Woman and Her Wishes - 1853

I repeat, however, that even the question of employments is a secondary one. The avocations of many men are as little stimulating to the intellectual nature as those of women. Comparatively few men are educated by their employments. The great educator of American men is the ballot-box, with its accompaniments.

By its accompaniments, I mean the whole world of public life, public measures, public interest and public office. From direct participation in this school of instruction, the American woman is not only more rigidly excluded than the woman of any other Christian nation, but this takes place under circumstances of peculiar aggravation, precisely because more importance is attributed to this sphere among the Americans than elsewhere. It is a startling fact, that in the land where the right of political action is most universal, most prized, and most jealously guarded among men, it should be most scrupulously denied to women. In most European countries, the sexes stand nearly on a level in this respect; the distinction is not of sex, but of station. A few men can be kings, peers and prime ministers-- a few women can be queens, regents and peeresses. The masses of both sexes are equally far removed from direct participation in public affairs, and hence woman, as woman, is neither degraded nor defrauded.

Indeed, some of the most eminent European statesmen and thinkers of the last century have argued against the principle of universal suffrage, on the ground that it must, if consistently established, include women also. This was the case, for instance, with Pitt and Coleridge. Talleyrand said, "To see one half of the human race excluded by the other half from all participation in government, is a political phenomenon, which, on abstract principles, it is impossible to explain." "The principle of an aristocracy is admitted, (says De Tocqueville,) the moment we reject an absolutely universal suffrage."

On the other hand, among English democrats,--as Godwin, Bentham, and the authors of the People's Charter, -- there is the same ready recognition of the abstract right of woman to this prerogative.

And yet, in the United States, in which alone the experiment of Democracy is claimed to have been tried; -- here, where all our institutions must stand or fall by their conformity to the abstract idea of equality;--here, where, moreover, (says De Tocqueville again,) "politics are existence, and exclusion from politics seems like exclusion from existence"; --here, one half the race is still excluded. Tennyson sums it all up in his "Princess" --

"Millions of throats will bawl for Civil Rights;
-- No woman named!"

Not to name her is, in a Democratic government, to ignore her existence; and hence, one cannot be surprised to read, in one of the ablest commentaries on American institutions, the cool general remark, "In the Free States, except criminals and paupers, there is no class of persons who do not exercise the elective franchise." Women are not even a "class of persons;" they are fairly dropped from the human race: and very naturally, since we have grown accustomed to recognize an universal suffrage" which does not include them.

It is no wonder that, under these circumstances, we Americans are remarkably polite to women. It will take a good many bows and delicate homages to atone for this unexpected result of free institutions, -- leaving one-half the population with less access to political power than they have under monarchies. With an awkward impulse of compensation, we attempt to atone for our fraud by courtesies. We rob woman of her right to the soil she stands upon, and then beg leave to offer her a chair. "Chivalry," said the brilliant German woman Rahel, "was a poetical lie, necessary to restore the equality of the sexes." Is our American chivalry of the same stamp?