WOMAN

Among those movements which seem to be, now and then, endemic in the

public mind,—perhaps we should say, sporadic,—rather than the single

inspiration of one mind, is that which has urged on society the benefits

of action having for its object a benefit to the position of Woman. And

none is more seriously interesting to every healthful and thoughtful mind.

In that race which is now predominant over all the other races of men,

it was a cherished belief that women had an oracular nature. They are

more delicate than men,—delicate as iodine to light,—and thus more

impressionable. They are the best index of the coming hour. I share

this belief. I think their words are to be weighed; but it is their

inconsiderate word,—according to the rule, ‘take their first advice, not

the second:’ as Coleridge was wont to apply to a lady for her judgment

in questions of taste, and accept it; but when she added—“I think

so, because—” “Pardon me, madam,” he said, “leave me to find out the

reasons for myself.” In this sense, as more delicate mercuries of the

imponderable and immaterial influences, what they say and think is the

shadow of coming events. Their very dolls are indicative. Among our Norse

ancestors, Frigga was worshipped as the goddess of women. “Weirdes all,”

said the Edda, “Frigga knoweth, though she telleth them never.” That is

to say, all wisdoms Woman knows; though she takes them for granted, and

does not explain them as discoveries, like the understanding of man.

Men remark figure: women always catch the expression. They inspire by a

look, and pass with us not so much by what they say or do, as by their

presence. They learn so fast and convey the result so fast as to outrun

the logic of their slow brother and make his acquisitions poor.[201] ’Tis

their mood and tone that is important. Does their mind misgive them, or

are they firm and cheerful? ’Tis a true report that things are going ill

or well. And any remarkable opinion or movement shared by woman will be

the first sign of revolution.

Plato said, Women are the same as men in faculty, only less in degree.

But the general voice of mankind has agreed that they have their own

strength; that women are strong by sentiment; that the same mental height

which their husbands attain by toil, they attain by sympathy with their

husbands. Man is the will, and Woman the sentiment. In this ship of

humanity, Will is the rudder, and Sentiment the sail: when Woman affects

to steer, the rudder is only a masked sail. When women engage in any

art or trade, it is usually as a resource, not as a primary object. The

life of the affections is primary to them, so that there is usually no

employment or career which they will not with their own applause and that

of society quit for a suitable marriage. And they give entirely to their

affections, set their whole fortune on the die, lose themselves eagerly

in the glory of their husbands and children. Man stands astonished at

a magnanimity he cannot pretend to. Mrs. Lucy Hutchinson, one of the

heroines of the English Commonwealth, who wrote the life of her husband,

the Governor of Nottingham, says, “If he esteemed her at a higher rate

than she in herself could have deserved, he was the author of that

virtue he doted on, while she only reflected his own glories upon him.

All that she was, was _him_, while he was hers, and all that she is now,

at best, but his pale shade.” As for Plato’s opinion, it is true that,

up to recent times, in no art or science, nor in painting, poetry or

music, have they produced a masterpiece. Till the new education and

larger opportunities of very modern times, this position, with the fewest

possible exceptions, has always been true. Sappho, to be sure, in the

Olympic Games, gained the crown over Pindar. But, in general, no mastery

in either of the fine arts—which should, one would say, be the arts of

women—has yet been obtained by them, equal to the mastery of men in the

same. The part they play in education, in the care of the young and the

tuition of older children, is their organic office in the world. So much

sympathy as they have makes them inestimable as the mediators between

those who have knowledge and those who want it: besides, their fine

organization, their taste and love of details, makes the knowledge they

give better in their hands.

But there is an art which is better than painting, poetry, music, or

architecture,—better than botany, geology, or any science; namely,

Conversation. Wise, cultivated, genial conversation is the last flower of

civilization and the best result which life has to offer us,—a cup for

gods, which has no repentance. Conversation is our account of ourselves.

All we have, all we can, all we know, is brought into play, and as the

reproduction, in finer form, of all our havings.

