The Woman's Tribune

The Chief Obstacle in the Way of Woman Suffrage.

At a recent reception in Chicago a gentleman asked me "what is the chief obstacle in the way of woman suffrage?" I replied, "the apathy of women themselves, due chiefly to the perversion of their religious sentiments."

The same principle that has held woman in abject slavery, in all ages, under all forms of religion, degrades her to-day. "Thus saith the Lord," has ever been a talisman by which tyrants have held the masses in subjection.

It needs but little observation in other countries, if prejudice blinds us to the views in our own, to convince any fair mind of the truth of my assertion. It is a religious custom that dooms two living wives to the grave of a dead chief in Central Africa: the widow to the funeral pyre of her Hindu husband.

It's through their religion that women are held in the Turkish harem; and consent to polygamous relations in Utah. No other power but the religious sentiment could hold half the race in such degrading bondage.

It is the perversion of the religious sentiment that crowds the convents with beautiful girls, the very cream of French society. I visited one retreat where an order, dressed in pale blue and white flowing robes, take turns to kneel and pray at the altar, where night and day their devotions never cease.

In his ritual on each returning day thanks the Lord that he was not a woman, while the woman is made to say "thank thee, O Lord, that I am what I am, according to thy holy will." The women who crowd our Christian temples, are sedulously taught their inferiority in the scale of being, and their subjection to man.

Paul's epistles abound with lessons of her obedience to man as sovereign, and the Old Testament represents her as a marplot in creation, an afterthought, the origin of sin, in collusion with the devil, cursed of God in her maternity, and marriage for her made a condition of slavery. "In sorrow shalt thou bring forth thy children; thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee."

The Pentateuch abounds with degrading expressions of everything female in the animal kingdom, women being considered too unclean to take part in the religious feasts and sacrifices.

With such lessons taught in the Bible and echoed and re-echoed on each returning Sabbath day in every pulpit in the land, how can woman escape the feeling that the injustice and oppression she suffers are of divine ordination? She is educated to reverence the Priests and Bishops, to believe in the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures. and as both alike teach her subjection and inferiority, it is not easy to teach her terms of self respect and equality.

Blind faith in accepted authorities, a reverence for the unknown and unknowable when enforced in the name of religion, are stronger passions in the human soul than love of country, than natural affection for family and kindred, than even life itself.

The history of the race is one huge record of individual sacrifice at the supposed pleasure of some invisible power, and under all forms of religion woman has been the greatest sufferer, and has never been recognized as an equal factor in any civilization.

Her seeming satisfaction in the most degrading conditions could never have been accomplished except through her religion.

Every time I have made this assertion, Tray, Blanche, Sweetheart and all of them have vied with each other in barking the loudest.

In looking over some old papers, I find letters from all the good men most active in the inauguration of our movement, expressing surprise at the indifference of women. I give one from Thomas Wentworth Higginson. It is written in answer to an invitation to attend a convention.

NEWPORT, R. I., May 2, 1886.

Dear Mrs. Stanton :-I have been delayed by excess of writing on other matters, and by doubt what to say. I never go to conventions, now, and dislike public speaking. A letter I will try to write.

My convictions as to the political rights of woman are unchanged. My faith is clogged by two things.

1st. - Woman's entire absorption in her own household, and admission that the mother of young children must during her prime of life be so absorbed; and, 2nd, my deep impression, at the South, of the impossibility of a race of contented slaves. I had always taken the ground that the acquiescence of the vast majority of women was like that of slaves. but observation has taught me that no such phenomenon is to be found among slaves, The acquiescence of women-for it is not an unwilling, coerced, dogged submission-is an argument hard to answer, for a man. Certainly men can never secure women's rights vicariously for them.

Hence a sort of chill of discouragement. for it is no more.

With increased respect for women like yourself who are dissatisfied, I am

Cordially yours,

-T. W. Higginson.

I find similar expressions in letters from Garrison, Phillips, Channing and Sargent, but none of them offer a reason for it.

No one who objects to my reason offers any other.

Now it is plain to me that woman lacks a proper self-respect, and equally plain that the religious theories in regard to her nature and status as a human being are responsible for her condition of subjection. Wherever the canon law has touched the civil law, it has made woman's condition more degraded.

It is woman's position in the church, and the holy books accepted as authority that make political equality so difficult.

When intelligent educated women can sit in a Methodist Conference. such as was held in New York city in May last, or in a Pan Presbyterian council such as was held in Philadelphia five years ago, and listen with patience to the contemptuous opinions expressed in regard to their sex we need no longer wonder at the degraded condition of the masses. And these are the very women who beg continually for the charities; they get up the fairs and donation parties, work slippers and make gowns for the Bishops, and as a reward for their devotion they are denied a seat in their councils.

—Elizabeth Cady Stanton.