Women and the Alphabet | Page 9

Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Europe, with the partial
exception of England and France, the profound absorption of the mass
of women in household labors renders their general elevation
impossible. But with us Americans, and in this age, when all these vast
labors are being more and more transferred to arms of brass and iron;
when Rochester grinds the flour and Lowell weaves the cloth, and the
fire on the hearth has gone into black retirement and mourning; when
the wiser a virgin is, the less she has to do with oil in her lamp; when
the needle has made its last dying speech and confession in the "Song
of the Shirt," and the sewing-machine has changed those doleful
marches to delightful measures,--how is it possible for the blindest to
help seeing that a new era is begun, and that the time has come for
woman to learn the alphabet?
Nobody asks for any abolition of domestic labor for women, any more
than of outdoor labor for men. Of course, most women will still
continue to be mainly occupied with the indoor care of their families,
and most men with their external support. All that is desirable for either
sex is such an economy of labor, in this respect, as shall leave some
spare time to be appropriated in other directions. The argument against
each new emancipation of woman is precisely that always made against
the liberation of serfs and the enfranchisement of plebeians,--that the
new position will take them from their legitimate business. "How can
he [or she] get wisdom that holdeth the plough [or the broom],--whose
talk is of bullocks [or of babies]?" Yet the American farmer has already
emancipated himself from these fancied incompatibilities; and so will
the farmer's wife. In a nation where there is no leisure class and no
peasantry, this whole theory of exclusion is an absurdity. We all have a
little leisure, and we must all make the most of it. If we will confine
large interests and duties to those who have nothing else to do, we must

go back to monarchy at once. If otherwise, then the alphabet, and its
consequences, must be open to woman as to man. Jean Paul says nobly,
in his "Levana," that, "before and after being a mother, a woman is a
human being, and neither maternal nor conjugal relation can supersede
the human responsibility, but must become its means and instrument."
And it is good to read the manly speech, on this subject, of John
Quincy Adams, quoted at length in Quincy's life of him, in which, after
fully defending the political petitions of the women of Plymouth, he
declares that "the correct principle is that women are not only justified,
but exhibit the most exalted virtue, when they do depart from the
domestic circle, and enter on the concerns of their country, of humanity,
and of their God."
There are duties devolving on every human being,--duties not small nor
few, but vast and varied,--which spring from home and private life, and
all their sweet relations. The support or care of the humblest household
is a function worthy of men, women, and angels, so far as it goes. From
these duties none must shrink, neither man nor woman; the loftiest
genius cannot ignore them; the sublimest charity must begin with them.
They are their own exceeding great reward; their self-sacrifice is
infinite joy; and the selfishness which discards them is repaid by
loneliness and a desolate old age. Yet these, though the most tender and
intimate portion of human life, do not form its whole. It is given to
noble souls to crave other interests also, added spheres, not necessarily
alien from these; larger knowledge, larger action also; duties,
responsibilities, anxieties, dangers, all the aliment that history has given
to its heroes. Not home less, but humanity more. When the high-born
English lady in the Crimean hospital, ordered to a post of almost
certain death, only raised her hands to heaven, and said, "Thank God!"
she did not renounce her true position as woman: she claimed it. When
the queen of James I. of Scotland, already immortalized by him in
stately verse, won a higher immortality by welcoming to her fair bosom
the dagger aimed at his; when the Countess of Buchan hung confined in
her iron cage, outside Berwick Castle, in penalty for crowning Robert
the Bruce; when the stainless soul of Joan of Arc met God, like Moses,
in a burning flame,--these things were as they should be. Man must not
monopolize these privileges of peril, the birthright of great souls.
Serenades and compliments must not replace the nobler hospitality

which shares with woman the opportunity of martyrdom. Great
administrative duties also, cares of state, for which one should be born
gray-headed, how nobly do these sit upon a woman's
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