Part 17

Men have a way of falling back on Eve's transgression, as if that were a sufficient excuse for all short- or wrong-coming. Milton glosses over Adam's part in the transgression, and even gives his sin a rather magnanimous air,--which is very different from that which Adam's character wears in Genesis,--while all the blame is laid on "the woman whom thou gavest to be with me." But before pronouncing judgment, I should like to hear Eve's version of the story. Moses has given his, and Milton his,--the first doubtless conveying as much truth as he was able to be the medium of, the second expressing all the paganism of his sex and his generation, mingled with the gall of his own private bitterness; but we have never a word from Eve. That is, we have man's side represented. But Eve will awake one day, and then, and not till then, we shall know the whole. Meanwhile, it is well for men to go back to the beginning of creation to find woman the guilty party. If they stop anywhere short of it, they will be forced to shift the burden to their own shoulders. A woman may have been originally one step in advance of man in evil-doing, but he very soon caught up with her, and has never since suffered himself to labor under a similar disadvantage. I cannot think of a single folly, weakness, or vice in women which men have not either planted or fostered; and generally they have done both. But they do not see the link between cause and effect, and they fail to direct their denunciation to the proper quarter.

It only needs to trust nature! Learn that women crave to pay homage as strongly as men crave to receive it. The higher women rise the more eagerly will they turn to somewhat higher. It cannot be sweeter for a man to be looked up to than it is for a woman to look up to him. Never can you raise women to such an altitude that they will find their pride and pleasure in looking down. Women want men to be masters quite as much as men themselves wish it; but they want them first to be worthy of it. Women never rebel against the authority of goodness, of superiority, but against the tyranny of obstinacy, ignorance, heartlessness. The supremacy which a husband holds by virtue of his character is a wife's boon and blessing, and she suns herself in it and is filled with an unspeakable content. It is the supremacy of mere position, the supremacy of inferiority, that galls and irritates; that breaks out in conventions and resolutions and remonstrances, in suicide and insanity and crime. "The women now-a-days are playing the devil all round," I heard a man say not long ago, in speaking of a woman hitherto respectable, who had left husband and children and eloped with some unknown adventurer. And I said in my heart, "I am glad of it. Men have been playing the devil single-handed long enough, I am glad women are taking it up. _Similia similibus curantur_." Things must, to be sure, be in a very dreadful condition to require such "heroic treatment," but things are in a very dreadful condition, and if men will not amend them out of love of justice and right and purity, I do not see any other way than that they must be forced to do it out of a selfish regard to their own household comfort. Let my people go, that they may serve me, was the word of the Lord to Pharaoh, but Pharaoh hardened his heart and would not let the people go. Not until there was no longer in Egypt a house in which there was not one dead did the required emancipation come. Then with a great cry of horror and dread were the children of Israel sent out as the Lord their God commanded. Let my people go, that they may serve me, seems the Lord to have been saying these many years to the taskmasters of America; but who is the Lord, the taskmasters have cried, that we should obey his voice to let Israel go? We know not the Lord, neither will we let Israel go. Now on summer fields red with blood, through the terrible voice of the cannonade bearing its summons of death, we are learning in anguish and tears who is the Lord; and if men choose not to do justly and love mercy and walk softly with women, it is according to analogy that women shall become to them the scourge of God. The very charities, the tendernesses, the blessing and beneficent qualities against which they have sinned shall become thongs to lash and scorpions to sting,--and all the people shall say amen!

I am so far from being surprised when women occasionally run away from their husbands, that I rather marvel that there is not a hegira of women; that our streets and lanes are not choked up with fugitives. I do not believe in women's leaving their husbands to live with other men; it is infamy and it is folly: but I do believe most profoundly in women's leaving their husbands. It may be their right and their duty. I think there is not the smallest danger in the state's putting all possible power of this nature into the hands of women; because a woman's nature is such that she will never exercise this power till she has borne to the utmost, cruelty, malignity, or indifference; and, in point of morality, indifference is just as good ground for separation as cruelty. Love is the sole morality of marriage, and a marriage to which love has never come, or from which it has departed, is immorality, and a woman cannot continue in it without continually incurring stain. I do not think she has a right to marry again; not even a legal divorce justifies a second marriage; but she has a right to withdraw from the man who imbrutes her. If the law does not justify such action, she is right in taking the matter into her own hands. There is no power on earth that can make a woman live with a man, if she chooses not to live with him, and has a will strong enough to bear out her choice; and when she finds that she ministers only to his selfishness, when she discovers that her marriage is no marriage at all, but an alliance offensive to all delicacy and opposed to all improvement, she is not only justified in discontinuing it, but she is not justified in continuing it. The position which a woman occupies in such a connection is fairer in the eyes of the law, but morally it is no less objectionable than if the marriage ceremony had never taken place. A prayer and a promise cannot turn pollution into purity.

