with few exceptions, of all the States in this Union. ‘In Louisiana
and Missouri, and possibly, in some other southern States, a woman not
only has half her husband’s property by right at his death, but may
always be considered as possessed of half his gains during his life;
having at all times power to bequeath that amount.’ That the laws which
have generally been adopted in the United States, for the government
of women, have been framed almost entirely for the exclusive benefit
of men, and with a design to oppress women, by depriving them of all
control over their property, is too manifest to be denied. Some liberal
and enlightened men, I know, regret the existence of these laws; and
I quote with pleasure an extract from Harriet Martineau’s Society in
America, as a proof of the assertion. ‘A liberal minded lawyer of
Boston, told me that his advice to testators always is to leave the
largest possible amount to the widow, subject to the condition of her
leaving it to the children; but that it is with shame that he reflects
that any woman should owe that to his professional advice, which
the law should have secured to her as a right.’ I have known a few
instances where men have left their whole property to their wives, when
they have died, leaving only minor children; but I have known more
instances of ‘the friend and helper of many years, being portioned off
like a salaried domestic,’ instead of having a comfortable independence
secured to her, while the children were amply provided for.
As these abuses do exist, and women suffer intensely from them, our
brethren are called upon in this enlightened age, by every sentiment of
honor, religion and justice, to repeal these unjust and unequal laws,
and restore to woman those rights which they have wrested from her.
Such laws approximate too nearly to the laws enacted by slaveholders
for the government of their slaves, and must tend to debase and
depress the mind of that being, whom God created as a help meet for
man, or ‘helper like unto himself,’ and designed to be his equal and
his companion. Until such laws are annulled, woman never can occupy
that exalted station for which she was intended by her Maker. And just
in proportion as they are practically disregarded, which is the case
to some extent, just so far is woman assuming that independence and
nobility of character which she ought to exhibit.
The various laws which I have transcribed, leave women very little more
liberty, or power, in some respects, than the slave. ‘A slave,’ says
the civil code of Louisiana, ‘is one who is in the power of a master,
to whom he belongs. He can possess nothing, nor acquire anything, but
what must belong to his master.’ I do not wish by any means to intimate
that the condition of free women can be compared to that of slaves in
suffering, or in degradation; still, I believe the laws which deprive
married women of their rights and privileges, have a tendency to
lessen them in their own estimation as moral and responsible beings,
and that their being made by civil law inferior to their husbands, has
a debasing and mischievous effect upon them, teaching them practically
the fatal lesson to look unto man for protection and indulgence.
Ecclesiastical bodies, I believe, without exception, follow the example
of legislative assemblies, in excluding woman from any participation
in forming the discipline by which she is governed. The men frame the
laws, and, with few exceptions, claim to execute them on both sexes. In
ecclesiastical, as well as civil courts, woman is tried and condemned,
not by a jury of her peers, but by beings, who regard themselves as
her superiors in the scale of creation. Although looked upon as an
inferior, when considered as an intellectual being, woman is punished
with the same severity as man, when she is guilty of moral offences.
Her condition resembles, in some measure, that of the slave, who,
while he is denied the advantages of his more enlightened master, is
treated with even greater rigor of the law. Hoping that in the various
reformations of the day, women may be relieved from some of their legal
disabilities, I remain,
Thine in the bonds of womanhood,
SARAH M. GRIMKE.
LETTER XIII.
RELATION OF HUSBAND AND WIFE.
_Brookline, 9th Mo., 1837._
MY DEAR SISTER,--Perhaps some persons may wonder that I should attempt
to throw out my views on the important subject of marriage, and may
conclude that I am altogether disqualified for the task, because I
lack experience. However, I shall not undertake to settle the specific
duties of husbands and wives, but only to exhibit opinions based on
the word of God, and formed from a little knowledge of human nature,
and close observation of the working of generally received notions
respecting the dominion of man over woman.
