Chapter VI Modern Communists
The Communists hold as the principle of social organization, not the agrarian law, as has been charged on them through ignorance or bad faith, but the enjoyment in common of the soil, of implements of labor, and of products. From each one according to his strength, to each one according to his needs, is the formula of most among them.
It is not our business to examine the social value of this doctrine, but only to show what Communism thinks of woman and her rights.
The modern communists may be divided into two classes: the religious and the political.
Among the first are the Saint Simonians, the Fusionists and the Philadelphians.
Among the second, are the Equalitarians, the Unitarians, the Icarians, etc.
The first consider woman as the equal of man. To the others, she is free; among some, with a shade of subordination.
The Unitarians, who have drawn largely from Fourier, proclaim woman free, and equal with man.
We shall speak here of only a few of the communistic sects, reserving for separate articles what relates to the Saint Simonians and the Fusionists.
The Philadelphians, admitting God and the immortality of the soul, lay down these two principles: God is the chief of the social order; Fraternity is the law that governs human relations.
Religion, to the Philadelphians, is the practice of Fraternity; Progress is a dogma, Community is the law of the individual before God and conscience.
Touching the relations of the sexes and the rights of woman, M. Pecqueur thus expresses himself in his work La République de Dieu, pp. 194, 195:
“Complete equality of the man and the woman.”
The Monogamic marriage, intentionally indissoluble as a normal condition; such is the second practical consequence of the dogma of religious fraternity.
1. EQUALITY.
“We bring no proofs in evidence of this; his reason is blotted out by prejudice and his heart chilled by egotism, who is not impressed at once with the truth of equality.
“In the state of society created by the religion of fraternity and equality, women will find, from their earliest years, the same means and the same conditions of development of function and of remuneration, in short, THE SAME RIGHTS, the same social aim to pursue as men; and in proportion as custom shall correspond with the religious and moral ends of the union, will the living law deduce the practical consequences of all order, contained in the germ in the dogma of the complete equality of the sexes.
“4. MONOGAMY AND INDISSOLUBILITY.
“To comprehend the lawfulness of the unlimited or indefinite monogamic marriage, it suffices to consider: 1st. the exigencies of our inmost nature, that is, the characteristics of love; its instinctive aspiration to the union and the fusion of two beings, to duration and to perpetuity; the necessity of possessing each other reciprocally and of having faith in this possession in order to love each other; in short, instinct, desire; the irresistible and universal affections, and the joys of paternity and of the family; 2d. the physiological conditions of generation, which exact monogamy in order to assure the reproduction and the good and progressive conservation of the species; 3d. social and religious exigencies, which require relations of all kinds to be predetermined and regulated, that each one may be secure in his expectation and his possession, and that there may be a possibility of satisfying the fundamental propensities of our natures.... To claim to introduce polygamy, promiscuousness, or union for a term of years into such surroundings, (the Philadelphian society,) is evidently to decree selfishness and mere carnal pleasure, while proclaiming duty and dignity. It is inconceivable that two moral beings, once united by pure love, should ever cease to love each other, to delight in each other, or at least to endure each other, when they are presumed already to be devoted and sacrificing without distinction in their love to their brothers and sisters.
“Still less is it conceivable that their brothers and sisters would dream of diverting this reciprocal love of two members of the family to their personal advantage; for this would be infamy.”
M. Pecqueur admits, notwithstanding, that in very rare cases, divorce may be granted on account of incompatibility of temper. In such case the offending party would be excluded from the republic, and the other would be at liberty to remarry.
According to M. Pecqueur, indissolubility of marriage does not relate to the present antagonistic state of society, as he says:
“Divorce is a great misfortune, not only to the parties concerned, but to religion; notwithstanding, in the kingdom of Cæsar in which pure justice is the question, it is the lesser evil, when the individuals are determined on a separation in fact, and are lusting after other ties. They do evil clandestinely; they are the cause or the occasion of the temptation or the fall of others. Do what they will, the scandal is known; so that neither society, nor the spouses, nor the children, nor morality derive benefit from the consecration of absolute perpetuity.
“It is not charitable, it is impious to force two beings to remain together, one of which, to say the least, maltreats, detests, takes advantage of, or domineers over the other. It is equally wrong to grant them a separation from bed and board without at the same time permitting them to yield to chaste affections when they acknowledge these in purity and liberty.”
So then, to the Philadelphians, expounded by M. Pecqueur, marriage is monogamous, indissoluble by intention; divorce is a sad necessity of the existing state of society, whilst separation is immorality. In short, woman is free and the equal of man.
Another communist sect, that of the Icarians, takes no notice either of the nature or the rights of women. Its chief, M. Cabet, an ex-attorney-general, was too fully imbued with the doctrines of the Civil Code, that inelegant paraphrase of the Apostle Paul, not to be persuaded that woman ought to remain outside the pale of political right, and that she ought to be subordinate to man in general, and to her husband, good or bad, in particular.
Let us do justice however to M. Cabet’s disciples; I have never found a single one of them of his opinion on this great question.
One evening in 1848, as M. Cabet was presiding over a well attended club, he was requested by a woman to put the question: Is woman the equal of man before social and political rights? Almost every hand was raised in the affirmative; in the negative, not a hand was raised, not a man protested against the affirmation. A round of applause followed from the galleries filled with women; and M. Cabet was somewhat disconcerted by the result. He seemed to be ignorant that the people, always eminently logical, are never guilty of quibbling to elude or to limit the principles that they have adopted.
This vote of the Cabet club was repeated in three others, in my presence. The men in paletots laughed at the demands of brave Jeanne Deroin; the men in blouses did not even smile at them.
M. Dezamy representing another shade of communism, thus expresses himself in the code of the Community; “Away with marital dominion! Freedom of alliance! perfect equality of both sexes! Freedom of divorce!”
He adds, under the heading; Laws for the union of the sexes, designed to prevent all discord and debauchery, page 266:
“Art. I. Mutual love, inmost sympathy, purity of heart between two beings, form and legalize their union.
“Art. II. There should be perfect equality between the two sexes.
“Art. III. No bond except that of mutual love can link the man and the woman together.
“Art. IV. Nothing shall prevent lovers who have separated from forming new ties as often as they shall be attracted to another person.”
The ethics of M. Dezamy are not to our taste; we prefer those of the Communist, Pecqueur; but we are glad to prove that modern communism, divided on the questions of marriage, the family, and morals in relations of the sexes, is unanimous with respect to the liberty of woman and the equality of the sexes before the law and society.
In this, modern communism is greatly superior to that of the ancient school, practised among several nations, and taught by Plato, Morelly, etc. We recognize a sign of the times in this juster appreciation of woman, with the introduction of the principle of her rights into doctrines which formerly never took them into account.
The greater part of the Communists belong to the working class; which proves that the people most of all feel the great truth, that the liberty of woman is identical with that of the masses; and it will take more than MM. Proudhon, Comte, Michelet and their adepts, to throw cold water on their feelings and to make them retrace their steps.
SAINT SIMONIANS.
My mother, a zealous Protestant and very austere in morals, disapproved of St. Simonianism, and never permitted any one to speak of it in my presence except to condemn it; she took great care that not a line of the new doctrine should fall under my eyes.
Whether from a natural spirit of opposition or from instinctive justice, I know not, but I by no means shared in the censure that I heard expressed about me; one thing alone resulted from it—curiosity to become acquainted with what were called immoral dogmas.
I was in this frame of mind when one day while with my mother in the neighborhood of the Palais du Justice, I saw a company of men advancing, clad in a graceful costume; they were the Saint Simonians going in a body to defend their infant church against prosecution at the bar. I was greatly moved by the sight; I felt in communion with these youth who were about to bear testimony to their faith; they did not seem like strangers, but as struggling for my own cause or for one that deserved my sympathy, and tears sprang to my eyes. I could have heartily embraced those whom I heard defending them, and as heartily have assailed those who claimed that it would be just to condemn them. My mother being too generous to join with the latter, we departed in silence. I knew, without having any knowledge of the details, that the church of St. Simon had been dispersed.
It was not until some years after that, having made the acquaintance of a St. Simonian lady, I was enabled to read the doctrinal writings and to form an idea of the aspirations and the dogmas of the school of St. Simon. If the nature of this work forbids me their analysis, it cannot reproach me for expressing my sympathies for those who have had great and generous aspirations; for those who, in a critical point of view, have rendered real services to the cause of Progress; for those who have brought to light the solution of the two capital problems of our epoch; the emancipation of woman and of the workman. The St. Simonians have been enough assailed, enough calumniated to justify a woman who is not a St. Simonian in considering it a duty to render them justice, by acknowledging the good which they have done.
Yes, you have a right to be proud of your name of St. Simonians, you who have proclaimed the obligation of laboring without respite for the physical, moral and intellectual amelioration of the most numerous and the poorest class;
You who have proclaimed the sanctity of science, art, manufactures, and labor in every form;
You who have proclaimed the equality of the sexes in the family, the church, and the state;
You who have preached of peace and fraternity to a world given over to wars of cannon and competition.
You who have criticised the ancient dogma, and all the evil institutions that have thence arisen;
Yes, I repeat, you have deserved well of Progress, you have deserved well of Humanity; and you have a right to bear with pride your great scholastic name; for it was noble to desire the emancipation of woman, of labor, and of the laborer; it was generous to consecrate youth and fortune to it, as so many among you have done.
Through your aspirations, you have been the continuers of ’89, since you dreamed of realizing what was contained in the germ in the Declaration of Rights: these are your titles of greatness; this is why your name will not perish. But if, through your sentiments, you belonged to the great era of ’89, the social form in which you claimed to incarnate your principles, belonged to the Middle Ages; the age therefore has done right to leave you behind. Seduced by trinitarian mysticism, deluded by an erroneous historical point of view, you claimed to resuscitate hierarchy and theocracy in a system of humanity fashioned in conformity with the opposing principle; the triumph of individual liberty in social equality. This is the reason that the age could not follow you. No more could women follow you, for they felt that they could only be affranchised through labor and through purity of morals; by ruling over, not imitating masculine passions. They felt that their power of moralization was due as much to their chastity as to their intellect; they knew that those who make use of the most liberty in love, neither love nor esteem the other sex; that, in general, they employ their ascendancy over it to pervert it to ruin and afflict their companions, and to dissolve the family and civilization; that, in consequence, they are the most dangerous enemies of the emancipation of their sex; for man, sobered of his passion, can never desire to emancipate those by whom he has been deceived, ruined and demoralized.
The St. Simonian orthodoxy is therefore, in my opinion, greatly mistaken with respect to the ways and means of realization. Shall we impute this to it as a crime? No, indeed! social problems are not mathematical problems; there is merit in propounding them; courage and devotion in pursuing their solution, even when we fail completely to attain it.
We all know the spirit of the St. Simonians who first brought before the public mind of the age the question of female emancipation; it would be ungrateful in the women who demand liberty and equality not to recognize the debt of gratitude which they have contracted toward them. It is their duty to say to their companions: the seal of St. Simonianism is the safeguard of the liberty of woman; wherever therefore you meet a St. Simonian, you may press his hand fraternally; you have in him a defender of your right.
Let us sketch the general outline of the St. Simonian doctrine, touching woman and her rights.
All of the St. Simonians admit that the sexes are equal;
That the couple forms the social individual;
That marriage is the sacred bond of generations; the association of a man and a woman for the accomplishment of a sacerdotal, scientific, artistic, or industrial work;
All admit divorce, and transition to another union; but some are more severe than others with respect to the conditions of divorce.
There is a division among them on the question of morals. Olinde Rodrigues and Bazard do not admit any liaison of love outside of marriage. M. Enfantine, on the contrary, claims the greatest liberty in love.
We should add that he gives to this opinion a fixed and provisional value only, since he says that the law of the relations of sexes can only be established in a sure and definitive manner by the concurrence of the woman; and since, on the other hand, he prescribes continence to his closest followers, until the coming of the Woman, of which he regards himself the precursor.
In addition, to give our readers a more precise idea of the sentiments of the St. Simonians concerning woman, we will cite some passages of their writings.
“The use of woman by man still exists,” says M. Enfantin; “this it is that constitutes the necessity of our apostleship. This use, this subalternation contrary to nature, with respect to the future, results on the one hand, in falsehood and fraud; on the other, in violence and animal passions; it is necessary to put an end to these vices.”—(Religion St. Simonienne, 1832, p. 5.)
“Woman, as we have said, is the equal of man; She is now a slave; it belongs to her master to affranchise her.” (Id. p. 12.)
“There will be no definitive law and morality until woman shall have spoken.” (Id. p. 18.)
“In the name of God,” exclaims M. Enfantin in his Appel à la Femme, “in the name of God and of all the sufferings which Humanity, his loved child, endures to-day in her flesh; in the name of the poorest and most numerous class whose daughters are sold to Indolence and whose sons are given up to War; in the name of all those men and of all those women, who cast the glittering veil of falsehood or the filthy rays of debauchery over their secret or public prostitution; in the name of St. Simon who came to announce to man and woman their moral, social and religious equality, I conjure woman to answer me!” (Entretien du 7 Décembre, 1831.)
On his side, Bazard concludes a pamphlet, published in January, 1832, with these words:
“And we too have hastened the coming of woman; we too summon her with all our might; but it is in the name of the pure love with which she has imbued the heart of man, and which man is now ready to give her in return; it is in the name of the dignity which is promised her in marriage; it is lastly and above all, in the name of the most numerous and poorest class, whose servitudes and humiliations she has hitherto shared, and whom her enchanting voice can alone to-day have power finally to release from the harsh imposition with which it is still weighed down by the wrecks of the past.”
Ah! you are to a great extent right, Enfantin and Bazard! So long as woman is not free and the equal of man; so long as she is not everywhere at his side, sorrows, disorders, war, the exploitation of the weak, will be the sad lot of humanity.
Pierre Leroux, the gentlest, best and most simple man that I know, writes in turn in the fourth volume of his Encyclopédie Nouvelle, article Egalité, the following remarkable paragraphs:
“There are not two different beings, man and woman, there is but a single human being with two phases, which correspond and are united by love.
“Man and woman exist to form the couple; they are the two parts of it. Outside of the couple, outside of love and marriage, there is no longer any sex; there are human beings of a common origin and of like faculties. Man at every moment of his life is sensation, sentiment, knowledge; so is woman. The definition is therefore the same.”
After having proved, according to his idea, that the type of woman differs from that of man, he continues:
“But this type does not separate them from the rest of humanity, and does not make of them a separate race which must be distinguished philosophically from man.... Love being absent, they manifest themselves to man as human beings, and are ranked, like man, under the various categories of civil society.”
After having observed that, however different men may be, they are therefore none the less equal, since they all are sensation, sentiment and knowledge, Pierre Leroux, applying this principle to the question of the right of woman, adds:
“From whatever side we look at this question, we are led to proclaim the equality of man and woman. For, if we consider woman in the couple, woman is the equal of man, since the couple itself is founded on equality, since love is equality in itself, and since where justice, that is, equality, does not reign, there love cannot reign, but the contrary of love.
“And if we consider woman outside of the couple, she is a being like unto man, endowed with the same faculties in various degrees; one of those varieties in unity which constitute the world and human society.”
The author says that woman should lay claim to equality only as a spouse and a human being; that to acknowledge her as free because she has sex, is to declare her at liberty not only to use but also to abuse love; and that the abuse of love must not be the appanage and sign of liberty.
He says that woman has sex only for him whom she loves and by whom she is loved; that to all others she can be merely a human being.
“From this point of view,” continues he, “we must say to women: you have a right to equality by two distinct titles; as human beings and as wives. As wives, you are our equals, for love in itself is equality. As human beings, your cause is that of all, it is the same as that of the people; it is allied to the great revolutionary cause; that is, to the general progress of the human kind. You are our equals, not because you are women but because there are no longer either slaves or serfs.
“This is the truth that must be spoken to men and women; but it would be to pervert this truth and to transform it into error to say to women: You are a sex apart, a sex in the possession of love. Emancipate yourselves; that is, use and abuse love. Woman thus transformed into an unchaste Venus, loses at once her dignity as a human being and as a woman; that is, as a being capable of forming a human couple under the sacred law of love.”
The excellent Leroux asks who does not feel, who does not admit at the present day the equality of the sexes?
Who would dare maintain that woman is an inferior being, of whom man is the guide and beacon light?
That woman is elevated by man, who is elevated only by himself and by God?
Who would dare maintain such absurdities to-day, brave and upright Leroux? P. J. Proudhon, the man who called you Theopompe and Pâlissier—M. Michelet, who claims that woman was created to be the most tiresome doll of her loving husband.
But to return to yourself.
You affirm that God is androgynous; that in him coexist the male and female principles on the footing of equality: that consequently, man and woman are equal in God. I assent to this willingly, although I know absolutely nothing about it. But when you add that woman is deserving of quite as much as man, because she has shared in all the agonizing crises of the progressive education of the human race;
That love, which cannot exist without the woman, has led us from the law of slavery to that of equality;
That consequently woman represents half in the work of the ages;
In this there is no mystery; I join you therefore with all my heart in repeating to men the invitations and the lessons which you give to these ungrateful and stubborn males:
“If we are free, it is in part by woman; let her then be made free by us.
“But is she so? Is she treated by us as an equal?
“A wife—does she find equality in love and marriage?
“A human being, does she find equality in the State?
“This is the question.
“On the subject of woman, our civil law is a model of absurd contradictions. According to the Roman law, woman lived perpetually under tutelage; in this system of legislation, everything was at least in perfect harmony; woman was always a minor. We, on our part, declare her in a multitude of cases to be free as man. She is no longer under general or fictitious tutelage; her age of majority is fixed; she is competent to inherit in her own right; she inherits in equal proportion; she controls and disposes of her property; more than this, in the system of communion of goods between husband and wife, we admit the separation of property. But let the marriage bond itself be in question, in which wealth is no longer at stake, but ourselves and our mothers, ourselves and our sisters, ourselves and our daughters; then we are found intractable in our laws; we no longer admit equality; we require woman to declare herself our inferior and servant, and to swear obedience to us.
“Truly we cling more to money than to love; we have more consideration for money-bags than for human dignity; for we emancipate women as soon as they become freeholders; but as soon as they become wives the law declares them our inferiors. Here notwithstanding, that bond is in question in which the equality of man and woman is most evident; that bond in which this equality breaks forth, as it were; that bond in which it is so necessary to proclaim that without equality, the bond itself exists no longer. Yet, by an absurd contradiction, our civil law chooses this moment to proclaim the inferiority of woman; it condemns her to obedience, makes her take a false oath, and takes advantage of love to make it outrage itself.
“I have no doubt that, to future ages, the characteristic symbol of our moral condition will be that article of our laws which sanctions in set terms inequality in love. It will be said of us: they had so little comprehension of justice, that they did not comprehend love which is justice in even its holiest type; they had so little comprehension of love, that they did not even admit justice in it; and that in their written law, their Code, the form of marriage, the only sacrament of which they yet had any idea, instead of sanctioning equality, sanctions inequality; instead of union, disunion; instead of the love that equalizes and identifies its objects, some contradictory and monstrous relation, founded at the same time upon identity, and upon inferiority and slavery. Yes, like those forms of the law of the Twelve Tables, that we quote now to prove the barbarity of the ancient Romans and their ignorance of justice, this article of our Code will be some day cited to characterize our grossness and ignorance, for the absence of an elevated notion of justice is as marked in it as is the absence of an elevated notion of love.
“Thence follows everything relative to the condition of woman; or rather, everything is connected with this point; for will we respect the equality of woman as a human being when we are senseless enough to deny her this quality as a wife? Is woman to-day, in so far as a human being, really treated as the equal of man? I will not enter upon this broad subject. I confine myself to a single question; what education do women receive? You treat them as you treat the people. To these too you leave the old religion that fits us no longer. They are children kept as long as possible in swaddling clothes, as though this were not the true way to deform them, to destroy at once the rectitude of their mind and the candor of their soul. Besides, what does Society do for them? To what new careers does she give them access? Yet, notwithstanding, it is evident to every thinking mind that our arts, our sciences, our manufactures will make as much new progress when women are called to take a part in them, as they did a few years ago, when they were opened to the serfs. You complain of the want and wretchedness that weighs down your systems of society; abolish the castes that are still subsisting; abolish the caste in which you hold immured the half of the human race.”
These few pages, my readers, give you the compass of the sentiments of the St. Simonians, both orthodox and dissenters, and justify the sympathy entertained by women who have attained majority for those who have so ardently pleaded their cause.
FUSIONISTS.
Louis de Tourreil, the revealer of Fusionism, is a man whom it is impossible to behold without sympathy or to hear without pleasure; he is kindly, he speaks well, and his ideas are most logically deduced; his principles once admitted, one is constrained to follow him to the end.
Tourreil expresses himself in the Revue Philosophique of May, 1856, on the subject of woman and her rights, as follows:
“Nature is reduced to three great co-eternal principles or productive agents of all things. These principles are:
“The female or passive principle,
“The male or active principle,
“And the mixed or unificative principle, participating in both, which is called Love.
“God is therefore Female, Male and Androgynous, in his trinary unity.
“He is simultaneously from all eternity Mother, Father and Love, instead of being, as the theologians say, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; three agents of like sex, incapable of producing anything.
“You will easily conceive, my dear brother, that if the masculine and the feminine sex hold the same rank in the Divine Trinity, they will be also found in the same rank in humanity. The part which the divine woman plays in Heaven, the human woman will play on Earth....
