Harriet Martineau - Women Quotes

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The sum and substance of female education in America, as in England, is training women to consider marriage as the sole object in life, and to pretend that they do not think so.

Harriet Martineau
Any one must see at a glance that if men and women marry those whom they do not love, they must love those whom they do not marry.

Harriet Martineau
The intellect of women is confined by an unjustifiable restriction of... education.... As women have none of the objects in life for which an enlarged education is considered requisite, the education is not given.... The choice is to either be ill-educated, passive, and subservient, or well-educated, vigorous, and free only upon sufferance.

Harriet Martineau
Marriage... is still the imperfect institution it must remain while women continue to be ill-educated, passive, and subservient.

Harriet Martineau
This noble word [women], spirit-stirring as it passes over English ears, is in America banished, and 'ladies' and 'females' substituted: the one to English taste mawkish and vulgar; the other indistinctive and gross.

Harriet Martineau
I saw no poor men, except a few intemperate ones. I saw some very poor women; but God and man know that the time has not come for women to make their injuries even heard of.

Harriet Martineau
During the present interval between the feudal age and the coming time, when life and its occupations will be freely thrown open to women as to men, the condition of the female working classes is such that if its sufferings were but made known, emotions of horror and shame would tremble through the whole of society.

Harriet Martineau
Women, like men, must be educated with a view to action, or their studies cannot be called education.

Harriet Martineau