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ONLY GETTING BETTER WITH AGE - ELIZABETH CADY STANTON
Solitude of Self
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Mr. Chairman and
gentlemen of the committee: |
We have been
speaking before Committees of the Judiciary for
the last twenty years, and we have gone over all
the arguments in favor of a sixteenth amendment
which are familiar to all you gentlemen;
therefore, it will not be necessary that I
should repeat them again.
The point I wish plainly to bring before you on
this occasion is the individuality of each human
soul; our Protestant idea, the right of
individual conscience and judgment--our
republican idea, individual citizenship. In
discussing the rights of woman, we are to
consider, first, what belongs to her as an
individual, in a world of her own, the arbiter
of her own destiny, an imaginary Robinson Crusoe
with her woman Friday on a solitary island. Her
rights under such circumstances are to use all
her faculties for her own safety and happiness.
Secondly, if we consider her as a citizen, as a
member of a great nation, she must have the same
rights as all other members, according to the
fundamental principles of our Government.
Thirdly, viewed as a woman, an equal factor in
civilization, her rights and duties are still
the same--individual happiness and development.
Fourthly, it is only the incidental relations of
life, such as mother, wife, sister, daughter,
that may involve some special duties and
training. In the usual discussion in regard to
woman's sphere, such as men as Herbert Spencer,
Frederic Harrison, and Grant Allen uniformly
subordinate her rights and duties as an
individual, as a citizen, as a woman, to the
necessities of these incidental relations, some
of which a large class of woman may never
assume. In discussing the sphere of man we do
not decide his rights as an individual, as a
citizen, as a man by his duties as a father, a
husband, a brother, or a son, relations some of
which he may never fill. Moreover he would be
better fitted for these very relations and
whatever special work he might choose to do to
earn his bread by the complete development of
all his faculties as an individual.
Just so with woman. The education that will fit
her to discharge the duties in the largest
sphere of human usefulness will best fit her for
whatever special work she may be compelled to
do.
The isolation of every human soul and the
necessity of self-dependence must give each
individual the right, to choose his own
surroundings.
The strongest reason for giving woman all the
opportunities for higher education, for the full
development of her faculties, forces of mind and
body; for giving her the most enlarged freedom
of thought and action; a complete emancipation
from all forms of bondage, of custom,
dependence, superstition; from all the crippling
influences of fear, is the solitude and personal
responsibility of her own individual life. The
strongest reason why we ask for woman a voice in
the government under which she lives; in the
religion she is asked to believe; equality in
social life, where she is the chief factor; a
place in the trades and professions, where she
may earn her bread, is because of her birthright
to self-sovereignty; because, as an individual,
she must rely on herself. No matter how much
women prefer to lean, to be protected and
supported, nor how much men desire to have them
do so, they must make the voyage of life alone,
and for safety in an emergency they must know
something of the laws of navigation. To guide
our own craft, we must be captain, pilot,
engineer; with chart and compass to stand at the
wheel; to match the wind and waves and know when
to take in the sail, and to read the signs in
the firmament over all. It matters not whether
the solitary voyager is man or woman.
Nature having endowed them equally, leaves them
to their own skill and judgment in the hour of
danger, and, if not equal to the occasion, alike
they perish.
To appreciate the importance of fitting every
human soul for independent action, think for a
moment of the immeasurable solitude of self. We
come into the world alone, unlike all who have
gone before us; we leave it alone under
circumstances peculiar to ourselves. No mortal
ever has been, no mortal over will be like the
soul just launched on the sea of life. There can
never again be just such environments as make up
the infancy, youth and manhood of this one.
Nature never repeats herself, and the
possibilities of one human soul will never be
found in another. No one has ever found two
blades of ribbon grass alike, and no one will
never find two human beings alike. Seeing, then,
what must be the infinite diversity in human,
character, we can in a measure appreciate the
loss to a nation when any large class of the
people in uneducated and unrepresented in the
government. We ask for the complete development
of every individual, first, for his own benefit
and happiness. In fitting out an army we give
each soldier his own knapsack, arms, powder, his
blanket, cup, knife, fork and spoon. We provide
alike for all their individual necessities, then
each man bears his own burden.
Again we ask complete individual development for
the general good; for the consensus of the
competent on the whole round of human interest;
on all questions of national life, and here each
man must bear his share of the general burden.
It is sad to see how soon friendless children
are left to bear their own burdens before they
can analyze their feelings; before they can even
tell their joys and sorrows, they are thrown on
their own resources. The great lesson that
nature seems to teach us at all ages is
self-dependence, self-protection, self-support.
