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,--In my last, I traced the creation and the fall of
man and woman from that state of purity and happiness which their
beneficent Creator designed them to enjoy. As they were one in
transgression, their chastisement was the same. ‘So God drove out
_the man_, and he placed at the East of the garden of Eden a cherubim
and a flaming sword, which turned every way to keep the way of the
tree of life.’ We now behold them expelled from Paradise, fallen from
their original loveliness, but still bearing on their foreheads the
image and superscription of Jehovah; still invested with high moral
responsibilities, intellectual powers, and immortal souls. They had
incurred the penalty of sin, they were shorn of their innocence,
but they stood on the same platform side by side, acknowledging _no
superior_ but their God. Notwithstanding what has been urged, woman
I am aware stands charged to the present day with having brought sin
into the world. I shall not repel the charge by any counter assertions,
although, as was before hinted, Adam’s ready acquiescence with his
wife’s proposal, does not savor much of that superiority _in strength
of mind_, which is arrogated by man. Even admitting that Eve was the
greater sinner, it seems to me man might be satisfied with the dominion
he has claimed and exercised for nearly six thousand years, and that
more true nobility would be manifested by endeavoring to raise the
fallen and invigorate the weak, than by keeping woman in subjection.
But I ask no favors for my sex. I surrender not our claim to equality.
All I ask of our brethren is, that they will take their feet from off
our necks, and permit us to stand upright on that ground which God
designed us to occupy. If he has not given us the rights which have, as
I conceive, been wrested from us, we shall soon give evidence of our
inferiority, and shrink back into that obscurity, which the high souled
magnanimity of man has assigned us as our appropriate sphere.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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