Becoming America - An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution, 2018a

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
Thus, the Idea of woman has not failed to be often and forcibly represented. So
many instances throng on the mind, that we must stop here, lest the catalogue be
swelled beyond the reader’s patience.
Neither can she complain that she has not had her share of power. This, in all
ranks of society, except the lowest, has been hers to the extent that vanity could
crave, far beyond what wisdom would accept. In the very lowest, where man,
pressed by poverty, sees in woman only the partner of toils and cares, and cannot
hope, scarcely has an idea of a comfortable home, he maltreats her, often, and is
less inuenced by her. In all ranks, those who are amiable and uncomplaining,
suer much. They suer long, and are kind; verily they have their reward. But
wherever man is suciently raised above extreme poverty, or brutal stupidity, to
care for the comforts of the reside, or the bloom and ornament of life, woman has
always power enough, if she choose to exert it, and is usually disposed to do so in
proportion to her ignorance and childish vanity. Unacquainted with the importance
of life and its purposes, trained to a selsh coquetry and love of petty power, she
does not look beyond the pleasure of making herself felt at the moment, and
governments are shaken and commerce broken up to gratify the pique of a female
favorite. The English shopkeeper’s wife does not vote, but it is for her interest that
the politician canvasses by the coarsest attery. France suers no woman on her
throne, but her proud nobles kiss the dust at the feet of Pompadour and Dubarry,
for such are in the lighted foreground where a Roland would modestly aid in the
closet. Spain shuts up her women in the care of duennas, and allows them no book
but the Breviary; but the ruin follows only the more surely from the worthless
favorite of a worthless queen.
It is not the transient breath of poetic incense, that women want; each can
receive that from a lover. It is not life-long sway; it needs but to become a coquette,
a shrew, or a good cook to be sure of that. It is not money, nor notoriety, nor the
badges of authority, that men have appropriated to themselves. If demands made
in their behalf lay stress on any of these particulars, those who make them have
not searched deeply into the need. It is for that which at once includes all these and
precludes them; which would not be forbidden power, lest there be temptation to
steal and misuse it; which would not have the mind perverted by attery from a
worthiness of esteem. It is for that which is the birthright of every being capable to
receive it,—the freedom, the religious, the intelligent freedom of the universe, to
use its means, to learn its secret as far as nature has enabled them, with God alone
for their guide and their judge.
Ye cannot believe it, men; but the only reason why women ever assume what
is more appropriate to you, is because you prevent them from nding out what
is t for themselves. Were they free, were they wise fully to develop the strength
and beauty of woman, they would never wish to be men, or manlike. The wellinstructed
moon ies not from her orbit to seize on the glories of her partner. No;
for she knows that one law rules, one heaven contains, one universe replies to them
alike. It is with women as with the slave.
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