What a touching instance of a child's solitude;
of that hunger of heart for love and
recognition, in the case of the little girl who
helped to dress a Christmas tree for the
children of the family in which she served. On
finding there was no present for herself she
slipped away in the darkness and spent the night
in an open field sitting on a stone, and when
found in the morning was weeping as if her heart
would break. No mortal will ever know the
thoughts that passed through the mind of that
friendless child in the long hours of that cold
night, with only the silent stars to keep her
company. The mention of her case in the daily
papers moved many generous hearts to send her
presents, but in the hours of her keenest
sufferings she was thrown wholly on herself for
consolation.
In youth our most bitter disappointments, our
brightest hopes and ambitions are known only to
otherwise, even our friendship and love we never
fully share with another; there is something of
every passion in every situation we conceal.
Even so in our triumphs and our defeats.
The successful candidate for Presidency and his
opponent each have a solitude peculiarly his
own, and good form forbide either in speak of
his pleasure or regret. The solitude of the king
on his throne and the prisoner in his cell
differs in character and degree, but it is
solitude nevertheless.
We ask no sympathy from others in the anxiety
and agony of a broken friendship or shattered
love. When death sunders our nearest ties, alone
we sit in the shadows of our affliction. Alike
mid the greatest triumphs and darkest tragedies
of life we walk alone. On the divine heights of
human attainments, eulogized land worshiped as a
hero or saint, we stand alone. In ignorance,
poverty, and vice, as a pauper or criminal,
alone we starve or steal; alone we suffer the
sneers and rebuffs of our fellows; alone we are
hunted and hounded thro dark courts and alleys,
in by-ways and highways; alone we stand in the
judgment seat; alone in the prison cell we
lament our crimes and misfortunes; alone we
expiate them on the gallows. In hours like these
we realize the awful solitude of individual
life, its pains, its penalties, its
responsibilities; hours in which the youngest
and most helpless are thrown on their own
resources for guidance and consolation. Seeing
then that life must ever be a march and a
battle, that each soldier must be equipped for
his own protection, it is the height of cruelty
to rob the individual of a single natural right.
To throw obstacle in the way of a complete
education is like putting out the eyes; to deny
the rights of property, like cutting off the
hands. To deny political equality is to rob the
ostracized of all self-respect; of credit in the
market place; of recompense in the world of
work; of a voice among those who make and
administer the law; a choice in the jury before
whom they are tried, and in the judge who
decides their punishment. Shakespeare's play of
Titus and Andronicus contains a terrible satire
on woman's position in the nineteenth
century — "Rude men," the play tells us, "seized
the king's daughter, cut out her tongue, out off
her hands, and then bade her go call for water
and wash her hands." What a picture of woman's
position. Robbed of her natural rights,
handicapped by law and custom at every turn, yet
compelled to fight her own battles, and in the
emergencies of life to fall back on herself for
protection.
The girl of sixteen, thrown on the world to
support herself, to make her own place in
society, to resist the temptations that surround
her and maintain a spotless integrity, must do
all this by native force or superior education.
She does not acquire this power by being trained
to trust others and distrust herself. If she
wearies of the struggle, finding it hard work to
swim upstream, and allow herself to drift with
the current, she will find plenty of company,
but not one to share her misery in the hour of
her deepest humiliation. If she tried to
retrieve her position, to conceal the past, her
life is hedged about with fears last willing
hands should tear the veil from what she fain
would hide. Young and friendless, she knows the
bitter solitude of self.
How the little courtesies of life on the surface
of society, deemed so important from man towards
woman, fade into utter insignificance in view of
the deeper tragedies in which she must play her
part alone, where no human aid is possible.
The young wife and mother, at the head of some
establishment with a kind husband to shield her
from the adverse winds of life, with wealth,
fortune and position, has a certain harbor of
safety, occurs against the ordinary ills of
life. But to manage a household, have a
deatrable influence in society, keep her friends
and the affections of her husband, train her
children and servants well, she must have rare
common sense, wisdom, diplomacy, and a knowledge
of human nature. To do all this she needs the
cardinal virtues and the strong points of
character that the most successful statesman
possesses.
An uneducated woman, trained to dependence, with
no resources in herself must make a failure of
any position in life. But society says women do
not need a knowledge of the world, the liberal
training that experience in public life must
give, all the advantages of collegiate
education; but when for the lock of all this,
the woman's happiness is wrecked, alone she
bears her humiliation; and the attitude of the
weak and the ignorant in indeed pitiful in the
wild chase for the price of life they are ground
to powder.
In age, when the pleasures of youth are passed,
children grown up, married and gone, the hurry
and hustle of life in a measure over, when the
hands are weary of active service, when the old
armchair and the fireside are the chosen
resorts, then men and women alike must fall back
on their own resources. If they cannot find
companionship in books, if they have no interest
in the vital questions of the hour, no interest
in watching the consummation of reforms, with
which they might have been identified, they soon
pass into their dotage. The more fully the
faculties of the mind are developed and kept in
use, the longer the period of vigor and active
interest in all around us continues. If from a
lifelong participation in public affairs a woman
feels responsible for the laws regulating our
system of education, the discipline of our jails
and prisons, the sanitary conditions of our
private homes, public buildings, and
thoroughfares, an interest in commerce, finance,
our foreign relations, in any or all of these
questions, here solitude will at least be
respectable, and she will not be driven to
gossip or scandal for entertainment.
