[Eve's Apology in Defense of Women]
agrees.
Amelia Lanier
Whose Eagles eyes behold the glorious
Sunne
Of th'all-creating Providence, reflecting
His blessed beames on all by him,
begunne;
Increasing, strengthning, guiding and
directing
All worldly creatures their due course to
runne,
Unto His powrefull pleasure all
subjecting:
And thou (deere Ladie) by his speciall
grace,
In these his creatures dost behold his
face.
Sith Cynthia is ascended to that rest
Of endlesse joy and true Eternitie,
That glorious place that cannot be
exprest
By any wight clad in mortalitie,
In her almightie love so highly blest,
And crown'd with everlasting
Sov'raigntie;
Where Saints and Angells do attend her
Throne,
And she gives glorie unto God alone.
To thee great Countesse now I will
applie
My Pen, to write thy never dying fame;
That when to Heav'n thy blessed Soule
shall flie,
These lines on earth record thy reverend
name:
And to this taske I meane my Muse to
tie,
Though wanting skill I shall but
purchase blame:
Pardon (deere Ladie) want of womans
wit
To pen thy praise, when few can equall
it.
Whose all-reviving beautie, yeelds such
joyes
To thy sad Soule, plunged in waves of
woe,
That worldly pleasures seemes to thee as
toyes,
Onely thou seek'st Eternitie to know,
Respecting not the infinite annoyes
That Satan to thy well-staid mind can
show;
Ne can he quench in thee, the Spirit of
Grace,
Nor draw thee from beholding Heavens
bright face.
And pardon (Madame) though I do not
write
Those praisefull lines of that delightfull
place,
As you commaunded me in that faire
night,
When shining Phoebe gave so great a
grace,
Presenting Paradice to your sweet sight,
Unfolding all the beauty of her face
With pleasant groves, hills, walks and
stately trees,
Which pleasures with retired minds
Thy Mind so perfect by thy Maker
fram'd,
No vaine delights can harbour in thy
heart,
With his sweet love, thou art so much
inflam'd,
As of the world thou seem'st to have no
part;
So, love him still, thou need'st not be
asham'd,
Tis He that made thee, what thou wert,
and art:
Tis He that dries all teares from Orphans
1
eies,
And heares from heav'n the wofull
widdows cries.
Tis He that doth behold thy inward
cares,
And will regard the sorrowes of thy
Soule;
Tis He that guides thy feet from Sathans
snares,
And in his Wisedome, doth thy waies
controule:
He through afflictions, still thy Minde
prepares,
And all thy glorious Trialls will enroule:
That when darke daies of terror shall
appeare,
Thou as the Sunne shalt shine; or much
more cleare.
The Heav'ns shall perish as a garment
olde,
Or as a vesture by the maker chang'd,
And shall depart, as when a skrowle is
rolde;
Yet thou from him shalt never be
estrang'd,
When He shall come in glory, that was
solde
For all our sinnes; we happily are
chang'd,
Who for our faults put on his
righteousnesse,
Although full oft his Lawes we doe
transgresse.
Long mai'st thou joy in this almightie
love,
Long may thy Soule be pleasing in his
sight,
Long mai'st thou have true comforts
from above,
Long mai'st thou set on him thy whole
delight,
And patiently endure when he doth
prove,
Knowing that He will surely do thee
right:
Thy patience, faith, long suffring, and
thy love,
He will reward with comforts from
above.
With Majestie and Honour is He clad,
And deck'd with light, as with a garment
faire;
He joyes the Meeke, and makes the
Mightie sad,
Pulls downe the Prowd, and doth the
Humble reare:
Who sees this Bridegroome, never can
be sad;
None lives that can his wondrous workes
declare:
Yea, looke how farre the Est is from the
West,
So farre he sets our sinnes that have
transgrest.
He rides upon the wings of all the
windes,
And spreads the heav'ns with his all
powrefull hand;
Oh! who can loose when the Almightie
bindes?
Or in his angry presence dares to stand?
He searcheth out the secrets of all
mindes;
All those that feare him, shall possesse
the Land:
He is exceeding glorious to behold,
Antient of Times; so faire, and yet so
old.
He of the watry Cloudes his Chariot
frames,
And makes his blessed Angels powrefull
Spirits
Rewarding all according to their merits;
The Righteous for an heritage he
claimes,
And registers the wrongs of humble
2
spirits:
Hills melt like wax, in presence of the
Lord,
So do all sinners, in his sight abhorr'd.
He in the waters laies his chamber
beames,
And cloudes of darkenesse compasse
him about,
Consuming fire shall goe before in
streames,
And burne up all his en'mies round
about:
Yet on these Judgements worldlings
never dreames,
Nor of these daungers never stand in
doubt:
While he shall rest within his holy Hill,
That lives and dies according to his Will.
