Page:Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (IA memoirsofmargare02fullrich).pdf/163

Rh mind, appears fantastic and absurd. He would as soon think of waiting for a change in the moon. Hence, while I realized that her contributions evinced rare intellectual wealth and force, I did not value them as I should have done had they been written more fluently and promptly. They often seemed to make their appearance ‘a day after the fair.’

“One other point of tacit antagonism between us may as well be noted. Margaret was always a most earnest, devoted champion of the Emancipation of Women, from their past and present condition of inferiority, to an independence on Men. She demanded for them the fullest recognition of Social and Political Equality with the rougher sex; the freest access to all stations, professions, employments, which are open to any. To this demand I heartily acceded. It seemed to me, however, that her clear perceptions of abstract right were often overborne, in practice, by the influence of education and habit; that while she demanded absolute equality for Woman, she exacted a deference and courtesy from men to women, as women, which was entirely inconsistent with that requirement. In my view, the equalizing theory can be enforced only by ignoring the habitual discrimination of men and women, as forming separate classes, and regarding all alike as simply persons, — as human beings. So long as a lady shall deem herself in need of some gentleman’s arm to conduct her properly out of a dining or ball-room, — so long as she shall consider it dangerous or unbecoming to walk half a mile alone by night, — I cannot see how the ‘Woman’s Rights’ theory is ever to be anything more than a logically defensible abstraction. In this view Margaret did not at all concur, and the diversity