I
think that the social condition of women during the nineteenth century was not
equal to that of the African American slaves, but I think there are many
similarities in the way that both groups were viewed and disempowered by the
patriarchal society.
I assume that the quote used in one
of the previous questions -- "Knowing that there exists in the minds of
men a tone of feeling toward women as toward slaves, such as is expressed in
the common phrase, "Tell that to women and children", etc. -- was
written by Margaret Fuller, but I could not find it in the excerpt from
"The Great Lawsuit" that is in our text book. After our class discussion last Thursday I
re-read Fuller's essay because I wanted to see the exact words she used in
comparing women to slaves; the closest thing I could find was this
statement: "But that is the very
fault of marriage, and of the present relation between the sexes, that the
woman does belong to the man, instead of forming a whole with him"
(747).
This concept of ownership, that one
human being is the property of another, is at the very root of 19th-century
America's oppression of both women and slaves.
A woman was considered a chattel, the property of her father, and then of
her husband, just as the slave was considered the property of her or his
master. Slaves were granted fewer human
rights than women -- if a woman's husband died, for instance, he could not
leave his wife to another man in his will as he could his slaves, and I think
that unlike slaves, women by this time were legally allowed to inherit property
-- but both women and slaves were considered as things rather than as free human beings. Neither group was permitted to vote; this
disenfranchisement prevented them from using judicial or political means to
improve their circumstances. At the
conclusion of her captivity narrative Harriet Jacob states, "Reader, my
story ends with freedom; not in the usual way, with marriage" (825). Although Jacobs was referring to the typical
"happy ending" for popular novels of her day, I believe her statement
also gives voice to the deeper truth that for 19th-century women, marriage was
usually antithetical to freedom! (And
alas, so it has also proved to be for many of us in the 20th and 21st
centuries!)
In his preface to Frederick
Douglass' narrative, William Lloyd Garrison argues that many people are
ignorant of this basic aspect of slavery (the definition of a person as a
thing), and are moved only by descriptions of physical cruelty to slaves. "They do not deny that the slaves are
held as property; but that terrible fact seems to convey to their minds no idea
of injustice...As if it were less cruel to reduce a human being to the
condition of a thing, than to give him a severe flagellation, or to deprive him
of necessary food and clothing!" (928)
I was horrified and deeply moved by Harriet Jacobs' separation from her
children, hiding for years in her grandmother's cramped attic (which reminded
me very much of Anne Frank's situation):
"I heard the voices of my children.
There was joy and there was sadness in the sound. It made my tears flow. How I longed to speak to them! I was eager to look on their faces; but there
was no hole, no crack, through which I could peep" (818). But I was also horrified by Margaret Fuller's
description of the exchange she observed between a woman and her husband
regarding their young daughter's education and future: "...he said, "I shall not have
Maria brought too far forward. If she
knows too much, she will never find a husband; superior women hardly ever
can.' 'Surely,' said his wife, with a
blush, 'you wish Maria to be as good and wise as she can, whether it will help
her to marriage or not.' 'No,' he
persisted, 'I want her to have a sphere and a home, and some one to protect her
when I am gone'" (746). And of
course, it is the husband's opinion which has the weight of law and will
prevail, unless his wife can somehow surreptitiously educate her daughter.
Not being allowed to raise or
educate your children as you wish is not as bad as having to go into hiding and
be completely separated from them, but it is still a form of oppression, and I
find it a chilling and insidious one.
Women in an oppressive marriage must go into hiding, not physically as
Harriet Jacobs did, but mentally and emotionally. They must hide their desire to learn and to
think for themselves, and they must find some way to encourage this freedom of
thought in their children without arousing their husband's anger. The conversation that Fuller described
reminded me very much of Frederick Douglass's description of his master's
reaction when he discovered that his wife was teaching Fredrick to read:
"A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master -- to do as he is
told do do...if you teach that nigger (speaking of myself) how to read, there
would be no keeping him" (945). In
both situations the desire of the oppressor is the same, to keep the oppressed
ignorant. Why? To maintain the oppressor's power and
control! Oppression can be viewed as a
continuum, with total freedom and equality on one end and complete subjugation
on the other. The experience of the
African American slave represents the latter extreme, but the experience of
being a woman in the 19th century would be much closer to that end of the
continuum than to freedom and equality.
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