Yet, then and only then will mankind be ripe for this, when inward and outward freedom for Woman as much as for Man shall be acknowledged as a right, not yielded as a concession. As the friend of the negro assumes that one man cannot by right hold another in bondage, so should the friend of Woman assume that Man cannot by right lay even well-meant restrictions on Woman. If the negro be a soul, if the woman be a soul, apparelled in flesh, to one Master only are they accountable. There is but one law for souls, and, if there is to be an interpreter of it, he must come not as man, or son of man, but as son of God.

Women in the nineteenth century had it hard. That's what Margaret Fuller's book Woman in the Nineteenth Century is all about. Ladies in the days of yore couldn't vote, they couldn't own property in the way that men could, and they were pretty much confined to being housewives for their entire lives. It's this very unsavory state of gender relations that Fuller criticizes in the above passage.

Fuller, of course, was an outspoken women's rights activist. Not only did she write about this stuff—she herself was a woman who managed to rebel against many of the conventions of her time. Her criticism of gender hierarchies and relationships in the above passage shows how important social reform was not only to her, but to other Transcendentalists, too. Like her peers, Fuller looked at her society critically, and she didn't like what she saw.

Fuller conveys to her readers just how bad the situation of women is by comparing them to slaves. Women in the nineteenth century may have seemed "freer" than slaves, but in fact they were restricted in so many ways that they were essentially "owned" by men.

At the time that Fuller wrote this book, slavery, and abolition, were hot topics. The Civil War, after all, was starting to stew, and soon it'd be hot on the burner.

So at that time, many white Americans were beginning to question the morality of slavery (as if owning other people could ever be moral). By drawing a parallel between slavery and patriarchy, Fuller shows that many women were, in fact, as "enslaved" as actual slaves.