In his first book, "The Daughter," which is divided into seven chapters, Legouvé takes the child from her birth; he shows her made inferior in the ancient religions and systems of legislation by Menu, by Moses, at Rome, at Sparta, at Athens, and under the feudal régime; and he asks why, even in our days, the birth of a daughter is received with a sort of disfavor. It is because she will neither continue the name nor the works of her father, says he; it is because her future gives rise to a thousand anxieties. "Life is so rude and so uncertain for a girl! Poor, how many chances of misery! Rich, how many chances of moral suffering! If she is to have only her labor for a maintenance, how shall we give her an occupation that will support her in a state of society in which women scarcely earn wherewith not to die? If she has no dowry, how can she marry in this world in which woman, never representing anything but a passive being, is forced to buy a husband?... From this début, and in this child's cradle, we have found and caught a glimpse of all the chains that await women: insufficiency of education for the rich girl; insufficiency of wages for the poor girl; exclusion from the greater part of the professions; subordination in the conjugal abode."
In the second chapter, the author shows by what gradations the daughter, deprived of the right of inheritance, has come in our times to share equally with her brothers; then, passing to the right of education, he answers those who pretend that to give a solid education to woman would be to corrupt her and to injure the family: "The diversity of their nature (man and woman) being developed by the identity of their studies, it may be said that women would become so much the more fully women in proportion as they received a masculine education.
"Well! it is in the name of the family, in the name of the salvation of the family, in the name of maternity, of marriage, of the household, that a solid and earnest education must be demanded for girls.... Without knowledge, no mother is completely a mother, without knowledge no wife is truly a wife. The question is not, in revealing to the feminine intellect the laws of nature, to make all our girls astronomers or physicians; do we see all men become Latinists by spending ten years of their life in the study of Latin? The question is to strengthen their minds by acquaintance with science; and to prepare them to participate in all the thoughts of their husbands, all the studies of their children.... Ignorance leads to a thousand faults, a thousand errors in the wife. The husband who scoffs at science might have been saved by it from dishonor."
Insisting upon the rights of woman, the author adds: "As such (the work of God) she has the right to the most complete development of her mind and heart. Away then with these vain objections, drawn from the laws of a day! It is in the name of eternity that you owe her enlightenment." Further on, he exclaims indignantly: "What! the state maintains a university for men, a polytechnic school for men, academies of art and trades for men, agricultural schools for men—and for woman, what has it established? Primary schools! And even these were not founded by the State, but by the Commune. No inequality could be more humiliating. There are courts and prisons for women, there should be public education for women; you have not the right to punish those whom you do not instruct!" M. Legouvé demands, in consequence, public education for girls in athenæums, "which, by thorough instruction with respect to France, her laws, her annals, and her poetry, shall make her women French women in truth. The country alone can teach love of country."
Ancient religions and systems of legislation punished misdemeanors and crimes against the purity of women severely (says M. Legouvé in his fourth chapter). Our code, profoundly immoral, does not punish seduction, and punishes corruption only derisively, and violation insufficiently. To declare void the promise of marriage is fearful immorality; to permit no investigation of paternity and to admit that of maternity, is as cruel as it is immoral. If the solicitude of the legislator for property be compared with his solicitude for purity, we shall soon see how little the law cares for the latter. "The law recognizes as criminal only a single kind of robbery of honor, violation, but it defines, pursues and punishes two kinds of robbery of money, larceny and fraud; there are thieves of coin, there are no sharpers in chastity."
When a man has seduced a girl fifteen years old under promise of marriage, he has "a right to come before a magistrate and say: This is my signature, it is true; but I refuse to acknowledge it; a debt of love is void in law."
The indignant author exclaims, further on: "Thus, therefore, on every side, in practice and in theory, in the world and in the law, for the rich as for the poor, we see abandonment of public purity, and a loose rein to all ungoverned or depraved desires.... Manufacturers seduce their workwomen, foremen of workshops discharge young girls who will not yield to them, masters corrupt their servant maids. Of 5083 lost women, enumerated by the grave Parent-Duchâtelet at Paris in 1830, 285 were servants, seduced by their masters, and discarded. Clerks, merchants, officers, students deprave poor country girls and bring them to Paris, where they abandon them, and prostitution gathers them up.... At Rheims, at Lille, in all the great centres of industry, are found organized companies for the recruital of the houses of debauchery of Paris."
With the indignation of an upright man, M. Legouvé adds: "Punish the guilty woman if you will, but punish also the man! She is already punished; punished by abandonment, punished by dishonor, punished by remorse, punished by nine months of suffering, punished by the burden of rearing a child: let him then be smitten in turn; or else, it is not public decency that you are protecting, as you say, it is masculine sovereignty, in its vilest form: seigniorial right!
"Impunity assured to men doubles the number of illegitimate children. Impunity fosters libertinism; libertinism enervates the race, wastes fortunes and blights offspring. Impunity fosters prostitution; prostitution destroys the public health, and makes a profession of idleness and license. Impunity, in short, surrenders half the human race as a prey to the vices of the other half: behold its condemnation in a single word."
In the fifth chapter, the author finding, with reason, that girls are married too young, desires that they should not enter upon family duties until twenty-two years old; works of charity, solid studies, innocent pleasures, and the ideal of pure love will suffice to keep them pure till this age. "If the young maiden learns that nothing is more fatal to this divine sentiment (love) than the ephemeral fancies which dare call themselves by its name; if she perceives in it one of those rare treasures which we win only by conquering them, which we keep only by deserving them; if she knows that the heart which would be worthy to receive it must be purified like a sanctuary and enlarged like a temple; then be sure that this sublime ideal, engraven within her, will disgust her, by its beauty alone, with the vain images that profane or parody it; idols are not worshipped when God is known."