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[The last number of Harper’s Magazine]

About This Item

  • Title: [The last number of Harper’s Magazine]
  • Date: 28 October 1857
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: per.00995
  • Source: Brooklyn Daily Times, 28 October 1857: 2. Our transcription is based on a digital image of a microfilm scan of the original issue. Microfilm of original issue held at Pennsylvania State University Libraries. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the journalism, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Editorial note: This piece is unsigned, as was the case for most of Whitman's journalism. However, this editorial is part of a series of texts that deal with a coherent theme that has been identified by the Whitman Archive journalism team as likely authored by Whitman. This decision is based on a combination of historical and (auto)biographical accounts, similarity to contemporary Whitman writings, a history of scholarly attribution, extant clippings retained by Whitman, computational stylometric analysis, and, in some cases, manuscript evidence in Whitman’s hand.
  • Contributors to digital file: Thara Michaelis Kaylen Michaelis Jamie DeRousse Jason Stacy Karie Cobb
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "[The last number of Harper’s Magazine]." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 16 July 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: per.00995.xml (TEI)
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☞The last number of Harper’s Magazine1 contains a just protest against the common cant of the day with regard to women. Among other points, the writer touches upon the disposition manifested to regard the fairer part of creation as merely calculated for household drudges, and to estimate their merits simply by their qualifications as housekeepers. Undoubtedly, this state of feeling exists among a large class of the sterner sex. They seem to imagine that woman was made for no nobler and loftier purpose than to fulfill the ordinary claims of domestic life. Their mouths are full of “wise saws and modern instances”2 concerning the cooking of dinners and the darning of stockings. Intellectual culture, according to them, should be separated from all connection with femininity. A woman who is capable of thinking of something besides buttons and baking-pans is voted a “blue,” and regarded with horror. We hope that some of this class may chance to read and “inwardly digest” the timely article in “Harper.”

Notes:

1.  [back]

2. "Wise saws and modern instances," is quoted from Shakespeare's As You Like It, Act 2, Scene 2 [back]

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