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Marion Kirkland Reid

fl. 1843

Eldest daughter of a Glasgow merchant, Marion Kirkland married Hugo Reid in 1839. Kirkland Reid attended the World's Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840 where she witnessed the exclusion of the female delegates from America. Spurred on by "the scornful sneers" of those who "condescend to notice such opinions as mine, " Reid penned A Plea for Woman (1843) which was immediately transported across the Atlantic and published in the US in 1845 under that title. American editions of 1847, 1848, 1851, and 1852 were published under the name Woman, her Education and Influence. The drawing of her in the 1847 edition of Woman, Her Education and Influence indicates a young woman, possibly in her twenties or early thirties. Reid was widowed in 1872. McFadden in Golden Cables of Sympathy: The Transatlantic Sources of Nineteenth Century Feminism states that Finnish Baroness Aleksandra Gripenberg met Reid in 1889. That is about all that is known about Reid's life. Historians are not even sure of her birth and death dates.

The World Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840 was a turning point in the woman's movement. Until that time, women on both sides of the Atlantic had worked in the abolition movement, suffering the same social opprobrium as men – mobbings, public attacks in the newspapers, and worse. Women had also born special opprobrium as unnatural females who left their homes, husbands, children, and God-ordained role in society to participate in social reform movements. In some anti-slavery organization the opprobrium was so bad that women created separate female anti-slavery societies, organizations in which they learned organization building skills that would be useful when the time came to build women's rights organizations. Other societies were mixed, they had male and female members of equal standing. When the call for the convention went out to "all friends" of the slave, the Philadelphia and Boston anti-slavery societies choose women to be included in their delegations. So the women arranged their lives to make the long, time-consuming, and expensive journey to England. Lucretia Mott, Sarah Pugh, Abby Kimber, Elizabeth Neal, Mary Grew, of Philadelphia and Ann Green Phillips, Emily Winslow, and Abby Southwick, of Boston were among the delegates at the opening day of the convention. Female British spectators included Anne Knight, Elizabeth Pease, Hannah Webb and her sister Maria Waring, Mary Howitt, Elizabeth Reid, Elizabeth Ashurst and her sister Matilda Ashurst Biggs, authors Anna Jameson, Amelia Opie, Marion Reid, and the philanthropist Lady Byron. Harriet Martineau was selected to represent Massachusetts but was too ill to attend. She would receive news of the Convention shortly after the events.

Immediately after the opening ceremony which was primarily a tribute to the now feeble, but highly respected, Thomas Clarkson, Wendell Phillips moved "That a Committee of five be appointed to prepare a correct list of the members of this Convention, with instructions to include in such list, all persons bearing credentials from any Anti-Slavery body" and the battle was engaged. Debate raged back and forth between the champions of women and their opponents, all the while being listened to in silence by the women who were present. When the debate was over and the vote taken, it was decided that the women should sit silently in the gallery as spectators, separated from the men by a curtain. So here was a group of social activist women who were not exactly hot-house flowers but who had survived blistering condemnation for their activities and who were rewarded by their male colleagues with insults and a knife-in-the-back. Well, that didn't sit to well with most of those women and they agreed among themselves that the situation for women just had to change. It would be a few years before the women got around to fighting for themselves, but their consciousness had been raised and important contacts had been made. They would spend the next decade first agitating among themselves, then broaching their concerns to a larger segment of womanhood. Within a generation, women would be creating organizations with primary missions to fight for the rights of women as women, including the right of women to vote.

When Marion Reid wrote A Plea for Woman and Anne Knight sent Lucretia Mott a copy along with her highest praise for the work and Lucretia Mott in turn recommended the book to everyone she knew, the book sold in the US like hot-cakes. Hugely influential on both sides of the Atlantic, Reid's work used arguments very similar to those of Thompson and Wheeler a generation earlier to justify woman suffrage. According to Reid, the power to choose rulers and make laws is the only method by which all other rights can be secured. In Plea, Reid addressed the arguments of the day against women's rights then presented counter-arguments to rebut them. In one location, members of the nascent woman's rights and woman suffrage movements could find a wealth of arguments to use against their opponents. Reid addressed two of the most important mid-nineteenth century arguments against the emancipation of women: (1) women and domesticity and (2) women and Christianity. In both cases, Reid reconciled women's rights, specifically woman suffrage, with the then popular conception of women's appropriate role in society.

from A Plea for Women, Chapter 5: Woman's Claim To Equal Rights

"To see one half of the human race excluded by the other from all participation of government, is a political phenomenon which, according to abstract principles, it is impossible to explain." — Talleyrand.

We shall now proceed to enumerate more precisely the disadvantages which, in this country, we conceive woman in general labours under. The principal of these seem to be:—
I. Want of equal civil rights.
II. Enforcement of unjust laws.
III. Want of means for obtaining a good substantial education.