“Were he (God) only of the masculine sex, men would say that the masculine sex alone is noble, and that woman is created merely for the service of man, as man is created for that of God. They would even question whether she had a soul, and would think that they were doing her a favor in admitting her as something in life.”
After quoting the teachings of the apostle Paul with respect to woman and marriage, the author continues:
“Behold, my dear brother, the part which Christianity assigns to woman. If this doctrine therefore were followed in every point, and if it ought to be replaced by no higher one, woman would find herself condemned in perpetuity to a subalternization humiliating to her nature.
“But Fusionism, which is the doctrine of Salvation for all, does not permit any one to be sacrificed; for this reason, woman is the equal of man and man the equal of woman, as in God, the eternal Mother is the equal of the eternal Father, and the eternal Father is the equal of the eternal Mother.”
De Tourreil believes that the Mother gives form and the Father life, two things equally necessary to constitute the being.
“Since woman is the equal of man in absolute principle,” continues he, “and since she is co-eternal with him, there is injustice in subordinating her to man in the relative; and the book of Genesis commits a gross error in making her proceed from man:
“If either of the two could be before the other, it would be the woman, for strictly speaking, we could conceive of the being without the life, but it would be quite impossible to conceive of the life without the being: The being without the life would be a dead being, but what would the life be without the being? It would be a life without existence, negation, the absence of life, nothingness. Therefore, in logical order, woman is first....
“Not only ought woman to be the equal of man, as we have seen, but in enunciation and classification, she should be named and classed first.
“Woman is the mould by which the species is perfected or depraved, according as the mould is good or bad. The fate of humanity depends therefore on woman, since she has all powerful influence on the fruit that she bears in her bosom.
“Pure, good, intelligent, she will produce healthy, intelligent and good beings.
“Impure, narrow, and wicked, she will produce unhealthy, unintelligent and wicked beings.
“In a word, the child will be what its mother is, for nothing can give what it has not.
“It is important therefore that woman should be developed like man, that her education should be comprehensive, that her person should be honored, respected, and tenderly cared for, in order that nothing in the social surroundings may shape it to evil.
“Destined by the Supreme Being to form the human being from her flesh, her blood and her soul, destined to nourish it with her milk and to give it its earliest education, the two acts which have the greatest influence over the individual life, woman should be considered as the chief agent of perfection. This rôle classes her naturally in a very elevated rank in society, and exacts of her superior perfections.
“Thus in the future she will be the image of Divine Wisdom on earth, as man will represent Divine Power.
“To man more especially will belong action; to woman, counsel.
“Man will take the initiative in difficult enterprises; woman will moderate or excite ardor therein.
“Man will rule the planet; woman will embellish it.
“Man will symbolize science and manufactures; woman will symbolize poetry and art.
“The one will always have need of the other; they will walk together side by side, and will find completeness reciprocally in each other.
“Such, my dear friend, after a brief fashion, is the idea which should be formed of woman. Man and woman are not two beings radically separated; both together make but a single being. To subordinate woman to man or man to woman is therefore to mutilate the human being, or to fail to comprehend its interests. That humanity may be happy, neither of its halves must suffer. And how can it help suffering if it is reduced to servitude and oppressed by the other?
“Our destiny on earth is to constitute the collective being in his own consciousness. For this, it is necessary to realize the humanitary androgynus. Now the humanitary androgynus necessitates first the individual androgynus which can only be constituted by harmonious marriage.
“Marriage is therefore the great formative or deformative law of the collective being, according as it is expressed by the legislator in a manner conformably or contrary to human destiny.
“It is in marriage that the sources of good and evil are found; would you know why?
“Because in the act that joins the man to the woman, and by which the couple are made to form but one body, the two souls are fused by means of a reciprocal donation, which unites the souls of the two for eternity.
“So that, after the conjunction, the soul of the woman adheres to the soul of the man and accompanies it everywhere, while the soul of the man adheres to the woman and never more quits it.
“Whence it follows that if the soul of the man be depraved, it depraves the woman to whom it is united, by exercising over her a continued action, even at a distance. So also does the depravity of the woman united to the man deprave him without his knowing it by an occult and permanent action.
“The souls of two depraved beings may be therefore inseparably conjoined, without thus constituting the individual androgynus, which is the divine end of marriage or the union of the sexes.
“The individual androgynus is only possible to the condition of unity. But unity cannot be constituted by evil.
“The good, the true and the perfect alone can combine the conditions of unity. The evil, the false and the imperfect are essentially inharmonious in their nature.
“Two wicked, insincere and vicious beings will only produce by their conjunction a still greater difference. They will be united, but only reciprocally to torment each other. Unity will never be constituted by them; and without the constitution of unity or the individual androgynus, it will be impossible to realize the human destiny.
“In order that the individual androgynus may exist in the couple, there must be perfect spiritual communion between them; that is, communion of thought, of feeling, and of will. But how can two individuals who, instead of being ruled by truth, are ruled only by their misdirected passions,—how can these two make but one? It is impossible.
“You will comprehend, my dear brother, from these few words, how sacred is marriage, and how important it is to contract none but harmonious unions, for the unhappiness of a lifetime often depends on an inconsiderate conjunction.”
Having had several opportunities of meeting M. de Tourreil, I asked him for some exact details in respect to the liberty of woman and marriage.
The following is an abstract of those that he has kindly given me;
Education should be the same for both sexes;
Woman should be at liberty to follow the vocation which comes to her from God; and of which she alone is judge;
“In all grades and employments in the republic of God, woman should be at the side of man;
After the age of fifty, all individuals of both sexes should be rulers and priests;
The reproduction of the species being the work of the love of persons healthy in mind and in body, before marriage, the bride should be required to make confession to a priestess and the bridegroom to a priest, in order to be enlightened with respect to the opportuneness or unsuitableness of the union.
Dissolution of marriage should take place but in a single case,—when the husband and wife have attained to complete fusion; that is, to feeling and knowing reciprocally that they have no longer anything to exchange. It then becomes necessary to form new ties, and, each one to labor to fuse with a new consort. In the existing condition of humanity, this fusion cannot take place; but in the future, when we shall be nearer perfection, it will become possible several times in life.
Fusionism is, as is evident, mystical socialism.
Its votaries are gentle and good, and very tolerant towards those who do not think like them.
PHALANSTERIANS.
The motto of the Fourieristic, Societary or Phalansterian school is respect for individual liberty, based on the following notions:
All nature is good; it becomes perverted only when performing its functions in evil surroundings.
No person exactly resembling the rest, each one should be the sole judge of his capacities, and should receive laws only from himself.
Attractions are proportional to destinies.
If the disciples of my compatriot, Charles Fourier, do not express themselves exactly in this wise, all that have written bears the imprint of these thoughts.
Are Fourier and his disciples right in believing that the law of passional attraction alone is required to organize the industrial, moral and social world?
That the primordial element of a system of society should be the Societary or Phalansterian association?
That the most opposite, the most diverse passions are the conditions sine quâ non of harmony?
That the compensation of labor and of competition should be regulated according to Labor, Capital and Talent?
We are not called on to examine this here.
The only thing that need occupy us in this rapid review of contemporaneous opinions is the investigation of the sentiments and ideas of Fourier and his school in that which concerns the principal object of this book. A few pages from the chief of the order, and a summary analysis will suffice for this.
In the Théorie des quatre Mouvements, M. Fourier writes;
“That the ancient philosophers of Greece and Rome should have disdained the interests of women is by no means surprising, since these rhetoricians were all ultra partisans of the pederasty which they had brought in high honor in la belle antiquité. They cast ridicule upon the associating with women; this passion was considered dishonorable.... These manners obtained the unanimous suffrage of the philosophers who, from the virtuous Socrates to the delicate Anacreon, affected Sodomitish love alone and contempt for women, who were banished to the upper apartments, immured as in a seraglio, and exiled from the society of men.
“These fantastic tastes not having found favor among the moderns, there is reason for surprise that our philosophers should have inherited the hatred that the ancient scholars bore to women, and that they should continue to disparage the sex on account of a few wiles to which woman is forced by the oppression which weighs upon her; for every word or thought in conformity with the voice of nature is made in her a crime.
“What can be more inconsistent than the opinion of Diderot, who pretends that, to write to woman, one has only to dip his pen in the rainbow, and sprinkle the writing with dust from butterflies’ wings? Women might reply to the philosopher: Your civilization persecutes us as soon as we obey nature; we are obliged to assume a fictitious character and to listen to impulses contrary to our desires. To give us a relish for this doctrine, you are forced to bring in play deceitful illusions and language, as you do with respect to the soldier whom you cradle in laurels and immortality to divert his thoughts from his wretched condition. If he were truly happy, he would welcome the plain and truthful language which you take care not to address to him. It is the same with women; if they were free and happy, they would be less eager for illusions and cajoleries, and it would no longer be necessary in writing to them to place rainbows and butterflies’ wings under contribution.
“When it (Philosophy) rails at the vices of women, it criticises itself; this it is that produces these vices by a social system which, repressing their faculties from their infancy and through the whole course of their life, forces them to have recourse to fraud in order to yield to nature.
“To attempt to judge of women by the vicious character which they display in civilization is like attempting to judge of human nature by the character of the Russian peasant, who is destitute of all ideas of honor and liberty; or like judging the beaver by the stupidity which they show when domesticated, whilst in a condition of liberty combined with labor, they become the most intelligent of all quadrupeds. The same contrast will reign between the women who are slaves of civilization and those who are free in the combined order; they will surpass men in industrial devotion, in loyalty, in nobleness; but outside of the free and combined state, woman, like the domesticated beaver or the Russian peasant, becomes a being so inferior to her destiny and talents that we are inclined to despise her when judging her superficially according to appearances.
“It is a surprising thing that women should have always shown themselves superior to men when they have had it in their power to display on the throne their natural talents, of which the diadem assured them a free use. Is it not certain that of eight queens, independent and unmarried, seven will be found to have reigned with glory, while of eight kings, we count habitually seven feeble sovereigns.
... The Elizabeths and Catherines did not make war in person, but they knew how to choose their generals; and it is enough that these are good. In every other branch of administration, has not woman given lessons to man? What prince has surpassed in firmness Maria Theresa who, in a disastrous moment, when the fidelity of her subjects was tottering and her ministers were struck with terror, undertook herself alone to inspire all with new courage? She intimidated by her presence, the disaffected Diet of Hungary; she harangued the Magnates in the Latin tongue, and brought her very enemies to swear on their sabres to die for her. This is an indication of the prodigies that would be wrought by feminine emulation in a social order which would permit free scope to her faculties.
“And you, the oppressing sex,—would you not go beyond the faults imputed to women if you, like them, had been moulded by a servile education to believe yourselves automatons created to obey prejudices and to cringe before the master whom chance had given you? Have we not seen your pretensions to superiority confounded by Catharine, who trampled under foot the masculine sex? In creating titled favorites, she trailed man in the dust, and proved that it is possible for him in full liberty to abase himself beneath woman, whose degradation is forced, and consequently, excusable. It would be necessary, to confound the tyranny of man that, for the space of a century, a third sex should exist, which should be both male and female, and stronger than man. This new sex would prove by dint of blows that men as well as women were made for its pleasures; then we should hear men protest against the tyranny of the hermaphrodite sex, and confess that force ought not to be the sole law of right. Now why are these privileges, this independence, which they would reclaim from this third sex, refused by them to women.
“In singling out those women who have had power to soar, from the virago, like Maria Theresia, to those of a gentler type, like the Ninons and the Sévignés, I am authorized in saying that woman, in a state of liberty, will surpass man in all functions of the mind and body which are not the attributes of physical strength.
“Man seems already to foresee this; he becomes indignant and alarmed when women give the lie to the prejudice that accuses them of inferiority. Masculine jealousy has especially broken out against women authors; philosophy has kept them out of academic honors, and has sent them back ignominiously to the household.”... (p. 148.)
“What is their existence to-day (that of women)? They exist in privations alone, even in the trades, in which man has encroached on everything, even to the minutest occupations of the needle and the pen, while women are seen employed in the toilsome labors of the field. Is it not scandalous to see athletes thirty years old squatted before a desk, or carrying a cup of coffee with muscular arms, as if there were not women and children enough to attend to the minor details of the counting-room and the household.
“What then are the means of subsistence for women destitute of fortune? The distaff, or else their charms if they have any. Yes, prostitution more or less glossed over is their only resource, which philosophy again contests to them; this is the abject fate to which they are reduced by this civilization, this conjugal slavery which they have not even thought of attacking.” (p. 150.)
Fourier bitterly reproaches women authors for having neglected to seek the means whereby to put an end to such a state of affairs, and adds with great reason:
“Their indolence in this respect is one of the causes that have accrued from the contempt of man. The slave is never more contemptible than by a blind submission which persuades the oppressor that his victim was born for slavery., (p. 150).”
Fourier is right, but... to elevate others is to risk being lost one’s self in the crowd; and every one is not capable of this degree of abnegation.
To combat for the right of the weak when men have admitted you to their ranks, is to prepare for yourself a rough way and a heavy cross.
In the first place, you are exposed to the hatred and raillery of men, then half-cultured women corroded by jealousy, invent a thousand calumnies for your destruction; they feign to be scandalized that a woman dare protest against the inferiority and use of her sex; they enter into league with the masters, clamor louder than they and satirize you without mercy.
Now all women are not made to shrug their shoulders in the face of this cohort of morbid minds... they love peace too well, they lack courage, and they do not care enough for justice; is it not so, ladies?
Let us return to Fourier. It is known that he admits several social periods. According to him, the pivot of each of them hinges on love and the degree of liberty of woman.
“As a general rule,” he says, “social progress and changes of the period will be wrought in proportion to the progress of women towards liberty, and the decay of the social order will be wrought in proportion to the decline of the liberty of women.”
In another place, he adds in speaking of philosophers:
“If they treat of morals, they forget to recognize and to claim the rights of the weaker sex, the oppression of which destroys the basis of justice.”
He says again, elsewhere:
“Now, God recognizes as liberty only that which is extended to both sexes, and not to one alone; so he has prescribed that all the germs of social evils, as the savage state, barbarism, civilization, should have no other pivot than the enthrallment of women; and that all the germs of social good, as the sixth, seventh and eighth period, should have no other pivot, no other compass, than the progressive affranchisement of the weaker sex.”
Fourier is reproached with having desired the emancipation of woman in love; nothing is more true. But to impute this to him as immorality, men must censure their own morals. Now, these gentlemen considering themselves as wholly pure, though themselves representing the butterfly in love, infidelity and the simultaneous possession of several women being only a pastime to them, I do not really see what they can blame in Fourier.
Either what they do is right, and therefore cannot be wrong in woman;
Or what they do is wrong; then why do they do it?
Fourier believed in the unity of the moral law and in the equality of the sexes; he believed in the lawfulness of the morals of these gentlemen, minus perfidy and hypocrisy; this is the reason that he claims emancipation in love for woman: he is logical.
Besides, he repeats continually that the ethics that he depicts would cause disorder in the civilized period; and that they can only be established progressively in subsequent periods. Many among the Phalansterians reject Fourier’s ethics with respect to love as well as his Theodicy, and I myself have heard several discourses in which the orator condemned, not only falsity in conjugal relations, but also looseness of morals.
Fourier and the Saint Simonian orthodoxy have both been guilty of the same error with regard to the emancipation of woman; but, men, I repeat, must be very audacious to impute it to them as a crime, since they indulge themselves in worse; as to women, sustained and loved by these reformers, let them imitate the pious conduct of Shem and Japhet; one owes respect to his father, whatever may be the idea or the wine with which he is drunken.
Now that we have cited the master, let us enumerate the principal points of the Fourierist doctrine, touching the liberty of woman and the equality of the sexes:
1. Man and woman are composed of the same physical, moral and intellectual elements; there is, therefore, between the sexes, identity of nature.
2. The proportion of these elements differs in the two sexes, and constitutes the difference that exists between them.
3. This difference is so equalized that the value shall be equal. Where man is the stronger, he takes precedence of woman; where woman is stronger, she takes precedence of man.
4. Man belongs to the major mode: he has the ascendency over woman in intellect, in logic, in the larger manufactures, in friendship; it belongs to him therefore to create positive science, to connect facts, to regulate commercial relations, to bind together interests, and to organize groups and series. To all these things, woman brings her indispensable aid, but by reason of her aptitudes, her services are only secondary therein.
5. Woman belongs to the minor mode; she has the ascendency over man in the kind of intellect that applies and adapts, in the intuition that puts man on the track of the good to which masculine logic should attain; in the sphere of maternity in which she presides over education, for she comprehends the means to be employed to ameliorate the species in every respect better than man; in the sphere of love in which she has the right and the power to civilize and refine the relations of the sexes; and to stimulate man to conquest of the intellect, to the amelioration of the physical conditions of the globe, of industry, of art, of social relations, etc.
Woman intervenes to a certain point in the major mode, so does man enter into the minor mode, in which his coöperation is indispensable.
Thus, in general, in man the head predominates, in woman, the heart; but as both have a heart and a head, man, through his heart, becomes an aid in the minor mode, and woman, through her head, becomes an aid in the major mode.
6. There are men who are women both in head and in heart; women who are men both in heart and in head; in humanity they form the eighth of an exception. Full liberty and right are granted to them.
7. Each member of the Phalanstery follows his vocation, obeys his attractions, for attractions are proportional to destinies. Therefore the eighth of an exception in both sexes, having an attraction towards labors that belong more especially to the other sex, is at liberty to yield to them.
8. All major men and women have an equal vote.
9. All matters are regulated by chiefs of both sexes, chosen by the free vote of both sexes.
10. All offices, from the presidency of the group to that of the globe, are filled jointly by men and women, who divide between them the details of this common function.
11. The mother is the instructress of her children; they belong to her alone; the father has no rights over them unless the mother chooses to confer these on him.
Such is the summary of the Fourierist doctrine on the subject of which we treat.
If the Societary School has not reached perfect truth, it must be at least acknowledged that it has taken the right way to attain it. Whether its theory of the classification and the predominance of faculties in conformity with the sexes be exact or not, the error will not be productive of mischievous results in practice. Woman being free to follow her aptitudes, being half in rights and functions, could always place herself in the exceptional eighth, without fear of encountering jealous individuals, better fitted than herself to warble in the minor key, who would send her back to the duties of the household.
I remember, in this connection, a certain advocate, by no means feminine, professing a superb disdain of the sex to which his mother belonged, worthy in a word, to be the disciple of P. J. Proudhon; would you know what this man had retained of all his lessons in law? The art of sweeping a room properly, of polishing furniture, of hemming napkins and pocket handkerchiefs neatly, and of compounding sauces. Do you not think, illustrious Proudhon, that he might have been advised with more justice to go and iron his collars, than certain women who write good articles on Philosophy.
But let us return to Fourier.
Among the Socialist Schools, that of Fourier occupies a distinguished place; it is the one most deserving of the gratitude of women through the principles that it has laid down. Be it understood, we separate in this connection the principles of Liberty and Equality from all that relates to the question of ethics, which we cannot resolve in the same manner as Fourier, any more for woman than man.
CHAPTER VII.
SUMMARY.
Appear, all ye modern innovators, before your judge, the public. Sum up your opinions.
COMMUNIST. The two sexes differ, do not perform the same functions, but they are equal before the law.
For woman to be really emancipated, society must be remoulded economically, and marriage suppressed.
PHILADELPHIAN AND ICARIAN. We are of your opinion, brother, except in what concerns marriage.
ORTHODOX ST. SIMONIAN. If Christianity has despised and oppressed woman, it has been because, in its sight, she represented matter, the world, evil. We, who are come to give the true meaning of the Trinity, rehabilitate or explain what our predecessors have condemned. Woman is the equal of man, because in God, who comprises everything, matter is equal to spirit. With man, woman forms the couple which is the social individual, the functionary. As woman is very different from man, we do not take the liberty of judging her; we content ourselves with summoning her that she may reveal herself.
Notwithstanding we think that she can only be affranchised by being emancipated in love.
PIERRE LEROUX agitated. Take care! It is not so much in sex that woman should be affranchised; it is only in her quality of wife and human being. She has sex only for him she loves; to all other men she is what they are themselves: sensation, sentiment, sense. She must be free in marriage and in the commonwealth as man himself should be.
FUSIONIST interrupting him. You are right, Pierre Leroux; yet neither is the previous speaker wholly wrong; woman is free and the equal of man in everything, because spirit and matter are equal in God; because the man and the woman form together the human androgynus, the derivation of the divine androgynus. It is not so, my dear sister?
MYSELF. Excuse me, brothers, from joining in your theological discussion; my wings are not strong enough to follow you into the bosom of God, in order to assure myself whether he is spirit or matter, androgynus or not, binary, trinary, quarternary, or nothing of all these. It is enough for me that you all grant that woman should be free, and the equal of man.
I permit myself only a single observation; that your notion of the couple or of the androgynus, at the bottom one and the same thing, tends fatally to the subjugation of my sex; if, by a metaphor, a fiction, we make of two beings, endowed each with a separate will, free-will and intellect, a single unity; in social practice, this unity is manifested by a single will, a single free-will, a single intellect, and the individuality that prevails in our society is that which is endowed with strength of arm; the other is annihilated, and the right given to the couple is in reality only the right of the stronger. The use that M. Proudhon has made of androgyny ought to cure you of this fancy; as the use which your predecessors made of the ternary ought to have preserved you from trinitary metaphysics. Be it said without offence to you, gentlemen, I have a decided antipathy to any trinities and androgynies whatsoever; I am a sworn enemy to all metaphysics, whether profane or sacred,—a constitutional vice, aggravated in me by Kant and his school.
