By Alice Meynell
(English contemporary. Poet and essayist. From “The Bookman.”)
See the curious history of the political rights of woman under the Revolution. On the scaffold she enjoyed an ungrudged share in the fortunes of a party. Political life might be denied her, but that seems a trifle when you consider how generously she was permitted political death. She was to spin and cook for her citizen in the obscurity of her living hours; but to the hour of her death was granted no part in the largest interests, social, national, international. The blood with which she should, according to Robespierre, have blushed to be seen or heard in the tribune was exposed in the public sight unsheltered by her veins.... Women might be, and were, duly silenced when, by the mouth of Olympe de Gougas, they claimed a “right to concur in the choice of representatives for the formation of the laws,” but in her person, too, they were liberally allowed to bear responsibility to the Republic. Olympe de Gougas was guillotined. Robespierre then made her public and complete amends.
A Lady Rebel
By Abigail Adams
(Wife of one president of the United States, and mother of another. A brilliant correspondent, her letters showing her to be a woman unusual in breadth of interest, and general culture. The following extract is from a letter written to her husband in 1774, during the session of the First Continental Congress.)
I long to hear that you have declared an independency. And in the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors.... If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.
“The Gibraltar of Our Cause”
By Susan B. Anthony