LEGOUVÉ.
The inheritor of a name which commands respect, Ernest Legouvé, an
elegant, eloquent, and impassioned author, has written a Moral History of
Women, whence exhales a perfume of purity and love which refreshes the
heart and calms the soul.
In every page of this book, we detect the impulse of an upright heart and
lofty mind, indignant at injustice, oppression, and moral deformity. The
author has deserved well of women, and it is with pleasure that I seize
the opportunity of thanking him in the name of those who, at the present
time, are struggling in various countries for the emancipation of half
the human race.
What is the object of Legouvé's work? We will let him tell it himself.
"The object of this book is summed up in these words: to lay claim to
feminine liberty in the name of the two very principles of the
adversaries of this liberty: tradition and difference (of the sexes),
that is to say, to show in tradition progress, and in difference
equality.
God created the human species double, we utilize but half of it; Nature
says two, we say one; we must agree with Nature. Unity itself, instead of
perishing thereby, would only then be true unity; that is, not the
sterile absorption of one of two terms for the benefit of the other, but
the living fusion of two fraternal individualities, increasing the common
power with all the force of their individual development.
"The feminine spirit is stifled, but not dead.... We cannot annihilate at
our pleasure a force created by God, or extinguish a torch lighted by his
hand; but turned aside from its purpose, this force, instead of creating,
destroys; this torch consumes instead of giving light.
"Let us then open wide the gates of the world to this new element: we
have need of it."
Then, examining the position of women, the author adds: "No history
presents, we believe, more iniquitous prejudices to combat, more secret
wounds to heal.
"Shall we speak of the present? As daughters, no public education for
them, no professional instruction, no possible life without marriage, no
marriage without a dowry. Wives--they do not legally possess their
property, they do not possess their persons, they cannot give, they
cannot receive, they are under the ban of an eternal interdict.
Mothers--they have not the legal right to direct the education of their
children, they can neither marry them, nor prevent them from marrying,
nor banish them from the paternal house nor retain them there. Members of
the commonwealth, they can neither be the guardians of other orphans than
their sons or their grand-sons, nor take part in a family council, nor
witness a will; they have not the right of testifying in the state to the
birth of a child! Among the working people, what class is most wretched?
Women. Who are they that earn from sixteen to eighteen sous for twelve
hours of labor? Women. Upon whom falls all the expense of illegitimate
children? Upon women. Who bear all the disgrace of faults committed
through passion? Women."
Then, after showing the position of rich women, he continues: "And thus,
slaves everywhere, slaves of want, slaves of wealth, slaves of ignorance,
they can only maintain themselves great and pure by force of native
nobleness and almost superhuman virtue. Can such domination endure?
Evidently not. It necessarily falls before the principle of natural
equity; and the moment has come to claim for women their share of rights
and, above all, of duties; to demonstrate what subjection takes away from
them, and what true liberty will restore to them; to show, in short, the
good that they do not and the good they might do."
The history of the past shows us woman more and more oppressed in
proportion as we trace back the course of centuries. "The French
Revolution (itself), which renewed the whole order of things in order to
affranchise men, did nothing, we may say, for the affranchisement of
women.... '91 respected almost all of the feminine disabilities of '88,
and the Consulate confirmed them in the civil code."
This, in Legouvé's opinion was the fault of the philosophy of the
eighteenth century, for "woman is, according to Diderot, a courtesan;
according to Montesquieu, an attractive child; according to Rousseau, an
object of pleasure to man; according to Voltaire, nothing.... Condorcet
and Sieyès demanded even the political emancipation of woman; but their
protests were stifled by the powerful voices of the three great
continuers of the eighteenth century, Mirabeau, Danton, and Robespierre."
Under the Consulate, "feminine liberty had no more decided enemy (than
Bonaparte:) a southerner, the spirituality of woman was lost on him; a
warrior, he saw in the family a camp, and there required, before all
else, discipline; a despot, he saw in it a state, and there required,
before all else, obedience. He it was who concluded a discussion in
council with these words: _There is one thing that is not French; that a
woman can do as she pleases_.... Always man (in the thought of
Bonaparte), always the honor of man! As to the happiness of woman, it is
not a single time in question (in the civil code.)"
