Women's subordination

“ Both as a personal relationship and as an institution, marriage is at present undergoing a profound modification resulting from the changing industrial and social position of women. The elevation of woman from the position of a chattel to that of a free citizen must inevitably affect the institution in which her subordinate position has been most strongly emphasized—which has been, indeed, the chief instrument of her subordination. ”

“ The object of this Essay is to explain as clearly as I am able, the grounds of an opinion which I have held from the very earliest period when I had formed any opinions at all on social or political matters, and which, instead of being weakened or modified, has been constantly growing stronger by the progress of reflection and the experience of life: That the principle which regulates the existing social relations between the two sexes—the legal subordination of one sex to the other—is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement; ”

“ The general principles to guide both men and women as to the duties of those in a subordinate station, have been made clear by discussions relating to civil government. But the corresponding duties of those invested with power and authority have not been so clearly set forth, especially those of the family state. While the duties of subordination, subjection, and obedience, have been abundantly enforced on woman, the corresponding duties of man as head and ruler of the family state have not received equal attention either from the pulpit or the press. ”

“ They are only fit to live alone, and no human beings ought to be compelled to associate their lives with them. But the legal subordination tends to make such characters among women more, rather than less, frequent. If the man exerts his whole power, the woman is of course crushed: but if she is treated with indulgence, and permitted to assume power, there is no rule to set limits to her encroachments. ”

“ The only excuse for considering this point, in an essay pleading especially for women, is that the law bears unequally on the two sexes; pressing hardest on woman, on account of her pecuniary dependence, and general subordination to man. ”

“ Naturally, therefore, women were excluded from any office, but it would be a mistake to suppose that their subordination to their husbands in religious matters was rigidly enforced throughout this period. ”

“ The change from feudal to modern capitalist conditions, as regards the position of women, is characterised, however, not only by, at one and the same time, the abolition of every vestige of subordination or disability, but, in addition to that, by the extension of the old compensating privileges, which were the counterpart of the former, and by the further heaping up on the top of these of new privileges, the result having finally saddled us with the institution of that sex-noblesse the leading features of which we have sketched out in the foregoing pages. ”

“ If we expect our women fitly to discharge their infinitely important office in the economy of education, we must emancipate them from the bondage of conventional subordination, and call them to the exercise of those political functions in which we now inhibit their participation. ”

“ Most women in England are still under the influence of the earlier polity of the Church and of Christendom. They do not dispute the duty of female subordination, and do not in fact as yet think of exercising the more flagrant of these new-fangled legal sex-privileges. The utmost pitch of domination that the majority have reached to is a noticeable increase in the display of overbearing manners towards their husbands, and other male dependents, and the palpable consciousness that the threat of a "public scene" will bring the scene-hating Englishman to his knees. ”

“ The subordination of women. They never were subordinated because they are weaker, because in savagery and barbarism they often are not so, but because of their feminine disabilities and the correlative inferiorities. ”

“ Where did man get the authority which he now exercises to govern one-half of humanity; from what power the right to place woman, his help-meet in life, in an inferior position? Came it from nature? Nature made woman his superior when it made her his mother—his equal when it fitted her to hold the sacred position of wife. Did women meet in council and voluntarily give up all their right to be their own law-makers? The power of the strong over the weak makes man the master. ”

“ Nor am I opposed to a woman's earning her own independence in any lawful calling, and wish many more were open to her which are now closed. Nor am I opposed to the organization and agitation of women, as women, to set forth the wrongs suffered by great multitudes of our sex, which are multiform and most humiliating. Nor am I opposed to women's undertaking to govern boys and men—they always have, and they always will. ”

“ All this, of course, is quite apart from the question referred to on a previous page, as to the economic responsibilities in the interests of women, which our Feminist law-makers have saddled on the man—namely, the responsibility of the husband, and the husband alone, for the maintenance of his wife and family, obligations from anything corresponding to which the female sex is wholly free. ”

“ Now to this quasi-argument the reply is sufficiently clear. The moral intended to be conveyed in the hypothetical question put, is that women have just as much right to object to men’s domination, as men would have to object to women’s domination. ”

“ Then the wives of our guardians must strip for their exercises, inasmuch as they will put on virtue instead of raiment, and must bear their part in war and the other duties comprised in the guardianship of the State, and must engage in no other occupations: though of these tasks the lighter parts must be given to the women rather than to the men, in consideration of the weakness of their sex. ”

“ It appears, then, that it is in America, alone, that women are raised to an equality with the other sex; and that, both in theory and practice, their interests are regarded as of equal value. They are made subordinate in station, only where a regard to their best interests demands it, while, as if in compensation for this, by custom and courtesy, they are always treated as superiors. Universally, in this Country, through every class of society, precedence is given to woman, in all the comforts, conveniences, and courtesies, of life. ”

“ We do not address ourselves to any one who requires to have it proved that these things should be remedied. We suppose average cases, in which there is neither complete union nor complete disunion of feelings and of character; and we affirm that in such cases the influence of the dependence on the woman’s side is demoralizing to the character of both.
The common opinion is, that, whatever may be the case with the intellectual, the moral influence of women over men is almost always salutary. ”

“ Could not each have made the same request to her husband at home?. Are your blandishments more seducing in public than in private, and with other women's husbands than your own? Although, if the modesty of matrons confined them within the limits of their own rights, it did not become you, even at home, to concern yourselves about what laws might be passed or repealed here.' Our ancestors thought it not proper that women should perform any, even private, business, without a director; but that they should ever be under the control of parents, brothers, or husbands. ”

