Matilda Joslyn Gage - Views On Social Issues

Views On Social Issues

Like many other suffragists, Gage considered abortion a regrettable tragedy, although her views on the subject were more complex than simple opposition. In 1868, she wrote a letter to The Revolution (a women's rights paper edited by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Parker Pillsbury), supporting the typical women's rights view of the time that abortion was an institution supported, dominated and furthered by men. Gage opposed abortion on principle, blaming it on the 'selfish desire' of husbands to maintain their wealth by reducing their offspring:

The short article on "Child Murder" in your paper of March 12 that touched a subject which lies deeper down in woman's wrongs than any other. This is the denial of the right to herself ... nowhere has the marital union of the sexes been one in which woman has had control over her own body.

Enforced motherhood is a crime against the body of the mother and the soul of the child....But the crime of abortion is not one in which the guilt lies solely or even chiefly with the woman....I hesitate not to assert that most of this crime of "child murder," "abortion," "infanticide," lies at the door of the male sex.

Many a woman has laughed a silent, derisive laugh at the decisions of eminent medical and legal authorities, in cases of crimes committed against her as a woman. Never, until she sits as juror on such trials, will or can just decisions be rendered. —(Reference: "Is Woman Her Own?" pages 215-216.)

Gage was quite concerned with the rights of a woman over her own life and body. In 1881 she wrote, on the subject of divorce:

When they preach as does Rev. Crummell, of "the hidden mystery of generation, the wondrous secret of propagated life, committed to the trust of woman," they bring up a self-evident fact of nature which needs no other inspiration, to show the world that the mother, and not the father, is the true head of the family, and that she should be able to free herself from the adulterous husband, keeping her own body a holy temple for its divine-human uses, of which as priestess and holder of the altar she alone should have control. —(Reference: "A Sermon Against Woman," page 2.)

Other feminists of the period referred to "voluntary motherhood," achieved through consensual nonprocreative sexual practices, periodic or permanent sexual abstinence, or (most importantly) the right of a woman (especially a wife) to refuse sex.

Works about Native Americans in the United States by Lewis Henry Morgan and Henry Rowe Schoolcraft also influenced Gage. She decried the brutal treatment of Native Americans in her writings and public speeches. She was angered that the Federal government of the United States attempted to confer citizenship (including suffrage) upon Native Americans (who, Gage argued, opposed taxation, and generally did not seek citizenship) while still withholding the vote from women. She wrote in 1878:

That the Indians have been oppressed - are now, is true, but the United States has treaties with them, recognising them as distinct political communities, and duty towards them demands not an enforced citizenship but a faithful living up to its obligations on the part of the government. —(Reference: "Indian Citizenship," page 2)

In her 1893 work Woman, Church and State she cited the Iroquois society, among others, as a 'Matriarchate' in which women had true power, noting that a system of descent through the female line and female property rights led to a more equal relationship between men and women. Gage spent time among the Iroquois and received the name Karonienhawi - "she who holds the sky" - upon her initiation into the Wolf Clan. She was admitted into the Iroquois Council of Matrons.