It is in behalf of the weakness of women, it is in behalf of tradition
which shows them constantly subordinate, it is in behalf of their
household functions, that the adversaries of the emancipation of women
oppose it. "To educate them is to deform them; and they do not want their
playthings spoiled," says M. Legouvé, ironically. He then continues in a
serious strain: "What matters tradition to us? What matters history to
us? There is an authority more powerful than the consent of the human
race: _it is the Right_. Though a thousand more centuries of servitude
should be added to those which have already passed, their accord could
not banish the primordial right which rules over everything, the absolute
right of perfecting one's self which every being has received from the
sole fact that he has been created."
To those who base their opposition on the domestic functions of woman, he
answers: "If there (in the household) is their kingdom, then there they
should be queens; their own faculties assure them there of authority, and
their adversaries are forced, by their own principles, to emancipate
them as daughters, as wives, as mothers. Or, on the contrary, it is
sought to extend their influence, to give them a rôle in the state, _and
we believe that they should have one_: well; it is also in this
dissimilarity (between the two sexes), that it is fitting to seek it.
When two beings are of value to each other, it is almost always because
they differ from, not because they resemble each other. Far from
dispossessing men, the mission of women therefore would be to do what men
leave undone, to aspire to empty places, in short, to represent in the
commonwealth the spirit of woman."
As is evident, Legouvé demands the civil emancipation of woman in the
name of the eternal Right, in the name of the happiness of the family, in
the name of the commonwealth; their long standing oppression is an
iniquitous fact, and he casts blame on all who have perpetuated it. This
blame from a man of heart and justice may perhaps have some weight with
those women who are so much accustomed to bondage that they do not blush
at it--that they even no longer feel it!
In his first book, "The Daughter," which is divided into seven chapters,
Legouvé takes the child from her birth; he shows her made inferior in the
ancient religions and systems of legislation by Menu, by Moses, at Rome,
at Sparta, at Athens, and under the feudal régime; and he asks why, even
in our days, the birth of a daughter is received with a sort of disfavor.
It is because she will neither continue the name nor the works of her
father, says he; it is because her future gives rise to a thousand
anxieties. "Life is so rude and so uncertain for a girl! Poor, how many
chances of misery! Rich, how many chances of moral suffering! If she is
to have only her labor for a maintenance, how shall we give her an
occupation that will support her in a state of society in which women
scarcely earn wherewith not to die? If she has no dowry, how can she
marry in this world in which woman, never representing anything but a
passive being, is forced to buy a husband?... From this _début_, and in
this child's cradle, we have found and caught a glimpse of all the chains
that await women: insufficiency of education for the rich girl;
insufficiency of wages for the poor girl; exclusion from the greater part
of the professions; subordination in the conjugal abode."
In the second chapter, the author shows by what gradations the daughter,
deprived of the right of inheritance, has come in our times to share
equally with her brothers; then, passing to the right of education, he
answers those who pretend that to give a solid education to woman would
be to corrupt her and to injure the family: "The diversity of their
nature (man and woman) being developed by the identity of their studies,
it may be said that women would become so much the more fully women in
proportion as they received a masculine education.
"Well! it is in the name of the family, in the name of the salvation of
the family, in the name of maternity, of marriage, of the household, that
a solid and earnest education must be demanded for girls.... Without
knowledge, no mother is completely a mother, without knowledge no wife is
truly a wife. The question is not, in revealing to the feminine intellect
the laws of nature, to make all our girls astronomers or physicians; do
we see all men become Latinists by spending ten years of their life in
the study of Latin? The question is to strengthen their minds by
acquaintance with science; and to prepare them to participate in all the
thoughts of their husbands, all the studies of their children....
Ignorance leads to a thousand faults, a thousand errors in the wife. The
husband who scoffs at science might have been saved by it from dishonor."
Insisting upon the rights of woman, the author adds: "As such (the work
of God) she has the right to the most complete development of her mind
and heart. Away then with these vain objections, drawn from the laws of a
day! It is in the name of eternity that you owe her enlightenment."
Further on, he exclaims indignantly: "What! the state maintains a
university for men, a polytechnic school for men, academies of art and
trades for men, agricultural schools for men--and for woman, what has it
established? Primary schools! And even these were not founded by the
State, but by the Commune. No inequality could be more humiliating. There
are courts and prisons for women, there should be public education for
women; you have not the right to punish those whom you do not instruct!"
M. Legouvé demands, in consequence, public education for girls in
athenæums, "which, by thorough instruction with respect to France, her
laws, her annals, and her poetry, shall make her women French women in
truth. The country alone can teach love of country."
