The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1881-06-29

OF PROVINCIAL, ana nmlIeu buOuSuI anu Ken.
But in our day of rapid progress-symbolic-
al of self-love, self-indulgence, self-elevation
and cupidity-the strength of the ivy must
soon be sapped by the sturdy oak, until it
languish and die, and the beauty of the
flowers so hidden from the warmth of the
sun and the air of heaven under the shadow
of the elm, hat they lose fragrance and
color, and so wilt and wither.
Woman has been taught to look to mar
as solace and strength, as priest and pro-
tector, as guide and guardian. In him she
has found none of these, and through false
teaching and innocent trust she assumed a
state of slavish inactiou, from which it is as
seemingly impossible to waken her, as the
black serf from his vassalage.
Through restriction of faculties woman
never had an opportunity-or, if she had.
eschewed it as a disgrace TO her sex-to ex-
ercise her intellectual gifts, and so lost
power by disuse. If a mother teach ali IN
FAINT thai it must not attempt to walk. be-
cause it can not walk, and, if it did, it
would be TO its shame and not TO its honor,
the child become a helpless cripple; its
limbs will be powerless because it has
never had healthy and invigorating prac-
tice and discipline; it will regard its big
- bAO OORCB bAAOdSA WAOnA al
power and gifts are to proceed; it will not
attempt to help itself, nor to retaliate when
it is neglected or imposed upon, because
mother thought it was inefficient, and to
doubt mother would be treason, and big
brother Jove very often has too many OF
his W pleasures and needs to look after to
preserve and protect those of the miserable
little slave. And so it lives on in the firm
faith of hereditary teaching and impIants
the same seeds of false trust and
spurious doctrine in the bosom
of its offspring, to be handed down
through the generations.
When women appear independent of men,
and take an obstrusive and ostentatious part
in reform and public thought, if she lose her
natural power and grace, it should be mans
best love and first duty to protect these by
placing her so far above himself that they
can not be molested or marred.
She may nave been content to live in the
confidence Of the traditional and popular
fallacy of inferiority in the early ages, when
mans research and enlightenment was
limited, and hers none at all. But to-day,
when we nave lived to divine the courses OF
the stars. the movement of the tides, the
grouping of the planets; when by the
c~anonical key of the Psychologist we learn
the origin and antiquity of man, and
all mysteries are revealed in the
broad light of Silence, she has learned
to know herself, her abilities, her profc-
%iencies, and her use; and if they are not
accorded her, then she must make a crusade
for them, as the Christian did to wrest the
holy sepulchre from the ~debsuching, defl-
ing possession of the Saracen.
Let gross invectives, and vile censure be
heaped upon the brave men and women
whose spirits cry aloud for the betterment
of humanity Let iconoclast, schismatic,
and non-conformists be the title, if you will
1t is what all pioneers of innovations and
evangelists of new doctrines have been sub
jected to, yet it is only by their inspirations
and through their creeds that we can ever
hope to attain our true plane of existence.
So long as woman cares to perpetuate the
false image of herself, she must occupy a
false and ignoble position |
They shroud their true natures behind
wells of counterfeit delicacy; they
suppress the inner voice that
would proclaim in one loud word
their true being; and stife natures breath.
that with enc tree inspiration would blast
forever the mendacious semblance of what
is not.
Lisetn to the words of such seers and
prophets as Mary Woolstonecraft, Lucretia
Mott, Margaret Fuller, Frances Wright,
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Wendell Phillips,
Henry Ward Beecher, and Wentworth Hig-
ginson, upon the inferiority of the sex,
ponder their sentiments well upon the social
laws. the privileges of marriage-that most
vital of all questions of woman-and the
proper mode of life, according to the die
tates of nature, and the resolutions of our
wisest philosophers They are the beacons
of light, the pillars of strength, and the
.shibbOleth of hope and faith, by which we
are sustained in this tight-fisted, sordid
sphere of slavish conventionality.