dress. For, as in many other instances, so in this, and emphatically
so in this, the cause is made more efficient by the reflex influence
of the effect. Let woman give up the irrational modes of clothing her
person, and these doctrines and sentiments would be deprived of their
most vital aliment by being deprived of their most natural expression.
In no other practical forms of folly to which they might betake
themselves, could they operate so vigorously and be so invigorated by
their operation.

Were woman to throw off the dress, which, in the eye of chivalry and
gallantry, is so well adapted to womanly gracefulness and womanly
helplessness, and to put on a dress that would leave her free to work
her own way through the world, I see not but that chivalry and
gallantry would nearly or quite die out. No longer would she present
herself to man, now in the bewitching character of a plaything, a
doll, an idol, and now in the degraded character of his servant. But
he would confess her transmutation into his equal; and, therefore, all
occasion for the display of chivalry and gallantry toward her on the
one hand, and tyranny on the other, would have passed away. Only let
woman attire her person fitly for the whole battle of life--that great
and often rough battle, which she is as much bound to fight as man is,
and the common sense expressed in the change will put to flight all
the nonsensical fancies about her superiority to man, and all the
nonsensical fancies about her inferiority to him. No more will then be
heard of her being made of a finer material than man is made of; and,
on the contrary, no more will then be heard of her being but the
complement of man, and of its taking both a man and a woman (the
woman, of course, but a small part of it) to make up a unit. No more
will it then be said that there is sex in mind--an original sexual
difference in intellect. What a pity that so many of our noblest women
make this foolish admission! It is made by the great majority of the
women who plead the cause of woman.

I am amazed that, the intelligent women engaged in the "Woman's Rights
Movement," see not the relation between their dress and the oppressive
evils which they are striving to throw off. I am amazed that they do
not see that their dress is indispensable to keep in countenance the
policy and purposes out of which those evils grow. I hazard nothing in
saying, that the relation between the dress and degradation of an