“ But to secure the insight and influence of superior and proved women in dealing with female offenders, by placing them in positions of authority and responsibility, would be a great step made towards the solution of some of the most difficult problems of society. The problems which grow out of the relations of the sexes have hitherto proved insoluble, the despair of legislation. With the most conscientious endeavour to act wisely, even our ablest statesmen do not know how to deal with them. ”

“ Jealousy of position, cattishness, envy of social standing—these were as evident among the office-women as they are in a woman’s club; and Una had to admit that woman’s cruelty to woman often justified the prejudices of executives against the employment of women in business; that women were the worst foes of Woman. ”

“ The democratic rule, then, is, that superiors in age, station, or office have precedence of subordinates; age and feebleness, of youth and strength; and the feebler sex, of more vigorous man. [Footnote: The universal practice of this nation, in thus giving precedence to woman has been severely commented on by foreigners, and by some who would transfer all the business of the other sex to women, and then have them treated like men. But we hope this evidence of our superior civilization and Christianity may increase rather than diminish.] ”

“ Does it need less time and capacity to superintend a manufactory, a commercial establishment, workmen, as do so many women, than to be at the head of an office, or of a public administration, and to superintend its officials, a right that woman has not? ”

“ The Question I shall at present handle is, whether the time an ingenious Gentleman spends in the Company of Women, may justly be said to be misemploy’d, or not. I put the question in general terms; because whoever holds the affirmative must maintain it so, or the Sex is no way concern’d to oppose him. On the other side I shall not maintain the Negative, but with some Restrictions and Limitations; because I will not be bound to justifie those Women, whose Vices and ill Conduct expose them deservedly to the Censure of the other Sex, as well as of their own. ”

“ If we clearly apprehend the fact, and allow it the weight which it deserves, it will be apparent that we must hesitate to accept the subordinate position which women have always had as a valid argument for the justice of it, and a sufficient reason why they should continue forever in it. ”

“ They claim for woman equal civil and political privileges with man, and see nothing but tyranny in the law, or usage that has the force of law, which keeps a woman out of her country’s legislative halls. Every where would these reformers place women in contest with men for the honors and emoluments which society bestows upon the successful;—in the camp, on the bench, at the bar, in the pulpit, in the dissecting-room, or hospital, with the operator’s knife in her hand,—in fact, wherever strong nerve, powerful intellect, decision, and firmness are required. ”

“ In the usual discussion in regard to woman’s sphere, such men as Herbert Spencer, Frederick Harrison and Grant Allen uniformly subordinate her rights and duties as an individual, as a citizen, as a woman, to the necessities of these incidental relations, some of which a large class of women never assume. ”

“ Surely the most uncompromising suffragette must admit that the wife ought to give way in such a case. That is to say, every one will admit that the wife's domestic authority is subordinate to that of her husband. But is she to be accorded an autonomy in outside affairs that is denied her in the home? Her authority is subject to her husband's in domestic matters—her special sphere ”

“ Nor is it supposed to consist solely in protection, which, in the present state of civilization, women have almost 18 ceased to need; it involves care for their happiness and consideration of their wishes, with a not unfrequent sacrifice of their own to them. The power of husbands has reached the stage which the power of kings had arrived at, when opinion did not yet question the rightfulness of arbitrary power, but in theory, and to a certain extent in practice, condemned the selfish use of it. ”

“ You had, as you say, a set of very rigid rules and regulations as to the conduct of the sexes — that is, especially as to women — but the basis of it, for the most part, was not ethical but prudential, the object being the safeguarding of the economic interests of women in their relations with men. ”

“ That was perhaps the most unfortunate and certainly the most unnatural of the results of the patriarchal regulation of society. It has never existed in any great State where women have possessed some degree of regulative power. ”

“ What women can do, the conduct of their own cause can best avouch. Where has sounder judgment, more unfailing prudence, more indefatigable assiduity,and more conspicuous practical ability sustained the life and ministered to the promotion of a great public object, than the gifts which have distinguished the chief agents in the assertion of Woman's Rights? ”

“ So long as convention lays upon women any special and fundamental claim of control—a claim altogether different in kind and extent from the claim it lays upon men—so long may it be the essentially womanly duty of every woman to have quick and alive within her the spirit of criticism, and latent within her blood the spirit of revolt. ”

“ Is it compatible with becoming simplicity?
The different ways of envisaging and answering these questions lead to two extremes; some would have us keep women indoors sewing and spinning with their maids; thus they make them nothing more than the chief servant of their master. Others, not content to secure their rights, lead them to usurp ours; for to make woman our superior in all the qualities proper to her sex, and to make her our equal in all the rest, what is this but to transfer to the woman the superiority which nature has given to her husband? ”

“ Added to the conclusions of the feminist spirit of domination, the final position is that the man is to submit to all insolences and outrages without redress.
This conception of the relative positions of men and women is urged in a thousand different ways on any woman who has a quarrel with her husband, and must inevitably influence the average woman. ”

“ Nobody could or would believe that in so few years the admission of the right of women, as “human beings,” to do that for which they felt best fitted would lead to the acceptance of the presence of women in all branches of human activity; and not only this, but that these women would be respected and honored, and appointed to positions of responsibility hitherto filled only by men. ”