Julia Ward Howe’s book Reminiscences 1819-1899 has been on my bookshelf for quite a number of years. I know I have read portions of it because I can see the sticky notes I have stuck in the book. The librarian in me is still hesitant to mark my books. Now I go back to that book and books created by her daughters to get a fresh look at Julia. In my blog I am going to share some of the passages that give me an understanding of the woman who was so important to our history.
In the Chapter on The Woman Suffrage Movement she wrote: (page 372)
“I sometimes feel as if words could not express the comfort and instruction which have come to me in the later years of my life from two sources. One of these has been the better acquaintance with my own sex; the other, the experience of the power resulting from associated action in behalf of worthy objects.
During the first two thirds of my life I looked to the masculine ideal of character as the only true one. I sought its inspiration, and referred my merits and demerits to its judical verdict. In an unexpected hour a new light came to me, showing me a world of thought and of character quite beyond the limits within which I had hitherto been content to abide. The new domain now made clear to me was that of true womanhood, –woman no longer in her ancillary relation to her opposite man, but in her direct relation to the divine plan and purpose, as a free agent, fully having with man every human right and every human responsibilit. “
