Woman: Man's Equal Part 5

Why, then, should the frivolity of some women be urged against the whole s.e.x? Rather, educate them. Let them realize that they are equally with man responsible to G.o.d for the powers of mind given them. And let them know, too, that they shall have equal opportunities for the development and exercise of those powers; that with equality in responsibility there is equality in privilege; and the next half-century will number fewer frivolous women--by many hundreds.

The dread is entertained by some that, if granted the elective franchise, women would be mixed up in election rows and drunken squabbles, as men are now. Such an event does not necessarily follow; neither is it at all probable. Men of good principle and well-balanced judgment do not make either fools or beasts of themselves now, badly as elections are managed; nor would sensible, right-minded women degrade themselves by unseemly conduct while exercising their right to vote.

No law has ever yet existed which entirely prevented evil-minded men and evil-minded women from making public exhibition of their degradation; and, as society is now constructed, where wicked men congregate, some wicked women will be found. Elevate women to perfect equality with man, and fewer wicked ones will prey upon society.

The great objection, the one which rises above all others, with regard to women taking an active part in civil and ecclesiastical matters, is, that they would thereby neglect their houses and families.

This objection has some weight; it is not altogether so unreasonable as most of the others raised. But even here the event dreaded does not necessarily follow, any more than because men are allowed to vote therefore their business and families must suffer in consequence.

Prudent men, when they accept offices of public trust, so order their business arrangements that they shall be properly attended to without allowing the one to interfere with the other. So also would prudent women. It might with as much propriety be argued that a farmer must not be permitted to accept any public office, not even that of juryman, because the acceptance of it might call him from home, either in Springtime or harvest; nor a doctor to become a candidate for public honors, lest some one might be sick while he was away,--as to argue that a woman must not be permitted to take an active part in public affairs because the house is to be attended to, and the comfort and well-being of her husband and children provided for. Are the recognized duties and ordinary occupations of women necessarily so all-engrossing as to be inconsistent with any other demand upon their time or thoughts; or of so much graver importance than the duties which men owe to their business and families, as to require her constant presence and the entire devotion of all her energies; while men, who have families and large business transactions on their hands, are justified in devoting a large portion of their time and attention to other objects, whether literature, science, or politics?

There is no more honorable position on earth than that of a wife, possessing the undivided affection of a good husband, surrounded by an orderly and interesting family of children. Neither is there a more honorable position among men than that of a husband, possessing the undivided affection of a good wife, who sympathizes with him in his every care, surrounded by a family of well-behaved, intelligent children. A well-regulated household is a picture upon which the good of either s.e.x love to look. The responsibility of regulating and ordering a household properly, devolves equally upon both the husband and wife. It can not be a well-regulated house if either fails to share the responsibility equally. Is the careful wife and mother, then, to be cut off from the rights of citizenship because she is a wife and mother?

There is no valid reason why an intelligent woman should not be permitted to carry the weight of her judicious influence beyond the charmed circle of her home, any more than that she should not be permitted to exercise it there. Even in the limited sphere now a.s.signed to women, many of them have proved that they could be faithful to the interests of their husbands and children, and yet accomplish much for the benefit of the world besides. Admitting, however--and we do admit it, heartily--that women are endowed with peculiar talents for the management of children, and men are better fitted than women for training horses or managing swine,--which occupation requires the greater mental culture? Which is likely to do the most for the benefit of mankind? The proper care for her children, and attention to them, does not necessarily prevent a woman from attending to matters of public utility outside of her house.

And then there are the unmarried women, who were referred to previously, that have not these household claims resting upon them. The objection concerning the neglect of households does not touch their cases at all; for they have neither children nor husbands to be neglected. That unmarried women, who step out from the "private sanct.i.ty of their homes," often accomplish much good by entering on the so much censured public career, the lives of Florence Nightingale, Miss McPherson, and Miss Dix, if there were no others, amply prove.