PHALANSTERIAN. For God’s sake, gentlemen, let us quit this mysticism. Man and woman are different, but the one is as necessary as the other to the great work that should be accomplished by humanity; therefore they are equal. As each individual has a right to develop himself integrally, to manifest himself completely in order to perform the parcellary task which his attractions assign to him, the liberty of one sex can no more be called in question than can that of the other. Man modulates in major, woman in minor, with an exceptional eighth; but, as in all the general functions, the combination of the two modes is necessary, it is evident that each of them ought to be double, and that woman ought everywhere to be equal with man.
M.DE GIRARDIN somewhat abruptly. Gentlemen, I agree with you that woman ought to be free and equal with man; only I maintain that her function is to manage, to economize, and to rear her children, while man labors and brings into the household the product of his industry.
As I wish woman to be freed from servitude and all children to be rendered legitimate, I suppress civil marriage, and institute universal dowry.
M. LEGOUVE smiling. You go too fast and too far, my dear sir, you will frighten everybody. At least, I believe like you in the equality of the sexes through the equivalence of their functions, but I take good care not to breathe a word of it. I content myself with claiming for woman instruction, diminution of conjugal servitude, and offices of charity; counting, between ourselves, that these victories obtained, women will be in a position through their education and proved utility, to affranchise themselves completely. Well! despite my reserve and moderation, you see that some call me effeminate, others sans culotte.
M. MICHELET, rising with tears in his eyes. Alas, gentlemen, you are all in the wrong road; and I am very sorry, my beloved academician Legouvé, to see you employ your elegant pen in leading woman in so perilous and irrational a way.
As to you, gentlemen, who lay claim to liberty and equality of rights for woman, you are not authorized by her to do so; she demands no right, what should she do with it—a being always feeble, always sick, always wounded. Poor creature! What can be her rôle here below, if not to be adored by her husband, whose duty it is to constitute himself her instructor, her physician, her confessor, her sick nurse, her waiting-maid; to keep her in a hot-house, and with all these multiplied cares to earn beside the daily bread; for woman cannot, ought not to work; she is the love and the altar of the heart of man.
Some among you have dared utter the vile word: Divorce.
No divorce! The woman who has given herself away, has received the imprint of man. You should not abandon her, however guilty she may be. I thought in the beginning that after your death she ought to wear mourning to the tomb, beyond which, she and her husband would be fused into the unity of love. But I have thought better of it; you may appoint a successor.
While Michelet is seating himself, wiping his eyes, the lid of a coffin is seen to rise, and Comte exclaims in a sepulchral tone:
Worthily and admirably spoken, illustrious professor!
What! you here? exclaims the assembly. Then one does not perish entirely, as you taught your disciples?
COMTE. No, gentlemen, and I was very agreeably surprised to see myself mistaken. But it is not to instruct you about the life beyond the tomb that I return; that would not have been worth the trouble of disturbing myself. It is to express to the great professor Michelet all the satisfaction that I feel in seeing him so richly poetise the ideal that I set up, and strew so many flowers over the admirable maxim of Aristotle and the commandment of the great St. Paul.
Yes, thrice illustrious Master, you have rightly said: woman is made for man, she should obey him, be devoted to him; she is only a doll in private life, absolutely nothing in public life. Yes, men should labor for her; yes, marriage is indissoluble; all this is irreproachable.
AUGUSTE COMTISM. I regret but one thing—that you have not preserved the ejaculatory orisons of the wife to the husband, and of the husband to the wife; it would have been a good example and have made a fine effect to see them every morning kneeling face to face, with clasped hands and closed eyes. I hope that this is only forgetfulness, and that you will reëstablish this detail in your next edition. I congratulate you openly on the happy thought that you have conceived of justifying the absorption of woman by man by aid of a wound and the mysteries of impregnation; this will have a great effect on the ignorant.
Rebellious women, and the madmen with corrupt hearts who sustain them, say that you are a poetic and ingenuous egotist, that our beloved Proudhon is a brutal egotist; that I am an egotist by A + B. Let them say so; I approve and bless you.”
The apparition was preparing to lie down again in his coffin when, having a passion for encountering phantoms, I seized a corner of his winding sheet, and, notwithstanding an unequivocal sign from him of vade retro, I had the courage to represent humbly to the defunct high priest that the brow of M. Proudhon deserved quite as much to be blessed as that of M. Michelet. The defunct gravely crossed his fleshless fore finger and thumb over the haughty and irreverent head of the great critic, who neither bowed nor seemed infinitely flattered.
It being his turn to speak, Proudhon rose and said: “Gentlemen Communists, Philadelphians, Fusionists, Phalansterians, Saint Simonians, and you, MM. Girardin and Legouvé, as well as all of your adherents, you are all effeminate, men hardened in absurdity.
“If my friend Michelet has gilded, perfumed and sugared the pill for you, I cannot imitate his address and moderation, for you know that in temperament I, P. J. Proudhon, am neither tender nor poetical. Permit me then roughly to tell you the truth concerning a question of which you do not understand the first word.
“The Church, St. Thomas d’Aquinas, St. Bonaventure, St. Paul, and Auguste Comte, as well as the Romans, the Greeks, Manu and Mahomet teach that woman is made for the pleasure and use of man, and that she should be subjected to him; now I have sufficiently established these great truths by affirmations without reply. It is demonstrated to-day, therefore, to all who believe in me that woman is a passive being, having the germ of nothing, who owes everything to man, and that, consequently, she belongs to him as the work to the workman. Lest my solution might appear somewhat harsh to you, or to savor too much of antiquity of the Middle Ages, I have borrowed of the modern innovators their farce of Androgyny; I have made the couple the organ of Justice; in this couple, woman, transformed by man, becomes a triple deity, a domestic idol, subject in everything to her priest. I shut her up in the household, and permit her to have only the superintendence of festivals and spectacles, the education of children and maidens, etc.
“Is it not evident, gentlemen, that woman, because she is weaker than we, is, by justice, condemned to obey us, and that her liberty consists in experiencing no amorous emotion, even for her husband? Is it not evident, in consequence, that you, who do not think as I, are effeminate, absurd men, and that the women who are no more willing to be slaves than we were in ’89 are insurgents, impure women whom sin has rendered mad?”
The majority of the assembly laugh; De Girardin shrugs his shoulders; Legouvé bites his lip in order not to laugh; Michelet appears troubled at this sally which may spoil everything. As, in uttering the word insurgent, the orator glances at me with marked design, I cannot help saying “yes, I deserve the name of insurgent like our fathers of ’89. As to you, if you do not amend, I fear greatly that I shall see you die duly confessed and blessed with extreme unction... and you will have well deserved it!”
Now, gentlemen, let us ascertain the vote of your honorable assembly.
Four schools,—the Communists, the St. Simonians, the Fusionians and the Phalansterians,—with one publicist, M. de Girardin, who makes as much noise by himself alone as a whole school, are for the liberty of woman and the equality of the sexes.
MM. Comte, Proudhon and Michelet are against the liberty of women and the equality of the sexes.
M. Legouvé and his innumerable adherents wish liberty for woman, and desire that she should labor to become equal to man through equivalence of functions.
Which means that the great majority of those who think are, in different degrees, for our emancipation.
Now that my readers are acquainted with your several opinions, gentlemen, it belongs to me, a woman, to speak myself in behalf of my right, without leaning on anything but Justice and Reason.
PART II.
OBJECTIONS TO THE EMANCIPATION OF WOMAN. NATURE AND FUNCTIONS OF WOMAN. LOVE. MARRIAGE. LEGAL REFORMS. SUMMARY.
OBJECTIONS TO THE EMANCIPATION OF WOMEN.
I.
What arguments do the adversaries of the emancipation of women use to refute the equality of the rights of the sexes?
Some, theosophists of the old school, claim that one half of humanity is condemned by God himself to submit to the other half, because, they say, the first woman sinned.
Not wishing to depart from the firm ground of justice, reason and proved facts, we will not argue with this class of adversaries.
Others, who claim to be imbued with the modern spirit, and pretend to be disciples of the doctrines of liberty, condemn woman to inferiority and obedience because, they say, she is weaker physically and intellectually than man;
Because she performs functions of an inferior order;
Because she produces less than man in an industrial point of view;
Because her peculiar temperament prevents her from performing certain functions;
Because she is only fit for in-door life; because her vocation is to be mother and housewife, to devote herself entirely to her husband and children;
Because man protects and supports her;
Because man is her proxy, and exercises rights both for her and himself;
Because woman has no more time than capacity to exercise certain rights.
The rights of woman are in her beauty and our love, add some, gallantly.
Woman does not claim her rights; many women themselves are scandalized by the demands made by a few of their sex, continue other men.
And they spare the courageous women who plead the cause of right, and the men who sustain them neither calumnies, nor mockery, nor insult, hoping to intimidate the former and disgust the latter.
Vain hope! the time in which we could be intimidated has gone by. If it is justifiable to fear the opinion of those whom we deem juster and more intelligent than ourselves, it would be folly to be disturbed by those whose irrationality and injustice we feel able to demonstrate.
This double demonstration we are about to attempt, taking up one by one the arguments of these gentlemen.
1. Woman cannot have the same rights as man, because she is inferior to him in intellectual faculties, you say. From this proposition, we have a right to conclude that you consider the human faculties as the basis of right;
That, the law proclaiming equality of right for your sex, you are all equal in qualities, all alike strong and alike intelligent.
That, lastly, no woman is as strong and as intelligent as you; I cannot say, as the least among you, since, if right is founded on qualities, as it is equal, your qualities must be equal.
Now gentlemen, what becomes of these pretensions in the presence of facts that show you all unequal in strength and in intellect? What becomes of these pretensions in the presence of facts that show us a host of women stronger than many men; a host of women more intelligent than the great mass of men?
Being unequal in strength and in intellect, and notwithstanding declared equal in right, it is evident therefore that you have not founded right on qualities.
And if you have not taken these qualities into account when your right has been in question, why then do you talk so loudly of them when the question is that of the right of woman.
If the faculties were the basis of right, as the faculties are unequal, the right would be unequal; and, to be just, it would be necessary to accord right to those who made good their claims to the necessary faculties and to exclude the rest; by this standard many women would be chosen and an infinite number of men excluded. See where we end when we have not the intellectual energy to take principles into consideration! You have but one means of evicting us of equality; namely, to prove that we do not belong to the same species as you.
2. Woman, you add, cannot have the same rights as man because, as mother and housewife, she performs only functions of an inferior order.
From this second proposition, we have a right to conclude that functions are the basis of right;
That your functions are equivalent, since your right is equal!
That the functions of woman are not equivalent to those of man.
You have to prove then, gentlemen, that the functions individually performed by each of you are equivalent; that, for example, Cuvier, Geoffroy St. Hilaire, Arago, Fulton, Jacquard, and other inventors and scholars have not done more, are not doing more for humanity and civilization than an equal number of manufacturers of pins’ heads.
You have to prove next that the labors of maternity, those of the household to which the workman owes his life, his health, his strength, the possibility of accomplishing his task—that these functions without which there would be no humanity, are not equivalent; that is, as useful to the social body as those of the manufacturer of jewels or of toys.
You have to prove lastly that the functions of the female teacher, merchant, book keeper, clerk, dressmaker, milliner, cook, waiting-maid, etc., are not equivalent to those of the male teacher, merchant, accountant, clerk, cook, tailor, hatter, footman, etc.;
I grant that it is embarrassing to your triumphant argument to encounter the thousands of facts which show us the real woman performing numerous functions in competition with you;
So it is, and these facts must be taken into account. But gentlemen, I have you in a dilemma! if functions are the basis of right, as right is equal, functions are equivalent; in which case those performed by woman are not inferior, since none are so. The functions which she performs are therefore equivalent to yours, and, by this equivalence, she again becomes equal.
Or else functions are not the basis of right; did you not take them into account when the establishment of your right was in question; why then do you speak of functions when the question is the right of woman?
Extricate yourself from this as you can; I shall not help you.
II.
3. Woman produces less than man industrially, you say. Admitting this to be true, do you count as nothing the great maternal function—the risks that woman runs in accomplishing it;
Do you count as nothing the labors of the household, the cares that are lavished upon you, and to which you owe cleanliness and health?
If the quantity of the product be the origin of the equality of right, why have those who produce little, those who produce nothing, and all of you who produce unequally, equal right?
Why are all those women who produce, while their husbands and sons enjoy and dissipate, destitute of the rights which the latter possess?
You do not admit the question of product into that of right when man is in question, why then do you admit it when woman is in question?
You see that this is inconsiderate, irrational, unjust.
4. Woman cannot be the equal of man, because her peculiar temperament interdicts to her certain functions.
Well, then a legislator can, without being unreasonable, decree that all men who are unfitted by temperament for the profession of arms, for instance, are excluded from equality of right!
Temperament, the source of right?
If a woman had written anything so absurd, she would have been cried down from one end of the world to the other.
Why, gentlemen, do you not exclude from equality all men who are weak, all those who are incapable of performing the functions that you prejudge woman incapable of performing?
When you are in question, you admit indeed that the right to perform every function supposes neither the faculty nor the inclination to make use of it; why do you not reason in the same manner when the question concerns us? What would you think of women if, having your rights while you were in subjection, they should keep you in an inferior position because you could not accomplish the great functions of gestation and lactation.
Man, they would say, being unable to be mother and nurse, shall not have the right of being instructed like us; of having, like us, civil dignity. His coarser temperament renders him incapable of being a witness to a certificate of birth or death; it is evident that his clumsiness excludes him judicially from diplomatic functions; we cannot therefore recognize his right to solicit them, etc.
Ah! gentlemen, you reason in the same manner in excluding woman from equality under the pretext that, in general, she is of a temperament weaker than your own; that is, you reason absurdly.
5. Woman cannot be the equal of man in right because he protects and maintains her.
If it is because you protect and maintain us, that we ought not to have our right, restore it then to unmarried women who are of age, and to widows whom you neither protect nor maintain.
Restore their right then to the wives who have no need of your protection, since the law protects them, even against you; to the wives whom you do not maintain, since they bring you either a dowry, or a profession, or services which you would be obliged to recompense if any other rendered them to you.
And if to be maintained by another, suffices to deprive an individual of his right, take it away from the host of men who are maintained by the incomes or the labor of their wives.
6. Man, in the exercise of certain rights, is the proxy of woman.
Gentleman, a proxy is chosen freely, and is not imposed on an individual; I do not accept you as proxies: I am intelligent enough to transact my business myself, and I pray you to restore to me, as well as to all the women who think as I do, an authority which you use unworthily. If married women, to have peace, are willing to continue you as their authority, it is their business; but none of you can legitimately retain that of widows and unmarried women who have attained majority.
7. Woman has not the same rights as man, because she has no more time than capacity to exercise them.
Has woman less time and capacity than your working men, pinned twelve hours a day to their petty and stultifying tasks? Affirm it if you dare!
Does it need less time and capacity to make a deposition in a criminal suit, as woman does, than to witness a civil act or a notarial contract, a right that woman has not.
Does it need less time and capacity to be the guardian of sons and to administer their fortune, as woman does, than to be the guardian of a stranger or of a nephew, and administer their property, a right that woman has not.
Does it need less time and capacity to superintend a manufactory, a commercial establishment, workmen, as do so many women, than to be at the head of an office, or of a public administration, and to superintend its officials, a right that woman has not?
Does it need less time and capacity to devote one’s self to instruction in a large boarding school, as do so many women, than in the chair of a professorship, as man alone has the right to do?
Woman proves, by her works, that she lacks capacity and time no more than you. Facts stifle affirmations for which you should blush. Fie! I am glad that I am not a man, lest I might say like things and be led to pretend that an instructress, a literary woman, a woman artist, an experienced female merchant has not the capacity of a porter or a rag-picker because she has not a beard on her chin.
8. The rights of woman are in her beauty and in the love of man.
Rights, based on beauty, and on that fragile thing styled man’s love! What are these worth, I ask you, gentlemen?
Then woman shall have rights if she is beautiful, and as long as she shall continue so; if she is beloved, and as long as she shall continue so? Old, ugly and forsaken, she must be thrown into the car of the condemned to be transported to the guillotine?
If a woman should say such things, what a universal hue and cry would be raised?
Yet men pretend that they are rational! We congratulate woman on having too much common sense ever to be so in this wise.
After all these arguments, none of which will bear analysis, comes at last the triumphant objection: women do not claim their rights, many among them are even scandalized by the demand made by a few in the name of all. Do not women demand them, gentlemen?
What are a host of American women doing at the present time?
What have a number of English women done already?
What did Jean Deroin, Pauline Roland and many others, do here in 1848?
What am I doing to-day, in the name of a legion of women of whom I am the interpreter?
All women do not make reclamations, no; but do you not know that every demand of right is made at first singly?
That slaves accustomed to their chains, do not feel them until their instigators to revolt show them the bruises on their flesh?
A few only demand their rights, you say; but is it in accordance with principle or with numbers that you judge of the justice of a cause?
Did you wait until all the male population demanded their right of universal suffrage in order to decree it to them?
Did you wait for the revendication of all the slaves of your colonies before emancipating them?
Yes, it is true, gentlemen, that many women are opposed to the emancipation of their sex. What does this prove? That there are human beings abased enough to have lost all sentiment of dignity; but not that right is not right.
Among the blacks, there are many who hate, denounce, and deliver up to the scourge and to death those among them who are meditating how to break their chains; which is right, which has the sentiment of human dignity, the latter or the former?
We demand our place at your side, gentlemen, because identity of species gives us the right to occupy it.
We demand our right, because the inferiority inwhich we are kept is one of the most active causes of the decay of morals.
We demand our right, because we are persuaded that woman has to set her stamp on Science, Philosophy, Justice and Politics.
We demand our right, lastly, because we are convinced that the general questions, the lack of solution of which threatens our modern civilization with ruin, can only be resolved by the co-operation of woman delivered from her fetters and left free in her genius.
Is it not a great proof of our insanity, our impurity, gentlemen, that we feel this ardent desire to check the corruption of morals, and to labor for the triumph of Justice, the coming of the reign of Duty and Reason, the establishment of an order of things in which humanity, worthier and happier, shall pursue its glorious destinies without the accompaniment of cannon or the shedding of blood?
Is it not because the advocates of emancipation are impure women whom sin has rendered mad, beings incapable of comprehending Justice and conscientious works?
III.
Gentlemen, we will conclude.
Though that were true which I deny; that woman is inferior to you; though that were true which facts prove false; that she can perform none of the functions which you perform, that she is fit only for maternity and the household, she would be none the less your equal in right, because right is based neither on superiority of faculties nor on that of the functions which proceed from them, but on identity of species.
A human being, like you, having, like you, intellect, will, free will and various aptitudes, woman has the right, like you, to be free and autonomous, to develop her faculties freely, to exercise her activity freely; to mark out her path, to reduce her to subjection, as you do, is therefore a violation of Human Right in the person of woman—an odious abuse of force.
From the stand point of facts, this violation of right takes the form of grievous inconsistency; for we find many women far superior to the majority of men; whence it follows that right is granted to those who ought not to have it, according to your doctrine, and refused to those who ought to possess it, according to the same doctrine, since they make good their claim to the qualities requisite.
We find that you accord right to qualities and functions, because the individual is a man, and that you cease to recognize it in the same case, because the individual is a woman.
Yet you boast of your lofty reason,—yet you boast of possessing the sense of justice!
Take care, gentlemen! Our rights have the same foundation as yours: in denying the former, you deny the latter in principle.
A word more to you, pretended disciples of the doctrines of ’89, and we have done. Do you know why so many women took part with our Revolution, armed the men, and rocked their children to the song of the Marseillaise! It was because they thought they saw under the Declaration of the rights of men and citizens, the declaration of the rights of women and female citizens.
When the Assembly took it upon itself to undeceive them, by lacking logic with respect to them, and closing their meetings, they abandoned the Revolution, and you know what ensued.
Do you know why, in 1848, so many women, especially among the people, declared themselves for the Revolution? It was because they hoped that this Revolution would be more consistent with respect to them than the former had been.
When, in their senseless arrogance and lack of intelligence, the representatives not only forbid them to assemble, but drove them from the assemblies of men, the women abandoned the Revolution by detaching their husbands and sons from it, and you know what ensued.
Do you comprehend at last?
I tell you truly; all your struggles are in vain, if woman does not go with you.
An order of things may be established by a coup de main, but it is only maintained by the adhesion of majorities; and these majorities, gentlemen, are formed by us women, through the influence that we possess over men, through the education that we give them with our milk.
We have it in our power to inspire them from their cradles with love, hatred or indifference for certain principles; in this is our strength; and you are blind not to comprehend that if man is on one side and woman on the other, humanity is condemned to weave Penelope’s web.
Gentlemen, woman is ripe for civil liberty, and we declare to you that we shall henceforth regard whoever shall rise against our lawful claim as an enemy of progress and of the Revolution; while we shall rank among the friends of progress and of the Revolution, those who declare themselves in favor of our civil emancipation, SHOULD THEY BE YOUR ADVERSARIES?
If you refuse to listen to our lawful demands, we shall accuse you before posterity of the crime with which you reproach the holders of slaves.
We shall accuse you before posterity of having denied the faculties of woman, because you feared her competition.
We shall accuse you before posterity of having refused her justice, because you wished to make her your servant and plaything. We shall accuse you before posterity of being enemies of right and progress.