The chief reason for opening to every soul the
doors to the whole round of human duties an
pleasures is the individual development thus
attained, the resources thus provided under all
circumstances to mitigate the solitude that at
times must come to everyone. I once asked Prince
Krapotkin, the Russian nihilist, how he endured
his long years in prison, deprived of books,
pen, ink, and paper. "Ah," he said, "I thought
out many questions in which I had a deep
interest. In the pursuit of an idea I took no
note of time. When tired of solving knotty
problems I recited all the beautiful passages in
prose or verse I have ever learned. I became
acquainted with myself and my own resources. I
had a world of my own, a vast empire, that no
Russian jailor or Czar could invade." Such is
the value of liberal thought and broad culture
when shut off from all human companionship,
bringing comfort and sunshine within even the
four walls of a prison cell.
As women of times share a similar fate, should
they not have all the consolation that the most
liberal education can give? Their suffering in
the prisons of St. Petersburg; in the long,
weary marches to Siberia, and in the mines,
working side by side with men, surely call for
all the self-support that the most exalted
sentiments of heroism can give. When suddenly
roused at midnight, with the startling cry of
"fire! fire!" to find the house over their heads
in flames, do women wait for men to point the
way to safety? And are the men, equally
bewildered and half suffocated with smoke, in a
position to more than try to save themselves?
At such times the most timid women have shown a
courage and heroism in saving their husbands and
children that has surprise everybody. Inasmuch,
then, as woman shares equally the joys and
sorrows of time and eternity, is it not the
height of presumption in man to propose to
represent her at the ballot box an the throne of
grace, do her voting in the state, her praying
in the church, and to assume the position of
priest at the family alter.
Nothing strengthens the judgment and quickens
the conscience like individual responsibility.
Nothing adds such dignity to character as the
recognition of one's self-sovereignty; the right
to an equal place, every where conceded; a place
earned by personal merit, not an artificial
attainment, by inheritance, wealth, family, and
position. Seeing, then that the responsibilities
of life rests equally on man and woman, that
their destiny is the same, they need the same
preparation for time and eternity. The talk of
sheltering woman from the fierce sterns of life
is the sheerest mockery, for they beat on her
from every point of the compass, just as they do
on man, and with more fatal results, for he has
been trained to protect himself, to resist, to
conquer. Such are the facts in human experience,
the responsibilities of individual. Rich and
poor, intelligent and ignorant, wise and
foolish, virtuous and vicious, man and woman, it
is ever the same, each soul must depend wholly
on itself.
Whatever the theories may be of woman's
dependence on man, in the supreme moments of her
life he can not bear her burdens. Alone she goes
to the gates of death to give life to every man
that is born into the world. No one can share
her fears, on one mitigate her pangs; and if her
sorrow is greater than she can bear, alone she
passes beyond the gates into the vast unknown.
From the mountain tops of Judea, long ago, a
heavenly voice bade His disciples, "Bear ye one
another's burdens," but humanity has not yet
risen to that point of self-sacrifice, and if
ever so willing, how few the burdens are that
one soul can bear for another. In the highways
of Palestine; in prayer and fasting on the
solitary mountain top; in the Garden of
Gethsemane; before the judgment seat of Pilate;
betrayed by one of His trusted disciples at His
last supper; in His agonies on the cross, even
Jesus of Nazareth, in these last sad days on
earth, felt the awful solitude of self. Deserted
by man, in agony he cries, "My God! My God! why
hast Thou forsaken me?" And so it ever must be
in the conflicting scenes of life, on the long
weary march, each one walks alone. We may have
many friends, love, kindness, sympathy and
charity to smooth our pathway in everyday life,
but in the tragedies and triumphs of human
experience each moral stands alone.
But when all artificial trammels are removed,
and women are recognized as individuals,
responsible for their own environments,
thoroughly educated for all the positions in
life they may be called to fill; with all the
resources in themselves that liberal though and
broad culture can give; guided by their own
conscience an judgment; trained to
self-protection by a healthy development of the
muscular system and skill in the use of weapons
of defense, and stimulated to self-support by
the knowledge of the business world and the
pleasure that pecuniary independence must ever
give; when women are trained in this way they
will, in a measure, be fitted for those hours of
solitude that come alike to all, whether
prepared or otherwise. As in our extremity we
must depend on ourselves, the dictates of wisdom
point of complete individual development.
