[176] The correctness of this conception may be seen from the comedy by Aristophanes, “The Popular Assembly of Women.” In this comedy Aristophanes depicts how the Athenian state was so mismanaged that no one knew what to do. In the popular assembly of the citizens of Athens the prytanes submit the question how the state is to be saved. A woman, disguised as a man, moves to entrust the government to the women, and this motion is carried without resistance, “because it was the only thing not yet tried in Athens.” The women proceed to steer the ship of state and immediately introduce communism. Of course, Aristophanes ridicules this condition, but the characteristic part of his play is, that he has the women introduce communism as the only rational social organization from their point of view, as soon as they come into power. Aristophanes had no idea of how much truth was in his jest.
[2.—The Struggle for Political Equality.]
The evident inequality of women before the law has caused the more advanced among them to demand political rights, in order to attain their equality by means of legislation. The same thought has also led the working class to direct their agitation toward the conquest of political power. What is right for the working class, cannot be wrong for the women. Being oppressed, devoid of rights and, in many instances, disregarded, it is not only their right, but their duty to defend themselves and to adopt any method that appears good to them, so that they may win an independent position. Of course these endeavors are opposed by the usual reactionary croakings. Let us see to what extent these are justified.
Women possessing eminent intellectual abilities have influenced politics at all times and among all peoples, even where they were not endowed with the power of sovereigns. Even the papal court was not exempt from this. If they could not exert any influence by means of the rights conceded to them, they did so by their intellectual superiority, even by intrigues. For many centuries their influence was particularly strong at the court of France, as also at the Spanish and Italian courts. At the close of the seventeenth century, at the court of Philip V. of Spain, Marie of Trémonille, Countess of Bracciano and Princess of Ursins, was the prime-minister of Spain for thirteen years, and during this time very ably conducted Spanish politics. As the mistresses of rulers, many women have succeeded in obtaining a great political influence; we need but mention the well-known names of Maintenon, the mistress of Louis XIV., and Pompadour, the mistress of Louis XV. The great intellectual awakening of the eighteenth century, that produced men like Montesquieu, Voltaire, d’Allembert, Holbach, Helvetius, La Mettrie, Rousseau, and many others, did not fail to affect the women. This great movement, which questioned the justification of the fundamental principles of the state and feudal society and helped to undermine them, may have been joined by some women to follow the fashion, to satisfy their love of intrigue, or for other unworthy motives. But a great many women were impelled to take part in this movement by their profound interest and enthusiasm for its noble aims. Decades before the outbreak of the great revolution, which swept over France like a purifying cloud-burst, tore the old order asunder and cast it down, causing jubilation among the most advanced minds of the age, women had thronged into the scientific and political clubs, where philosophical, scientific, religious, social and political problems were discussed with unwonted daring, and had taken part in the discussions. When at length, in July, 1789, the storming of the Bastille ushered in the great revolution, women of the upper classes and women of the common people participated actively and exerted a very noticeable influence both for and against it. They participated excessively in both good and evil wherever an opportunity presented itself. The majority of historians have taken more notice of the excesses of the revolution than of its great and noble deeds. These excesses, by the way, were only too natural, for they were the result of tremendous exasperation at the unspeakable corruption, the exploitation, the imposition, the baseness and villany of the ruling classes. Under the influence of these biased descriptions, Schiller wrote the lines: “And women there become hyenas and mock at horror and despair.” And yet in those years women have set so many noble examples of heroism, magnanimity, and admirable self-sacrifice, that to write an impartial book on “the women in the great revolution,” would mean the erection of a noble monument in their honor.[177] According to Michelet, women even were the van-guard of the revolution. The general poverty and want from which the French people suffered under the predatory and disgraceful rule of the Bourbon kings, especially affected the women, as is always the case under similar conditions. Being excluded from almost every decent means of support, tens of thousands of them fell victims to prostitution. To this was added the famine of 1789, which increased the suffering of women and children to the utmost. This famine led them to storm the town-hall in October and to march in masses to Versailles, the seat of the court. It also caused a number of them to petition the national assembly “that the equality between man and woman be reinstated, that work and employment be opened to them and that they be given positions suited to their abilities.” As the women recognized that they needed power to win their rights, but that they could attain power only by organizing and by standing together in great numbers, they organized women’s clubs throughout France, some of which had a surprisingly large membership, and also took part in the men’s meetings. While brilliant Madame Roland preferred to play a leading political part among the “statesmen” of the French Revolution, the Girondistes, passionate and eloquent Olympe de Gouges took the leadership of the women of the people and espoused their cause with all the enthusiasm of her fervent temperament.
