Society sets man free from every conceivable family duty, without a word. On the other hand, it binds women down to them with cords of iron, and is pitiless if a single one be snapped. I do not ask society to require less of woman, but more of man. There is an immense amount of cant, intentional and unintentional, talked upon this subject. Last January, I heard one of our wisest and best public teachers speak upon the constitution of the family; and, when he had spoken whole pages of solid sense, he said this foolish thing,—that the life of the family rested in the mother; that, when she died, the children must scatter, the father could not hold them alone, but that the father might be faithless or dissipated, might abide in foreign countries, might wander for years a stranger, and still the family sacredness be unbroken. I do not believe it. I protest against such a view of the family, as a great public evil, and one which no public teacher should strengthen by any heedless or sentimental words.
No man has a right to ask any woman to be his wife, who means to sacrifice her life to his own love of business or pleasure or vagrancy; who does not mean to stand strong at her side till death. I speak for the heart of all womanhood when I say, that no good woman would ever accept such an offer, if she supposed she were to be idly left to fulfil its duties alone. If God had intended to rear women independent of manly influence, he would never have constituted the family. It is because every woman needs every man that its laws are absolute. If the physical legitimacy of the family depend upon the mother, the spiritual legitimacy depends upon the holy faithfulness of the father. When death or sickness or imperative duty takes her beloved ones from her, God sends to woman the Comforter, who helps her to bear and do her double duty. Yet even this angel is born of a voiceless sorrow. It was in recognition of this human need, as much as of the divine love, that Theodore Parker was accustomed to pray to Him who is both Father and Mother.
Do you object, that, under the present constitution of society, man cannot find time for this fidelity? When woman becomes an active worker, adding to the resources of the household, man is set free from a portion of his care. The future offers him ample time; the present, more than he uses. I wish I could see him as anxious to make acquaintance with his own young children as with the gay society of his neighborhood.
The actual guardianship of society is now thrown into woman's hands. It does not belong to her: it belongs to men and women.[46]
Individual men shrink from the idea of being "governed by their wives." From traditional indolence, however, and that sentimental respect which does not permit a man to sit in a woman's presence, the "world" has certainly come to be governed by "its wife." Worst of all, nobody punishes it even by a sneer.
The historical development of woman's social progress corresponds to the logical statement upon which I have insisted.
Nearly two centuries ago, Mary Astell would have established a college for women; but the bigotry of Bishop Burnet defeated her plans. The niece of a beneficed clergyman, she had not the courage to press her schemes against the open opposition of the church. Many other efforts, like hers, to secure and make use of education, led the way to a recognition of a decided bias in the individual: so when, a century later, Mary Wollstonecraft was born, the way was open for the assertion of the right to labor. This assertion is hardly indicated in her most celebrated work; but it gives pungency and effect to the dreariest pages of her novels.
In Australia, when a female child is born, the natives break her finger-joints; an artificial distinction, which they seem to think more decisive and enduring than God's own limit of sex.
Mary Wollstonecraft saw, that civilized society, enslaved by tradition and custom, imposed conditions quite as arbitrary, and, to all practical purposes, broke every joint in a woman's body; leaving her helpless, to depend on the strength and skill and affection of man.
A passionate and thriftless father, who spent more than three daughters could earn, and whom she nevertheless protected to her dying day, did not give her a very high idea of the security of such dependence. The response to her appeal was heard in a myriad of distinguished voices, and seen in the consecutive, chosen, and persevering labors of Harriet Martineau in political economy, of Anna Jameson in artistic criticism, of Mary Carpenter in the reformation of criminals, of Florence Nightingale in sanitary reform, of Caroline Chisholm in emigration, of Mrs. Griffith in marine botany (a special study, which she may almost be said to have created), of Janet Taylor in practical philanthropy among seamen, and nautical astronomy.