Women are, by this and their social influence, the civilizers of

mankind. What is civilization? I answer, the power of good women. It

was Burns’s remark when he first came to Edinburgh that between the

men of rustic life and the polite world he observed little difference;

that in the former, though unpolished by fashion and unenlightened

by science, he had found much observation and much intelligence; but

a refined and accomplished woman was a being almost new to him, and

of which he had formed a very inadequate idea. “I like women,” said

a clear-headed man of the world; “they are so finished.” They finish

society, manners, language. Form and ceremony are their realm. They

embellish trifles. All these ceremonies that hedge our life around are

not to be despised, and when we have become habituated to them, cannot

be dispensed with. No woman can despise them with impunity. Their genius

delights in ceremonies, in forms, in decorating life with manners, with

properties, order and grace. They are, in their nature, more relative;

the circumstance must always be fit; out of place they lose half their

weight, out of place they are disfranchised. Position, Wren said, is

essential to the perfecting of beauty;—a fine building is lost in a dark

lane; a statue should stand in the air; much more true is it of woman.

We commonly say that easy circumstances seem somehow necessary to the

finish of the female character: but then it is to be remembered that

they create these with all their might. They are always making that

civilization which they require; that state of art, of decoration, that

ornamental life in which they best appear.

The spiritual force of man is as much shown in taste, in his fancy

and imagination,—attaching deep meanings to things and to arbitrary

inventions of no real value,—as in his perception of truth. He is as

much raised above the beast by this creative faculty as by any other.

The horse and ox use no delays; they run to the river when thirsty, to

the corn when hungry, and say no thanks, but fight down whatever opposes

their appetite. But man invents and adorns all he does with delays

and degrees, paints it all over with forms, to please himself better;

he invented majesty and the etiquette of courts and drawing-rooms;

architecture, curtains, dress, all luxuries and adornments, and the

elegance of privacy, to increase the joys of society. He invented

marriage; and surrounded by religion, by comeliness, by all manner of

dignities and renunciations, the union of the sexes.

And how should we better measure the gulf between the best intercourse

of men in old Athens, in London, or in our American capitals,—between

this and the hedgehog existence of diggers of worms, and the eaters of

clay and offal,—than by signalizing just this department of taste or

comeliness? Herein woman is the prime genius and ordainer. There is no

grace that is taught by the dancing-master, no style adopted into the

etiquette of courts, but was first the whim and the mere action of some

brilliant woman, who charmed beholders by this new expression, and made

it remembered and copied. And I think they should magnify their ritual of

manners.[202] Society, conversation, decorum, flowers, dances, colors,

forms, are their homes and attendants. They should be found in fit

surroundings—with fair approaches, with agreeable architecture, and with

all advantages which the means of man collect:

“The far-fetched diamond finds its home

Flashing and smouldering in her hair.

For her the seas their pearls reveal,

Art and strange lands her pomp supply

With purple, chrome and cochineal,

Ochre and lapis lazuli.

The worm its golden woof presents.

Whatever runs, flies, dives or delves

All doff for her their ornaments,

Which suit her better than themselves.”[203]

There is no gift of Nature without some drawback. So, to women, this

exquisite structure could not exist without its own penalty. More

vulnerable, more infirm, more mortal than men, they could not be such

excellent artists in this element of fancy if they did not lend and give

themselves to it. They are poets who believe their own poetry. They emit

from their pores a colored atmosphere, one would say, wave upon wave of

rosy light, in which they walk evermore, and see all objects through this

warm-tinted mist that envelops them.

But the starry crown of woman is in the power of her affection and

sentiment, and the infinite enlargements to which they lead. Beautiful

is the passion of love, painter and adorner of youth and early life: but

who suspects, in its blushes and tremors, what tragedies, heroisms and

immortalities are beyond it? The passion, with all its grace and poetry,

is profane to that which follows it. All these affections are only

introductory to that which is beyond, and to that which is sublime.

We men have no right to say it, but the omnipotence of Eve is in

humility. The instincts of mankind have drawn the Virgin Mother—

“Created beings all in lowliness

Surpassing, as in height above them all.”[204]

This is the Divine Person whom Dante and Milton saw in vision. This is

the victory of Griselda, her supreme humility. And it is when love has

reached this height that all our pretty rhetoric begins to have meaning.

When we see that, it adds to the soul a new soul, it is honey in the

mouth, music in the ear and balsam in the heart.

“Far have I clambered in my mind,

But nought so great as Love I find.

What is thy tent, where dost thou dwell?