It is argued by some that, if women would exercise the privilege of the franchise, she must be prepared to take the field as a soldier, or enter the navy, as circ.u.mstances might require, in time of war. History informs us that women have given valuable a.s.sistance in time of war, even taking the field and fighting n.o.bly for their country when their valor was needed; and, in our own day, there is on record an instance of a woman commanding a vessel during a long voyage over exceedingly dangerous seas, and bringing it successfully into the desired port. But apart from this, the fact is, the argument is simply used as a bugbear to frighten the timid and deter them from claiming their just position, both social and civil. By law, certain cla.s.ses of men are exempt from war, except in extreme cases, so that by no means all who vote, now, are expected to fight. Then, women render an equivalent to the State, and risk their lives in doing it, quite as much as soldiers or sailors; not, however, in destroying human life, but in perpetuating it. As recruiting agents, therefore, and the first drill-masters or instructors of the members of future battalions, they serve the Government as effectually as any standing army.

It does not follow, then, that as a consequence of being permitted to vote, or being admitted to other privileges, women must load the cannon or wield the sword. We wonder if the originator of such an attempt at intimidation ever heard of Joan of Arc or Margaret of Anjou.

It is claimed that women are unfit for public life because--another unproved a.s.sertion--they are incapable of reasoning logically or speaking fluently. Women have had but little opportunity afforded them for public speaking; yet, even with the slight advantages which they have possessed, they have proved themselves quite as capable of arriving at a high standard of reasoning or oratory as the majority of the opposite s.e.x. Anna d.i.c.kinson will draw a full house in any city in the United States; and disinterested listeners (men) have p.r.o.nounced her lectures unsurpa.s.sed, in close reasoning and power of fervid eloquence, by any male lecturer in the Union. But, say some, all women are not equally gifted; there are few endowed with the talents or voice of Miss d.i.c.kinson. Just so; and but few men are endowed with the talents of Theodore Cuyler, or gifted with the versatile wit of J.B. Gough; yet other men speak in public, and in their humbler sphere render the State good service.

The various Churches have not done what they might in drawing out this talent in women, and using it for the good of the world. Indeed, while quoting and straining the writings of the apostles to suit their own narrow views, those who have given tone to the various branches of the Christian Church, and virtually fixed the position of women therein, have wandered far, very far, from the practice of the Pauline days with regard to the employment of women in the public workings of the Church, as is shown by a comparison of the present working of the several Christian Churches with the sacred records, as given in Acts and the Epistles themselves.

The Society of Friends, upon examination, becoming convinced of the falsity of the reasoning, a.s.sumed to be predicated upon the Word of G.o.d, that there was inferiority between the s.e.xes, and not believing that the a.s.sumption was borne out by a careful perusal of the Scriptures, granted perfect equality to men and women in the exercise of religious services.

Having been the foremost religious body of modern times in granting liberty of speech to Christian women, they have been more highly honored than most other denominations in the number of gifted speakers among their women.

In the early days of Methodism, too, women were allowed to exercise the talent for public speaking, with which G.o.d had endowed them; and Dinah Evans and Mrs. Fletcher--the one in the humbler walks of life, the other a lady of position, education, and refinement--stand forth conspicuously upon the pages of history, giving evidence that the ministry of Christian women was honored by G.o.d in leading the wicked to forsake their unrighteous ways. As Methodism became older, like the primitive Church, it departed from the first usage, and as a consequence, like it, it lost for the time a powerful agency for doing good. Latterly, however, women, especially in the United States, are breaking through the fetters--ecclesiastical as well as civil--which have so long bound them. In a measure, at least, their day of civil and religious slavery is drawing to a close. They now very frequently preside and speak at public religious meetings, and are admitted by candid, well-informed men to be quite as competent to discharge the duties of a presiding officer, or to present the ideas they wish to convey in a clear and logical manner, as any of the learned clergymen or clear-headed laymen in the same meeting. Some of the most eloquent public advocates of the missionary enterprise in the United States are earnest Christian women.

In the halcyon days of Queen Victoria, before the sad bereavement came upon her which has darkened her latter years and caused her to retire as much as possible from public view--at the time when she read her own speeches from the throne--she was p.r.o.nounced, by competent critics, to be unsurpa.s.sed, as a reader, by any elocutionist in Europe.

