Monday, August 11, 2008

The Declaration of Sentiments

Reading Sweet Cicely brought to mind questions about what rights women lacked in the 19th century, so I decided to look into it. Most of the stuff I kept finding was about women's rights in England, which is wasn't what I was concerned with, but after some digging around on Wikipedia, I found the Declaration of Sentiments, which was signed in Seneca, New York, and was modeled after the Declaration of Independence.

After a short introduction similar to the Declaration of Independence, the Declaration of Sentiments gives the following list of transgressions:
  • He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise.
  • He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice.
  • He has withheld from her rights which are given to the most ignorant and degraded men - both natives and foreigners.
  • Having deprived her of this first right as a citizen, the elective franchise, thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of legislation, he has oppressed her on all sides.
  • He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead.
  • He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns.
  • He has made her morally, an irresponsible being, as she can commit many crimes with impunity, provided they be done in the presence of her husband. In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her master - the law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty, and to administer chastisement.
  • He has so framed the laws of divorce, as to what shall be the proper causes of divorce, in case of separation, to whom the guardianship of the children shall be given; as to be wholly regardless of the happiness of the women - the law, in all cases, going upon a false supposition of the supremacy of a woman, and giving all power into his hands.
  • After depriving her of all rights as a married woman, if single and the owner of property, he has taxed her to support a government which recognizes her only when her property can be made profitable to it.
  • He has monopolized nearly all the profitable employments, and from those she is permitted to follow, she receives but a scanty remuneration.
  • He closes against her all the avenues to wealth and distinction, which he considers most honorable to himself. As a teacher of theology, medicine, or law, she is not known.
  • He has denied her the facilities for obtaining a thorough education - all colleges being closed against her.
  • He allows her in church, as well as State, but a subordinate position, claiming Apostolic authority for her exclusion from the ministry, and, with some exceptions, from any public participation in the affairs of the Church.
  • He has created a false public sentiment by giving to the world a different code of morals for men and women, by which moral delinquencies which exclude women from society, are not only tolerated but deemed of little account in man.
  • He has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah himself, claiming it as his right to assign for her a sphere of action, when that belongs to her conscience and her God.
  • He has endeavored, in every way that he could to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life.

"Elective franchise," in the above, refers to the right to vote, but other than that I think it is pretty easy to understand. Most of them involve suffrage in some way, which indicates that women probably viewed that as the most fundamental of the rights they lacked. For the most part, I think these are legitimate complaints, although some I don't really think are legitimate rights (for anybody, not just women), such as the third-to-last item on the list, since it amounts to a claim on a particular standard of moral judgment, which is really outside the scope of political rights.

I did find this interesting, just because it gives a more explicit reference point for many of the issues being raised in Sweet Cicely.

1 comment:

melissa said...

I have never heard of this. I agree, it does seem to speak specifically towards "Sweet Cicely." I found this one especially interesting:

*He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead.

Does this mean that if the woman is not married then they are NOT civilly dead? This doesn't seem right since, Cicely was still unable to participate in civil society after her husband died.