When Jehovah ushered into existence man, created in his own image,
he instituted marriage as a part of paradisaical happiness: it was a
_divine ordination_, not a civil contract. God established it, and man,
except by special permission, has no right to annul it. There can be no
doubt that the creation of Eve perfected the happiness of Adam; hence,
our all-wise and merciful Father made her as he made Adam, in his own
image after his likeness, crowned her with glory and honor, and placed
in her hand, as well as in his, the sceptre of dominion over the whole
lower creation. Where there was perfect equality, and the same ability
to receive and comprehend divine truth, and to obey divine injunctions,
there could be no superiority. If God had placed Eve under the
guardianship of Adam, after having endowed her, as richly as him, with
moral perceptions, intellectual faculties, and spiritual apprehensions,
he would at once have interposed a fallible being between her and her
Maker. He could not, in simple consistency with himself, have done
this; for the Bible teems with instructions not to put any confidence
in man.
The passage on which the generally received opinion, that husbands are
invested by divine command with authority over their wives, as I have
remarked in a previous letter, is a prediction; and I am confirmed in
this belief, because the same language is used to Cain respecting Abel.
The text is obscure; but on a comparison of it with subsequent events,
it appears to me that it was a prophecy of the dominion which Cain
would usurp over his brother, and which issued in the murder of Abel.
It could not allude to any thing but physical dominion, because Cain
had already exhibited those evil passions which subsequently led him to
become an assassin.
I have already shown, that man has exercised the most unlimited and
brutal power over woman, in the peculiar character of husband,--a word
in most countries synonymous with tyrant. I shall not, therefore,
adduce any further proofs of the fulfilment of that prophecy, ‘He
will rule over thee,’ from the history of heathen nations, but just
glance at the condition of woman in the relation of wife in Christian
countries.
‘Previous to the introduction of the religion of Jesus Christ, the
state of society was wretchedly diseased. The relation of the sexes to
each other had become so gross in its manifested forms, that it was
difficult to perceive the pure conservative principle in its inward
essence.’ Christianity came in, at this juncture, with its hallowed
influence, and has without doubt tended to lighten the yoke of bondage,
to purify the manners, and give the spiritual in some degree an empire
over the animal nature. Still, that state which was designed by God to
increase the happiness of woman as well as man, often proves the means
of lessening her comfort, and degrading her into the mere machine of
another’s convenience and pleasure. Woman, instead of being elevated
by her union with man, which might be expected from an alliance with
a superior being, is in reality lowered. She generally loses her
individuality, her independent character, her moral being. She becomes
absorbed into him, and henceforth is looked at, and acts through the
medium of her husband.
In the wealthy classes of society, and those who are in comfortable
circumstances, women are exempt from great corporeal exertion, and
are protected by public opinion, and by the genial influence of
Christianity, from much physical ill treatment. Still, there is a vast
amount of secret suffering endured, from the forced submission of women
to the opinions and whims of their husbands. Hence they are frequently
driven to use deception, to compass their ends. They are early taught
that to appear to yield, is the only way to govern. Miserable sophism!
I deprecate such sentiments, as being peculiarly hostile to the dignity
of woman. If she submits, let her do it openly, honorably, not to gain
her point, but as a matter of Christian duty. But let her beware how
she permits her husband to be her conscience-keeper. On all moral and
religious subjects, she is bound to think and to act for herself. Where
confidence and love exist, a wife will naturally converse with her
husband as with her dearest friend, on all that interests her heart,
and there will be a perfectly free interchange of sentiment; but _she
is no more bound to be governed by his judgment_, than he is by hers.
They are standing on the same platform of human rights, are equally
under the government of God, and accountable to him, and him alone.