The second and third of these grievances are, in themselves, and essentially, evil and unjust. The first is, perhaps, principally of importance, because without it there are no sure means of obtaining and securing the others; but although the results of legislative powers are what render those powers chiefly desirable, still they are also desirable on their own account; free institutions being one of the most important and elevating influences which can be brought to bear on the human mind. We, therefore, place the deprivation of civil rights first; being the fertile source of many other evils, as well as most injurious in itself.

The ground on which equality is claimed for all men is of equal force for all women; for women share the common nature of humanity, and are possessed of all those noble faculties which constitute man a responsible being, and give him a claim to be his own ruler, so far as is consistent with order, and the possession of the like degree of sovereignty over himself by every other human being. It is the possession of the noble faculties of reason and conscience which elevates man above the brutes, and invests him with this right of exercising supreme authority over himself. It is more especially the possession of an inward rule of rectitude, a law written on the heart in indelible characters, which raises him to this high dignity, and renders him an accountable being, by impressing him with the conviction that there are certain duties which he owes to his fellow-creatures. Whoever possesses this consciousness, has also the belief that the same convictions of duty are implanted in the breast of each member of the human family. He feels that he has a right to have all those duties exercised by others towards him, which his conscience tells him he ought to exercise towards others; hence the natural and equal rights of men.

We do not mean to enter into the question of the claim of all men to equal rights, but simply to state the foundation on which that claim rests, and to show that the first principles on which it does rest apply to all mankind, without distinction of sex. The question of the equal right of all men to be represented in the Legislature, would be the more out of place here, as it has already been ably discussed, and answered in the affirmative, by many of the greatest men of modern times: of these, Jeremy Bentham may be mentioned as the chief. Now, as all the arguments of those who may be called Benthamites apply equally to men and women,* (with the exception of some counter objections in the case of woman, which we shall examine and show to be but trifling,) being built upon the grand characteristics of human nature, which are the same in both sexes, it is certainly inconsistent to allow those arguments weight in the case of the one sex, and refuse it in that of the other. Perhaps those who refuse their assent to these doctrines—who cling to expediency, and put right altogether out of the question, are, to a certain length, excusable for denying equal civil rights to woman; but even these would find it difficult to assign any reason in favour of the expediency which they assert exists for the exclusion of all women from this right.

Our readers will, doubtless, soon observe, that throughout all the arguments we have used in these pages runs the idea of the equal right of all men to be represented—actually and really represented—in Parliament. Now, this has been merely because we were not exactly aware of the grounds on which this privilege has been confined to persons having a house of ten-pounds' rent and upwards. Of course, we do not mean that all women should possess a privilege which has, as yet, only been conferred on particular classes of men; we only mean to insist that the right is the same in both sexes. If there be any particular reason for the exclusion from this privilege of a certain class among men, we would allow it to have weight for excluding the corresponding class of women, but for these alone. We would insist that with whatever speciousness certain classes among men have been excluded from this right it does not follow as a matter of course-as often assumed-that all women ought to be excluded. The class of women corresponding to the privileged class among men have still a claim; and the onus probandi against them lies with those who advocate the continuance of the system of exclusion.

The exercise of those rights would be useful in two ways: it would tend to ennoble and elevate the mind; and it would secure the temporal interest of those who exercise it.

No doubt can be entertained of the debasing nature of slavery. Its tendency to crush and extinguish the moral and spiritual, and to elevate the animal in human nature, is now generally acknowledged, but it does not seem to be so clearly perceived, that every degree of constraint partakes of the same tendency. Perfect liberty, we should say, is that, which allows as much freedom to each individual human being as is consistent with the same degree of freedom in every other human being. Everything short of this liberty, however far it may be from absolute slavery, yet partakes of its nature, and of its power of crushing, cramping and debasing the human mind; of implanting a slavish spirit, and of substituting cunning for true wisdom. It prevents the human being from developing its powers; forbids independence of thought and action without which there can be no virtue; and exercises, in a thousand baneful ways, the most pernicious influence on the formation of individual character. What a cramping and keeping-down effect on the mind of women must this remark have, "What have women to do with that?"-the matter in question being one of interest to the whole human family -"let them mind their knitting, or their house affairs! Now, this remark is, perhaps, only occasionally expressed in words, yet the spirit of it runs through all society: if not often spoken in conversation, it is constantly acted on by our institutions.