‘My mansion is humility,

Heaven’s vastest capability.’

The further it doth downward tend,

The higher up it doth ascend.”[205]

The first thing men think of, when they love, is to exhibit their

usefulness and advantages to the object of their affection. Women make

light of these, asking only love. They wish it to be an exchange of

nobleness.

There is much in their nature, much in their social position which gives

them a certain power of divination. And women know, at first sight, the

characters of those with whom they converse. There is much that tends to

give them a religious height which men do not attain. Their sequestration

from affairs and from the injury to the moral sense which affairs often

inflict, aids this. And in every remarkable religious development in the

world, women have taken a leading part. It is very curious that in the

East, where Woman occupies, nationally, a lower sphere, where the laws

resist the education and emancipation of women,—in the Mohammedan faith,

Woman yet occupies the same leading position, as a prophetess, that she

has among the ancient Greeks, or among the Hebrews, or among the Saxons.

This power, this religious character, is everywhere to be remarked in

them.[206]

The action of society is progressive. In barbarous society the position

of women is always low—in the Eastern nations lower than in the West.

“When a daughter is born,” says the Shiking, the old Sacred Book of

China, “she sleeps on the ground, she is clothed with a wrapper,

she plays with a tile; she is incapable of evil or of good.” And

something like that position, in all low society, is the position of

woman; because, as before remarked, she is herself its civilizer.

With the advancements of society, the position and influence of

woman bring her strength or her faults into light. In modern times,

three or four conspicuous instrumentalities may be marked. After the

deification of Woman in the Catholic Church, in the sixteenth or

seventeenth century,—when her religious nature gave her, of course, new

importance,—the Quakers have the honor of having first established, in

their discipline, the equality in the sexes. It is even more perfect

in the later sect of the Shakers, where no business is broached or

counselled without the intervention of one elder and one elderess.

A second epoch for Woman was in France,—entirely civil; the change

of sentiment from a rude to a polite character, in the age of Louis

XIV.,—commonly dated from the building of the Hôtel de Rambouillet.[207]

I think another important step was made by the doctrine of Swedenborg,

a sublime genius who gave a scientific exposition of the part played

severally by man and woman in the world, and showed the difference of sex

to run through nature and through thought. Of all Christian sects this

is at this moment the most vital and aggressive.

Another step was the effect of the action of the age in the antagonism

to Slavery. It was easy to enlist Woman in this; it was impossible not

to enlist her. But that Cause turned out to be a great scholar. He was a

terrible metaphysician. He was a jurist, a poet, a divine. Was never a

University of Oxford or Göttingen that made such students. It took a man

from the plough and made him acute, eloquent, and wise, to the silencing

of the doctors. There was nothing it did not pry into, no right it did

not explore, no wrong it did not expose. And it has, among its other

effects, given Woman a feeling of public duty and an added self-respect.

One truth leads in another by the hand; one right is an accession of

strength to take more. And the times are marked by the new attitude

of Woman; urging, by argument and by association, her rights of all

kinds,—in short, to one half of the world;—as the right to education, to

avenues of employment, to equal rights of property, to equal rights in

marriage, to the exercise of the professions and of suffrage.

Of course, this conspicuousness had its inconveniences. But it is cheap

wit that has been spent on this subject; from Aristophanes, in whose

comedies I confess my dulness to find good joke, to Rabelais, in whom it

is monstrous exaggeration of temperament, and not borne out by anything

in nature,—down to English Comedy, and, in our day, to Tennyson,[208]

and the American newspapers. In all, the body of the joke is one,

namely, to charge women with temperament; to describe them as victims of

temperament; and is identical with Mahomet’s opinion that women have not

a sufficient moral or intellectual force to control the perturbations

of their physical structure. These were all drawings of morbid anatomy,

and such satire as might be written on the tenants of a hospital or on

an asylum for idiots. Of course it would be easy for women to retaliate

in kind, by painting men from the dogs and gorillas that have worn our

shape. That they have not, is an eulogy on their taste and self-respect.

The good easy world took the joke which it liked. There is always the

want of thought; there is always credulity. There are plenty of people

who believe women to be incapable of anything but to cook, incapable of

interest in affairs. There are plenty of people who believe that the

world is governed by men of dark complexions, that affairs are only

directed by such, and do not see the use of contemplative men, or how

ignoble would be the world that wanted them. And so without the affection

of women.