I have sometimes been astonished and grieved at the servitude of
women, and at the little idea many of them seem to have of their own
moral existence and responsibilities. A woman who is asked to sign a
petition for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, or
to join a society for the purpose of carrying forward the annihilation
of American slavery, or any other great reformation, not unfrequently
replies, ‘My husband does not approve of it.’ She merges her rights and
her duties in her husband, and thus virtually chooses him for a savior
and a king, and rejects Christ as her Ruler and Redeemer. I know some
women are very glad of so convenient a pretext to shield themselves
from the performance of duty; but there are others, who, under a
mistaken view of their obligations as wives, submit conscientiously to
this species of oppression, and go mourning on their way, for want of
that holy fortitude, which would enable them to fulfil their duties as
moral and responsible beings, without reference to poor fallen man. O
that woman may arise in her dignity as an immortal creature, and speak,
think and act as unto God, and not unto man!
There is, perhaps, less bondage of mind among the poorer classes,
because their sphere of duty is more contracted, and they are deprived
of the means of intellectual culture, and of the opportunity of
exercising their judgment, on many moral subjects of deep interest and
of vital importance. Authority is called into exercise by resistance,
and hence there will be mental bondage only in proportion as the
faculties of mind are evolved, and woman feels herself as a rational
and intelligent being, on a footing with man. But women, among the
lowest classes of society, so far as my observation has extended,
suffer intensely from the brutality of their husbands. Duty as well as
inclination has led me, for many years, into the abodes of poverty and
sorrow, and I have been amazed at the treatment which women receive
at the hands of those, who arrogate to themselves the epithet of
_protectors_. Brute force, the law of violence, rules to a great extent
in the poor man’s domicil; and woman is little more than his drudge.
They are less under the supervision of public opinion, less under the
restraints of education, and unaided or unbiased by the refinements of
polished society. Religion, wherever it exists, supplies the place of
all these; but the real cause of woman’s degradation and suffering in
married life is to be found in the erroneous notion of her inferiority
to man; and never will she be rightly regarded by herself, or others,
until this opinion, so derogatory to the wisdom and mercy of God, is
exploded, and woman arises in all the majesty of her womanhood, to
claim those rights which are inseparable from her existence as an
immortal, intelligent and responsible being.
Independent of the fact, that Jehovah could not, consistently with his
character as the King, the Lawgiver, and the Judge of his people, give
the reins of government over woman into the hands of man, I find that
all his commands, all his moral laws, are addressed to women as well as
to men. When he assembled Israel at the foot of Mount Sinai, to issue
his commandments, we may reasonably suppose he gave all the precepts,
which he considered necessary for the government of moral beings. Hence
we find that God says,--‘Honor thy father and thy mother,’ and he
enforces this command, by severe penalties upon those who transgress
it: ‘He that smiteth his father, or his mother, shall surely be put to
death’--‘He that curseth his father, or his mother, shall surely be put
to death’--Ex. 21: 15, 17. But in the decalogue, there is no direction
given to women to obey their husbands: both are commanded to have no
other God but Jehovah, and not to bow down, or serve any other. When
the Lord Jesus delivered his sermon on the Mount, full of the practical
precepts of religion, he did not issue any command to wives to obey
their husbands. When he is speaking on the subject of divorce, Mark 16:
11, 12, he places men and women on the same ground. And the Apostle,
1st Cor. 7: 12, 13, speaking of the duties of the Corinthian wives and
husbands, who had embraced Christianity, to their unconverted partners,
points out the same path to both, although our translators have made a
distinction. ‘Let him not put her away,’ 12--‘Let her not leave him,’
13--is precisely the same in the original. If man is constituted the
governor of woman, he must be her God; and the sentiment expressed to
me lately, by a married man, is perfectly correct: ‘In my opinion,’
said he, ‘the greatest excellence to which a married woman can attain,
is to worship her husband.’ He was a professor of religion--his wife a
lovely and intelligent woman. He only spoke out what thousands think
and act. Women are indebted to Milton for giving to this false notion,
‘confirmation strong as proof of holy writ.’ His Eve is embellished
with every personal grace, to gratify the eye of her admiring husband;
but he seems to have furnished the mother of mankind with just
intelligence enough to comprehend her supposed inferiority to Adam, and
to yield unresisting submission to her lord and master. Milton puts
into Eve’s mouth the following address to Adam:
‘My author and disposer, what thou bidst,
Unargued I obey; so God ordains--
God is thy law, thou mine: to know no more,
Is woman’s happiest knowledge and her praise.’
