Josiah Allen on the Woman QuestionHolley, Marietta
General
Josiah Allen on the Woman Question
Holley, Marietta
Feminism -- Fiction; Humorous stories; Sex role -- Fiction; Women's rights -- Fiction
Why, in the very first beginin' of time, we find the great fact that
smashes female equality down into the dirt where it belongs. We find
that wimmen wuz made and manufactured jest because men wuz kinder
lonesome. As Uncle Sime well sez, "It wuz jest a happen that wimmen
wuz made at all. Adam happened to feel kinder lonesome alone on that
big farm, and probable needed wimmen's help. And he happened to have
a extra rib he could spare as well as not, and so wimmen wuz made out
of that spare rib. But," sez Uncle Sime, "Adam would have been as
well agin off if Eve hadn't been made, and I should have told him so
if I had been there." Sez he bitterly, "Men hain't been lonesome since
wimmen wuz made. Oh, no! she has kep' her clack goin', and kep' men's
noses down on the grindstun ever sence."
"Well," sez I, "Simon, it wuz noble in Adam to be willin' to lose one
of his ribs to make her, for who knows to what hites men might have riz
up if he hadn't parted with it. If us men have riz up to such a hite
with one rib lackin' who knows how fur we should have gone up with the
hull on 'em."
"That hain't the pint," sez Uncle Sime. "The pint is, how dast wimmen
feel so big and claim to be equal to us men, when they think how, and
why, and what out of they wuz created. Wimmen ort to feel thankful and
grateful to men that she wuz made at all. How would she felt if she
hadn't been made? I guess she would feel pretty cheap and not put on so
many airs, and be hikein' round preachin' to her superiors."
In his excitement Uncle Sime had enunciated that crushin' argument
in a ruther loud tone. We wuz settin' on the back stoop and Samantha
comin' out to shake the table-cloth must have hearn it. But instead of
actin' humiliated and crushed by that masterly argument she looked at
us kinder queer over her specs, folded her table-cloth camly and said
nothin'.
And after she went in Uncle Sime resoomed his unanswerable arguments.
"Why, beside Bible proofs I can prove it in a scientific way. Weigh up
a man's bones in the stillyards and they'll weigh one hundred pounds
more or less, jest the bones. And now jest think on the preposterous
idee of that one little rib bone a risin' up right in the face of
science and reason, and pretendin' to be equal to the hull carcass.
And worse yet tryin' to stomp on him and bring him down to her level
by votin'. Why, if Adam had hearn to me and kep' that rib bone where
it wuz, jest think what the world would have escaped, think of the
jealousies, angers, revenges, weariness, expenses, wars, ruin and
bloodshed caused through the centuries by changin' that rib bone into a
female!"
I wuz astounded to see how deep Uncle Sime had doven into the great
mysteries of human existence, not but what I'd have thought it out
myself, if I'd had time from fambly cares.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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