"Home Life" is a speech given by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who was an American social activist, abolitionist and leading figure of the early women's right movement. In this speech, which was delivered during 1875, she talks about marriage, divorce and granting greater rights to women. According to Elizabeth Cady Stanton granting greater divorce and other rights to women will put an end to marriage as indissoluble tie which is slavery for women, but John Stuart Mills disagrees with Stanton by stating that men can not yet tolerate being equal with women. "From women's standpoint, I see that marriage is indissoluble tie is slavery for women, because law, religion and public sentiment all combine under this idea to hold her true to this relation, whatever it may be and there is no other human slavery that knows such depths of degradation as a wife chained to a man who she neither loves nor respects" (Voices of Freedom, 16). I think this is the most significant point she made in this speech. Stanton is speaking for all the women who are in an unhappy, mistreated, abused marriage, and they have no choice but to tolerate it. She was speaking for women who were oppressed during that time. What she is trying to point out is that if women were given the right to divorce than women wouldn't have to be tied to unsuccessful abusive marriage. She also points out that when men and women are not owned by each other as property, and rather are together only by affection, their marriage will be more successful and will be a lifelong relationship not a burden. Women seeking for rescue from a marriage although they can't since they have no choice but to bare with their husband no matter how they are treated, good or bad. Stanton says "The freer the relations between human beings, the happier."(Voices Of Freedom, 17) I think this is a good point she's making, I strongly believe that a happier marriage involves respect, eternal love, and devotion, which they didn't have during 1870s.
