Volume III Part 43 (1/2)

Olympia Brown was the first woman settled as pastor in the State.

Her parish was at Weymouth Landing. In 1864 she pet.i.tioned the Ma.s.sachusetts legislature ”that marriages performed by a woman should be made legal.” The Committee on the Judiciary, to whom the matter was referred, reported that no legislation was necessary, as marriages solemnized by women were already legal.[150] Thus the legislature of the State established the precedent, that ”he” meant ”she” under the law, in one instance at least. Phebe Hanaford, Mary H. Graves and Lorenza Haynes were the first Ma.s.sachusetts women to be ordained preachers of the gospel. Rev. Lorenza Haynes has been chaplain of the Maine House of Representatives.

The three best-known women sculptors in this country were born and bred in Ma.s.sachusetts. They are Harriet Hosmer, Margaret Foley and Anne Whitney. Harriet Hosmer was the first to free herself from the traditions of her s.e.x and follow her profession as a sculptor. When she desired to fit herself for her vocation there was no art school east of the Mississippi river where she could study anatomy, or find suitable models. Margaret Foley, who, amid the hum of the machinery of the Lowell cotton mills, first conceived the idea of chiseling her thought on the surface of a ”smooth-lipped sh.e.l.l,”

was obliged to go to Rome in order to get the necessary instruction in cameo-cutting. There her genius developed so much that she began to model in clay, and soon became a successful sculptor in marble.

Lucy Larcom, in her ”Idyl of Work,” says of Miss Foley:

”That broad-browed delicate girl will carve at Rome Faces in marble, cla.s.sic as her own.”

One of her finest creations is ”The Fountain,” first exhibited in Horticultural Hall at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, 1876. A free art-school was opened to women in Boston in 1867, and Anne Whitney was not obliged to go to Rome for instruction in the appliances of her art. Harriet Hosmer and Margaret Foley have both made statues which adorn the public buildings and parks of their native country; and Anne Whitney's statues of Samuel Adams and Harriet Martineau are the crowning works of her genius.

No great work has yet been done by Ma.s.sachusetts women in oil painting; but in water colors, and in decorative art, many have excelled, first prizes in superiority of design having been taken by them over their masculine compet.i.tors. Lizzie B. Humphrey, Jessie Curtis, Sarah W. Whitman and Fidelia Bridges, take high rank as artists. Helen M. Knowlton, a pupil of William M. Hunt, is a skillful artist in charcoal and has produced some fine pictures.

Women form a large proportion of the students in the school of design recently opened in Boston. A great deal of the ornamental painting now so fas.h.i.+onable on cards and all fancy articles is done by the deft fingers of women. The census of 1880 reports 268 artists and 1,270 musicians and teachers of music.

Of woman as actress and public singer, it is unnecessary to speak, since she has the right of way in both these professions. Here, fortunately, the supply does not exceed the demand; consequently she has her full share of rights, and what is better, equitable pay for her labor. In 1880 there were 111 actresses. Charlotte Cushman, Clara Louise Kellogg and Annie Louise Cary were born in Ma.s.sachusetts.

The drama speaks too feebly on the right side of the woman question. No successful modern dramatist has made this ”humour” of the times the subject of his play. An effort was made in 1879, by the executive committee of the New England a.s.sociation, to secure a woman suffrage play: but it was not successful, and there is yet to be written a counteractive to that popular burlesque, ”The Spirit of '76.” It is to be regretted that the stage still continues to ridicule the woman's rights movement and its leaders; for, as Hamlet says:

”The play's the thing, Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.”

In 1650, when Anne Bradstreet lived and wrote her verses, a woman author was almost unknown in English literature. This lady was the wife of the governor of Ma.s.sachusetts, and because of her literary tendencies was looked upon by the people of her time as a marvel of womankind. Her contemporaries called her the ”tenth muse lately sprung up in America,” and one of them, Rev. Nathaniel Ward, was inspired to write an address to her, in which he declares his wonder at her success as a poet, and playfully foretells the consequences if women are permitted to intrude farther into the domain of man. The closing lines express so well the conflicting emotions which torment the minds of the opponents of the woman suffrage movement, that I venture to quote them:

”Good sooth,” quoth the old Don, ”tell ye me so?

I muse whither at length these Girls will go.

It half revives my chil, frost-bitten blood To see a woman once do aught that's good.

And, chode by Chaucer's Boots and Homer's Furrs, Let men look to't least Women wear the Spurrs.”

