The history of woman's wrongs has for ages been written in tears, often
with her life-blood; and yet the volume has, in most instances, been
concealed in her own bosom, notwithstanding its fearful weight. But if,
at any time, as sometimes happens, unable to keep it hidden longer, she
unfolds the pages of her grief to others, what an outcry is raised
against her! The oppressed Italian peasant, the Russian serf, the
Spanish or American black, all, if they are only of the male sex, may
make their wrongs public, may even resist oppression to the death, and
be applauded for so doing. But let a woman speak so that she can be
heard, no matter how great the outrages from which she has suffered, let
her couch her timid complaint in ever such delicate language, and what a
storm of invective is hurled at her! The very act of complaining is
declared--by the advocates of her inferiority--to be in itself unwifely,
_indecent_. "A woman's voice has no business to be heard outside of her
own house; nor _there_, if her lord decrees otherwise," say they. It is
asserted that she has been induced to give publicity to her
sorrows--indeed, has _occasioned them_--by peevishness or imprudence, or
by something worse; and thus, by an, unfair, sometimes an altogether
_false_, issue being raised, the unhappy victim not merely of
oppression, but of downright brutality, is shut off from justly merited
sympathy.
Pages:
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28