Is this a movement towards violating the sanctity of marriage? It is rather causing that marriage shall not with its sanctity protect sin. When a slaver, freighted with wretchedness, unfurls from its masthead the Stars and Stripes, that it may avoid capture, does it thereby free itself from guilt, or does it desecrate our flag? Who honors his country, he who permits the slave-ship to go on her horrible way protected by the sacred name she has dared to invoke, or he who scorns to suffer those folds to sanction crime, tears down the flag from its disgracing eminence, unlooses the bands of the oppressor and bids the oppressed go free?

But are there not inconstant, weak women, who would take advantage of such power, and for any fancied slight or foolish whim desert a good home and a good husband? Well, what then? If a silly woman will of her own motion go away and live by herself, I think she pursues a wise course and deserves well of the Republic. I do not believe her good husband will complain. On the contrary, he would doubtless adopt a part at least of the Napoleonic principle, and build a bridge of gold for his fleeing spouse. Such power will never make silly women, though it may possibly render them more conspicuous, and that will be a benefit. The more vividly a wrong is seen and felt, the more likely is it to be removed. The remedy for the mischief which Lord Burleigh's she-fool may do is, not to bind her to your hearth, but to keep her away from it altogether; and better than a remedy, the preventive is, so to treat women that they shall not be fools. If the ways of male transgressors against women can be made so hard that they shall, in very self-defence, set to and mend them--Heaven be praised!

But what of the Bible? Is not the permanency of the marriage connection inculcated there? No more than I inculcate it. I certainly do not see it enforced in any such manner as to weaken my position. Its permanency is assumed rather than enjoined; but a basis of essential oneness is also assumed, which is the sufficient, the true, and the only true and sufficient basis. "Therefore," says Adam, "shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh." But if, instead of cleaving to his wife, a man cleaves away from his wife, and instead of being one flesh, the twain become twain,--I do not see that Adam has anything to say on the subject. I suppose Eve looked so lovely to him, and he was so delighted to have her, that it never occurred to him to make any provision against the contingency of his abusing her. I have not made any especial research, but I do not remember anything in the precepts or examples of the Bible that enjoins the continuance of association in spite of everything. In principle it is presumed to be perpetual, but in practice the Bible makes certain exceptions to perpetuity,--lays down rules indeed for separation. "What God hath joined together let not man put asunder," says our Saviour, which surely does not mean that what greed or lust or ambition has joined together woman may not put asunder. When a young man and a maiden, drawn towards each other by their God-given instincts, have become one by love, no mere outside incompatibility of wealth or rank, or any such thing, should forbid them to become one by marriage. For what God hath joined together let not man put asunder. But the God who would not permit an ox and an ass to be yoked together to the same plough, never, surely, joined in holy wedlock a brute and an angel; and if the angel struggles to escape from the unequal yoke-fellow to whom the powers of evil have coupled her, who dare thrust her back under the yoke with a "Thus saith the Lord"? Christ himself does not pronounce against the putting away of wife or husband, but against the putting away of one and marrying another. St. Paul's words regarding the Christian and the idolater can hardly be applied in our society, but so far as they can be applied they confirm my views. "Let not the wife depart from her husband," he says, and immediately adds, "_but and if she depart, let her remain unmarried_, or be reconciled to her husband." Precisely. For no trivial cause should the wife give her husband over to be the prey of his own wicked passions; but if he is so bad, if he so degrades her life that she must depart, let her remain unmarried.

It may be said that the interests of children would be compromised by this mode of procedure. But the interests of children are already fatally compromised. The interests of children are never at variance with those of their parents. If it is for the interest of the mother to leave her husband, it is not for the interest of her children that she should stay with him. Whatever mortification or disgrace might come to a few children would not be the greatest harm that could happen to them, and in the end all children would be the gainers.

