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MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE: Quotes from her writingsMatilda Joslyn Gage was a prolific writer and editor, best known for her work on the first three volumes of A History of Woman Suffrage, with Stanton and Anthony, her book Woman Church and State, and her newspaper, The National Citizen and Ballot Box. The following quotes overview some of Gage's most important views. The injustice of man towards woman under the laws of both Church and State engrafted upon society, have resulted in many evils unsuspected by the world, which if known would strike it with amazement and terror. In the name of religion, the worst crimes against humanity have ever been perpetrated. Woman desires freedom in order to become what she has the innate power of becoming. She is a living growing organism as much as is a tree, and like that tree, she needs room and freedom. A tree planted close beside a stone wall, cannot grow upon the side next to the wall. Sunshine and air may meet it upon the opposite side, its branches may put forth in one direction, but the stone wall prevents its becoming a tree of symmetrical proportions. People demand the overthrow of those restrictions which press the hardest upon them. In each of these three institutions every human being has an interest, and a natural right to assist in framing. Those three institutions, family, society, and government are his only three sources of life, of happiness, and of liberty in this world. We may look forward with an eye of prescience and in the remote future see a time when human governments shall have come to an end, but our duty lies not in the contemplation of that happy period. We belong to a period of the world's struggle; our opportunities and our duties lie with the world as we find it, and women as human beings have inherent rights to share in all the duties of the world, in all methods of the world's progress, because in these duties, in these methods, lie developing powers. Woman is a glorious possibility, the youngest-born of God's creatures, the Benjamin of life, the future of the world is hers. Autograph Book, 21 February 1882 The world is now full of subjects to compel great thoughts. Woman's experiences broaden, deepen, embolden her. She sees life as never before:- as never before she dares to be herself. The progress of life is a growth headward; as the spirit brain increases, morality increases and humanity becomes more free. True civilization is a recognition of the rights of others at every point of contact, and when this takes place the world will step out of the darkness of heathendom into a full light of a religious and political civilization grander than any of which it has yet dreamed. "The Foundation of Sovereignty," The Woman's Tribune. April 1887. While so much is said of the inferior intellect of woman, it is by a strange absurdity conceded that very many eminent men owe their station in life to their mothers. To those who fancy we are near the end of the battle or that the reformer's path is strewn with roses, we may say them nay. The thick of the fight has just begun; the hottest part of the warfare is yet to come, and those who enter it must be willing to give up father, mother and comforts for its sake. Neither shall we who carry on the fight, reap the great reward. We are battling for the good of those who shall come after us; they, not ourselves, shall enter into the harvest. Final Editorial, National Citizen and Ballot Box, 1881. The policy of the church from the moment of her existence has been universal dominion over the lives, property, and thought of mankind. The threads of life mingle like broth in the Witches Cauldron, from many a diverse source. Once possessor of a name but now by virtue of a few words, merely an auxiliary to her reverend husband Money causes people to be interested in each other He took me to one house, a ministers, I didn't like things a bit. They felt grand, kept three servants, black ones, too, and had a great dinner after meeting. Those colored folks had staid home and cooked it. I didn't think it was right. They had carpets you couldn't hear your feet on, and pictures that looked like birds sitting in them. It was all very grand and fine but I didn't feel at home. He had borrowed money of Mr. Sniffles and so he wanted to use him well. He never paid it though. I spose there are good folks in New York but I'd rather be home with ma. She had lived and breathed and thought and acted as directed by father and mother all these years, and now her father was dead and she was left under sole charge and direction of her mother. Her mother, did I say? A selfish tyrant, rather, to whom she was bound by those ties most binding to people trained as this girl had been. Affection, obedience, control of her will, all in the name of duty and religion. Hannah was old, that kind of age that depends not upon years but causes people to lose all interest in life. Like a parasite her mother drew all the juices of youth and happiness from her daughter. If God's justice and mercy extends not farther across the border than theologians teach, how worse than wretched the fate of myriad millions who on earth longed for simple happiness, happiness so simple that it should be common to all as the air they breathe. (Catherine the Second) I propose to glance for a brief hour, at the history of one of the most remarkable women that ever lived. The events of a life always possess a peculiar fascination. The hopes, the fears, the joys, the sorrows, the loves and hatreds of the most obscure person, when spread before us, at once enlist our attention, and have for us an absorbing interest, for here we seek new revelations of the mysteries of life; and an acquaintance with the condition and surroundings of the commonest (one) person, may give us a knowledge of all that person's country was at the time they lived. The events of a life always possess a peculiar fascination. The hopes and fears, the joys and sorrows, the loves and hatreds, and ambitions, of the most obscure person, when open before us, at once enlist our attention, and have (possess) for us an absorbing interest, for here we seek new revelations of the mysteries of life; and a knowledge of the conditions and surroundings, of one person may give to us a perception of all that person's country was at the time they lived. It is no less true mentally and physically, than morally, that a parent's sins are visited upon their children to the third and fourth generation. Every man lives again in the race. His successors are but modified editions of himself. To judge how much our acts will influence the future, we must look back and see what influence the past had had upon us. We are measurably what our fathers and mothers were, our children will measurably be what we have been. (death:) Even the cricket was still. The frosts of approaching winter had hushed his song. He was dead, and all nature, too, seemed dying; but faith said there is a summer beyond. These sleep now, but by and by they will awaken again. I looked at the mounds about me and faith again whispered, "These are not dead, they but sleep! There is a summer beyond where friends meet again." "Letter from Mrs. Gage", Daily Standard, 18 Nov. 1871. (revivals:) American revivals, as a noticeable fact, occur in the winter months, when people are less busy with pressing work for the body, and are upon the lookout for excitement. Revivals have in them that element of emotional exaltation so unconsciously sought by this age and this people.( "Washington Gossip," NY Evening Post, 12 Feb. 1876.) Sympathetic contagion, generally connected with some religious feeling, never has force where the intellect is scientifically and philosophically cultivated, and active. It belongs to an age, or a phase of ignorance and religious superstition. The crusades dragged thousands from home to engage in a war for wresting the Holy Sepulchre from the Turks. For three centuries, imagining they were doing God's service, men were afflicted with that superstitious madness till even children entered it, and thousands of boys and girls from ten to fourteen years of age, led by one of their own companions, marched despite parents and magistrates, on this same mad errand. Moral contagion as a law of life, has never yet received its due consideration. From such instances as have been mentioned, one can well see how Bishop Butler came to suggest his famous idea of the insanity of whole communities. He deemed many incidents of history unexplainable on any other grounds. Delusions seem to be capable of communicating themselves and fastening with a very tenacious hold upon the imagination. During the witchcraft delusion, many persons voluntarily accused themselves of its practice. At the time of the Tarantula mania, which raged in the south of Europe during the fifteenth century, whole companies of the afflicted, hand in hand, sang and danced themselves voluntarily into the sea and were drowned. Suicide, crime, and even accidents put on a contagious form. No stranger fact exists in the religious history of the world, than the rise and spread of the Mormon delusion in this country. The one man power, contrary to the instincts of our government, swelling in the space of thirty years from nothing to one hundred thousand; the deeper depths of woman's degradation, hand in hand, with this autocracy, furnish a problem whose cause is for the philosophers to elucidate. ("The Woman's Anti-Whiskey Crusade," The Golden Age, 21 March 1874.)
The quotes on this page were collected by Sally Roesch Wagner, Ph.D., who is widely regarded as the leading authority on the life and work of Matilda Joslyn Gage. She can be reached at SWagner711@aol.com
The Background Image on this page is from a painting of Morning Glories by Matilda Joslyn Gage |
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