, and to turn it aside
from the practice of justice, of virtue, and of self-respect.
In consequence, we profess that the spectacles of criminal courts
habituate the heart to insensibility, and should be avoided as much as
executions.
We profess that the modern drama is generally evil, because it excites
interest for adulterers, robbers, seducers and prostitutes; that the
intellect is subjected in theatres to an unhealthy and enervating
atmosphere.
We profess, lastly, that novels should be read with great moderation,
because, in general, when they do not corrupt the morals, they pervert
the judgment and waste precious time.
Though we love and esteem Art, we are indignant at the bad use which is
made of it, and we have little esteem for those who avail themselves of
it to lead the heart astray, and to pervert the moral sense.
We say to woman: Educate yourselves, be worthy and chaste; life is
earnest, employ it earnestly.
You see that _woman in the image of the stained curb-stone_, is by no
means the ideal of which we dream.
Can you, a man of heart, can you treat women as wretched and corrupt
because they are willing no longer to be slaves?
And besides, do you think that liberty, which in man engenders
individuality and virtue, would produce in woman moral degradation?
Ah! leave these calumnies to those who have no heart; they ill befit you,
who may deceive yourself through the lofty poetry of your soul, but who
can wish for evil only because you believe it to be good.
The women who ask to be free, great, mistaken poet, are those who are
conscious of their dignity, of the true rôle of their sex in humanity;
those who desire that the women who follow them in the career of labor
should no longer be obliged _to live by man_, because to live by him is
at least to prostitute their dignity, and almost always, their whole
person. They wish that woman should be the equal of man, in order to love
him holily, to devote herself without calculation, to cease to deceive
him or to rule him by artifice, and to become to him a useful auxiliary,
instead of a servant or a toy. They know our influence over you; slaves,
we can only debase you; at present, we render you cowardly, selfish, and
dishonest; we send you out every morning, like vultures, upon society, to
provide for our foolish expenses or to endow our children; we, women of
emancipation, are unwilling that our sex should longer play this odious
rôle, and be, through its slavery, an instrument of demoralization and of
social degradation,--and this you impute to us as a crime!
Ah! I do not believe it; you yourself will say that I ought not to
believe it.
Looking from a deplorably narrow stand point, you fancied that you saw
all woman-kind in a few valetudinarians, your kind heart was moved for
them, and you sought to protect them. Had you looked far and high, you
would have seen the workers of thought and muscle; you would have
comprehended that inequality is to them a source of corruption and
suffering.
Then, in your lofty and glowing style, you would have written, not this
book of Love which repels all intelligent and reflective women, but a
great and beautiful work to demand the right of half the human race.
The misfortune, the irreparable misfortune, is that instead of climbing
to the mountain top to look at every moving thing under the vast horizon,
you have shut yourself up in a narrow valley, where, seeing nothing but
pale violets, you have concluded that every flower must be also a pale
violet; whilst Nature has created a thousand other species, on the
contrary, strong and vigorous, with a right, like you, to earth, air,
water and sunshine.
Whatever may be your love, your kindness and your good intentions towards
woman, your book would be immensely dangerous to the cause of her
liberty, if men were in a mood to relish your ethics: but they will
remain as they are; and the dignity of woman, kept waking by their
brutality, their despotism, their desertion, their foul morals, will not
be lulled to sleep under the fresh, verdant, alluring and treacherously
perfumed foliage of this manchineel tree, called the book of _Love_.
In Michelet's later work, "Woman," by the side of many beautiful pages
full of heart and poetry are found things that we regret to point out,
for the sake of the author.
M. Michelet has evidently amended, as we shall press on him; but as a
spice of vengeance, he pretends that their language has been dictated by
directors, _philosophers and others_. We know some of these ladies
personally, and can assure him that they have had no director of any
kind--quite the contrary.
Is it also in consequence of rancor that the author pretends that woman
loves man, not for his real worth, but because he pleases her, and that
she makes God in her own image, "a God of partiality and caprice, who
saves those who please him?" "In feminine theology," adds Michelet, "God
would say: I love thee because thou art a sinner, because thou hast no
merit; I have no reason to love thee, but it is sweet to me to forgive."
Very well, your sex loves woman _for her real worth_; we never hear a
man, enamored of some unworthy creature, say: "What matters it, I love
her!" Your love is always wise, and given reasonably; none but deserving
women can please you. I ask why so many honest women are abandoned and
unhappy, while so many that are impure and vicious, yet sought and
adored, are in possession of the art of charming, of ruining and of
perverting men?
Michelet deplores the state of divorce which is established between the
sexes; we deplore it likewise; but our complaints do not remedy it. Men
shun marriage from motives that do them no credit: they have at their
pleasure the poor girls whom want places at their mercy; they shun
marriage because they do not wish a real, that is, an autonomous wife at
their side; for themselves, they wish liberty, for their wife, slavery.
On their side, women tend to enfranchisement, which is well for them as
it is for men: they should not suffer themselves to be turned aside from
their pursuit; on the other hand, as men are attracted by a costly
toilette, and neglect plainly dressed women, if the latter, in the wish
to please and retain them, imitate public women, whose is the fault? Is
it ours, who desire to please you and to be loved by you, or yours, who
can only be attracted by dress? If you loved us _for our real worth_, and
not because our dresses and jewels please your eye, we would not ruin
you.
Let us point out in a few lines the contradictions and differences that
are found between Michelet's first and second works.
In both, woman is the flame of love and of the fireside religion,
harmony, poetry, the guardian of the domestic hearth, a housewife whose
cares are ennobled by love: civilization is due to her grace, she should
be the representative of grace if not of beauty.
In both books, the household must be isolated; the wife must have no
intimate friendship; mother, brothers and sisters prevent her from
becoming absorbed as she ought to be in her husband. What we think of
this absorption is already known; we will only say here that if the
friends and relatives of the wife should be expelled, those of the
husband should be none the less so; the mother and friends of the husband
have more power to injure the wife than those of the wife to injure the
husband; numerous sad facts prove this.
In "Love," woman is a receptive power, incapable of comprehending
conscientious works; she must receive everything from her husband in the
intellectual and moral point of view.
In "Woman," she is half of the couple, in the same ratio as man is
capable of the most lofty speculations, and thoroughly understands
administration. She gives the child the education that before all else
will influence the rest of his life. "So long as woman is not the partner
of labor and of _action_," says the author, "we are serfs, we can do
nothing--she may even be the equal of man in medical science; she is a
school, she is sole educatress, etc."
Very well, thus far; and doubtless Michelet would have been consistent,
had he not got into his head a masculine and a feminine ideal which
spoils everything; he reasoned to himself: "Man is a creator, woman a
harmony whose end and destination is love;" and, consequently, he marks
out for the latter a plan of education different from that by which man
should be developed; the natural sciences are suited to woman, history
should only be taught her to form in her a firm moral and religious
faith. As love is her vocation, to each season of the life of woman
should correspond an object of love; flowers, the doll, poor children,
next the lover, then the husband and children, then the care of young
orphans, prisoners, etc.
In "Love," the wife alone seems bound to confess to the husband. In
"Woman," the obligation is mutual.
The widow, in "Love," should not marry again, in "Woman," she may espouse
a friend of the husband, or still better, the one whom he may choose on
his deathbed; if she is too old, she may watch over a young man; but she
will do better to protect young girls, to make peace in families, to
facilitate marriages, to superintend prisons, etc.
We will carry the analysis no further; our objections to the author's
doctrine will be found in the article on Proudhon, and in the sequel of
the work.