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A. B. Paterson - "Saltbush Bill, J.P., and Other Verses"

Woman in the Ninteenth Century

M >> Margaret Fuller Ossoli >> Woman in the Ninteenth Century




But, among those who meditate upon this text, there is a great
difference of view as to the way in which perfection shall be sought.

"Through the intellect," say some. "Gather from every growth of life
its seed of thought; look behind every symbol for its law; if thou
canst _see_ clearly, the rest will follow."

"Through the life," say others. "Do the best thou knowest today.
Shrink not from frequent error in this gradual, fragmentary state.
Follow thy light for as much as it will show thee; be faithful as far
as thou canst, in hope that faith presently will lead to sight. Help
others, without blaming their need of thy help. Love much, and be
forgiven."

"It needs not intellect, needs not experience," says a third. "If you
took the true way, your destiny would be accomplished, in a purer and
more natural order. You would not learn through facts of thought or
action, but express through them the certainties of wisdom. In
quietness yield thy soul to the causal soul. Do not disturb thy
apprenticeship by premature effort; neither check the tide of
instruction by methods of thy own. Be still; seek not, but wait in
obedience. Thy commission will be given."

Could we indeed say what we want, could we give a description of the
child that is lost, he would be found. As soon as the soul can affirm
clearly that a certain demonstration is wanted, it is at hand. When
the Jewish prophet described the Lamb, as the expression of what was
required by the coming era, the time drew nigh. But we say not, see
not as yet, clearly, what we would. Those who call for a more
triumphant expression of love, a love that cannot be crucified, show
not a perfect sense of what has already been given. Love has already
been expressed, that made all things new, that gave the worm its place
and ministry as well as the eagle; a love to which it was alike to
descend into the depths of hell, or to sit at the right hand of the
Father.

Yet, no doubt, a new manifestation is at hand, a new hour in the day
of Man. We cannot expect to see any one sample of completed being,
when the mass of men still lie engaged in the sod, or use the freedom
of their limbs only with wolfish energy. The tree cannot come to
flower till its root be free from the cankering worm, and its whole
growth open to air and light. While any one is base, none can be
entirely free and noble. Yet something new shall presently be shown of
the life of man, for hearts crave, if minds do not know how to ask it.

Among the strains of prophecy, the following, by an earnest mind of a
foreign land, written some thirty years ago, is not yet outgrown; and
it has the merit of being a positive appeal from the heart, instead of
a critical declaration what Man should _not_ do.

"The ministry of Man implies that he must be filled from the divine
fountains which are being engendered through all eternity, so that, at
the mere name of his master, he may be able to cast all his enemies
into the abyss; that he may deliver all parts of nature from the
barriers that imprison them; that he may purge the terrestrial
atmosphere from the poisons that infect it; that he may preserve the
bodies of men from the corrupt influences that surround, and the
maladies that afflict them; still more, that he may keep their souls
pure from the malignant insinuations which pollute, and the gloomy
images that obscure them; that he may restore its serenity to the
Word, which false words of men fill with mourning and sadness; that he
may satisfy the desires of the angels, who await from him the
development of the marvels of nature; that, in fine, his world may be
filled with God, as eternity is." [Footnote: St. Martin]

Another attempt we will give, by an obscure observer of our own day
and country, to draw some lines of the desired image. It was suggested
by seeing the design of Crawford's Orpheus, and connecting with the
circumstance of the American, in his garret at Rome, making choice of
this subject, that of Americans here at home showing such ambition to
represent the character, by calling their prose and verse "Orphic
sayings"--"Orphics." We wish we could add that they have shown that
musical apprehension of the progress of Nature through her ascending
gradations which entitled them so to do, but their attempts are
frigid, though sometimes grand; in their strain we are not warmed by
the fire which fertilized the soil of Greece.

Orpheus was a lawgiver by theocratic commission. He understood nature,
and made her forms move to his music. He told her secrets in the form
of hymns, Nature as seen in the mind of God. His soul went forth
toward all beings, yet could remain sternly faithful to a chosen type
of excellence. Seeking what he loved, he feared not death nor hell;
neither could any shape of dread daunt his faith in the power of the
celestial harmony that filled his soul.

