Women -- Suffrage -- History; Women -- Suffrage -- United States -- History; Women's rights -- History; Women's rights -- United States -- History
Mr. WISE, of North Carolina, made a long and learned address,
treating principally of geology and women. He claimed for woman
more even than she for herself. He said: "Women are generally
more competent to vote than their husbands, and sisters better
fitted to be judges than their brothers, the mother more capable
of wisely exercising the elective franchise than her booby son."
LUCY STONE said: The last speaker alluded to this movement as
being that of a few disappointed women. From the first years to
which my memory stretches, I have been a disappointed woman.
When, with my brothers, I reached forth after the sources of
knowledge, I was reproved with "It isn't fit for you; it doesn't
belong to women." Then there was but one college in the world
where women were admitted, and that was in Brazil. I would have
found my way there, but by the time I was prepared to go, one was
opened in the young State of Ohio--the first in the United States
where women and negroes could enjoy opportunities with white men.
I was disappointed when I came to seek a profession worthy an
immortal being--every employment was closed to me, except those
of the teacher, the seamstress, and the housekeeper. In
education, in marriage, in religion, in everything,
disappointment is the lot of woman. It shall be the business of
my life to deepen this disappointment in every woman's heart
until she bows down to it no longer. I wish that women, instead
of being walking show-cases, instead of begging of their fathers
and brothers the latest and gayest new bonnet, would ask of them
their rights.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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