A thoroughly liberal education, and the practice of conversing with persons of intelligence, renders material a.s.sistance to both men and women, by enabling them to express their thoughts in the clearest and most forcible language possible; and the same thing may be remarked of declamation. In social circles, where men and women of average mental culture meet together, there is no perceptible difference between the conversational powers of the s.e.xes. Let the facilities for the education of men and women once be made equal throughout the civilized world, and the hackneyed cry of her mental inferiority will be heard of no more, excepting when mentioned among the other exploded theories of the Dark Ages and of barbaric times. The cramping of the mental powers of women, or the attempting to cramp them, lest they might claim equal advantages with the other half of the race, will be cla.s.sed--and justly so--with the cramping of women's feet by the Chinese, lest they might claim and exercise the liberty of walking the streets at pleasure, as their husbands do. A woman will be no more expected to give credence to every thing her husband believes, no matter how absurd the belief may be, at his dictation, because he is her husband, or to yield implicit obedience to his commands, no matter how tyrannical, than she will be to follow him to the funeral pyre.

Already ladies, by dint of untiring industry and perseverance, have mounted to honorable positions, and have acquired meritorious fame as artists, both in painting and in sculpture. Who, in our times, stands higher on the list of artists than Rosa Bonheur or Miss Hosmer? In the study of medicine, women have been met by the most scandalous opposition and insult by those conservators of good morals, male medical students.

Yet, believing that women were as capable of acquiring skill in the healing art as men, and that, where the peculiar diseases of women were concerned, they were better adapted to it, and that there was less impropriety in their attending their own s.e.x than in men doing so, they persevered, and have won for themselves honorable distinction. That women have, for years, distinguished themselves in connection with medical science, may be seen from the following interesting historical facts presented by Caroline H. Ball:

Madame Francoise, the midwife of Catharine de Medici, lectured ably to students of both s.e.xes. James Guillemeau was a French surgeon of great eminence, who died in 1813; but the obstetrical observations which gave value to his books were contributed by Madame Veronne. It was to the Countess of Cinchon, and the influence which she used at every court in Europe, and finally at the Court of Rome, that the world owed the use of Peruvian bark, and consequently of quinine. Its early name, "Jesuit's Bark," showed one step of her process. (See "Anastasis Corticis Peruviani, Seu China Defensis.") Madame Breton patented a system of artificial nourishment for infants, in use in France as late as 1830.

At the age of twenty-four, in the year 1736, Elizabeth Blackwell, of London, published a work on Medical Botany. It was in three volumes, folio, well ill.u.s.trated, and was the first of its kind in any country.

Madame Ducoudray, born in Paris, 1712, was the first lecturer who used a manikin, which she herself invented and perfected. Physicians persist in ignoring this fact, although it was publicly approved by the French Academy of Surgeons, December 1, 1758.

Morandi, born in Bologna in 1716, and Beheron, born at Paris in 1730, invented and perfected the use of wax preparations to represent diseases. Beheron's collection was purchased by Catharine II, of Russia, and went to St. Petersburg. Hunter acknowledged his obligations to her.

Morandi's collection, at Bologna, was visited and purchased by Joseph II. She was Professor of Anatomy at the university. Lady Mary Wortley Montague introduced inoculation into Europe; and the intelligent observation of a farmer's wife led Dr. Jenner to his experiments with vaccine matter.

The services of regularly qualified lady physicians are now eagerly sought, not only in the United States, where they in later times first proved their capability, but also in foreign countries. Medical universities, the sage faculties of which once frowned with scorn upon "women who would be guilty of the indelicacy of pushing themselves into the medical profession," now gladly open their doors to them; the more candid of the professors admitting that the "indelicacy," not to say indecency, is upon the side of men who would push themselves into the sick-chamber of a woman, and make inquiries of her concerning symptoms peculiar to her s.e.x, when there are women who are competent to attend to her case.