And our accusation will remain standing and living before future generations who, more enlightened, more just, more moral than you, will turn away their eyes with disdain and contempt from the tomb of their fathers.
NATURE AND FUNCTIONS OF WOMAN
I.
I think that we have sufficiently though summarily proved to all honest inquiries that social right is identical for both sexes since they are identical in species. The question of right being placed beyond discussion, we can now ask what use woman shall make of her right; in other terms, what functions she is qualified to perform in accordance with her whole nature.
Let us first mark the profound difference that exists between right and function, then define and divide the latter.
Right is the condition sine qua non of the development and manifestations of the human being: it is absolute, general for the whole species, because the individuals who compose it should be able lawfully to develop and manifest themselves.
Function is the use of the faculties of the individual with a view to a purpose useful to himself and to others; function is therefore a production of utility and, in conclusion, the manifestation of the aptitudes predominating in each of us, whether naturally, or in consequence of education and habit.
Society, having needs of every kind, has functions of every nature and various scope; these functions may be classified as follows:
1. Scientific and philosophic functions;
2. Industrial functions;
3. Artistic functions;
4. Educational functions;
5. Medical functions;
6. Functions for the preservation of safety;
7. Judicial functions;
8. Functions of exchange and circulation;
9. Administrative and governmental functions;
10. Legislative functions;
11. Functions of solidarity or of social benevolence and of institutions for the prevention of crime.
This classification, which would be very imperfect and insufficient, were this a treatise on social organization, being all that is needed for the use that we have to make of it, we shall adhere to it in this place.
Men, and women after them, have deemed proper hitherto to class man and woman separately; to define each type, and to deduce from this ideal the functions suited to each sex. Neither have chosen to see that numerous facts contradict their classification.
What! exclaims the classifiers, do you deny that the sexes differ? Do you deny that, if they differ, they should have different functions?
If our classification does not seem good to you, criticise it, we ask nothing more; but replace it by a better one.
To criticise your classification, ladies and gentlemen, is what I intend to do; but if the elements are wanting to establish a better, can you, ought you even to require me to present you one.
Do you think me a man, that you exact of me abuse of the à priora, and a startling arbitrary course of reasoning. “Proudhon is right,” murmur these gentlemen; “woman is incapable of abstract reasoning, of generalizing, of knowing herself”....
Really, gentlemen, do you think that it is through incapacity that I am unwilling to present to you a classification of the sexes, a theory of the nature of woman?... Let us hasten then to prove the contrary: instead of one theory, we will give you four. Man and woman form a series only with respect to the reproduction of the species: all the other characteristics by which it has been attempted to make a distinction between them are only generalities contradicted by a multitude of facts; now, as a generality is not a law, nothing can be therefore concluded from these, nothing absolute deduced from them in a functional point of view.
On the other hand, the greatest radical difference of zoological species lies in the nervous system, especially in the greater or lesser bulk and complexity of the encephalus; now, Anatomy admits, after numerous experiments, that, in proportion to the whole size of the body, the brain of woman equals in volume that of man; that the composition of both is the same, and Phrenology adds that the organs of the brain are the same in both sexes.
Lastly, it is a biological principle that organs are developed by exercise and atrophied by continued repose; now, man and woman do not exercise their encephalic organs in the same manner; educational training, manners, prejudice, enforced habits tend to develop in the masculine what becomes atrophied in the feminine head; whence it follows that the differences empirically established are by no means the result of Nature, but of the accidental causes by which they have been produced.
Conclusion: the two sexes therefore, when reared alike become developed alike, and are fit for the same functions, except those which concern the reproduction of the species.
Here, gentlemen, is a theory complete in all its parts, tenable in an anatomo-biologic point of view, and which I challenge you to prove false, for I shall find replies to all your objections.
II.
We admit the principle that the sexes form series in physical, moral, intellectual, consequently functional respects.
We believe that they should become subordinate to each other in proportion to their relative excellence; and we take the destiny of the species as the touchstone of their respective value.
If we compare the sexes with each other, we prove in a general way, that man is merely woman on a coarser scale; we prove in the second place that he is far more animal than woman, since his muscular system is more fully developed and since he respires lower; so that he is most evidently a medium between woman and the higher species of apes.
Woman alone contains and develops the human germ; she is the creator and preserver of the race.
It is not quite certain that the co-operation of man is necessary for the work of reproduction; this is the means chosen by Nature, but human science will succeed, we hope, in delivering woman from this insupportable subjection.
Analogy authorises us to believe that woman, the sole depositary of the human germ, is equally the sole depositary of all the moral and intellectual germs, whence it follows that she is the inspirer of all knowledge, all discoveries, all justice, the mother of all virtue. Our analogous deductions are confirmed by facts; woman employs her intellect in the concrete; she is an acute observer; man is only fit to construct paradoxes and to lose himself in the abyss of metaphysics; science has only emerged from the limbo of à priora without confirmation, since the advent into this domain of the form of the feminine mind; we shall affirm, therefore, that true scholars are feminized minds.
In moral respects, man and woman differ greatly; the former is harsh, rough, without delicacy, devoid of sensibility and modesty; his habitual relations with the other sex modify him only with great difficulty; woman is naturally gentle, loving, feeling, equitable, modest; to her, man owes justice and his other virtues, when he has any; whence it follows that it is really to woman alone that social progress is due; hence it is that every step made towards civilization is marked by an advance of woman towards liberty.
If we consider each of the sexes in their relation to human destiny, we are forced to admit that, if there was reason for the predominance of man in the necessity of hewing out this destiny, the pre-eminence of woman is ensured in the future reign of right and peace.
It was necessary to struggle and fight in order to establish justice and to subject nature to humanity; this belonged of right to man, who represents muscular force, the spirit of conflict; but as we already foresee in the approaching future, the coming of peace, the substitution of pacific labor and negotiations for war, it is clear that woman will take rightfully the direction of human affairs, to which she will be called by her faculties, found better adapted to the end henceforth to be pursued.
Woman should be the last to develop and manifest herself socially, for the same reason that the human species is the last creation of our globe; the perfect being always appears after those that have served to pave the way.
As it is demonstrated, on the other hand, that, in the scale of the various organisms, the organ that is superadded to the others to constitute a change of species, governs those which the individual derives from inferior species, so woman, fully developed in a social body organized for peace and pacific labor, will be the new organ that will govern the social body.
Does this signify that woman should oppress man? By no means; she would thus be ungrateful for the services rendered her, and would trespass against her gentle nature; but she will teach him to comprehend that his glory is to obey, to become subordinate to the other sex, because he is less perfect, and because his qualities are no longer necessary to the general good.
You laugh, gentlemen, at this second theory; you think it absurd.... So it is; for it is the counterpart of the thetic woman of Proudhon. Let us proceed then to the third theory.
III.
Every classification of the human species is a pure subjective creation; that is, one which exists only in the form given to the perception by the intellect; the very conception of humanity with the enumeration of the characteristics which are reputed to distinguish it from the other species, is stamped with subjectivity.
The truth is that not a single human being resembles his neighbor; that there are as many different men and women as there are men and women composing the species.
Classifications, in all things, are illusions of the mind, for nature hates identity and never repeats herself: there are not two grains of sand, not two drops of water, not two leaves alike; and most probably the sun, since the commencement of its existence, has not appeared twice identically the same at its rising. Yet despite the evidence of these truths, despite the conviction which we have attained of the illusion of the senses, of the weakness of our intellect, which can know nothing of the inmost nature of beings; which can only seize upon a few fleeting traces of their personal characteristics; yet despite all these things we dare establish series, attribute to them characteristics which are speedily contradicted by facts, and torture and do violence to the only beings that really exist; namely, individuals, in the name of that other thing which exists only in our sick brain: kind, class!
The bitter fruits that have been produced by our mania for classification ought to cure us of this. Has not this malady, impelling theocratists and legislators to divide humanity into castes and classes, caused most of the calamities of our species? Have we not, thanks to these execrable divisions, a hideous past, the echoes of which bring back to our shrinking ears naught but sobs, cries of anger, rebellion, malediction and vengeance, and sinister clanking of weapons and chains?
Have we not also to thank them that, on the pages of our history, all stained with blood and tears and exhaling an odor of the charnel house, we read nought but tyranny, brutishness and demoralization?
Have we not further to thank them that king and subject, master and serf, white and black, man and woman become demoralized by oppression, injustice and cruelty on one hand; and intrigue, baseness, and vengeance on the other?
Are not wrong and wretchedness found everywhere, because inequality, the offspring of insane classifications, is found everywhere?
Ah! who shall deliver us from our infatuation!
Let us class animals, vegetables, minerals if we will! our errors do not influence and cannot disturb them; but let us respect the human species which will escape all classification, however reasonable the process may be, because every human being is changeable, progressive, and differs far more from his fellows than the most intelligent animal from the rest of his species.
Let us leave each one then to make his own autonomic law and to manifest himself in conformity with his nature, and take care only that right shall be equal for all; that the strong shall not oppress the weak; that each function shall be entrusted to the one individual that is proved the best qualified to perform it; this is all that we can do, all that we should do, if we seek to show ourselves wise and just.
Harmony exists in nature, because each being in it follows peaceably the laws that govern his individuality; it will be the same in humanity, when universal reason shall comprehend that human order is pre-established in the co-operation of individual faculties left free in their manifestations; and that to establish a factitious, wholly imaginary order; that is, true disorder, is to retard the coming of order, peace and happiness.
Let us refrain then from all classification of faculties and functions according to the sexes: besides being false, they will lead us to cruelty; for we shall oppress those, whether men or women, who are neither yielding enough to submit to it nor hypocritical enough to appear to do so; and we shall do this without profit to human destiny, but, on the contrary, to its detriment.
Here, gentlemen, is a nominalistic theory which I challenge you to overthrow by sufficient reasons: for, as in the first, I shall have answers to all your objections.
We now come to our last theory, which is yours in the major and minor terms, but the opposite in the conclusions.
IV.
All the different parts of the same organism are modified by each other, and in this manner the functions become mutually modified.
Now, man and woman differ from each other in important organs.
Each of the sexes must therefore differ from the other not only through the organs that distinguish them, but through the modifications produced by the presence of these organs.
This, gentleman, is my first syllogism: I know that we shall not contest this point—it is classical Biology.
Let us investigate anatomically the organic differences to which sexuality subjects man and woman.
Nervous System. The so called nerves of feeling are more fully developed in woman than in man, those of motion are less developed in the former than in the latter; the cerebellum is more fully developed in the head of man than in that of woman; in the latter, the antero-posterior diameter of the brain preponderates over the bi-lateral, which is greater in proportion in the masculine sex: it is also observed that the organs of observation, circumspection, subtleness and philoprogenitiveness are more prominent in the head of woman than in that of man, in which the reasoning organs, with those of combativeness and destructiveness predominate.
Locomotive System. Man is larger than woman, he has more compact bones, and larger and better developed muscles, his thorax is the reverse of that of woman, in which, the greatest breadth is between the shoulders, while, with him, it is at the base; the pelvis is larger and broader in the female than the male sex.
Epidermic and cellular systems. Man has a more hairy skin than woman; what is called fat is less abundant in the masculine than in the feminine organism; in general, the skin of man is rougher, and his form less round; woman has longer and more silky hair. Splanchnic organs. The cerebral mass is the same in proportion in both sexes, as well as the organs of the brain, with the exception of the predominances which we have pointed out; the respiratory systems differ somewhat; woman breaths higher than man; in the latter, the circulation is more active and energetic.
To these physical differences correspond intellectual and moral differences.
Woman, having the nerves of feeling more fully developed, is more impressionable and more mobile than man.
Being weaker and as persistent, she obtains by address and stratagem what she cannot obtain by force; her weakness gives her timidity, circumspection, the necessity of feeling herself protected.
The kinds of labor that require strength are repugnant to her.
Her maternal destiny renders her an enemy of destruction, of war; and her more delicate organization makes her dread and shun contention. This same maternal destination impresses a peculiar stamp on her intellect; she loves the concrete, and is always inclined to transform thought into facts, to incarnate it, to give it a fixed form; her reasoning is intuition or quick perception of a general relation, of a truth that man elucidates only with great difficulty, by the aid of stilted logic.
Woman is a better observer than man, and carries induction farther than he; she is consequently more penetrating, and is a much better judge of the moral and intellectual value of those about her.
She has, more than man, sentiment of the beautiful, delicacy of heart, love of good, respect for modesty, veneration for everything superior.
More provident than he, she has more order and economy, and looks after administrative details with a carefulness which is often carried to puerility.
Woman is adroit, sedulous; she excels in works of taste, and possesses strong artistic tendencies.
Gentler, more tender, more patient than man, she loves everything that is weak, protects everything that suffers; every sorrow, every calamity brings a tear to her eye and draws a sigh from her breast.
This is woman, such as you paint her, gentlemen.
You then add:
The vocation of woman therefore is love, maternity, the household, sedentary occupations.
She is too weak for occupations that demand strength, and for those of war.
She is too impressionable and too feeling, too good, too gentle to be legislator, judge or juror.
Her taste for household details, a retired life, and the grave functions of maternity indicate clearly that she is not made for public employments. She is too variable to cultivate science with profit; too feeble and too much occupied beside to pursue protracted experiments.
Her kind of rationality renders her unsuited to the elaboration of theories; and she is too fond of the concrete and of details to become seriously interested in general ideas; which excludes her from all high professional functions and from those requiring serious study.
Her place is therefore at the fireside to make man better, to sustain him, to care for him, to procure him the joys of paternity, and to fill the place of a good housewife.
Such are your conclusions: here are mine, admitting as a hypothesis, what I affirm with you of woman.
V.
1. Woman carrying into Philosophy and Science her subtleness of observation, her love of the concrete, will correct the exaggerated tendency of man for abstract reasoning, and demonstrate the falsity of theories constructed, à priori, on a few facts alone. Then only will ontology disappear, then will it be recognized that a hypothesis is merely an interrogation point; that truth is always intelligible in its nature, however unknown it may be; we shall generalize nothing but known facts, we shall carefully avoid erecting simple generalities into laws, and we shall thus have veritable philosophy, and true human science, because they will bear the imprint of both sexes.
2. Woman carrying her peculiar faculties into the arts and manufactures, will increasingly introduce therein art, perfection in details. Cultivated in the direction of her aptitudes, she will find ingenious methods of application of scientific discoveries.
3. Patient, gentle, good, more moral than man, she is the born educator of childhood, the moralizer of the grown man; the majority of the educational functions revert to her of right, and she has her assigned place in special instruction.
4. By her quick intuition and her acuteness of observation, woman alone can discover the therapeutics of nervous affections; her dexterity will render her valuable in all delicate surgical operations. On her should devolve the care of treating the diseases of women and children, because she alone is capable of fully comprehending them; she has her especial place in hospitals, not only for the cure of disease, but also for the execution and surveillance of the details of management and the care of the patients.
5. The presence of woman in judicial functions, as juror and arbiter, will be a guarantee of veritable human justice to all; that is, of equity.
Woman alone through her gentleness, her mercy, her sympathetic disposition, and her subtleness and observation, can comprehend that society has its share of culpability in every fault committed; for it should be organized to prevent wrong rather than to punish it. This point of view, especially feminine, will transform the penitentiary system and raise up numerous institutions. Then only will the world comprehend that the punishment inflicted on the guilty should be a means of reparation and regeneration; society will no longer slay its prisoners as if weak and fearful: it will amend the assassin instead of imitating him; it will force the thief to work to make restitution of what he has stolen; it will no longer believe that it has the right by imprisoning a criminal to deprive him of his reason, to drive him to despair, to suicide by solitary confinement; to deprive him completely of marriage; to couple him with those more corrupt than himself. Conscious of its own share of culpability, society will repair in penitentiaries the fault of its carelessness: it will be firm, yet kind and moralizing: it will give in them the education which it ought to have given outside, and will prepare work houses for the liberated convicts in order that the contempt and horror often shown toward them by men worse than they may not drive them to a second offence.
7. Woman, carrying into the social household her spirit of order and economy, her love of details and abhorrence of waste and foolish expense, will reform government: she will simplify everything; will suppress sinecures and the accumulation of offices, and will produce much from little instead of, like man, producing little from much: the purse of the tax-payers will not complain of the change.
8. Under the direct influence of woman as legislator, we shall have a reconstruction of all laws; first and before everything, we shall have preventive measures, a compulsory education; then the form of legal proceedings will be simplified, the civil code recast, and all laws concerning illegitimate children and the inequality of the sexes banished from it; the laws concerning morals will be more severe, and the penal code more rational and equitable.
By her administrative reforms born of the economical instinct of woman, taxes will be diminished; her abhorrence of blood and war will greatly reduce the fearful impost of blood-shed. Having a deliberative voice, and knowing, by her griefs and love the value of a man, it will be only from sheer necessity that she will consent to vote bevies of citizens for the shambles called wars: she will do this only when her country is menaced or when it is necessary to protect oppressed nationalities; in all other cases, she will employ the system of conciliation.
9. Woman, being much more economical and a better analyst than man, when thoroughly instructed, will soon perceive that nations, like individuals, differ in aptitudes, and that the end of these differences is union and fraternity through exchange of products: she will therefore deter her country from cultivating certain branches of the acts and manufactures in which other nations excel and which they can produce to better advantage; she will cure it of the foolish pretension of being sufficient unto itself, and will prevent it from sacrificing the interest of the mass of consumers to that of a few producers: thus the barriers and custom duties that separate the different organs of humanity will fall by degrees; there will be treaties of free trade, and all will be gainers by the cheapness of products, and the suppression of the expenses of maintaining a too often annoying department of customs.
The qualities and faculties of woman not only make her an educator, but assure her preponderance in all functions arising from social solidarity; she alone knows how to console, to encourage, to moralize with gentleness, to comfort with delicacy; she has the genius of charity; to her therefore should revert the superintendence and direction of hospitals and prisons for women, the management of charitable institutions, the care of abandoned children, etc. She should create institutions to furnish employment to workmen out of work, and to save liberated convicts from indolence and relapse into crime.
Thus, gentleman, without departing from the data of your theory, you behold woman placed everywhere by the side of man, except in the hard labor from which you yourselves will soon be released by machinery, and in the military institutions which, in all probability, will some day disappear.
Hitherto institutions, laws, sciences, philosophy have chiefly borne the masculine imprint; all of these things are only half human; in order that they may become wholly so, woman must be associated in them ostensibly and lawfully, consequently, she must be cultivated like you; culture will not make her like you, do not fear it; the rose and the carnation growing in the same soil, under the same sky, in the same sunshine, with the cares of the same gardener, remain rose and carnation: they are more beautiful in proportion as they are better cultivated, and as the elements which they absorb are more abundant: if man and woman differ, a similar education will only make them differ still more, because each will employ it in the development of that which is peculiar to himself.
For the interest of all things and people it is necessary that woman should enter all the avocations of life, that she should have her function in all the functions: after the general interest of humanity, comes that of the family; it cannot go before it.
Since woman now is generally mother and housewife while performing at the same time a host of other functions, she will become none the less so in taking upon herself a few more; besides, the time of life at which an individual enters certain important functions is that at which woman has finished her maternal task. A few women acting as public functionaries will not hinder the great majority of their companions from remaining in private life, any more than a few men in the same position hinder the mass of men from continuing there.
VI.
You admit a classification at last, you say, and still more you grant that there are masculine and feminine functions. You are mistaken, gentlemen: you accused me of being incapable of giving you a complete theory, I have given you the outlines of four—outlines which it would be easy for me to extend and perfect. But I do not admit a single one of these theories as a whole.
Are you eclectic, then?
The gods forbid! I have as much repugnance to eclecticism, as to mystic trinitarianism and androgyny.
I do not admit the theory of the identity of the sexes, because I believe with Biology that an essential organic difference modifies the entire being; that therefore woman must differ from man.
I do not admit the theory of the superiority of either sex, because it is absurd; humanity is man-woman or woman-man; we do not know what one sex would be if it were not incessantly modified by its relations with the other, and we know them only as thus modified: What we know to a certainty is that they form together the existing condition of humanity; that they are equally necessary and equally useful to each other and to society.
I do not admit my third theory because it is ultra-nominalism nominalism; if it is really true that all the individuals of both sexes differ among themselves in a far more remarkable manner than those of the other species, it is none the less true that a classification, founded upon a constant anatomical characteristic, is legitimate, and that the principle of classification lies in the nature of things, for if things appear to us classified, it is because they are so; the laws of the mind are the same as those of Nature so far as knowledge is concerned; we must admit this, unless we are sceptics or idealists, and I am neither the one nor the other; neither am I a realist in the philosophic acceptation of the word, for I do not believe that the species is something apart from the individuals in which it is manifested; it is in them and through them; this repeats the affirmation that there are individuals identical in one or several respects, although different in all others.
Lastly, I do not admit the fourth theory, although it may be true in principle, because the numerous facts that contradict the distinguishing characteristics, do not permit me to believe that these characteristics are laws established by sexuality.
In fact, there are brains of men in heads of women, and vice versa.
Men mobile and impressionable; women firm and insensible.
Women large, strong and muscular, lifting a man like a feather; men small, frail, and of extreme delicacy of constitution.
Women with a stentorian voice and abrupt manners; men with a soft voice and graceful manners.
Women with short, harsh hair, bearded, with rough skin and angular figures; men with long, silky hair without beard, round and portly.
Women with an energetic circulation of blood; men in whose veins it courses feebly and slowly.