But woe to them that double-hearted
bee,
Who with their tongues the righteous
Soules doe slay;
Bending their bowes to shoot at all they
see,
With upright hearts their Maker to obay;
And secretly doe let their arrowes flee,
To wound true hearted people any way:
The Lord wil roote them out that speake
prowd things,
Deceitfull tongues are but false Slanders
wings.
Froward are the ungodly from their
berth,
No sooner borne, but they doe goe
astray;
The Lord will roote them out from off
the earth,
And give them to their en'mies for a
pray,
As venemous as Serpents is their breath,
With poysned lies to hurt in what they
may
The Innocent: who as a Dove shall flie
Unto the Lord, that he his cause may trie
The righteous Lord doth righteousnesse
allow,
His countenance will behold the thing
that's just;
Unto the Meane he makes the Mightie
bow,
And raiseth up the Poore out of the dust:
Yet makes no count to us, nor when, nor
how,
But powres his grace on all, that puts
their trust
In him: that never will their hopes
betray,
Nor lets them perish that for mercie
pray.
He shall within his Tabernacle dwell,
Whose life is uncorrupt before the Lord,
Who no untrueths of Innocents doth tell,
Nor wrongs his neighbour, nor in deed,
nor word,
Nor in his pride with malice seems to
swell,
Nor whets his tongue more sharper than
a sword,
To wound the reputation of the Just;
Nor seekes to lay their glorie in the Dust.
That great Jehova King of heav'n and
earth,
Will raine downe fire and brimstone
from above,
Upon the wicked monsters in their berth
That storme and rage at those whom he
doth love:
Snares, stormes, and tempests he will
raine,
and dearth,
Because he will himselfe almightie
prove:
And this shall be their portion they shall
drinke,
That thinkes the Lord is blind when he
3
doth winke.
paines to winne.
Pardon (good Madame) though I have
digrest
From what I doe intend to write of thee,
To set his glorie forth whom thou lov'st
best,
Whose wondrous works no mortall eie
can see;
His speciall care on those whom he hath
blest
From wicked worldlings, how he sets
them free:
And how such people he doth overthrow
In all their waies, that they his powre
may know.
But thou, the wonder of our wanton age
Leav'st all delights to serve a heav'nly
King:
Who is more wise? or who can be more
sage,
Than she that doth Affection subject
bring;
Not forcing for the world, or Satans
rage,
But shrowding under the Almighties
wing;
Spending her yeares, moneths, daies,
minutes, howres,
In doing service to the heav'nly powres.
The meditation of this Monarchs love,
Drawes thee from caring what this world
can yield;
Of joyes and griefes both equall thou
dost prove,
They have no force, to force thee from
the field:
Thy constant faith like to the Turtle
Dove
Continues combat, and will never yield
To base affliction; or prowd pomps
desire,
That sets the weakest mindes so much
on fire.
Thou faire example, live without
compare,
With Honours triumphs seated in thy
breast;
Pale Envy never can thy name empaire,
When in thy heart thou harbour'st such a
guest:
Malice must live for ever in dispaire;
There's no revenge where Virtue still
doth rest:
All hearts must needs do homage unto
thee,
In whom all eies such rare perfection
see.
Thou from the Court to the Countrie art
retir'd,
Leaving the world, before the world
leaves thee:
That great Enchantresse of weake
mindes admir'd,
Whose all-bewitching charmes so
pleasing be
To worldly wantons; and too much
desir'd
Of those that care not for Eternitie:
But yeeld themselves as preys to Lust
and Sinne,
Loosing their hopes of Heav'n Hell
That outward Beautie which the world
commends,
Is not the subject I will write upon,
Whose date expir'd, that tyrant Time
soone ends,
Those gawdie colours soone are spent
and gone:
But those faire Virtues which on thee
attends
Are alwaies fresh, they never are but
one:
They make thy Beautie fairer to behold,
Than was that Queenes for whom prowd
Troy was sold.
4
As for those matchlesse colours Red and
White,
Or perfit features in a fading face,
Or due proportion pleasing to the sight;
All these doe draw but dangers and
disgrace:
A mind enrich'd with Virtue, shines
more bright,
Addes everlasting Beauty, gives true
grace,
Frames an immortall Goddesse on the
earth,
Who though she dies, yet Fame gives her
new berth.
What fruit did yeeld that faire forbidden
tree,
But blood, dishonour, infamie, and
shame?
Poore blinded Queene, could'st thou no
better see,
But entertaine disgrace, in stead of
fame?
Doe these designes with Majestie agree?
To staine thy blood, and blot thy royall
name.
That heart that gave consent unto this ill,
Did give consent that thou thy selfe
should'st kill.
