So Many Books

Emerson’s address, Woman, was a lecture read before the Woman’s Rights Convention in Boston on September 20, 1855.

Emerson agrees with all the standard beliefs about women. Women are more delicate and more impressionable than men. They also are keepers of some kind of secret wisdom:

In this sense, as more delicate mercuries of the imponderable and immaterial influences, what they say and think is the shadow of coming events…all wisdoms Woman knows; though she takes them for granted, and does not explain them as discoveries, like the understanding of man. Men remark figure: women always catch the expression. They inspire by a look, and pass with us not so much by what they say or do, as by their presence. They learn so fast and convey the result so fast as to outrun the logic of their slow brother and make his acquisitions poor…And any remarkable opinion or movement shared by woman will be the first sign of revolution.

If I were sitting in the audience, my hand would shoot up into the air and I would have to interrupt. Erm, ’scuse me, Mr. Emerson? Um, yes, well, you certainly allocate quite a lot of power to women. I mean with all that wisdom, quick understanding and ability to incite revolution, maybe you could explain then why it is women have to hold a women’s rights convention? With all our supposed power, why is it women don’t already have the right to vote, own property, and have an education?

Perhaps it’s because women are all about sentiment while men are the ones with the will?

Man is the will, and Woman the sentiment. In this ship of humanity, Will is the rudder, and Sentiment the sail: when Woman affects to steer, the rudder is only a masked sail. When women engage in any art or trade, it is usually as a resource, not as a primary object. The life of the affections is primary to them, so that there is usually no employment or career which they will not with their own applause and that of society quit for a suitable marriage. And they give entirely to their affections, set their whole fortune on the die, lose themselves eagerly in the glory of their husbands and children. Man stands astonished at a magnanimity he cannot pretend to.

Erm, Mr. Emerson? Astonished? Personally, I’m astonished you dare trot out that line of bull. I don’t see men lining up for the title of domestic god. So spare me the women live for their husband’s and children crap.

Of course the women have not produced any masterpieces baloney crops up. But that shouldn’t matter because women are the best creators of conversation. Besides, women don’t need to decorate canvas with paint or paper with words when women themselves are ornaments and decorate “life with manners, with properties, order and grace.”

Emerson agrees with the charge of the newspapers that women are “victims of temperament”

They have tears, and gayeties, and faintings, and glooms and devotion to trifles. Nature’s end, of maternity for twenty years, was of so supreme importance that it was to be secured at all events, even to the sacrifice of the highest beauty. They are more personal. Men taunt them that, whatever they do, say, read or write, they are thinking of themselves and their set. Men are not to the same degree temperamented, for there are multitudes of men who live to objects quite out of them, as to politics, to trade, to letters or an art, unhindered by any influence of constitution.

Right, men never think of themselves. They are completely objective and never make any kind of decisions out of self-interest. Uh-huh.

But in spite of all our failings and delicacies, Emerson declares that women “have an unquestionable right to their own property.” Very generous. It is always easy to give something when it was never your to give in the first place.

As far as voting goes, women should not be kept from it with the argument that they know nothing of the affairs of the world. A good number of men know nothing either and it is not uncommon for them to be told how to vote before they walk into the polls by their party. Emerson is certain women couldn’t do any worse.

The other argument that allowing women to become involved in politics would unsex and contaminate them, well, Emerson says,

that only accuses our existing politics, shows how barbarous we are, - that our policies are so crooked, made up of things not to be spoken, to be understood only by wink and nudge ; this man to be coaxed, that man to be bought, and that other to be duped. It is easy to see that there is contamination enough, but it rots the men now, and fills the air with stench.

I can agree with Emerson on that point. He also goes on to argue that in the US we have laws against taxation without representation, therefore if women are not allowed to vote, to represent themselves, then they should not be taxed either.

One more reason why women should be allowed more rights–they are so good and moral and have such a civilizing influence, that their increased presence in the public sphere can only further “improve and refine the men.”

The real root of the reason women want more rights however, appears to come down to the fact that men are falling down on the job of being men:

Woman should find in man her guardian. Silently she looks for that, and when she finds that. he is not, as she instantly does, she betakes her to her own defences, and does the best she can. But when he is her guardian, fulfilled with all nobleness, knows and accepts his duties as her brother, all goes well for both.

I was thinking of calling this post “Emerson Makes Me Want to Throw Up” for the way in which he describes women in such a stereotypical way. For the life of me I couldn’t figure out why the women at the convention didn’t tar and feather him. But then I remembered it was 1855, Emerson is a product of his times, and it was meaningful that he was speaking at the convention in support of women’s rights at all. So while I can’t forgive him his “angels in the house” praise of women, I do appreciate his attempt to support women in becoming educated and moving beyond the purely domestic sphere, though I wish he could have managed a more enlightened argument.

Next week’s Emerson: Address at the Opening of Concord Free Public Library