I Will Die A Free Woman Poem by Franca Kenneth

It is no discovery
The fact is self evident
There is much that a woman needs for happiness
Beside a home and a husband
A woman needs a great deal more than this
To fill the measure of her happiness
And it is through the attempt to restrict
and limit her to such poor substitutes
for a world-wide range and freedom
that she has been so dwarfed in mental stature
and made the unhappy creature and slave
of man's hard ambition and indomitable love of power.

It is not woman's fault
taking her in the aggregate
that she is so weak in body and mind
and such a passive slave to man's will
In law, a woman is scarcely recognized, except as a criminal
She is punished if she does wrong
but has no legal protection in her rights
as an independent human being
She is only man's shadow
The public opinion that affects her is made by him
So long as she submits, man will hold her in fetters
Power and dominion are sweet.

Man is born a tyrant
You see it in a family of sisters and brothers
The boys always attempt to rule their sisters
and if the latter do not submit, then comes discord and contention
Nearly all men are despises of woman's intellect
They reject the doctrine of an equality in the sexes.

Freedom is the price of struggle and combat
and woman will first have to show, in actual strife
that she is the equal of her present lord
Every age and every land have seen noble martyrs
in the cause of freedom
It is better to die for liberty than live as an ignorant slave.
And I will die a free woman.