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
deprive themselves of the means of purchasing valuable books which
might enlarge their stock of useful knowledge, and perhaps prove a
blessing to the family by furnishing them with instructive reading. If
the minds of women were enlightened and improved, the domestic circle
would be more frequently refreshed by intelligent conversation, a means
of edification now deplorably neglected, for want of that cultivation
which these intellectual advantages would confer.
DUTIES OF WOMEN.
One of the duties which devolve upon women in the present interesting
crisis, is to prepare themselves for more extensive usefulness, by
making use of those religious and literary privileges and advantages
that are within their reach, if they will only stretch out their hands
and possess them. By doing this, they will become better acquainted
with their rights as moral beings, and with their responsibilities
growing out of those rights: they will regard themselves, as they
really are, FREE AGENTS, immortal beings, amenable to no tribunal but
that of Jehovah, and bound not to submit to any restriction imposed
for selfish purposes, or to gratify that love of power which has
reigned in the heart of man from Adam down to the present time. In
contemplating the great moral reformations of the day, and the part
which they are bound to take in them, instead of puzzling themselves
with the harassing, because unnecessary inquiry, how far they may go
without overstepping the bounds of propriety, which separate male and
female duties, they will only inquire, ‘Lord, what wilt thou have us to
do?’ They will be enabled to see the simple truth, that God has made no
distinction between men and women as moral beings; that the distinction
now so much insisted upon between male and female virtues is as absurd
as it is unscriptural, and has been the fruitful source of much
mischief--granting to man a license for the exhibition of brute force
and conflict on the battle field; for sternness, selfishness, and the
exercise of irresponsible power in the circle of home--and to woman a
permit to rest on an arm of flesh, and to regard modesty and delicacy,
and all the kindred virtues, as peculiarly appropriate to her. Now to
me it is perfectly clear, that WHATSOEVER IT IS MORALLY RIGHT FOR A
MAN TO DO, IT IS MORALLY RIGHT FOR A WOMAN TO DO; and that confusion
must exist in the moral world, until women takes her stand on the same
platform with man, and feels that she is clothed by her Maker with the
_same rights_, and, of course, that upon her devolve the _same duties_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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