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Judith Sargent MurrayOn the Equality of the Sexes
Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1790A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Equal Intellectual Capabilities
The overarching theme of “On the Equality of the Sexes” is that women are just as intellectually capable as men. Prompted by the inequality women experienced during the Revolutionary Age and the Revolutionary War itself, “On the Equality of the Sexes” is in large part a response to equality as it was addressed in the political field during this period. Murray wrote this argument as an appeal to men and in support of women of the 18th century. Specifically, Murray argues that women are equally intelligent to men and that any deficits in this area are caused by the suppression of women.
The idea of equal intelligence is introduced in the poem that acts as a preface and carries through both parts of the essay. Murray writes: “Is it upon mature consideration we adopt the idea, that nature is thus partial in her distributions? Is it indeed a fact, that she hath yielded to one half of the human species so unquestionable a mental superiority?” (2).
Here, Murray builds her argument for equal intelligence by discussing the natural order of the world and argues that nature would not have created two sexes with one sex being so completely superior to the other. She later demonstrates this idea by discussing the similitude between a male two-year-old and a female two year old. She argues that any differences in judgment that occur between the two sexes after this age are then a result of the education they are provided and the expectations placed upon them.
One other point offered by Murray includes the logical argument that physical superiority does not equate to mental superiority:
I know there are who assert, that as the animal powers of the one sex are superiour, of course their mental faculties also must be stronger; thus attributing strength of mind to the transient organization of this earth born tenement. But if this reasoning is just, man must be content to yield the palm [to] many of the brute creation, since by not a few of his brethren of the field, he is far surpassed in bodily strength (4).
In this way, Murray makes a logical “if, then” move, showing that if men are mentally superior to women because of their physical strength, then animals must be superior to men because of their physical strength. As it is common knowledge that human intellect exceeds animal intellect, Murray is able to effectively undermine this rebuttal.
Educational Opportunities for Women
Secondary to intellectual equality, Murray argues for equal educational opportunities for women. Murray makes efforts to show that education need not interfere with the traditional duties of a woman but, rather, can make her a happier and more effective member of society. Murray presents several reasons why women should receive an equal education, including improved marriage partnerships, self-fulfillment, and becoming closer to God. Many of these are notably conservative in upholding the traditional role of a woman as wife, mother, and congregant. This social conservatism helps to balance the challenging intellectual radicalism of Murray’s feminist argument.
Murray’s primary argument is that any apparent inferiority on the part of women is down to their significantly limited educational and other opportunities: She predicts that women will show themselves to be equal if given the resources and opportunities to do so. Indeed, Murray is a personal example of her own argument, and her experiences enrich her reasoning. On the one hand, she was able to receive a much better education than most women, demonstrating that education is the key to women’s attainment; on the other, she was acutely aware of the difference between herself and her brother, who was sent on to Harvard. Murray is here a living example of her own argument. The importance of her personal circumstances is highly relevant to a piece that was written for private circulation amongst the educated class, including many women who would have had a similar experience to herself.
According to Murray, improved educational opportunities for women could lead to happier marriages. She believed that an appropriate education would make women feel equal to their husbands, instead of falsely inferior or oppressed. She writes, “Doth the person to whom her adverse fate hath consigned her, possess a mind incapable of improvement, she is equally wretched, in being so closely connected with an individual whom she cannot but despise” (3).
This argument forms parts of Murray’s emotional appeal to her male readers, asking them to acknowledge that marriages between two people who are equally well-educated are likely to be more successful. In promoting the happiness of men, as well as of their wives, Murray furthers her essay’s persuasive effect. Showing the importance of personal happiness, Murray expresses the view that women would feel more self-fulfilled upon receiving an equal education. She writes, “Meantime she herself is most unhappy; she feels the want of a cultivated mind” (3). Murray recognizes the desire in women to learn and grow. She describes women as feeling a “void” when they arrive at adulthood, when it seems there is little left to accomplish and they are trapped in the tedium of their conventional role. Murray’s emphasis on happiness, and the right to happiness, is part of her use of Lockean theory on the natural rights and purpose of individuals, widely accepted in its application to men in America. In applying the same theories and reasoning to women, Murray highlights the intellectual unreasonableness of the gendered double standard.
Murray also argues that education helps bring individuals closer to God. In fact, in the poem that prefaces this essay, she states that denying the pursuit of education is a turn away from God:
Weak is the level’d, enervated mind, / And but while here to vegetate design’d. / The torpid spirit mingling with its clod, / Can scarcely boast its origin from God” (1).
In Murray’s view, minds that fail to learn or improve are distanced from God, whether male or female. To be close to God, Murray suggests individuals must work on learning and self-improvement. This opening theme is echoed in her assertion that Eve’s thirst for knowledge was a “laudable ambition,” part of her essay’s satirical conceit that the Fall brought mankind closer to God. As such, it would be ideal for members of both sexes to receive an equal education.
The Tedium of Domestic Duties
Murray argues that the conventional domestic duties assigned to women are insufficient to fulfill the desires of human beings, as domestic duties rarely take much complex thought: It takes very little mental effort to continue a familiar domestic task. As a result, women typically find this type of work dull and must use their imaginations for entertainment while completing their domestic work. Although this may (as Murray argues) help women develop their imaginative capabilities, in other respects, it hampers women’s mental development. Murray writes:
Should it still be vociferated, ‘Your domestick employments are sufficient’—I would calmly ask, is it reasonable, that a candidate for immortality, for the joys of heaven, an intelligent being, who is to spend an eternity in contemplating the works of Deity, should at present be so degraded, as to be allowed no other ideas, than those which are suggested by the mechanism of a pudding, or the sewing the seams of a garment? (4).
Murray here builds on one of the essay’s core claims to suggest that denying women mental stimulation warps not only their character but their immortal souls. Just as uneducated women cannot be good partners to their husbands, they cannot be good subjects of God when their thoughts extend no further than cooking and sewing. Fortunately, Murray suggests, the very dullness of domestic chores means they are easily supplemented with more engaging pursuits:
Nay, we have even more leisure for sedentary pleasures, as our avocations are more retired, much less laborious, and, […] by no means require that avidity of attention which is proper to the employments of the other sex (6).
If women could order their days as they like, they could easily find time to study and learn; as it is, Murray argues, they often stretch out their housework or indulge in frivolous pursuits to fill the empty hours.
Murray closes her argument with a corollary to her claim that domesticity does not naturally suit women more than it does men. Domestic chores, she says, are as important to men as they are to women:
[I]s not the well favoured viand equally delightful to your taste; and doth not your sense of hearing suffer as much, from the discordant sounds prevalent in an ill regulated family, produced by the voices of children and many et ceteras?” (6).
Murray here suggests that the sexual division of labor is a matter of convention rather than innate tendency, even calling it an “exchange” of services. While women may agree to complete certain essential household tasks, men should not deceive themselves that women naturally find those tasks enjoyable or fulfilling any more than they themselves would. Murray’s argument again here appeals to her male readers’ life experience, compassion, and better judgment in asking them to adjust their assumptions about women’s lives and experiences.
