Madame d' Héricourt

“ Gentlemen, I cannot write otherwise than as a woman, since I have the honor to be a woman.
If am I harsh and unsparing to my adversaries, it is because they appear to me to be those of reason and of justice; it is because they, the strong and well armed, attack harshly and unsparingly a sex which they have taken care to render timid and to disarm; it is, in short, because I believe it perfectly lawful to defend weakness against tyranny which has the audacity and insolence to erect itself into right. ”

“ I have often asked myself why many men remain faithful to their mistresses and treat them kindly, while they are disrespectful and unfaithful to their wives; I have asked myself also why many couples who had long lived happily together when voluntarily united, were unhappy and often driven to a legal separation when they had finally married; and the only reason that I have been able to find is that we set the most value on that which we know may escape us. Man has more respect for a woman who is not his legal property, his inferior, than for her who is thus transformed by the law. ”

“ You understand the great destiny of our species; you understand your rights and duties; I need not therefore repeat to you that woman is no more made for man than man for woman; that consequently woman cannot, without failing in her duty, become lost and absorbed in man; for with him, she should love her children, her country, humanity; she owes more to her children than she does to him; and if forced to choose between family interests and generous sentiments of a higher order woman should no more hesitate than should man to sacrifice the former to justice. ”

“ The emancipators desire humanity to go forward, to vibrate no longer between the past and the future; they know the influence that women possess, first over children, then over men; they know that woman cannot serve progress unless she finds it to her interest to do so; that she will find it so only through liberty; that she will love it only if her intellect is elevated by study, and her heart purified from the petty selfishness of home by the predominating love of the great human family. As they desire the end sincerely, they sincerely desire the means ”

“ It will be only when woman shall take her lawful place that humanity will see love in all its splendor, and that this passion, subversive to-day in inequality and incoherence, will become what it should be; one of the great instruments of Progress.
We, my children, who are too rational to mistake the means by which Nature impels us to accomplish her designs for the designs themselves, will take care not to fancy that the end of love is pleasure; on the other hand, we have too much respect for equality to imagine that it is for the benefit of one sex alone. ”

“ Woman will render the law kind, and will convert this two-edged sword into an olive branch.... There is no justice without tolerance; now, it is in the exercise of tolerance that woman excels; by the sensibility of her heart and the delicacy of her impressions, by the tenderness of her soul, by her love, in fine, she will blunt the sharp angles of justice, destroy its asperities, of a divinity of terror make a divinity of peace. ”

“ Whatever may be your love, your kindness and your good intentions towards woman, your book would be immensely dangerous to the cause of her liberty, if men were in a mood to relish your ethics: but they will remain as they are; and the dignity of woman, kept waking by their brutality, their despotism, their desertion, their foul morals, will not be lulled to sleep under the fresh, verdant, alluring and treacherously perfumed foliage of this manchineel tree, called the book of Love. ”

“ Prove to us that labor, the stamp of the human species—that labor, which you consider as the great emancipator—that labor, which makes men equal and free, has not virtue to make women equal and free. If you prove this to us, we shall have to register one contradiction more.
You do not admit that woman should have the right of claiming for herself special legislation, as though man were her chief enemy and tyrant. ”

“ We will admit in the first place the principle that virtue exists in the ratio of strength and intellect, whence we have a right to conclude that man is more virtuous than woman. Do not laugh; it disturbs my ideas. I go further; man alone is virtuous; man alone has the sense of justice; man alone has the comprehension of right. Tell me, I pray you, "what produces in man this energy of will, this confidence in himself, this frankness, this daring, all these powerful qualities that we have agreed to designate by the single word, morality. ”

“ To attempt to judge of women by the vicious character which they display in civilization is like attempting to judge of human nature by the character of the Russian peasant, who is destitute of all ideas of honor and liberty; or like judging the beaver by the stupidity which they show when domesticated, whilst in a condition of liberty combined with labor, they become the most intelligent of all quadrupeds. ”

“ To see woman in the household alone, is to view her from a contracted stand point, which retards the advent of her liberty. It is to close the way to progress, because there are social functions which will never be well performed until woman shall participate in them, and social questions that will never be resolved until woman shall stand by the side of man to elucidate them. It is to replace woman beneath the yoke of man, because it is in human nature to rule and domineer over those whom we provide with their daily bread. ”

“ My work is one of conscience. If I enlighten some, if I make others reflect; if I awaken in the heart of men the sentiment of justice, in that of women the sentiment of their dignity; if I am clear to all, fully comprehended by all, useful to all, even to my adversaries, it will satisfy me and will console me for displeasing those who love ideas only as they love women: in full dress. ”

“ They know our influence over you; slaves, we can only debase you; at present, we render you cowardly, selfish, and dishonest; we send you out every morning, like vultures, upon society, to provide for our foolish expenses or to endow our children; we, women of emancipation, are unwilling that our sex should longer play this odious rôle, and be, through its slavery, an instrument of demoralization and of social degradation,—and this you impute to us as a crime! ”