Little by little the mists of superst.i.tion and error, incident to barbaric times, are being dispelled by the genial light of a brighter day. Even now, genteel ignorance is not esteemed the acme of feminine perfection, except by those theorists who would degrade woman mentally, that they themselves may thus acquire so much a higher elevation--at least in their own imaginations--as to stand to them in G.o.d's stead, or, at the very least, to be a semi-deity whose superior wisdom is to be worshiped.

The facilities for acquiring a good common education, of late years afforded to the ma.s.ses, in which there was not so wide a distinction made between the s.e.xes as formerly, have accomplished much in removing old-time prejudices; as the searching examinations of these public schools have fairly tested the capabilities of both boys and girls, and have established the fact that, with equal opportunities, the girls were fully equal to the boys in mental ability and attainments. Grudgingly, girls have been allowed to enter the grammar and higher schools; and here, too, by their proficiency, they have proved their right to enter.

There was a great outcry raised when the first genuine university which admitted women, allowed them to pursue precisely the same studies as young men. It was predicted that almost unheard-of evils would ensue.

Woman, if they succeeded, would be unfitted for her "sphere," and become unwilling to soothe, with tender hand, the suffering and the distressed, etc. The wail was terrific. The experiment, however, succeeded. Women not only commenced a real collegiate course, but pursued it to the end, graduating with honors; and, despite prophecy, college-bred women made faithful wives, judicious mothers, and good housekeepers. A cruel war ravaged the fair fields of a portion of the United States, bringing with it its attendant train of misery. What was the employment of ladies who had graduated in universities in this crisis of their country? Had their knowledge of Latin and Greek made them either inefficient or hard? The weary, wounded soldier in the hospitals would testify that the kind hand of an educated and refined woman bathed his feverish temples, while her gentle voice breathed into his ear the glad tidings of a peace to be attained by repentance and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Delicacies were needed for the invalid soldiers, and were not to be bought for money; the educated woman, side by side with her uneducated sister, bared her white arms above the elbow, and molded delicate pastry, and sealed and pickled and preserved as diligently and as deftly as if she had never demonstrated a problem in Euclid or heard of Sophocles. In what way had women become unfitted for their sphere by a liberal education? In no way whatever. If some highly educated women are inefficient housekeepers, and slatternly in their persons, so also are many who neither know how to read nor write; just as there are many impracticable, inefficient, and slovenly men who are highly educated, and ignorant men who are also incompetent and inefficient. Education has nothing to do with making either men or women inefficient; the inefficient would be inefficient to the end of time, though their minds were never troubled with literature.

No fearful calamity having ensued as a consequence of the admission of ladies to one university, others also began slowly, and with great caution, to open their doors to them; and now their admission on the same footing as their brothers to the same universities, and their capability to complete the same curriculum is no longer an experiment, but an established fact. Even in conservative, staid old England, ladies are admitted to the examinations at Cambridge. But all are by no means open. No: there are those, and some of them men of sense in other respects, who can not come down from the lofty pedestal on which they have placed themselves, and are not willing to allow their sisters or daughters to mount, lest they should reach their side. These sneer and frown, and prophesy evil just as vehemently as did narrow-minded men of the same cla.s.s fifty or twenty years ago; and their influence will, for a time, keep some of the colleges closed to women. But this is a matter of little consequence now. There are universities now open to them of as high a literary grade as those which are closed against them; and consequently they may drink at will at the fountain of knowledge, despite the sneers and frowns of those who would prevent it if they could, but happily can not altogether.

Though there is still much fierce opposition to the movement for granting them equal civil and ecclesiastical rights and privileges, and for allowing them to compete fairly with men in business transactions or in the learned professions; and though it may be expected that this opposition will be continued for some time to come,--yet women have cause for thankful rejoicing, and may take courage. The long night of their bitter servitude is nearly over, the dawn of better days is beginning to tinge the horizon; and hope may now be entertained that erelong they shall occupy the position to which they are ent.i.tled, as man's compeer--the position of equality with him in all the relations of life--and enjoy the full rights and privileges of civilized and Christianized citizenship.

The morning is breaking.

CHAPTER VIII.

Famous Women of Antiquity.