Women frank, inconsiderate and daring; men strategic, dissembling and timid.
Women violent, loving strife, war and contention, and wont to storm on every occasion; men gentle, patient, dreading strife, and exceedingly timid.
Women loving abstract reasoning, generalizing and synthetizing much, and without intuition of any sort; men intuitive, acute observers, good analysts, incapable of generalizing.... I know many such.
Women insensible to works of art, and without the sentiment of the beautiful; men full of enthusiasm for both.
Women immoral, immodest, respecting nothing or no one; men moral, chaste and reverential.
Women extravagant and disorderly; men economical and parsimonious to avarice.
Women thoroughly selfish, rigid, disposed to take advantage of the weakness, kindness, folly or misery of others; men full of generosity, mansuetude, and self-sacrifice.
What follows from these undeniable facts? that the law of sexual differences is not manifested through the several characteristics which have been laid down.
That these characteristics may be only the result of education, of the difference of prejudices, of that of occupations, etc.
That, as these generalities may be the fruit of the difference of training and surroundings, nothing can be legitimately deduced from them as to the functions of woman; would it not be absurd, in fact, to pretend that a woman who is organized for philosophy and the sciences can not, ought not to occupy herself with them because she is a woman, while a man, who is incapable of them but foolish and vain enough to be ignorant of his incapacity, can and ought to engage in them because he is a man?
Functions belong to those who prove their aptitude for them, and not to an abstraction called sex, for, definitively, every function is individual in its aggregate or in its elements.
VII.
We have explained why we reject the theories that we have sketched; we will now explain why we neither give nor wish to give a classification of the sexes.
We do not give a classification, because we neither have nor can have one; the elements for its establishment are lacking. A biological deduction permits us to affirm that such a one exists; but it is impossible to disengage its law in the present surroundings; the veritable feminine stamp will be known only after one or two centuries of like education and equal rights: then there will be no need of a classification, for the function will fall naturally to the proper functionary under a system of equality in which the social elements classify themselves.
My belief and my hopes concerning the future, I shall not confess; for I may be in error, since I have no facts to control my intuitions, and everything that is purely Utopian has always a dangerous side. Besides have I not said that, had I formed a classification, I should not give it? Why not? Because, a detestable use would be made of it, as usual, if it were adopted.
Hitherto, have not men availed themselves of classifications based upon characteristics afterwards recognized as purely imaginary to oppress, distort and calumniate those banished to the inferior ranks?
History is at hand to give us this salutary lesson. Where is now to-day the ville-pedaille, the villains and base-tenants, fit only to drain ditches and to be stripped to the skin? Inventing, governing, making laws for, and gradually transforming our globe, devastated by the superior and only capable species, into a smiling and peaceful domain.
Upon all classification of the human species, whether in castes, in classes, or in sexes, are based three wrongs.
The first is to make it a crime in the individual degraded into the lower series, that he does not resemble the conventional type that has been formed of this series, while the so called superior being is not required to resemble his type; thus a weak, cowardly, unintelligent man, a man milliner or an embroiderer, is none the less a man, while a virago, a firm and courageous woman, a great queen, a woman philosopher are not women, but men whom none love and who are given over as a prey to wild beasts, jealous, effeminate men, to devour.
The second wrong is to take advantage of the conventional type to deform the being classed in the inferior series in order to kill his energies and to hinder his progress. Then, to attain this end, education, social surroundings are organized, prejudices are invented; and so successfully is this done in general that the oppressed, ignorant of himself, believes himself really of an inferior nature, resigns himself to his chains, and is even indignant at the rebellion of those of his series who are too energetic and individual not to react against the part to which social imbecility has condemned them.
The third wrong is to take advantage of the state of debasement to which the oppressed has been reduced, to calumniate him and deny his rights; men exclaim, Look! See the serf! see the slave! see the negro! see the workingman! see woman! What rights would you grant these inferior and feeble natures? They are incapable of knowing and ruling themselves: we must therefore think for them, wish for them, and govern them.
Ah no, gentlemen, these are not men and women; they are the deplorable results of your selfishness, of your frightful spirit of domination, of your imbecility.... If there were infernal gods, I should devote you to them relentlessly with all my heart. Instead of calumniating your fellows that you may preserve your privileges, give them instruction and liberty; then only will you have the right to pass judgment on their nature: for we can only know the nature of a human being when it has become freely developed in equality.
I think that I have justified my repugnance to give a classification of the sexes, both by the impossibility of actually establishing a reasonable one, and by the very legitimate fear of the bad use that would be made of it.
But it will be objected, and not without reason, that a classification is necessary for social practice.
I consent to it with all my heart, since I have reserved my positions, and proved the worthlessness of existing classifications.
As it is my principle that the function should fall to the functionary who proves his capacity, I say that at present, through the difference of education, man and woman have distinct functions; and that we must give to the latter the place that in general she deserves.
I add that it is a violation of the natural right of woman to form her with a view to certain functions to which she is destined; she should in all respects enjoy the rights common to all; it cannot rightfully be said to her any more than to man, “your sex cannot do that, cannot pretend to that;” if it does it and pretends to it, it is because the sex can do it and pretend to it; if it could not, it would not do it; the first right is liberty, the first duty, the culture of one’s aptitudes, the development of his reason and his power of usefulness: if a god should affirm the contrary, not conscience, but the god would speak falsely.
Let woman take the place therefore that is suited to her present development, but let her never cease to remember that this place is not a fixed point, and that she should continually strive to mount upwards until, her peculiar nature revealing itself through equality of education, instruction, right and duty, she takes her rightful place by the side of man and on a level with him.
Let her laugh at all the utopian follies elaborated concerning her nature, her functions determined for eternity, and remember that she is not what nature, but what subjection, prejudice, ignorance has made her; let her escape from all her chains, and no longer permit herself to be intimidated and debased.
Thus, gentlemen, all my ideas on the nature and functions of woman may be summed up in these few propositions:
I believe, because a physiological deduction authorizes me to do so, that general humanity common to both sexes is stamped by sexuality.
In fact, I know not, and you know no better than I, what are the true characteristics arising from the distinction of the sexes, and I believe that they can be revealed only by liberty in equality, parity of instruction and of education.
In social practice, functions should belong to those who can perform them: woman therefore should perform those functions for which she shows herself qualified, and society should become so organized that this may be possible.
What are these functions relative to her degree of present development? I will tell you directly.
LOVE; ITS FUNCTION IN HUMANITY.
I.
You tell the child that lies, “it is wrong to deceive; you would not wish others to deceive you.”
You tell the child that pilfers, “it is wrong to steal; you would not wish others to steal from you.”
You tell the child that takes advantage of his strength and knowledge to torment his younger companion; “you would not wish others to do these things to you; you are wicked and cowardly.”
These are good lessons. Why then, when the child has become a young man, do you say: Young men must sow their wild oats?
To sow their wild oats is to deceive young girls, to destroy their future, to practice adultery, to keep mistresses, to visit brothels.
Yet mothers, women thus consent to the profanation of their sex!
Those who forbade their child to steal a toy, permit him to steal the honor and repose of human beings!
Those who shamed their son for falsehood, permit him to deceive poor young girls!
Those who made it a crime in their son to oppress those weaker than themselves, permit him to be oppressive and perfidious toward women!
Then they complain later that their sons treat them ill; that they dishonor and ruin themselves;
That they desire the death of their parents, in order to enrich the usurers from whom they have borrowed money to maintain their mistresses in luxury.
They complain that they destroy their health, and give their mothers puny grandchildren, for whose existence they are in continual anxiety.
Ah! ladies, you have only what you deserve; bear the weight of a joint responsibility which you cannot escape. You authorized your sons to sow their wild oats; endure the consequences.
But a mother cannot be the confident of her son, it is said.
Why not, madam, if you have brought him up in such a way as to have no dishonorable confidence to make to you.
He would have none to make, if you had accustomed him to conquer himself, to respect every woman as though she were his mother, every young girl as though she were his sister; to treat others as he would think it right to be treated by them; if you had fully inculcated on him that there is but one system of morality, which both sexes are equally bound to obey; if you had caused him to honor, love and practice labor; if you had told him that we live to improve ourselves, to practise justice and kindness, and to render back to humanity what it does for us in protecting us, enlightening us, rendering us moral, surrounding us with security and comfort; that in fine our glory lies in subjecting ourselves to the great law of Duty.
If you had reared him in this manner, madam, on surprising in your son the first signs of the ardent attraction that man feels toward the other sex, far from abandoning the education of this instinct to the chances of inexperience, you would do for it what you did for the others; you would teach the young man to subject it to a wise discipline.
Instead of repeating the stupidly atrocious phrase; young men must sow their wild oats, you would have taken your son’s hand affectionately in your own, and, looking in his face, would have said: “My child, Nature decrees that a woman should henceforth attract you more strongly than I, and should maintain or destroy what I have so laboriously built up: I do not murmur at this; it must be so. But my affection and duty require me to enlighten you in this grave juncture. Tell me, if a young man, to satisfy the instinct which is now awakening in you, should corrupt your sister, should sacrifice her life, what would you think of him? what would you do?”
The young man, accustomed from childhood to practise Justice, would not fail to reply: “I should think him depraved and cowardly. Would he not be punished?”
“No, my son, the seducer is not punished by the law.”
“Well! I would kill him, for my right of justice reverts to me when the law makes no provision.”
“Right, my child. Then you will be neither depraved nor cowardly with respect to any young girl; you will not deserve the sentence which you have pronounced; namely, death. You will respect all young girls and women as you would wish your sister, your daughter to be respected.
“Another question: what would you think of a man who should persuade me to betray your father; who should rob him of my heart and cares; who should draw me aside from the grave duties of maternity? What would you think of the man who should act thus with respect to your own companion?”
“I would judge him like the former and would treat him no better.”
“Right again. Then you will respect all married women as you would wish your mother and your wife to be respected; and if you should meet any one towards whom you should feel attracted, or who should be disloyal enough to seek to attract you, you will shun her: for flight is the sole remedy for passion.
“A multitude of women, innocent at first, have been turned aside from the right path by men who do not think as you do. They now avenge themselves upon your sex for the evil it has done them. They corrupt and ruin men who, in their company, lose all sense of morality, who learn to laugh at what you believe and venerate, and undermine and destroy their health. Do you feel the deplorable courage to expose yourself to such risks?”
The young man, practised from childhood to subject his inclinations to reason and justice, would reply: “No, mother, I will not do what I would not wish my companion to do; I will neither degrade myself morally, nor destroy my health, nor contribute my share towards perpetuating a state of things which degrades the sex to which belongs my mother, my sister, my wife and my daughters, should I be so happy as to possess them.
“I acknowledge frankly that I foresee a violent struggle with myself, but, thanks to the moral training to which you have accustomed me, thanks to the ideal of destiny which you have given me, which I have accepted in the plenitude of my reason, and which my duty marks out for me, I do not despair of subduing myself.”—“This victory will be less difficult to obtain, if you employ yourself usefully and seriously; for you will thus attract your vitality to the superior regions of the brain. You will do wisely to add to this, much physical exercise; to abstain from too substantial a diet, and especially from stimulating drinks! you know the reaction of the physical upon the moral system. Carefully avoid licentious reading and improper conversation; give a place in your mind to the virgin who will be united to you; think and act as if in her presence; it will guard you and keep you pure. This sweet ideal will strengthen you against temptation, and contribute greatly to render you insensible towards those women who should have no place in your heart.”
“Love, my child, is a thing most serious in its results; for the beings whom it unites become modified by each other; it leaves its traces, however short may be its duration.
“Its end is Marriage, one of the ends of which is the continuity of the species. Now, you know the effects of solidarity of blood; it is most important therefore that you should choose for your companion a woman whose character, morals and principles are in unison with your own; not only for your happiness, but for the organization of your children, the harmony of their nature and conduct.
“If passion does not leave you sufficiently free in your judgment, come to me: I will see for you, and if I say: my son, this woman will debase you, will cause you to commit faults; be sure that your children will have evil propensities; she is not adapted to rear them according to your ideal, which she will never accept, because she is vain and selfish; if I tell you this, I know, my son, that whatever may be your suffering, you will renounce a woman whom you would cease to love after a few months’ union, and will prefer a transient sadness to a life of unhappiness.”
II.
The mother who has just shown her son why love should be subjected to Reason and Justice, and has pointed out to him what he should do to subdue its animal phase, perceives also the awakening of this instinct in her daughter. She wins her attention and gains her confidence by revealing to her what is passing within her heart, telling her that, at her age, she felt the same.
“Hitherto,” continues she, “you have been but a child; your career as a woman is now commencing. You desire the affection of a man, and your heart is moved at the sweet thought of becoming a mother. Do not blush, my daughter; it is lawful, on condition that your desires are made subject to Reason and the law of Duty.
“Many snares will be spread before your steps; for men of all ages address to a young girl innumerable flattering speeches, and surround her with homage which renders her vain and coquettish if she has the weakness to suffer herself to be intoxicated thereby. Persuade yourself fully that all this adoration is not addressed to you individually, but to your youth, to the brightness of your eyes, to the freshness of your complexion, and that, were you far better than you are and far superior in intellect, these men would be ceremoniously and frigidly polite, were you thirty years older. This thought present in your mind will make you smile at their frivolous and common-place jargon, and will preserve you from many weaknesses, such as rivalry of dress, petty jealousies, and the ridiculous blunder of playing the young girl at fifty.
“As you can espouse but one man, it is sufficient to be loved by one in the manner that you wish. A woman who comports herself voluntarily so as to captivate the hearts of many men, and leaves each to believe that she prefers him above all, is an unworthy coquette, who sins against Justice and Kindness: against Justice, inasmuch as she demands a sentiment for which she can make no return; as she acts towards others as she would think it unjust that others should act towards her; against Kindness, inasmuch as she risks causing suffering to sincere hearts and sacrificing their repose to a pleasurable impulse of vanity: such a woman, my child, is contemptible; she is a dangerous enemy of her sex; first, because she gives a bad opinion of it; next, because she is an enemy to the repose of other women; I know that you are too ingenuous, too true and too worthy to fear that you will fall into such errors.
“You have acknowledged to me that your young imagination had pictured to itself a man. Far from banishing this ideal, let it be always present to your mind, much less in its physical aspect than in that of intellect, morality and industry. This image will do more to keep you safe than all my counsels, than all the surveillance that I might, but never would exercise over you, because this would be unworthy of us both.
“Do not forget however that an ideal is absolute; that the reality is always defective; do not therefore seek in the man to whom you shall give your heart, a realization of the ideal, but the qualities and faculties which, with your aid, will permit him to approximate to what you wish to see him. You yourself are the ideal of a man, not such as you are, but such as he will aid you to become.
“I dwell upon this point, my daughter, because nothing is more dangerous than to insist on finding the ideal in the reality; this makes us over difficult and lacking in indulgence; and, if we have a lively imagination and little reason, renders us unhappy and involves us in innumerable errors.
You know and feel that the end of love is Marriage; now one of your duties as lover and spouse is the improvement of the one to whom you shall be united. You will stand with him in two different relations! first as his betrothed, afterwards as his wife. Your modifying power will, in the first case, be exercised in a direct proportion to his desire to please and to be worthy of you; in the second, in proportion to his confidence, esteem and affection for you. In the first case, he will wish to modify himself; in the second, he will do so without knowing it.”
“What, mother, will he not always love me the same?”
“Love, my child, undergoes transformations which we should expect and to which we should submit; in the beginning it is a fever of the soul; but fever is a condition which cannot last without destroying life. Your husband, while loving you perhaps more deeply, will love you less ardently than before Marriage. Your love will become transformed, why shall not his be the same?
“You cannot imagine how much trouble results from the ignorance of women on this point, and from the vain pursuit of the ideal in love. Many women, believing that their husband loves them no longer because he loves them in a different manner, become detached from him, suffer, and betray their duties; others, dreaming of perfection in the loved one, fancy that they have found it, and becoming disabused after the fever has past, quit him, accusing him of having deceived them; they love others with the same illusion, followed by the same disenchantment, until age creeps on without curing them of the chimera. Lastly, there are others who, comprehending only the first period of love, cease to love the man who has passed beyond it, and pursue another love which will bring them the same fever; these, as you comprehend, have not the slightest idea of woman’s grave duties in Love.
“What I have just said of women is equally true of men. You will avoid these dangers, my daughter, you who have been accustomed from childhood to submit to reason; who know that all reality is imperfect, that habit weakens sentiment, you will therefore take the man who suits you, as he is, designing to improve him and to render him happy, knowing in advance that his love will change without becoming extinguished, if you succeed in gaining his affection, confidence and esteem, so that he will find in you good counsel, peace, assistance and security. You are too pure, my daughter, to foresee all the snares that will be spread for you. It belongs to me therefore to arm your youthful prudence: You will perhaps encounter men married or betrothed who, according to the common expression, will pay court to you, and will utter innumerable sophisms to justify their conduct.”
“Their sophisms would fall to the ground before the simple answer: Sir, as I should be driven to despair if another woman should rob me of him whom I loved, as I should despise and hate her, all your compliments cannot persuade me that it is right for me to do what I would not that others should do to me. If you return to the subject, I shall inform the person interested.
“Right, my child: but if a young man who was free should speak of love, and urge you to write to him in secret?”
“Might he not have good reason for acting in this manner?”
“None, my child. You must know that men are exceedingly corrupt; that many among them eschew marriage, flit from one woman to another, take advantage of our credulity, and make use of the most impassioned language to lead us in the way of shame and perdition. Now, my child, know besides that we bear the weight of men’s faults as well as of our own; the verbal and written promises of a man bind him to nothing. If, suffering yourself to be led astray, you should become a mother, the child would remain your charge; and you could no longer hope for marriage; I say nothing of our grief and shame, nor of the terrible risks to which you would expose your brother, who might perish in punishing the vile seducer whom the law does not touch. If a man seeks you therefore unknown to us, be sure that it is because his intentions are evil; that he considers you as a toy which he purposes to break when it ceases to amuse him. Now, my daughter, you know that woman is created to be the worthy companion of man; that she is not born to be sacrificed to him as an object of pleasure. Instead therefore of suffering yourself to be seduced, profit by the influence over men which is given you by your beauty and grace, to recall them to their duties: in this manner, you may be the means of saving many women; you will give a favorable opinion of your sex, and will prepare a good example for your daughter by setting one to your companions, many of whom will follow it in order to share in the esteem that will surround you; always remember that our acts not only injure ourselves, but we have a joint responsibility with others, and consequently no one can be lost or saved alone.
“One word more, my child. In your uncertainties, do not hesitate to confide your troubles to me; do not say, My mother is too reasonable to understand me in this. Was it not by becoming a child again in order to comprehend you, that I fulfilled my sacred task of instructor? be persuaded that it will not be more difficult for me to become a young girl again in order to comprehend, while remaining a tender and experienced mother to advise you.
“You are free: I am not your censor, but your elder sister, who loves you with devotion and desires your happiness before all things. As a recompense for my love and my long-continued cares, I only ask to be your best friend; that is, the one in whose presence you will think and speak aloud. Is this asking too much of you, who are my joy and crown.”
This is the way, ladies, in which the woman who has attained majority, strives to educate the world in Love.
III.
The young girl and young man enter into society. The prudent mother knows that it is gently insinuated to her son that she is a prude, a dotard who knows nothing of the passions; who does not suspect that everything in nature is good, and should be respected; and who has read the history of our species to so little purpose that she has not perceived that humanity has love in all forms: the polygamic and polyandric, and even... the ambiguous.
She knows also, that he is told that the satisfaction of the animal instinct is necessary to the health of man, and that brothels are places of public utility.
She knows, lastly, that young and giddy girls, with lax principles, make dangerous confidences to her daughter.
It is time, in opposition to these lax doctrines and pernicious examples, to give to her children the philosophy of Love. According to her method, she suffers is to elucidate itself.
My son, says she, what is the end of the attraction of mineral molecules towards each other?
SON. The production of a body having a determined form.
MOTHER. What is the end of the attraction of the plant for heat, light, air, the elements which it absorbs?
SON. The production of its own body, the development of its organs, and of its properties, its preservation.
MOTHER. And do you know, my daughter, what is the end of the attraction of the pistil and stamens of the flower.
DAUGHTER. The production of a being resembling its parents.
MOTHER. Why do we as well as the animals experience an inclination or attraction for certain kinds of food?
SON. It is evidently in order to incite to action the organs which procure to the organism the elements adapted to produce blood.
MOTHER. Why do both sexes of the same species experience an attraction towards each other?
DAUGHTER. For the production of young to perpetuate the species.
MOTHER. Why do the females, and often males among animals experience an inclination or attraction to take care of the young?
DAUGHTER. In order to preserve them and to educate them as far as is in their power, that they may be able to provide for themselves.
MOTHER. Are you quite sure, my children, that the end of these attractions is not the attraction itself, the procurement of a pleasure?
SON. The pleasure seems to me only the means of impelling the being to fulfill a necessary or useful function. Thus the end of our scientific, artistic and industrial inclinations or attractions is not the pleasure which we take in their satisfaction, but the production of science, art and industry.
DAUGHTER. That is, the increase and progress of our intellect through the knowledge of the laws of Nature, in order to modify this nature with a view to our wants and pleasures.
MOTHER. To what inclination or attraction is Society due?
SON. To our attraction for our fellow beings.
DAUGHTER. This attraction is the father of Justice and of Goodness: it produces them.