Ancient religions and systems of legislation punished misdemeanors and
crimes against the purity of women severely (says M. Legouvé in his
fourth chapter). Our code, profoundly immoral, does not punish seduction,
and punishes corruption only derisively, and violation insufficiently. To
declare void the promise of marriage is fearful immorality; to permit no
investigation of paternity and to admit that of maternity, is as cruel
as it is immoral. If the solicitude of the legislator for property be
compared with his solicitude for purity, we shall soon see how little the
law cares for the latter. "The law recognizes as criminal only a single
kind of robbery of honor, _violation_, but it defines, pursues and
punishes two kinds of robbery of money, _larceny_ and _fraud_; there are
thieves of coin, there are no sharpers in chastity."
When a man has seduced a girl fifteen years old under promise of
marriage, he has "a right to come before a magistrate and say: This is my
signature, it is true; but I refuse to acknowledge it; a debt of love is
void in law."
The indignant author exclaims, further on: "Thus, therefore, on every
side, in practice and in theory, in the world and in the law, for the
rich as for the poor, we see abandonment of public purity, and a loose
rein to all ungoverned or depraved desires.... Manufacturers seduce their
workwomen, foremen of workshops discharge young girls who will not yield
to them, masters corrupt their servant maids. Of 5083 lost women,
enumerated by the grave Parent-Duchâtelet at Paris in 1830, 285 were
servants, seduced by their masters, and discarded. Clerks, merchants,
officers, students deprave poor country girls and bring them to Paris,
where they abandon them, and prostitution gathers them up.... At Rheims,
at Lille, in all the great centres of industry, are found organized
companies for the recruital of the houses of debauchery of Paris."
With the indignation of an upright man, M. Legouvé adds: "Punish the
guilty woman if you will, but punish also the man! She is already
punished; punished by abandonment, punished by dishonor, punished by
remorse, punished by nine months of suffering, punished by the burden of
rearing a child: let him then be smitten in turn; or else, it is not
public decency that you are protecting, as you say, it is masculine
sovereignty, in its vilest form: seigniorial right!
"Impunity assured to men doubles the number of illegitimate children.
Impunity fosters libertinism; libertinism enervates the race, wastes
fortunes and blights offspring. Impunity fosters prostitution;
prostitution destroys the public health, and makes a profession of
idleness and license. Impunity, in short, surrenders half the human race
as a prey to the vices of the other half: behold its condemnation in a
single word."
In the fifth chapter, the author finding, with reason, that girls are
married too young, desires that they should not enter upon family duties
until twenty-two years old; works of charity, solid studies, innocent
pleasures, and the ideal of pure love will suffice to keep them pure till
this age. "If the young maiden learns that nothing is more fatal to this
divine sentiment (love) than the ephemeral fancies which dare call
themselves by its name; if she perceives in it one of those rare
treasures which we win only by conquering them, which we keep only by
deserving them; if she knows that the heart which would be worthy to
receive it must be purified like a sanctuary and enlarged like a temple;
then be sure that this sublime ideal, engraven within her, will disgust
her, by its beauty alone, with the vain images that profane or parody it;
idols are not worshipped when God is known."
"What is marriage?" asks M. Legouvé.
"The union of two free beings, forming an alliance in order to perfect
themselves through love." Neither antiquity nor the Middle Age considered
it in this light. The father, in ancient times, transmitted to the
husband his right of property in his daughter in consideration of a
certain sum. At Athens, the daughter, even when married, formed part of
the paternal inheritance, and was bound to leave her husband to espouse
the heir. At Rome, the father, after having given his daughter in
marriage, had the power to take her back and to espouse her to another.
Among the barbarians, she belonged to him who paid the _mundium_ to her
father. Under the feudal system, the law disposed also of the daughter
without her consent. The French Revolution emancipated her in this
respect; she is required now to consent to her marriage; but the customs
of the age take from her the benefit of this emancipation; she is married
too young to know what she is doing, and interest almost always
determines her parents to give her in marriage. For woman to profit by
her legal emancipation, she should be at least twenty-two years old when
she marries; she should make her choice freely; and her relatives should
content themselves with keeping her apart from those whom she ought not
to choose, and should only enlighten and counsel her; for on the love
between the married couple depends the happiness and virtue of the wife.
Examining next the origin of the dower, the transferral of the dowry, the
betrothal and the marriage, he shows the _mundium_ paid at first to the
father or the brother; then later, to the maiden, becoming, with the rest
of the nuptial gifts, the origin of the dower, which he wishes to see
made obligatory in modern times. Passing to the dowry, he proves that,
becoming by degrees a custom among the Romans, it was at first the
property of the husband; then, as the world progressed, it became the
property of the wife. Our code fully protects the dowry; but the law
should oblige wealthy parents to endow their daughters so that they can
marry. In olden times, a maiden was betrothed by pledges exchanged by the
father and the man who asked her in marriage; at a later date the pledge
was given to the maiden instead of the father, and the law intervened to
render obligatory promises of marriage. At the present day, in France,
there are no longer betrothed, but future spouses.