In 1818, Hannah Mather Crocker, grand-daughter of Cotton Mather, published a book, called ”Observations on the Rights of Women.” In speaking of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mrs. Crocker says, that while that celebrated woman had a very independent mind, and her ”Rights of Woman” is replete with fine sentiments, yet, she continues, patronizingly, ”we do not coincide with her respecting the total independence of the s.e.x.” Mrs. Crocker evidently wanted her s.e.x to be not too independent, but just independent enough.[151]

In 1841, when Lydia Maria Child edited the _Anti-Slavery Standard_, Margaret Fuller the _Dial_, and Harriot F. Curtis and Harriet Farley the _Lowell Offering_, there were perhaps in New England no other well-known women journalists or editors. Cornelia Walter of the _Evening Transcript_ was the first woman journalist in Boston.

To-day, women are editors and publishers of newspapers all over the United States; and the woman's column is a part of many leading newspapers. Sallie Joy White was the first regular reporter in Boston. She began on the _Boston Post_, a Democratic newspaper, in 1870. Her first work was to report the proceedings of a woman suffrage meeting. She is now on the staff of the _Boston Daily Advertiser_. Lilian Whiting is on the staff of the _Traveller_, and most of the other Boston newspapers have women among their editors and reporters. Some of the best magazine writing of the time is done by women; one needs but to look over the table of contents of the leading periodicals to see how large a proportion of the articles is written by them. Really, the s.e.x seems to have taken possession of what Carlyle called the ”fourth estate”--the literary profession, and they journey into unexplored regions of thought to give the omniverous modern reader something new to feed upon. The census of 1880 reports 445 women as authors and literary persons.

The newspaper itself, that great engine ”whose amba.s.sadors are in every quarter of the globe, whose couriers upon every road,” has slowly swung round, and is at last headed in the right direction.

Reporters for the daily press in Ma.s.sachusetts no longer write in a spirit of flippancy or contempt, and there is not an editor in the State of any account who would permit a member of his staff to report a woman's meeting in any other spirit than that of courtesy.

Teachers occupying high positions and presidents of colleges have given p.r.o.nounced opinions in favor of the reform. Said President Hopkins of Williams College, in 1875:

I would at this point correct my teaching in ”The Law of Love,”

to the effect that _home_ is peculiarly the sphere of woman, and civil government that of man. I now regard the home as the joint sphere of man _and_ woman, and the sphere of civil government more of an open question between the two.

The New England Women's Club, parent[152] of the modern clubs and a.s.sociations for the advancement of women, has been one of the factors in the woman's rights movement. Its members have, in their work and in their lives, ill.u.s.trated the doctrine of woman's equality with man. It was formed in February, 1868.[153]

There has never been, from time immemorial, much difference of opinion concerning woman's right to do a good share in the _drudgery_ of the world. But in the remunerative employments, before 1850, she was but spa.r.s.ely represented. In 1840, when Harriet Martineau visited this country, she found to her surprise that there were only seven vocations, outside home, into which the women of the United States had entered. These were ”teaching, needlework, keeping boarders, weaving, type-setting, and folding and st.i.tching in book-bindery.” In contrast, it is only necessary to mention that in Ma.s.sachusetts alone, woman's ingenuity is now employed in nearly 300 different branches of industry. It cannot be added that for doing the same kind and amount of work women are paid men's wages. The census does not include the services of the mother and daughter among the _paid_ vocations, though, as is well known, in many instances they do all the housework of the family.

They get no wages, and therefore do not appear among the ”useful cla.s.ses.” They are not earners, but savers of money. A money-_saver_ is not a recognized factor, either in political economy or in the State census. The mother, daughter or wife is put down in its pages as ”keeping house.” If they were paid for their services they would be called ”housekeepers,” and would have their place among the paid employments.

Among the many rights woman has appropriated to herself must be included the ”patent right.” The charge has often been made that women never invent anything, but statistics on the subject declare that in 1880 patents for their own inventions were issued to eighty-seven different women in the United States. A fair proportion of these were from Ma.s.sachusetts.

This progress in the various departments encountered great opposition from certain teachers and writers. Dr. Bushnell's ”Reform Against Nature,” Dr. Fulton's talk both in and out of the pulpit, served to show the weakness of that side of the question.

Frances Parkman, Dr. Holland, Dr. W. H. Hammond, Rev. Morgan Dix, and even some women have added their so-called arguments in the vain attempt to keep woman as they think ”G.o.d made her.”

Much the stronger writers and speakers have been found on the right side of this question. The names of leading speakers, such as William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips and Theodore Parker, have already been mentioned. Perhaps the most suggestive articles in favor of the reform were T. W. Higginson's ”Ought Women to Learn the Alphabet,” published in the _Atlantic Monthly_ of February, 1859, and Samuel Bowles' ”The Woman Question and s.e.x in Politics,”