Woman and Her Wishes - 1853

III. To the third suggestion, that woman is not fitted for any additional political rights, there is much to be said; and yet little that has not been said by others.

1. For instance, it can hardly be seriously urged that women are not qualified to vote intelligently, since the direct and irresistible protest of the address of the petitioners to the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention: --

"It would be a disgrace to our schools and civil institutions, to argue that a Massachusetts woman, who has enjoyed the full benefit of all their culture, is not as competent to form an opinion on civil matters, as the illiterate foreigner, landed but a few years before upon our shores, unable to read or write, not free from early prejudices, and little acquainted with our institutions. Yet such men are allowed to vote."

2. Another argument is met as explicitly by a resolution of the first Woman's Rights Convention in Worcester: --

Resolved, That it is as absurd to deny all women their civil rights, because the cares of household and family take up all the time of  some, as it would be to exclude the whole male sex from Congress, because some men are sailors or soldiers in active service, or merchants, whose business requires all their attention and energies.

3. It is said that women are not now familiar with political affairs. Certainly they are not, for they have no stimulus to be. Give them the same motive for informing themselves, and the natural American appetite for newspapers will be developed as readily in women as in men.

4. There is fear of undue publicity. "Place woman, unbonneted and unshawled, before the public gaze, (wrote the exquisite critic of the New York Christian Inquirer,) and what becomes of her modesty, her virtue? "But surely, the question of publicity is already settled, to the utmost extent. At least, every man must be silent who acquiesces in the concert, the drama, or the opera. I will not dwell on the exposures of the stage, or the indelicacies of the ballet. But if Jenny Lind was "an angel of purity and benevolence," for consenting to stand, chanting and enchanting, before three thousand excited admirers; if Madame Sontag could give a full-dress rehearsal (which does not commonly imply a superfluity of costume) for the special edification of the clergy of Boston, and be rewarded with duplicate Bibles; it is really hard to see why a humble woman in a Quaker dress -- yes, or any other -- may not bear her testimony against sin, before as large an audience as can be assembled to hear her.

"Oh, but," men say, "it seems different, somehow, to hear a Quaker woman speak in public!" Yes, but is it different? Are right and reason to depend on the color of a dress? It has been said that "a saint in crape is twice a saint in lawn." But why is a drab-colored Amazon more tolerable than any other?

We repress a woman's tongue in public, and then complain that she uses it disproportionately in private. But if she has any thing worth saying in the one case, why not in the other? Surely, there is no want of physical power. Jenny Lind can fill as large a concert-room as Lablache. Nay, there is another aspect to the argument. Often, at conventions of men, amid the roughness and the gruffness of tone, the stammering and the hesitating, when I have recalled to memory the clear, delicious voice of Lucy Stone, "gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman," yet penetrating with its quiet fascination to the utmost corners of the largest hall -- never loud to the nearest, never faint to the farthest, and bearing on its quiet current all pure womanly thoughts and noble aspirations -- I have almost wondered at the tolerance of Paul in suffering a man to speak in public.

"It was indeed an act of faith," says her journal, in describing a public address; "I have a feeling of unfitness and unworthiness for these services more than I can express. On entering the assembly, I hardly dared look up; when I did, I thought there must be fifteen hundred persons present; but I may, I think, say it was, before I ended, a glorious time; the power of the good spirit appeared to reign over us."