Thou sayest, ‘the moment woman begins to feel the promptings of ambition, or the thirst for power, her ægis of defence is gone.’ Can man, then, retain his ægis when he indulges these guilty passions?
Angelina Emily Grimké
The Public Record
Angelina Emily Grimké Weld was an American abolitionist, political activist, women's rights advocate, and supporter of the women's suffrage movement. At one point she was the best known, or "most notorious," woman in the country. She and her sister Sarah Moore Grimké were considered the only notable examples of white Southern women abolitionists. The sisters lived together as adults, while Angelina was the wife of abolitionist leader Theodore Dwight Weld.
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I cannot refrain from pronouncing this sentiment as beneath the dignity of any woman who names the name of Christ.
No woman, who understands her dignity as a moral, intellectual, and accountable being, cares aught for any attention or any protection, vouchsafed by ‘the promptings of chivalry, and the poetry of romantic gallantry’?
Such a one loathes such littleness, and turns with disgust from all such silly insipidities.
Her noble nature is insulted by such paltry, sickening adulation, and she will not stoop to drink the foul waters of so turbid a stream.
If all this sinful foolery is to be withdrawn from our sex, with all my heart I say, the sooner the better.
Yea, I say more, no woman who lives up to the true glory of her womanhood, will ever be treated with such practical contempt.
What dost thou mean by woman’s retaining her place as defenceless and dependent?
What did Jesus say to his disciples, when he commissioned them to preach the gospel?--‘Behold, I send you forth as SHEEP in the midst of wolves; be ye wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.
Again, she must ‘make no claims, and maintain no rights, but what are the gifts of honor, rectitude and love.’ From whom does woman receive her rights?
One would really suppose that man, as her lord and master, was the gracious giver of her rights, and that these rights were bestowed upon her by ‘the promptings of chivalry, and the poetry of romantic gallantry,’--out of the abundance of…
The great fundamental principle of Abolitionists is, that man cannot rightfully hold his fellow man as property.