In talking of education how shallow the argument
that each class must be educated for the special
work it proposed to do, and all those faculties
not needed in this special walk must lie dormant
and utterly wither for want of use, when,
perhaps, these will be the very faculties needed
in life's greatest energies. Some say, Where is
the use of drilling series in the languages, the
Sciences, in law, medicine, theology? As wives,
mothers, housekeepers, cooks, they need a
different curriculum from boys who are to fill
all positions. The chief cooks in our great
hotels and ocean steamers are men. In large
cities men run the bakeries; they make our bread,
cake and pies. They manage the laundries; they
are now considered our best milliners and
dressmakers. Because some men fill these
departments of usefulness, shall we regulate the
curriculum in Harvard and Yale to their present
necessities? If not why this talk in our best
colleges of a curriculum for girls who are
crowding into the trades and professions;
teachers in all our public schools rapidly
hiring many lucrative and honorable positions in
life? They are showing too, their calmness and
courage in the most trying hours of human
experience.
You have probably all read in the daily papers
of the terrible storm in the Bay of Biscay when
a tidal wave such havoc on the shore, wrecking
vessels, unroofing houses and carrying
destruction everywhere. Among other buildings
the woman's prison was demolished. Those who
escaped saw men struggling to reach the shore.
They promptly by clasping hands made a chain of
themselves and pushed out into the sea, again
and again, at the risk of their lives until they
had brought six men to shore, carried them to a
shelter, and did all in their power for their
comfort and protection.
What especial school of training could have
prepared these women for this sublime moment of
their lives. In times like this humanity rises
above all college curriculums and recognizes
Nature as the greatest of all teachers in the
hour of danger and death. Women are already the
equals of men in the whole of ream of thought,
in art, science, literature, and government.
With telescope vision they explore the starry
firmament, and bring back the history of the
planetary world. With chart and compass they
pilot ships across the mighty deep, and with
skillful finger send electric messages around
the globe. In galleries of art the beauties of
nature and the virtues of humanity are
immortalized by them on their canvas and by
their inspired touch dull blocks of marble are
transformed into angels of light.
In music they speak again the language of
Mendelssohn, Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, and
are worthy interpreters of their great thoughts.
The poetry and novels of the century are theirs,
and they have touched the keynote of reform in
religion, politics, and social life. They fill
the editor's and professor's chair, and plead at
the bar of justice, walk the wards of the
hospital, and speak from the pulpit and the
platform; such is the type of womanhood that an
enlightened public sentiment welcomes today, and
such the triumph of the facts of life over the
false theories of the past.
Is it, then, consistent to hold the developed
woman of this day within the same narrow
political limits as the dame with the spinning
wheel and knitting needle occupied in the past?
No! no! Machinery has taken the labors of woman
as well as man on its tireless shoulders; the
loom and the spinning wheel are but dreams of
the past; the pen, the brush, the easel, the
chisel, have taken their places, while the hopes
and ambitions of women are essentially changed.
We see reason sufficient in the outer conditions
of human being for individual liberty and
development, but when we consider the self
dependence of every human soul we see the need
of courage, judgment, and the exercise of every
faculty of mind and body, strengthened and
developed by use, in woman as well as man.
Whatever may be said of man's protecting power
in ordinary conditions, mid all the terrible
disasters by land and sea, in the supreme
moments of danger, alone, woman must ever meet
the horrors of the situation; the Angel of Death
even makes no royal pathway for her. Man's love
and sympathy enter only into the sunshine of our
lives. In that solemn solitude of self, that
links us with the immeasurable and the eternal,
each soul lives alone forever. A recent writer
says:
I remember once, in crossing the Atlantic, to
have gone upon the deck of the ship at midnight,
when a dense black cloud enveloped the sky, and
the great deep was roaring madly under the
lashes of demoniac winds. My feelings was not of
danger or fear (which is a base surrender of the
immortal soul), but of utter desolation and
loneliness; a little speck of life shut in by a
tremendous darkness. Again I remember to have
climbed the slopes of the Swiss Alps, up beyond
the point where vegetation ceases, and the
stunted conifers no longer struggle against the
unfeeling blasts. Around me lay a huge confusion
of rocks, out of which the gigantic ice peaks
shot into the measureless blue of the heavens,
and again my only feeling was the awful
solitude.
And yet, there is a solitude, which each and
every one of us has always carried with him,
more inaccessible than the ice-cold mountains,
more profound than the midnight sea; the
solitude of self. Our inner being, which we call
our self, no eye nor touch of man or angel has
ever pierced. It is more hidden than the caves
of the gnome; the sacred adytum of the oracle;
the hidden chamber of Eleusinian mystery, for to
it only omniscience is permitted to enter.
Such is individual life. Who, I ask you, can
take, dare take, on himself the rights, the
duties, the responsibilities of another human
soul?
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