The word helpmate intrigued Louisa, who, when she was still in the White House, wrote: “Man’s interpretation of the word ‘helpmate’ as used in the Bible means this: Women made to cook his dinner, wash his clothes, gratify his sensual appetites, and thank him and love him for permission to drudge through life at the mercy of his caprices. Is this the interpretation intended by the Creator, the father of all mercy?” A deeply religious person herself, she often thought about the prevailing notion that heaped guilt and inferiority only on women because of Eve and the apple.
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