Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/206

190 everything for which we have any inclination or calling, the pursuit of our happiness according to our own judgment and our own will, that is what the female human being must be able to claim for herself, as well as the male, but that is what is still everywhere, directly or indirectly, denied her, and withheld from her.

I would not have thought it possible that even you would have resource to the untenable objections which I have hundreds of times been obliged to refute in conversation, but which are almost sure to be brought up again, as often as the rights of the female being are discussed with a male being. You, too, persuade yourself, or try to persuade your readers, that we women demanded — how absolutely crazy — with this emancipation of ours, the liberty to shoulder a musket, to be pressed into a regiment of soldiers, to go to sea as sailors, in short, to do just those very.things which are quite as contrary to our wishes as to our nature. What would you say, if I should keep my canary bird caged lest he fall upon and devour my doves and hens? Men treat us just as idiotically as I would in such a case treat my canary bird. Of a canary bird you expect that in a state of liberty he would follow his nature, and use his faculties, but of a woman you expect that in a state of liberty she would change her nature, and force herself to do things for which she has as little ability as inclination. How you come to such assumptions is absolutely