It seemed significant of the state of things in this country, that the
sculptor should have represented the seer at the moment when he was
obliged with his hand to shade his eyes.

Each Orpheus must to the depths descend;
For only thus the Poet can be wise;
Must make the sad Persephone his friend,
And buried love to second life arise;
Again his love must lose through too much love,
Must lose his life by living life too true,
For what he sought below is passed above,
Already done is all that he would do
Must tune all being with his single lyre,
Must melt all rooks free from their primal pain,
Must search all nature with his one soul's fire,
Must bind anew all forms in heavenly chain.
If he already sees what be must do,
Well may he shade his eyes from the far-shining view.


A better comment could not be made on what is required to perfect Man,
and place him in that superior position for which he was designed,
than by the interpretation of Bacon upon the legends of the Syren
coast "When the wise Ulysses passed," says he, "he caused his mariners
to stop their ears, with wax, knowing there was in them no power to
resist the lure of that voluptuous song. But he, the much experienced
man, who wished to be experienced in all, and use all to the service
of wisdom, desired to hear the song that he might understand its
meaning. Yet, distrusting his own power to be firm in his better
purpose, he caused himself to be bound to the mast, that he might be
kept secure against his own weakness. But Orpheus passed unfettered,
so absorbed in singing hymns to the gods that he could not even hear
those sounds of degrading enchantment."

Meanwhile, not a few believe, and men themselves have expressed the
opinion, that the time is come when Eurydice is to call for an
Orpheus, rather than Orpheus for Eurydice; that the idea of Man,
however imperfectly brought out, has been far more so than that of
Woman; that she, the other half of the same thought, the other chamber
of the heart of life, needs now take her turn in the full pulsation,
and that improvement in the daughters will best aid in the reformation
of the sons of this age.

It should be remarked that, as the principle of liberty is better
understood, and more nobly interpreted, a broader protest is made in
behalf of Woman. As men become aware that few men have had a fair
chance, they are inclined to say that no women have had a fair chance.
The French Revolution, that strangely disguised angel, bore witness in
favor of Woman, but interpreted her claims no less ignorantly than
those of Man. Its idea of happiness did not rise beyond outward
enjoyment, unobstructed by the tyranny of others. The title it gave
was "citoyen," "citoyenne;" and it is not unimportant to Woman that
even this species of equality was awarded her. Before, she could be
condemned to perish on the scaffold for treason, not as a citizen, but
as a subject. The right with which this title then invested a human
being was that of bloodshed and license. The Goddess of Liberty was
impure. As we read the poem addressed to her, not long since, by
Beranger, we can scarcely refrain from tears as painful as the tears
of blood that flowed when "such crimes were committed in her name."
Yes! Man, born to purify and animate the unintelligent and the cold,
can, in his madness, degrade and pollute no less the fair and the
chaste. Yet truth was prophesied in the ravings of that hideous fever,
caused by long ignorance and abuse. Europe is conning a valued lesson
from the blood-stained page. The same tendencies, further unfolded,
will bear good fruit in this country.

Yet, by men in this country, as by the Jews, when Moses was leading
them to the promised land, everything has been done that inherited
depravity could do, to hinder the promise of Heaven from its
fulfilment. The cross, here as elsewhere, has been planted only to be
blasphemed by cruelty and fraud. The name of the Prince of Peace has
been profaned by all kinds of injustice toward the Gentile whom he
said he came to save. But I need not speak of what has been done
towards the Red Man, the Black Man. Those deeds are the scoff of the
world; and they have been accompanied by such pious words that the
gentlest would not dare to intercede with "Father, forgive them, for
they know not what they do."

Here, as elsewhere, the gain of creation consists always in the growth
of individual minds, which live and aspire, as flowers bloom and birds
sing, in the midst of morasses; and in the continual development of
that thought, the thought of human destiny, which is given to eternity
adequately to express, and which ages of failure only seemingly
impede. Only seemingly; and whatever seems to the contrary, this
country is as surely destined to elucidate a great moral law, as
Europe was to promote the mental culture of Man.