When the assembly proclaimed “the rights of man” (les droits de l’homme), in 1793, she promptly recognized that they were only rights of men. In opposition to these, Olympe de Gouges, together with Rose Lacombe and others, wrote “The rights of Women,” in seventeen articles. On the 28 Brumaire (November 20, 1793), she defended the rights before the Paris Commune, with arguments that are still fully justified. In her argumentation the following sentence, characteristic of the situation, was contained: “If a woman has the right to mount the scaffold she must also have the right to mount the platform.” Her demands remained unfulfilled. But her reference to the right of woman to mount a scaffold met with bloody confirmation. Her defence of the rights of women on the one hand, and her struggle against the atrocities of the assembly on the other, made her appear ripe for the scaffold to the assembly. She was beheaded on the 3d of November, of the same year. Five days later Madame Roland was beheaded, also. Both went to their death heroically. Shortly before these executions, on October 17, 1793, the assembly had shown its attitude of hostility toward women by deciding to suppress all the women’s clubs. Later on, when the women continued to protest against the wrong perpetrated against them, they were even forbidden to attend the assembly and the public meetings, and were treated as rebels.
When monarchical Europe marched against France, and the assembly declared “the fatherland to be in danger,” Parisian women offered to do what was done twenty years later by enthusiastic Prussian women, to bear arms in defence of the fatherland, thereby hoping to prove their right to equality. But they were opposed in the commune by the radical Chaumette, who addressed them thus: “Since when are women permitted to deny their sex and to make men of themselves? Since when is it customary for them to neglect the tender care of their households, to forsake the cradles of their children, to come into public places, to speak from platforms, to enter the ranks of the army, with one word, to perform those duties which nature has destined man to perform? Nature has said to the man: ‘Be a man! The races, the hunt, agriculture, politics, all exertions are your privilege.’ She has said to the woman: ‘Be a woman! The care of your children, the details of the household, the sweet restlessness of motherhood, these are your tasks.’ Foolish women, why do you seek to become men? Are human beings not properly divided? What more do you ask? In the name of Nature, remain what you are, and far from envying us our stormy lives, make us forget them in the midst of our families by letting our eyes rest upon the lovely sight of our children, happy in your tender care.” Undoubtedly the radical Chaumette expressed the opinion held by most men. It is generally considered an appropriate division of labor that men defend the country and women care for hearth and home. For the rest the oratorical effusion of Chaumette consists of mere phrases. It is not true that man has borne the burdens of agriculture. From primeval days down to the present woman has contributed a large share to agriculture. The exertions of the hunt and the races are no “exertions,” but a pleasure to men, and politics entails dangers only for those who combat current opinions, while to others it offers at least as much pleasure as exertion. Nothing but the egotism of man finds expression in this speech.
Aims similar to those pursued by the Encyclopedists and the great revolution in France found expression in the United States, when, during the seventies and eighties of the eighteenth century, the colonists won their struggle for independence from England and established a democratic constitution. At that time, Mercy Ottis Warren and the wife of the second president of the United States, Mrs. Adams, together with a few other women, favored political equality. It was due to their influence that the State of New Jersey bestowed the right of suffrage upon women, of which it deprived them again in 1807. In France, even before the outbreak of the revolution, Condorcet, later a Girondist, published a brilliantly written essay in favor of woman’s suffrage and the political equality of both sexes.
Inspired by the great events in the neighboring country, it was brave Mary Wollstonecraft, born in 1759, who proclaimed woman’s cause at the other side of the channel. In 1790 she wrote a book in opposition to Burke, one of the most vehement opponents of the French Revolution, in which she defended the rights of man. Soon after she proceeded to demand the rights of man for her own sex. In her book, published in 1792, “A Vindication of the Rights of Women,” she severely criticised her own sex, but demanded and bravely defended complete equality for women in behalf of the common welfare. She met with vehement opposition and was subjected to severe and unjust attacks. Heart-broken by bitter inward struggles, she died in 1797, misunderstood and ridiculed by her contemporaries.
At the same time, when the first serious endeavors to obtain political equality for women were being made in France, England, and the United States, even in Germany, which was particularly retrogressive then, a German writer—Th. G. v. Hippel—anonymously published a book in Berlin, in 1792, on the “Civic Improvement in the Condition of Women,” in which he defended the equal rights of women. At that time a book on the civic improvement in the condition of men would have been equally justified. We must therefore doubly admire the courage of this man, who, in his book, ventured to draw all the logical conclusions from social and political sex equality and defended same very ably and intelligently.