[Editor's Note: Paulina Wright Davis singled out Harper's as an especially obdurate foe of woman's rights for reasons which the following editorial make clear. What makes this essay especially interesting is its acknowledgement that opponents of woman's rights needed to set forth their own arguments. Initially foes had replied only with sarcasm and ridicule. Indeed, as this piece makes clear, it took an effort for opponents to take the ideas of the woman's rights advocates seriously enough to respond. As a result, this is one of the earliest full statements of the anti-woman's rights position. Within a year, as "Rights and Wrongs of Women" demonstrated, Harper's would pull back from its opposition to women owning property in their own names. Davis somewhat sardonically labelled the magazine's willingness in 1854 to admit that women had wrongs a mark of progress.]
P. 838: Woman's Rights--or the movement that goes under that name, may seem to some too trifling in itself, and too much connected with ludicrous associations to be made the subject of serious argument. If nothing else, however, should give it consequence, it would demand our earnest attention from its intimate connection with all the radical and infidel movements of the day. A strange affinity seems to bind them all together. They all present the same attractions to the same class of minds. They are all so grounded in the same essential fallacy of individual right, in distinction from the organic good, or social propriety, that the careful observer could have no difficulty in predicting the whole course of the man or woman who once sets out on the track of any one of them.
But not to dwell on this remarkable connection--the claim of "woman's rights presents not only the common radical notion which underlies the whole class, but also a peculiar enormity of its own; in some respects more boldly infidel, or defiant both of nature and revelation, than that which characterizes any kindred measure. It is avowedly opposed to the most time-honored proprieties of social life; it is opposed to nature; it is opposed to revelation. The first charge it might perhaps meet by the plea of reform; the second it would deny; the third, it would confess, not only, but even glory in the confession. Almost every other radical movement claims the Scriptures, in some sense, as its ally, and will stand upon the platform they offer, or seem to offer. . . . Here, however, the "woman's rights" doctrine is peculiar. We never yet heard a passage of Scripture quoted, either fairly or perversely, in its support. Abolitionists have their pet texts. Fourierism will sometimes employ the dialect of the Bible. But this unblushing female Socialism defies alike apostles and prophets. In this respect no kindred movement is so decidedly infidel, so rancorously and avowedly anti-biblical.
It is equally opposed to nature, and the established order of society founded upon it. . . .There is one broad striking fact in the constitution of human species which ought to set the question at rest forever. This is the fact of maternity.
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. . .It is the design of God, expressed and carried out in nature, that a moiety of the human race should have a charge--a precious charge, a most honorable charge--but one which must, in the very nature of things, unfit them for the right and regular performance of those duties which the usage of all civilized and all Christian nations have ever assigned to the opposite sex. From this there arise, in the first place, physical impediments, which, during the best part of the female life, are absolutely insurmountable, except at a sacrifice of almost every thing that distinguishes the civilized human from the animal, or beastly, and savage state. As a secondary, yet inevitably resulting consequence, there come domestic and social hindrances which still more completely draw the line between the male and female duties. Any one may carry out this argument. . . . Around the nursing mother God and nature have thrown a hallowed seclusion.
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But it is not in maternity alone that we see the Divine design. The whole dual constitution of humanity, with all the affections and duties that grow out of it, reveals the same great intent. . . .There is an inner and an outer sphere. The first is as honorable as the second; it is even more intimately connected with the essential life. . . . Woman was meant to be the main influence in the one; man in the other. To this all civilization tends. Its recognition and establishment is ever in proportion to the advance of a pure Christianity.
P. 839: . . .the most serious importance of this modern "woman's rights" doctrine is dervied from its direct bearing upon the marriage institution. The blindest must see that such a change as is proposed in the relations and life of the sexes, can not leave either marriage or the family in their present state. It must vitally affect, and in time wholly sever, that oneness which has ever been at the foundation of the marriage idea, from the primitive declaration in Genesis to the latest decision of the common law. This idea gone--and it is totally at war with the modern theory of "woman's rights"--marriage is reduced to the nature of a contract simply. . . .And then follows the inevitable consequence. That which has no higher sanction than the will of the contracting parties, must, of course, be at any time revocable by the same authority that first created it. That which makes no change in the personal relations, the personal rights, the personal duties, is not the holy marriage union, but the unholy alliance of concubinage.
. . .It is very hard that her [the wife's] association with him [the husband] should make her, in any way, the suffering victim of his cruelty and crimes. . . .There is, however, at the present day, a danger in the opposite quarter, and one that threatens a far sorer evil. There is danger that laws giving the right of separate property, and of course the management of separate property, to the wife, may in time vitally affect that oneness which is so essential to the marriage idea.
. . . The family is the natural unit in the State.
P. 840:If this view [that the family is the natural unit] be correct, it is the Family, the household, which should be immediately represented in the State, not the individual. It is the family that votes, and not the individual. Whoever deposits that vote, deposits it as the agent of the whole domestic community . . . .
But the husband may cast a ballot different from that which would be acceptable to the wife. What then? Shall there be separate voting? If so, the family is at an end. The domestic community is sundered, and the organic life expires. No evils arising from separate property would be so terrible, or so completely subversive of the marriage idea, as the separate voting of the husband and wife, the father and the mosther, the outward and inner representatives of the family unity.
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There are two antagonists whom the modern advocates of "woman's rights" find especially in their path. These are, the common law and the Apostle Paul.