Female Suffrage: A Letter to the Christian Women of America

by Susan Fenimore Cooper

Susan Fenimore Cooper

(This e-text has been prepared from the original two-part magazine article, "Female Suffrage: A Letter to the Christian Women of America," by Susan Fenimore Cooper, which appeared in Harper's New Weekly Magazine, Vol. XLI (June-November, 1870), pp. 438-446, 594-600. The author is identified only in the Table of Contents, p. v, where she is listed as "Susan F. Cooper."

Transcribed by Hugh C. MacDougall jfcooper@wpe.com

{Because "vanilla text" does not permit of accents or italics, accents have been ignored, and both all-capital and italicized words transcribed as ALL CAPITALS. Paragraphs are separated by a blank line, but not indented. Footnotes by Susan Fenimore Cooper are inserted as paragraphs (duly identified) as indicated by her asterisks. All insertions by the transcriber are enclosed in {brackets}. For readers wishing to know the exact location of specific passages, the page breaks from Harper's are identified by a blank line at the end of each page, followed by the original page number at the beginning of the next.

{A Brief Introduction to Susan Fenimore Cooper's article:

{The question of "female suffrage" has long been resolved in the United States, and—though sometimes more recently—in other democratic societies as well. For most people, certainly in the so-called Western world, the right of women to vote on a basis of equality with men seems obvious. A century ago this was not the case, even in America, and it required a long, arduous, and sometimes painful struggle before the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified on August 18, 1920.

{Why then, take steps to make available through the Gutenberg Project an article arguing AGAINST the right of women to vote—an article written by a woman?

{There are two reasons for doing so. The first is that Susan Fenimore Cooper (1813-1894) was no ordinary woman. She was educated in Europe and extremely well read; she was the daughter and literary assistant of James Fenimore Cooper, America's first internationally recognized novelist; and she was a naturalist and essayist of great talent whose "nature diary" of her home village at Cooperstown, published as "Rural Hours" in 1850, has become a classic of early American environmental literature.

{Yet Susan Fenimore Cooper argued eloquently, bringing to her task not only her deep religious feelings but also her very considerable knowledge of world history and of American society, that women should not be given the vote! Hers was not a simple defense of male dominion; her case is combined with equally eloquent arguments in favor of higher education for women, and for equal wages for equal work. "Female Suffrage," is thus of considerable biographic importance, throwing important light on her views of God, of society, and of American culture.

{At the same time, "Female Suffrage" demonstrates that no social argument—however popular or politically correct today—can be considered as self-evident. Those who favor full legal and social equality of the sexes at the ballot box and elsewhere (as I believe I do), should be prepared to examine and answer Susan Fenimore Cooper's arguments to the contrary. Many of those arguments are still heard daily in the press and on TV talk shows—not indeed to end women's right to vote, but as arguments against further steps towards gender equality. Unlike many modern commentators, Susan Fenimore Cooper examines these arguments in detail, both as to their roots and their possible effects, rather than expressing them as simplistic sound-bites. She asks her readers to examine whether gender equality is compatible with Christian teachings; whether universal suffrage can ever resolve social problems; whether the "political" sphere is as significant to human life as politicians believe. One need not agree with her answers, but one can only be grateful that she forces us to ask questions.

{Hugh C. MacDougall, Secretary, James Fenimore Cooper Society—August 1999}