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Letter from Vlasta (Anna Wheeler)

The Crisis, August 1833

SIR,

I have to apologize for obtruding any observations of mine upon the Crisis, understanding, as I do, that the columns of this paper are open only to select and chosen correspondents1, who confine themselves to such limits as co-operative principles prescribe; these rules I presume are, to avoid all deep-searching inquiry into things as they are, to hold out the olive of peace and oblivion, and to advocate the doctrine of universal charity, applicable to the new social science taught by Mr. Owen.

This would be well, indeed, could it produce the effect proposed; but I hold it as one of the things the most impossible, that not having examined the social laws, institutions, and customs, which have governed past, and continue to regulate present society; not having observed carefully, painfully, and if I may so express myself, sympathetically, the consequence of these laws and customs, as they affect the character and influence the conduct of human beings, we can be but very lukewarm advocates of a better system. Knowledge should at least supply a deficiency of sympathy with the sufferings and enjoyments of our species, which precept alone cannot awaken, in minds not naturally disposed to it.

To cast round the world an equal eye,
And feel for all that feels,

a knowledge of the past and present state of society, in its deteriorating effect on the character of men and women, and the general well-being of our race, will, I say, replace in a great measure (and for all useful purposes) that want of heartfelt sympathy which is perhaps the result of a peculiarly fine organization, which we have had no part in forming.

My motive, Sir, for addressing you at present is, (if permitted) to make some remarks on the letter of Concordia, which appeared in the last number of the Crisis (Nos. 31 and 32). Concordia, addressing herself to Mr. Owen, observes, that this philanthropist has announced his intention of publishing a code of laws for the human race. She adds, naively, for 'women as well as men,' it being something new, indeed, to include women, as making part of the human race! She warns Mr. Owen very properly upon his incapability, as a man, to legislate wisely for woman! - man, as she justly remarks, being totally ignorant of the moral peculiarities of our nature: all this is true, and could not be otherwise, - which I doubt if Concordia clearly perceives. Under the present system (I must not describe it), which exalts to the wildest excess the animal propensities of man, and sinks to the lowest possible degree that nature will admit the intellectual and moral nature of woman, - (I say the moral nature, - for it must be admitted that the slave, whose every feeling and action is dictated by the will of others, cannot rank as a moral being) man must be utterly ignorant of our nature. But it appears to me that Mr. Owen has already published his code for the human race, and, as a wise legislator should do, has taken his stand at the extremity of that broad outline, which asserts the equal rights of both sexes - involving equal education; - mankind having a common nature, the wants of one human being are the wants of every other; therefore, the whole business of legislation, I humbly conceive, should confine itself to discovering the best means of supplying these common wants of all, taking especial care that the interests of any one individual of either sex should not clash with the interests of any other. Hence I consider 'the greatest happiness principle,' to be all-sufficient as the basis of legislation, - should the legislature attempt any thing further upon its own dictation (what it has always done), it is at once officious, oppressive, and pernicious in the extreme: after this every human being may, and ought to be, left to the free exercise of his or her own particular tastes, feelings, and faculties, to work out their own ideas of happiness.

The legislator who sets up a code of prohibitory and denouncing laws - such as 'thou shalt not' do this or that - has already established others, where privation is the stern rule, and monopoly the odious exception: then come disorder upon disorder, and punishment upon punishment, like wild-fire, ruthless and indiscriminate, in its fury seeking whom it may devour! Prohibitory laws have hitherto acted upon men as an invitation to do exactly that which they were forbidden - and such laws could only have existed till now, by man contriving to throw the penalty of his open violation of them on his unresisting slave, woman; and this system of injustice, fraud, cruelty, and confusion is what we honour as the progress of civilisation! It is the partial development of the human faculties that makes us so pernicious to each other - we all approach each other with a conviction, confirmed by experience under what are called civilized institution, that all are enemies to each. But the full development and free exercise of all our faculties will render us, not only highly and mutually beneficial to each other, but will deprive us at once of both power and inclination to act injuriously to any one; thus, it will be obvious to our enlarged perceptions, that happiness for social beings is a thing reflected from one to the other, from all to one. No one will insist on any thing from others that is not freely and spontaneously accorded; the affections, known not to be under our own control, no one will be ignorant enough to exact from another the sacrifice of this holy right of the heart.

I would ask Concordia if, as a man, Mr. Owen must necessarily be ignorant of woman's nature, and cannot, therefore, legislate wisely for her, is it likely that woman herself would be more competent to the task, ignorant as she equally is of every woman's feelings, save her own? and these she is acquainted with only in reference to man himself; a woman is as much a stranger to the feelings of her sex in general as are men themselves who have been precluded purposely by their social arrangements from studying our nature as their own, and therefore never recognized us as a portion of the human species. Woman has, hitherto, been devoted to the ungracious service of man; discovering how to please, or evade his oppression, has been her sole and ignoble study - she is not, nor ever has been, permitted to hold fellowship or sympathy with her sex; this would immediately upset the vicious social system.

