1.—“... _but a slave himself_ ...”
“The domination of either sex over the other paralyses the dominion of
either.”—Ellen Sarah, Lady Bowyer (Letter to _Daily News_, 24th October,
1891).
_Id._...
“Can man be free if woman be a slave?
Chain one who lives, and breathes this boundless air
To the corruption of a closed grave!
Can they whose mates are beasts, condemned to bear
Scorn, heavier far than toil or anguish, dare
To trample their oppressors?”
—Shelley (“The Revolt of Islam,” Canto 2, s. xliii.).
2.—“... _she to shape her own career be free_ ...”
“Not less wrong—perhaps even more foolishly wrong—is the idea that woman
is only the shadow and attendant image of her lord, owing him a
thoughtless and servile obedience, and supported altogether in her
weakness by the pre-eminence of his fortitude. This, I say, is the most
foolish of all errors, respecting her who was made to be the helpmate of
man. As if he could be helped effectively by a shadow, or worthily by a
slave.”—John Ruskin (“Of Queens’ Gardens,” p. 125).
4.—“_Free mistress of her person’s sacred plan_.”
Eliza W. Farnham (in “Woman and Her Era,” Vol. II., p. 92) clearly
enunciates the depth of degradation and slavery from which woman’s
person must be freed:—“When this mastery is established, and ownership
of her becomes a fixed fact, she who was worshipped, vowed to as an
idol, deferred to as a mistress, required to conform herself to nothing
except the very pleasant requirement that she should take her own way in
everything; to come and go, to accept or reject, to do or not, at her
own supreme pleasure—this being may find herself awaking in a state of
subjection which deprives her of the most sacred right to her own
person—makes her the slave of an exacting demand that ignores the
conditions, emotions, susceptibilities, pains, and pleasures of her
life, as tyrannically and systematically as if she were indeed an
insensate chattel.”
Happily, as far as England is concerned, our law no longer lends its
power to enforce such a position.
5.—“_Free human soul_ ...”
Woman’s deep and wholesome impulse and yearning for individual freedom
and selfdom is well-spoken in the following lines, by an anonymous
writer; touchingly shown also is the unsufficingness to her soul of even
the most honeyed of unequal positions:—
“Oh, to be alone!
To escape from the work, the play,
The talking every day;
To escape from all I have done,
And all that remains to do.
To escape—yes, even from you,
My only love, and be
Alone and free.
Could I only stand
Between gray moor and gray sky,
Where the winds and the plovers cry,
And no man is at hand;
And feel the free wind blow
On my rain-wet face, and know
I am free—not yours, but my own—
Free, and alone!
For the soft firelight
And the home of your heart, my dear,
They hurt, being always here.
I want to stand upright,
And to cool my eyes in the air,
And to see how my back can bear
Burdens—to try, to know,
To learn, to grow!
I am only you!
I am yours, part of you, your wife!
And I have no other life.
I cannot think, cannot do;
I cannot breathe, cannot see;
There is ‘us,’ but there is not ‘me’:—
And worst, at your kiss I grow
Contented so.”
7.—“_From woman slave can come but menial race_,”
“If the result to the family is such as I have described what must be
the effect on the race? A slow but sure degeneration. And has this not
taken place? Is the race now such as you read of it in early times
before the Mogul invasion brought the Zenana and child-marriage in its
train? Where are the Rajputs and the Mahrattas with their manly
exercises and their mental vigour? For centuries you have been children
of children, and there is no surer way of becoming servants of
servants.”—Mrs. Pechey Phipson, M.D. (“Address to the Hindoos,” p. 9).
_Id._... “If children are to be educated to understand the true
principle of patriotism, their mother must be a patriot.”—Mary
Wollstonecraft (Letter to Talleyrand).
8.—“_The mother free confers her freedom and her grace_.”
“The child follows the blood of the mother; the son of a slave or serf
father and a noble woman is noble. ‘It is the womb which dyes the
child,’ they say in their primitive language.... ‘The woman bears the
clan,’ say the Wyandot Indians, just as our ancestors said ‘The womb
dyes the child!’”—Letourneau (“The Evolution of Marriage,” Ch. XI.,
XVII.).