Though the national independence be blurred by the servility of
individuals; though freedom and equality have been proclaimed only to
leave room for a monstrous display of slave-dealing and slave-keeping;
though the free American so often feels himself free, like the Roman,
only to pamper his appetites end his indolence through the misery of
his fellow-beings; still it is not in vain that the verbal statement
has been made, "All men are born free and equal." There it stands, a
golden certainty wherewith to encourage the good, to shame the bad.
The New World may be called clearly to perceive that it incurs the
utmost penalty if it reject or oppress the sorrowful brother. And, if
men are deaf, the angels hear. But men cannot be deaf. It is
inevitable that an external freedom, an independence of the
encroachments of other men, such as has been achieved for the nation,
should be so also for every member of it. That which has once been
clearly conceived in the intelligence cannot fail, sooner or later, to
be acted out. It has become a law as irrevocable as that of the Medes
in their ancient dominion; men will privately sin against it, but the
law, as expressed by a leading mind of the age,

"Tutti fatti a semblanza d'un Solo,
Figli tutti d'un solo riscatto,
In qual'ora, in qual parte del suolo
Trascorriamo quest' aura vital,
Siam fratelli, siam stretti ad un patto:
Maladetto colui che lo infrange,
Che s'innalza sul finoco che piange
Che contrista uno spirto immortal." [Footnote: Manzoni]

"All made in the likeness of the One.
All children of one ransom,
In whatever hour, in whatever part of the soil,
We draw this vital air,
We are brothers; we must be bound by one compact;
Accursed he who infringes it,
Who raises himself upon the weak who weep,
Who saddens an immortal spirit."


This law cannot fail of universal recognition. Accursed be he who
willingly saddens an immortal spirit--doomed to infamy in later, wiser
ages, doomed in future stages of his own being to deadly penance, only
short of death. Accursed be he who sins in ignorance, if that
ignorance be caused by sloth.

We sicken no less at the pomp than the strife of words. We feel that
never were lungs so puffed with the wind of declamation, on moral and
religious subjects, as now. We are tempted to implore these
"word-heroes," these word-Catos, word-Christs, to beware of cant
[Footnote: Dr. Johnson's one piece of advice should be written on
every door: "Clear your mind of cant." But Byron, to whom it was so
acceptable, in clearing away the noxious vine, shook down the
building. Sterling's emendation is worthy of honor:

"Realize your cant, not cast it off."]

above all things; to remember that hypocrisy is the most hopeless as
well as the meanest of crimes, and that those must surely be polluted
by it, who do not reserve a part of their morality and religion for
private use. Landor says that he cannot have a great deal of mind who
cannot afford to let the larger part of it lie fallow; and what is true
of genius is not less so of virtue. The tongue is a valuable member,
but should appropriate but a small part of the vital juices that are
needful all over the body. We feel that the mind may "grow black and
rancid in the smoke" even "of altars." We start up from the harangue
to go into our closet and shut the door. There inquires the spirit,
"Is this rhetoric the bloom of healthy blood, or a false pigment
artfully laid on?" And yet again we know where is so much smoke, must
be some fire; with so much talk about virtue and freedom, must be
mingled some desire for them; that it cannot be in vain that such have
become the common topics of conversation among men, rather than schemes
for tyranny and plunder, that the very newspapers see it best to
proclaim themselves "Pilgrims," "Puritans," "Heralds of Holiness." The
king that maintains so costly a retinue cannot be a mere boast, or
Carabbas fiction. We have waited here long in the dust; we are tired
and hungry; but the triumphal procession must appear at last.

Of all its banners, none has been more steadily upheld, and under none
have more valor and willingness for real sacrifices been shown, than
that of the champions of the enslaved African. And this band it is,
which, partly from a natural following out of principles, partly
because many women have been prominent in that cause, makes, just now,
the warmest appeal in behalf of Woman.

Though there has been a growing liberality on this subject, yet
society at large is not so prepared for the demands of this party, but
that its members are, and will be for some time, coldly regarded as
the Jacobins of their day.

"Is it not enough," cries the irritated trader, "that you have done
all you could to break up the national union, and thus destroy the
prosperity of our country, but now you must be trying to break up
family union, to take my wife away from the cradle and the
kitchen-hearth to vote at polls, and preach from a pulpit? Of course,
if she does such things, she cannot attend to those of her own sphere.
She is happy enough as she is. She has more leisure than I
have,--every means of improvement, every indulgence."

