Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1873-08-15
JV'O.H.s.V-S .s.vO.N.9LOUS POSI-
TzO.N.RRFOR.N. V'BEDED.

The anomalous position of woman in our
day finds curious illustration in the late
criminal record. The Waworth case, the
Gilem case, the Smith case, the monstrous
list OF cases of undisinguished wife-mur-
dering, wife avenging Patricks, all point
to one moral. 1t is plain that the popular
prejudice still comedies to the man some
divine right of ownership and control over
the woman, whether he cherish or hate,
honor or outrage. And because this be-
lief belongs to the patrarchal age and to
eastern barbarsm, il works infinite evil in
our modern western civilization.
When brute force governed the world,
men were, as a rule, the necessary protect
ors of women. In their turn, women were
the helpless slaves of men. AS society was
then org anized some sort of marriage was
open TO every woman, for every man
wanted a household of cheap servitors. If
he fought, on occasion, to protect his wives
and concubines, as he fought to protect his
cames and asses, they cancelled the debt
in labor. They were the household mil
lers, bakers, spinners, weavers, dyers,
cl others, chambers, breeders; and always
and everywhere ignorant chattels, to be
scourged or parted with at the will of their
master. Women were not consciously de.
based by this system, because nobody
dreamed of anything better.
In Europe, the patriarchal arrangement
fell into early discredt. Greece and Rome,
therefore, with their hosts of unmarried
women, were perplexed with the conse-
no, eft hot
ton. Later, the Catholic church offered
its remedy OF orders of celibate nuns. That
failed as was inevitab c. Medieval En-
rope maintained the supremacy of the man
over the woman as rigidly as primitive Asia
had done, though by different means. The
lofiiest idealist of the seventeenth century
saw no higher doctrine than "He for God
only, she for God in him." With advancing
intelligence and morality the position of
woman has necessarily improved. She is,
in fact to-day, responsible, capable, and
vigorous member of society, perfectly able
to take care of herself. But in popular
theory, and TO a certain extent in law, she
still remains weak, wavering shadow Of
man, his helpless care and absolutejproper-
| ty.
1t was this most monstrous tradition
which made of Walworth the husband a
brutal domestic tyrant, a coarse domestic
bully. Should not man do what he would
with his own? 1t was this sentimental
nonsense that made Walworth the son a
calculating parricide. Should not son
"protect" his mother? That the costly
legal machinery Of a sovereign state stood
ready to "protect' her as threatenings and
pisto could not, was a fact too common
place to weigh with him. Her honor be.
ing insulted, chiyalry demanded that he
should avenge it. Smith, who killed a
man, and tried TO kill a woman, because
that man paid court to that woman, justi-
fed him self hundred times over with the
same plea-"She belonged to me-" And he
died, to his own thinking, in the full odor
of sanctity, and in the sincere belief thathe
had committed no crime. Gillen coolly
stabbed his wife because she refused TO live
with him on account of his debauchery,
faithlessness and violence. He thought
that he exercised the plainest right of hus-
band, and said to the policeman, "You'd
have done the same if your wife had left
YOU" And that policeman admitted that
he saw the murderer lying in watt knew
his mad RACES, and feared some violence,
but "did not like to interfere between man
and wife," Goodrich happened to be the
victim instead of the victor, under his sys-
tenn, which was evidently the same name.
ly, that the woman is the absolute property
of the man and the creature of his will. TIC
his thinking she had no right in 1.-The case.
These are not pleasant pictures; but It is
only in their concrete form that the bad
tendencies of society arrest the general
mind. The one hope of diminishing crime
is to reform those false modes of thought
which generate crime. No one of these IL
moro dangerous than the notion OF man'i