“Faugh, on such twaddle! ‘Golden rules for wives’—‘duty of wives’—how sick we are at the sight of such paragraphs! Why don’t our wise editors give us now and then some ‘golden rules’ for husbands, by way of variety? Why not tell us of the promises men make at the altar, and of the injunction ‘Husbands, love your wives as your own selves’? ‘Implicit submission of a man to his wife is disgraceful to both, but implicit obedience of the wife to the will of the husband is what she promised at the altar.’ So you say! What nonsense! what absurdity! what downright injustice! A disgrace for a man to yield to the wishes of his wife, but an honor for a wife to yield implicit obedience to the commands of her husband, be he good or bad, just or unjust, a kind husband or a tyrannical master! Oh! how much of sorrow, of shame and unhappiness have such teachings occasioned. Master and slave! Such they make the relationship existing between husband and wife; and oh, how fearfully has woman been made to feel that he who promised at the altar to love, cherish and protect her is but a legalized master and tyrant! We deny that it is any more her duty to make her husband’s happiness her study than it is his business to study her happiness. We deny that it is woman’s duty to love and obey her husband, unless he prove himself worthy of her love and unless his requirements are just and reasonable. Marriage is a union of two intelligent, immortal beings in a life partnership, in which each should study the pleasure and the happiness of the other and they should mutually share the joys and bear the burdens of life.”
THE CLERGY.
“It is too true that the majority of this class of men stand aloof from the humanitarian questions of the day, and exert their influence to prejudice their people against them and to prevent their hearing the truth; yet it is not less true that there are among them many warm-hearted, earnest and true men; and for this reason the charges brought by reformers should be limited. We find that it is with clergymen as with other people; there are some very open and liberal, and others very conservative and bigoted. Some would think it a desecration to allow a woman to lecture in their church, while others not only freely offer their church for temperance, but also for woman’s-rights lectures. Some think it an abomination for women to speak in public on any subject, while others wish that there were a hundred to take the platform in behalf of temperance where there is but one now. We have discussed temperance and woman’s rights in numerous churches and have had clergymen for our listeners. While we would by no means excuse those who so coldly and scornfully turn away from the woman question and its discussion, yet we feel unwilling to see the more liberal classed with them and subjected to censure. We know of no other course for reformers to pursue, but to be sure they are right and then ‘go ahead’ without regard to the opposition of the clergy or any other class of men.”
MALE BLOOMERS.
“Under this head, many of our brother editors are aiming their wit and ridicule at those gentlemen who have donned the shawl as a comfortable article of wearing apparel in cold weather. There is a class of men who seem to think it their especial business to superintend the wardrobes of both men and women, and if any dare to depart from their ideas of propriety they forthwith launch out all sorts of witticisms and hard names, and proclaim their opinions, their likes and dislikes, with all the importance of authorized dictators. As to the shawl, it would be well if it could be banished from use entirely, as it is an inconvenient and injurious article of apparel, owing to its requiring both hands to keep it on and thereby tending to contract the chest and cause stooping shoulders. But, if worn at all, men have the same right to it that women have. If they find it convenient that is enough, and no one has a right to object to their wearing it because women wear shawls. Indeed, we think the shawl of right belongs to men as it answers so well to the description of the garment prescribed for them in Deut., xxii. 12: ‘Thou shalt make thee fringes upon the four quarters of thy vesture wherewith thou coverest thyself.’ True, men have departed from this injunction in former years, and resigned to women the dress prescribed for themselves and worn by their fathers in olden times. But that is no reason why they should not resume it.”
WOMEN MECHANICS.
It having been stated that a woman in New Jersey had made a carriage, Mrs. Bloomer comments as follows:
“This is told as though it were something wonderful for women to have mechanical genius when, in fact, there are thousands all over the country who could make as good mechanics and handle tools with as much skill and dexterity as men, if they were only allowed to manifest their skill and ingenuity. A girl’s hands and head are formed very much like those of a boy; and, if put to a trade at the age when boys are usually apprenticed, our word for it she will master her business quite as soon as the boy at the same trade, be the trade what it may. Women have taste and ingenuity for something besides washing dishes and sewing on buttons, and so people will find out some day, hard as it is now to believe it.”
WOMAN’S DRESS.
“Our counsel to every woman is, wear what pleases you best. Pursue a quiet and independent course in the matter, turning neither to the right nor the left to enquire who is pleased or displeased; and, if others do not see fit to keep you company by patterning their dress after yours, you will at least be left in the peaceable enjoyment of your own comfortable attire, and real friends will value you according to your worth, and not according to the length of your train.”