"Have you asked her whether she was satisfied with these
_indulgences_?"

"No, but I know she is. She is too amiable to desire what would make
me unhappy, and too judicious to wish to step beyond the sphere of her
sex. I will never consent to have our peace disturbed by any such
discussions."

"'Consent--you?' it is not consent from you that is in question--it is
assent from your wife."

"Am not I the head of my house?"

"You are not the head of your wife. God has given her a mind of her own.

"I am the head, and she the heart."

"God grant you play true to one another, then! I suppose I am to be
grateful that you did not say she was only the hand. If the head
represses no natural pulse of the heart, there can be no question as
to your giving your consent. Both will be of one accord, and there
needs but to present any question to get a full and true answer. There
is no need of precaution, of indulgence, nor consent. But our doubt is
whether the heart _does_ consent with the head, or only obeys its
decrees with a passiveness that precludes the exercise of its natural
powers, or a repugnance that turns sweet qualities to bitter, or a
doubt that lays waste the fair occasions of life. It is to ascertain
the truth that we propose some liberating measures."

Thus vaguely are these questions proposed and discussed at present.
But their being proposed at all implies much thought, and suggests
more. Many women are considering within themselves what they need that
they have not, and what they can have if they find they need it. Many
men are considering whether women are capable of being and having more
than they are and have, _and_ whether, if so, it will be best to
consent to improvement in their condition.

This morning, I open the Boston "Daily Mail," and find in its "poet's
corner" a translation of Schiller's "Dignity of Woman." In the
advertisement of a book on America, I see in the table of contents
this sequence, "Republican Institutions. American Slavery. American
Ladies."

I open the "_Deutsche Schnellpost_" published in New York, and
find at the head of a column, _Juden und Frauenemancipation in
Ungarn_--"Emancipation of Jews and Women in Hungary."

The past year has seen action in the Rhode Island legislature, to
secure married women rights over their own property, where men showed
that a very little examination of the subject could teach them much;
an article in the Democratic Review on the same subject more largely
considered, written by a woman, impelled, it is said, by glaring wrong
to a distinguished friend, having shown the defects in the existing
laws, and the state of opinion from which they spring; and on answer
from the revered old man, J. Q. Adams, in some respects the Phocion of
his time, to an address made him by some ladies. To this last I shall
again advert in another place.

These symptoms of the times have come under my view quite
accidentally: one who seeks, may, each month or week, collect more.

The numerous party, whose opinions are already labeled and adjusted
too much to their mind to admit of any new light, strive, by lectures
on some model-woman of bride-like beauty and gentleness, by writing
and lending little treatises, intended to mark out with precision the
limits of Woman's sphere, and Woman's mission, to prevent other than
the rightful shepherd from climbing the wall, or the flock from using
any chance to go astray.

Without enrolling ourselves at once on either side, let us look upon
the subject from the best point of view which to-day offers; no
better, it is to be feared, than a high house-top. A high hill-top, or
at least a cathedral-spire, would be desirable.

It may well be an Anti-Slavery party that pleads for Woman, if we
consider merely that she does not hold property on equal terms with
men; so that, if a husband dies without making a will, the wife,
instead of taking at once his place as head of the family, inherits
only a part of his fortune, often brought him by herself, as if she
were a child, or ward only, not an equal partner.

