Samantha on the Woman Question by Marietta Holley (uplifting book club books TXT) 📗

“Edgar Allan Poe’s genius wuz worthy a place among the Immortals, no doubt; his poems and stories excite wonder and admiration. But do they move the soul like Mrs. Stowe’s immortal story that thrilled the world and helped free a race?—yes, two races—for the curse of slavery held the white race in bondage, too. Yet she and her three or four woman companions face the stormy winds in an out-of-the-way corner, while Poe occupies his honorable sightly place among his fifty or more male companions.

“Wimmen have always been admonished to not strive for right and justice but to lean on men’s generosity and chivalry. Here wuz a place where that chivalry would have shone, but it didn’t seem to materialize, and if wimmen had leaned on it, it would have proved a weak staff, indeed.

“Such things as this are constantly occurring and show plain that wimmen needs the ballot to protect her from all sorts of wrongs and indignities. Men take wimmen’s money, as they did here, and use it to uplift themselves, and lower her, like taxin’ her heavily and often unjustly and usin’ this money to help forward unjust laws which she abominates. And so it goes on, and will, until women are men’s equals legally and politically.”

“Ahem—you present things in a new light. I never looked at this matter with your eyes.”

“No, you looked at ’em through a man’s eyes; such things are so customary that men do ’em without thinkin’, from habit and custom, like hushin’ up children’s talk, when they interrupt grown-ups.”

Agin he sot demute for a short space, and then said, “I feel that natural human instinct is aginst the change. In savage races that knew nothin’ of civilization, male force and strength always ruled.”

“Why,” sez I, “history tells us of savage races where wimmen always rule, though I don’t think they ort to—ability and goodness ort to rule.”

“Nature is aginst it,” sez he.

But I sez firmly, “Bees and lots of other insects and animals always have a female for queen and ruler. They rule blindly and entirely, right on through the centuries, but we are enlightened and should not encourage it. In my opinion the male bee has just as good a right to be monarch as his female pardner has, if he is as good and knows as much. I never believed in the female workin’ ones killin’ off the male drones to save winterin’ ’em; they might give ’em some light chores to do round the hive to pay for their board. I love justice and that would be my way.”

Agin he sithed. “Modern history don’t seem to favor the scheme—” But his axent wuz as weak as a cat and his boughten smile seemed crackin’ and wearin’ out; he knowed better.

Sez I, “We won’t argy long on that p’int, for I might overwhelm you if I approved of overwhelmin’, but, will merely ask you to cast one eye on England. Was the rain of Victoria the Good less peaceful and prosperous than that of the male rulers who preceded her? And you can then throw your other eye over to Holland: is their sweet queen less worthy and beloved to-day than other European monarchs? And is her throne more shaky and tottlin’ than theirn?”

He didn’t try to dispute me and bowed his head on his breast in a almost meachin’ way. He knowed he wuz beat on every side, and almost to the end of his chain of rusty, broken old arguments. But anon he brightened up agin and sez, ketchin’ holt of the last shackly link of his argument:

“You seem to place a great deal of dependence on the Bible. The Bible is aginst the idee. The Bible teaches man’s supremacy, man’s absolute power and might and authority.”

“Why, how you talk,” sez I. “In the very first chapter the Bible tells how man wuz turned right round by a woman, tells how she not only turned man round to do as she wanted him to, but turned the hull world over.

“That hain’t nothin’ I approve of; I don’t speak of it because I like the idee. That wuzn’t done in a open honorable manner as things should be done. No, Eve ruled by indirect influence, the gently influencing men way, that politicians are so fond of. And she brought ruin and destruction onto the hull world by it.

“A few years later when men and wimmen grew wiser, when we hear of wimmen rulin’ Israel openly and honestly, like Miriam, Deborah and other likely old four mothers, things went on better. They didn’t act meachin’ and tempt, and act indirect.”

He sithed powerful and sot round oneasy in his chair. And sez he, “I thought wimmen wuz taught by the Bible to serve and love their homes.”

“So they be. And every true woman loves to serve. Home is my supreme happiness and delight, and my best happiness is found in servin’ them I love. But I must tell the truth, in the house or outdoors.”

Sez he faintly, “The Old Testament may teach that women have some strength and power. But in the New Testament in every great undertaken’ and plan men have been chosen by God to carry them through.”

“Why-ee!” sez I, “how you talk! Have you ever read the Bible?”

He said evasively, his grandmother owned one, and he had seen it in early youth. And then he went on in a sort of apologizin’ way. He had always meant to read it, but he had entered political life at an early age where the Bible wuzn’t popular, and he believed that he had never read further than the Epistles of Gulliver to the Liliputians.

Sez I, “That hain’t Bible, there hain’t no Gulliver in it, and you mean Galatians.”

Well, he said, that might be it, it wuz some man he knew, and he had always heard and believed that man wuz the only worker that God had chosen.

“Why,” sez I, “the one great theme of the New Testament—the salvation of the world through the birth of Christ—no man had anything to do with. Our divine Lord wuz born of God and Woman. Heavenly plan of redemption for fallen humanity. God Himself called woman into that work, the divine work of saving a world, and why shouldn’t she continue in it? God called her. Mary had no dream of publicity, no desire of a world’s work of suffering and renunciation. The soft air of Galilee wropped her about in its sweet content, as she dreamed her quiet dreams in maiden peace—dreamed, perhaps, of domestic love and happiness.

“From that sweetest silence, the restful peace of happy innocent girlhood, God called her to her divine work of helpin’ redeem a world from sin. And did not this woman’s love and willin’ obedience, and sufferin’ set her apart, baptize her for this work of liftin’ up the fallen, helpin’ the weak?