Not only does civil liberty remove those evil influences, but it also substitutes ennobling influences in their place. The consciousness of responsibility which the possession of a vote would bestow the dignity of being trusted, the resolution to justify the faith placed in her trust and judgment, would all call forth, in woman, noble powers which, hitherto, have been too much suffered to lie dormant: powers which, when they have occasionally peeped forth in an individual, have but too often been greeted with laughter and ridicule, sometimes even with more serious obloquy. Thus, some of the gifted among women have been induced to hide their light beneath an exterior of levity and frivolity, while others have gained the pardon of the lord of the creation for encroaching on what he claims as his peculiar domain—the intellectual—by falling down and worshipping him, and then devoting their talents to instructing their sex in all the duties of this idolatry. The possession of the franchise would tend to raise woman above the bonds of this intolerable restraint; would give free play to her faculties, energy and individuality to all her powers. It would remove that inert and subdued state of mind which must be the result of a belief, that one is not fit for this or that thing of common sense and every-day life.

But, besides all this, equal privileges are necessary for the mere temporal interests of all; for no one can be supposed to know so well as the individual himself, what is for his own peculiar advantage. Accordingly, it is found, that when one class legislates for any other class, it attends first to the bearing of that legislation on its own class interests; not, perhaps, so much from selfishness, (although that also will help to blind the legislator,) as because it knows what is for its own interest better than it possibly can know the interest of another class with whose mode of life, and consequent wants and wishes, it never can be so familiar as with its own. Each class, then, knowing what is best for its own peculiar benefit, will have its interests best attended to by its own representative; and when all are represented, those measures will be resolved on which favour the happiness of the greatest number.

We are aware that it is said, that woman is virtually represented in Parliament, her interests being the same as those of man; but the many laws which have been obliged to be passed to protect them from their nearest male relatives are a sufficient answer. The simple fact of such laws being necessary would be a strong presumption that woman requires to have her interests really represented in the Legislature; but the manifestly unjust nature of the laws which this necessity has produced, convert presumption into proof, by showing most distinctly, that no sentiment, either of justice or gallantry, has been sufficient to ensure anything like impartiality in the laws between the sexes. Those laws, then, are in themselves a convincing proof, first, that woman requires representation, and, second, that she is not represented. So utterly unjust are they,—as we shall show when treating more particularly of the subject,—that no real representative of woman could have any share in the making of them. They are evidently the production of men legislating for their own most obvious interests, (I say obvious, because their own true and deep interest was to do justice,) without the slightest reference to the injustice they were committing against women.

Members of Parliament are so deeply engaged with the party-spirit of politics that the more special interests of woman, even although most intimately bound up with the general prosperity and well-being of the race, are in great danger of being entirely lost sight of. Unless she be actually represented, there is very little chance of woman's obtaining justice, even in those matters where the laws are acknowledged to be partial,—the evident results of class legislation. The justice of her complaints may be allowed; but if she has no one whose business it is to advocate her cause, its justice will hardly prevent it from being laid on the shelf. It is a proverbial saying, that "everybody's business is nobody's business;" and this is very well exemplified in the manner in which woman is pretended to be represented now. Denying that women are represented, infers another great wrong done them. 'No taxation without representation' is the great motto of the British constitution. Does the tax-gatherer pass the door of the self-dependent and solitary female? Do the various commodities she consumes, come to her charged only with the price of their production and carriage to her? Or is a fourth, or even a third, added to that price, which goes into the public treasury? If she must pay, why cannot she also vote?

* The passage in which Bentham has recorded his conviction, that all his tests of aptitude for political privileges apply equally to both sexes, is rather long for extraction; but it has been well condensed by the editor of the original edition of his works. "On the admission of females, Mr Bentham's plan forbore to lay much stress; because it found no grounds for any very determinate assurance that, in that case, the result would be materially different; and because no minds could be expected to be at present prepared for it. But it declared that it could find no reasons for exclusion, and that those who, in support of it, gave a sneer or a laugh for a reason, because they could not find a better, had no objection to the vesting of absolute power in that sex, and in a single hand: so that it was not without palpable inconsistency and self-condemnation, that the exclusion they put upon this class could be brought forward."-Ed. of original Edition of Bentham.

Footnotes:

1 Reid, p. xiv
2 McFadden, p. 22
3 McFadden, p. 179
4 Anderson, p. 127
5 Anderson, p. 127

References:

Bonnie Anderson, Joyous Greetings: The First International Women's Movement 1830 – 1860 [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000]

Mari Jo Buhle and Paul Buhle, eds., Concise History of Woman Suffrage, excerpts of The History of Woman Suffrage by Anthony, Stanton, and Gage, vol 1, pp. 53 - 62 World's Anti-Slavery Convention, London, England, June 1840

Margaret McFadden, Golden Cables of Sympathy: The Transatlantic Sources of Nineteenth-Century Feminism [Lexington, Ky: University of Kentucky Press, 1999]

Marion Kirkland Reid and Susanne Ferguson (ed.), A Plea for Woman [Edinburgh: Polygon, 1988]

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last updated February 2003