We will not speak of the innumerable instances in which profligate and
idle men live upon the earnings of industrious wives; or if the wives
leave them, and take with them the children, to perform the double
duty of mother and father, follow from place to place, and threaten to
rob them of the children, if deprived of the rights of a husband, as
they call them, planting themselves in their poor lodgings,
frightening them into paying tribute by taking from them the children,
running into debt at the expense of these otherwise so overtasked
helots. Such instances count up by scores within my own memory. I have
seen the husband who had stained himself by a long course of low vice,
till his wife was wearied from her heroic forgiveness, by finding that
his treachery made it useless, and that if she would provide bread for
herself and her children, she must be separate from his ill fame--I
have known this man come to install himself in the chamber of a woman
who loathed him, and say she should never take food without his
company. I have known these men steal their children, whom they knew
they had no means to maintain, take them into dissolute company,
expose them to bodily danger, to frighten the poor woman, to whom, it
seems, the fact that she alone had borne the pangs of their birth, and
nourished their infancy, does not give an equal right to them. I do
believe that this mode of kidnapping--and it is frequent enough in all
classes of society--will be by the next age viewed as it is by Heaven
now, and that the man who avails himself of the shelter of men's laws
to steal from a mother her own children, or arrogate any superior
right in them, save that of superior virtue, will bear the stigma he
deserves, in common with him who steals grown men from their
mother-land, their hopes, and their homes.

I said, we will not speak of this now; yet I _have_ spoken, for
the subject makes me feel too much. I could give instances that would
startle the most vulgar and callous; but I will not, for the public
opinion of their own sex is already against such men, and where cases
of extreme tyranny are made known, there is private action in the
wife's favor. But she ought not to need this, nor, I think, can she
long. Men must soon see that as, on their own ground, Woman is the
weaker party, she ought to have legal protection, which would make
such oppression impossible. But I would not deal with "atrocious
instances," except in the way of illustration, neither demand from men
a partial redress in some one matter, but go to the root of the whole.
If principles could be established, particulars would adjust
themselves aright. Ascertain the true destiny of Woman; give her
legitimate hopes, and a standard within herself; marriage and all
other relations would by degrees be harmonized with these.

But to return to the historical progress of this matter. Knowing that
there exists in the minds of men a tone of feeling toward women as
toward slaves, such as is expressed in the common phrase, "Tell that
to women and children;" that the infinite soul can only work through
them in already ascertained limits; that the gift of reason, Man's
highest prerogative, is allotted to them in much lower degree; that
they must be kept from mischief and melancholy by being constantly
engaged in active labor, which is to be furnished and directed by
those better able to think, &c., &c.,--we need not multiply instances,
for who can review the experience of last week without recalling words
which imply, whether in jest or earnest, these views, or views like
these,--knowing this, can we wonder that many reformers think that
measures are not likely to be taken in behalf of women, unless their
wishes could be publicly represented by women?

"That can never be necessary," cry the other side. "All men are
privately influenced by women; each has his wife, sister, or female
friends, and is too much biased by these relations to fail of
representing their interests; and, if this is not enough, let them
propose and enforce their wishes with the pen. The beauty of home
would be destroyed, the delicacy of the sex be violated, the dignity
of halls of legislation degraded, by an attempt to introduce them
there. Such duties are inconsistent with those of a mother;" and then
we have ludicrous pictures of ladies in hysterics at the polls, and
senate-chambers filled with cradles.

But if, in reply, we admit as truth that Woman seems destined by
nature rather for the inner circle, we must add that the arrangements
of civilized life have not been, as yet, such as to secure it to her.
Her circle, if the duller, is not the quieter. If kept from
"excitement," she is not from drudgery. Not only the Indian squaw
carries the burdens of the camp, but the favorites of Louis XIV.
accompany him in his journeys, and the washerwoman stands at her tub,
and carries home her work at all seasons, and in all states of health.
Those who think the physical circumstances of Woman would make a part
in the affairs of national government unsuitable, are by no means
those who think it impossible for negresses to endure field-work, even
during pregnancy, or for sempstresses to go through their killing
labors.

As to the use of the pen, there was quite as much opposition to
Woman's possessing herself of that help to free agency as there is now
to her seizing on the rostrum or the desk; and she is likely to draw,
from a permission to plead her cause that way, opposite inferences to
what might be wished by those who now grant it.

As to the possibility of her filling with grace and dignity any such
position, we should think those who had seen the great actresses, and
heard the Quaker preachers of modern times, would not doubt that Woman
can express publicly the fulness of thought and creation, without
losing any of the peculiar beauty of her sex. What can pollute and
tarnish is to act thus from any motive except that something needs to
be said or done. Woman could take part in the processions, the songs,
the dances of old religion; no one fancied her delicacy was impaired
by appearing in public for such a cause.

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