“RULING A WIFE.”
During this year, Mr. T. S. Arthur published a book bearing this title, in which he undertook to define the duties of the wife of a hard-hearted, thoughtless man, and to show that even under the most shocking circumstances of injustice it was still the wife’s duty to submit and obey. Mrs. Bloomer took exception to this position. Mr. Arthur answered her, and she then wrote in reply in part as follows:
“I have too good an opinion of my sex to admit that they are such weak, helpless creatures, or to teach them any such ideas. Much rather would I arouse them from their dependent, inferior position, and teach them to rely more upon themselves and less upon man, so that when called upon, as many of them are and ever will be, to battle with the rough things of the world, they may go forth with confidence in their own powers of coping successfully with every obstacle and with courage to meet whatever dangers and difficulties may lie in their way. The more you impress this upon their minds, the more you show that she is man’s equal, and not his slave, so much the more you do to elevate woman to her true position. The present legal distinctions between the sexes have been made by man and not by God. Man has degraded woman from her high position in which she was placed as his companion and equal, and made of her a slave to be bought and sold at his pleasure. He has brought the Bible to prove that he is her lord and master, and taught her that resistance to his authority is to resist God’s will. I deny that the Bible teaches any such doctrine. God made them different in sex, but equal in intellect, and gave them equal dominion. You deny that they are ‘intellectually equal.’ As a whole, I admit that at the present day they are not; though I think there have been individual cases where woman’s equality cannot be denied. But at her creation no difference existed. It is the fault of education that she is now intellectually inferior. Give her the same advantages as men, throw open the door of our colleges and schools of science and bid her enter, teach her that she was created for a higher purpose than to be a parlor ornament or mere plaything for man, show her that you regard her as an equal and that her opinions are entitled to consideration, in short, treat her as an intelligent, accountable being, and when all this has been done, if she prove herself not man’s equal in intellect I will yield the point and admit her inferiority. It is unjust to condemn her as inferior when we consider the different education she has received and the estimation in which she has ever been held. We are by the laws and customs of society rendered dependent and helpless enough, at the best; but it is both painful and mortifying to see our helplessness shown up to the world in such colors, and by such a writer as yourself. If, instead of leading Mrs. Long into such difficulties after she had left her husband, you had allowed her to hire out as a servant, if nothing better presented itself, you would have done justice to woman, set her a better example, and more truly drawn her character.”
The above presents very fully the views of Mrs. Bloomer at that time (1850). She was pleading for the elevation of woman, for her redemption from the curse of drink, for a better education for her, and wider fields for the work of her hands. She had not yet troubled herself much about the suffrage question,—the right to the ballot; that came along later in life, as we have already seen.
CHAPTER FOURTH.
THE REFORM DRESS.
The reform-dress movement was simply an episode in Mrs. Bloomer’s life and work, although perhaps an important one. She never dreamed of the wonderful celebrity which it brought to her name. This came upon her accidentally, as we shall see later on. It was first mentioned in the Lily in February, 1851. Other short articles on the subject appeared in subsequent numbers during that year, with pictures of herself dressed in the new costume. The whole story she herself told in the following article which appeared originally some years ago in the Chicago Tribune and is here reproduced in full, followed by some further items bearing on the subject:
“In January or February, 1851, an article appeared editorially in the Seneca County Courier, Seneca Falls, N. Y., on ‘Female Attire,’ in which the writer showed up the inconvenience, unhealthfulness and discomfort of woman’s dress, and advocated a change to Turkish pantaloons and a skirt reaching a little below the knee.
“At the time, I was publishing a monthly paper in the same place devoted to the interests of woman, temperance and woman’s rights being the principal subjects. As the editor of the Courier was opposed to us on the woman’s-rights question, this article of his gave me an opportunity to score him one on having gone so far ahead of us as to advocate our wearing pantaloons, and in my next issue I noticed him and his proposed style in a half-serious, half-playful article of some length. He took up the subject again and expressed surprise that I should treat so important a matter with levity. I replied to him more seriously than before, fully indorsing and approving his views on the subject of woman’s costume.
“About this time, when the readers of the Lily and the Courier were interested in and excited over the discussion, Elizabeth Smith Miller, daughter of the Hon. Gerrit Smith, of Peterboro, N. Y., appeared on the streets of our village dressed in short skirts and full Turkish trousers. She came on a visit to her cousin, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who was then a resident of Seneca Falls. Mrs. Miller had been wearing the costume some two or three months at home and abroad. Just how she came to adopt it I have forgotten, if I ever knew. But she wore it with the full sanction and approval of her father and husband. During her father’s term in congress she was in Washington, and the papers of that city described her appearance on the streets in the short costume.