MOTHER. Will you generalize the character of this inclination or attraction in accordance with what we have just said?
SON. The end of all attraction or inclination is the production, progress and preservation of beings.
MOTHER. Are all instincts good which are merely inclinations or attractions?
SON. For animals, which are subject to fatality, they are; because they tend directly to their end, without ever appearing to deviate from it. In our species, they are good in principle, if we regard their end; but they may become evil through the deviation to which our liberty subjects them.
MOTHER. By what token can we know that our instinct has a right tendency?
DAUGHTER. By comparing its use with its end; by assuring ourselves that this use is not prejudicial to the practice of justice, that it does not detract from the right of any of our faculties; that is, that it disturbs neither our individual harmony nor that of others; for it is on these conditions alone that it can coöperate in the realization of the social ideal.
MOTHER. Very well. Now apply this general doctrine to human love, my children.
SON. Since love is one of the forms of attraction, and since the general end of attraction is the production, progress and preservation of beings and species, it is evident that human love should possess these characteristics. Its principal function appears to me to be the reproduction of the species.
DAUGHTER. It seems to me, brother, that this is not enough; since true husbands and wives do not cease to love each other after this end has been fulfilled, and since persons may love without having children.
MOTHER. You are right, my daughter; our faculties being more numerous and more fully developed than those of the animals, our love cannot be incomplete like theirs; it cannot be of the same nature in our progressive species as in those species fatal and unprogressive of themselves. In us, each faculty, properly employed, aids in the improvement of all the rest, wrongly employed, it interrupts our harmony and lowers us; it is the same with our love. Or rather this passion is the one that most of all causes us to grow or to decline.
You know, my children, that humanity advances only by forming itself an ideal and endeavoring to realize it. Every passion has its ideal, which is modified by that of the whole. In the beginning, man, in the animal state, made the end of love the pleasure resulting from the satisfaction of a wholly physical want: he cared nothing for the most evident aim—progeny. A little later, man less gross, loved woman for her beauty and fruitfulness; this was the patriarchal age of love. Later still, the Northern races wrought a change in this instinct; love became decomposed, as it were; the lover possessed the love of the soul; the woman was loved not only for her beauty, but as the inspirer of lofty deeds; the husband was the possessor of the body alone and the children were the fruit of marriage; this was the chivalrous age of love. Since pacific labor has been organized and has gained a place in public opinion, love has entered a new phase; many among the moderns consider it as the initiative of labor. Some regard the attraction of pleasure as playing the chief part in industrial production, and leave full liberty to the attraction, however inconsistent it may be; others preserve the couple, and transform woman into the moving power of action; the love that she inspires excites the efforts of the worker.
The progress hitherto made by humanity is therefore that love has now for its end the perpetuation of the species, the modification of man by woman, and the production of labor.
In a higher ideal of Justice, the sexes being equal in rights, love will have a higher end; the spouses will unite on account of conformity of principles, union of hearts, wedding of intellects, common labor: love will join them to double their strength, to modify them by each other, from the friction of their hearts will be struck out sentiments which neither would have had alone; from the union of their intellects will be born thoughts which neither would have had alone; from the aid that they will lend each other in their common labor will proceed works that neither would have accomplished alone, as from the union of their whole being, will be born new generations more perfect than the preceding because they will be the product of the greatest possible harmony. It will be only when woman shall take her lawful place that humanity will see love in all its splendor, and that this passion, subversive to-day in inequality and incoherence, will become what it should be; one of the great instruments of Progress.
We, my children, who are too rational to mistake the means by which Nature impels us to accomplish her designs for the designs themselves, will take care not to fancy that the end of love is pleasure; on the other hand, we have too much respect for equality to imagine that it is for the benefit of one sex alone. We will remain faithful to the ideal of our lofty destinies, in defining love as the reciprocal attraction of man and woman with the end of perpetuating the species, of improving the partners mutually with respect to intellect and feeling, and of advancing science, art and industry by the labor of the pair.
IV.
Sophists have told you, my son, that all our inclinations are in Nature; that they are good and should be respected.
You asked them doubtless whether the inclinations to theft, to assassination, to violation, to anthropophagy, which are in Nature, are good, and why, instead of respecting them, society punishes their manifestation.
You demonstrated to them, I hope, that there is nothing commendable in the exaggeration or the perversion of instincts.
You demonstrated to them, I hope, that Nature is brutal fatality against which we are bound to struggle both within and without ourselves; that our Justice and virtue are composed only of conquests made over it in us, as all that constitutes our physical well-being is only the result of conquests made over it outside of us.
These sophists have told you that love comes and goes without our knowing how or wherefore; and that we can no more command it to spring up than to endure.
This is true, my son, of the brutal desires of the flesh, which is the passion of animals alone, and is extinguished by possession.
This is also true of that complex passion which has its seat in the imagination and the senses, and ends with the illusion that is always of short duration.
But it is not true of genuine love; this sees both the faults and the virtues of the loved one; but softens the first and exalts the last, and hopes by degrees to put an end to that which wounds it.
This sentiment which takes possession of the heart, is patient; it bears lest it become effaced, it surrounds itself with precautions in order to remain constant; if it becomes extinct, it is not unconsciously: for we suffer cruel tortures before resolving to cease to love.
You have been told that love is irrepressible; are we then beings of fatality? This sophism renders man cowardly and depraves him; for what is the use of struggling against what we know to be unconquerable, and why not sacrifice to it the best of our tendencies? Examine the conduct of the partisans of such a doctrine.
The human ideal requires that they shall not do to others what they would not think it just that others should do to them; yet they seduce maidens, make them mothers, and abandon them without caring about the children born of these unions; without caring whether the young mother commits suicide, dies of grief, or becomes depraved; without caring whether the parents go down to the grave.
Like deadly reptiles, they glide to the domestic fireside of others, rob their friend of the affection of his wife, and force him to labor for the children of adultery.
The woman who believes in irrepressible love breaks her pledges to her husband; lives a life of deceit; brings trouble and sorrow into the houses of other women, whose lives are blighted by her.
It is in this way that those who practice this sophistry fulfil their duty to be just, not to afflict their fellows, to labor for the happiness and improvement of those about them, to preserve the weak from oppression and wrong. To this pretended irrepressibility of love, they sacrifice Justice, goodness, the happiness, repose and honor of others; lead them into the path of dissipation; bring dissolution into the family and society; in a word, offer up as a sacrifice to animal instinct, moral sense and reason.
You have also been told that every species of love is found in Nature; the polyamic and polygandric, as well as that of the constant pair.
Yes, my child, every species of love is found in Nature, as is every species of vice and every species of virtue. But you know that it is not enough that a thing exists within us to prove it to be good; it must be in conformity with the ideal of our destiny, with our harmony: it is wrong in the opposite case.
Love, such as we have defined it, needs duration and equality; duration, because we do not become modified in a few months; because we do not accomplish great works in a few months; because we do not rear children in a few months; duration is so truly an aspiration of love, that it imagines that eternity will hardly suffice for it. It must have equality; division is hateful to it; it will therefore have a unit for a unit, both male and female. Now polygamy and polyandria are the negation of equality, of dignity in love.
Let us consider the effects of these two deviations of instinct.
Oriental polygamy renders human beings profoundly unequal, transforms women into cattle, mutilates thousands of men to guard the harems, depraves the possessor of women by despotism and cruelty, concentrates all his vitality upon a single instinct at the expense of intellect, reason and activity; whence it follows that he is lost to science, art, industry, society according to right: that he submits without repugnance to despotism, and passively extends his neck to the halter. There, no influence is wielded by woman, who is subjected to designed enervation, who is depraved in as hideous a manner as the eunuch, her keeper. Thus, inequality in love and in right, abandonment of art, science and industry, intellectual and physical enervation, debasement of the moral sense—such are vices inherent to the polygamy of the East. You see that this is far from the ideal of our destinies.
In our West, polygamy de facto produces the cattle of the brothel, legions of courtesans who ruin families. As many of these women are diseased, they infect those who associate with them with fearful maladies which undermine their constitutions, and thus pave the way for puny offspring, consequently, for weak minds and feeble intellects. I appeal for proof to the conscription; never were so many exemptions seen as now on account of under size, although the standard has been lowered, never were so many exemptions seen as now for constitutional imperfections and acquired disease.
To vitiate the generation in its germ is not the only crime of our polygamy; it enervates those who practice it, for nothing leads to excess, consequently to enervation, so much as the change of relations. On the other hand, our polygamists become transformed into machines of sensation; then intellect grows weak; they become stupid and selfish. Look at the pitiable young men of the present time, emaciated by their vices and by those of their sires; scoffers, faithless, jesting at the most sacred things, despising, not only the corrupt women, their worthy companions, but also the whole sex to which their mothers belong; look at them; so gross as to sicken the observer, nothing longer commands their respect; they thrust aside gray haired women from the sidewalk into the gutter; they are impertinent to old men; they put young girls to the blush with their cynical speeches; polygamy has rendered them ignoble, and has destroyed our native urbanity as well as all dignity.
They will tell you that women are but little better than they. But this result becomes inevitable in a country in which women are not kept in seclusion. Polyandria becomes the necessary companion of polygamy; for since men consider themselves at liberty to have more than one woman, why should women consider themselves forbidden to have more than one man?
Finally, my son, the results of irrepressible love, Polygamy and Polyandria in our Western country are:
The seduction and corruption of women;
Adultery, debasement of character; the moral and intellectual enfeebling of both sexes;
The enervation and degeneracy of the race;
Falsehood, deceit, cruelty, injustice of every kind, the use of woman by man for her beauty, that of man by woman for his money or position;
The dissolution and ruin of the family;
Several thousand illegitimate children annually, without counting abortions;
Such is the value of these theories put in practice.
Is this in conformity with our ideal of human love? Is it in conformity with our ideal of human destiny, which requires that we shall progress and cause others to progress in good; that we shall practice Justice and Goodness?
A word more, and we have done.
When Rome had ceased to believe in chastity, in the sacredness of oaths; when she wallowed in polygamic and polyandric customs; when she took pleasure for her end, tyranny appeared. Nothing was more natural: man binds captive those only who have first suffered themselves to be bound under the yoke of bestial instinct: he who knows how to govern himself does not yield obedience to man; he bows only before the law when it is the expression of Reason.
Remember, my son, that we are powerful only through chastity; only thus can we produce great works in science, art and industry; only thus can we practice Justice, be worthy of liberty. Outside of chastity, there is nothing but degradation, injustice, impotence, slavery; and every nation that forsakes it falls from the arms of despotism into the grave.
Do not suffer yourself therefore to be moved by modern sophisms, have always before your thoughts your obligations as a moral and a free being, your duties as a member of humanity; subject all that is within you to Reason, to Justice, to the sentiment of your dignity, and live like a man, not like a brute.
MARRIAGE, A DIALOGUE.
I
READER. We are about to speak of Marriage from the stand point of the modern ideal—how do you define it?
AUTHOR. Love, sanctioned by Society.
READER. Do you consider Marriage as indissoluble?
AUTHOR. Before the law, I do not; but at the moment of their union, the spouses should have full confidence that the bond will never be dissolved.
I believe that Marriage becomes indissoluble by the will alone of the spouses; that it can be so only in this manner.
READER. What part do you assign to Society in Marriage?
AUTHOR. You shall fix it yourself after recalling our principles.
If man and woman are free beings at any period of their life, they cannot legally and validly lose their liberty.
If man and woman are beings socially equal in any of their relations, the one cannot legally, validly be subordinated to the other.
If the continual end of the human being is to become perfected through liberty, and to seek happiness, no law can legitimately, validly turn him aside from its pursuit.
If the end of society should be to render individuals equal it cannot, under penalty of forfeiting its mission, constitute inequality of persons and of rights.
If Society cannot without iniquity enter the domain of individual liberty, it cannot lawfully, validly prescribe duties that pertain only to the jurisdiction of the conscience, and annul moral liberty.
Now draw your conclusions.
READER. From these principles, it follows that man and woman should remain free and equal in Marriage; that Society has no right to intervene in their association except to render them equal; that it has no right to prescribe to them duties which proceed only from love, nor consequently to punish their violation, that it cannot in principle grant or refuse divorce, because it belongs to the husband and wife alone to know whether it is useful for their happiness and progress to be separated from each other.
AUTHOR. Your conclusions are right, but if Society has no right over the body or the soul of the husband and wife in their capacity of spouses, if it cannot without abuse of power interfere in any of their intimate relations, it is its right and duty to intervene in Marriage as regards interests and children.
READER. In fact, in the union of the sexes, there is not merely an association of two free and equal persons, but also a partnership of capital and labor; then, from the marriage, children are born for whose education, occupation and subsistence it is necessary to provide.
AUTHOR. Now, the general protection of material interests and of the rising generation devolves of right upon Society. In the sight of the law, the husband and wife ought to be regarded only as partners, engaging to employ a certain share of capital, together with their labor, for a definite purpose. Society takes note only of a contract of interests, the execution of which it guarantees like that of any other contract, and the breach of which it makes public, should it take place by the wish of the parties interested. On the other hand, the education of the rising generation is a question of life and death to Society. The children being free with respect to development, and liable to be useful or injurious to their fellow citizens according to the training which they have received, society has a right to watch over them, to secure their material support, their moral future, to fix the age of marriage, to entrust the children to the more deserving parent in case of separation, and if both are unworthy, to take them away entirely.
READER. Do you not go a little too far; on the one hand, do not children belong to their parents, on the other, may not Society err with respect to the choice of the principles to be instilled in them?
AUTHOR. Children do not belong to their parents because they are not THINGS: to those who obstinately persist in believing them property, we say that Society has the right of dispossession for the public good. Then the social right over children is limited so far as principles are concerned to those of morality. Society has no right over religious beliefs which belong to the domain of spiritual jurisdiction. The power that should take away children from their parents because they were not of a certain religious faith would be guilty of despotism, and would merit universal execration. If you say that Society has no right to impose a dogma upon children, you speak truly; but I cannot conceive how you can entertain the thought of forbidding it the right to teach them, even against the will of their parents, enlightening science, purifying morality. Is it not the duty of society to secure the progress of its members, and can any one have a right to keep a human being in ignorance and evil?
READER. You are right, and I condemn myself. Let us return to Marriage. I see with pleasure that you differ in opinion from a number of modern innovators who deny the lawfulness of social interference in the union of the sexes.
AUTHOR. If the union were without protection, who would suffer by it? Not men, but rather women and children.
No one can compel a man to live with a woman whom he has ceased to love; but he must be constrained to fulfill his duties with respect to the children born of this union, and to keep his business engagements: in wronging his companion and escaping from the burdens of paternity, he takes advantage of his liberty to the detriment of others: Society has a right to prevent this.
READER. So you do not grant to Society the right of binding souls or bodies; but that of guaranteeing the contract of Marriage, and the obligations of the spouses towards their future children; of forcing them, in case of separation, to fulfill this last obligation?
AUTHOR. Yes; thus in case of the rupture of the marriage tie, society has only to state publicly the responsibilities of the spouses, the number of children, and the name of the parent on whom their guardianship devolves, either by mutual consent or by social authority. And in confining itself to this part, Society would do more to prevent the separation of married couples than by all that it has hitherto foolishly invented for the purpose. The parties would be free to marry again; but what woman would be willing to unite herself to a man who was burdened with several children, or who had treated his first companion unkindly? What man would consent to wed a woman in the same position?
Do you not think that the difficulty that would be experienced in contracting a new marriage would be a curb on the inconstancy and bad conduct that lead to a rupture?
READER. I believe indeed that marriage, as you understand it, would have more chances of duration than ours: first, because it is our nature to cling most closely to that which we may lose. I have often asked myself why many men remain faithful to their mistresses and treat them kindly, while they are disrespectful and unfaithful to their wives; I have asked myself also why many couples who had long lived happily together when voluntarily united, were unhappy and often driven to a legal separation when they had finally married; and the only reason that I have been able to find is that we set the most value on that which we know may escape us. Man has more respect for a woman who is not his legal property, his inferior, than for her who is thus transformed by the law. Notwithstanding, it must be acknowledged that your ideas appear eccentric.
AUTHOR. Yet they are nothing more than an application of our laws; indeed, do they not decree that covenants can have things only, not persons for their object. That Society does not recognize vows, and that proceedings cannot be instituted against their violation?
Now the existing law of marriage alienates one of the partners in favor of the other; the wife belongs to the husband; she is in his power. What is such a contract, if not the violation of the principle which affirms that no covenant can be made involving persons? can it be more lawful to alienate one’s person by a contract of slavery?
Some say that we are at liberty to dispose of our freedom as we choose, even though it be to renounce it. Indeed, we may do this, as we may commit suicide, but to make use of our liberty to renounce it or to commit suicide is much less to use aright than to violate the laws of moral or physical nature; these are acts of insanity which we should pity, but which we are not at liberty to erect into a law.
Why does Society refuse to recognize vows and to punish their violation, if not because it admits that it is forbidden to penetrate into the jurisdiction of the conscience? if not because it does not admit that an individual may alienate his moral and intellectual being any more than his body, and devote himself to immobility when it is his duty, on the contrary, to go forward?
I ask then if this same Society is not inconsistent in exacting perpetual vows from the husband and wife, in exacting from the wife a vow of obedience, a tacit vow to deliver up her person to the desires of the husband?
Is not the moral liberty of the spouses as worthy of respect as that of nuns, priests and monks?
Have married persons more right in Nature and Reason, to alienate their moral and intellectual being, their liberty and their person than the celibates of the Church?
Another inconsistency of the law is that it declares Marriage an association; the contract of Marriage is therefore a contract of partnership. Now I ask whether, in a single contract of this kind, it is enjoined by law on one of the partners to obey, to be subjected to a perpetual minority, to be absorbed?
I doubt not that the law would declare such a contract between independent partners void; why then does it legalize such a monstrosity in the partnership of husband and wife? It is a relic of barbarism, as you will see if you reflect on it.
READER. I hope that, through reason and necessity, the law will be reformed sooner or later: but a reformation which will not take place is that of the forms of religious marriage, which prescribe to the spouses the same oaths as the code, and like it, subject the wife to the husband.
AUTHOR. Well, what matters it to us, since, thanks to liberty, the religious marriage is merely a benediction with which we can dispense. Those who have a disposition to go to the Church, the Temple, or the Synagogue should have full liberty to receive the blessing of their respective priests! this does not concern Society. What we need is that, if afterward their vows should not seem to them binding, social authority should not make them obligatory; they have a right to be absurd, but society has no right to impose absurdity on them. Its duty is, on the contrary, to enlighten them, and to render them free.
II.
READER. Those who subordinate woman in marriage rest on the assertion that unity of direction, consequently a ruling power, is needed in the family; now, your theory evidently destroys this ruling power.
AUTHOR. What is the ruling power? Practically, it is manifested through the function of government. Formerly, it was based upon two principles, now recognized as radically false: Divine right and inequality. It was the right of those who exercised it to call themselves kings, autocrats, priests, men; it was the duty therefore of the people, the church, woman to obey the elect of God, their superiors by the grace of right delegated from on high.
But in modern opinion, the ruling power is nothing more than a function delegated by the parties interested in order to execute their will.
It is not our business to inquire here whether this modern interpretation has become incarnated in facts; whether the old principle is not still struggling with the new; whether the holders of political and familial authority are not still making insane pretensions to divine right; we have only to show what the notion of the ruling power has become in the present state of thought and feeling.
What will be the ruling power in marriage, in accordance with modern opinion, if not the delegation by one spouse to the other of the management of business and of the family—a delegation of function; no longer a right?
And if man and woman are socially equal in principle, if the aptitudes, upon which all functions are based, are not dependent on sex, by what right does society interfere to give the authority either to the husband or the wife?
If there is need of a ruling power in the household, are not the parties themselves best capable of bestowing it on the one who can best and most usefully exercise it?
But among partners, is there really room for a ruling power? No, there is room only for division of labor, mutual understanding with respect to common interests. To consult each other, to come to an agreement, to divide the tasks, to remain master each of his own department; this is what the spouses should do, and what they do in general.
The law has so little part in our customs that to-day things happen in this wise: many rich women translate two articles of the Code as follows; the husband shall obey his wife, and shall follow her wherever she sees fit to dwell or sojourn. And the husbands obey, because it would not do to offend a wife with a large dowry; because it would make a scandal to thwart their wife; because they need her, being unable, without dishonoring themselves, to keep a mistress.
Husbands in the great centres of population escape obedience through love outside of marriage; they lay no restrictions on their part; Madame is free.
Among the working classes of the citizens and the people, it is practically admitted that neither shall command, and that the husband shall do nothing without consulting his wife and obtaining her consent.
In all classes, if any husband is simple enough to take his pretended right in earnest, he is cited as a bad man, an intolerable despot whom his wife may hate and deceive with a safe conscience; and it is a curious fact that the greater part of the legal separations are for no other cause at the bottom than the exercise of the rights and prerogatives conceded to the husbands by law.
I ask you now, what is the use of maintaining against reason and custom, an authority which does not exist, or which is transferred to the spouse condemned to subjection.
READER. On this point, I am wholly of your opinion; not a single woman of modern times takes the rights of her husband in earnest. But your theory not only attacks his authority; it also wages war against the indissolubility of marriage, which it is affirmed, is necessary to the dignity of this tie; to the happiness and future of the children, to the morality of the family.
