St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1891-07-12
WHAT GAIL ANTHONY THINKS
A Strong Plea for the Liberty Of
the CitiZeness.

thO OAtA6OhCS5s
No woman suffers more from too
definite comprehensivenes of classifi-
cation than the widow. She becomes
such by the mere physical accident of
death which is not even her own; and
to consider her henceforth as the prod
uct of circumstances over which she
has mad no actual control, to lump her
grief, her status as a matron and her
restored ability to make contracts to-
gether under one common term only
too generally employed as a handle for
vulgar reprOach, is the height of maScu
line injustice. | say masculine, for had
our language been constructed by wOm-
en- things would be very different.
There would be a good many stone
walls to be found where now there are
only bad breaks.
The resentment which the world
cherishes against the widow for her i'm
pertInence in presuming to survive her
husband is but too apparent in such
question as the present. Yet goodness
knows that in the vast majority of
cases the wife is only too willing 10 die
first. Often it is not week after her
marriage before she wishes she were
dead. What an absudity it is, then, TO
ask if she "shOuld' marry again. The
question ought to be, has she memory?
Granting that she has not, what is mans
objection to her yielding second time
to his persuasions 10 become party to
a ceremony which he himself IN
vented and has never yet been able to
improve upon? | believe it is supposed
that the tendency of the widow toward
remarriage is automobile. Even grant
ing thdt this were the case, it would
still remain the fact that the Institution
was put into woman's hands by man to
the apparent intent that he should for
centuries be able to enjoy the double
and inconsistent pleasure of condemn
ing her for disregarding its limitations
and scOffing at her for inviting them.
Oh, man can make no objection here!
Were he to be forced into vidual mat
rimony by legislation itself, his claim to
sympathy would be grOundless,
If the inexperienced young girl is
romantic figure because she marries for
the comforts of love, why is the widow
any less romantic in marrying for the
comforts of a home? Love is always
more or less immaterial; the average
home can at least be expressed in terms
of the carpenters rule and the survey
or's chain. We're a man l should far
prefer the hand that was unerring Onpie
Araby the Blest round the rim
of each matutinal cup of cot
fee, no matter we're that hand
rough as a crash towel with previously
ministering to another mans wants and
castigating another mans offspring, to
one whose sole merit was that it lent
itself timidly to half-frightened press
ure amid the ghostly, moon-haunted
trees of summer evening.
Eve was the original widow. From her
first marriage descended the race of
blushing beauties and signing maidens.
rapt devOtees of the malady and mad
ness of spring. After the death
of Adam she married again, and from
this second marriage descended the
race of housewives, the tollers whose
monuments, vaster and more enduring
than those of Egypt, remain to testify
to the serVitude of the real founders of
our social system, from kitchen to nurS-
cry. am aware that | am stating facts
slightly contrary to the received version
of the married life of Adam and Eve,
but if | choose to speak in parallels
certainly shall do so. One bulWark of
feminine weakness l confess | still re-
fuse to discard-a complete disregard
of logic, and a thoroughly informed
style of rhetoric of my own.
Men, bachelors or widOwerS, for PHYS
sake have some compassion on the
widow! If you ask her to marry you
and the result is disappointment wear
the rue IN one of the pockets permitted
by nature to you, but denied TO her.
Do not flaunt it in public. She is not to
blame for being a wnow; who but man
made her so? GAII. CADY ANTHONY.