That pride of Nature which adornes the
faire,
Like blasing Comets to allure all eies,
Is but the thred, that weaves their web of
Care,
Who glories most, where most their
danger lies;
For greatest perills do attend the faire,
When men do seeke, attempt, plot and
devise,
How they may overthrow the chastest
Dame,
Whose Beautie is the White whereat
they aime.
Faire Rosamund, the wonder of her time,
Had bin much fairer, had shee not bin
faire;.
Beautie betraid her thoughts, aloft to
clime,
To build strong castles in uncertaine
aire,
Where th'infection of a wanton crime
Did worke her fall; first poyson, then
despaire,
With double death did kill her perjur'd
soule,
When heavenly Justice did her sinne
controule.
Twas Beautie bred in Troy the ten yeares
strife,
And carried Hellen from her lawfull
Lord;
Twas Beautie made chaste Lucrece loose
her life,
For which prowd Tarquins fact was so
abhorr'd:
Beautie the cause Antonius wrong'd his
wife,
Which could not be decided but by
sword:
Great Cleopatraes Beautie and defects
Did worke Octaviaes wrongs, and his
neglects.
Holy Matilda in a haplesse houre
Was borne to sorow and to discontent,
Beauty the cause that turn'd her Sweet to
Sowre,
While Chastity sought Folly to prevent.
Lustfull King John refus'd, did use his
powre,
By Fire and Sword, to compasse his
content:
But Friends disgrace, nor Fathers
banishment,
Nor Death it selfe, could purchase her
consent.
Here Beauty in the height of all
5
perfection,
Crown'd this faire Creatures everlasting
fame,
Whose noble minde did scorne the base
subjection
Of Feares, or Favours, to impaire her
Name:
By heavenly grace, she had such true
direction,
To die with Honour, not to live in
Shame;
And drinke that poyson with a cheerefull
heart,
That could all Heavenly grace to her
impart.
This Grace great Lady, doth possesse thy
Soule,
And makes thee pleasing in thy Makers
sight;
This Grace doth all imperfect Thoughts
controule,
Directing thee to serve thy God aright;
Still reckoning him, the Husband of thy
Soule,
Which is most pretious in his glorious
sight:
Because the Worlds delights shee doth
denie
For him, who for her sake vouchsaf'd to
die.
And dying made her Dowager of all;
Nay more, Co-heire of that eternall
blisse
That Angels lost, and We by Adams fall;
Meere Cast-awaies, rais'd by a Judas
kisse,
Christs bloody sweat, the Vineger, and
Gall,
The Speare, Sponge, Nailes, his
buffeting with Fists,
His bitter Passion, Agony, and Death,
Did gaine us Heaven when He did loose
his breath.
These high deserts invites my lowely
Muse
To write of Him, and pardon crave of
thee,
For Time so spent, I need make no
excuse,
Knowing it doth with thy faire Minde
agree
So well, as thou no Labour wilt refuse,
That to thy holy Love may pleasing be:
His Death and Passion I desire to write,
And thee to reade, the blessed Soules
delight.
But my deare Muse, now whither
wouldst thou flie,
Above the pitch of thy appointed
straine?
With Icarus thou seekest now to trie,
Not waxen wings, but thy poore barren
Braine,
Which farre too weake, these siely lines
descrie;
Yet cannot this thy forward Mind
restraine,
But thy poore Infant Verse must soare
aloft,
Not fearing threat'ning dangers,
happening oft.
Thinke when the eye of Wisdom shall
discover
Thy weakling Muse to flie, that scarce
could creepe,
And in the Ayre above the Clowdes to
hover,
When better ‘twere mued up, and fast
asleepe;
They'l thinke with Phaeton, thou canst
neare recover,
But helplesse with that poore yong Lad
to weepe:
The little World of thy weake Wit on
fire,
Where thou wilt perish in thine owne
desire.
6
But yet the Weaker thou doest seeme to
be
In Sexe, or Sence, the more his Glory
shines,
That doth infuze such powerfull Grace in
thee,
To shew thy Love in these few humble
Lines;
The Widowes Myte, with this may well
agree,
Her little All more worth than golden
mynes,
Beeing more deerer to our loving Lord,
Than all the wealth that Kingdoms could
affoard.
Therefore I humbly for his Grace will
pray,
That he will give me Power and Strength
to Write,
That what I have begun, so end I may,
As his great Glory may appeare more
bright;
Yea in these Lines I may no further
stray,
Than his most holy Spirit shall give me
Light:
That blindest Weakenesse be not overbold,
The manner of his Passion to unfold.
In other Phrases than may well agree
With his pure Doctrine, and most holy
Writ,
That Heavens cleare eye, and all the
World may see,
I seeke his Glory, rather than to get
The Vulgars breath, the seed of Vanitie,
Nor Fames lowd Trumpet care I to
admit;
But rather strive in plainest Words to
showe,
The Matter which I seeke to undergoe.
