Heroines of History
In attempting to give a definition of strong-minded women, I find it necessary to distinguish between just ideas of strength and what is so considered by the modern woman's rights' movement.
A very estimable woman by the name of Mrs. Bloomer obtained the reputation of being strong-minded by curtailing her skirts six inches, a compliment which certainly excites no envious feeling in my heart; for I am philosophically puzzled to know how cutting six inches off a woman's dress can possibly add anything to the height of her head.
One or two hundred women getting together in convention and resolving that they are an abused community, and that all the men are great tyrants and rascals, proves plainly enough that they—the women—are somehow discontented, and that they have, perhaps, a certain amount of courage, but I cannot see that it proves them to have any remarkable strength of mind.
Really strong-minded women are not women of words, but of deeds; not of resolutions, but of actions. History does not teach me that they have ever consumed much time in conventions and in passing resolutions about their rights; but they have been very prompt to assert their rights, and to defend them too, and to take the consequences of defeat.
Thus all history is full of startling examples of female heroism, which prove that woman's heart is made of as stout a stuff and of as brave a mettle as that which beats within the ribs of the coarser sex. And if we were permitted to descend from this high plane of public history into the private homes of the world, in which sex, think you, should we there find the purest spirit of heroism? Who suffers sorrow and pain with the most heroism of heart? Who, in the midst of poverty, neglect and crushing despair, holds on most bravely through the terrible struggle, and never yields even to the fearful demands of necessity until death wrests the last weapon of defence from her hands? Ah, if all this unwritten heroism of woman could be brought to the light, even man himself would cast his proud wreath of fame at her feet!
Rousseau asserts that "all great revolutions were owing to women." The French Revolution, the last great and stirring event upon which the world looks back, arose, as Burke ill-naturedly expresses it, "amidst the yells and violence of women." We accept the compliment which Burke here pays to the power of woman, and attribute the coarseness of his language to the bitter repugnance which every Englishman of that day had to everything that was French. No, Mr. Burke, it was not by "yells and violence" that the great women of France helped on that mighty revolution—it was by the combined power of intellect and beauty. Nor will women who get together in conventions for the purpose of berating men, ever accomplish anything. They can effect legislation only by quiet and judicious counsel, with such means as control the judgment and the heart of legislators. And the experience of the world has pretty well proved that a man's judgment is pretty easily controlled when his heart is once persuaded.