AUTHOR. I claim, on the contrary, that my theory secures, as far as is humanly possible, the perpetuity and purity of marriage. At present, when the knot is tied, the spouses, no longer fearing to lose each other, find in the absence of this fear the germ of a mutual coolness; they may quarrel, be discourteous or unfaithful to each other; there will be scandal, a legal separation perhaps, but they are riveted together; they can never become strangers. Contrast with this picture a household in which the bond is dissoluble; all is changed; the despotic or brutal husband represses his evil propensities, because he knows that his companion, whom after all he loves, would quit him and transfer to another the attentions she lavishes on him; and that no honest woman would be willing to take her place.
The husband disposed to be unfaithful would continue in the path of duty, because his abandonment and offences would alienate his wife, blast his reputation, and prevent him from forming an honorable alliance.
The worn out profligate would no longer espouse the dowry of a young girl, because he would know that, promptly disenchanted, the young wife, instead of having recourse to adultery, would break the ill assorted union.
The woman who should take advantage of her dowry, of the necessity of her husband to remain faithful, to tyrannise over him, would fear a divorce which would throw the blame on her and condemn her to a life of solitude.
A shrewish wife would no longer dare to inflict suffering on her husband, or a coquette to deceive or torment him; who would marry them after a separation?
Do you not see that free marriages are happier and more lasting than any others?
Have you not yourself admitted that to separate the parties in these unions, it often suffices to join them legally?
I know myself of a voluntary union that was very happy during twenty-two years, and was dissolved by separation at the end of three years of legal marriage; I have known of many others of a shorter duration which legality contributed to dissolve instead of rendering eternal.
You would hardly believe how many married couples reformed in their treatment of each other in 1848, when they feared that the law of divorce might be accepted. If the simple expedient of divorce has power to produce good results, what may not be expected from a rational law.
We need only to reflect in order to comprehend that voluntary dissolubility, without social intervention, would render unions better assorted, for it would be for one’s interest, for his own reputation, to enter into them only with the moral conviction of being able to preserve them; then only would no excuse be found for infidelity; loyalty would make part of the relations of the spouses. The law of perpetuity has perverted everything, corrupted everything; on the side of the woman, it favors, yes, necessitates stratagem; on the side of the man, it favors brutality and despotism; it provokes on both sides adultery, poisoning and assassination; and leads to those separations which are daily increasing in number, and which, by giving the lie to the indissolubility of marriage, place the partners in a painful and perilous situation, and bring in their train a host of irregularities.
In fact, if the spouses are separated while young, concubinage is their refuge. The man in this false position finds many to excuse him; but the woman is forced to conceal herself, to tremble at the thought of a pregnancy and to make it disappear. Legal separation leads the spouses not only to concubinage, to mutual hatred, but causes the birth of thousands of children whose future is compromised, destroyed by the fact of their illegitimacy. Let the spouses be free in accordance with their right, and all will fall into its proper order, for all will be done openly and truly.
READER. But the future of the children?
AUTHOR. The morality of the children is better insured under the system of liberty than under that of indissolubility, for they will not be witnesses for years of the bitter contention and licentiousness which now render them deceitful and vicious, and inspire them with contempt or hatred for one of the authors of their being, sometimes of both, when they do not take them for models; if life in common becomes impossible to the parents, which will be more rare under the law of liberty, the children will not be subjected to the power of those who violate the law of received morality; they may see these parents contract a new alliance as now, but this alliance will be honored by all.
From these unions children may be born as now, but these children, instead of being cast into the hospital, will share with the first the affection and inheritance of their father or mother. The so-styled legitimate children will lose in fortune, it is true; but they will gain in good examples; many children who are now in the category of the illegitimate will be ranked among the former, and will be no longer condemned by desertion to die young, or else to grovel in ignorance, vice and misery; to see their brow branded with the fault of their parents as of their own by a host of imbeciles and men without heart, who have no other guarantee for what they call their legitimacy than the presumption accorded them by the law.
III.
READER. It will be long yet, perhaps, before collective Reason comprehends liberty in the union of the sexes as you do, and men will ascribe to themselves the right not only of binding the interests, but the souls and bodies of the spouses.
AUTHOR. As far as we can foresee, Society must necessarily? pass through two stages to realize our opinion; it must first grant divorce for a declared cause; later it will grant divorce decreed in private on the petition of one or both of the spouses. We will not take up this last form of the rupture of the conjugal tie, but that which is nearest us—divorce for a declared cause.
What are the reasons which you would consider valid for a petition for divorce?
READER. First, those which now give rise to separation from bed and board: adultery of the wife, cruelty, grave abuses, condemnation of one of the spouses to punishment affecting the liberty or person, the fraudulent management of the property by the husband; next, infidelity of the husband, qualified adultery, incompatibility of temper, notable vices, such as drunkenness, gaming, etc.
AUTHOR. Very well; these causes suffice.
READER. During the proceedings for divorce, the wife should be as free as the husband. The child that should be born to her after more than ten months’ separation should be reputed natural, even though the divorce had not been pronounced; and should bear her name and inherit from her like one of her legitimate children.
AUTHOR. Who should take custody of the children and the property during the proceedings?
READER. The court should decide who should have the care of the children, in accordance with the causes for the petition for divorce and the testimony of the parents, friends and neighbors.
AUTHOR. But if the spouses ask to be divorced only on account of incompatibility of temper, and are both honorable?
READER. They should be requested to agree mutually either to share the children, or to entrust them to one of the two, or to give the younger children to the mother, leaving the sons over fifteen to the father. The court, besides, should appoint from the family of the mother, a guardian to watch over the conduct of the father towards the children left in his care; and from the family of the father, a similar guardian to the mother and the children remaining with her. This guardianship, which should be strictly moral, should continue till the children had attained majority.
AUTHOR. And in case the parents should be alike unworthy?
READER. In such a case, which would seldom happen, the judge, in behalf of society, should deprive them of the custody of the children, and entrust it to a member of the family of one of the parents, appointing a guardian to watch over his conduct and protect the interests of his ward from the family of the other.
AUTHOR. Very well; I see with pleasure that you are cured of the erroneous belief that the children belong to the parents, and that you comprehend the high function of society as the protector of minors.
During the suit for divorce, who shall have the control of the property?
READER. If the contract has been made under the system of separation of property, and for paraphernalia, there is no need of putting the question; each one will manage his own.
But I am somewhat puzzled how to answer you in case of communion of goods, or in case the capital is embarked in a common business, carried on solely by one of the parties. The present law does not seem to me sufficiently to protect the interests of the wife in case of separation.
AUTHOR. Without entangling ourselves in a host of individual cases which modify or contradict each other, let us provide that in case of communion of goods, the administration of the property shall be taken from the spouse holding it if the petition for divorce be based on his bad management, his dissipated habits, or his condemnation to a penalty affecting his liberty or person; that in all other cases, he shall make an inventory of the property and the condition of the business; and a person shall be appointed from the family of the spouse excluded from the management to watch over the conduct of the spouse to whom it is entrusted, who shall be bound to pay alimony to the other until the divorce shall be decreed.
READER. And if there is no fortune?
AUTHOR. Until the spouses become strangers, they owe assistance to each other: the court should therefore require the spouse that earns the more to aid the other.
READER. How long a time should elapse between the admission of the petition and the judgment of divorce?
AUTHOR. A year, in order that the parties may have time for reflection.
READER. The divorce being granted, and the ex-partners restored to liberty, would you permit them to marry others?
AUTHOR. Most assuredly; else what signifies our arguments against separation?
READER. What! the adulterous and brutal spouse, he who has inflicted suffering on his partner, who has been wholly in the wrong, should enjoy like the other the privilege of marrying again? I confess that this shocks me.
AUTHOR. Because you are not sufficiently imbued with the doctrines of liberty and the sentiment of right. Marriage is the natural right of every adult; society has no right therefore to prohibit it or to make it a privilege; on the other hand, in every divorce, there is wrong or the lack of something on either side with respect to the other; the man or woman who commits adultery may be a model of fidelity to a partner better suited to his or her temperament and disposition; he who has been brutal and violent may be wholly different with a wife possessing a different character; in short, we repeat, to prohibit marriage is to permit libertinism, and it is not the interest of society to pervert itself. Both partners therefore should have a right to marry, but the law should take care that all should be informed of the burdens resting upon them by reason of their first marriage, and know that they are divorced. Consequently, society has a right to publish the bill of divorce, and to require that the parties divorced should provide for the necessities of their minor children, and that the bill of divorce, joined to the one setting forth this obligation, should accompany the publication of the bans of a new marriage; in this, there is neither injustice nor abuse of power; for each one will submit to the consequence of what he has done in perfect freedom.
READER. And would you not fix the number of times that a divorced person might re-marry?
AUTHOR. Why fix it? do you fix the number of times that a widow or widower may marry again?
READER. But a libertine, a bad man might marry ten times, and thus render ten women unhappy.
AUTHOR. What are you talking of! do you seriously believe that there would be a woman insane enough to marry a man nine times divorced, a man obliged to accompany the publication of his bans with nine bills of divorce, with nine judgements compelling him to pay so much yearly for the support of seven, eight or nine children. Do you seriously believe that a woman would consent to become the companion of such a man! This man might indeed marry twice—but three times! do you think that it would be possible?
READER. You are right, and on reflection, the measures which you advocate appear perhaps severe.
AUTHOR. I know it; but our aim is not to favor divorces nor subsequent unions; but, on the contrary, to prevent the former as far as possible by the difficulties of forming the latter. Now for this it is not necessary to restrict the liberty of the individual, but to render him responsible for his acts, and to rivet the chain that he has forged for himself in such a manner that he can neither cast it aside nor lay the burden of it on others unless they are duly warned of it and consent thereto.
IV.
READER. Ought society to permit unions disproportioned in age? Is it not to expose a woman to adultery, to marry her at seventeen or eighteen to a man of thirty, forty or even fifty years of age? What harmony of sentiments and views can exist at that time between the spouses? The wife sees in her husband a sort of father, whom notwithstanding she can neither love nor respect like a father, and she remains a minor all her life.
AUTHOR. These unions are very prejudicial to woman and the race, and they would be for the most part averted, if the law should fix the marriageable age at twenty-four or twenty-five for both sexes. At seventeen, we marry to be called Madame, and to wear a bridal dress and a wreath of orange flowers; we certainly should not do this at twenty-five.
If the flower is not called on to form its fruit until it is fully matured, neither should man and woman: now, in our climate the organization of neither is complete until twenty-four or twenty-five.
Woman gives more to the great work of reproduction and wears out faster in it; to render her liable to become a mother prematurely is therefore to expose her to greater sufferings.
In the first place, she is forced to share between herself and her offspring the elements necessary to her own nutrition, which weakens both her and the child.
Her development is checked, her constitution is changed, she becomes predisposed to uterine affections, and runs the risk of becoming an invalid at the age when she ought to enjoy robust health.
The enervation of the body brings with it that of the mind: the woman becomes nervous, irritable, and often capricious; she cannot nurse her children; she will not be capable of rearing them properly, she will make dolls of them, and will favor the development of faults which afterwards becoming vices, will afflict the family and society.
This woman, a mother before her time, not only will never become the thoughtful companion and counsellor of her husband who, being much older than she, will amuse himself with her as with a child, but will be his ward for her whole life, and will have recourse to artifice to have her own way. Thus to weaken woman in every respect, to shorten her life, to put her under guardianship, to prepare the way for puny and badly reared offspring,—such are the most obvious results of her precocious marriage.
To hold women in voluntary subjection and to organize the harem among us, we need only take advantage of the permission of the law authorising their marriage at the age of fifteen.
That woman may not be in subjection; that she may be able to become a mother without detriment to her health and under circumstances favorable to the good organization of her children; that she may be a worthy and earnest wife, prepared to fulfill all her duties, she must not be married, I repeat, before twenty-four or twenty-five; and she must not marry a man older than herself.
READER. But it is claimed that the husband ought to be ten years older than the wife, because the latter grows old faster, and because it is necessary that the husband should have had experience in life in order to appreciate his wife and to render her happy.
AUTHOR. Errors and prejudices all. Woman grows old sooner than man only through premature marriage and maternity; a well preserved man and woman are alike old at the same age. But the woman consents to grow old while the man is much less willing to do so, since he does not blush when gray haired, to marry a young girl, and to set up the ridiculous pretention of being loved by her for love. Men must be broken of the habit of believing themselves perpetually at the age of pleasing; of imagining that they are quite as agreeable to our eyes when they are old and ugly as if they were Adonises. They must be told unceasingly that what is unbecoming in us is equally so in them; and that an old woman would be no more ridiculous in seeking the love of a young man, than an old man in pretending to that of a young girl.
The husband and wife should be nearly of the same age; first, to treat each other more easily as equals; next, because there will be more harmony in their feelings and views, as well as in their temperaments, all things very necessary to the organization of children.
It is necessary besides, in order that the woman may not be tempted to infidelity; you know how many troubles arise from unions disproportioned in age.
The husband must have seen life, it is said; this is the opinion of those who permit their sons to sow their wild oats; who believe that man is at liberty to wallow in the mire of dens of infamy, and that there are two kinds of morality. We do not belong to this class. You would not give your daughter to a man who had seen life, because he would be blasé, because he would pervert her or expose her, through the disenchantment that would follow, to seek in another what she did not find in her husband.
What we have said as regards your daughter applies also to your son; he must not marry a woman younger than himself; for you would no more desire a disadvantageous position for your daughter-in-law than for your daughter; both are dear to you and worthy of respect before the solidarity of sex.
READER. I shall educate my son to comprehend that the form of marriage prescribed by the Code is merely a relic of barbarism, that his wife owes obedience only to Duty, that she is a free being and his equal; and that he has no rights over her person but those which she herself accords to him. I shall tell him that love is a tender plant which must be tended carefully to keep it alive; that it is blighted by unceremoniousness and slovenliness; that he should therefore be as careful of his personal appearance after marriage as he was to be pleasing to the eyes of his betrothed. I shall say to him: ask nothing except from the love of your wife; remember that more than one husband has excited repulsion by the brutality of the wedding night. Marriage, my son, is a grave and holy thing; purity is its choicest jewel; know that many men have owed the adultery of their wife to the deplorable pains that they have taken to deprave her imagination. Far from using your influence over her who will be the half of yourself in order to render her docile to your wishes, and to make her your echo, develop reason and character in her; in elevating her, you will become better, and will prepare for yourself a counsel and stay. I have married you under the system of separation of goods in order that your wife may be protected against you, should you depart from your principles; and should you ever grieve me by straying from them, your wife will became doubly my daughter. I shall be her companion and consoler, and shall close my arms and my doors on you.
AUTHOR. Right, and you will do well to add: interest your wife in your occupation; take care that she is always busy, for labor is the preserver of chastity.
READER. To my daughter I will say: the social order in which we live requires, my child, that you shall superintend your house; the state of Society is still far distant in which our sex will be relieved from this function. Do not forget that the prosperity of the family depends on the spirit of order and economy of the wife. What your fortune or special business exempts you from executing, superintend and direct. Extravagance of dress and furniture now surpasses all bounds. Luxury is not wrong in itself, but in the existing state of things, it is a great relative evil, for we have not yet resolved the problem of increasing and varying products without at the same time increasing the wretchedness and debasement of their producers. Be simple therefore: this does not exclude elegance, but only those piles of silks and laces which trail in the dust of the streets, those diamonds and precious stones which make the fortune of the few at the expense of the morality of the many, and which are only dead capital, the liberation of which would be productive of great good. Do not suffer yourself to be ensnared by the sophism that honest women must adorn themselves to hinder men from passing their time with courtesans. Would you not be ashamed to compete in dress with women whom you do not esteem, and would the man who could be retained by such means be worth the trouble?
I have instructed you in your legal position as wife, mother and property holder; I marry you under the system of separation of goods in order to spare your husband the temptation of regarding himself as your master; in order that he may be obliged to take your advice and to look upon you as his partner. Despite these precautions, you will be a minor, since the law thus decrees. But our law is not Reason: never forget that you are a human being; that is, a being endowed like your husband with intellect, sentiments, free will, and inclination; that you owe submission only to Reason and your conscience; that if it is your duty to make sacrifices to the peace in little things, and to tolerate the faults of your husband as he should tolerate yours, it is none the less your duty resolutely to resist a brutal—I will have it so.
You will be a mother, I hope; nurse your children yourself, rear them in the principles of Right and Duty which I have instilled into your intellect and heart, in order to make of them, not only just, good, chaste men and women, but laborers in the great work of Progress.
You understand the great destiny of our species; you understand your rights and duties; I need not therefore repeat to you that woman is no more made for man than man for woman; that consequently woman cannot, without failing in her duty, become lost and absorbed in man; for with him, she should love her children, her country, humanity; she owes more to her children than she does to him; and if forced to choose between family interests and generous sentiments of a higher order woman should no more hesitate than should man to sacrifice the former to justice.
AUTHOR. It will be said that you instruct your daughter in a very manly way.
READER. Since in our days men play the mandolin, is it not necessary that women should speak seriously? Since men, in the name of their naïve selfishness, claim the right to confiscate woman to their use, to extol to her the charms of the gyneceum, to suppress her rights, and to preach to her the sweets of absorption, must not women re-act against these soporific doctrines, and recall their daughters to the sentiment of dignity and individuality.
AUTHOR. I endorse you with all my heart!
Now that we are nearly agreed on all points, we have only to sum up what we have said, and to give an outline of the principal reforms necessary to be wrought in order that woman my be placed in a position more in conformity with Right and Justice.
SUMMARY OF PROPOSED REFORMS.
I.
AUTHOR. Identity of right being based on identity of species, and woman being of the same species as man, what ought she to be before civil dignity, in the employment of her activity and in marriage?
READER. The equal of man.
AUTHOR. How will she become the equal of man in civil dignity?
READER. When she shall hold a place on the jury and by the side of all civil functionaries; shall be a member of boards of trade and mercantile associations; and shall be a witness in all cases in which the testimony of man is required.
AUTHOR. Why ought the testimony of woman to be admitted in all cases in which that of man is required?
READER. Because woman is as credible as man; because she is, like him, a civil personage.
AUTHOR. Why ought woman to have a place on the jury?
READER. Because the Code declaring her the equal of man as regards culpability, misdemeanor, crime and punishment, she is thus declared capable like him of comprehending wrong in others;
Because the jury being a guarantee for the male culprit, the female culprit should have a similar guarantee;
Because if the male criminal is better comprehended by men, the female criminal will be better comprehended by women;
Because society in its aggregate being offended by the crime, it is necessary that this society, composed of two sexes, should be represented by both to judge and to condemn it. Because, lastly, where the moral sense is concerned, the feminine element is the more necessary inasmuch as men claim that our sex is in general more moral and more merciful than their own.
AUTHOR. Why ought woman to hold a place among civil functionaries?
READER. Because society, represented by these functionaries, is composed of two sexes;
Because even now in a number of public functions, there is a department more especially belonging to woman;
Because, in the ceremony of the marriage celebration for instance, if woman does not appear as magistrate, not only is society insufficiently represented, but the wife may regard herself as delivered up to the power of a man by all the men of the country.
AUTHOR. Why ought woman to have her place in boards of trade and mercantile associations?
READER. Because she shares equally in industrial production;
Because she shares equally in commerce;
Because she understands business transactions and contracts as well if not better than man;
Because, in all questions of interests, she should be her own representative.
AUTHOR. When will woman become the equal of man in the employment of her activity and of her other faculties?
READER. When she shall have colleges, academies and schools for special instruction, and when all vocations shall be accessible to her.
AUTHOR. Why ought women to receive the same national education as men?
READER. Because they exercise a vast influence over the ideas, sentiments and conduct of men, and because it is for the interest of society that this influence should be salutary;
Because it is for the interest of all to enlarge the views and elevate the sentiments of women, in order that they may use their natural ascendency for the advancement of progress, of truth, of good, of moral beauty;
Because woman has a right, like man, to cultivate her intellect, and to acquire the knowledge bestowed by the state;
Because, lastly, as she pays her part of the expenses of national education, it is robbery to prohibit her from participating in it.
AUTHOR. Why ought woman to be admitted to academies and professional schools?
READER. Because Society, not having a right to deny the existence of any aptitude among its members, has consequently no right to prevent those who claim to possess them from cultivating them, nor to lock up from them the treasures of science and practice which are at its disposal.
Because there are women who are born chemists, physicians, mathematicians, etc., and because these women have a right to find in social institutions the same resources as man for the cultivation of their aptitudes;
Because there are professions practised by women who need the instruction that is interdicted them.
AUTHOR. Why ought every field of occupation to be accessible to woman?
READER. Because woman is a free being, whose vocation no one has a right to contest or to restrict;
Because she, no more than man, will enter vocations forbidden her by temperament, lack of aptitude or want of time; and it is therefore quite as unnecessary to interdict them to her as to those men who are unfit to enter them.
AUTHOR. Do you not even interdict to her those vocations in which strength is needed, or which are attended with danger?
READER. Women are not forbidden to be carpenters or tilers, yet they do not become such, because their nature opposes it; it is precisely because nature does oppose it, that I think society unreasonable in meddling with the nature. There is no need to prohibit what is impossible; and if what has been declared impossible is done, it is because it is possible: now society has no right to prohibit what is possible to any of its members; this appears even absurd where vocation is in question.
AUTHOR. Let each one follow his private occupation at his own risk and peril, then; but are there not certain public functions which are not suitable for women?
READER. No one knows this, since they are not open for her admission; and, were it so, the prohibition would be useless: competition would show the falsity of ill-founded pretentions.
AUTHOR. When will woman become the equal of man in marriage?
