Free woman

“ Roland, has made the remark that in order to free woman, man, the workingman, must first be freed,—the economic conditions must first undergo a universal change. Then why, in freedom’s name, is woman’s cause not more frequently urged as an argument to that end? O, that woman herself would only awake to a sense of her condition! O, sisters, awake! Hasten the advent of the coming day that proclaims your freedom from the tyranny of man, by aiding him to obtain the rights that are justly his. ”

“ The femme libre (free woman) of the new social order may, indeed, escape the charge of neglecting her family and her household by contending that it is "not her vocation to become a wife and a mother." Why then, we ask, is she constituted a woman at all? Merely that she should become a sort of second-rate man? We have already declared, and we repeat, that we wish a free career for every talent. ”

“ To talk of the freedom of woman, of her individual right to control her actions, when she works like a beast of burden to reach a minimum of existence, to keep from dying of starvation, to talk of the freedom of women where conditions are such that the free choice of work, for man as well as for woman, is an empty phrase—to put it mildly, it is senseless. ”

“ She talked of freedom until some pious prudes really suspected she meant license, and she predicted that the time would come when the genius of woman would rise superior to the imposed trammels of sex. She should have lived in the present age, when she would have seen woman’s struggles for emancipation, as exhibited in the French female clubs, and the German free associations, to say nothing of the free inquirers and declaimers against female slavery in this country. ”

“ But is she therefore more dependent than the woman who lives upon what she can get out of the scanty earnings of a drunken husband? Does the community therefore think it has a right to control her? Not a bit of it. She is in point of fact the only free woman among us. My dream was to see all women equally free—inheritors from the community of so much of its earnings ”

“ Do not instincts arise in us, too, that demand expression, free from all coercion of convention? And if we stifle them are we really the better—the more moral sex? I doubt this, as I have come to doubt so many of the lies that have been accepted as the truth about women.
The true hope of the future lies in the undivided recognition of responsibility in love, which alone can make freedom possible. Freedom for all women—the women of the home and the women of the streets. The prostitute woman must be freed from all oppression. ”

“ Attempts to generalise on this matter in which individual freedom has every right to be recognised, they consider reactionary. Full freedom for the woman, married or unmarried, to choose her work and to continue it; full freedom to choose motherhood or to do without it, this they say is the way to free woman, this is the line of progress. Here woman is subject to that economic law which has made it necessary for her to work for her own living. ”

“ “Because he foresaw that she would be very much more useful to him in the character of a free woman.” ”

“ Simon, and like the modern feminists—looked upon freedom in love as the central point in the woman’s question. Like George Sand, the feminism of the present day asserts the right of free thought against the creed of authority in every field; the solidarity of mankind and the cause of peace against the patriotism of militarism; social reform against the existing relations of society. ”

“ In France or Italy, have the women confined themselves to domestic life? though they have not hitherto had a political existence, yet, have they not illicitly had great sway? corrupting themselves and the men with whose passions they played. In short, in whatever light I view the subject, reason and experience convince me that the only method of leading women to fulfil their peculiar duties, is to free them from all restraint by allowing them to participate the inherent rights of mankind. ”

“ What is there in these considerations which is not equally applicable to females as free, intelligent, moral, responsible beings, entitled to equal rights and interests and protection, and having a vital stake in all the regulations and laws of society? ”

“ A human being, like you, having, like you, intellect, will, free will and various aptitudes, woman has the right, like you, to be free and autonomous, to develop her faculties freely, to exercise her activity freely; to mark out her path, to reduce her to subjection, as you do, is therefore a violation of Human Right in the person of woman—an odious abuse of force. ”

“ When the mailed hand of force is withdrawn, leaving woman free like man to do wrong even at her own cost, to stand or fall on her own merits, she will do well—in making love or laws, a loaf of bread or an immortal being—just in proportion as responsibility is recognized, intelligence enlarged and liberty inviolate. ”

“ Yet the position of woman throughout history serves as the criterion of the freedom of the people or an age. When man shall despise that right which is founded only on might, woman will be free and stand on an equal level with him,—a friend and not a dependent. ”

“ Quickly this look became inquisitive and significant, so that I began to fancy he had doubts as to the use I might make of my stipulated freedom, and was puzzled to conjecture why a woman should wish to be free at all. ”

“ In the education and elevation of women, then, lies the great hope of the future. Leading Freethinkers have always seen this. Shelley's great cry, "Can man be free if woman be a slave?" is one witness, and Mill's great essay on The Subjection of Women is another. ”

“ He can possess nothing, nor acquire anything, but what must belong to his master.’ I do not wish by any means to intimate that the condition of free women can be compared to that of slaves in suffering, or in degradation ”

“ But we are grateful to remember many women who needed no arguments, whose clear insight and reason, pronounced in the outset that a woman's soul was as well worth saving as a man's; that her independence and free choice are as necessary and as valuable to the public virtue and welfare ”

“ Say that she is not created free and equal, and therefore (for the sequence follows on the premise) that she is not entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But with all the audacity arising from an assumed. superiority, you dare not so libel and insult humanity as to say, that she is not included in that declaration; and if she is, then what right has man, except that of might, to deprive woman of the rights and privileges he claims for himself? And why, in the name of reason and justice, why should she not have the same rights? Because she is woman? Humanity recognizes no sex ”

“ I told him I had, perhaps, different notions of matrimony from what the received custom had given us of it; that I thought a woman was a free agent as well as a man, and was born free, and, could she manage herself suitably, might enjoy that liberty to as much purpose as the men do: ”