This much admired sentimental nonsense is fraught with absurdity and
wickedness. If it were true, the commandment of Jehovah should have run
thus: Man shall have no other gods before ME, and woman shall have no
other gods before MAN.
The principal support of the dogma of woman’s inferiority, and
consequent submission to her husband, is found in some passages
of Paul’s epistles. I shall proceed to examine those passages,
premising 1st, that the antiquity of the opinions based on the false
construction of those passages, has no weight with me: they are the
opinions of interested judges, and I have no particular reverence
for them, _merely_ because they have been regarded with veneration
from generation to generation. So far from this being the case, I
examine any opinions of centuries standing, with as much freedom, and
investigate them with as much care, as if they were of yesterday.
I was educated to think for myself, and it is a privilege I shall
always claim to exercise. 2d. Notwithstanding my full belief that the
apostle Paul’s testimony, respecting himself, is true, ‘I was not a
whit behind the chiefest of the apostles,’ yet I believe his mind was
under the influence of Jewish prejudices respecting women, just as
Peter’s and the apostles were about the uncleanness of the Gentiles.
‘The Jews,’ says Clarke, ‘would not suffer a woman to read in the
synagogue, although a servant, or even a child, had this permission.’
When I see Paul shaving his head for a vow, and offering sacrifices,
and circumcising Timothy, to accommodate himself to the prepossessions
of his countrymen, I do not conceive that I derogate in the least from
his character as an inspired apostle, to suppose that he may have been
imbued with the prevalent prejudices against women.
In 1st Cor. 11: 3, after praising the Corinthian converts, because
they kept the ‘ordinances,’ or ‘traditions,’ as the margin reads,
the apostle says, ‘I would have you know, that the head of every
man is Christ, and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of
Christ is God.’ Eph. 5: 23, is a parallel passage. ‘For the husband
is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the Church.’
The apostle closes his remarks on this subject, by observing, ‘This
is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the Church.’ I
shall pass over this with simply remarking, that God and Christ are
one. ‘I and my Father are one,’ and there can be no inferiority where
there is no divisibility. The commentaries on this and similar texts,
afford a striking illustration of the ideas which men entertain of
their own superiority, I shall subjoin Henry’s remarks on 1st Cor. 11:
5, as a specimen: ‘To understand this text, it must be observed, that
it was a signification either of shame, or subjection, for persons to
be veiled, or covered in Eastern countries; contrary to the custom
of ours, where the being bare-headed betokens subjection, and being
covered superiority and dominion; and this will help us the better to
understand the reason on which he grounds his reprehension, ‘Every
man praying, &c. dishonoreth his head,’ i. e. Christ, the head of
every man, by appearing in a habit unsuitable to the rank in which
God had placed him. The woman, on the other hand, that prays, &c.
dishonoreth her head, i. e. the man. She appears in the dress of her
_superior_, and throws off the token of her subjection; she might with
equal decency cut her hair short, or cut it off, the common dress of
the man in that age. Another reason against this conduct was, that
the man is the image and glory of God, the representative of that
glorious dominion and headship which God has over the world. It is the
man who is set at the head of this lower creation, and therein bears
the resemblance of God. The woman, on the other hand, is the glory
of the man: she is his representative. Not but she has dominion over
the inferior creatures, and she is a partaker of human nature, and so
far is God’s representative too, but it is at second hand. She is the
image of God, inasmuch as she is the image of the man. The man was
first made, and made head of the creation here below, and therein the
image of the divine dominion; and the woman was made out of the man,
and shone with a _reflection of his glory_, being made superior to
the other creatures here below, but in subjection to her husband, and
deriving that _honor from him_, out of whom she was made. The woman was
made for the man to be his help meet, and not the man for the woman.
