The women of 1867
New York Ledger
Aug. 10, 1867
Aug. 10, 1867
A WOMAN WHO WROTE used to be considered a sort of monster. At this day it is difficult to find one who does not write, or has not written, or who has not, at least, a strong desire to do so. Gridirons and darning-needles are getting monotonous. A part of their time the women of to-day are content to devote to their consideration when necessary; but you will rarely find one --- at least among women who think --- who does not silently rebel against allowing them a monopoly.
What? you inquire, would you encourage, in the present overcrowded state of the literary market, any more women scribblers? Stop a bit. It does not follow that she should wish or seek to give to the world what she has written. I look around and see innumerable women, to whose barren, loveless life this would be improvement and solace, and I say to them, write! Write, if it will make that life brighter, or happier, or less monotonous. Write! it will be a safe outlet for thoughts and feelings, that maybe the nearest friend you have, has never dreamed had place in your heart and brain. You should have read the letters I have received; you should have talked with the women I have talked with; in short, you should have walked this earth with your eyes open, instead of shut, as far as its women are concerned, to indorse this advice. Nor do I qualify what I have said on account of social position, or age, or even education. It is not safe for the women of 1867 to shut down so much that cries out for sympathy and expression, because life is such a maelstrom of business or folly, or both, that those to whom they have bound themselves, body and soul, recognize only the needs of the former. Let them write if they will. One of these days, when a diary is found, when the hand that penned it shall be dust, with what amazement and remorse will many a husband, or father, exclaim, I never knew my wife, or my child, till this moment; all these years she has sat by my hearth, and slumbered by my side, and I hav been a stranger to her. And you sit there, and you read sentence after sentence, and recall the day, the month, the week, when she moved calmly, and you though happily, or, at least, contentedly, about the house, all the while her heart was aching, when a kind word from you, or even a touch of your hadn't upon her head, as you passed out to business, or pleasure, would have cheered her, oh so much! When had you sat down by her side after the day's work for both was over, and talked with her just a few moments of something besides the price of groceries, and the number of shoes Tommy had kicked out, all of which, proper and necessary in their place, need not of necessity form the staple of conversation between a married pair; had you don this; had you recognized that she had a soul as well as yourself, how much sunshine you might have thrown over her colorless life!
"Perhaps, sir" you reply; "but I have left my wife far behind in the region of thought. It would only distress her to do this!" How do you know that? And if it were so, are you content to leave her --- the mother of your children --- so far behind? Ought you to do it? Should you not, by raising the self-respect you have well nigh crushed by your indifference and neglect, extend a manly hand to her help? I think so. The pink cheeks which first won you may have faded, but remember that it was in your service, when you quietly accept the fact that "you have left your wife far behind you in mental improvement." Oh! it is pitiable this growing apart of man and wife, for lack of a little generous consideration and magnanimity! It is pitiable to see a husband without a thought that he might and should occasionally, have given his wife a lift out of the petty, harrowing details of her woman's life, turn from her, in company, to address his conversation to some woman who, happier than she, has had time and opportunity for mental culture. You do not see, sir --- you will not see --- you do not desire to see, how her cheek flushes, and her eye moistens, and her heart sinks like lead as you thus wound her self-respect. You think her "cross and ill-natured," if when, the next morning, you converse with her on the price of butter, she answers you listlessly and with total want of interest in the treadmill-subject.
I say to such women: Write! Rescue a part of each week at least for reading, and putting down on paper, for your own private benefit, your thoughts and feelings. Not for the world's eye, unless you choose, but to lift yourselves out of the dead-level of your lives; to keep off inanition; to lesson the number who are yearly added to our lunatic asylums from the ranks of misappreciated, unhappy womanhood, narrowed by lives made up of details. Fight it! oppose it, for your own sakes and your children's! Do not be mentally annihilated by it. It is all very well to sneer at this and raise the old cry of "a woman's sphere being home" --- which, by the way, you hear oftenest from men whose home is only a place to feed and sleep in. You might as well say that a man's sphere is his shop or his counting-room. How many of them, think you, would be contented, year in and year out, to eat, drink, and sleep as well as to transact business there, and never desire or take, at all costs, some let-up from its monotonous grind? How many would like to forego the walk to and from the place of business? forego the opportunities for conversation, which chance thus throws in their way, with other men bent on the same or other errands? Have, literally, no variety in their lives? Oh, if you could be a woman but one year and try it! A woman --- but not necessarily a butterfly --- not necessarily a machine, which, once wound up by the marriage ceremony, is expected to click on undeviating monotony till Death stops the hands.
