Sunshine for Women Book Summaries | Home

Woman and Her Master is a history of women in antiquity, beginning in "savage life" and passing through the ancient cultures of India, China, Egypt, "the Hebrews," Greece, Italy before the Romans, and Rome. About half of the work is about women in the Bible.

1.       "If, in the first era of society, woman was the victim of man's physical superiority, she is still, in the last, the subject of laws, in the enactment of which she has had no voice -- amenable to the penalties of a code, from which she derives but little protection. While man, in his first crude attempts at jurisprudence, has surrounded the sex with restraints and disabilities, he has left its natural rights unguarded, and its liberty unacknowledged. Merging the very existence of woman in his own, he has allowed her no separate interest, assigned her no independent possessions: "for," says the law -- the law of man -- "the husband is the head of the wife, and all that she has belongs to him." Even the fruit of her own labour is torn from her, unless she is protected by the solitary blessedness of a derided but innocent celibacy, or by an infamous frailty. Thus, (to adopt the barbarous jargon of these barbarous laws,) as femme sole or femme couverte, she is equally the victim of violence and injustice, those universal and invariable attributes of the law of the strongest." pp. 17-18

2.       "Educating her for the Harem, but calling on her for the practices of the Portico, man expects from his odalisque the firmness of the stoic, and demands from his servant the exercise of those virtues which, placing the élite of his own sex at the head of its muster-roll, give immortality to the master. He tells her "that obscurity is her true glory, insignificance her distinction, ignorance her lot, and passive obedience the perfection of her nature;" yet he expects from her, as the daily and hourly habit of her existence, that conquest over the passions by the strength of reason, that triumph of moral energy over the senses and their appetites, and that endurance of personal privations and self-denials, which with him (even under all the excitements of ambition and incentives to renown) are qualities of rare exception, the practices of most painful acquirement.

         Such has been the destiny of woman amongst the most highly-organized and intellectual of the human races, and in the regions most favorable to their moral development. Among the inferior varieties, and in less temperate regions, she is even yet more degraded and helpless. The object and the victim of a brutal sensuality, her life passes in humiliating restriction and debasing ignorance; while her death is not unusually an act of murderous violence, or of refined torture." p. 19

3.       "Still , notwithstanding her false position, woman has struggled through all disabilities and degradations, has justified the intentions of Nature in her behalf, and demonstrated her claim to share in the moral agency of the world. In all outbursts of mind, in every forward rush of the great march of improvement, she has borne a part; permitting herself to be used as an instrument, without hope of reward, and faithfully fulfilling her mission, without partaking in his triumph, or sharing in his success. Her subtlety has insinuated views which man has shrank from exposing, and her adroitness found favour for doctrines, which he had the genius to conceive, but not the art to divulge. Priestess, prophetess, the oracle of the tripod, the sibyl of the cave, the veiled idol of the temple, the shrouded teacher of the academy, the martyr or missionary of a spiritual truth, the armed champion of a political cause, she has been covertly used for every purpose, by which man, when he has failed to reason his species into truth, has endeavoured to fanaticise into good; whenever mind has triumphed by indirect means over the inertia of masses.

         In all moral implusions, woman has aided and been adopted; but, her efficient utility accomplished, the temporary part assigned her for temporary purposes performed, she has been ever hurled back into her natural obscurity, and conventional insignificance: no law against her has been repealed, no injury redressed, no right admitted. Alluded to, rather as an incident than a principal in the chronicles of nations, her influence, which cannot be denied, has been turned into a reproach; her genius, which could not be concealed, has been treated as a phenomenon, when not considered as monstrosity!" pp. 20-21

4.       Long section on Semiramis beginning on p. 35. She references Diodorus Siculus, one of Gage's sources.

5.       "It is related in the brief story of the Cretans and of the Syrians, that their national genealogy was carried on from mother to daughter, the bearers and bestowers of the family cognomen, and the inheritors of its wealth." p. 36

6.       On p. 44, the footnote refers of the debate on the relative guilt of Adam and Even between Luigi Foscali and Isotta Nogarola.

7.       Morgan's take on the creation story in Genesis (Chapter IV) (I have left out most of her footnotes.):

         "The Mosaic history of the creation assigns to the East the first scene of human existence, and places the first pair, created in perfect equality, in a Paradise, which

         "of God the garden was,
         By him in the East of Eden planted."

8.       "For God created man in his own image, male and female created he them," "to be a mate and a help to each other." To the male, to Adam^*, it appears, was assigned a first task of corporeal performance; for "he was put into the garden to dress and keep it." To the female, Eve, was permitted the first exercise of mind, in the call made on her intellect, by one who (whether considered as a "fallen spirit, second only to the first," or as a 'creature more subtle than any beast of the field, which the Lord had made,") sought to influence human action by intellectual means, though for evil purposes. The selection of the female for the experiment of a superhuman sophistry, indicated on her part a difficulty, rather than a facility to be won over; and the reward offered, for risking the awful penalty of death "by disobedience," was no less than that "she should be as are the Gods, knowing good from evil!" The woman, ("seeing that the tree was to be desired, to make one wise,) took the fruit accordingly thereof and did eat."

         The man only followed the example of the woman; and "the woman thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat," was the weak and reproachful answer of Adam to the interrogation of his Creator. The crime was common, but the motive was peculiar to the woman.

         The penalty, too, of disobedience to both was death; but a sublime and prophetic distinction was made in favour of the future "mother of all living," of whom was to proceed one who should "swallow up death in victory," &tc.

         The temporal punishments inflicted on Eve were marked by an intellectual pre-eminence in suffering -- Adam's by personal degradation: to Adam was assigned the task of physical labour; "in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground from whence thou wert taken; for out of it was thou taken, for dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return." A humiliating vocation -- a humiliating reminiscence, both spared as denunciations to Eve. Her retribution, on the contrary, was founded on the affections and on the mind -- "sorrow," that was to be "multiplied," and "pain" (corporeal indeed in the first instance,) but connected with grief and anxieties still more harassing. Her desire, also, was decreed to be "to her husband," (that devotedness, the attribute of her peculiar and finer organization): and her "submission" to his "rule" was the penalty of her sensibility, no less than the token of physical inferiority.

         * Adam, in the Hebrew -- Red Earth , -- Eve -- Life. But the Reverend Dr. Conyers of Middleton, in his allegorical explanation of the first chapter of Genesis represents Adam to be the Mind, Eve the senses, and the Serpent Pleasure or Passion -- See Dr. Middleton's Letters to Dr. Waterland, vol. 2, p. 149." pp. 43-45

9.       "It is remarkable that while the men of Israel were perpetually in the battle-field, the women were incessantly occupied with the arts of peace and utility -- arts which alone forward the blessings of civilization , and foster the better virtues of humanity." p. 96

10.       p. 116 footnote to Josephus

I stopped reading on p. 153, the beginning of the section on women in classical Greece. I want to finish this book, but I'm working on reading three other books, I have lots to do on the web pages, and I don't know when I'll get have the time to get back to this book.

Return to Booknotes Menu

Thanks for visiting Sunshine for Women at http://www.pinn.net/~sunshine/main.html

e-mail sunshine@pinn.net

Sunshine for Women encourages you to support our feminist sisters by purchasing their books, reading them, disseminating the ideas they contain, but most especially, by making their book available to our sisters, our daughters, and the community at large by requesting your school library, your public library, and area bookstores to carry their books. Remember it is not enough to write literature, history, and theology, we must pass these works on to future generations. Help us to preserve these works for a new generation by putting them on library bookshelves.


last updated Dec 1, 2000