Woman, Church & State / The Original Exposé of Male Collaboration Against the Female Sex

by Matilda Joslyn Gage

Looking for a mission, for a work to do, this is the attitude of many women today.... You hear of the education of women, of co-education of the sexes, of emancipation of woman from bonds—what bonds the Lord only knows! Here is a mission worthy of yourselves, it is of all works that could be rendered the fittest for a church woman, because she was at the beginning of all the trouble in the world.... We believe the old story of the Bible re-affirmed by Christ and his apostles, that Adam was not deceived by the devil, but that the woman being deceived, was in the transgression. Now to her with whom the wrong began, we look for the beginning of the right. Remember that in the woman are the poles of the good and the evil in human nature.

When she is good she is the best of all that exists; when bad, the worst.

Another sermon of this Lenten series, expressed the views of the reverend gentleman upon the family relation, bearing of children and divorce, in which he expressed his hatred of modern development saying:

I feel great solicitude about the subject of this evening’s lecture; I had rather not touch it at all. You may think that its selection is an instance of that disrespect to which I have referred. Not so, oh, not so. I hold the old ideas. I abhor and detest the modern development; before any woman who fears God, does her duty, and gives us in her life and acts the picture of a true and beautiful womanliness, I rise up and bless her and do her reverent homage. It is thus in no spirit of assumption that I shall say what I have to say tonight. It is rather in a tone of remonstrance, of wonder, of expostulation. Why do women err as they do? Why lower themselves to men’s level? Why should the queens abdicate their thrones and go down to the ring and act unseemly parts and lay their honor in the dust? Let us think this evening of some things done by women which one would have said that no woman with a woman’s heart and a woman’s sense could, after due reflection, justify. Sins fall naturally into groups or classes, and if I speak this evening of only one class of sins it is because the time does not permit us to take a larger survey of the field. We shall limit ourselves, then, to these topics:

The lack of serious views of life and the habit of turning the thoughts exclusively to enjoyment. The degradation of the idea of matrimony, as shown by entering into that estate for low and unworthy motives. The deliberate determination of some married women to defeat the objects for which marriage was instituted; to have no real home; to avoid first the pains and next the cares and duties of maternity. The habit, where a home exists, of neglecting it by spending most of the time away from it, running up and down in pursuit of excitement and turning their children over to the care of servants. The growing indifference to the chief of all social abominations, divorce, and the toleration of lax notions about it.

These questions of most vital import to woman, to her material condition, intellectual development and place in the church, Rev. Dr. Dix and the great body of the church, deem themselves supremely competent to adjust without woman’s voice upon them. Wherever she has shown her views upon the subject of education, industries, the family, the church, to be in opposition to those of theologians, she has at once been told to remain in her old position of “inferiority” looking up to man as her divinely appointed master and spiritual head; Dr. Dix, in his lectures, but gave the views of priests of all denominations at the present day. Despite the advancing civilization of the age, and the fact that in so many avocations woman has shown her capacity for taking equal part with man, we find theology still unprogressive; a portion of the press, however, severely criticised these discourses.[17] The “Lenten Pastoral” 1886, of Rev. A. Cleveland Coxe, bishop of Western New York, to the laity of his diocese, contained a middle-age reminder to women of the impurity of motherhood, in the demand made for church cleansing subsequent to her bringing an immortal being into life:

6. Christian women, active as they often are, above all comparison with men, are yet sometimes negligent of their immediate duties as wives and mothers and fail to exert that healthful influence over the family, which God has made it the high privilege of woman to exercise in this sphere of her duty and her glory. The office for “the Churching of Women” testifies against those who neglect it, as forgetting the dignity of motherhood and that gratitude to God which every woman owes to the Christian religion, for enthroning her in the household, and making the example of the “Blessed among Women” her peculiar lesson and incentive to piety.

Many portions of this advice is an open insult to woman, and could the divine but see it, is even from the Christian standard an imputation upon that being he professes to revere as the Creator of the universe.

A work was recently written by an English bishop, bearing upon the governmental effort for repeal of the law forbidding marriage with a deceased wife’s sister or brother. This work was written for the express purpose of proving that, while it is eminently improper and sinful for a woman to marry her deceased husband’s brother, it is eminently proper and right for a man to marry his deceased wife’s sister, and this upon the same principle that governed the disinheritance of woman under the Salic law; i.e., because by marriage a woman becomes merged into her husband’s family. He specifically declares that the sister of the wife is in no sense the sister of the husband, therefore it is permissible for a man to marry his wife’s sisters successively. But he affirms that to the contrary, the widow cannot marry her deceased husband’s brother, as by the act of her marriage she became a part of her husband’s family; a second marriage to such husband’s brother thereby becoming incestuous. This is the law of England, both religious and civil. A striking evidence of the incongruity of this law is found in the fact that the illegitimacy of such brother is held to destroy the relationship, as by law of both church and state an illegitimate child is not held as related to its father; he is the son of nobody. A woman can marry two brothers in succession, one the child of marriage, the other a child of the same father born outside of the marriage relation. The son of nobody, a being unfathered in the eye of the law, is the brother of nobody. A striking instance of the effect of this law occurred in England within the past few years, when a lady successively married two brothers, the first a natural son of the Earl of Waldegrave, the second his legitimate son. The father, although not recognized as such in law, left the bulk of his property to his natural son; the title, over which he had no power of alienation, descending to the son born under authority of the church. The first husband, dying, the lady afterward married the legitimate son, thus becoming first, “Mrs.” Waldegrave, and afterwards, “Lady” Waldegrave, securing both fortune and title by her marriage with the non-recognized and law-recognized sons of the same father, and breaking neither the law of state or church in so doing. American clergymen of the Episcopal church have expressed views in accordance with those of the English bishop. Rev. George Zabriskie Gray, D.D., dean of the Episcopal Theological School of Cambridge, Mass., published a work in 1885 entitled “Husband and Wife,” also suggested by the constantly debated English question of State, concerning the lawfulness of marriage with a deceased wife’s sister. Dr. Gray coincides with many of his reverend brethren in the declaration that with the wife no liberty of divorce is allowable, but his reasons present somewhat the freshness of novelty. As previously stated, the non-relationship of husband and wife was at one time the general Christian belief. While like the English bishop, Rev. Mr. Gray admits the relationship of the wife to the husband to such extent that becoming fully absorbed by him his relatives become hers; like the English bishop he further declares that in consequence of this absorption, the wife loses her former family relationship, her mother and father, her sister or brother no longer bearing relationship to her, but have become to her as strangers. He said:

The wife becomes a member of his family, while he does not become one of her own. The equilateral idea is a physiological[18] and psychological impossibility. The unity is in the man. The woman by marriage becomes a member of the man, therefore she cannot put him away; for a member cannot put away the head; the impurity of the wife imperils the family, renders pedigree and all concerned therein uncertain, and so she may be put away. But the husband’s unchastity, while it may be as sinful, yet has no such effect. It does not render it doubtful who are rightful children of his stock, who are entitled to the name that he and his wife both bear, and therefore does not call for the severance of the marriage tie, that is, the dissolution of the family. That is, divorce so far as Scripture goes seems to be a measure for the protection of the family and of the rightful inheritance of whatever is to be transmitted to the children, and so a remedy open only to man. There seems to be no way of preventing the abuse of divorce, if any principle is admitted that will extend it to woman.