In his second book, the author distinguishes the beloved one from the
mistress, the adoration of pure from that of sensual love; the first
produces goodness, patriotism, and respect for woman; the second regards
her only as an object of pleasure and of disdain. Antiquity had no
knowledge of pure love; the Middle Age, which comprehended it, was
divided equally between it and sensual love; to-day, we have learned to
comprehend that the two loves should be united; that the beloved and the
mistress should make one in the person of the wife.
The third book, "The Wife," is divided into seven chapters.
The subordination of woman in marriage, with contempt for the mother,
arose from two erroneous ideas: the inferiority of her nature; her
passivity in the reproduction of the species, in which she performed the
part of the earth with respect to the reception of germs. Modern science
has destroyed these bases of inferiority by demonstrating: 1st, that the
human germ, before taking its definitive form, passes, in the bosom of
its mother, through progressive degrees of animal life; 2d, that in all
species, both animal and vegetable, the females are the conservers of the
race, which they bring to their own type.
Among the Romans, two forms of marriage placed the wife, soul, body and
estate, _in the hands_ of her husband; in a third form, which left her in
her father's family, she received a dowry, inherited, and administered
her property. Barbarism and feudality made the wife a ward, the husband
an administrator, and a step was taken towards the equality of the
spouses by the institution of _acquêts_, or property belonging to both,
though obtained by but one. To-day, the maiden is married sometimes under
the dotal system, occasionally under that of the separation of property,
and chiefly under that of communion of goods. This last, which is the
rule, permits the husband to dispose of the property of his partner, to
sell the household furniture, to take possession of the very jewels of
his wife to adorn his mistress. "Thus, this law respects no dignity, no
delicacy, nothing whatever," says M. Legouvé. The omnipotence of the
husband is a crime of the law in every point of view; it is in manifest
violation of the modern principle, which exacts that all authority shall
be limited and placed under surveillance. "To surrender to the husband
the fortune of the wife is to condemn her to an eternal moral minority,
to create him absolute master of the actions and almost of the soul of
his companion." The author next addresses himself to those who pretend to
justify marital omnipotence by the incapacity of woman: "In vain do facts
protest against this alleged incapacity; in vain does reality say: To
whom is the prosperity of most of our commercial houses due? To women.
Who establish, who superintend the thousands of establishments of
millinery and objects of taste? Women. By whom are the boarding-schools,
the farms, often even, the manufactories, sustained? By women. It matters
not, the Code denies to the wife the foresight to preserve, the judgment
to administer, even the maternal tenderness to economize, and the
marriage certificate becomes the expression of this disdainful phrase:
the most reasonable woman never attains the good sense of a boy fourteen
years of age." How shall we set to work to remedy this iniquitous and
shameful state of affairs? The property of the partners should be divided
into three shares: one for the wife, to be placed at her disposal five
years after marriage, one for the husband, and a third common to both, to
be administered by the husband under the direction of a family council,
which council, in case of incapacity or waste, shall have the right
provisionally to take away the management from him, to entrust it to his
wife.
If anything is iniquitous and revolting, it is the power of the husband
over the person and the actions of his wife; the right over her of
correction, still tolerated in our days. There must be a directing power
in the household; the husband must be the depositary of this power, which
should be limited, and controlled by the family council. Legal
omnipotence demoralizes the husband, who believes in the end in the
lawfulness of his despotism. It is said that custom establishes precisely
the contrary of what the laws prescribe: this is generally true, but it
is at the expense of the moral character of the wife, thus forced to have
recourse to artifice. "Restore liberty to women, since liberty is truth!"
exclaims Legouvé. "This will be, at the same time, to affranchise man.
Servitude always creates two slaves: he who holds the chain and he who
wears it."
