A Woman's Philosophy of Woman; or, Woman affranchised. / An answer to Michelet, Proudhon, Girardin, Legouvé, Comte, and other modern innovators

by Madame d' Héricourt

"Let us then open wide the gates of the world to this new element: we have need of it."

Then, examining the position of women, the author adds: "No history presents, we believe, more iniquitous prejudices to combat, more secret wounds to heal.

"Shall we speak of the present? As daughters, no public education for them, no professional instruction, no possible life without marriage, no marriage without a dowry. Wives—they do not legally possess their property, they do not possess their persons, they cannot give, they cannot receive, they are under the ban of an eternal interdict. Mothers—they have not the legal right to direct the education of their children, they can neither marry them, nor prevent them from marrying, nor banish them from the paternal house nor retain them there. Members of the commonwealth, they can neither be the guardians of other orphans than their sons or their grand-sons, nor take part in a family council, nor witness a will; they have not the right of testifying in the state to the birth of a child! Among the working people, what class is most wretched? Women. Who are they that earn from sixteen to eighteen sous for twelve hours of labor? Women. Upon whom falls all the expense of illegitimate children? Upon women. Who bear all the disgrace of faults committed through passion? Women."

Then, after showing the position of rich women, he continues: "And thus, slaves everywhere, slaves of want, slaves of wealth, slaves of ignorance, they can only maintain themselves great and pure by force of native nobleness and almost superhuman virtue. Can such domination endure? Evidently not. It necessarily falls before the principle of natural equity; and the moment has come to claim for women their share of rights and, above all, of duties; to demonstrate what subjection takes away from them, and what true liberty will restore to them; to show, in short, the good that they do not and the good they might do."

The history of the past shows us woman more and more oppressed in proportion as we trace back the course of centuries. "The French Revolution (itself), which renewed the whole order of things in order to affranchise men, did nothing, we may say, for the affranchisement of women.... '91 respected almost all of the feminine disabilities of '88, and the Consulate confirmed them in the civil code."

This, in Legouvé's opinion was the fault of the philosophy of the eighteenth century, for "woman is, according to Diderot, a courtesan; according to Montesquieu, an attractive child; according to Rousseau, an object of pleasure to man; according to Voltaire, nothing.... Condorcet and Sieyès demanded even the political emancipation of woman; but their protests were stifled by the powerful voices of the three great continuers of the eighteenth century, Mirabeau, Danton, and Robespierre."

Under the Consulate, "feminine liberty had no more decided enemy (than Bonaparte:) a southerner, the spirituality of woman was lost on him; a warrior, he saw in the family a camp, and there required, before all else, discipline; a despot, he saw in it a state, and there required, before all else, obedience. He it was who concluded a discussion in council with these words: There is one thing that is not French; that a woman can do as she pleases.... Always man (in the thought of Bonaparte), always the honor of man! As to the happiness of woman, it is not a single time in question (in the civil code.)"

It is in behalf of the weakness of women, it is in behalf of tradition which shows them constantly subordinate, it is in behalf of their household functions, that the adversaries of the emancipation of women oppose it. "To educate them is to deform them; and they do not want their playthings spoiled," says M. Legouvé, ironically. He then continues in a serious strain: "What matters tradition to us? What matters history to us? There is an authority more powerful than the consent of the human race: it is the Right. Though a thousand more centuries of servitude should be added to those which have already passed, their accord could not banish the primordial right which rules over everything, the absolute right of perfecting one's self which every being has received from the sole fact that he has been created."

To those who base their opposition on the domestic functions of woman, he answers: "If there (in the household) is their kingdom, then there they should be queens; their own faculties assure them there of authority, and their adversaries are forced, by their own principles, to emancipate them as daughters, as wives, as mothers. Or, on the contrary, it is sought to extend their influence, to give them a rôle in the state, and we believe that they should have one: well; it is also in this dissimilarity (between the two sexes), that it is fitting to seek it. When two beings are of value to each other, it is almost always because they differ from, not because they resemble each other. Far from dispossessing men, the mission of women therefore would be to do what men leave undone, to aspire to empty places, in short, to represent in the commonwealth the spirit of woman."

As is evident, Legouvé demands the civil emancipation of woman in the name of the eternal Right, in the name of the happiness of the family, in the name of the commonwealth; their long standing oppression is an iniquitous fact, and he casts blame on all who have perpetuated it. This blame from a man of heart and justice may perhaps have some weight with those women who are so much accustomed to bondage that they do not blush at it—that they even no longer feel it!