The Friendships of Women

by William Rounseville Alger

When the untenableness of muscular or mental power, as a ground for holding women in an inferior position, becomes obvious, the next support man conceives for his exclusive appropriation of authority, is the belief that he is exclusively the representative and vicegerent of God on earth; that woman is placed in subordination to him by the direct command of God. In the Hindu law we read, "The husband of a woman is her deity;" and in the Ramayana, "A husband is the god of his consort." The New Testament says, "Man is the head of the woman, but the head of the man is God;" "Man is the glory of God, but woman is the glory of man. For the man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man." The Apostle likewise declares, "I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve." This position of the Apostle was based on the Hebrew account of the creation of the first woman from the rib of the first man, and of the sentence of God upon her in consequence of her sin in eating the apple: "Thou shalt be subject to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." Few persons have a conception of the extent to which this representation has moulded the opinions and feelings of the Christian world. The origin of the view is obvious: the desire of the stronger for homage, and the willingness of the weaker to reflect that desire in their conduct. Is it a sound view? or is it a fallacy and a superstition? or is it a mixture of truth and error?

For those who believe in the infallibility of every word of Scripture, the subject is taken out of the province of natural reason, conscience, and expediency; and there is nothing to be said. They hold by the current tradition as the explicit will of God. But, at the present day, there is an increasing proportion of persons who look on the Hebrew narrative of the origin and earliest experience of our race in the garden of Eden, as a legend, similar to kindred narratives in other literatures. They are led, by teachings of philosophy and science which they cannot resist, to the conclusion, that the Almighty did not produce the human species by an arbitrary and wholly exceptional interposition; but created them just as he did the other species—through a law of development. It seems to them incredible, that man and woman were made separately, in succession, the latter exclusively for the former. They are obliged to suppose that man and woman were created simultaneously—the differentiation of sex having gone on in the lower types for incomputable ages, causing humanity to appear in its earliest rise as male and female. So, instead of saying, "The man was not made for the woman, but the woman for the man," they would affirm, "The man and the woman were equally made for each other, to advance hand in hand to perfection." Those who assume this scientific point of view, will see that the question of the rights of woman, and her true relation to man, is to be decided purely by a philosophical mastery of the expediency and inexpediency, the essential right and wrong, in the facts of the case. The question of the eligibility of woman to public life and political prerogatives has nothing to do with her comparative personal weakness; nothing to do with any supposed rule, given in an ancient revelation; nothing to do with any supposition that man was the first to be created and the second to sin, woman the second to be created and the first to sin. Did priority of creation confer authority to govern, then man should obey the lower animals; for they were made before he was. Even Apostolic logic sometimes limps. The question can be understood only by a correct perception of the will of God, as indicated in the nature and destiny of progressive humanity composed of male and female.

What, then, is the will of God, so indicated? Regarded as the two halves of humanity, men and women are alike and equal. Their unlikeness, when regarded as male and female, cannot destroy this primary and fundamental equality, or vitiate any of the rights it involves. Consequently, whatever belongs to humanity proper, belongs equally to men and to women. Woman has an equal claim with man to every thing permanently connected with the fulfilment of the human destiny; that is, the full and harmonious exercise of the faculties of human nature. The division into male and female, affecting not their equality of rights, merely gives special fitnesses and duties to each. Unquestionably, the higher nervous development and maternal offices of woman relatively fit her for tenderness and domesticity: the coarser muscular development and adventurousness of man relatively fit him for hardihood and publicity. But this can furnish no ground for subjecting one, and enthroning the other. It is a reason for their equal co-operation in assimilating each other's best qualities for their mutual and common perfection. Every thing that is good should be granted to both: whatever is evil should not be sought by either.

The true social desideratum at last is, not that women, equally with men, assume the exercise of authority; but that men, equally with women, forego the exercise of authority. The genuine perfection of humanity, instead of being the enforced obedience of one half to the other half, is the spontaneous obedience of both halves to the law of God. The incomplete statement of Paul, "I suffer not a woman to usurp authority," is supplemented by the far deeper word of Christ, "Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them. But it shall not be so among you: whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant." This is the ideal of the future—that man shall no more have authority to command than woman, everybody doing right voluntarily, under the intrinsic sway of morality. Politics is the reign of force by legislative sanctions: morality is the reign of affection by social sanctions. The latter is pre-eminently the sphere of woman. Is it her sole sphere, or is she also called to enter the other sphere?

