Life and writings of Amelia BloomerBloomer, D. C. (Dexter C.)
History
Life and writings of Amelia Bloomer
Bloomer, D. C. (Dexter C.)
Bloomer, Amelia Jenks, 1818-1894; Women's rights -- United States
This lecture had been prepared during the early months of the year
and the closing months of 1852. She delivered it on many occasions
in subsequent years in various parts of the country, rewriting it
several times in whole or in part for that purpose. Towards the
closing years of her life she revised it once more, fully setting
forth her ideas and convictions on the subject of woman suffrage;
and in this completed form it is printed in full in the Appendix of
this work. It is believed to be one of the strongest arguments that
has ever been written in favor of woman’s right to the ballot. Mrs.
Bloomer also prepared lectures on woman’s right to employment and
education as fully in all respects as that enjoyed by the other sex.
These lectures, she delivered to audiences in different parts of the
country as occasion offered. They were radical in their claims for
equality for woman in all the employments and acquirements of life
with man, for at that time this claim was only just beginning to
be discussed. No colleges were then open to women. No universities
offered her the literary advantages of their halls and lecture rooms,
and the general opinion was entertained among the mass of the people
that the three studies of reading, writing and arithmetic were enough
for her. So also there was little for women to do but to sew and
stitch, and occasionally teach school for wages far below those paid
to men. There were no women lawyers, no women preachers, except among
the Quakers, no typewriters, no clerks in the stores, no public
offices filled by women. Mrs. Bloomer in her lectures insisted that
all this was wrong. She argued that the schoolroom, the workshop,
the public office, the lawyer’s forum and the sacred desk should
be opened to her sex on entire equality with man. These were then
unpopular doctrines to promulgate either in the public press or on
the lecturer’s platform; but Mrs. Bloomer was spared long enough to
see her rather radical ideas on this subject brought into practical
application, for at the end of 1894 woman’s right to both education
and employment on an equality with man had come to be almost
universally recognized.
A CLUB OF TALKERS.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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