A Matter farre beyond my barren skill,
To shew with any Life this map of
Death,
This Storie; that whole Worlds with
Bookes would fill,
In these few Lines, will put me out of
breath,
To run so swiftly up this mightie Hill,
I may behold it with the eye of Faith;
But to present this pure unspotted
Lambe,
I must confesse, I farre unworthy am.
Yet if he please t'illuminate my Spirit,
And give me Wisdom from his holy Hill,
That I may Write part of his glorious
Merit,
If he vouchsafe to guide my Hand and
Quill,
To shew his Death, by which we doe
inherit
Those endlesse Joyes that all our hearts
doe fill;
Then will I tell of that sad blacke fac'd
Night,
Whose mourning Mantle covered
Heavenly Light.
That very Night our Saviour was
betrayed,
Oh night! exceeding all the nights of
sorow,
When our most blessed Lord, although
dismayed,
Yet would not he one Minutes respite
borrow,
But to Mount Olives went, though sore
afraid,
To welcome Night, and entertaine the
Morrow;
And as he oft unto that place did goe,
So did he now, to meete his long nurst
woe.
He told his deere Disciples that they all
Should be offended by him, that selfe
night,
7
His Griefe was great, and theirs could
not be small,
To part from him who was their sole
Delight;
Saint Peter thought his Faith could never
fall,
No mote could happen in so cleare a
sight:
Which made him say, though all men
were offended,
Yet would he never, though his life were
ended.
But his deare Lord made answere, That
before
The Cocke did crowe, he should deny
him thrice;
This could not choose but grieve him
very sore,
That his hot Love should proove more
cold than Ice,
Denying him he did so much adore;
No imperfection in himselfe he spies,
But faith againe, with him hee'l surely
die,
Rather than his deare Master once denie.
embrace
His holy corps, yet could make no
defence
Against those Vipers, objects of
disgrace,
Which sought that pure eternall Love to
quench:
Here his Disciples willed he to stay,
Whilst he went further, where he meant
to pray.
None were admitted with their Lord to
goe,
But Peter, and the sonnes of Zebed'us,
To them good Jesus opened all his woe,
He gave them leave his sorows to
discusse,
His deepest griefes, he did not scorne to
showe
These three deere friends, so much he
did intrust:
Beeing sorowfull, and overcharg'd with
griefe,
He told it them, yet look'd for no reliefe.
And all the rest (did likewise say the
same)
Of his Disciples, at that instant time;
But yet poore Peter, he was most too
blame,
That thought above them all, by Faith to
clime;
His forward speech inflicted sinne and
shame,
When Wisdoms eyes did looke and
checke his crime:
Who did foresee, and told it him before,
Yet would he needs averre it more and
more.
Sweet Lord, how couldst thou thus to
flesh and blood
Communicate thy griefe? tell of thy
woes?
Thou knew'st they had no powre to doe
thee good,
But were the cause thou must endure
these blowes,
Beeing the Scorpions bred in Adams
mud,
Whose poys'ned sinnes did worke
among thy foes,
To re-ore-charge thy over-burd'ned
soule,
Although the sorowes now they doe
condole.
Now went our Lord unto that holy place,
Sweet Gethsemaine hallowed by his
presence,
That blessed Garden, which did now
Yet didst thou tell them of thy troubled
state,
Of thy Soules heavinesse unto the death,
So full of Love, so free wert thou from
8
hate,
To bid them stay, whose sinnes did stop
thy breath,
When thou wert entring at so straite a
gate,
Yea entring even into the doore of
Death,
Thou bidst them tarry there, and watch
with thee,
Who from thy pretious blood-shed were
not free.
Bidding them tarry, thou didst further
goe,
To meet affliction in such gracefull sort,
As might moove pitie both in friend and
foe,
Thy sorowes such, as none could them
comport,
Such great Indurements who did ever
know,
When to th' Almighty thou didst make
resort?
And falling on thy face didst humbly
pray,
If ‘twere his Will that Cup might passe
away.
And thou content to undergoe all paines,
Sweet Lambe of God, his deare beloved
Sonne,
By this great purchase, what to thee
remaines?
Of Heaven and Earth thou hast a
Kingdom wonne,
Thy Glory beeing equall with thy
Gaines,
In ratifying Gods promise on the Earth,
Made many hundred yeares before thy
birth.
But now returning to thy sleeping
Friends,
That could not watch one houre for love
of thee,
Even those three Friends, which on thy
Grace depends,
Yet shut those Eies that should their
Maker see;
What colour, what excuse, or what
amends,
From thy Displeasure now can set them
free?
Yet thy pure Pietie bids them Watch and
Pray,
Lest in Temptation they be led away.
Saying, Not my will, but thy will Lord
be done.
