For six thousand years the history of woman has been a mournful record of helpless resignation to social prejudice and legal tyranny. A doom of expiation laid on the sex, perhaps, for having been first in the transgression. Yet, tradition teaches also that through woman comes the redemption of humanity, and many earnest souls are even now waiting for some diviner revelation of the mission of woman than the world has yet seen. ‘Earth waits for her Queen’ is the epigraph of Margaret Fuller's great essay, entitled, ‘Woman in the Nineteenth Century.’ As yet, however, the expiatory sacrifice goes on unchanged, and women still weep and toil, as they have ever done, that man, the lord of the world, may find existence made easier and pleasanter by the ceaseless devotion and patient self-sacrifice of the inferior, at least, the weaker sex.

In the early ages, while men were warring or hunting, the women of the family performed all the servile duties; drawing water from the well, like Rebecca; tending the flocks, like Rachel; or cooking the food, like Sara, who was dismissed to knead cakes while angels were conversing with her husband.

Polygamy and slavery began even before Adam's death. ‘Hear my voice, ye wives of Lamech,’ exclaimed the dictatorial Antediluvian to his two wives, Adah and Zillah, who, no doubt, obeyed in silence, for their answers are not recorded in the sacred history.