‘The whip on WOMAN’S shrinking flesh!
Our soil yet reddening with the stains
Caught from her scourging warm and fresh.’
Can any American woman look at these scenes of shocking licentiousness and cruelty, and fold her hands in apathy, and say, ‘I have nothing to do with slavery’? She cannot and be guiltless.
I cannot close this letter, without saying a few words on the benefits to be derived by men, as well as women, from the opinions I advocate relative to the equality of the sexes. Many women are now supported, in idleness and extravagance, by the industry of their husbands, fathers, or brothers, who are compelled to toil out their existence, at the counting house, or in the printing office, or some other laborious occupation, while the wife and daughters and sisters take no part in the support of the family, and appear to think that their sole business is to spend the hard bought earnings of their male friends. I deeply regret such a state of things, because I believe that if women felt their responsibility, for the support of themselves, or their families it would add strength and dignity to their characters, and teach them more true sympathy for their husbands, than is now generally manifested,—a sympathy which would be exhibited by actions as well as words. Our brethren may reject my doctrine, because it runs counter to common opinions, and because it wounds their pride; but I believe they would be ‘partakers of the benefit’ resulting from the Equality of the Sexes, and would find that woman, as their equal, was unspeakably more valuable than woman as their inferior, both as a moral and an intellectual being.
Thine in the bonds of womanhood,
Sarah M. Grimke.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] Thomas S. Grimke.
LETTER IX.
HEROISM OF WOMEN—WOMEN IN AUTHORITY.
Brookline, 8th Mo. 25th, 1837.
My Dear Sister,—It seems necessary to glance at the conduct of women under circumstances which place them in juxtaposition with men, although I regard it as entirely unimportant in proving the moral equality of the sexes; because I condemn, in both, the exercise of that brute force which is as contrary to the law of God in men as in women; still, as a part of our history, I shall notice some instances of courage exhibited by females.