When as thou prayedst an Angel did
appeare
From Heaven, to comfort thee Gods
onely Sonne,
That thou thy Suffrings might'st the
better beare,
Beeing in an agony, thy glasse neere run,
Thou prayedst more earnestly, in so
great feare,
That pretious sweat came trickling to the
ground,
Like drops of blood thy sences to
confound.
Although the Spirit was willing to obay,
Yet what great weakenesse in the Flesh
was found!
They slept in Ease, whilst thou in Paine
didst pray;
Loe, they in Sleepe, and thou in Sorow
drown'd:
Yet Gods right Hand was unto thee a
stay,
When horror, griefe, and sorow did
abound:
His Angel did appeare from Heaven to
thee,
To yeeld thee comfort in Extremitie.
Loe here his Will, not thy Will, Lord
was done,
But what could comfort then thy
troubled Minde,
9
When Heaven and Earth were both
against thee bent?
And thou no hope, no ease, no rest
could'st finde,
But must restore that Life, which was
but lent;
Was ever Creature in the World so
kinde,
But he that from Eternitie was sent?
To satisfie for many Worlds of Sinne,
Whose matchlesse Torments did but
then begin.
thee;
Thou now must leave those Friends thou
held'st so deere,
Yea those Disciples, who did most adore
thee;
Yet in thy countenance doth no Wrath
appeare,
Although betrayd to those that did
abhorre thee:
Thou did'st vouchsafe to visit them
againe,
Who had no apprehension of thy paine.
If one Mans sinne doth challendge Death
and Hell,
With all the Torments that belong
thereto:
If for one sinne such Plagues on David
fell,
As grieved him, and did his Seed undoe:
If Salomon, for that he did not well,
Falling from Grace, did loose his
Kingdome too:
Ten Tribes beeing taken from his wilfull
Sonne
And Sinne the Cause that they were all
undone.
Their eyes were heavie, and their hearts
asleepe,
Nor knew they well what answere then
to make thee;
Yet thou as Watchman, had'st a care to
keepe
Those few from sinne, that shortly
would forsake thee;
But now thou bidst them henceforth Rest
and Sleepe,
Thy houre is come, and they at hand to
take thee:
The Sonne of God to Sinners made a
pray,
Oh hatefull houre! oh blest! oh cursed
day!
What could thy Innocency now expect,
When all the Sinnes that ever were
committed,
Were laid to thee, whom no man could
detect?
Yet farre thou wert of Man from beeing
pittied,
The Judge so just could yeeld thee no
respect,
Nor would one jot of penance be
remitted;
But greater horror to thy Soule must rise,
Than Heart can thinke, or any Wit
devise.
Now drawes the houre of thy affliction
neere,
And ugly Death presents himselfe before
Loe here thy great Humility was found,
Beeing King of Heaven, and Monarch of
the Earth,
Yet well content to have thy Glory
drownd,
By beeing counted of so meane a berth;
Grace, Love, and Mercy did so much
abound,
Thou entertaindst the Crosse, even to the
death:
And nam'dst thy selfe, the sonne of Man
to be,
To purge our pride by thy Humilitie.
But now thy friends whom thou didst
call to goe,
10
Heavy Spectators of thy haplesse case,
See thy Betrayer, whom too well they
knowe,
One of the twelve, now object of
disgrace,
A trothlesse traytor, and a mortall foe,
With fained kindnesse seekes thee to
imbrace;
And gives a kisse, whereby he may
deceive thee,
That in the hands of Sinners he might
leave thee.
Now muster forth with Swords, with
Staves, with Bils,
High Priests and Scribes, and Elders of
the Land,
Seeking by force to have their wicked
Wils,
Which thou didst never purpose to
withstand;
Now thou mak'st haste unto the worst of
Ils,
And who they seeke, thou gently doest
demand;
This didst thou Lord, t'amaze these
Fooles the more,
T'inquire of that, thou knew'st so well
before.
When loe these Monsters did not shame
to tell,
His name they sought, and found, yet
could not know
Jesus of Nazareth, at whose feet they
fell,
When Heavenly Wisdome did descend
so lowe
To speake to them: they knew they did
not well,
Their great amazement made them
backeward goe:
Nay, though he said unto them, I am he,
They could not know him, whom their
eyes did see.
How blinde were they could not discerne
the Light!
How dull! if not to understand the truth,
How weake! if meekenesse overcame
their might;
How stony hearted, if not mov'd to ruth:
How void of Pitie, and how full of
Spight,
Gainst him that was the Lord of Light
and Truth:
Here insolent Boldnesse checkt by Love
and Grace,
Retires, and falls before our Makers
face.
For when he spake to this accursed crew,
And mildely made them know that it
was he:
Presents himselfe, that they might take a
view;
And what they doubted they might
cleerely see;
Nay more, to re-assure that it was true,
He said: I say unto you, I am hee.