“ Is it not a great proof of our insanity, our impurity, gentlemen, that we feel this ardent desire to check the corruption of morals, and to labor for the triumph of Justice, the coming of the reign of Duty and Reason, the establishment of an order of things in which humanity, worthier and happier, shall pursue its glorious destinies without the accompaniment of cannon or the shedding of blood? ”

“ Why does Society refuse to recognize vows and to punish their violation, if not because it admits that it is forbidden to penetrate into the jurisdiction of the conscience? if not because it does not admit that an individual may alienate his moral and intellectual being any more than his body, and devote himself to immobility when it is his duty, on the contrary, to go forward?
I ask then if this same Society is not inconsistent in exacting perpetual vows from the husband and wife, in exacting from the wife a vow of obedience, a tacit vow to deliver up her person to the desires of the husband? ”

“ When will you cease to be masculine photographs, and resolve to complete the revolution of humanity by finally making the word of woman heard in Religion, in Justice, in Politics and in Science?
What are we to do, you say?
What are you to do, ladies? Well! what is done by women believing. Look at those who have given their soul to a dogma; they form organizations, teach, write, act on their surroundings and on the rising generation in order to secure the triumph of the faith that has the support of their conscience. Why do not you do as much as they? ”

“ Was I guilty of a paralogism in pointing out to you that it is not she, but you, who demand this, since you lay down as a principle the inequality of the sexes before human law?
All that you say relatively to the pretended inferiority of woman and the conclusions which you draw from it applying to human races inferior to our own, it would be easy for me to demonstrate that the consequence of your principles is the re-establishment of slavery. The nearest perfect has the right to take advantage of the weakest, instead of becoming his educator. ”

“ And you, the oppressing sex,—would you not go beyond the faults imputed to women if you, like them, had been moulded by a servile education to believe yourselves automatons created to obey prejudices and to cringe before the master whom chance had given you? Have we not seen your pretensions to superiority confounded by Catharine, who trampled under foot the masculine sex? In creating titled favorites, she trailed man in the dust, and proved that it is possible for him in full liberty to abase himself beneath woman, whose degradation is forced, and consequently, excusable. ”

“ I know that my objection on the score of the incapacity of women is quite as applicable to that of men; but is it a reason, because you have admitted the right of the ignorant masses of men who had not demanded it, to show yourselves equally unwise with respect to women who are in the same position? I will correct myself, gentlemen, of what you term my aristocratic spirit, when I see your political freedmen comprehending the tendencies of civilization, and making use of their right to drive the abettors of the past to despair by promoting the triumph of liberty and equality. ”

“ And it is when this mother has a double right that you dare to say that she has none! that between her and her son there is no justice! In truth, I should rather live among savages than in a society that thinks and feels like you.
A mother has an incontestable right over her child, for she has risked her own life to give it birth: the father acquires rights over it only when ever he fulfils his duty; when he does not fulfil it, he has no right; thus says reason. In this question, marriage signifies nothing. ”

“ PROUDHON. Literary women! As if there were any! "The woman author does not exist; she is a contradiction. The part of woman in literature is the same as in manufactures; she is useful where genius is no longer of service, like a needle or a bobbin.
"By cutting out of a woman's book all that is borrowed, imitated, gleaned, and common-place, we reduce it to a few pretty sayings; philosophy on nothing. To the community of ideas, woman brings nothing of her own, any more than to generation." ”

“ READER. Personally, I am of your opinion; but it is necessary to foresee and to refute the objections that may be made to you by very intelligent women; these women will say, Reflect, the negation of right is iniquitous, for it is the negation of equality and of human nature. It is as false as dangerous to lay down the principle of the recognition of right only to the extent in which it is claimed; for it is notorious that slaves are not the ones in general to demand their own rights; your affirmation therefore condemns the emancipation of slaves and serfs, and universal suffrage. ”

“ As is evident, Legouvé demands the civil emancipation of woman in the name of the eternal Right, in the name of the happiness of the family, in the name of the commonwealth; their long standing oppression is an iniquitous fact, and he casts blame on all who have perpetuated it. This blame from a man of heart and justice may perhaps have some weight with those women who are so much accustomed to bondage that they do not blush at it—that they even no longer feel it! ”

“ It is demonstrated to-day, therefore, to all who believe in me that woman is a passive being, having the germ of nothing, who owes everything to man, and that, consequently, she belongs to him as the work to the workman. Lest my solution might appear somewhat harsh to you, or to savor too much of antiquity of the Middle Ages, I have borrowed of the modern innovators their farce of Androgyny; I have made the couple the organ of Justice; in this couple, woman, transformed by man, becomes a triple deity, a domestic idol, subject in everything to her priest. ”