But for the general charge: no doubt it is well founded. They are victims

of the finer temperament. They have tears, and gayeties, and faintings,

and glooms and devotion to trifles. Nature’s end, of maternity for

twenty years, was of so supreme importance that it was to be secured at

all events, even to the sacrifice of the highest beauty. They are more

personal. Men taunt them that, whatever they do, say, read or write, they

are thinking of themselves and their set. Men are not to the same degree

temperamented, for there are multitudes of men who live to objects quite

out of them, as to politics, to trade, to letters or an art, unhindered

by any influence of constitution.

The answer that lies, silent or spoken, in the minds of well-meaning

persons, to the new claims, is this: that though their mathematical

justice is not to be denied, yet the best women do not wish these things;

they are asked for by people who intellectually seek them, but who have

not the support or sympathy of the truest women; and that, if the laws

and customs were modified in the manner proposed, it would embarrass and

pain gentle and lovely persons with duties which they would find irksome

and distasteful. Very likely. Providence is always surprising us with

new and unlikely instruments. But perhaps it is because these people

have been deprived of education, fine companions, opportunities, such as

they wished,—because they feel the same rudeness and disadvantage which

offends you,—that they have been stung to say, ‘It is too late for us to

be polished and fashioned into beauty, but, at least, we will see that

the whole race of women shall not suffer as we have suffered.’

They have an unquestionable right to their own property. And if a

woman demand votes, offices and political equality with men, as among

the Shakers an Elder and Elderess are of equal power,—and among the

Quakers,—it must not be refused. It is very cheap wit that finds it

so droll that a woman should vote. Educate and refine society to the

highest point,—bring together a cultivated society of both sexes, in a

drawing-room, and consult and decide by voices on a question of taste

or on a question of right, and is there any absurdity or any practical

difficulty in obtaining their authentic opinions? If not, then there

need be none in a hundred companies, if you educate them and accustom

them to judge. And, for the effect of it, I can say, for one, that all

my points would sooner be carried in the State if women voted. On the

questions that are important,—whether the government shall be in one

person, or whether representative, or whether democratic; whether men

shall be holden in bondage, or shall be roasted alive and eaten, as in

Typee, or shall be hunted with bloodhounds, as in this country; whether

men shall be hanged for stealing, or hanged at all; whether the unlimited

sale of cheap liquors shall be allowed;—they would give, I suppose, as

intelligent a vote as the voters of Boston or New York.

We may ask, to be sure,—Why need you vote? If new power is here, of a

character which solves old tough questions, which puts me and all the

rest in the wrong, tries and condemns our religion, customs, laws, and

opens new careers to our young receptive men and women, you can well

leave voting to the old dead people. Those whom you teach, and those whom

you half teach, will fast enough make themselves considered and strong

with their new insight, and votes will follow from all the dull.

The objection to their voting is the same as is urged, in the lobbies of

legislatures, against clergymen who take an active part in politics;—that

if they are good clergymen they are unacquainted with the expediencies of

politics, and if they become good politicians they are worse clergymen.

So of women, that they cannot enter this arena without being contaminated

and unsexed.

Here are two or three objections: first, a want of practical wisdom;

second, a too purely ideal view; and, third, danger of contamination. For

their want of intimate knowledge of affairs, I do not think this ought to

disqualify them from voting at any town-meeting which I ever attended. I

could heartily wish the objection were sound. But if any man will take

the trouble to see how our people vote,—how many gentlemen are willing to

take on themselves the trouble of thinking and determining for you, and,

standing at the door of the polls, give every innocent citizen his ticket

as he comes in, informing him that this is the vote of his party; and how

the innocent citizen, without further demur, goes and drops it in the

ballot-box,—I cannot but think he will agree that most women might vote

as wisely.

For the other point, of their not knowing the world, and aiming at

abstract right without allowance for circumstances,—that is not a

disqualification, but a qualification. Human society is made up of

partialities. Each citizen has an interest and a view of his own, which,

if followed out to the extreme, would leave no room for any other

citizen. One man is timid and another rash; one would change nothing, and

the other is pleased with nothing; one wishes schools, another armies,

one gunboats, another public gardens. Bring all these biases together and

something is done in favor of them all.

