Woman under socialism

by August Bebel

According to the law of the canton of Zurich, the husband is the guardian of his wife; he administers her property; and he represents her before third parties. According to the Code Civil, the husband administers the property that the wife brings with her, he can sell her property, alienate it, load it with mortgages without requiring her consent, or signature. Similar provisions exist in several other cantons of Switzerland besides Zurich, in France, Belgium, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Denmark and also in a large part of Germany. Countries in which community of property may be excluded in marriage are, besides parts of Germany, and a large part of Switzerland, Austria, Poland and the Baltic provinces. Countries in which the absolute independence of married women exist with respect to their property are: Italy, Russia, Great Britain and Ireland. In Norway, a law of the year 1888, on the administration of the property of married persons, provides that a married woman has the same power to dispose of her property as unmarried women, only the law specifies a few exceptions. In this law the expression is used that woman becomes un-free in marriage. Who could blame her if, there also, as happens frequently in France, women are seen to waive formal matrimonial contracts?

According to the law of Berne, what the married woman earns belongs to her husband. Similarly with most cantons of Switzerland, also in France and Belgium. The consequence is that the wife often finds herself in a state of virtual slavery: the husband squanders with lewd women or in the grog-shop what his wife makes: he incurs debts: gambles away his wife's earnings: leaves her and her children in want. He even has the right to demand from her employer the wages due her.

By the law of December 11, 1874, Sweden secures to the married woman the right to dispose freely of that which she earns by her personal effort. Denmark has raised the same principle to the force of a law; nor can, according to Danish law, the property of the wife be seized to cover the debts of the husband. Similarly runs the law of Norway of 1888.[152] The right of educating the children and of deciding thereupon is, according to the legislation of most countries, the attribute of the father: here and there a subordinate co-operation is granted the mother. The old Roman maxim, that stood in sharp contradiction to the principles prevalent during the mother-right, and that clothed the father alone with rights and powers over the child, is to this day the key-note of legislation on the subject.

Among the continental countries, woman holds the freest position in Russia,—due to the communistic institutions there still in existence, or to reminiscences of the same. In Russia, woman is the administrator of her property: she enjoys equal rights in the administration of the community. Communism is the most favorable social condition to woman. The fact transpired from the sketch of the age of the mother-right, given on previous pages.[153] In the United States women have conquered full civil equality; they have also prevented the introduction of the English and similar laws regulating prostitution.

The civic inequality of woman has provoked among the more advanced members of the female sex demand for political rights, to the end of wielding the power of legislation in behalf of their civic equality. It is the identical thought that moved the working class everywhere to direct their agitation towards the conquest of the political powers. What is right for the working class can not be wrong for woman. Oppressed, disfranchised, relegated everywhere to the rear, woman has not the right only, she has the duty to defend herself, and to seize every means she may deem fit to conquer a more independent position for herself. Against these efforts also the reactionary mob, of course, bristles up. Let us see how.

The great French Revolution, that, as is well known, started in 1789 and threw all old institutions out of joint, conjured up a freedom of spirits such as the world had never seen before. Woman also stepped upon the stage. During the previous decades immediately preceding the outbreak of the Revolution, many of them had taken part in the great intellectual struggle that then raged throughout French society. They flocked in swarms to the great scientific discussions, attended political and scientific meetings, and did their share in preparing the Revolution, where theory was to crystalize into fact. Most historians have noted only the excesses of the Revolution,—and as always happens when the object is to cast stones at the people and arouse horror against them—have enormously exaggerated these to the end of all the more readily extenuating the shameful transgressions of the ruling class. As a rule, these historians have belittled the heroism and greatness of soul, displayed also by many women in both camps. So long as the vanquishers remain the historians of the vanquished, it will ever be thus.

In October, 1789, a number of women petitioned the National Assembly "that equality be restored between man and woman, work and occupation be given them free, places be left for them that their faculties were fit for."

When in 1793 the Convention proclaimed "le droit de l'homme" (the Rights of Man), the more far-seeing women perceived that these were only the rights of males. Olympe de Gouges, Louise Lecombe and others paralleled these "Rights of Man" with 17 articles on the "Rights of Woman," which, on the 28th Brumaire (November 20, 1793) they defended before the Commune of Paris upon the principle: "If woman has the right to mount the scaffold, she must also have the right to mount the tribune." Their demands remained unheeded. When, subsequently, upon the march of monarchic Europe against the Republic, the Convention declared the "Fatherland in danger," and called upon all men, able to carry arms, to defend the Fatherland and the Republic, inspired Parisian women offered to do what twenty years later inspired Prussian women likewise did against the domination of Napoleon,—defend the Fatherland, arms in hand. The radical Chaumette rose against those Parisian women and addressed them, asking: "Since when is it allowed to women to renounce their sex and become men? Since when is it usage for them to abandon the sacred cares of their households, the cradles of their children, and to appear at public places, to speak from the tribunes, to step in the files of the troops,—in short, to fill duties that Nature has devolved upon man alone? Nature said to man: 'Be thou man! Racing, the chase, the cultivation of the fields, politics and violent labors of all sorts are thy privilege!' It said to woman: 'Be thou woman! The care of thy children, the details of thy household, the sweet inquietudes of motherhood,—that is thy work!' Unwise women, why wish you to become men? Is not mankind properly divided? What more can you want? In the name of Nature, remain what you are; and, far from envying us the perils of so stormy a life, rest satisfied to make us forget them in the lap of our families, by allowing our eyes to rest upon the fascinating spectacle of our children, made happy by your tender care."

The women allowed themselves to be silenced, and went away. There can be no doubt that the radical Chaumette voiced the innermost sentiments of most of our men, who otherwise abhor him. We also hold that it is a proper division of work to leave to men the defense of the country, and to women the care of the home and the hearth. In Russia, late in the fall of the year and after they have tended the fields, the men of whole village districts move to distant factories, and leave to the women the administration of the commune and the house. For the rest, the oratorical gush of Chaumette is mere phrases. What he says concerning the labors of the men in the fields is not even correct: since time immemorial down to to-day, woman's was not the easy part in agriculture. The alleged labors of the chase and the race course are no "labors" at all: they are amusements of men; and, as to politics, it has perils for him only who swims against the stream, otherwise it offers the men at least as much amusement as labor. It is the egoism of man that speaks in that speech.

At about the same time when the French Revolution was under way, and engaged the attention of all Europe, a woman rose on the other side of the Channel also, in England, to labor publicly in behalf of equal rights for her sex. She was Mary Wollstoncraft, born in 1759, and who, in 1790, published a book against Edmund Burke, the most violent enemy of the French Revolution. She later, 1792, wrote a second book—"A Vindication of the Rights of Woman"—in which she took the stand for absolute equality of rights for her sex. In this book she demands the suffrage for women in the elections for the Lower House. But she met in England with even less response than did her sisters in France. Ridiculed and insulted by her contemporaries, she went under after trying ordeals. Before the Revolution it was the encyclopedist Condorcet who principally took the field for the equal rights of both sexes.