Thus the Cross of the feminine life embodies the idea of the revolution in its favor: revolution, which, above all its wars, national or civil, its struggles for or against freedom, above all its discoveries in the world of matter and of force, above all its inventions, its new arts and its improved old arts, its philanthropies, its religious agitations, is destined to command for the nineteenth century the respect of the coming ages. Dion's star upon its forehead, already the dim and distant future diaphaned in its light, comes up to cheer our waiting, wandering eyes.
It is only woman who can state woman. The unknown quantity falls not within the terms of any equation to which man can reduce her. Master, teacher of all other lessons in nature, here he must be the taught. Leader of all other movements, here he must be follower. Greater must not only include, it must conduct less.
Whence?
Out of the peaceful, still waters below: no longer stay possible there. The vis vitæ overruling the vis inertia, we take up the line of march. Fold the napkin away from your eyes, O daughter of the ages, and behold, there lies your road—a throng already pressing their way where you thought you were alone. Upward, as well by the universal as by the special law of the case. Many a tearful eye turned backward to the land we are leaving—land beloved by woman, though stained with oppression, darkened by slavery, impoverished by lack of action, dwarfed in its proportions, devious in many of its loveliest lines—some of its sweetest paths leading those who set feet of innocent trust in them down to hell at last; beloved despite all, because the heart of the traveller is tender and loving; cherished, because her repressed soul is timid and doubting. We have lacked light, freedom, space for action and growth, yet are there pleasant places there. All these are now before us. Dry your tears, O tender souls, suppress your sighs, stifle your groans. Let us press forward in courage and hope. Forty years, it may be, in the wilderness, but deliverance at last. The gentle cloud will be over us by day, the path of duty will shine as a fire upon us by night.
Farewell, then, Africa, land of despot and victim; farewell, Asia, land of satrap and slave; farewell, Europe, land of monarch and subject: welcome, broad, varied, exhaustless New World, spreading inviting fields before longing eyes that falter while they gaze.
Whither?
Two thoughts naturally result from this new attitude: first, to go straight to the kingdom already laid out and well beaten into paths by man; second, to be so polite when arrived there as to accept him, his life, power, work, as standards to which it were wisest that we conform ourselves with all expedient haste, and thus blot out as speedily as may be the woman world—let its existence be remembered only as an evil escaped, a humiliation left behind forever. Has not its narrowness shamed us, its poverty of action cramped and starved the capacities we begin to feel unfolding in us—has not its peace made us seem cowards while we lingered in it, and will not its imperishable purity bear transplantation, and bloom in perennial beauty on the wider fields to which we are hastening?
We touch the borders of the promised land. Weary and spirit-sore, less from the travel than the bitter experiences which prompted it, we yearn for the hospitable welcome due to a stranger, a helper arrived in due season. We are come, O potentate. Open wide the glad gates that shall receive us. Is not this the Canaan which we but ask to divide with thee?—a goodly land, and a prosperous, which it were joyful to go in and possess. But the heathen inhabitant thereof turns his back upon us, shuts his gates, closes his doors, ascends his throne, takes up his sceptre, and waving it before our astonished eyes, says: 'This is my own kingdom. I have created it from a wilderness to suit my own life, not another. It cannot be shared; nobody, not you, my mother, my wife, sister, daughter—not even you, most beloved, cherished, worshipped woman, shall divide it with me. No admittance except on business.'
What to do in such an unexpected emergency!—such behavior, with all sorts of personal and external power to back it, to say nothing of those proverbial fractions of law, nine out of ten of which instantly convert themselves into an adamantine cement, binding his to him, so that indeed it were a critical piece of practice to essay their sundering, for Nature is in the union, and she is high to be overreached, deep to be undermined, strong to be defeated, compact and wary to be foiled.
Sit down, then, a beggar at the border of man's realm, craving permission to enter and share it with him? Essay to conquer an entrance? And when once within, whether by courtesy or conquest, what then? Competition with that stronger physique, that ruggeder life, that loves the wrestle with external hindrances which I love not, and am inferior for, did I love them? An equal part in that career with one who is exempt from the offices that absorb the half of my full lifetime, and require the best powers of every sort that I possess?