Mary Collier - The Woman's Labour

Mary Malone writes:
Mary Collier was a washerwoman from Hampshire. She knew how things used to be before Patriarchy. 

No Learning ever was bestow’d on me;
My Live was always spent in Drudgery:
And not alone; alas! With Grief I find
It is the Portion of poor Woman-kind.
Oft have I thought as on my Bed I lay,
Eas’d from the tiresome Labours of the Day,
Our first Extraction from the Mass refin’d,
Could never be for Slavery design’d;
Till Time and Custom by degrees destroy’d
That happy State our Sex at first enjoy’d.
When Men had us’d their utmost Care and Toil,
Their Recompense was but a Female Smile;
When they by Arts and Arms were rendered Great
They laid their Trophies at a Woman’s Feet;
They, in those Days, unto our Sex did bring
Their Hearts, their All, a Free-will Offering;
And as from us their Being they derive,
They back again should all due homage give.