Year: 1873

Criven 10 DO so Dy nealtny opposltlon.


The Recent Woman's Congress.


There was dramatic propriety in the fact
that the recent meetings of the Association
for the Advancement of Women were held in
the Union League Theatre. We will not say
that never was meeting held before charac-
terized with just that quality and quantity of
picturesqueness, for we do not know what the
processes of evolution during the eternity that
has passed may have developed in other
planets and far distant ages. But, SO far as
the relation of this earth to space and time
are concerned, we have no warrant for be-
lieving that anything exactly 1ikeit has ever
been seen before. The Congress was a wom-
ans rights meeting stripped of several of
those characteristics which have hitherto been
accepted as distinctive of such meet
ings. There was smaller proper
ton of those wonderfully constructed
monads whom we are obliged to
call men for want Of more exact, but inof-
fensive appellation, but whose long hair and
short ideas seem to entitle them to place not
the highest in q feminine category. There
was larger proportion of sterling women,
pure in character, unsullied in reputation,
earnest in intentions and infexible in reso-
luton. Altogether, the recent Woman's Con-
gress was an improvement upon former
women's rights meetings, and we felicitate it
upon the fact that the dramatic picturesque
ness to which we have referred possessed SO
few elements lacking dignity. But it would
have been absurd to expect, as some
cavillers appear to have done, that bodies
battling for what they believed to be
their rights should be totally regard
less of the demands Of fashion. Almost
. any woman will rise to moral height if you
dress her in the depth Of the fashion; and we
doubt not that among the scores Of elegantly
attired ladies who took part in the public
exercise at the Union League Theatre last
week nine-tenths of them will deposit their
first votes in bonnets ordered for the occasion.


Still, let as give these ladies their due. We
have no desire to throw undeserved ridicule
upon dignifed women acting from correct
motives. In fact, to speak with pre-
cision, no ridicule will adhere to
women like these, but only to those
exceptional interlopers who have but half
perception of things as they ought to be, and
with the wings of the bat hope to soar like the
eagle. The humor that was inherent in the
meetings took its rise from a very different
and much more respectable source than this.
Some OF the best things said by the speakers
were spiced with touch of comedy that will
do something to contradict the assertions of
mysogonists who declare that woman has no
sense of humor. The Rev. Antoinette Brown
Blackwell, for instance, announced that as
an experiment she recommended an oc-
casional exchange of household duties, and be-
lieved that one day of baby tending and bread
making would 60 far to humanize a husband
and enable the whole family to sleep of nights.
Now, there is something in this view No one
will gainsay its humor. Whether it would
work practically in large proportion of cases
is another question But we have no doubt,
and we presume. many of our readers will
share our convictions, that there is a certain
proportion of women who are better suited
for the transaction Of much work that we call
masculine than are many of the men who now
monopolize that work. Nay, we will go even
further and maintain that it would not be diff
fcult to find men who would be more useful
and happy in the performance of quiet domes-
tic duties than in those public functions to
which the biases of society confine them.
Nature has given them that fineness of organ
ization, that delicacy Of nerves, which is con-
ventionally termed feminine, though the
number Of women who daily contradict
the propriety of Such a phraseology as
exclusively applicable to the female sex
seems to be increasing Still, we do not like
the spectacle of Ingomar and Parthenia chang
ing places, except as a poetical antithesis,
pretty for the moment and possessing valu-
able emblematic moral. To the one his spear
and buckler, to the other her distaff and rose
wreaths. To the modern Ingomar the store,
the Office, the business exchange; to Parthe-
mia the sewing machine, the cradle, the babies
and the shirt buttons.


The exigencies of the age in which we live
are too pressing to warrant us in taking that
telescope view Of the future Of humanity
when the present aspect of affairs shall possi-
bly, be reversed in many points and that
expansion shall have taken place in the one
sex and that repression in the other
which shall assimilate their sympa-
thies upon q nobler and higher level
than they now occupy We are content
with recognizing in the present movement
among the better order Of women's rights
women more respectable and dignifed ele-
ment than ever before, and If this element
grows and augments itself with noble and
valuable accretions it will be our pleasure, not
less than our duty. to draw attention to it from