Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 October 1890 — Woman in Office. [ARTICLE]

Woman in Office.

A woman behind an official desk is an awe-inspiring object to the most courageous man in existence; she is her sex plus authority, Charlotte Corday and Minerva combined. She is not the more imposing by reason of her office, but the office is imposing because she tills it, because the office is herself. Such a woman may insist on anything unhindered of man. He is even content, at her command, to concede that the earth is flat for the time being. He appears before so much majesty in a commanding attitude; he waits her pleasure patiently, not daring to murmur at delay. For these reasons the official woman does not go out of her way to annoy or to torture man; she accepts him as a worm, and because he is weak she refrains from treading on him, and goes no further than to gorgonize him with her Tennysonian “stony stare.” It is for members of her own sex that she reserves her more aggressive weapons, man, the worm, obierves, and after awhile he retaliates by saying that a woman in office cannot escape from herself. She refuses to see, or cannot see, any difference between a free, if tax-paying, public and her own family circle. She carries her home characteristics into public affairs, regarding men as the possessors of obnoxious latch keys, and women as the victims of them. Her clients are punished for her toothache and responsible for her dyspepsia. That she is compelled to hold lowly office is the fault of the world, and the world must suffer for it. She knows that she is better than other women, and demonstrates her superiority to anticipate their doubt, or the doubt that she has invented for them. In all probability these faults —light ones, after all, when compared with some of the offenses of the male official—will be remedied; but until they are, women in office will be a thorn in the flesh of women out of office.