It has been so often a.s.serted that women are incompetent to form any thing like correct opinions on civil or political questions, or to govern with discretion, even when by chance the reins are committed to their control for a brief season; and that they have always been found so; and, also, that they are naturally incapable of a sufficiently great degree of mental effort to ent.i.tle them to celebrity,--that the statement has come to be regarded as a fact by the ma.s.ses, who have lacked either the ability or the desire to investigate the matter. With the majority of men, as such a.s.sertions fostered their love of power, and the idea of their own self-consequence, it was natural for them to accept them without question, as undoubted truth. With women, until within the present century, the facilities for acquiring an education have been so meagre that, except where they were possessed of both a large fortune and an unlimited amount of perseverance, they had slight opportunities for acquiring accurate information on that or any other subject. What their fathers, husbands, or brothers told them, they might believe if they chose; for the rest, to the very large majority of women, history was a sealed book; so that, for want of correct information, they were not in a position to contradict any a.s.sertion, however extravagant, untruthful, or absurd it might be.

In the foregoing pages of this treatise, it has been maintained that the statements concerning the alleged mental inferiority of women are untruthful; and that history, both ancient and modern, proves them to be so. In order, therefore, to establish this proposition more fully, the following sketches have been added, giving an account of a few women eminent for the founding of colonies, for piety, for patriotism, and for attainments in science, literature, and arts; and some, alas! for wickedness.

ELISA, OR DIDO, FOUNDER OF CARTHAGE.

Carthage, one of the most noted nations of antiquity, was founded by a woman, and flourished under her rule. A Tyrian princess, Dido--or Elisa, as she is indiscriminately named in history--was in jeopardy from the tyranny and oppression of an unnatural brother, who, not content with what he had inherited from his father, had cast covetous eyes upon the immense possessions of his sister's husband, whose death he compa.s.sed.

All the powers of mind which had hitherto lain dormant within her, being roused by the horrid act of her brother, Dido at once set about rescuing her treasure from his grasp, and her retainers from his unbridled fury. Not choosing to seek protection from any of the princes of the surrounding countries, and knowing herself to be unsafe while in the vicinity of her brother, she, as speedily as possible, and with the utmost secresy, gathered what she was possessed of together, and, with her followers, embarked in search of some country where she might live free from tyranny and oppression. Undaunted by the dangers, real and imaginary, which beset the paths of the early navigators of the Mediterranean, the little band of adventurers pursued their course, steering westward, ever westward; away past Egypt, and past Libya, until they came in sight of a peninsula on the northern coast of Africa hitherto unknown to history, but ever afterward to be famous as the landing-place of the heroic woman. At a point only a short distance from the site of the present city of Tunis, Dido, with her followers, established herself; not taking possession of the territory on which she set her foot, as became the fashion some time later, but purchasing it from the natives at a given price. According to the usage of the times, she at once set about founding a city; and one hundred years before the founding of Rome--its after rival and destroyer--the work of building Carthage, or the New City, as Dido named it, began. The city being advantageously situated for commerce, and the rule of Dido more mild than that of Pygmalion, her brother, hundreds of the Tyrians flocked to her standard. These men of Tyre brought with them their old home-love of commercial enterprise and maritime adventure; and, in a marvelously short time, Carthage took high rank among the nations of the world; and it was conceded, by one of the most renowned philosophers of Greece, that it enjoyed one of the most perfect governments of antiquity.

It is told of Dido, that she was not only capable and brave, but also--like many of the opposite s.e.x--somewhat sharp in a bargain; and that she tricked the Africans into giving her more territory than they designed doing. The story is--though it is not generally believed--that having bargained with the natives for as much land as an ox-hide would encompa.s.s, she cut it up into the smallest possible strips, and by this means made it capable of surrounding a large extent of ground; and, as a bargain is a bargain, she gained possession of the inclosure by agreeing to pay an annual tribute for it. But whether or not this rather improbable story be true, avarice and tyranny on the part of a brother seems to have roused the dormant power in Dido's nature; and the indomitable perseverance, fort.i.tude, and faculty for government displayed by the outraged woman, were the forces which brought about the founding of a powerful nation. King Pygmalion is only remembered because he was the brother of the ill.u.s.trious Queen Dido.