"I hold that man the worst of public foes Who, either for his own or children's sake, To save his blood from scandal, lets the wife Whom he knows false abide and rule the house."

True. For "man" put "woman," and for "wife" "husband," and it will be no less true. Of one thing be sure. The interests of children need not block the wheels of legislation. The mother will take them into as earnest consideration as any assembly of men. If they are not safe in her hands, they will not be safe in any hands.

Furthermore notice, the chief stress of Scriptural prohibition is laid on men. The rules and restraints are for men. Very little injunction is given to women. The Inspirer of the Bible knew the souls which he had made, and for the hardness of men's hearts hedged them about with restrictions, and for the softness of women's hearts left them chiefly to their own sweet will. The great Creator knew that women would never be largely addicted to leaving their husbands for trifling causes, nor indeed are serious causes often sufficient to produce such results. The rack and wheel and thumb-screw of married life are generally less powerful than the patience of the wifely heart. But his Maker knew, too, the inconstant nature of man, and bound him with the strictest charges. I am entirely willing to abide by the Bible. Let the state abide by it too, and give to women the legal power to save themselves. There is no danger that they will abuse it. They will even use it only to correct the most fatal abuse.

But what, then, becomes of the marriage vows? Shall all their solemnity vanish as a thread of tow when it toucheth the fire? No; but I would have the marriage vows themselves vanish. They are heathenish. They are a relic of barbarism. I have never studied into their origin, but there is internal evidence that women had neither part nor lot in framing them. The whole matter is one of those masculinities with which society has been saddled for generations,--one of the bungling makeshifts to which men resort when they are left to themselves, and have but a vague notion of what it is that they want, and no notion at all of how they are to get it. Look at it a moment. Here is the whole world lying before man, waiting for him to enter in and take possession. Woman desires nothing so much as that he should be monarch of all he surveys. She acknowledges him to be in his own right, she implores him to be by his own act, king. The greatest blessing that can fall upon her is his coronation. It is only when the king is come to his own that woman can enter into her lawful inheritance. So long as he keeps his crown in abeyance, so long as he tramples his prerogatives under foot, she too misses the purple and the throne. What does he do? Instead of wearing his dignities, and discharging his duties, he goes clad in rags, he dwells with beggars, he deals in baubles, and depends for allegiance upon a word! With all his power depending solely upon himself, with love and life awaiting only his worthiness, with a devotion that knows no measure standing ready and eager to bless him, all the dew of youth, all the faith of innocence, all the boundless trust of tenderness, all the grace and charm and resource of an infinitely daring and enduring affection,--he turns away from it all and claims the coarseness of a promise! He does not see the invincible strength of that subtile, impalpable bond which God has ordained, but trusts his fate to a clumsy yet flimsy cord which himself has woven, which his eyes can see and his hands handle, and in which therefore he can believe, no matter though it parts at the first strain.

Does it? Did a person ever change his course out of respect to his marriage vows? I do not mean his marriage or the marriage ceremony, but simply the promises: to love, honor, and cherish on the one side; to love, honor, and obey on the other. Did a man's promise ever fetter his tongue from uttering the harsh word? Did a woman's promise ever induce her to heed her husband's wishes? I trow not. The honor and love which a husband or wife do not spontaneously render, they will seldom render for a vow. If the vital spark of heavenly flame remains, the promise is of no use. If it is gone out, the promise is of no power. A solemn declaration of facts, a solemn assertion, calling upon God and man for witness, would, it seems to me, be equally efficient, and much more moral, than the present form of promise. Power over the future is not given to any of us, but we can all bear witness of the present. The history of this war goes to show that oaths of any sort are of but little use,--mere wisps of straw when the current sets against them,--and that Christ meant what he said when he said, "Swear not at all." But, however the case may stand regarding facts, there can be but one opinion regarding feelings. To swear to preserve an emotion or an affection is to assume a burden which neither our fathers nor we are able to bear. And to take an oath which one has no power to keep, has a tendency to weaken in men's minds the obligation of oaths. If there must be swearing, we should act on Paley's hint, and promise to love as long as possible, and then to make the best of the bargain.

