Page 60 of Lady Daring
“Woman,” he thundered in a voice trained for the pulpit, “was not made the co-equal to man. Woman is made of softer matter for the purpose of providing companionship and a comfortable home, bearing children. Remember Milton’s lines! ‘For contemplation he and valour form’d, For softness she and sweet attractive grace.’ Even Eve acknowledges this! ‘God is thy law, thou mine,’ she says to Adam. Woman was created to submit. It is her design.”
“But Adam asks his Maker for an equal,” Henrietta said. “‘Among unequals what society can sort, what harmony or true delight?’ It is fellowship he seeks, ‘all rational delight.’ An educated woman would make a better companion to a man, and a better guide for her children as well.”
“Miss Wardley-Hines.” Lord Pinochle stood, puffing out his chest. “Is this some personal grievance you bear? Are you attempting to bring your father, or someone else in your life, to a sense of the duty he has failed to execute?”
His malicious smile taunted her. He wanted everyone in the room to think she was accusing Darien, when Pinochle was responsible for worse.
“In no way does my point come from personal example,” Henrietta replied with an angry flush. “I have benefitted from the protection and guidance of a most wonderful father. I hope every woman in this room has been equally fortunate in her protectors.
“But I am not speaking in the abstract, as you have guessed,” she went on, projecting her voice above the titters and the whispers of “Daring!” “In the institutions that we of the Minerva Society support, I daily see women and children who are left destitute or worse by fathers, or brothers, or husbands who have failed to adhere to the responsibility that Mr. Spickey soclearly outlined for us. What choice do they have but to throw themselves upon the charity of others?
“If women are to be held responsible for the failures that leave them without protection, then the solution is to provide options for self-sufficiency. Education will teach them to choose well and to govern themselves. Any sensible woman would rather hold property than be property.”
“Your attitudes will change, Miss Wardley-Hines, when you have children,” Mrs. Spickey exclaimed, pressed beyond endurance. “Then you will know the real joys for which women have been created.”
Henrietta thought of the small, dark-haired infant in her nursery, marked with the stain of illegitimacy from birth, being rocked to sleep in the arms of a girl whose own infant had been taken from her. Not even Mrs. Spickey could argue it was a woman’s true purpose to be auctioned to her father’s friend and thrown destitute in the street, then forced to bear a child from the injustice.
“If woman’s sole purpose is to marry and mother, then why does God deny so many women this destiny?” Henrietta retorted. “And if marriage is sacred, then why do men abandon or ignore their vows? Or why, for that matter, are so many young women forced into unions they do not desire?”
She glared at Pinochle. Darien’s carelessness with women was, partly, a ruse designed to stir conclusions from a few kisses. Pinochle had forced himself on his maid and planted her with a child he then instructed her to get rid of. She longed to denounce him before the crowd. His eyes dared her to make that mistake.
Henrietta took refuge in her argument, keeping her voice strong and clear. “We should require, first, that women be educated in virtue and reason, and then we must demand that men exercise virtue and reason as well.”
“Woman is not made for self-sufficiency. Her frame is too weak and her faculties lacking. She is best suited to the keeping of home and rearing of children. She has not the strength of mind to participate in the public realm,” someone shouted.
“The physical stature I will grant you, but what if her mind could be strengthened?” Henrietta countered.
“Woman is disobedient and immoral, ruled by her emotions, given to self-indulgence and lust!” Mr. Spickey roared. Mrs. Spickey’s eyes bulged at this assertion, but she kept her mouth screwed shut.
“The same might be said of man,” Henrietta retorted, glaring at Pinochle, who flushed.
“Woman is too pure to be sullied by public commerce and the base business of the world. She belongs in the home, where she may be protected and kept in comfort, tending to her children. Woman’s more spiritual nature is meant to be a balm to the man who spends his days in labor. She would not be able to provide this solace, this inspiration, were she sullied with labor herself.” This was delivered by a woman in sober black who was shaking her head.
“I am afraid I do not know how to reconcile these two,” Henrietta said. “Is woman innately immoral and base, or is she innately noble and pure? In either case, what are the responsibilities of the men who are supposed to guide and protect her? And what is to be done with the women who lose their homes due to death or misfortune or, through the poor behavior of their menfolk, are deprived of the homes they had?”
“A woman who is wronged by her man ought to have some means of satisfaction,” shouted a man clad in fustian, leaping to his feet. He had the darkened nails of a laborer, perhaps a blacksmith. “The law needs to be fair. And a government that gives more rights to some men while denying those of others ain’t fair! The miss on the platform is right—the law needs tolook the same onallGod’s creatures, even its women, even its other races, like that African there. King George ain’t being fair to us! We working men ought to have a voice!”
And that was the cue for any number of men, all throughout the room, to take to their feet and begin shouting in earnest. The noise echoed in the cavernous hall. Henrietta’s debate about women’s rights was over, and something else entirely was at play.
“Rabble!” Mr. Spickey shrieked, pointing at Thomas Hardy. “There’s a reason you and your type oughtn’t have a voice in government. Little better than animals, you are—no respect for decency!”
“We’ve plenty of respect for them as shows it to us!” Hardy roared back. “Who’s made you so fat but the working man, I axe you? Who breaks his back so you can be so plump?”
“Liberté!” came the cry, along with a raised fist. “Équalité! Fraternitié!”
“Are women allowed to be part of the fraternity?” Henrietta shouted into the clamor. “Or is it only men who may be accorded the honor of equality?”
James appeared next to her, eyes bright, whip in hand. “Ey now, here’s a hubble-bubble!” he crowed. “Best you make leg bail and clear the stage if these riffraff take over! There’s a mobility at brew, and that Hardy’s the bellwether.”
“This ismydebate, and I mean to restore order to it.” Henrietta appealed to Lady Bessington, who adjusted her headdress as she waited out the melee, as serene as a ship in full sail. “Order!” Henrietta shouted. “I demand order.”
James laughed at her. “As if they’ll listen to a gentry mort! These’ll listen to Queen Dick, an’ that’s all.”
“It’s time the King listened!” Hardy shouted, pounding his fist on the table. Fox and Wilberforce stepped away from him, taking refuge behind the spectator’s gallery. Mr. Godwingazed around in amazement, looking as if he wanted to throw himself into the fight but was uncertain where his opening lay. Mr. Equiano leaned on the table, smiling, watching the anger escalate. Passionate pleas for freedom were his métier.
“Our demands will be heard!” Hardy shouted. “We will not be denied!”
“Down with King George!” the call began, and at that, a crowd of blue-uniformed officers burst into the room.
