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

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
take one or two illustrations. Men, no one denies, may, and in some cases ought
to, be liable to compulsory military service. No one, I suppose, would hesitate to
admit that, if we were engaged in a great war, it might become necessary, or that
if necessary it would be right, to have a conscription both for the land and for the
sea service. Ought men and women to be subject to it indiscriminately? If any one
says that they ought, I have no more to say, except that he has got into the region
at which argument is useless. But if it is admitted that this ought not to be done,
an inequality of treatment founded on a radical inequality between the two sexes
is admitted, and, if this admission is once made, where are you to draw the line?
Turn from the case of liability to military service to that of education, which in
Germany is rightly regarded as the other great branch of state activity, and the
same question presents itself in another shape. Are boys and girls to be educated
indiscriminately, and to be instructed in the same things? Are boys to learn to
sew, to keep house, and to cook, as girls unquestionably ought to be, and are girls
to play at cricket, to row, and be drilled like boys? I cannot argue with a person
who says Yes. A person who says No admits an inequality between the sexes on
which education must be founded, and which it must therefore perpetuate and
perhaps increase.
Follow the matter a step further to the vital point of the whole question—
marriage. Marriage is one of the subjects with which it is absolutely necessary both
for law and morals to deal in some way or other. All that I need consider in reference
to the present purpose is the question whether the laws and moral rules which
relate to it should regard it as a contract between equals, or as a contract between
a stronger and a weaker person involving subordination for certain purposes on
the part of the weaker to the stronger. I say that a law which proceeded on the
former and not on the latter of these views would be founded on a totally false
assumption, and would involve cruel injustice in the sense of extreme general
inexpediency, especially to women. If the parties to a contract of marriage are
treated as equals, it is impossible to avoid the inference that marriage, like other
partnerships, may be dissolved at pleasure. The advocates of women’s rights are
exceedingly shy of stating this plainly. Mr. Mill says nothing about it in his book
on the “Subjection of Women,” though in one place he comes very near to saying
so, but it is as clear an inference from his principles as any thing can possibly be,
nor has he ever disavowed it. If this were the law, it would make women the slaves
of their husbands. A woman loses the qualities which make her attractive to men
much earlier than men lose those which make them attractive to women. The tie
between a woman and young children is generally far closer than the tie between
them and their father. A woman who is no longer young, and who is the mother of
children, would thus be absolutely in her husband’s power, in nine cases out of ten,
if he might put an end to the marriage when he pleased. This is one inequality in
the position of the parties which must be recognized and provided for beforehand
if the contract is to be for their common good. A second inequality is this: When a
man marries, it is generally because he feels himself established in life. He incurs,
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