The Subjection of Women;D. Appleton, 1869 - 188 pages |
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admit affairs allowed Aristotle bodily capacity character chivalrous Christianity common consider consideration constitution cultivation custom depend desire despotism differences duty effect eminent England equal evil exclude exercise exist experience fact faculties favour feelings fluence freedom functions give greater Hobson's choice human nature husband improvement individual inferior influence institutions interest justice kings law of force least LELAND STANFORD less lives male sex mankind marriage married married couples master means members of parliament ment mental mind modern moral Mozart never number of women obedience object obtained occupations opinion original persons pleasure plebeian political political emancipation position practical present presumption principle privilege pursuit question racter reason relation rence respect rience rule sentiments serfs slavery slaves social society speculation strongest superior supposed tastes tendencies things thought tion vidual virtue voluntary association whole wife wives woman
Popular passages
Page 79 - Existing moralities, accordingly, are mainly fitted to a relation of command and obedience. Yet command and obedience are but unfortunate necessities of human life: society in equality is its normal state. Already in modern life, and more and more as it progressively improves, command and obedience become exceptional facts in life, equal association its general rule. The morality of the first ages rested on the obligation to submit to power; that of the ages next following, on the right of the weak...
Page 38 - What is now called the nature of women is an eminently artificial thing the result of forced repression in some directions, unnatural stimulation in others.
Page 30 - ... itself, from those of times long past? It is, that human beings are no longer born to their place in life, and chained down by an inexorable bond to the place they are born to, but are free to employ their faculties, and such favourable chances as offer, to achieve the lot which may appear to them most desirable. Human society of old was constituted on a very different principle. All were born to a fixed social position, and were mostly kept in it by law, or interdicted from any means by which...
Page 86 - The rule is simple : whatever would be the husband's or wife's if they were not married, should be under their exclusive control during marriage ; which need not interfere with the power to tie up property by settlement, in order to preserve it for children. Some people are sentimentally shocked at the idea of a separate interest in money matters, as inconsistent with the ideal fusion of two lives into one. For my own part, I am one of the strongest supporters of community of goods, when resulting...
Page 2 - So long as an opinion is strongly rooted in the feelings, it gains rather than loses in stability by having a preponderating weight of argument against it. For if it were accepted as a result of argument, the refutation of the argument might shake the solidity of the conviction; but when it rests solely on feeling, the worse it fares in argumentative contest, the more persuaded its adherents are that their...
Page 87 - When the support of the family depends not on property but on earnings, the common arrangement, by which the man earns the income and the wife superintends the domestic expenditure, seems to me in general the most suitable division of labor between the two persons.
Page 27 - All women are brought up from the very earliest years in the belief that their ideal of character is the very opposite to that of men; not self-will, and government by self-control, but submission, and yielding to the control of other.
Page 81 - Citizenship, in free countries, is partly a school of society in equality; but citizenship fills only a small place in modern life, and does not come near the daily habits or inmost sentiments. The family, justly constituted, would be the real school of the virtues of freedom.
Page 19 - We must consider, too, that the possessors of the power have facilities in this case, greater than in any other, to prevent any uprising against it. Every one of the subjects lives under the very eye, and almost, it may be said, in the hands, of one of the masters — in closer intimacy with him than with any of her...
Page 1 - ... and that it ought to be replaced by a principle of perfect equality, admitting no power or privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other. The very words necessary to express the task I have undertaken show how arduous it is. But it would be a mistake to suppose that the difficulty of the case must lie in the insufficiency or obscurity of the grounds of reason on which my conviction rests. The difficulty is that which exists in all cases in which there is a mass of feeling to be contended...