“ And in the midst of all this there comes a cry that woman is an individual, and that because she is an individual she must be set free. It would be nearer the [Pg 94] truth to say that if she is an individual she is free, and will act like those who are free. ”

“ And if men would escape the [Pg 26] degradation of being accepted by a woman in such a spirit, they should be anxious to do all in their power to make women free, to remove all obstructions raised by prejudice ”

“ Now, woman is confronted with the necessity of emancipating herself from emancipation, if she really desires to be free. ”

“ make women rational creatures, and free citizens, and they will quickly become good wives, and mothers; that is—if men do not neglect the duties of husbands and fathers. ”

“ Women are ineligible to public offices for the following simple reasons: public officers are responsible to the state; and hence must be perfectly free, and dependent always only upon their own will; otherwise such a responsibility would be unjust and contradictory. Woman, however, is free and independent only so long as she has no husband. Hence the exclusive condition under which a woman might become eligible to office, would be the promise not to marry. But no rational woman can give such a promise, nor can the state rationally accept it. ”

“ 'Can man be free if woman be a slave? ”

“ To emancipate woman is not only to open the gates of the university, the law courts, or the parliaments, for her, for the "emancipated" woman will always throw domestic toil on to another woman. To emancipate woman is to free her from the brutalizing toil of kitchen and washhouse; it is to organize your household in such a way as to enable her to rear her children, if she be so minded, while still retaining sufficient leisure to take her share of social life.
It will come to pass. As we have said, things are already improving. ”

“ It is by the promulgation of sound morals in the community, and more especially by the training and instruction of the young, that woman performs her part towards the preservation of a free government. ”

“ What is the ideal of perfect society? Is it a state where there is a universal contention for notice, power, and honor? Then let women enter that contest now. Is it a state where each is content with the personal fruition of his own powers, in harmony with the same enjoyment by all others? Then let women, by setting such an example of abstinence from the public realm of politics, draw men also to their true happiness, in "the realm of home and morals."
Turning from the authority of history to the authority of moral science, there is no reason for the enslavement of woman to man. ”

“ The realm of the affections, with its imperious exactions and its imperial largesses, is theirs. Certainly no right or privilege should be withheld from women; but they ought to be careful not to mistake dangers or defects or vices for rights and privileges. It is simple blindness to fail to see that the distinctively feminine sphere of action is domestic life, and the inner life—not the brawling mart and caucus. The freedom and education of woman should be so enlarged that she can include, in intelligence and sympathy, all the interests of mankind. ”

“ While, on the other hand,—one may say this quite apart from construing the galvanic twitchings of a revived mediævalism in ecclesiastic and other social affairs as real life—there have also come conceptions of the liberty 144 and dignity of womanhood, independent or self-dependent, beyond those which prevailed in the nunnery world.
A popular feeling has been growing that a woman’s sphere is whatever she can do excellently. ”

“ She had never known what real freedom was; women of the comfortable class—and men, too, for that matter—usually are born into the petty slavery of conventions at least, and know nothing else their whole lives through—never know the joy of the thought and the act of a free mind and a free heart. ”

“ May I ask you to bring to that labor as fair a spirit, as unprejudiced an outlook, as just a decision as he would have done?
I ask this not as a partisan of woman's rights, but as a lover of the human race. In this faint dawn of woman's day, I discern not woman's development of freedom merely, but the promise of that higher, finer, purer civilization which is to redeem the world, the lack of which makes men tyrants and women slaves. ”

“ How does the objector know that women do not desire equality and freedom? He never knew a woman who did not, or would not, desire it for herself individually. It would be very simple to suppose that, if they do desire it, they will say so. Their position is like that of the tenants or laborers who vote against their own political interests to please their landlords or employers; with the unique addition that submission is inculcated on them from childhood, as the peculiar attraction and grace of their character. ”

“ It has been the means of sending to their graves unknown, unknelled, and unnamed, thousands of women whose high intellects have been wasted, and whose powers for good have been paralysed and undeveloped. To the subjection and degradation of woman I ascribe the sufferings and crimes of humanity, nor will Society be ever truly raised, or ennobled, or perfected until woman’s freedom has been granted, and she takes her rightful place as the equal of man. ”

“ So in the wise, virtuous, self-supporting, common-sense women we propose as the mothers of the future republic, the reverend gentleman may see a lack of what he considers the feminine element. In the development of sufficient moral force to entrench herself on principle, need a woman necessarily lose any grace, dignity, or perfection of character? Are not those who have advocated the rights of women in this country for the last twenty years as delicate and refined, as moral, high-toned, educated, just, and generous as any women in the land? ”

“ They can talk about women's rights—I feel as if they ought to have them fast enough, if they want them, poor things; a woman has a hard row to hoe, and will have, if she gets all the rights in creation. But I guess the rights they'd find it hardest to give up would be the rights to have men look after them just a little more than they look after other men, just because they are women. When I think of Annie Berry—the girl I was going to marry, you know, if she hadn't died—I feel as if I couldn't do enough for another woman. ”

“ "Women ought to be free—as free as we are," he declared, making a discovery of which he was too irritated to measure the terrific consequences. ”

“ How my heart throbs to see women assembling in convention to inquire what part they have in the great moral struggles of humanity! [Pg 482] Verily a new era is dawning upon the world, when woman, hitherto the mere dependent of man, the passive recipient alike of truth and error, at length shakes off her lethargy, the shackles of a false education, customs and habits, and stands upright in the dignity of a moral being, and not only proclaims her own freedom, but demands what she shall do to save man from the slavery of his own low appetites. ”