Antiquity, the Middle Age, and the centuries nearer our own, punished the
adultery of the wife severely, even cruelly, yet did not admit that a man
could become guilty of this offence with respect to his spouse. Our
present code acknowledges, indeed, that the husband can commit adultery,
but only in case he maintains his mistress under the conjugal roof; the
wife is an adulteress everywhere, and is punished severely; as to the
husband, his punishment is a farce. "Such impunity," says M. Legouvé, "is
not only injurious to order, it is an insult to public morals, _it is a
lesson of debauchery, given by the law itself_." If, by adultery, the
wife wounds the heart of an honorable man, introduces false heirs into
the family, she at least can abstract nothing from the common fortune;
while the husband, in the same case, can ruin the family, while
increasing the number of natural children and provoking his wife to wrong
by his neglect and brutality. The husband, besides, is more criminal than
the wife, for he seeks adultery, while, on the contrary, it comes to the
wife under a thousand attractive forms. Notwithstanding, the adultery of
the woman deserves greater punishment than that of the man.... Ah! M.
Legouvé, is this logic?
The Oriental wife was and is still, a slave, a generatrix; the Roman wife
was something more than this; the wife of the Middle Age owed her body to
her husband, but the Courts of Love had decided that her affections
could, nay, should belong to another. To-day, the ideal of marriage is
enlarged; we comprehend that it is the fusion of two souls, a school for
mutual perfection, and that the two spouses should belong wholly to each
other.
We have been led to this new ideal of the conjugal union by the
civilizing struggles of the church against divorce and repudiation. In
its nature, marriage is indissoluble, but in the existing state of things
in which the ideal is but very exceptionally realized, the legislator has
deemed it right to render possible the separation of the spouses: this
measure is immoral and unfortunate both for the partners and for their
children. The only remedy for family difficulties is _divorce_, a
question with which the church has nothing to do.
The whole of the last chapter of the third book is a condemnation of
fickleness in love, and an affirmation of the indissolubility of marriage
and of the sanctity of the conjugal tie.
The fourth book, "The Mother," comprises six chapters.
Until a late day, it was believed that woman was only the soil in which
man, the creator of the species, deposited the human germ. Modern science
has overthrown this false doctrine, and elevated woman by demonstrating
these three incontestable facts: 1st, that, dating from the moment of
conception, the human germ passes through successive degrees of animal
life until it acquires its proper form; 2d, that the female sex is the
conserver of the race, since it always brings them to its own type, as
well in the human as in the animal and vegetable species; 3d, that woman
is physiologically of a nature superior to man, since it is now
demonstrated that the higher the respiratory apparatus is placed in the
organism, the more elevated is the species in the scale of beings; and
that woman breathes from the upper, and man from the lower part of the
lungs.
Maternity does not give to women rights over their children, but
contributes, notwithstanding, to their emancipation; thus, in India, a
woman who had borne sons could not be repudiated, and at Rome, a woman
emerged from tutelage at maternity.
It is iniquitous to give the paternal authority to the father alone; the
mother should have an equal right with him over her children. Supremacy
of direction belongs indeed to the father, but this direction should be
limited and superintended by a family council, and transferred to the
mother in case of the unworthiness of her spouse.
The education of the children belongs of right to the mother, because she
understands them best, and because it is necessary that she should
acquire that entire influence over her sons which she will need
afterwards to counsel and to console them. Public education is not fit
for boys until they have attained their twelfth year; younger, it is
injurious in its results to their character. The author demands that the
maternal grand-parents shall not be made inferior in guardianship, as is
the case now in the law; and he considers it as sacrilege not to give to
the mother an equal right with respect to consent to the marriage of
their children.
Legitimate maternity is happiness to the rich woman; want, often grief,
to the poor woman. Illegitimate maternity is to women of all ranks a
source of sorrow, shame and crime. To the rich girl it is dishonor, an
eternal bar to marriage; to the poor girl it is poverty, shame if she
keeps her child; crime, if she destroys it. Yet the law dares grant
impunity to the corrupter, to the seducer, to the man who has not
hesitated to sacrifice to a moment of passion the whole future of a
woman, the whole future of a child! The State ought to come to the aid of
all poor mothers, because it is for its interest that the race should be
strong and vigorous, and because mothers are the preservers of the race.
Let the genius of women be set to work; let infant schools and infant
asylums be founded in every quarter of France.
The Hindoo widow was burned; the Jewish widow was bound to re-marry
certain men designated by the law; the Grecian and the Gothic widow
passed under the guardianship of her son, and the latter could not even
re-marry without his permission; the Christian widow was condemned to
seclusion; none of these women had any rights over their children. The
French code restores full liberty to the widow, renders to her the right
of majority, appoints her the guardian and directress of her children; it
is a preliminary step to liberty in marriage.
The fifth book, _Woman_, is divided into five chapters.
