Read Ebook: A Woman's Philosophy of Woman; or Woman affranchised. An answer to Michelet Proudhon Girardin Legouvé Comte and other modern innovators by H Ricourt Madame D

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em as their competitors in these, and even confess that they are superior in management. No man, worthy of the name, would dare contest that woman is his equal, and that the day of her civil emancipation is close at hand.

Such is what many women are, what they wish to be to-day; see if it is not madness to seek to revive the gyneceum and the atrium for these women, impregnated with the ideas of the eighteenth century, wrought upon by the ideas of '89 and of the modern reformers. To say to such women that they shall have no place in the state, nor in marriage, nor in science, nor in art, nor in the trades, nor even in your subjective paradise, is something so monstrous that I cannot conceive, for my part, how aberration could go so far.

I should say many more things to you, sir, were not this critical sketch too long already; but imperfect though it may be, having to my mind only the meaning of a woman's protest against your doctrines, I shall pause here.

LEGOUV?.

The inheritor of a name which commands respect, Ernest Legouv?, an elegant, eloquent, and impassioned author, has written a Moral History of Women, whence exhales a perfume of purity and love which refreshes the heart and calms the soul.

In every page of this book, we detect the impulse of an upright heart and lofty mind, indignant at injustice, oppression, and moral deformity. The author has deserved well of women, and it is with pleasure that I seize the opportunity of thanking him in the name of those who, at the present time, are struggling in various countries for the emancipation of half the human race.

What is the object of Legouv?'s work? We will let him tell it himself.

"The object of this book is summed up in these words: to lay claim to feminine liberty in the name of the two very principles of the adversaries of this liberty: tradition and difference , that is to say, to show in tradition progress, and in difference equality.

God created the human species double, we utilize but half of it; Nature says two, we say one; we must agree with Nature. Unity itself, instead of perishing thereby, would only then be true unity; that is, not the sterile absorption of one of two terms for the benefit of the other, but the living fusion of two fraternal individualities, increasing the common power with all the force of their individual development.

"The feminine spirit is stifled, but not dead.... We cannot annihilate at our pleasure a force created by God, or extinguish a torch lighted by his hand; but turned aside from its purpose, this force, instead of creating, destroys; this torch consumes instead of giving light.

"Let us then open wide the gates of the world to this new element: we have need of it."

Then, examining the position of women, the author adds: "No history presents, we believe, more iniquitous prejudices to combat, more secret wounds to heal.

"Shall we speak of the present? As daughters, no public education for them, no professional instruction, no possible life without marriage, no marriage without a dowry. Wives--they do not legally possess their property, they do not possess their persons, they cannot give, they cannot receive, they are under the ban of an eternal interdict. Mothers--they have not the legal right to direct the education of their children, they can neither marry them, nor prevent them from marrying, nor banish them from the paternal house nor retain them there. Members of the commonwealth, they can neither be the guardians of other orphans than their sons or their grand-sons, nor take part in a family council, nor witness a will; they have not the right of testifying in the state to the birth of a child! Among the working people, what class is most wretched? Women. Who are they that earn from sixteen to eighteen sous for twelve hours of labor? Women. Upon whom falls all the expense of illegitimate children? Upon women. Who bear all the disgrace of faults committed through passion? Women."

Then, after showing the position of rich women, he continues: "And thus, slaves everywhere, slaves of want, slaves of wealth, slaves of ignorance, they can only maintain themselves great and pure by force of native nobleness and almost superhuman virtue. Can such domination endure? Evidently not. It necessarily falls before the principle of natural equity; and the moment has come to claim for women their share of rights and, above all, of duties; to demonstrate what subjection takes away from them, and what true liberty will restore to them; to show, in short, the good that they do not and the good they might do."

The history of the past shows us woman more and more oppressed in proportion as we trace back the course of centuries. "The French Revolution , which renewed the whole order of things in order to affranchise men, did nothing, we may say, for the affranchisement of women.... '91 respected almost all of the feminine disabilities of '88, and the Consulate confirmed them in the civil code."

