Caroline Wells Healey Dall

“ Better for a woman, that she should be a cast-away in a city refuge, with a mind comparatively pure, than a woman in high society, capable of catching or uttering the vile "double entendre," always on the lookout for a possible vulgarism, wringing decency out of human life as if it were only a wet napkin, and sceptical of the purity and innocence she has not yet found in her own heart.
In estimating the influences which modify public opinion concerning women, I am not willing to be silent concerning the popular idea of love. ”

“ When I said, six months ago, that ten Beacon-street women, engaged in honorable work, would do more for this cause than all the female artists, all the speech-making and conventions, in the world, I was entirely in earnest.
It is pretty and lady-like, men think, to paint and chisel: philanthropic young ladies must work for nothing, like the angels. Let them, when they rise to angelic spheres; but, here and now, every woman who works for nothing helps to keep her sister's wages down,—helps to keep the question of death or dishonor perpetually before the women of the slop-shop. ”

“ Men generally keep a fair position; women, rarely. To test the truth of this, let me press the question. To whom do we all, to whom does the Commonwealth, owe a sacred debt, if not to the teachers of the primary and the grammar schools? Among these women, I have found some of the most delicate, high-bred, and cultivated women whom I have ever known of the same age. Let any one who sees them collected on public occasions glance at them, and judge; but, in cities at least, these women are never in society. ”

“ In seconding the illustrious efforts of Mehemet Ali, I have been able to trace our debasement as a nation to no other cause than the want of a useful and efficient moral education for our women. In giving to them enlightened education, we shall be striking at the root of the evils that afflict us; we shall diminish the dangers and misfortunes which proceed from ignorance and idleness. Habits of industry, cleanliness, order, and economy, by increasing happiness, make us morally better, and will secure that moral training to our children which no subsequent effort is sufficient to replace. ”

“ Dependent upon the "right to labor," as we have already seen, is "woman's civil equality." If all the fields of human labor are thrown absolutely open (and you admit that they ought to be) ; if women enter and grow wealthy therein; if every second woman, for instance, were an intelligent property-holder,—is it credible that she, or her husband for her, would remain contented in her present minority? Would she not want a seat in the legislature to protect her property, a vote to control appropriations and taxes? There are no revolutionists like the industrial classes. ”

“ He evidently shared in the worst corruptions of his age, and, like many other satirists, availed himself joyfully of the mask of satire to entertain his own imagination with his own descriptions. No one, with the least clear-sightedness or candor, can fail to perceive the depraved moral character of Aristophanes. Only less filthy than Rabelais, his fancy runs riot among the moral jakes and common sewers of the world, over which, by consummate art and the matchless magic of his style, he contrives unhappily to breathe a fragrance which should never be found save where virtue is. ”

“ They will never be better paid till women of rank begin to work for money, and so create a respect for woman's labor; and women of rank will never do this till American men feel what all American men profess,—a proper respect for Labor, as God's own demand upon every human soul,—and so teach American women to feel it. How often have I heard that every woman willing to work may find employment! ”

“ A full understanding of this will give her courage to press her claims. It is the power of conscience and love which she is to bring to bear on the ballot-box, and which is to mould, with her aid, questions and interests hitherto untouched by any higher impulse than the love of gain.
I cannot leave this statement of human rights, without claiming for woman one right of which men very commonly deprive her; in behalf of which society makes no clamor, and about which the most radical reformers say very little. I mean woman's right to find man in his proper place, as counsellor and friend. ”

“ If the ideal standard makes no headway against public opinion, what encouragement to our hopes does common life offer?
As exquisite beauty of water, hill, and dale lies hidden in many a country hamlet, unheeded by the guidebook, unsuspected by the traveller on the turnpike road; so, in society, self-sacrifice, noble daring, and saintly perseverance, nestle behind the prominent failure. We find them everywhere, except where we should most naturally look for them. ”

“ But with the prospect of peace comes the old duty of agitation; and we find ourselves again summoned to our work, and again anxiously awaiting its results,—anxiously, for the public work of women is an object which still attracts the gaze of the curious; and the smallest indiscretion on the part of a single woman has a retrograde effect, which very few seem able to measure.
Our reform is unlike all others; for it must begin in the family, at the very heart of society. If it be not kindly, temperately, and thoughtfully conducted, men everywhere will be able to justify their remonstrances. ”

“ His marriage, too, is still fragrant; a full-fruited flower of promise to the world, which makes us see the best things possible, and believe that the time is coming when man and woman will not seldom stand before the altar as equal and individual, yet sacredly one. To Elizabeth Browning, to whom was given in her life that place of pre-eminence among women which Shakespere must always hold among men, we owe grateful thanks, for the scholarly achievement, the conscientious study, the womanly zeal, which distinguished all her work. ”

“ No man has a right to ask any woman to be his wife, who means to sacrifice her life to his own love of business or pleasure or vagrancy; who does not mean to stand strong at her side till death. I speak for the heart of all womanhood when I say, that no good woman would ever accept such an offer, if she supposed she were to be idly left to fulfil its duties alone. If God had intended to rear women independent of manly influence, he would never have constituted the family. It is because every woman needs every man that its laws are absolute. ”

