 |
The Solitude of Self
by Elizabeth Cady Stanton
|
| |
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, which may involve
some special duties and training. . . . |
| |
The strongest reason for
giving woman all the opportunities for higher education, for the full development of her
faculties, her 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 watch the winds 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 ever will be like the soul just launched on the sea of life. There can never again
be just such a combination of prenatal influences; never again 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 ever find two human beings alike. Seeing,
then, that what must be the infinite diversity in human character, we can in a measure
appreciate the loss to a nation when any class of the people is 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 interests, 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. . . . |
| |
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 shadow of our affliction. Alike amid the greatest
triumphs and darkest tragedies of life, we walk alone. On the divine heights of human
attainment, eulogized and worshipped 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 through dark courts and
alleys, in by-ways and high-ways; 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 obstacles in the way
of a complete education is like putting out the eyes; to deny the rights of poverty is
like cutting off the hands. To refuse 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 in choosing 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. [Think .... . 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 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, secure against
the ordinary ills of life. But to manage a household, have a desirable 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 lack of all this, the woman's happiness is wrecked, alone she bears her
humiliation; and the solitude of the weak and ignorant is indeed pitiable. In the wild
chase for the prizes 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 bustle of life in a
measure over, when the hands are weary of active service, when the old arm chair 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 interests in all around us continues. If, from a life-long 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 condition of our private homes,
public building and thoroughfares, an interest in commerce, finance, our foreign
relations, in any or all these questions, her 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 and 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. . . . |
| |
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 and the throne of grace,
to do her voting in the state, her praying in the church, and to assume the position of
high 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, everywhere conceded~a place earned by personal merit, not an artificial attainment
by inheritance, wealth, family and position. Conceding, then, that the responsibilities of
life rest 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 storms 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, and to conquer. Such are the facts in human experience, the
responsibilities of individual sovereignty. 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 cannot 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, no one can mitigate her pangs; and if her sorrow is
greater than she can bear, alone she passes beyond the gates into the vast unknown.... |
| |
So it ever must be in the
conflicting scenes of life, in 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 mortal stands alone. . .
. |
| |
Women are already the equals
of men in the whole realm of thought, in art, science, literature and government.... 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, plead
at the bar of justice, walk the wards of the hospital, 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 needles 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 beings 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, amid 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. . . . |
| |
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 ourself, 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? |
| |
|
| |
--(This was originally a
speech given by Stanton in 1892.) |
 top
 |
|
