“They regard her with a species of covert adoration—as a heroine, who has first, since Fanny Wright, dared, in living up to principle, to do that which they are all, in reality, yearning for courage to do themselves.
“The chaos of social licentiousness, to which the general acceptation of such doctrine as this must lead, may be regarded, to say the least of it, as pleasantly melodramatic. When one woman may go to the house of another, and say, ‘Though thou hast been bound to this man, in the holy bonds of matrimony, yet these bonds are of no moral force; though thou hast borne to this man children from his loins, yet the fact that thou hast suffered gives thee no claim upon him, for it is the penalty of thy sex; and that they are bone of thy bone, and flesh of his flesh, gives thee no just hold upon him, but rather upon the State. And if thou hast nursed him in sickness, he has fed thee and clothed thee, in ample equivalent; if thou hast loved him, he has loved thee; if thou lovest him still, it is thy weakness. Get thee gone! This man no longer loveth thee; he is mine. Thou shalt surrender to me thy nuptial couch; there is no true marriage but in love!’
“Nor does the candor of Regina Straightback rest with practical declarations such as these; she goes quite as far in other directions. She does not hesitate to denounce the Bible, as sanctioning all the oppressions of woman—as the mere tool of the priesthood, the orthodox of whom are banded, to a man, in mortal opposition to their rights. She recommends the use of it, as a means—to those who are more disposed than she is to Jesuitism—of conquering by indirections. They may influence and control the masses, by invoking its sanction, to be sure; but she, for her own part, will have nothing to do with subterfuges; she rejects the Bible system in toto, as false—false in fact and tendency. God has made woman sufficient unto herself in the universe. She can and ought to protect herself; and if she does not, it’s her own fault.
“The Bible might do for men; but women possess a higher spirituality, and stronger intuitions; they do not need it. Man, with his heavy logic, never gets beyond a truism or a self-evident fact, of the mere physical world; while woman, with her electrical inspiration, leaps the ‘large lengths’ of universal law, and, like a conquering presence, glides within the spiritual, supreme. It is thus that, scorning all bonds of sense, she knoweth that she doth know!
“The announcement of these tremendous propositions would, of course, be calculated to have an overwhelming effect upon the tender adolescence of thousands of bright spirits—to electrify their hearts and souls with the novel consciousness of claims and attributes, of which they had never dreamed themselves or their sex to be possessors.
“The result has been, of necessity, the institution of a feminine order of ‘knight-errantry,’ of which the Quixote has yet to be sung.
“The Committee do not generally employ such agents as Regina Straightback; but as the time seems to have practically arrived, owing to the preparatory labors of Etherial Softdown and Eusedora Polypheme, they seem to have conceded that such pretensions may be safely risked, though, it is well known, they usually do far more harm than good to any cause.
“The fact that such a step may be safely ventured upon, seems to be the most encouraging token of the progress already achieved, and of the ultimate and triumphant success of the exertions of the ‘Committee of Disorganisation.’”
CHAPTER XXX.
HUMILITY BAREBONES STOUT.
The report goes on to say—