"Half a century ago women were at an infinite disadvantage in regard to their occupations. The idea that their sphere was at home, and only at home, was like a band of steel on society. But the spinning-wheel and the loom, which had given employment to women, had been superseded by machinery, and something else had to take their places. The taking care of the house and children, and the family sewing, and teaching the little summer school at a dollar per week, could not supply the needs nor fill the aspirations of women. But every departure from these conceded things was met with the cry, "You want to get out of your sphere," or, "To take women out of their sphere;" and that was to fly in the face of Providence, to unsex yourself in short, to be monstrous women, women who, while they orated in public, wanted men to rock the cradle and wash the dishes. We pleaded that whatever was fit to be done at all might with propriety be done by anybody who did it well; that the tools belonged to those who could use them; that the possession of a power presupposed a right to its use."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
AbolitionistsFeminists from the United StatesTax resistersWomen activists from the United StatesWomen's rights activists
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Imported from EN Wikiquote
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Lucy_Stone
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Lucy Stone
Lucy Stone (13 August 1818 – 18 October 1893) was an American social activist and suffragette. She was married to abolitionist Henry Brown Blackwell and the mother of Alice Stone Blackwell.
51 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Lucy Stone →
Related Quotes
"I know, Mother, you feel badly and that you would prefer to have me take some other course, if I could in conscience.…"
"If, while I hear the shriek of the slave mother robbed of her little ones, I do not open my mouth for the dumb, am I …"
"This letter writing is a miserable way of communicating, after all, though I would not on any account be deprived of …"
"Women are in bondage; their clothes are a great hindrance to their engaging in any business which will make them pecu…"
"We want rights. The flour merchant, the house-builder, and the postman charge us no less on account of our sex; but w…"
"Too much has already been said and written about "women's sphere". Leave women, then, to find their sphere."
"The last speaker alluded to this movement as being that of a few disappointed women. From the first years to which my…"
"I know not what you believe of God, but I believe He gave yearnings and longings to be filled, and that He did not me…"
"All over this land women have no political existence. Laws pass over our heads that we can not unmake. Our property i…"
"Nor let it be said that we have forgot/The women who stood with Lucretia Mott;/Nor her who to the world was known/By …"