CLEOPATRA.

The character of Cleopatra forms a striking contrast to that of Dido, in many particulars: the one the first princess and founder of a nation destined to live in history ages after it had ceased to exist; the other the last princess of a land equally famed in story, whose kingdom was to suffer extinction, in a great measure in consequence of her vices--not because she was too weak to sway the scepter, but because she was too wicked to rule justly.

The last representative of the dynasty of the Ptolemies, she seemed to possess an undue share of the evil propensities of an evil race; and, with this, the gift of rare beauty, added to very winning manners and remarkable powers of fascination. In her const.i.tution was blended a dangerous combination of varied charms and varied vices. The learning of the Egyptian schools she had mastered; there were none of the then modern accomplishments of which she had not made herself mistress; wealth and regal honors were hers; and yet what a sad picture she presents! Evil pa.s.sions were allowed to rankle in her breast unchecked, till she became one of the vilest creatures, in a country become the vilest and basest of nations. The powers of mind with which she was endowed, used for the benefit of her country, might have been the means of its salvation; but instead of appealing to the patriotism of her people--if, indeed, they then possessed any--she chose rather to court the favor of the rising Roman general, and gain by flattery and crime what might have been denied to virtue. Though her kingdom was in danger, and her own position and the inheritance of her children were at stake, she reveled in sinful pleasure with the enemy. By the power of her charms, she effected a compromise with the first Caesar, which left her in possession of Egypt; but not on honorable terms. How could terms, dictated on the one side and agreed to on the other by base pa.s.sion, be aught but shameful and humiliating?

Caesar in the west, and the Roman legions far away, Cleopatra paid no more regard to the treaty between them than if it had never been made.

Such a violation of contract the Romans never forgave; and Mark Antony, who had striven to rise to the supreme power after the a.s.sa.s.sination of Julius Caesar, as soon as he had leisure from his other ambitious schemes, bent his steps toward Egypt, to punish the faithless queen.

Again she had recourse to her personal charms. The stern but vicious general, though in name a conqueror, became an easy victim of her wiles; and was himself in fact the conquered one. If Cleopatra had been Mark Antony's most bitter foe, she could not more surely have lured him on to utter, hopeless ruin.

At last, the crisis came. Augustus Caesar had arrived upon the sh.o.r.es of Egypt to avenge his sister's wrongs. Mark Antony's fate was sealed.

Once more the wretched woman tried her powers of fascination; but youth and sprightliness were gone. She failed to captivate Augustus by her winning manners, or move him by a display of her distress. Her power, she realized at last, was gone; but grace his triumph in Rome she was determined she would not. As a crowned queen she had lived; as one she would die. The deadly asp, it is said, became the executioner of her wicked will; and when the victor came to stay the act which would rob him of a part of his revenge, he found the work accomplished. Cleopatra would try her wiles no more.

Here was a woman who, by her adroitness and tact and a pa.s.sionate will, wielded an almost incredible power over some of the greatest men of that age; whom she brought under her influence, and for years led them whither she would, according to the whim which possessed her. Which was the weaker mentally, Mark Antony or Cleopatra? It is for the historical student to determine for himself. In licentiousness, they certainly were on a par.

LUCRETIA.

Contrast the depravity of the wretched Cleopatra with the virtue of Lucretia, wife of Collatinus, a distinguished Roman. Beautiful and, for the time in which she lived, highly accomplished, she was the idol of her husband. Loving and faithful to him, and attentive to the ordering of her household, she was p.r.o.nounced a model Roman dame. Virtue was pre-eminently a characteristic of the Roman matron. A heartless libertine, annoyed that Lucretia should stand so high, and fired by wine and evil pa.s.sion, determined to accomplish her downfall; and, while she was helplessly in his power, effected his vile purpose. The outraged woman waited till her husband and father could be summoned; and, having told her dreadful tale, and entreated them to avenge her dishonor, she plunged a dagger to her heart. A heathen, she knew not there was sin in suicide, and preferred death to a tarnished reputation.