Feminism - Women and Memory Forum

SOME FUNDAMENTAL ASSUMPTIONS 29
mouth of an adulterous woman under the Roman empire ; ^^ and
it made its appearance early in the modern woman movement.
" Is not a woman a member of the race," asked Mrs. Abby H.
Price at the Woman's Convention at Worcester in 1850; and she
answered, " Yes, for above these titles of wife and mother, which
depend upon circumstances and are accidental and transitory,
there is for a woman a title eternal, inalienable, preceding and rising
above all,— that of human being, co-existent with man." ^^
Even before that, Fanny Wright (later Madame Darusmont), the
Scotchwoman who first brought feminism to America, said in her
parting address at New York in 1830: " What is the purpose of
our souls? The equalisation of our human conditions, the annihilation
of all arbitrary distinctions, the substitution of the simple
character of human beings for that of all others." ^^ And
a little later Higginson quoted from Jean Paul Richter's Levana
(published 1806) a statement that " before and after being a
mother, a woman is a human being." ^* And Mill followed suit,
declaring that " the mere consciousness a woman would then
[when emancipated] have of being a human being like any other
[i. e. like a man] would effect an immense expansion." ^" The
idea has continued to be harped upon ever since. ^'' It is a constant
refrain in the writings and lectures of Mrs. Oilman. " We
women," says Mrs. Pankhurst, " in trying to make our case
clear, always have to make as part of our argument, and urge
upon men in our audience, the fact — a very simple fact— that
women are human beings." '^ Only recently at New York,
February 20, 1914, six feminists conducted a public symposium
on the subject of " Breaking into the Human Race," at which
Marie Jenney Howe, who presided, maintained that " the world
is human, and women want to be human, not merely emotional,
personal, feminine creatures. We're sick," she cried, " of being
specialised to sex. We intend simply to be ourselves, not just
25 Above, i. 99.
26 Proceedings, 28.
27 Parting ^ddrew, in pamphlet form, p. II. •• , .. „ .
28 Ought Women to learn the Alphabet? jp. I47- The original is: Bevor nnd
nachdem man eine Mutter ist, ist man em Mensch, § 87. So G. W. Curtis, possibly
with the same in mind: "They [women] are not only parents, they are human be-
ines " Fair Play for Women, Address at New York, 1870, in Orations and Addresses,
2
i '10 Ibsen also has made his Nora talk this way. Still earlier, in 1792, Hippel
asked 'the strange question :" NfVhy should not women be able to say If Why
should they not be persons?" Ueber die burgerhche Verbesserung der Weiher, m
Werke vi 119; they should, he replied, have the rank due to them as human beings,
2W because, as man and woman are only one human being, we ought not to divide
what God has united, 143,— an argument which would not be tolerated to-day!
29 Subjection of Women, 155. During the Massachusetts constitutional convention
of iS^I W B Greene seems to have been converted to the doctrine of woman's
rights by re'flecting upon the fact that women are people and human beings. Official
Report of Debates, ii. 726 A, B, 731 A.
30 E.g., in Mrs. Jacobi's Common Sense. 100.
31 Speech at Hartford, Nov. 13, 1913. Verbatim Report, p. 6.
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