All antiquity oppressed woman, although it recognized in her something
superior, and made her a priestess or a prophetess. The Christian woman
of the early ages, who alone could dethrone the Pagan woman, not only
endured martyrdom as courageously as man, but was distinguished for her
great charity, for the purity and lucidity of doctrine which rendered her
the counsellor of learned men. We do not know, in reality, to what
heights woman can attain; we cannot judge her by what she is to-day,
since she is the work of the eternal oppression of man. "Who can say
whether many of the ills that rend society, and of the insoluble
problems that trouble it, may not be caused in part by the annihilation
of one of the two forces of creation, the ban placed on female genius?
Have we a right to say to half the human kind: you shall not have your
share in life and in the state? Is it not to deny to them (to women)
their title of human beings? Is it not to disinherit the state itself?
Yes, woman should have her place in civil life," concludes Legouvé.
Woman and man are equal, but different. To man, belong synthesis,
superiority in all that demands comprehensive views, genius, muscular
force; to woman, belong the spirit of analysis, the comprehension of
details, imagination, tenderness, grace. Man has more strength of reason
and body, woman more strength of heart, with a marvelous perspicacity to
which man will never attain. The division thus fixed, what ought woman to
do?
In the family, the task of the wife is the management of domestic
affairs, the education of the children, and the comfort of the husband,
of whom she should be the inspiration. By the side of the eminent man,
yet in the shade, there is always a woman; this career of hidden utility
and of modest devotion is the one best suited to woman. In civil life
there are several fields of occupation which they may enter with success:
art, literature, instruction, _administration_, medicine. "Modesty itself
demands that we should call in women as physicians, not to men, but to
women; for it is an abiding outrage upon all purity that their ignorance
should forcibly expose to masculine curiosity the sufferings of their
sisters.... Nervous diseases, especially, would find in feminine genius
the only adversary able to understand and combat them." The author says
that it is the duty of society to see that poor women do not work for
one-third or one-fourth the wages of men; and that, in manufactures, they
have not the most dangerous and least remunerative labors.
"Parent-Duchâtelet," says he, "attests that of three thousand lost women,
_only thirty-five had an occupation that could support them_, and that
fourteen hundred had been precipitated into this horrible life by
destitution. One of them, when she resolved on this course, _had eaten
nothing for three days_." M. Legouvé thinks it shameful that men should
enter into competition with women in the manufacture of articles of dress
and taste.
In the fifth and last chapter, the author recognizes the remarkable
capacity of women in administration, of which he cites numerous examples.
He demands that they should have the superintendence of prisons for
women, hospitals, charitable institutions, the legal guardianship of
foundlings, the management, in short, of all that concerns social
charity, because they will acquit themselves in it infinitely better than
men. But he refuses to them all participation in political acts and in
all that concerns the government, because they have no aptitude for
things of this nature. Finally, he concludes thus: "Our task is finished;
we have examined the principal phases of the life of women, in the
character of daughters, wives, mothers, and women, comparing the present
with the past, and endeavoring to indicate the future; that is, by
pointing out the bad, verifying the better, seeking the best.
"What principle has served us in this as a guide? Equality in difference.
"In the name of this principle, what ameliorations have we demanded in
the laws and customs?
"For daughters:
"Reform in education.
"Laws against seduction.
"The postponement of the marriageable age.
"The actual participation of the betrothed parties in the execution of
their contract.
"Abolition of the formal request to the father of consent to marriage,
which is an insult to the father and an injustice to the child.
"For wives:
"An age of legal majority.
"Administration, and the right of disposing of a portion of their private
property.
"The right to appear in law without the consent of their husbands.
"The limitation of the power of the husband over the person of the wife.
"The creation of a family council, charged with controlling this part of
the power.
"For mothers:
"The right of government.
"The right of direction.
"The right of education.
"The right of consent to the marriage of their children.
"A law requiring the investigation of paternity.
"The creation of a family council to decide on serious disagreements
between father and mother.
"For women:
"Admission to guardianship and the family council.
"Admission to all professions.
"Admission within the bounds of their capabilities and duties to public
offices."
It is evident that Legouvé has but one end, that of advancing the
emancipation of women a single step; he does not demand all that he
believes just, but all that seems to him mature and possible.
We should thank him for his prudence: he has brought over many men to our
cause, and has prepared them to hear the voice of woman, speaking loudly
and firmly by her right as a wife and a human being, as a worker and a
member of the social body.
By the side of Legouvé, outside the social schools, are a phalanx of just
and generous men who have written in our favor. We thank them all for
their good words.