"If any difference should be made by law between husband and wife, reason, justice and humanity, if their voices were heard, would dictate that it should be in her favor"
About this Quote
Start with the sly reversal: Rose takes the era's favorite premise - that marriage is a legal hierarchy - and flips the burden of proof. If lawmakers insist on making "a difference" between husband and wife, she argues, then their own professed standards should force the inequality to run in the opposite direction. It's not only a plea for equality; it's a rhetorical trap set for a legal system that congratulated itself on reason while practicing domination.
The line works because it names the real problem without getting lost in moralizing. "By law" is the tell. Rose is targeting coverture, the doctrine that effectively erased a married woman's legal identity: property, wages, contracts, even custody could default to the husband. She doesn't ask for sentimental respect inside the home; she indicts the state for underwriting the home as a small monarchy.
"Reason, justice and humanity, if their voices were heard" is doing double duty. It's a nod to Enlightenment ideals that American and British institutions claimed as their brand, and a jab at how thoroughly those ideals had been gagged when women were the subject. The conditional clause is the dagger: of course their voices aren't heard - not in courts, not in legislatures, not in the franchise.
There's also strategic audience awareness. Rose, an immigrant Jewish-born freethinker turned abolitionist and women's rights organizer, speaks in the language of civic virtue rather than sectarian doctrine. She offers legislators a way to save face: either abandon legal difference altogether, or admit that your "reason" is just custom in a powdered wig.
The line works because it names the real problem without getting lost in moralizing. "By law" is the tell. Rose is targeting coverture, the doctrine that effectively erased a married woman's legal identity: property, wages, contracts, even custody could default to the husband. She doesn't ask for sentimental respect inside the home; she indicts the state for underwriting the home as a small monarchy.
"Reason, justice and humanity, if their voices were heard" is doing double duty. It's a nod to Enlightenment ideals that American and British institutions claimed as their brand, and a jab at how thoroughly those ideals had been gagged when women were the subject. The conditional clause is the dagger: of course their voices aren't heard - not in courts, not in legislatures, not in the franchise.
There's also strategic audience awareness. Rose, an immigrant Jewish-born freethinker turned abolitionist and women's rights organizer, speaks in the language of civic virtue rather than sectarian doctrine. She offers legislators a way to save face: either abandon legal difference altogether, or admit that your "reason" is just custom in a powdered wig.
Quote Details
| Topic | Husband & Wife |
|---|
More Quotes by Ernestine
Add to List
