tiousness and positions women as ôcompelled by their position in society to depend on menö as having ôno way of escape from the besotted victims of appetite and passion with whom their lot is cast.ö Though Anthony (1) says that ôit is not my purpose to harrow your feelings by attempting to depict the horrible agonies of mind and body that grow out of these monster social evils,ö this is precisely what she does. The inclusion of many statistics on the extent of intemperance leads Anthony (2) to the claim that prostitution is a form of gendered victimization in which men abuse women who may be driven to prostitution by the extremes of starvation.
Anthony (3) says that ôthe work of womenà (is) to prevent this violation by the removal of the causesö which lead people to violate the moral law. In other words, though Anthony (3) recognizes that the vast majority of prostitutes are driven to such activity by social inequities and economic realities, she nevertheless accepts the gendered notion that women are inherently charged with the responsibility of promoting and maintaining the moral law.
Anthony (3) refers to the ôuseful and profitable work in the householdö undertaken by wives and daughters cared for appropriately by their husbands. At the same time, she recognizes that ôwomen, like men, must have equal chances to earn a livingö (Anthony, 4). What this suggests is that Anthony herself felt that women ought to be able to receive the kind of education and training which would make it possible for them to support themselves in dignity but nevertheless continued to value the more traditional roles of women as wives, mothers, and homemakers. There is a direct contradiction in these views, with Anthony (4) calling on the one hand for ôwomen employers, superintendents, legislatorsö and yet emphasizing elsewhere the sanctity of marriage û or marriage to men who are not impure or licentious.
AnthonyÆs argume...