By Lucretia Mott
(One of the early leaders in the Woman Suffrage, Anti-Slavery, and other progressive movements of her time. A member of the Society of Friends—a Quaker. The following is from a letter written in 1869 to Josephine Butler, of England.)
In the Marriage union, no ministerial or other official aid is required to consecrate or legalize the bond. After due care in making known their intentions, the parties, in presence of their friends, announce their covenant, with pledge of fidelity and affection, invoking Divine aid for its faithful fulfilment. There is no assumed authority or admitted inferiority, no promise of obedience. Their independence is equal, their dependence mutual, and their obligations reciprocal. This of course has had its influence on married life and the welfare of families. The permanence and happiness of the conjugal relation among us have ever borne a favorable comparison with those of other denominations.
The Love That Pales
By Mary Wollstonecraft
1759-1797
Youth is the season for love in both sexes; but in those days of thoughtless enjoyment provision should be made for the more important years of life, when reflection takes place of sensation. But Rousseau, and most of the male writers who have followed his steps, have warmly inculcated that the whole tendency of female education ought to be directed to one point—to render them pleasing.
Let me reason with the supporters of this opinion who have any knowledge of human nature. Do they imagine that marriage can eradicate the habitude of life? The woman who has only been taught to please will soon find that her charms are oblique sunbeams, and that they cannot have much effect on her husband’s heart when they are seen every day, when the summer is past and gone. Will she then have sufficient native energy to look into herself for comfort, and cultivate her dormant faculties? Or is it not more rational to expect that she will try to please other men, and, in the emotions raised by the expectations of new conquests, endeavor to forget the mortification her love or pride has received? When the husband ceases to be a lover, and the time will inevitably come, her desire of pleasing will then grow languid, or become a spring of bitterness; and love, perhaps the most evanescent of all passions, gives place to jealousy or vanity.
When Marriage Meant Bondage
By Lucy Stone