The gentle and amiable Concordia, naturally enough, glories in 'the quickness and intensity of woman's love.' Yes, truly - it is commonly and sometimes most inconveniently 'intense.' - And for whom is this volcano of love smouldering in its stifled eruption? - for man himself, (the individual) and for him only - he is the jealous Argus of those feelings and this devotedness, which he knows not how to value himself, but will suffer no general participation of with his species.

This intensity of woman's love, which Concordia considers so distinguishing a mark of excellence in her sex, I believe to be the fatal result of her vicious and slavish training, and the profound ignorance in which she is kept as to the nature of those social laws which work her degradation and misery; under such laws, I hold that woman's love is the symbol of her deep degradation, moral and social; and I could as soon admire the prostrate worshippers of Juggernaut, as I could, under present social arrangements, admire the humiliating idolatry of 'woman's love' for man, such as he has been, such as he must continue to be, till he discovers the error of his ways, and aspires to nobler views. Far be it from me, however, to wish to extinguish in woman's breast the beautiful, the divine, the harmonizing sentiment of love! no! I would only direct it towards objects worthy of its original and exalted nature.

Individual worth, intellectual and moral excellent, has very rarely awakened the love of woman. Their education tends sedulously to keep from them all correct notions of right or wrong - of vice or virtue. It is the abstract faculty of loving with more devotedness, under all circumstances and whatever oppression, whatever absence of the most estimable qualities, that woman vaunts her superiority over man's nature; - yet he can just do the same, save only the constancy and devotedness.

Love, like religion, in woman, has been made a superstition; and the hangman's wife has just as much reverence for and devotedness to her master, as any other gentle dame who piously concentrates all useless affections on one, however worthless and vicious he may be. I would not attempt to rationalize love, religion, or any of the sentiments; these all experience shows it is dangerous to tamper with, - but I would rationalize human character, from whence all sentiments and opinions emanate; and thereby evaluate and rectify all sentiments by the invigorating influence of a co-operating reason. Wherever large masses of human beings are congregated, in every community there must be rules and regulations, the most aptly appropriate for the time being, and for the general good; till experience suggests better. The progress of knowledge always implies the expediency of some local changes; and the interest of all being generally understood by all, these changes should take place under the sanction of all, and through their chosen representatives; for though every one will know his own wants (a thing that does not always happen now), all may not be able to express them with the precision and judgment of others; here it is that the legislative rights of woman should be exercised, not apart from the judicial functions of man, but in conjunction with them. Women should in the legislative assembly, whether of state or community, represent, not legislate for her sex (as the free woman of the St. Simonians is required to do), which from her ignorance of the infinite shades of difference in female as well as male character, would be legislating according to her own peculiar feelings, and would prove as baleful to woman's happiness as male legislation has ever shown itself to be, in the Procrustes' bed it has established for every female mind, reducing all to the same crippled stature:- this representative system would effect that alliance and sympathy among women to which they are now utter strangers; alas! they would gradually become acquainted with the secret springs of each other's heart; they would no longer have cause to fear each other as now; their feelings, and sentiments, and wishes, would be represented, and for this purpose they must be made known; they would no longer be cannibals to their own heart; candour and ingenuousness would succeed to secresy and mystery; in the disclosure of their feelings, they would no longer fear that their secrets would be whispered maliciously to one tyrant, with the hope of engaging many others to marr and defeat their plans and enjoyments. No! no more of this; it is woman who pleads the cause of woman; man is present, and for the first time becomes informed of what that cause is; he sits on the same bench, he presides at the same councils. If man is to be the associate, and not the master of woman, not the oppressor, her judge, and her executioner as hitherto, the more intimately he becomes acquainted with the peculiarities of woman's more refined sentiments and moral capabilities, the more refined will he become himself, and the more harmonious and honourable will be the intercourse of the sexes. But to make woman an independent legislator for woman, would be to plunge both sexes deeper into that mire of legislative ignorance which has bound man and woman together, but separated their minds and their interests.