She was, naturally, therefore, made subject to him, because made for
him, for HIS USE AND HELP AND COMFORT.’
We see in the above quotation, what degrading views even good men
entertain of women. Pity the Psalmist had not thrown a little light on
this subject, when he was paraphrasing the account of man’s creation.
‘Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned
him with glory and honor. Thou madest him to have dominion over the
works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet.’ Surely
if woman had been placed below man, and was to shine only by a lustre
borrowed from him, we should have some clear evidence of it in the
sacred volume. Henry puts her exactly on a level with the beasts;
they were made for the use, help and comfort of man; and according to
this commentator, this was the whole end and design of the creation
of woman. The idea that man, as man is superior to woman, involves an
absurdity so gross, that I really wonder how any man of reflection can
receive it as of divine origin; and I can only account for it, by that
passion for supremacy, which characterizes man as a corrupt and fallen
creature. If it be true that he is more excellent than she, as man,
independent of his moral and intellectual powers, then every man is
superior by virtue of his manship, to every woman. The man who sinks
his moral capacities and spiritual powers in his sensual appetites,
is still, as a man, simply by the conformation of his body, a more
dignified being, than the woman whose intellectual powers are highly
cultivated, and whose approximation to the character of Jesus Christ is
exhibited in a blameless life and conversation.
But it is strenuously urged by those, who are anxious to maintain their
usurped authority, that wives are, in various passages of the New
Testament, commanded to obey their husbands. Let us examine these texts.
Eph. 5: 22. ‘Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands as unto
the Lord.’ ‘As the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be
to their own husbands in every thing.’
Col. 3: 18. Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as it is
fit in the Lord.’
1st Pet. 3: 2. ‘Likewise ye wives, be in subjection to your own
husbands; that if any obey not the word, they may also without the
word be won by the conversation of the wives.’
Accompanying all these directions to wives, are commands to husbands.
Eph. 5: 25. ‘Husbands, love your wives even as Christ loved the
Church, and gave himself for it.’ ‘So ought men to love their wives as
their own bodies. He that loveth his wife, loveth himself.’
Col. 3: 19. ‘Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against
them.’
1st Pet. 3: 7. ‘Likewise ye husbands, dwell with them according to
knowledge, giving honor unto the wife as unto the weaker vessel, and
as being heirs together of the grace of life.’
I may just remark, in relation to the expression ‘weaker vessel,’ that
the word in the original has no reference to intellect: it refers to
physical weakness merely.
The apostles were writing to Christian converts, and laying down
rules for their conduct towards their unconverted consorts. It no
doubt frequently happened, that a husband or a wife would embrace
Christianity, while their companions clung to heathenism, and husbands
might be tempted to dislike and despise those, who pertinaciously
adhered to their pagan superstitions. And wives who, when they were
pagans, submitted as a matter of course to their heathen husbands,
might be tempted knowing that they were superior as moral and religious
characters, to assert that superiority, by paying less deference to
them than heretofore. Let us examine the context of these passages,
and see what are the grounds of the directions here given to husbands
and wives. The whole epistle to the Ephesians breathes a spirit of
love. The apostle beseeches the converts to walk worthy of the vocation
wherewith they are called, with all lowliness and meekness, with
long suffering, forbearing one another in love. The verse preceding
5, 22, is ‘SUBMITTING YOURSELVES ONE TO ANOTHER IN THE FEAR OF GOD.’
Colossians 3, from 11 to 17, contains similar injunctions. The 17th
verse says, ‘Whatsoever ye do in word, or in deed, do all in the name
of the Lord Jesus.’ Peter, after drawing a most touching picture of
Christ’s sufferings for us, and reminding the Christians, that he
had left us an example that we should follow his steps, ‘who did no
sin, neither was guile found in his mouth,’ exhorts wives to be in
subjection, &c.