“And, as the woman is different from the man, so is she relative to him.  This is true on the other side also.  They are bound together by mutual relationship so intimate and vital that the existence of neither is absolutely complete except with reference to the other.  But there is this difference, that the relation of woman is, characteristically, that of subordination and dependence.  This does not imply inferiority of character, of capacity, of value, in the sight of God or man; and it has been the glory of woman to have accepted the position of formal inferiority assigned her by the Creator, with all its responsibilities, its trials, its possible outward humiliations and sufferings, in the proud consciousness that it is not incompatible with an essential superiority; that it does not prevent her from occupying, if she will, an inward elevation of character, from which she may look down with pitying and helpful love on him she calls her lord.  Jesus said, ’Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them.  But it shall not be so among you; but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant, even as the Son of man came, not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.’  Surely woman need not hesitate to estimate her status by a criterion of dignity sustained by such authority.  She need not shrink from a position which was sought by the Son of God, and in whose trials and griefs she will have his sympathy and companionship.”

There is a comforting aspect to this discourse, after all.  It holds out the hope, that a particularly noble woman may not be personally inferior to a remarkably bad husband, but “may look down with pitying and helpful love on him she calls her lord.”  The drawback is not only that it insults woman by a reassertion of a merely historical inferiority, which is steadily diminishing, but that it fortifies this by precisely the same talk about the dignity of subordination which has been used to buttress every oppression since the world began.  Never yet was there a pious slaveholder who did not quote to his slaves, on Sunday, precisely the same texts with which President ——­ favors his meek young pupils.  Never yet was there a slaveholder who would not shoot through the head anybody who should attempt to place him in that beautiful position of subjection whose spiritual merits he had just been proclaiming.  When it came to that, he was like Thoreau, who believed resignation to be a virtue, but preferred “not to practice it unless it was quite necessary.”