If him they sought, he's willing to obay,
Onely desires the rest might goe their
way.
Thus with a heart prepared to endure
The greatest wrongs Impietie could
devise,
He was content to stoope unto their
Lure,
Although his Greatnesse might doe
otherwise:
Here Grace was seised on with hands
impure,
And Virtue now must be supprest by
Vice,
Pure Innocencie made a prey to Sinne,
Thus did his Torments and our Joyes
beginne.
Here faire Obedience shined in his
breast,
And did suppresse all feare of future
11
paine;
Love was his Leader unto this unrest,
Whil'st Righteousnesse doth carry up his
Traine;
Mercy made way to make us highly
blest,
When Patience beat downe Sorrow,
Feare and Paine:
Justice sate looking with an angry brow,
On blessed misery appeering now.
More glorious than all the Conquerors
Than ever liv'd within this Earthly
round,
More powrefull than all Kings, or
Governours
That ever yet within this World were
found;
More valiant than the greatest Souldiers
That ever fought, to have their glory
crown'd:
For which of them, that ever yet tooke
breath,
Sought t'indure the doome of Heaven
and Earth?
But our sweet Saviour whom these
Jewes did name;
Yet could their learned Ignorance
apprehend
No light of grace, to free themselves
from blame:
Zeale, Lawes, Religion, now they doe
pretend
Against the truth, untruths they seeke to
frame:
Now al their powres, their wits, their
strengths, they bend
Against one siely, weake, unarmed man,
Who no resistance makes, though much
he can,
To free himselfe from these unlearned
men,
Who call'd him Saviour in his blessed
name;
Yet farre from knowing him their
Saviour then,
That came to save both them and theirs
from blame;
Though they retire and fall, they come
agen
To make a surer purchase of their
shame:
With lights and torches now they find
the way,
To take the Shepheard whilst the sheep
doe stray.
Why should unlawfull actions use the
Light?
Inniquitie in Darkenesse seekes to dwell;
Sinne rides his circuit in the dead of
Night,
Teaching all soules the ready waies to
hell;
Sathan coms arm'd with all the powres
of Spight,
Heartens his Champions, makes them
rude and fell;
Like rav'ning wolves, to shed his
guiltlesse blood,
Who thought no harme, but di'd to doe
them good.
Here Falshood beares the shew of
formall Right,
Base Treacherie hath gote a guard of
men;
Tyranny attends, with all his strength
and might,
To leade this siely Lamb to Lyons
denne;
Yet he unmoov'd in this most wretched
plight,
Goes on to meete them, knowes the
houre, and when:
The powre of darkenesse must expresse
Gods ire,
Therefore to save these few was his
desire.
12
These few that wait on Poverty and
Shame,
And offer to be sharers in his Ils;
These few that will be spreaders of his
Fame,
He will not leave to Tyrants wicked
wils;
But still desires to free them from all
blame,
Yet Feare goes forward, Anger Patience
kils:
A Saint is mooved to revenge a wrong,
And Mildnesse doth what doth to Wrath
belong.
For Peter griev'd at what might then
befall,
Yet knew not what to doe, nor what to
thinke,
Thought something must be done; now,
if at all,
To free his Master, that he might not
drinke
This poys'ned draught, farre bitterer than
gall,
For now he sees him at the very brinke
Of griesly Death, who gins to shew his
face,
Clad in all colours of a deepe disgrace.
And now those hands, that never us'd to
fight,
Or drawe a weapon in his owne defence,
Too forward is, to doe his Master right,
Since of his wrongs, hee feeles so true a
sence:
But ah poore Peter! now thou wantest
might,
And hee's resolv'd, with them he will
goe hence:
To draw thy sword in such a helpelesse
cause,
Offends thy Lord, and is against the
Lawes.
So much he hates Revenge, so farre from
Hate,
That he vouchsafes to heale, whom thou
dost wound;
His paths are Peace, with none he holdes
Debate,
His Patience stands upon so sure a
ground,
To counsell thee, although it comes too
late:
Nay, to his foes, his mercies so abound,
That he in pitty doth thy will restraine,
And heales the hurt, and takes away the
paine.
For willingly he will endure this wrong,
Although his pray'rs might have obtain'd
such grace,
As to dissolve their plots though ne'r so
strong,
And bring these wicked Actors in worse
case
Than Ægypts King on whom Gods
plagues did throng,
But that foregoing Scriptures must take
place:
If God by prayers had an army sent
Of powrefull Angels, who could them
prevent?
Yet mightie JESUS meekely ask'd, Why
they
With Swords and Staves doe come as to
a Thiefe?
Hee teaching in the Temple day by day
None did offend, or give him cause of
griefe.
Now all are forward, glad is he that may
Give most offence, and yeeld him least
reliefe:
His hatefull foes are ready now to take
him,
And all his deere Disciples do forsake
him.