One thing is clear; namely, that it is unjust for the laws to discriminate against women on account of their actual exclusion from political power. They ought to have the same legal rights as men to earn, hold, and control property. Since they have the same interest as man in the laws they live under, they are entitled, in some way, either by their own voice or through others, to the same consideration in the framing and execution of those laws.

Shall we go still further, and say that they ought to take an equal part with men in the caucus, at the ballot-box, in the senate, at the bar, on the bench, and elsewhere? If universal suffrage be the true theory of government, then, logically, women are entitled to vote; because they, equally with men, represent humanity. Every asserted disqualification, on the ground of ignorance or preoccupation, is sophistical; because the same plea would disqualify four-fifths of the men too. If a government of all by all be the true theory, it is a wrong to exclude women. If they are not fully qualified, they ought to become qualified; and the only way to qualify them is to confess their claim and begin their education. Either all should vote, or merely those who are fitted: if merely those who are fitted, then thousands of men would be shut out, thousands of women admitted.

The plea for the admission of women to political activity is often met by the assertion, that they do not themselves wish it; that the best women revolt with profound distaste from every thing of the sort. But is this distaste a veracious instinct? or is it a prejudice, owing to the ideal of feminine character and life, which they have been educated to admire? Men have coveted a monopoly of executive power, and held up passive obedience as the fittest type of womanliness. Women, as a general rule, partake the prejudices, and like to flatter the vanity, of the stronger sex. The question is not, What do women desire? but, What ought they to desire? What is right and best for them? The question must not be decided by any thing extrinsic or accidental, any prejudices or fortuitous associations.

Every measure of intrinsic justice should be sustained despite of the incidental evils which may be feared. The opinion that women would be demoralized by voting, is no reason for withholding that right from them, if it be a right. To become egotistic, clamorous, corrupt, and brazen, is not a necessary accompaniment of political life; but is the personal fault of those who become so, and just as much a vice in men as in women, just as good a reason for recalling those from the ballot-box, as for withholding these. There is no incompatibility between the different realms of duty or of privilege.

What would be the effect of female voting? The physical womanliness of woman essentially consists in wifehood and maternity. This, of course, cannot be changed by any enlargement of her domain of interests and activities. Her moral womanliness consists in modesty and self-denial, the preponderance of disinterestedness over egotism. Now, is there any real likelihood that the assumption by women of the elective franchise, with its accompaniments, will destroy this type of womanhood, universally acknowledged as the ideal of womanly beauty and excellence? Is it not too well established in the authority of the most cultivated souls, to be so easily shaken? It is the true type, which, developed out of the historic progress in social conditions, cannot be lost, but must be more confirmed and glorified by the continued action, in the future, of the same causes which have already produced it. Not the destruction of the most exalted moral type of feminine character, rather its extension to masculine character, is what is to be looked for in the changes of the future. The greater the number of types of character exhibited to the public, and the greater the facility of comparison between them, the more sharply defined, and the more clearly recognized, will the best one be. Will not a pure and noble woman, eminently fitted by her wisdom and virtues for social influence, entering the political arena, set an example there, adapted to make men revere her, assimilate to her, and become themselves more modest, self-sacrificing, and incorruptible? On the other hand, when she is unfitted and unworthy, will not the reflection, in her, of their own vices of exasperated rivalry, pride, and tyranny, appear doubly detestable? Then the ideal, so far from being injured, would rather be improved—manly responsibilities making the women less timid and foolish, contact with womanly sentiment making the men less coarse and reckless. How well this conclusion is sustained by sound probabilities, deserves to be carefully weighed. No one should dogmatize on it.

In determining how far, if at all, women had best enter into the sphere of public life, and take part in the functions of government, there remains another consideration, which will be decisive with many minds. It is drawn from the difference between those things which are in themselves good, and therefore enduring parts of human life, and those things which are merely provisional means to good—means necessitated by existing evils, but destined gradually to lessen, and finally to pass away. Were political government an intrinsic and permanent end, an essential good of humanity, all, or at least all who are qualified, should share in it; because every human being has a right to a portion in every thing which is indispensable to the completion of the human destiny. Liberty, culture, and work are intrinsic and eternal elements of the human lot: women, therefore, have as clear a claim to these as men. But government is not a good in itself, is not an end. It is an evil attendant on human wickedness, a means devised to prevent severer evils; an element of decreasing proportions and of temporary duration. It is an artifice which we wish to see lessen as fast as is safe, and to disappear as soon as is possible.