Sinners and Saints: A Tour Across the States and Round Them, with Three Months Among the MormonsRobinson, Phil
General
Sinners and Saints: A Tour Across the States and Round Them, with Three Months Among the Mormons
Robinson, Phil
Latter Day Saint churches; Utah -- Description and travel; West (U.S.) -- Description and travel
Indeed, it has been in contemplation to evangelize the Eastern
States, on this very subject of Woman's Rights! To send out from
Utah exponents of the proper place of woman in society, and to teach
the women of monogamy their duties to themselves and to each other!
"Woman's true status"--I am quoting from their organ--"is that of
true status companion to man, but so protected by law that she can
act in an independent sphere if he abuse his position, and render
union unendurable." They not only, therefore, claim all that women
elsewhere claim, but they consider marriage the universal birthright
of every female. First of all, they say, be married, and then in case
of accidents have all other "rights" as well. But to start with, every
woman must have a husband. She is hardly worth calling a woman if she
is single. Other privileges ought to be hers lest marriage should
prove disastrous. But in the first instance she should claim her right
to be a wife. And everybody else should insist on that claim being
recognized. The rest is very important to fall back upon, but union
with man is her first step towards her proper sphere.
Now, could any position be imagined more ludicrous for the would-be
saviours of Utah womanhood than this, that the slaves whom they talk
of rescuing from their degradation should be striving to bring others
up to their own standard? When Stanley was in Central Africa, he was
often amused and sometimes not a little disgusted to find that instead
of his discovering the Central Africans, the Central Africans insisted
on "discovering" him. Though he went into villages in order to take
notes of the savages, and to look at their belongings, the savages used
to turn the tables on him by discussing him, and taking his clothes
off to examine the curious colour, as they thought it, of his skin. So
that what with shaking off his explorers, and hunting up the various
articles they had abstracted for their unscientific scrutiny, his time
used to be thoroughly wasted, and he used to come away crestfallen,
and with the humiliating consciousness that it was the savages and not
he that had gained information and been "improved" by his visit. They
had "discovered" Stanley, not Stanley them. Something very like this
will be the fate of those who come to Utah thinking that they will be
received as shining lights from a better world. They will not find
the women of Utah waiting with outstretched arms to grasp the hand
that saves them. There will be no stampede of down-trodden females.
On the contrary, the clarion of woman's rights will be sounded, and
the intruding "champions" of that cause will find themselves attacked
with their own weapons, and hoisted with their own petards. 'With
the sceptre of woman's rights the daughters of Zion will go down as
apostles to evangelize the nation. 'Who is she that looketh forth as
the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an
army with banners?' The Daughter of Zion!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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