Women -- Suffrage -- History; Women -- Suffrage -- United States -- History; Women's rights -- History; Women's rights -- United States -- History
Among the letters to the Convention, there was one quite novel and
interesting from Helene Marie Weber,[44] a lady of high literary
character, who had published numerous tracts on the Rights of Woman.
She contended that the physical development of woman was impossible in
her present costume, and that her consequent enfeebled condition made
her incapable of entering many of the most profitable employments in
the world of work. Miss Weber exemplified her teachings by her
practice. She usually wore a dress coat and pantaloons of black cloth;
on full-dress occasions, a dark blue dress coat, with plain flat gilt
buttons, and drab-colored pantaloons. Her waistcoat was of buff
cassimere, richly trimmed with plain, flat-surfaced, gold buttons,
exquisitely polished; this was an elegant costume, and one she wore to
great advantage. Her clothes were all perfect in their fit, and of
Paris make; and her figure was singularly well adapted to male attire.
No gentleman in Paris made a finer appearance.
One of the grand results of this Convention was the thought roused in
England. A good report of the proceedings in the New _York Tribune_,
for Europe, of October 29, 1850, was read by the future Mrs. John
Stuart Mill, then Mrs. Taylor, and at once called out from her pen an
able essay in the _Westminster and Foreign Quarterly Review_, entitled
"Enfranchisement of Woman." This attracted the attention of many
liberal thinkers, and foremost of these, one of England's greatest
philosophers and scholars, the Hon. John Stuart Mill, who became soon
after the champion of woman's cause in the British Parliament. The
essayist in speaking of this Convention says:
Most of our readers will probably learn, from these pages, for
the first time, that there has risen in the United States, and in
the most Civilized and enlightened portion of them, an organized
agitation, on a new question, new not to thinkers, nor to any one
by whom the principles of free and popular government are felt,
as well as acknowledged; but new, and even unheard of, as a
subject for public meetings, and practical political action. This
question is the enfranchisement of women, their admission in law,
and in fact, to equality in all rights, political, civil, social,
with the male citizens of the community.
It will add to the surprise with which many will receive this
intelligence, that the agitation which has commenced is not a
pleading by male writers and orators _for_ women, those who are
professedly to be benefited remaining either indifferent, or
ostensibly hostile; it is a political movement, practical in its
objects, carried on in a form which denotes an intention to
persevere. And it is a movement not merely _for_ women, but _by_
them....
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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