This, in Legouv?'s opinion was the fault of the philosophy of the eighteenth century, for "woman is, according to Diderot, a courtesan; according to Montesquieu, an attractive child; according to Rousseau, an object of pleasure to man; according to Voltaire, nothing.... Condorcet and Siey?s demanded even the political emancipation of woman; but their protests were stifled by the powerful voices of the three great continuers of the eighteenth century, Mirabeau, Danton, and Robespierre."

As is evident, Legouv? demands the civil emancipation of woman in the name of the eternal Right, in the name of the happiness of the family, in the name of the commonwealth; their long standing oppression is an iniquitous fact, and he casts blame on all who have perpetuated it. This blame from a man of heart and justice may perhaps have some weight with those women who are so much accustomed to bondage that they do not blush at it--that they even no longer feel it!

In the second chapter, the author shows by what gradations the daughter, deprived of the right of inheritance, has come in our times to share equally with her brothers; then, passing to the right of education, he answers those who pretend that to give a solid education to woman would be to corrupt her and to injure the family: "The diversity of their nature being developed by the identity of their studies, it may be said that women would become so much the more fully women in proportion as they received a masculine education.

"Well! it is in the name of the family, in the name of the salvation of the family, in the name of maternity, of marriage, of the household, that a solid and earnest education must be demanded for girls.... Without knowledge, no mother is completely a mother, without knowledge no wife is truly a wife. The question is not, in revealing to the feminine intellect the laws of nature, to make all our girls astronomers or physicians; do we see all men become Latinists by spending ten years of their life in the study of Latin? The question is to strengthen their minds by acquaintance with science; and to prepare them to participate in all the thoughts of their husbands, all the studies of their children.... Ignorance leads to a thousand faults, a thousand errors in the wife. The husband who scoffs at science might have been saved by it from dishonor."

Insisting upon the rights of woman, the author adds: "As such she has the right to the most complete development of her mind and heart. Away then with these vain objections, drawn from the laws of a day! It is in the name of eternity that you owe her enlightenment." Further on, he exclaims indignantly: "What! the state maintains a university for men, a polytechnic school for men, academies of art and trades for men, agricultural schools for men--and for woman, what has it established? Primary schools! And even these were not founded by the State, but by the Commune. No inequality could be more humiliating. There are courts and prisons for women, there should be public education for women; you have not the right to punish those whom you do not instruct!" M. Legouv? demands, in consequence, public education for girls in athenaeums, "which, by thorough instruction with respect to France, her laws, her annals, and her poetry, shall make her women French women in truth. The country alone can teach love of country."

When a man has seduced a girl fifteen years old under promise of marriage, he has "a right to come before a magistrate and say: This is my signature, it is true; but I refuse to acknowledge it; a debt of love is void in law."

The indignant author exclaims, further on: "Thus, therefore, on every side, in practice and in theory, in the world and in the law, for the rich as for the poor, we see abandonment of public purity, and a loose rein to all ungoverned or depraved desires.... Manufacturers seduce their workwomen, foremen of workshops discharge young girls who will not yield to them, masters corrupt their servant maids. Of 5083 lost women, enumerated by the grave Parent-Duch?telet at Paris in 1830, 285 were servants, seduced by their masters, and discarded. Clerks, merchants, officers, students deprave poor country girls and bring them to Paris, where they abandon them, and prostitution gathers them up.... At Rheims, at Lille, in all the great centres of industry, are found organized companies for the recruital of the houses of debauchery of Paris."

With the indignation of an upright man, M. Legouv? adds: "Punish the guilty woman if you will, but punish also the man! She is already punished; punished by abandonment, punished by dishonor, punished by remorse, punished by nine months of suffering, punished by the burden of rearing a child: let him then be smitten in turn; or else, it is not public decency that you are protecting, as you say, it is masculine sovereignty, in its vilest form: seigniorial right!

