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

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
in many cases, and by other suggestions of the same sort. His great argument
against the present state of things is that it is opposed to what he calls “the modern
conviction, the fruit of a thousand years of experience”—
“That things in which the individual is the person directly interested never go
right but as they are left to his own discretion, and that any regulation of them
by authority except to protect the rights of others is sure to be mischievous . .
. . The peculiar character of the modern world . . . is that human beings are no
longer born to their place in life and chained down by an inexorable bond to the
place they are born to, but are free to employ their faculties and such favorable
chances as oer, to achieve the lot which may appear to them most desirable.
Human society of old was constituted on a very dierent principle. All were
born to a xed social position, and were mostly kept in it by law or interdicted
from any means by which they could emerge from it . . . . In consonance with
this doctrine it is felt to be an overstepping of the proper bounds of authority
to x beforehand on some general presumption that certain persons are not
t to do certain things. It is now thoroughly known and admitted that if some
such presumptions exist no such presumption is infallible . . . . Hence we ought
not . . . to ordain that to be born a girl instead of a boy shall decide the person’s
position all through life.”
The result is that “the social subordination of women thus stands out as an
isolated fact in modern social institutions.” It is in “radical opposition” to “the
progressive movement, which is the boast of the modern world.” This fact creates
a “prima-facie presumption” against it, “far outweighing any which custom and
usage could in such circumstances create” in its favor.
I will not follow Mr. Mill through the whole of his argument, much of which
consists of matter not relevant to my present purpose, and not agreeable to discuss,
though many of his assertions provoke reply. There is something—I hardly know
what to call it, indecent is too strong a word, but I may say unpleasant in the
direction of indecorum—in prolonged and minute discussions about the relations
between men and women, and the characteristics of women as such. I will therefore
pass over what Mr. Mill says on this subject with a mere general expression of
dissent from nearly every word he says. The following extracts show the nature of
that part of his theory which bears on the question of equality:
“The equality of married persons before the law . . . is the only means of rendering
the daily life of mankind in any high sense a school of moral cultivation.
Though the truth may not be felt or generally acknowledged for generations
to come, the only school of genuine moral sentiment is society between equals.
The moral education of mankind has hitherto emanated chiey from the law
of force, and is adapted almost solely to the relations which force creates. In
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