Those deare Disciples that he most did
13
love,
And were attendant at his becke and call,
When triall of affliction came to prove,
They first left him, who now must leave
them all:
For they were earth, and he came from
above,
Which made them apt to flie, and fit to
fall:
Though they protest they never will
forsake him,
They do like men, when dangers
overtake them.
And he alone is bound to loose us all,
Whom with unhallowed hands they led
along,
To wicked Caiphas in the Judgement
Hall,
Who studies onely how to doe him
wrong;
High Priests and Elders, People great
and small,
With all reprochfull words about him
throng:
False Witnesses are now call'd in apace,
Whose trothlesse tongues must make
pale death imbrace
The beauty of the World, Heavens
chiefest Glory;
The mirrour of Martyrs, Crowne of holy
Saints;
Love of th'Almighty, blessed Angels
story;
Water of Life, which none that drinks it,
faints;
Guide of the Just, where all our Light we
borrow;
Mercy of Mercies; Hearer of
Complaints;
Triumpher over Death; Ransomer of
Sinne;
Falsly accused: now his paines begin.
Their tongues doe serve him as a Passing
bell,
For what they say is certainly beleeved;
So sound a tale unto the Judge they tell,
That he of Life must shortly be
bereaved;
Their share of Heaven, they doe not care
to sell,
So his afflicted Heart be throughly
grieved:
They tell his Words, though farre from
his intent,
And what his Speeches were, not what
he meant.
That he Gods holy Temple could
destroy,
And in three daies could build it up
againe;
This seem'd to them a vaine and idle toy,
It would not sinke into their sinful
braine:
Christ's blessed body, al true Christians
joy,
Should die, and in three dayes revive
againe:
This did the Lord of Heaven and earth
endure,
Unjustly to be charg'd by tongues
impure.
And now they all doe give attentive eare,
To heare the answere, which he will not
make;
The people wonder how he can forbeare,
And these great wrongs so patiently can
take;
But yet he answers not, nor doth he care,
Much more he will endure for our sake:
Nor can their wisdoms any way
discover,
Who he should be that proov'd so true a
Lover.
To entertaine the sharpest pangs of
death,
And fight a combate in the depth of hell,
For wretched Worldlings made of dust
14
and earth,
Whose hard'ned hearts, with pride and
mallice swell;
In midst of bloody sweat, and dying
breath,
He had compassion on these tyrants fell:
And purchast them a place in Heav'n for
ever,
When they his Soule and Body sought to
sever.
Sinnes ugly mists, so blinded had their
eyes,
That at Noone dayes they could discerne
no Light;
These were those fooles, that thought
themselves so wise,
The Jewish wolves, that did our Saviour
bite;
For now they use all meanes they can
devise,
To beate downe truth, and goe against all
right:
Yea now they take Gods holy name in
vaine,
To know the truth, which truth they doe
prophane.
The chiefest Hel-hounds of this hatefull
crew,
Rose up to aske what answere he could
make,
Against those false accusers in his view;
That by his speech, they might
advantage take:
He held his peace, yet knew they said
not true,
No answere would his holy wisdome
make,
Till he was charged in his glorious name,
Whose pleasure ‘twas he should endure
this shame.
Then with so mild a Majestie he spake,
As they might easly know from whence
he came,
His harmelesse tongue doth no
exceptions take,
Nor Priests, nor People, meanes he now
to blame;
But answers Folly, for true Wisdomes
sake,
Beeing charged deeply by his powrefull
name,
To tell if Christ the Sonne of God he be,
Who for our sinnes must die, to set us
free.
To thee O Caiphas doth he answere give,
That thou hast said, what thou desir'st to
know,
And yet thy malice will not let him live,
So much thou art unto thy selfe a foe;
He speaketh truth, but thou wilt not
beleeve,
Nor canst thou apprehend it to be so:
Though he expresse his Glory unto thee,
Thy Owly eies are blind, and cannot see.
Thou rend'st thy cloathes, in stead of thy
false heart,
And on the guiltlesse lai'st thy guilty
crime;
For thou blasphem'st, and he must feele
the smart:
To sentence death, thou think'st it now
high time;
No witnesse now thou need'st, for this
fowle part,
Thou to the height of wickednesse canst
clime:
And give occasion to the ruder sort,
To make afflictions, sorrows, follies
sport.
Now when the dawne of day gins to
appeare,
And all your wicked counsels have an
end,
To end his Life, that holds you all so
deere,
For to that purpose did your studies
15
bend;
Proud Pontius Pilate must the matter
heare,
To your untroths his eares he now must
lend:
Sweet Jesus bound, to him you led away,
Of his most pretious blood to make your
pray.