"Impunity assured to men doubles the number of illegitimate children. Impunity fosters libertinism; libertinism enervates the race, wastes fortunes and blights offspring. Impunity fosters prostitution; prostitution destroys the public health, and makes a profession of idleness and license. Impunity, in short, surrenders half the human race as a prey to the vices of the other half: behold its condemnation in a single word."

In the fifth chapter, the author finding, with reason, that girls are married too young, desires that they should not enter upon family duties until twenty-two years old; works of charity, solid studies, innocent pleasures, and the ideal of pure love will suffice to keep them pure till this age. "If the young maiden learns that nothing is more fatal to this divine sentiment than the ephemeral fancies which dare call themselves by its name; if she perceives in it one of those rare treasures which we win only by conquering them, which we keep only by deserving them; if she knows that the heart which would be worthy to receive it must be purified like a sanctuary and enlarged like a temple; then be sure that this sublime ideal, engraven within her, will disgust her, by its beauty alone, with the vain images that profane or parody it; idols are not worshipped when God is known."

"What is marriage?" asks M. Legouv?.

In his second book, the author distinguishes the beloved one from the mistress, the adoration of pure from that of sensual love; the first produces goodness, patriotism, and respect for woman; the second regards her only as an object of pleasure and of disdain. Antiquity had no knowledge of pure love; the Middle Age, which comprehended it, was divided equally between it and sensual love; to-day, we have learned to comprehend that the two loves should be united; that the beloved and the mistress should make one in the person of the wife.

The third book, "The Wife," is divided into seven chapters.

The subordination of woman in marriage, with contempt for the mother, arose from two erroneous ideas: the inferiority of her nature; her passivity in the reproduction of the species, in which she performed the part of the earth with respect to the reception of germs. Modern science has destroyed these bases of inferiority by demonstrating: 1st, that the human germ, before taking its definitive form, passes, in the bosom of its mother, through progressive degrees of animal life; 2d, that in all species, both animal and vegetable, the females are the conservers of the race, which they bring to their own type.

If anything is iniquitous and revolting, it is the power of the husband over the person and the actions of his wife; the right over her of correction, still tolerated in our days. There must be a directing power in the household; the husband must be the depositary of this power, which should be limited, and controlled by the family council. Legal omnipotence demoralizes the husband, who believes in the end in the lawfulness of his despotism. It is said that custom establishes precisely the contrary of what the laws prescribe: this is generally true, but it is at the expense of the moral character of the wife, thus forced to have recourse to artifice. "Restore liberty to women, since liberty is truth!" exclaims Legouv?. "This will be, at the same time, to affranchise man. Servitude always creates two slaves: he who holds the chain and he who wears it."

The Oriental wife was and is still, a slave, a generatrix; the Roman wife was something more than this; the wife of the Middle Age owed her body to her husband, but the Courts of Love had decided that her affections could, nay, should belong to another. To-day, the ideal of marriage is enlarged; we comprehend that it is the fusion of two souls, a school for mutual perfection, and that the two spouses should belong wholly to each other.

The whole of the last chapter of the third book is a condemnation of fickleness in love, and an affirmation of the indissolubility of marriage and of the sanctity of the conjugal tie.

The fourth book, "The Mother," comprises six chapters.

Until a late day, it was believed that woman was only the soil in which man, the creator of the species, deposited the human germ. Modern science has overthrown this false doctrine, and elevated woman by demonstrating these three incontestable facts: 1st, that, dating from the moment of conception, the human germ passes through successive degrees of animal life until it acquires its proper form; 2d, that the female sex is the conserver of the race, since it always brings them to its own type, as well in the human as in the animal and vegetable species; 3d, that woman is physiologically of a nature superior to man, since it is now demonstrated that the higher the respiratory apparatus is placed in the organism, the more elevated is the species in the scale of beings; and that woman breathes from the upper, and man from the lower part of the lungs.

Maternity does not give to women rights over their children, but contributes, notwithstanding, to their emancipation; thus, in India, a woman who had borne sons could not be repudiated, and at Rome, a woman emerged from tutelage at maternity.

