Book review: Make No Apologies: Early Feminist Writings

Make No Apologies: Early Feminist Writings

Edited by Amanda L. Webster

I agree, 'much of what was written by feminists one hundred years or more in the past still resonates today', and the patriarchy is alive and well. The book proposes a few reasons for it, saying, 'it was the positions of privilege that many of these feminists enjoyed that allowed their voices to be heard while those of their so-called inferiors have been largely silenced'. And it seems, 'at least some of these writings belong to “foot soldiers of patriarchy”'.

The very first essay, Declaration of Sentiments by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, lists the 'repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman', turning her into 'an irresponsible being'. Now she can commit many crimes with impunity, 'provided they be done in the presence of her husband'. Another essay, The Industrial Position of Women by Emily Blackwell, M.D., argues for 'women to be allowed equal access to work', which is just as valid today as it was one hundred and thirty-plus years ago. Interestingly, 'In the savage state, women built the wigwam, raised the corn, prepared the clothes, carried on in its rudest and most elementary form all the work which is today the object of modern industry' and mostly done by males. Thus, when the simple forms of labor developed into architecture and agriculture and manufacture, it is held that women do not fit easily to these old occupations. 

In 'Uncivil Liberty: An Essay to Show the Injustice and Impolicy of Ruling Woman Against Her Consent', Ezra Hervey Heywood traces the origins of the concept of social and legal inferiority of women. The legal subjection of woman is thought to be justified by an assumed natural dependence on man. Here, 'the old claim of tyranny, that “the king can do no wrong,” takes a new turn, the essay posits. Still another essay discusses 'the whole power of voluntary maternity' and free sexual selection by women. 'It should be for them to choose whether they will have children or not: and if so, how many, at what intervals, and with whom.'

Voltairine de Cleyre likens marriage to slavery rather than to prostitution. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, in 'The Yellow Wall Paper' exhorts all fathers to enjoy equal rights both on the responsibilities and the joys of parenthood. Floyd Dell, in her essay 'Femism for Men', suggests that, though Feminism is going to make it possible for the first time for men to be free, they object to it, since they yearn for the feel of power more than they want the sense of freedom. Ethel Puffer Howes describes, how women could be both mothers and career women at the same time by removing the artificial sex restriction invoked to explain the inhibitions of achievement. And, Freedom or Death by Emmeline Pankhurst underscores the fact that men have done splendid things, can speak of great achievements in engineering; but they have failed, they have miserably failed, when it has come to dealing with the lives of human beings. And the race must be saved, and it can only be saved through the emancipation of women.

The ideas expressed here are all the more valid now, when society is struggling to invent reasons to re-impose the sexual restrictions of the earlier days.