Woman and Her Wishes - 1853

II. Upon the second point, that women do not need additional civil rights, there is more to be said.

I do not understand it to be asserted by any one, that women have no influence, because they have no direct political power. Margaret Fuller is right on this point; "it needs only that she be a good cook, or a good scold, to secure her influence, if that were all." There never was a time when she had not this, however totally the theory of society may have excluded her. Demosthenes confessed that "measures which the statesman has meditated a whole year, may be overturned in a day by a woman." The shrewd Ganganelli (Pope Clement XIV.) said well that "many women who appeared only as the wives of princes or ambassadors, and who are not even mentioned in history, have frequently been the cause of thegrandest exploits. Their counsels have prevailed, and the husbands have had all the honor due to the sagacity of their wives." And Montesquieu complains of those who "judge of a government by the men at the head of affairs, and not also by the women who sway those men." "Soignez les femmes," Napoleon used to say to his emissaries; "Secure the women!"

It is upon a different ground that the complaint proceeds. "Woman should not merely have a share in the power of man -- for of that omnipotent Nature will not suffer her to be defrauded --but it should be a chartered power, too fully recognized to be abused." "It is always best (remarks another advocate) to add open responsibility, where there must at any rate be concealed power."

The question lies here. Woman must have influence somehow: shall she have it simply, directly, openly, responsibly? --or, on the other hand; by coaxings, caresses, dimples, dinners, fawnings, frownings, frettings, and lectures after the manner of Mrs. Caudal? It is possibly true, as Miss Bremer's heroine says, that a woman may obtain any thing she wishes of her husband, by always keeping something nice to pop into his mouth; but it is quite questionable whether such a relation can rank any higher in the scale of creation, than the loves of Nutcracker and Sugar Dolly in the German tale.

Besides, there is this fatal difficulty, that woman, with all her powers of domestic coaxing and coercion, has never yet coaxed or coerced her partner into doing her simple justice. Shall we never get beyond the absurd theory that every woman is legally and politically represented by her husband, and hence has an adequate guarantee? The answer is, that she has been so represented ever since representation began; and the result appears to be, that among the Anglo-Saxon race generally, the entire system of laws in regard to woman is at this moment so utterly wrong, that Lord Brougham is reported to have declared it useless to attempt to amend it; "there must be a total reconstruction, before a woman can have any justice."

The wrong lies not so much in any special statute, as in the fundamental theory of the law. Yet no candid man can read the statutes on this subject, of the most enlightened nation, without admitting that they were obviously made by man, --not with a view to woman's interest, but to his own. Our Massachusetts laws may not be so bad as the law repealed in Vermont in 1850, which confiscated to the State one half the property of every childless widow, unless the husband had other heirs. But they must compel from every generous person the admission, that neither justice nor gallantry has yet availed to procure any thing like impartiality in the legal provisions for the two sexes. With what decent show of justice, then, can man, thus dishonored, claim a continuance of this suicidal confidence?

There is something respectable in the frank barbarism of the old Russian nuptial consecration, "Here, wolf, take thy lamb." But we cannot easily extend the same charity to the civilized wolf of England and America, clad in the sheep's clothing of a volume of Revised Statutes; --caressing the person of the bride, and devouring her property.

For I believe that our laws do give some protection to the person, and that our courts would hardly sustain the opinion of the English Justice Buller, that the husband might lawfully "correct" his wife with a stick not larger than his thumb -- "so great a favorite is the female sex of the laws of England," as Blackstone says. Yet if he should do so, I see but an imperfect remedy. For no woman's cause had ever a trial by a jury of her peers; she may not even have half the jury composed of such as herself, though this privilege is given to foreigners under the English laws. And the wrongs of the outraged wife, or the bereaved mother, can only be adjudged by a masculine tribunal.

It was thought very ludicrous when the female petitioners in New York craved permission to address the Assembly in person, instead of leaving their cause to men. But I apprehend that if that change were made here, the spectacle would not again be seen of a bill to protect the property of married women being refused a third reading, by a large majority, in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, "after a considerable discussion, mostly of a humorous description."

"The perfection of woman's character (said Coleridge) is to be characterless. Every man would like to have an Ophelia or a Desdemona for a wife." This last proposition is perhaps too universal a statement; yet grant it, and the sad question still recurs,

But what was the fate of Ophelia and Desdemona?"