Woman and Her Wishes - 1853

Nor is the complaint only, that any system of "education" is utterly imperfect which provides for women only schools, and not functions.

Nor is it the whole of the grievance, that the employments easily accessible to women are few, unintellectual and underpaid.

Nor is it all, that the denial of equal political rights being an absolute wrong, must necessarily be in many ways a practical wrong. Is not each individual, male or female, an unit before God? Has not woman, equally with man, an individual body to be protected, and an individual soul to be saved? Must she not see, feel, know, speak, think, act for herself, and not through another? We hear much said of the value of the "franchise of a freeman," say women. --But why should Franchise belong to Francis more than to Frances, when the three words are etymologically the same, and should be practically so; all signifying simply, Freedom? Nay, as things now stand, Frank may grow up a vulgar, ignorant ruffian, and Fanny may have the mental calibre and culture of Margaret Fuller or Mary Lowell Putnam, --the self-devoted energy of Dorothea Dix or Mary Ware: yet it will make no difference. The man must count as one in the State, the woman counts zero; a ratio, as mathematicians agree, of infinite inferiority.

But this is not all. Nor is it all that this exclusion is a thing done without "the consent of the governed." "The body politic (says the Massachusetts Constitution) is formed by a voluntary association of individuals." Accordingly, we think it a daring responsibility to hold a Constitutional Convention, or even to pass a Liquor Law, without a popular vote thereon. When was the popular vote taken, in which women relinquished even the rights conceded to them by their English ancestors? At any given moment, there is probably a clear majority of women over men in this commonwealth. Have this majority consented to their present subjection? No, they have had no opportunity to consent; they have never been asked; they have only acquiesced, as the black majority in South Carolina acquiesce, because that very subjection has made them both ignorant and timid.

Nor is it all, that we lose the services of the purest half of the human race from our public offices. Not one of these admirable women, whom I have just named, may have a direct voice in legislating for a hospital or a prison; not one of these accomplished ones can have a place in even a school-committee; to say nothing of those grander cares of state, which were yet freely granted to Elizabeth of England and to Maria Theresa.

Nor is it all, that female labor thus loses its guarantee of protection, which political economy has always recognized as an important feature of free institutions. "To give energy to industrial enterprise," says one American writer, unconscious of the covert satire, "the dignity of labor should be sustained; the franchise of a. freeman should be granted to the humblest laborer who has not forfeited his right by crime. In the responsibilities of a freeman, he will find the strongest motives to exertion. Besides, so far as government can by its action affect his confidence of a just remuneration for his toil, he feels that a remedy is put in his hands by the ballot-box." Indeed, John Neal asserts that the right of suffrage is worth fifty cents a day, in its effect upon the wages of male laborers, in this country. --But where are all these encouragements for women?

Nor is it all, that with the right to labor, all the other rights of woman, as to person and property, are equally endangered by this exclusion from direct power.