It is iniquitous to give the paternal authority to the father alone; the mother should have an equal right with him over her children. Supremacy of direction belongs indeed to the father, but this direction should be limited and superintended by a family council, and transferred to the mother in case of the unworthiness of her spouse.

The education of the children belongs of right to the mother, because she understands them best, and because it is necessary that she should acquire that entire influence over her sons which she will need afterwards to counsel and to console them. Public education is not fit for boys until they have attained their twelfth year; younger, it is injurious in its results to their character. The author demands that the maternal grand-parents shall not be made inferior in guardianship, as is the case now in the law; and he considers it as sacrilege not to give to the mother an equal right with respect to consent to the marriage of their children.

Legitimate maternity is happiness to the rich woman; want, often grief, to the poor woman. Illegitimate maternity is to women of all ranks a source of sorrow, shame and crime. To the rich girl it is dishonor, an eternal bar to marriage; to the poor girl it is poverty, shame if she keeps her child; crime, if she destroys it. Yet the law dares grant impunity to the corrupter, to the seducer, to the man who has not hesitated to sacrifice to a moment of passion the whole future of a woman, the whole future of a child! The State ought to come to the aid of all poor mothers, because it is for its interest that the race should be strong and vigorous, and because mothers are the preservers of the race. Let the genius of women be set to work; let infant schools and infant asylums be founded in every quarter of France.

The Hindoo widow was burned; the Jewish widow was bound to re-marry certain men designated by the law; the Grecian and the Gothic widow passed under the guardianship of her son, and the latter could not even re-marry without his permission; the Christian widow was condemned to seclusion; none of these women had any rights over their children. The French code restores full liberty to the widow, renders to her the right of majority, appoints her the guardian and directress of her children; it is a preliminary step to liberty in marriage.

All antiquity oppressed woman, although it recognized in her something superior, and made her a priestess or a prophetess. The Christian woman of the early ages, who alone could dethrone the Pagan woman, not only endured martyrdom as courageously as man, but was distinguished for her great charity, for the purity and lucidity of doctrine which rendered her the counsellor of learned men. We do not know, in reality, to what heights woman can attain; we cannot judge her by what she is to-day, since she is the work of the eternal oppression of man. "Who can say whether many of the ills that rend society, and of the insoluble problems that trouble it, may not be caused in part by the annihilation of one of the two forces of creation, the ban placed on female genius? Have we a right to say to half the human kind: you shall not have your share in life and in the state? Is it not to deny to them their title of human beings? Is it not to disinherit the state itself? Yes, woman should have her place in civil life," concludes Legouv?.

Woman and man are equal, but different. To man, belong synthesis, superiority in all that demands comprehensive views, genius, muscular force; to woman, belong the spirit of analysis, the comprehension of details, imagination, tenderness, grace. Man has more strength of reason and body, woman more strength of heart, with a marvelous perspicacity to which man will never attain. The division thus fixed, what ought woman to do?

In the fifth and last chapter, the author recognizes the remarkable capacity of women in administration, of which he cites numerous examples. He demands that they should have the superintendence of prisons for women, hospitals, charitable institutions, the legal guardianship of foundlings, the management, in short, of all that concerns social charity, because they will acquit themselves in it infinitely better than men. But he refuses to them all participation in political acts and in all that concerns the government, because they have no aptitude for things of this nature. Finally, he concludes thus: "Our task is finished; we have examined the principal phases of the life of women, in the character of daughters, wives, mothers, and women, comparing the present with the past, and endeavoring to indicate the future; that is, by pointing out the bad, verifying the better, seeking the best.

"What principle has served us in this as a guide? Equality in difference.

"In the name of this principle, what ameliorations have we demanded in the laws and customs?

"For daughters:

"Reform in education.

"Laws against seduction.

"The postponement of the marriageable age.

"The actual participation of the betrothed parties in the execution of their contract.

"Abolition of the formal request to the father of consent to marriage, which is an insult to the father and an injustice to the child.

"For wives:

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