Pray You, Sir, Whose Daughter?Gardener, Helen H. (Helen Hamilton)
General
Pray You, Sir, Whose Daughter?
Gardener, Helen H. (Helen Hamilton)
Fiction
The apathy of the public to the wrongs of woman is clearly seen at this
hour, in propositions now under consideration in the Legislature of New
York. Though two infamous bills have been laid before select committees,
one to legalize prostitution, and one to lower the age of consent, the
people have been alike ignorant and indifferent to these measures. When
it was proposed to take a fragment of Central Park for a race course, a
great public meeting of protest was called at once, and hundreds of men
hastened to Albany to defeat the measure.
But the proposed invasion of the personal rights of woman, and the
wholesale desecration of childhood has scarce created a ripple on the
surface of society. The many do not know what laws their rulers are
making, and the few do not care, so long as they do not feel the iron
teeth of the law in their own flesh. Not one father in the House or
Senate would willingly have his wife, sister, or daughter subject to
these infamous bills proposed for the daughters of the people. Alas! for
the degradation of sex, even in this republic. When one may barter away
all that is precious to pure and innocent childhood at the age of ten
years, you may as well talk of a girl's safety with wild beasts in the
tangled forests of Africa, as in the present civilizations of England
and America, the leading nations on the globe.
Some critics say that every one knows and condemns these facts in our
social life, and that we do not need fiction to intensify the public
disgust. Others say, Why call the attention of the young and the
innocent to the existence of evils they should never know. The majority
of people do not watch legislative proceedings.
To keep our sons and daughters innocent, we must warn them of the
dangers that beset their path on every side.
Ignorance under no circumstances ensures safety. Honor protected by
knowledge, is safer than innocence protected by ignorance.
A few brave women are laboring to-day to secure for their less capable,
less thoughtful, less imaginative sisters, a recognition of a true
womanhood based on individual rights. There is just one remedy for the
social complications based on sex, and that is equality for woman in
every relation in life.
Men must learn to respect her as an equal factor in civilization, and
she must learn to respect herself as mother of the race. Womanhood is
the great primal fact of her existence; marriage and maternity, its
incidents.
This story shows that the very traits of character which society (whose
opinions are made and modified by men) considers most important and
charming in woman to ensure her success in social life, are the very
traits that ultimately lead to her failure.
Self-effacement, self-distrust, dependence and desire to please,
compliance, deference to the judgment and will of another, are what make
young women, in the opinion of these believers in sex domination, most
agreeable; but these are the very traits that lead to her ruin.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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