READER. When the person of the wife is not pledged in marriage; when the engagements are reciprocal, and when the wife is not treated as a minor and absorbed in the husband. And this should be so:
Because it is not allowable to alienate one’s personality, such an alienation, being immoral and void of itself;
Because the wife being a distinct individual, cannot be actually absorbed by the husband, and a law is absurd when it rests on a fiction and supposes an impossibility;
Because, in fine, woman, being the equal of man before Society, cannot, under any pretext, lose this equality by reason of a closer association with him.
AUTHOR. There are two questions in marriage, aside from that of the person—property and children. Do you not think that the married woman ought, like the unmarried woman who has attained majority, to be mistress of her property, to be free to exercise any profession that suits her, and to be at liberty to sell, to buy, to give, to receive, and to institute suits at law?
READER. The married man having all these rights, it is evident that the married woman ought to have them under the law of equality. Are you not of the same opinion?
AUTHOR. In all partnerships, we pledge a portion of our liberty on certain points agreed upon. Now the husband and wife are partners; they cannot therefore be as perfectly free with respect to each other as though they were strangers; but it is necessary, we repeat, that their position should be the same and their pledges mutual. If the wife can neither sell, nor alienate, nor give, nor receive, nor appear in court without the consent of the husband, it is not allowable for the husband to do these things without the consent of the wife; if the wife is not permitted to practise a profession without the consent of the husband, the husband is not at liberty to do so without the consent of the wife; if the wife cannot pledge the common property without authority from the husband, the husband cannot pledge it without the consent of the wife. I go further; I would not willingly permit the wife, before the age of twenty-five, to give her husband authority to alienate anything belonging to one of the two; the husband has too much influence over her for her to be really free before this age.
READER. But what if one of the parties through caprice or evil motives is unwilling that the other should do something that is proper and advantageous?
AUTHOR. Arbiters are frequently chosen in the differences that arise between partners in business; society, represented by the judicial power, is the general arbiter between the husband and wife; still we think that it would be well to establish between them a perpetual arbiter, holding the first degree of jurisdiction: this might be the family council, organized differently from the present. Before this confidential tribunal, better fitted than any other to understand the case, the husband and wife should carry, not only the differences arising between them concerning questions of interests, but those relating to the education, profession and marriage of the children. This tribunal should give the first judgment, and much scandal would be avoided by its decisions, from which besides one could always appeal to the social court.
I need not add that the right of the father and the mother over the children is absolutely equal, and that, if the right of either could be contested, it would not be that of the mother, who alone can say, I know, I am certain that these children are mine.
READER. In fact, it is odious that the plenitude of right should be found on the side of the mere legal presumption, the act of faith, uncertainty.
Regarding marriage as a partnership of equals, do you not think that it would be well to mark this equality and the distinction of personalities in the name borne by the spouses and their children?
AUTHOR. Certainly, on the day of marriage each of the spouses should join his partner’s name to his own; this is done already in certain cantons of Switzerland, and even in France, among a few individuals.
The children should bear the double name of their parents until marriage, when the daughters should keep the mother’s name, and the sons the father’s; or else, if we wish to bring into the question the system of liberty, it might be decreed that, on attaining majority, the child himself should choose which of the two names he would bear and transmit.
II.
READER. Now, let us take up the political right.
AUTHOR. A nation is an association of free and equal individuals, co-operating, by their labor and contributions, to the maintenance of the common work; they have an incontestible right to do whatever is necessary to protect their persons, their rights and their property from injury. Man has political rights because he is free and the equal of his co-partners; according to others, because he is a producer and a tax-payer; now, woman being, through identity of species, free and the equal of man; being in point of fact, a producer and a tax-payer; and having the same general instincts as man, it is evident that she has the same political rights as he. Such are the principles, let us proceed to the application.
We have said elsewhere, that it is not enough that a thing should be true in an absolute sense; it is necessary under penalty of transforming good into evil, to take into account the surroundings into which we seek to introduce it; this men too often forget, the practical truth in our question is that it is profitable to recognize political rights only to the extent to which it is demanded, because those who do not demand it are intellectually incapable of making use of it, and because if they should exercise it, in a majority of cases, it would be against their own interests; Prudence exacts that we should be sure that the possessor of a right is really emancipated, and that he will not be the blind tool of a man or a party.
Now, in the existing state of affairs, women not only do not demand their political rights, but laugh at those who address them on the subject; they pride themselves on being thought unfit for that which regards general interests; they recognize themselves therefore as incapable.
On the other hand, they are minors civilly, slaves of prejudice, deprived of general education, submissive for the most part to the influence of their husbands, lovers or confessors, clinging as a majority to the ways of the past. If therefore they should enter without preparation into political life, they would either duplicate men or cause humanity to retrograde.
You comprehend now why many women who are more capable than an infinite number of men of coöperating in great political acts, choose rather to renounce them than to compromise the cause of progress by the extension of political right to all women.
READER. Personally, I am of your opinion; but it is necessary to foresee and to refute the objections that may be made to you by very intelligent women; these women will say, Reflect, the negation of right is iniquitous, for it is the negation of equality and of human nature. It is as false as dangerous to lay down the principle of the recognition of right only to the extent in which it is claimed; for it is notorious that slaves are not the ones in general to demand their own rights; your affirmation therefore condemns the emancipation of slaves and serfs, and universal suffrage.
The objection that you raise against the right on account of the incapacity of women and the low use which they would make of it, might apply quite as well to men who are scarcely more fully emancipated than they; who are often the duplicate of their wife or confessor, or who have no other opinion than that of their electoral committee.
In right, as in everything else, an apprenticeship is necessary: woman will make use of it at first badly, then better, then well; for we learn to play on an instrument much more quickly by using it than by learning its theory.
The exercise of right gives elevation and dignity, elevates the individual in his own esteem, and causes him to study questions which he would have neglected had he not been obliged to examine them in order to concur in and resolve them. Do you wish women to take to heart matters of general interest? Then give them political right.
These objections, may be raised against you.
AUTHOR. They were raised against me in 1848 by a number of eminent women, and by many men devoted to the triumph of the new principles.
I answered them then and I answer them again to-day: We should speedily agree, if our modern society were not the scene of conflict between two diametrically opposite principles.
The question is not to decide whether political right belongs to woman, whether she would develop it, enlarge it, etc., but rather whether she would use it to ensure the triumph of the principle that says to humanity, Advance! or of that which gives as the word of command, Retreat!
What is the end of political right? Evidently, to accomplish a great duty in the direction of progress. Well, is it not dangerous to accord it to those who would employ it against this end?
What! you struggle for right, in order to obtain the triumph of a holy cause, yet feel no hesitation in according it to those who would certainly make use of right to kill right!
You reproach me for acting like the Jesuits, who value justice much less than expediency. Well, gentlemen, if you had had half their ability, you would have been successful long ago. Like true savages, you would think yourselves dishonored by possessing prudence and practical sense, by offering yourselves to battle otherwise than with naked bodies; this may be very fine, very courageous—but as to being sensible, that is another thing.
I am not guilty of the crime of denying right, since I do not deny it; I only desire that it shall not be demanded since this would be suicidal, I do not lay down the principle that every kind of right should be recognized only to the extent in which it is claimed, since I speak to you of political rights alone; there are rights which make their own demand, such as those of living, of development, of enjoyment, of the fruit of one’s labor, and it is shameful for society not to recognize them to their full extent. But we awaken later to the sentiment of civil right, and still later to that of political right; take the logical advance of humanity into account therefore and do not remain in the absolute.
I know that my objection on the score of the incapacity of women is quite as applicable to that of men; but is it a reason, because you have admitted the right of the ignorant masses of men who had not demanded it, to show yourselves equally unwise with respect to women who are in the same position? I will correct myself, gentlemen, of what you term my aristocratic spirit, when I see your political freedmen comprehending the tendencies of civilization, and making use of their right to drive the abettors of the past to despair by promoting the triumph of liberty and equality. Until then, permit me to keep my opinion.
And I have kept my opinion, which is this: the exercise of political right is a means of reform and progress, only if those who enjoy it believe in progress and are anxious for reforms: in the opposite case, the popular vote can be nothing but the expression of prejudices, errors and passions—instead of learning to exercise it through the use of it, as it is urged, they employ it simply to cut their own fingers.
READER. May it not be objected that, in accordance with your theory of right, all being equal, no one can arrogate to himself the function of distributing rights?
AUTHOR. Theory is the ideal towards which practice should tend; if we had not this ideal, we could not know by what principle to guide ourselves; but in social reality, there are individuals who have attained majority, and others who, being minors, are destined to attain it.
If I should assert that those who have attained majority can rightfully accord or refuse right to the minors, I should depart essentially from my principles; it is by the law, which is the expression of the conscience of those most advanced, while waiting till it shall be the conscience of all, that political majority is decreed and that its conditions are established. The right is virtual in each of us; no one therefore has the right to give it, to take it away, or to contest it; it is recognized when we are in a condition to exercise and to demand it; and we prove that we are in a condition to exercise it when we satisfy the conditions fixed by the law.
READER. What should be these conditions for the enjoyment of political right, in your opinion?
AUTHOR. Twenty-five years of age; and a certificate attesting that the individual knows how to read, write and reckon, that he possesses an elementary knowledge of the history and geography of his country; together with a correct theory with respect to Right and Duty, and the destiny of humanity upon earth. The knowledge of a small volume would be sufficient, as you see, to enable every man and woman, twenty-five years of age and healthy in mind, to enjoy political rights, after having been subjected to an initiation by the enjoyment of civil rights. But, I ask you, what could those do with political right who confound liberty with license, who scarcely know the meaning of the words Right and Duty, and who are even incapable of writing their own vote! Men have their rights, let them keep them! a right once admitted cannot be taken away: let them render themselves fit to exercise them. As to women, let them first emancipate themselves civilly and become educated: their turn will come.
READER. It is very important that men should comprehend that you do not deny, but merely postpone the political rights of our sex.
AUTHOR. Be easy; they will comprehend it rightly; they will not mistake counsel dictated by prudence for an acknowledgement of inferiority and a resignation of functions.
III.
READER. Will you now state the legal reforms which we should demand successively.
AUTHOR. So far as civil life is concerned, we should ask:
That a woman who is a foreigner may be able to become naturalized in a country otherwise than by marriage.
That woman shall not lose her nationality by the same sacrament.
That woman be admitted to sign, as a witness, all certificates of social condition, with all others that have been hitherto interdicted to her.
You know that already, in derogation of the law, midwives sign certificates of birth of unacknowledged natural children, and that, in certain notarial documents, drawn up by justices of the peace, to attest to a fact in the absence of written evidence, the testimony of women is admitted.
We demand that tradeswomen and merchant women shall form a part of the boards of trade; that in every criminal trial, women shall be placed on the jury: that to women shall be entrusted the management and superintendence of hospitals, prisons for women, and charitable associations.
That in every district, a woman shall be appointed to superintend girls’ schools, infant asylums, and nurses.
You know that women are already filling public employments in derogation of the law, since the teaching and inspection of girls’ schools, and other asylums, are entrusted to them, and since women keep post-offices, stamp offices, etc.
READER. This regards civil Right in general; what reforms shall we demand concerning married women?
AUTHOR. That the conjugal abode shall be that which is inhabited by the husband and wife together, no longer by the man alone.
That the articles shall be suppressed which command the wife to obey her husband, and to follow him wherever he sees fit to reside.
That the prohibition to sell, mortgage, receive, give, appear in law, etc., without the consent of the husband or court, shall be extended to the husband as far as to the wife.
That marriage under the system of separation of goods shall become the public law.
READER. What reforms do you demand with respect to the family council and guardianship?
AUTHOR. We demand that the family council shall be composed of twenty persons; ten men and ten women, parents, relatives and friends, chosen by the spouses.
That the powers of this council, presided over by the justice of the peace, shall be so determined that it shall give the first judgment in differences arising between the spouses as to children, property, guardianship, etc.
We demand that every woman may be qualified to be appointed guardian or to watch over the conduct of the guardian towards the ward.
That the guardianship of the spouse interdicted shall be always confessed by the family council.
That the wife like the husband, may name a definitive guardian and a council of guardianship for her surviving spouse.
That the spouses may name during their lifetime, the father, a male inspecting guardian from his family, the mother, a female inspecting guardian from hers, that in case of pre-decease, the children may be always under the influence of both sexes.
That this superior guardianship, in the absence of any expressed desire, belongs of right to a member of the family of the defunct, who must be of the same sex.
That in case of a second marriage, if the child is maltreated or unhappy, the inspecting guardian, whether male or female, can have it adjudged to him by the family council, without excluding the appeal of the guardian to the courts.
That in case of the death of the father or mother, the guardianship belongs of right to the nearest ancestor, and the inspecting guardianship to the nearest ancestor of the other line.
If there be competition between the two lines, the family councils shall choose the guardian from one family and the inspecting guardian from the other, and of opposite sex.
That the duties of guardianship and inspecting guardianship shall comprehend, not only the material, but also the moral and intellectual interests of the wards.
That the father who is guardian, shall lose the right of guardianship over the children if he re-marries without first having had it continued to him by the family council.
That lastly, the State shall so organize a board of guardianship for abandoned children that the boys shall be under the superintendence of the men and the girls under that of the women; this board will form a great family council.
READER. I like your system better than that of the law, not only because woman is the equal of man therein, but because wards will be better protected by it; I have known men to cause their wives, over-excited by their ill treatment, to be placed under interdict, in order to remain masters of their property; on the other hand, you know how many children are wronged or made unhappy by the second marriage of their father. A step-mother has full power to inflict suffering on the little unfortunates.
But you have said nothing of the authority of parents over their children.
AUTHOR. The authority of the parents over the children is the same; the expression, paternal authority, is incomplete; the true phrase would be parental authority. On this head, we demand that if there be dissension between the father and mother with regard to the children, the family council shall decide in the first instance.
That neither the father nor the mother shall have power to shut up the child unless both are agreed.
That the father or the mother acting as guardian shall not have power to have recourse to this measure except with the concurrence of the inspecting guardian, or, in case of difference, with the approbation of the family council, always reserving the right of appeal to the court.
That the marriageable age shall be fixed at twenty-five for both sexes.
READER. Shall we demand the suppression of separation from bed and board?
AUTHOR. No; but we must demand that divorce shall be established.
That divorce may be obtained for the adultery of one of the parties, cruelty, grave abuses, condemnation to punishment affecting the liberty or person, notorious vices, incompatibility of temper, mutual consent.
That, during the suit for separation or for divorce, the guardianship of the children shall be given to the most deserving parent; and that, if both are alike unworthy, a guardian and inspecting guardian of different sexes shall be appointed.
That, if both are deserving, they shall settle it amicably between themselves before the family council.
That parties married under the dotal system or under that of the separation of goods, shall have control of their own property.
That if the petition for divorce be on account of the bad management of the common property, the administration shall be taken away from the husband and entrusted to the wife.
That if the petition be on account of the condemnation of one of the parties to punishment affecting the liberty or person, the other shall remain administrator.
That, in all other cases, an inventory shall be made and the spouse best fitted to the task be appointed guardian under the surveillance of one or two members of the family of the other spouse, with the obligation of furnishing estovers to the other.
That the decree granting the divorce or separation shall bear the number, name and age of the children born of the marriage, together with the annual sum that each party is bound to furnish for their maintenance and education.
That this decree shall state to whose custody the children are entrusted, whether by natural consent or by familial or judicial authority.
That it shall be placarded publicly in the courts, and inserted in the leading journals of the vicinity.
That this instrument shall accompany the publication of the bans of a subsequent marriage, under pain of heavy penalties.
READER. These measures are severe; if it would be easy to become divorced, it would not be easy to marry afterwards.
AUTHOR. I do not deny it; but it is better to prevent divorce by the difficulty of marrying afterwards, than by placing restrictions upon it; in the first case, the difficulty comes from the fetters which the individual has forged for himself; he makes his own destiny; in the second, individual liberty is infringed upon by social authority, which is an abuse of power.
READER. Let us enter upon the legal reforms concerning morals.
AUTHOR. We demand that every promise of marriage which is not fulfilled shall be punished with a fine and damages.
That every man whom an unmarried mother can prove by witnesses or letters, to be the father of her child, shall be subject to the burdens of paternity.
That the investigation of paternity shall be authorized like that of maternity.
That the seduction of an unmarried woman under twenty-five shall be severely punished.
That no unmarried woman can be registered among the public women before twenty-five years old, and that she shall be put into the house of correction if she abandons herself to prostitution before this age.
That every abandoned woman who receives a man under twenty-five years of age shall be punished with fine and imprisonment, and that the penalty shall be terrible if she is diseased.
READER. It will be said that paternity cannot be proved.
AUTHOR. I do not deny that it may be possible that the father attributed to the natural child will not be the true one; but it will be necessary to establish by proofs that he has rendered himself liable to be reputed such: it is the probability of paternity in marriage extended to paternity out of marriage. So much the worse for men who suffer themselves to be caught! it is shameful to attach impunity to the most disorderly and subversive of selfish desires; women must no longer bear alone the burden of natural children, and no longer be tempted to abandon them.
READER. But what if it be proved that a married man has rendered himself liable to become a father outside his household.
AUTHOR. This should be first a case of divorce; next, of punishment for him and his accomplice. As to the child, the man should bear the charge of it in concert with the mother.
READER. These are indeed Draconian laws!
AUTHOR. Do you not see that corruption is shutting us in, body and soul; and that if we do not create a vigorous reaction against it by the severity of the laws, the reform of education, and the awakening of the ideal, our society will be, ere long, only an immense brothel?
READER. Alas! it is but too true.
AUTHOR. Let us demand then, not only a rational reform of the national education, but also that the number of lyceums shall be doubled for girls.
That all the institutions of higher instruction dependent on the state shall be open to them as to boys.
That they shall be admitted to receive the same university degrees, and the same diplomas of capacity as men.
That every field of occupation shall be opened to them as to men;
So that, elevated in public opinion by equality, their activity shall no longer be nominally compensated; that they may live by their labor, and that want, discouragement and suicide may no longer terminate their life when they do not make choice of the sad part of elements of demoralization.
I.
APPEAL TO WOMEN.
Progressive women, to you, I address my last words, Listen in the name of the general good, in the name of your sons and your daughters.
You say: the manners of our time are corrupt; the laws concerning our sex need reform.
It is true; but do you think that to verify the evil suffices to cure it?
You say: so long as woman shall be a minor in the city, the state and marriage, she will be so in social labor; she will be forced to be supported by man; that is to debase him while humbling herself.
It is true; but do you believe that to verify these things suffices to remedy our abasement?
You say: the education that both sexes receive is deplorable in view of the destiny of humanity.
It is true; but do you believe that to affirm this suffices to improve, to transform the method of education?
Will words, complaints and protestations have power to change any of these things?
It is not to lament over them that is needed; it is to act.
It is not merely to demand justice and reform that is needed; it is to labor ourselves for reform; it is to prove by our works that we are worthy to obtain justice; it is to take possession resolutely of the contested place; it is, in a word, to have intellect, courage and activity.
Upon whom then will you have a right to count, if you abandon yourselves?
Upon men? Your carelessness and silence have in part discouraged those who maintained your right; it is much if they defend you against those who, to oppress you, call to their aid every species of ignorance, every species of despotism, every selfish passion, all the paradoxes which they despise when their own sex is in question.
You are insulted, you are outraged, you are denied or you are blamed in order that you may be reduced to subjection, and it is much if your indignation is roused thereby!
When will you be ashamed of the part to which you are condemned?
When will you respond to the appeal that generous and intelligent men have made to you?
When will you cease to be masculine photographs, and resolve to complete the revolution of humanity by finally making the word of woman heard in Religion, in Justice, in Politics and in Science?
What are we to do, you say?
What are you to do, ladies? Well! what is done by women believing. Look at those who have given their soul to a dogma; they form organizations, teach, write, act on their surroundings and on the rising generation in order to secure the triumph of the faith that has the support of their conscience. Why do not you do as much as they?
Your rivals write books stamped with supernaturalism and individualistic morality, why do you not write those that bear the stamp of rationalism, of solidary morality and of a holy faith in Progress?
Your rivals found educational institutions and train up professors in order to gain over the new generation to their dogmas and their practices, why do not you do as much for the benefit of the new ideas?
Your rivals organize industrial associations, why do not you imitate them?
Would not what is lawful to them be so to you.
Could a government which professes to revive the principles of ’89, and which is the offspring of Revolutionary right, entertain the thought of fettering the direct heirs of the principles laid down by ’89, while leaving those free to act who are more or less their enemies? Can any one of you admit such a possibility?
What are we to do?
You are to establish a journal to maintain your claims.
You are to appoint an encyclopedic committee to draw up a series of treatises on the principal branches of human knowledge for the enlightenment of women and the people.
You are to found a Polytechnic Institute for women.
You are to aid your sisters of the laboring classes to organize themselves in trades associations on economical principles more equitable than those of the present time.
You are to facilitate the return to virtue of the lost women who ask you for aid and counsel.
You are to labor with all your might for the reform of educational methods.
Yet, in the face of a task so complicated, you ask: what are we to do?
Ah, ye women who have attained majority, arise, if ye have heart and courage!
Arise, and let those among you who are the most intelligent, the most instructed, and who have the most time and liberty constitute an Apostleship of women.
Around this Apostleship, let all the women of Progress be ranged, that each one may serve the common cause according to her means.
And remember, remember above all things, that Union is strength.
The End