My Wife and I; Or, Harry Henderson's History

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

"Because," said he, "look at the difference. The woman Queen in England comes to it quietly; she is born to it, and there is no fuss about it. But whoever is set up to be President of the United States is just set up to have his character torn off from his back in shreds, and to be mauled, pummeled, and covered with dirt by every filthy paper all over the country. And no woman that was not willing to be draggled through every kennel, and slopped into every dirty pail of water, like an old mop, would ever consent to run as a candidate. Why, it's an ordeal that kills a man. It killed Gen. Harrison, and killed old Zack. And what sort of a brazen tramp of a woman would it be that could stand it, and come out of it without being killed? Would it be any kind of a woman that we should want to see at the head of our government? I tell you, it's quite another thing to be President of a democratic republic, from what it is to be hereditary Queen."

"Good for you, papa!" said Eva, clapping her hands. "Why how you go on! I never did hear such eloquence. No, Ida, set your mind at rest, you shan't be run for President of the United States. You are a great deal too good for that."

"Now," said Mr. Van Arsdel, "there's your friend, Mrs. Cerulean, tackled me the other night, and made a convert of me, she said. Bless me! she's a handsome woman, and I like to hear her talk. And if we didn't live in the world we do, and things weren't in any respect what they are, nothing would be nicer than to let her govern the world. But in the great rough round of business she's nothing but a pretty baby after all,—nothing else in the world. We let such women convert us, because we like to have them around. It amuses us, and don't hurt them. But you can't let your baby play with matches and gunpowder, if it wants to ever so much. Women are famous for setting things agoing that they don't know anything about. And then, when the explosion comes, they don't know what did it, and run screaming to the men."

"As to Mrs. Cerulean," said Eva, "I never saw anybody that had such a perfectly happy opinion of herself, as she has. She always thinks that she understands everything by intuition. I believe in my heart that she'd walk into the engine-room of the largest steamship that ever was navigated, and turn out the chief engineer and take his place, if he'd let her. She'd navigate by woman's God-given instincts, as she calls them."

"And so she'd keep on till she'd blown up the ship," said Mr. Van Arsdel.

"Well," said I, "one fact is to be admitted, that men, having always governed the world, must by this time have acquired a good deal of traditional knowledge of the science of government, and of human nature, which women can't learn by intuition in a minute."

"For my part," said Ida, "I never was disposed to insist on the immediate granting of political rights to women. I think that they are rights, and that it is very important for the good of society that these rights should finally be respected. But I am perfectly willing, for my part, to wait and come to them in the way, and at the time, that will be best for the general good. I would a great deal rather come to them by gradual evolution than by destructive revolution. I do not want them to be forced upon society, when there is so little preparation among women that they will do themselves no credit by it. All history shows that the most natural and undeniable human rights may be granted and maintained in a way that will just defeat themselves, and bring discredit on all the supporters of them, just as was the case with the principles of democratic liberty in the first French Revolution. I do not want the political rights of woman advocated in a manner that will create similar disturbances, and bring a lasting scandal on what really is the truth. I do not want women to have the ballot till they will do themselves credit and improve society by it. I like to have the subject proposed, and argued, and agitated, and kept up, in hopes that a generation of women will be educated for it. And I think it is a great deal better and safer, where it can be done, to have people educated for the ballot, than to have them educated by the ballot."

"Well, Ida, there's more sense in you than in the most of 'em," said Mr. Van Arsdel.

"Yes," said Ida, "I think that an immediate rush into politics of such women as we have now, without experience or knowledge of political economy of affairs, would be, as Eva says, just like women's undertaking to manage the machinery of a large steamer by feminine instincts. I hope never to see women in public life till we have had a generation of women who have some practical familiarity with the great subjects which are to be considered, about which now the best instructed women know comparatively nothing. The question which mainly interests me at present is a humanitarian one. It's an absolute fact that a great portion of womankind have their own living to get; and they do it now, as a general rule, with many of the laws and institutions of society against them. The reason of this is, that all these laws and institutions have been made by men, without any consent or concurrence of theirs. Now, as women are different from men, and have altogether a different class of feelings and wants and necessities, it certainly is right and proper that they should have some share in making the laws with which they are to be governed. It is true that the laws have been made by fathers and brothers and husbands; but no man, however, near, ever comprehends fully the necessities and feelings of women. And it seems to me that a State where all the laws are made by men, without women, is just like a family that is managed entirely by fathers and brothers, without any concurrence of mothers and sisters. That's my testimony, and my view of the matter."