“If the present arrangements of society will not admit of woman’s free development, then society must be remodeled, and adapted to the great wants of all humanity.”
Blackwell argues that social arrangements should be changed when they prevent women from developing their abilities and participating fully in human life.
Source details
Elizabeth Blackwell letter to Emily Collins (1848), reproduced in History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I, Chapter V, validated scan page 91 / scan leaf 103. Blackwell argues that social arrangements must be remodeled if they prevent women's free development; this remains nineteenth-century reform argument rather than a current empirical claim about social policy.