If women legislate independently for themselves, what defence, I ask, can they have against the counter-legislation of men in favour of the lowest instincts of their own nature, and against the highest and most ennobling sympathies of ours? No! woman's best security for happiness depends on the mutual co-operation of both parties. Both must have equal weight in forming social arrangements, they will then both become wiser, more virtuous and steadier friends; without either requiring that odious monopoly of the affections which debases woman's love in making her the slave of man, while utterly indifferent to the weal, or woe, or degradation of her own sex. 'A fearful gift, indeed, is now the power to love in woman' - it is pernicious to herself, because all is secretiveness and suffering in her love; hurtful to society, because it has been made an antisocial passion; she is taught to feel a sense of shame in loving, and must keep well her own secret, she must not love till permitted, and then she must love to excess one, and hate or be indifferent to all the world besides. The faculty of loving in woman, is, indeed, a fearful gift, as it now acts; because it is an abstract sentiment, totally unconnected with the moral or intellectual qualities of the object beloved: it resembles those fanatical royalists whose creed is to adore their idol quand-meme.

Woman's love is again a fearful thing, because it has fixed and perpetuated the degradation of her sex, and arrested the moral progress of man himself; why should he change his unjust, cruel, and insulting laws for woman, when he can by compulsion, and through woman's power of loving, command worship and adoration, be pleased, served, and flattered, however deficient he may be in all the finer qualities of heart and mind? Where, I ask under such circumstances, can man learn justice to his fellow-man? Yet this state of things must continue till woman's emancipated mind gives a more wide-spreading sympathy for all her species. If the difference in the nature of man and woman be so widely marked, as Concordia believes, (a belief that men have always found it convenient to establish), then is there some harmony in universal nature lost, and must only be clumsily supplied, as it has been, by coercive laws, compelling the woman's nature to sacrifice itself to that of man. Yet I believe that the obvious difference which now exists between the habits and feelings of both sexes, to arise from the unnatural position of both. We have no right, however, to accuse nature of error, which we must do if such great dissimilarity exists, till we put nature fairly on her trial, by giving an improved and equal education to man and woman; and then see, if, in the full development of all our faculties, nature will not be able to regulate her own works. The exaggerated development given to the animal propensities of man, by our vicious social system, the stifled, or at best partial development of all his nobler faculties, makes, indeed, fearful odds between him and woman, whose gloomy, misty, antisocial, half-superstitious, half-slavish, half-selfish character of love, marks her, in the sad part she has to play in the drama of human life, the very type of human sacrifice; and we find her under all circumstances, whether she be the rich, the poor man's, or the public's slave, she is still the weeping Magdalene, the mute penitent, suffering for errors she is perfectly innocent of; and which never could have existed, to curse humanity, had she been permitted to plead her own cause in conjunction with that of man, who, from not meeting any wholesome resistance to his cruel and worst propensities, but, on the contrary, the most abject submission and encouragement, must continue blind to the demoralizing effects of his own laws and institutions.

No wonder, then, that he should be ignorant of the nature of woman; no wonder that she, the humble servant of man exclusively, should be equally ignorant of her own.

Alike the bondage and the license suit,
The brute made ruler, and the man made brute.

The advice given by Concordia to her sex is excellent - 'To take their own cause into their own hands;' but we must beware at present of obtruding upon men's attention the weak side of woman's character, which as true reformers we should avoid: this weak side is 'loving too well, but not wisely,' - no, men should be shown that women, resolved to become more worthy of themselves, can love only what is lovely and estimative in human qualities. And that the vague and dreamy love which acts like an incubus upon our understandings, and which men foolishly and in direct opposition to their real interest are ambitious of inspiring us with, is, with other childish feeling, laid aside. We must exalt the object of our love by giving dignity to the passion itself, promptly showing our motive for loving to be the love of excellence.

But alas! under our present oppressed condition, our love, Circe-like, changes men, capable as they are of becoming demi-gods, into swine! Let us then study to acquire that knowledge, strength, and lofty character, that shall legitimatize our witchery over them. The deformed, transformed by our aid and more rational institutions, will be worthy of our love, as we will be of theirs.

My letter, I fear, Mr. Editor, is too long for even your well-tried patience; but, like myself, I am quite sure you would rather be instructed than amused. I have therefore taken you over a rugged road, that of error, leading, however, to truth; so we must not mind the sharp thorns and briars that lay hold of us on the way. We shall compare scratches when we get to the end of our journey, which is a long day's march yet. But there is something extremely agreeable in the prospect, for I understand that there is something in the air which will, immediately upon our arrival, heal all our wounds, as if by magic. If this be true, and I firmly believe it, (women have large faith) who cares for brambles, or briars, or flints, or stocks, or stones? We shall make new roads in a short time, when we all go to work together; this will be making short work of what is now peculiarly dry and fatiguing.

I remain, Mr. Editor,
With great respect and good wishes,
Your fellow-labourer
VLASTA
London, August, 1833

1 We beg to assure Vlasta of our impartiality in this respect. The Correspondents of the Crisis are chiefly anonymous, and unknown to us. -ED.

Reprinted in Marie Mulvey Roberts and Tamae Mizuta (ed.), The Rebels, Irish Feminists [London: Routledge / Thoemmes Press, 1995]

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