CHAPTER XXIX.REPORTS CONTINUED—REGINA STRAIGHTBACK
We have already obtained a glimpse of Regina Straightback, in character. Her tall Indian-like figure, with her picturesque and semi-manly costume, will not be readily forgotten.
The faithful police of the ‘Committee of Disorganisation,’ in course of a detailed report concerning this woman, says:
“Regina Straightback is nearly as unbending in temper as in figure, which peculiarity renders her of somewhat less avail to us than such more ductile natures as her fast friend, Etherial Softdown, and her soul’s sister, Eusedora Polypheme.
“However, she possesses an availability of her own, which is invaluable in its way. She is incontrovertibly the Amazonian queen of the ‘New-Lights.’ Her commanding figure and her dramatic carriage, together with her unanswerably positive andimperious manner, have, as implying a natural gift of command, won for her the universal suffrage of her sisters militant. So it never fails that, by a species of spontaneous acclaim, she is selected to preside over all convocations of the ‘faithful,’ whether held in public or in private.
“By tacit consent, she has, therefore, come to be regarded as the actual figure-head of the bark of Progress; and, hence, there is no movement, on the part of feminine schismatics, worthy of attention, to which she has chosen to deny her presiding countenance.
“This renders her, of course, a very formidable and important person, in all the ‘New-Light’ agitations of the day. Conscious of supremacy, she exercises it without hesitation; and, with a boldness that is startling to all parties, dares to assert outright those opinions which, in reality, lie at the bottom of the whole agitation in which they are engaged.
“Indeed, not only does she defiantly assert them openly on all occasions, but openly lives up to them in the face of society. While her followers modestly say, they want woman’s civil rights in marriage, she courageously asserts, that there is no marriage except in love, and that the civil contract is like any other partnership in which equivalents are exchanged; and, by way of proof of her sincerity, she boasts, publicly and privately, of the terms on which she married her present husband; who, by the way, possessed considerable property. ‘I do not love you, sir,’ said she; ‘I love another man, whom you know. If you choose to take me on these conditions, I am ready to marry you.’
“The charming candor of this proposal won the day; and the superannuated ‘New-Light’ was fain content to exchange his hand and fortune for herhand, and to leave her heart to settle its affairs in some other direction.
“This is the sort of frankness in which the ‘Committee of Disorganisation’ do most rejoice. They regard it as a highly favourable omen, when a ‘distinguished female’ can take suchgrounds as this, and be publicly sustained by thousands of her sex; for with whatever gravity they may pretend to repudiate the doings of Regina Straightback, in this one particular, it is very certain, that they must regard it with secret favor, and that this is the principal cause of her universal and overwhelming popularity.
“They regard her with a species of covert adoration—as a heroine, who has first, since Fanny Wright, dared, in living up to principle, to do that which they are all, in reality, yearning for courage to do themselves.
“The chaos of social licentiousness, to which the general acceptation of such doctrine as this must lead, may be regarded, to say the least of it, as pleasantly melodramatic. When one woman may go to the house of another, and say, ‘Though thou hast been bound to this man, in the holy bonds of matrimony, yet these bonds are of no moral force; though thou hast borne to this man children from his loins, yet the fact that thou hast suffered gives thee no claim upon him, for it is the penalty of thy sex; and that they are bone of thy bone, and flesh of his flesh, gives thee no just hold upon him, but rather upon the State. And if thou hast nursed him in sickness, he has fed thee and clothed thee, in ample equivalent; if thou hast loved him, he has loved thee; if thou lovest him still, it is thy weakness. Get thee gone! This man no longer loveth thee; he is mine. Thou shalt surrender to me thy nuptial couch; there is no true marriage but in love!’
“Nor does the candor of Regina Straightback rest with practical declarations such as these; she goes quite as far in other directions. She does not hesitate to denounce the Bible, as sanctioning all the oppressions of woman—as the mere tool of the priesthood, the orthodox of whom are banded, to a man, in mortal opposition to their rights. She recommends the use of it, as a means—to those who are more disposed than she is to Jesuitism—of conquering by indirections. They may influence and control the masses, by invoking its sanction, to besure; but she, for her own part, will have nothing to do with subterfuges; she rejects the Bible system in toto, as false—false in fact and tendency. God has made woman sufficient unto herself in the universe. She can and ought to protect herself; and if she does not, it’s her own fault.
“The Bible might do for men; but women possess a higher spirituality, and stronger intuitions; they do not need it. Man, with his heavy logic, never gets beyond a truism or a self-evident fact, of the mere physical world; while woman, with her electrical inspiration, leaps the ‘large lengths’ of universal law, and, like a conquering presence, glides within the spiritual, supreme. It is thus that, scorning all bonds of sense, she knoweth that she doth know!
“The announcement of these tremendous propositions would, of course, be calculated to have an overwhelming effect upon the tender adolescence of thousands of bright spirits—to electrify their hearts and souls with the novel consciousness of claims and attributes, of which they had never dreamed themselves or their sex to be possessors.
“The result has been, of necessity, the institution of a feminine order of ‘knight-errantry,’ of which the Quixote has yet to be sung.
“The Committee do not generally employ such agents as Regina Straightback; but as the time seems to have practically arrived, owing to the preparatory labors of Etherial Softdown and Eusedora Polypheme, they seem to have conceded that such pretensions may be safely risked, though, it is well known, they usually do far more harm than good to any cause.
“The fact that such a step may be safely ventured upon, seems to be the most encouraging token of the progress already achieved, and of the ultimate and triumphant success of the exertions of the ‘Committee of Disorganisation.’”