What? you inquire, would you encourage, in the present overcrowded state of the literary market, any more women scribblers? Stop a bit. It does not follow that she should wish or seek to give to the world what she has written. I look around and see innumerable women, to whose barren, loveless life this would be improvement and solace, and I say to them, write! Write, if it will make that life brighter, or happier, or less monotonous. Write! it will be a safe outlet for thoughts and feelings, that maybe the nearest friend you have, has never dreamed had place in your heart and brain. You should have read the letters I have received; you should have talked with the women I have talked with; in short, you should have walked this earth with your eyes open, instead of shut, as far as its women are concerned, to indorse this advice. Nor do I qualify what I have said on account of social position, or age, or even education. It is not safe for the women of 1867 to shut down so much that cries out for sympathy and expression, because life is such a maelstrom of business or folly, or both, that those to whom they have bound themselves, body and soul, recognize only the needs of the former. Let them write if they will. One of these days, when a diary is found, when the hand that penned it shall be dust, with what amazement and remorse will many a husband, or father, exclaim, I never knew my wife, or my child, till this moment; all these years she has sat by my hearth, and slumbered by my side, and I hav been a stranger to her. And you sit there, and you read sentence after sentence, and recall the day, the month, the week, when she moved calmly, and you though happily, or, at least, contentedly, about the house, all the while her heart was aching, when a kind word from you, or even a touch of your hadn't upon her head, as you passed out to business, or pleasure, would have cheered her, oh so much! When had you sat down by her side after the day's work for both was over, and talked with her just a few moments of something besides the price of groceries, and the number of shoes Tommy had kicked out, all of which, proper and necessary in their place, need not of necessity form the staple of conversation between a married pair; had you don this; had you recognized that she had a soul as well as yourself, how much sunshine you might have thrown over her colorless life!
"Perhaps, sir" you reply; "but I have left my wife far behind in the region of thought. It would only distress her to do this!" How do you know that? And if it were so, are you content to leave her --- the mother of your children --- so far behind? Ought you to do it? Should you not, by raising the self-respect you have well nigh crushed by your indifference and neglect, extend a manly hand to her help? I think so. The pink cheeks which first won you may have faded, but remember that it was in your service, when you quietly accept the fact that "you have left your wife far behind you in mental improvement." Oh! it is pitiable this growing apart of man and wife, for lack of a little generous consideration and magnanimity! It is pitiable to see a husband without a thought that he might and should occasionally, have given his wife a lift out of the petty, harrowing details of her woman's life, turn from her, in company, to address his conversation to some woman who, happier than she, has had time and opportunity for mental culture. You do not see, sir --- you will not see --- you do not desire to see, how her cheek flushes, and her eye moistens, and her heart sinks like lead as you thus wound her self-respect. You think her "cross and ill-natured," if when, the next morning, you converse with her on the price of butter, she answers you listlessly and with total want of interest in the treadmill-subject.
I say to such women: Write! Rescue a part of each week at least for reading, and putting down on paper, for your own private benefit, your thoughts and feelings. Not for the world's eye, unless you choose, but to lift yourselves out of the dead-level of your lives; to keep off inanition; to lesson the number who are yearly added to our lunatic asylums from the ranks of misappreciated, unhappy womanhood, narrowed by lives made up of details. Fight it! oppose it, for your own sakes and your children's! Do not be mentally annihilated by it. It is all very well to sneer at this and raise the old cry of "a woman's sphere being home" --- which, by the way, you hear oftenest from men whose home is only a place to feed and sleep in. You might as well say that a man's sphere is his shop or his counting-room. How many of them, think you, would be contented, year in and year out, to eat, drink, and sleep as well as to transact business there, and never desire or take, at all costs, some let-up from its monotonous grind? How many would like to forego the walk to and from the place of business? forego the opportunities for conversation, which chance thus throws in their way, with other men bent on the same or other errands? Have, literally, no variety in their lives? Oh, if you could be a woman but one year and try it! A woman --- but not necessarily a butterfly --- not necessarily a machine, which, once wound up by the marriage ceremony, is expected to click on undeviating monotony till Death stops the hands.
Fanny Fern
To cite this project:
Fanny Fern, "The Women of 1867," Fanny Fern Archive, Ed. Haley Jones (2019) http://fannyfernarchive.org.
Fanny Fern, "The Women of 1867," Fanny Fern Archive, Ed. Haley Jones (2019) http://fannyfernarchive.org.
