Letters on the equality of the sexes, and the condition of womanGrimké, Sarah
Religion
Letters on the equality of the sexes, and the condition of woman
Grimké, Sarah
Women -- History; Women -- United States; Women's rights -- United States
MY DEAR SISTER,--I have now taken a brief survey of the condition of
woman in various parts of the world. I regret that my time has been so
much occupied by other things, that I have been unable to bestow that
attention upon the subject which it merits, and that my constant change
of place has prevented me from having access to books, which might
probably have assisted me in this part of my work. I hope that the
principles I have asserted will claim the attention of some of my sex,
who may be able to bring into view, more thoroughly than I have done,
the situation and degradation of woman. I shall now proceed to make a
few remarks on the condition of women in my own country.
During the early part of my life, my lot was cast among the
butterflies of the _fashionable_ world; and of this class of women,
I am constrained to say, both from experience and observation, that
their education is miserably deficient; that they are taught to regard
marriage as the one thing needful, the only avenue to distinction;
hence to attract the notice and win the attentions of men, by their
external charms, is the chief business of fashionable girls. They
seldom think that men will be allured by intellectual acquirements,
because they find, that where any mental superiority exists, a woman
is generally shunned and regarded as stepping out of her ‘appropriate
sphere,’ which, in their view, is to dress, to dance, to set out to the
best possible advantage her person, to read the novels which inundate
the press, and which do more to destroy her character as a rational
creature, than any thing else. Fashionable women regard themselves,
and are regarded by men, as pretty toys or as mere instruments of
pleasure; and the vacuity of mind, the heartlessness, the frivolity
which is the necessary result of this false and debasing estimate of
women, can only be fully understood by those who have mingled in the
folly and wickedness of fashionable life; and who have been called from
such pursuits by the voice of the Lord Jesus, inviting their weary and
heavy laden souls to come unto Him and learn of Him, that they may
find something worthy of their immortal spirit, and their intellectual
powers; that they may learn the high and holy purposes of their
creation, and consecrate themselves unto the service of God; and not,
as is now the case, to the pleasure of man.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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