MANUSCRIPT: Working manuscript on the female condition.
Autograph Essay Draft:
“I have always felt that I was the victim of a great wrong”
Bent, Matilda. Autograph Essay Draft Signed “Matilda W.C. Bent.” West Somerville, Mass. 01/28/1911; one 7 ¼ x 9 ¾ -inch leaf “City Hall, Somerville, Mass.” stationery; red ink; creased where folded.
A Massachusetts woman, Matilda Bent, drafts an essay or speech on her perceptions of being female at the start of the 20th century. She begins, “I have always felt that I was the victim of a great wrong; especially so when the four sons whome I have borne and reared at the age of twentyone became legal citizens of this Commonwealth and cast their first-ballots – while their Mother was still classed with imbeciles, idiots, and criminals.
She continues to write of gender inequalities, that despite being “taxed to the limit,” she is “still denied the right of franchise which is given to the men who collect the garbage and ashes at my house.”
Bent ends her piece by quoting a number of religious passages about justice, ending with, “‘Shall I not visit for these things Saith the Lord and shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this.’ God save the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.”
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