Every one is a half vote, but the next elector behind him brings the

other or corresponding half in his hand: a reasonable result is had.

Now there is no lack, I am sure, of the expediency, or of the interests

of trade or of imperative class interests being neglected. There is

no lack of votes representing the physical wants; and if in your city

the uneducated emigrant vote numbers thousands, representing a brutal

ignorance and mere animal wants, it is to be corrected by an educated and

religious vote, representing the wants and desires of honest and refined

persons. If the wants, the passions, the vices, are allowed a full vote

through the hands of a half-brutal intemperate population, I think it but

fair that the virtues, the aspirations should be allowed a full vote, as

an offset, through the purest part of the people.

As for the unsexing and contamination,—that only accuses our existing

politics, shows how barbarous we are,—that our policies are so crooked,

made up of things not to be spoken, to be understood only by wink and

nudge; this man to be coaxed, that man to be bought, and that other to

be duped. It is easy to see that there is contamination enough, but it

rots the men now, and fills the air with stench. Come out of that: it is

like a dance-cellar. The fairest names in this country in literature, in

law, have gone into Congress and come out dishonored. And when I read

the list of men of intellect, of refined pursuits, giants in law, or

eminent scholars, or of social distinction, leading men of wealth and

enterprise in the commercial community, and see what they have voted for

and suffered to be voted for, I think no community was ever so politely

and elegantly betrayed.

I do not think it yet appears that women wish this equal share in public

affairs. But it is they and not we that are to determine it. Let the

laws be purged of every barbarous remainder, every barbarous impediment

to women. Let the public donations for education be equally shared by

them, let them enter a school as freely as a church, let them have and

hold and give their property as men do theirs;—and in a few years it will

easily appear whether they wish a voice in making the laws that are to

govern them. If you do refuse them a vote, you will also refuse to tax

them,—according to our Teutonic principle, No representation, no tax.

All events of history are to be regarded as growths and offshoots of

the expanding mind of the race, and this appearance of new opinions,

their currency and force in many minds, is itself the wonderful fact.

For whatever is popular is important, shows the spontaneous sense of

the hour. The aspiration of this century will be the code of the next.

It holds of high and distant causes, of the same influences that make

the sun and moon. When new opinions appear, they will be entertained

and respected, by every fair mind, according to their reasonableness,

and not according to their convenience, or their fitness to shock our

customs. But let us deal with them greatly; let them make their way

by the upper road, and not by the way of manufacturing public opinion,

which lapses continually into expediency, and makes charlatans. All

that is spontaneous is irresistible, and forever it is individual force

that interests. I need not repeat to you—your own solitude will suggest

it—that a masculine woman is not strong, but a lady is. The loneliest

thought, the purest prayer, is rushing to be the history of a thousand

years.

Let us have the true woman, the adorner, the hospitable, the religious

heart, and no lawyer need be called in to write stipulations, the cunning

clauses of provision, the strong investitures;—for woman moulds the

lawgiver and writes the law. But I ought to say, I think it impossible

to separate the interests and education of the sexes. Improve and refine

the men, and you do the same by the women, whether you will or no. Every

woman being the wife or the daughter of a man,—wife, daughter, sister,

mother, of a man, she can never be very far from his ear, never not of

his counsel, if she has really something to urge that is good in itself

and agreeable to nature. Slavery it is that makes slavery; freedom,

freedom. The slavery of women happened when the men were slaves of

kings. The melioration of manners brought their melioration of course.

It could not be otherwise, and hence the new desire of better laws.

For there are always a certain number of passionately loving fathers,

brothers, husbands and sons who put their might into the endeavor to make

a daughter, a wife, or a mother happy in the way that suits best. Woman

should find in man her guardian. Silently she looks for that, and when

she finds that he is not, as she instantly does, she betakes her to her

own defences, and does the best she can. But when he is her guardian,

fulfilled with all nobleness, knows and accepts his duties as her

brother, all goes well for both.

The new movement is only a tide shared by the spirits of man and woman;

and you may proceed in the faith that whatever the woman’s heart is

prompted to desire, the man’s mind is simultaneously prompted to

accomplish.[209]