A great deal has been said and written in this age and country on the subject of what is technically called woman's rights; and, in the course of such agitation, many good and true things have been thought out and made available to the bettering of her condition, besides many foolish and impracticable, arising from a too grasping desire for a wider and more exciting sphere of effort, as well as from a palpable misapprehension of their own nature and their legitimate sphere, which prevails quite extensively among women. The pioneers of the rights of woman have done a good work, however, and may well be pardoned wherein they have gone beyond what might be fairly and profitably demanded for our sex. They have called the public attention to the subject, and have enlisted the thoughts and the services of many earnest men as well as women in their cause; thus provoking that inquiry which will eventually lead to the finding of the whole truth concerning woman, her rights, privileges, duties. And for this, in common with the pioneers in every cause that has for its object the amelioration and advantage of any class of human beings, they deserve the thanks of all. That there should be some ultraists, who would not know where to stop in the extravagant and unsuitable claims they urge, was to be expected. This should not blind our eyes to the lawful claims of woman upon society, nor is it sufficient to throw ridicule upon a movement which has, in this day, indeed, borne its full share of obloquy from the careless, the thoughtless, the too conservative, all of whom are alike clogs upon the wheel of human progress.
This is not the age nor ours the people to shun the fair discussion of any question, much less one which commends itself as of practical importance. This American people has proved, by the calm and patient consideration it has accorded to the advocates of woman's rights, that it has reached that lofty point in the progress of society at which woman is regarded as a positive quantity in the problem which society is working out, and it marks an era in the history of the sex, prophetic of the full enjoyment of all the rights which are hers by nature, or may be hers by favor. I think that in this country, at least, woman has been put upon a very clear and unobstructed path, with many encouragements to go on in the highest course of improvement of which she is capable. There seems to be a general disposition to investigate, and to allow her the rights she claims—rights of education, of labor, of property, of a fair competition in any suitable field of enterprise; so that she bids fair to become as self-supporting, independent, and intelligent as she desires. It is true that much is still said of the jealousy and selfishness of men, leading them to monopolize most of the sources of profitable effort to their own use, thus cramping the sphere of woman, and making her dependent and isolated.
Now, it is very much a question with me whether, after all, the failure, so far, to secure these fancied rights, is not quite as much the result of woman's backwardness and inefficiency as of man's jealous and greedy monopoly; whether the greatest obstacle does not lie in the adverse opinions prevailing among women themselves. According to my observation, as fast as women have proved themselves adapted to compete with men in any particular field, their brothers have forthwith striven to make the path easy and pleasant for them.
But there is a natural and necessary jealousy excited when women attempt to go out of the beaten track, and establish new conditions and resources for themselves—a jealousy which has its source in the instinctive feeling of civilized society, that the standard of womanhood must not be lowered; that its safety and progressive well-being depend upon the immaculate preservation of that pure and graceful ideal of womanhood which every true man wishes to see guarded with a vestal precision. And society will pause, thoughtfully to consider, before the stamp of its approbation is affixed to any mode of development by which that lofty ideal would suffer. Anything which tends in the least to unsex, to unsphere woman, by so much works with a reflex influence on man and on society, and produces in both a gradual and dangerous deterioration. And self-preservation is the first instinct of society as well as of the individual being. Man, and the eternal and infinite order of the world, require that woman keep her proper place, and that she demand nothing which, granted, would introduce confusion and disorder among the social forces.
But it is not so much of woman's rights that I would speak. I am not afraid but that she will possess these in due time, as fast as her nature and true place and mission in the world come to be more fully understood. I am far more anxious that she should come into such more perfect understanding.
Woman has always been a puzzle, an enigma, to man. When, in the pride of his anatomical skill, he has essayed to make her his study, thinking to master the secret of her curious physical being, he has been forced to stop short of his purpose, dumb and blind in the presence of that wondrous complexity that no science of his own can master; and no casuist has yet solved the why of her equally wonderful and complex mental and spiritual being. They have made Reason, cold, critical, judge, the test; but the fine, delicate essence of her real being has always eluded it. When Love seeks the solution—the large, generous Love, that is one day to sit as the judge of all things, supreme over purblind human Reason—then she will be understood, for she will yield to the asking of that all-seeing One. This will be when the world is ripe for the advent of woman, who shall rule through love, the highest rule of all. Slowly, slowly, though surely, is the world ascending, through the wondrous secret chain of influences binding her to the moral order of the universe, to the height of this supernal law of love; and there, in that new and holy kingdom, woman's crown and sceptre await her.
But who shall say that a glimmer of this future royal beauty and glory has yet dawned upon her?
If man has misunderstood woman, she has none the less misunderstood herself. Indeed, her feet have for ages been treading debatable ground, that has shaken beneath her through the clashings of man's ignorance and her own vague, restless clamors and aimlessness. She has felt the stirrings within of that real being she was created, but has never dared to assert herself, or, to speak more truly, has only known to assert herself in the wrong direction. False voices there have been without number, but not even yet has true womanhood been able, in spite of its irrepressible longings, to utter that clear, free, elevated speech that shall yet stir the keenest pulses of the world.
As it is, the world has nearly outgrown the petty jealousy, the cool assumption of inferiority, the flippant criticism of her weaknesses, the insulting catering to her foibles, with which woman has been accustomed to be treated, and which have made her either the slave, the toy, or the ridicule of man; and it is getting to see that she is at least of as much relative importance as man; that without her he will in vain aspire to rise; that, by a law as infallible as that which moves and regulates the spheres, his condition is determined by hers; that wherever she has been a slave, he has been a tyrant, and that all oppression and injustice practised upon her has been sure in the end to rebound upon himself. If there is one thing more than another which, at any given period and in any particular nation, has pointed to the true state of society along the scale of advancement, it has been the degree of woman's elevation; the undercurrents of history have all set steadily and significantly in the direction of the truth, which the world has been slow to accept and make use of, indeed, that society nears perfection only in the proportion in which woman has been honored and enfranchised; in which she has had opportunity and encouragement to work and act in her own proper and lawful sphere.
Those who have gone the farthest in claiming special rights for woman have generally based their demands upon a virtual abandonment of the idea of sex, except in a physical sense. Here is a primary, fundamental error. There is unquestionably a sex of mind, of soul, and he who ignores or denies this is, it seems to me, studying his subject without the key which alone will unlock it.