That part of the marriage contract which relates to obedience deserves a separate attention. What is meant by a wife's obedience? Shall an adult person of ordinary intelligence forego the use of her own judgment and adopt the conclusions of another person's? Is that what is meant?

To the law and to the testimony again. In the beginning nothing is said of obedience or lordship. There is no subordination of man to woman or woman to man. They are simply one flesh. God created man in his own image; male and female created he them. And God blessed _them_, and said unto _them_, have dominion, &c. Eve was to have dominion precisely like Adam, so far as we can see. But in the fall she forfeited it, and the curse came: "Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." When the king was shorn of his power, the queen was dethroned. That settles the question, does it not? Not at all. God so loved the world, that, when the fulness of the time was come, he sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law. Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us. So then, brethren, we are not children of bondwomen, but of free women!

If you do not believe the Bible, the curse is of no account. If you do believe the Bible, the curse is taken away. Now then where are you?

But St. Paul is brought in here with great effect by the defenders of the old _regime_. St. Paul, living under the new dispensation, became its exponent, reduced it to a system, and must be considered authority regarding its meaning and design. The curse had been as completely taken away then as now, yet he says: "Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church.... Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything." Can anything be stronger or more explicit? Nothing. But if you take St. Paul, take the whole of him. Accepting for wives the injunction of submission, accept it also for yourselves; for in the preceding verses he says, "Be filled with the spirit, _submitting yourselves one to another_ in the fear of God." The same word is used to indicate the relations proper between husband and wife and between friend and friend. If, then, according to St. Paul, the wife must absolutely obey her husband, her husband must just as absolutely obey his wife, and both must obey their next-door neighbor.

Observe also the manner of the control and the submission,--"as unto the Lord." The husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church. The wife is to be subject to the husband, as the church is subject to Christ. Why, this is just what I want. Not a wife in Christendom but would rejoice to recognize her husband to be her head as Christ is the head of the church. Only let husbands follow their model, and there would be no more question of obedience. Quote St. Paul against me? St. Paul is my standard-bearer! If you had only obeyed St. Paul, I should not be fighting at all. The world would go on so smoothly and lovingly that I should never be required to stir up its impure mind by way of remembrance, but should be occupied in writing the loveliest little idyls that ever were thought of. It is the flagrant disregard and violation of Paul's teachings that brings me unto you with a rod instead of in love and the spirit of meekness. I want no higher standard than was set up by Paul.

Men reason very well so long as they confine their reasoning to pure mathematics, but when they attempt to apply their logic to practical life, they are at fault. They find it difficult to make allowance for friction. They do not observe, and they do not know what to do with their observations when they have made them. Consequently, though their arguments look very well, they do not stand the test of experiment. Nothing can be more charming than this implicit trust which men so love and laud, this unhesitating submission of the fond wife,--the "God is thy law, thou mine" of Milton (which most men evidently believe is to be found in all the Four Gospels and most of the Epistles). Yet its only practical justification would be the infallibility of men. But in actual life men are not infallible. They are just as likely to be wrong as women. The only obedience practicable or desirable is the adoption of the wisest course after consultation. Practically, there is seldom much trouble about this matter; but there is none the less for all the theories and all the vows of obedience. Yet we have it from good authority, that it is better not to vow than to vow and not pay.

When I see the strenuousness with which man has ever enjoined upon woman respect for his position and submission to his will, the persistence with which he has maintained his superiority and her subordination, the compensatory and unreasonable, inconsequent homage which he awards to those who acquiesce in his claims, I seem to be reading a new version of an old story. Man takes woman up into an exceeding high mountain, and shows her what seems to her dazzled eyes all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them, and says unto her, "All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me." But as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,--"Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve." For many generations the world has reaped a bitter harvest from worshipping and serving the creature more than the Creator. Eve's desire was to the man, and he ruled over her consequently, and she brought forth a murderer. The virgin-mother rejoiced primarily in God, and that Holy Thing which was born of her was called the Son of God. For six thousand years the works of the flesh have been manifest, which are these: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.

When women begin to talk of right, men begin to talk of courtesy. They are very willing that women should be angels, but they are not willing that they should be naturally-developed women. They like to pay compliments, but they like not to award dues. One great article of their belief is, that

"A woman ripens like a peach, In the cheeks chiefly,"