“ If you will not protect the vulgar against themselves, you cannot protect the refined against the vulgar. He is not a pure man, who, among his fellows, thinks a thought or utters a word he would blush to have his sister hear. She is not a pure woman, who, in the seclusion of her chamber, or gossip with her household, omits one of the proprieties which delicacy requires. She has no title to our respect, who is not secure in her own. How can we reach such a standard as this, if we invite pollution daily across our threshold, and call it harmless because it dresses in printer's ink? ”

“ Some time may women write the lives of women! Why not warm thy scalpel, O philosopher! out of regard to what was once tender, quivering, human flesh? Rumor and prejudice carried the news of Margaret's faults far enough while she was living: what we need now is to send on the same wave the most abundant and satisfying proof of her goodness and genius. When great men speak of her, they should speak [121] grandly, and find for what vulgar natures must misconceive, the noble and generous interpretation. I do not mean that SHE would have shrunk from the boldest statement of the truth. ”

“ Understand, then, that the abstract right to vote is not the question for you to consider: that was settled some hundreds of years ago.
The practical question for American men to put to themselves is, whether their own democratic experiment is a failure. Will you go back to the property basis for your own franchise? or do you still profess to believe, that man—as man, as child of God—has a right to reign, which does not depend upon broad doubloons or broad acres? And, if man has this right upon a simple human ground, how can you deny it to woman? ”

“ I ask for woman, then, free, untrammelled access to all fields of labor; and I ask it, first, on the ground that she needs to be fed, and that the question which is at this moment before the great body of working women is "death or dishonor:" for lust is a better paymaster than the mill-owner or the tailor, and economy never yet shook hands with crime. ”

“ In such a society, Pericles saw that his own soul would grow; so sustained, he should be more for Athens and himself. He was no Christian to deny himself for the sake of that unhappy wife and children,—a wife whose discontent had already infected the state. The gods he knew—Zeus and Eros—smiled on the step he took. What if the laws of Athens forbade a legal marriage with a foreigner? Pericles was Athens; and what he respected, all men must honor. Aspasia had, so far as we know, a free maiden heart ”

“ Centuries of discomfiture and defeat have not sufficed to teach them how little security is to be found in suspicion and scepticism. If I do not want my groceries stolen, I must leave my storeroom open. The very servant who would not scruple to pick my locks will know better than to pick that of her own heart. "A thorough-bred woman," says Mrs. Reid, "is good only so far as her husband suggests and allows;" and, so long as this is the standard, woman's duplicity may well match man's utmost expectation, and there is not a privilege of his open vice that she will not secure by stealth. ”

“ When I think how happy human life might be, if men and women worked freely together, I lose patience. Such marriages as I can dream of,—where, household duties thriftily managed and speedily discharged, the wife assumes some honorable trust, or finds a noble task for her delicate hands; while the [209] husband follows his under separate auspices! Occupied with real service to men and each other, how happily would they meet at night to discuss the hours they had lived apart, to help each other's work by each other's wit, and to draw vital refreshment from the caresses of their children! ”

“ If women seek to advance their own cause by mean and meretricious tricks,—such as those which have dishonored the policy of men,—may God for ever disappoint their hope! I would rather be defeated with the friends of liberty than crowned with its foes. It is because I believe woman strong enough to withstand the low and loose and degrading temptations of public life that I would lead her towards it. ”

“ I feel, to this day, how I saw one clergyman shrink, years ago, from a tale which he ought to have heard from one agonized woman's lips; and how others, admirable in the usual pulpit and pastoral charge, will think themselves unfit for this. Under such circumstances, let a clergyman call upon those of his congregation who are willing to become the friends of the rest, to meet in his study. From the half-dozen who will have at once the modesty and the courage to come forward, let a man and a woman be chosen to act as a "Committee of Comfort." ”

“ In a country where no European man can labor, where the native rests until compelled by his conqueror to work, in the year 1859 behold seven thousand women laboring in the ghauts! Climbing, climbing, through the cloudless day, women carry baskets of stone and earth upon their heads, to creep to the edge of the ravines, and fill with these tedious contributions thousands of perpendicular feet; and the men who pay them, doubtless, talk to their daughters about woman's lack of physical strength!
In Australia, the woman carries the burdens which man's indolence refuses ”

“ In my first lecture, I showed you that women were starving, and that vice is a better paymaster than labor. I showed you the awful falsity of the cry, "Do not let women work: we will work for them. They are too tender, too delicate, to bide the rough usage of the world." I showed you that they were not only working hard, but had been working at hard [208] and unwholesome work, not merely in this century, but in all centuries since the world began. I showed you how man himself has turned them back, when they have entered a well-paid career. ”

“ Thousands and tens of thousands have fallen victims to it. The woman who will not labor, rich or honored though she be, bends her head to the inevitable curse of Heaven.
This curse works in failing health, fading beauty, broken temper, and weary days. Let her never fancy, that, being neither wife nor mother, she is exempt from the law: she cannot balance that decree of God by the foolish customs of society or the weak objections of her kindred. Never let her say she does not need to labor. Disease, depression, moral idiocy, or inertia, follow on an idle life. ”