A Short History of Women's Rights: From the Days of Augustus to the Present Time. with Special Reference to England and the United States. Second Edition Revised, With Additions.Hecker, Eugene A. (Eugene Arthur)
History
A Short History of Women's Rights: From the Days of Augustus to the Present Time. with Special Reference to England and the United States. Second Edition Revised, With Additions.
Hecker, Eugene A. (Eugene Arthur)
Women's rights -- History
A consideration and an analysis of these five classes of objections will
constitute a summary of the relations of woman to the community, and may
also serve as a guide or suggestion to the possibility of a legitimate
development, in the near future, of her rights as a citizen.
I. The theological argument is based upon the distinctly evil conception
of woman, presented in _Genesis_, as the cause of misery in this world
and upon the subordinate position assigned to her by Paul and Peter.
Christ himself has left us no teachings on the subject. The Hebrew and
Oriental creed of woman's sphere permeated the West as Christianity
expanded and forced to extinction the Roman principle of equality. Only
within fifty years, has the female sex regained the rights enjoyed by
women under the law of the Empire seventeen centuries ago. The Apostolic
theory of complete subordination gained strength with each succeeding
age. I have already cited instances of ecclesiastical vehemence. As a
final example I may recall that when, early in the nineteenth century,
chloroform was first used to help women in childbirth, a number of
Protestant divines denounced the practice as a sin against the Creator,
who had expressly commanded that woman should bring forth in sorrow and
tribulation. Yet times have so far changed within two decades that the
theological argument is practically obsolete among Protestants, although
it is still influential in the Roman Catholic Church, which holds fast
to the doctrine laid down by the Apostles. We may say, however, that of
all the objections, the theological has, in practice, the least weight
among the bulk of the population. The word _obey_ in the clerical
formula _love, honour, and obey_ provokes a smile.
II. The physiological argument is more powerful. Its supporters assert
that the constitution of woman is too delicate, too finely wrought to
compete with man in his chosen fields. The physiological argument makes
its appearance most persistently in the statement that woman should have
no vote because she could not defend her property or her country in
time of war. In reply to this some partisans of equal suffrage have
thought it necessary to prove that women are physically equal in all
respects to men. But the issues between nations which in the centuries
past it had been believed could be adjusted only by war, by being fought
out (not, of course, to any logical conclusion, but to a result which
showed simply that one party was stronger than the other), are now, in
the great majority of cases, determined by the more reasonable, the more
civilised, method of arbitration.
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