The Original Sin | Text by Michelle Shail | Holiday Issue 2009
Our culture links the acquisition of material possessions and status symbols to individual worth and thus equates, by and by, our emotion happiness. At 34 some would say I had arrived:
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✓ Married to a successful attorney working for a fortune 100 company
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✓ Three healthy children; each gender fruitfully represented
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✓ Home in the Country Club selected by me, and
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✓ Top of the line mini-van of my choice installed in the oversized garage
I was bewildered, then, along with others to identify myself as unhappy. Was I a prima donna housewife in charge of the majority of our family dynamics, schedules and purchasing dollars never fully satiated and determined to perpetually see myself on the outside looking in? Well, no. I was the newlywed wife who commuted around the DC beltway working long days while her husband attended law school full time. And yes, that law degree not only accomplished one of his dreams, but benefited me in the pursuit of my goals. Never the less, I was willing and able to earn the house we built, the cars we bought, the retirement accounts we funded and the comforts we enjoyed.
Ultimately the disillusionment with my life was not about material possessions. Riding the cultural wave from subjugation to liberation - I failed to embrace the emotional message of freedom.
Those that Came Before Us
With the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 in America, women were still down on their knees, as they always had been throughout the world. And 72 years after our Forefather’s claimed their freedom from the clutches of England, women quietly began their revolution to shatter their ramparts of confinement. As a 38 year old woman with a college degree, the opportunity to pursue a Master’s degree, and the option of a career, it is difficult to contemplate a time when women could not vote, seek higher education, or inherit property. Thus were the cultural norms in 1848. Married women were dead in the eyes of the law, required to submit to laws that they had no voice in establishing, and were the physical and emotional property of either fathers or husbands. Yet American women paid the price of Free Will equally. While men waged war in the name of morality, religion and freedom, choose weapons over dialogue and pursued power and control over shared participation, women and children were abandoned, abused and cast into poverty.
How, in an idealistic democracy, that sacrificed life and family for freedom from oppression, could half of the population be so devalued? This was the bold contemplation of the young housewife and mother from upstate New York, Elizabeth Cady Stanton. In a time when afternoon tea was reserved for conversation, Elizabeth Stanton and her four friends selected a place and time [Wesleyan Chapel, Seneca Falls, July 19 and 20, 1848] for a convention to explore the social, civil rights and conditions of women in the United States. The forbidden fruit was the vote: for to vote was to have a say in the paradise of freedom.
In their brazen audacity, the signers of the Declaration of Sentiments, the result of the first Women’s Right’s Convention, were branded Temptresses of the New World. These women, no strangers to sacrifice, fully understood the ridicule that would befall their efforts. This small group of women held firm under vicious attack from media publications, from within the communities and from over the pulpits. As the universe attempts to find its center the raucous assaults on this courageous group actually established sympathies for their cause and the momentum grew. This paradigm plays out in the world today as we read with astonishment the brutal oppression of men and women who dare question the theocracies in countries such as Iran and Afghanistan. It’s sobering to learn how little time separates us from similar atrocities.
After decades of brilliant utility, women finally won the right to vote in 1920 - a full 144 years after the Declaration of Independence. Such a significant accomplishment was only the beginning of change for the rights of women. Patriots of the cause spoke eloquently and wrote voraciously to establish government agencies and civil associations to protect the rights of women and further their cause. Gradually their plight improved and society was able to contemplate women’s freedom regarding reproductive rights in the 1960’s, while the 1970’s and 80’s brought the Equal Rights Amendment. Despite the backlash, the contempt they faced and the age-old tactic of inciting speculative fear regarding women’s rights and the pursuit of employment, interest in politics, sports, the military, religious posts and the power of the purchasing dollar we are reminded of Margaret Mead’s quote, “never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
