Thomas Wentworth Higginson - Women and the Alphabet a Series of Essays

Title: Women and the Alphabet

Author: Thomas Wentworth Higginson

Release Date: September 15, 2004 [eBook #13474]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOMEN AND THE ALPHABET***

BY

The first essay in this volume, "Ought Women to learn the Alphabet?" appeared originally in the "Atlantic Monthly" of February, 1859, and has since been reprinted in various forms, bearing its share, I trust, in the great development of more liberal views in respect to the training and duties of women which has made itself manifest within forty years. There was, for instance, a report that it was the perusal of this essay which led the late Miss Sophia Smith to the founding of the women's college bearing her name at Northampton, Massachusetts.

The remaining papers in the volume formed originally a part of a book entitled "Common Sense About Women" which was made up largely of papers from the "Woman's Journal." This book was first published in 1881 and was reprinted in somewhat abridged form some years later in London (Sonnenschein). It must have attained a considerable circulation there, as the fourth (stereotyped) edition appeared in 1897. From this London reprint a German translation was made by Frulein Eugenie Jacobi, under the title "Die Frauenfrage und der gesunde Menschenverstand" (Schupp: Neuwied and Leipzig, 1895).

T.W.H.

CAMBRIDGE, MASS.

I. OUGHT WOMEN TO LEARN THE ALPHABET?

II. PHYSIOLOGY

Too Much Natural History

Darwin, Huxley, and Buckle

The Spirit of Small Tyranny

The Noble Sex

The Truth about our Grandmothers

The Physique of American Women

The Limitations of Sex

III. TEMPERAMENT

The Invisible Lady

Sacred Obscurity

Virtues in Common

Individual Differences

Angelic Superiority

Vicarious Honors

The Gospel of Humiliation

Celery and Cherubs

The Need of Cavalry

The Reason Firm, the Temperate Will

Allures to Brighter Worlds, and leads the Way

IV. THE HOME

Wanted--Homes

The Origin of Civilization

The Low-Water Mark

Obey

Woman in the Chrysalis

Two and Two

A Model Household

A Safeguard for the Family

Women as Economists

Greater Includes Less

A Copartnership

One Responsible Head

Asking for Money

Womanhood and Motherhood

A German Point of View

Childless Women

The Prevention of Cruelty to Mothers

V. SOCIETY

Foam and Current

In Society

The Battle of the Cards

Some Working Women

The Empire of Manners

Girlsterousness

Are Women Natural Aristocrats?

Mrs. Blank's Daughters

The European Plan

Featherses

VI. STUDY AND WORK

Experiments

Intellectual Cinderellas

Cupid and Psychology

Self-Supporting Wives

Thorough

Literary Aspirants

The Career of Letters

Talking and Taking

How to Speak in Public

VII. PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT

We the People

The Use of the Declaration of Independence

Some Old-Fashioned Principles

Founded on a Rock

The Good of the Governed

Ruling at Second Hand

VIII. SUFFRAGE

Drawing the Line

For Self-Protection

Womanly Statesmanship

Too Much Prediction

First-Class Carriages

Education via Suffrage

Follow Your Leaders

How to Make Women Understand Politics

Inferior to Men, and near to Angels

IX. OBJECTIONS TO SUFFRAGE

The Facts of Sex

How will it Result?

I have all the Rights I want

Sense Enough to Vote

An Infelicitous Epithet

The Rob Roy Theory

The Votes of Non Combatants

Mmanners repeal Laws

Dangerous Voters

How Women will Legislate

Individuals vs. Classes

Defeats before Victories

Paris smiled, for an hour or two, in the year 1801, when, amidst Napoleon's mighty projects for remodelling the religion and government of his empire, the ironical satirist, Sylvain Marchal, thrust in his "Plan for a Law prohibiting the Alphabet to Women."[1] Daring, keen, sarcastic, learned, the little tract retains to-day so much of its pungency, that we can hardly wonder at the honest simplicity of the author's friend and biographer, Madame Gacon Dufour, who declared that he must be insane, and soberly replied to him.

His proposed statute consists of eighty-two clauses, and is fortified by a "whereas" of a hundred and thirteen weighty reasons. He exhausts the range of history to show the frightful results which have followed this taste of fruit of the tree of knowledge; quotes from the Encyclopdie, to prove that the woman who knows the alphabet has already lost a portion of her innocence; cites the opinion of Molire, that any female who has unhappily learned anything in this line should affect ignorance, when possible; asserts that knowledge rarely makes men attractive, and females never; opines that women have no occasion to peruse Ovid's "Art of Love," since they know it all in advance; remarks that three quarters of female authors are no better than they should be; maintains that Madame Guion would have been far more useful had she been merely pretty and an ignoramus, such as Nature made her,--that Ruth and Naomi could not read, and Boaz probably would never have married into the family had they possessed that accomplishment,--that the Spartan women did not know the alphabet, nor the Amazons, nor Penelope, nor Andromache, nor Lucretia, nor Joan of Arc, nor Petrarch's Laura, nor the daughters of Charlemagne, nor the three hundred and sixty-five wives of Mohammed; but that Sappho and Madame de Maintenon could read altogether too well; while the case of Saint Brigitta, who brought forth twelve children and twelve books, was clearly exceptional, and afforded no safe precedent.

It would seem that the brilliant Frenchman touched the root of the matter. Ought women to learn the alphabet? There the whole question lies. Concede this little fulcrum, and Archimedea will move the world before she has done with it: it becomes merely a question of time. Resistance must be made here or nowhere. Obsta principiis. Woman must be a subject or an equal: there is no middle ground. What if the Chinese proverb should turn out to be, after all, the summit of wisdom, "For men, to cultivate virtue is knowledge; for women, to renounce knowledge is virtue"?

No doubt, the progress of events is slow, like the working of the laws of gravitation generally. Certainly there has been but little change in the legal position of women since China was in its prime, until within the last half century. Lawyers admit that the fundamental theory of English and Oriental law is the same on this point: Man and wife are one, and that one is the husband. It is the oldest of legal traditions. When Blackstone declares that "the very being and existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage," and American Kent echoes that "her legal existence and authority are in a manner lost;" when Petersdorff asserts that "the husband has the right of imposing such corporeal restraints as he may deem necessary," and Bacon that "the husband hath, by law, power and dominion over his wife, and may keep her by force within the bounds of duty, and may beat her, but not in a violent or cruel manner;" when Mr. Justice Coleridge rules that the husband, in certain cases, "has a right to confine his wife in his own dwelling-house, and restrain her from liberty for an indefinite time," and Baron Alderson sums it all up tersely, "The wife is only the