Which, when that wicked Caytife did
perceive,
By whose lewd meanes he came to this
distresse;
He brought the price of blood he did
receive,
Thinking thereby to make his fault
seeme lesse,
And with these Priests and Elders did it
leave,
Confest his fault, wherein he did
transgresse:
But when he saw Repentance
unrespected,
He hang'd himselfe; of God and Man
rejected.
By this Example, what can be expected
From wicked Man, which on the Earth
doth live?
But faithlesse dealing, feare of God
neglected;
Who for their private gaine cares not to
sell
The Innocent Blood of Gods most deere
elected,
As did that caytife wretch, now damn'd
in Hell:
If in Christs Schoole, he tooke so great a
fall,
What will they doe, that come not there
at all.
Now Pontius Pilate is to judge the Cause
Of faultlesse Jesus, who before him
stands;
Who neither hath offended Prince, nor
Lawes,
Although he now be brought in woefull
bands:
O noble Governour, make thou yet a
pause,
Doe not in innocent blood imbrue thy
hands;
But heare the words of thy most worthy
wife,
Who sends to thee, to beg her Saviours
life.
Let barb'rous crueltie farre depart from
thee,
And in true Justice take afflictions part;
Open thine eies, that thou the truth mai'st
see,
Doe not the thing that goes against thy
heart,
Condemne not him that must thy Saviour
be;
But view his holy Life, his good desert.
Let not us Women glory in Mens fall,
Who had power given to over-rule us all.
Till now your indiscretion sets us free,
And makes our former fault much lesse
appeare;
Our Mother Eve, who tasted of the Tree,
Giving to Adam what shee held most
deare,
Was simply good, and had no powre to
see,
The after-comming harme did not
appeare:
The subtile Serpent that our Sex
betraide,
Before our fall so sure a plot had laide.
That undiscerning Ignorance perceav'd
No guile, or craft that was by him
intended;
For had she knowne, of what we were
bereav'd,
To his request she had not condiscended.
But she (poore soule) by cunning was
16
deceav'd,
No hurt therein her harmelesse Heart
intended:
For she alleadg'd Gods word, which he
denies,
That they should die, but even as Gods,
be wise.
But surely Adam can not be excusde,
Her fault though great, yet hee was most
too blame;
What Weaknesse offerd, Strength might
have refusde,
Being Lord of all, the greater was his
shame:
Although the Serpents craft had her
abusde,
Gods holy word ought all his actions
frame,
For he was Lord and King of all the
earth,
Before poore Eve had either life or
breath.
Who being fram'd by Gods eternall
hand,
The perfect'st man that ever breath'd on
earth;
And from Gods mouth receiv'd that strait
command,
The breach whereof he knew was
present death:
Yea having powre to rule both Sea and
Land,
Yet with one Apple wonne to loose that
breath
Which God had breathed in his
beauteous face,
Bringing us all in danger and disgrace.
And then to lay the fault on Patience
backe,
That we (poore women) must endure it
all;
We know right well he did discretion
lacke,
Beeing not perswaded thereunto at all;
If Eve did erre, it was for knowledge
sake,
The fruit beeing faire perswaded him to
fall:
No subtill Serpents falshood did betray
him,
If he would eate it, who had powre to
stay him?
Not Eve, whose fault was onely too
much love,
Which made her give this present to her
Deare,
That what shee tasted, he likewise might
prove,
Whereby his knowledge might become
more cleare;
He never sought her weakenesse to
reprove,
With those sharpe words, which he of
God did heare:
Yet Men will boast of Knowledge,
which he tooke
From Eves faire hand, as from a learned
Booke.
If any Evill did in her remaine,
Beeing made of him, he was the ground
of all;
If one of many Worlds could lay a staine
Upon our Sexe, and worke so great a fall
To wretched Man, by Satans subtill
traine;
What will so fowle a fault amongst you
all?
Her weakenesse did the Serpents words
obay;
But you in malice Gods deare Sonne
betray.
Whom, if unjustly you condemne to die,
Her sinne was small, to what you doe
commit;
All mortall sinnes that doe for vengeance
crie,
17
Are not to be compared unto it:
If many worlds would altogether trie,
By all their sinnes the wrath of God to
get;
This sinne of yours, surmounts them all
as farre
As doth the Sunne, another little starre.
Then let us have our Libertie againe,
And challendge to your selves no
Sov'raigntie;
You came not in the world without our
paine,
Make that a barre against your crueltie;
Your fault beeing greater, why should
you disdaine
Our beeing your equals, free from
tyranny?
If one weake woman simply did offend,
This sinne of yours, hath no excuse, nor
end.
To which (poore soules) we never gave
consent,
Witnesse thy wife (O Pilate) speakes for
all;
Who did but dreame, and yet a message
sent,
That thou should'st have nothing to doe
at all
With that just man; which, if thy heart
relent,
Why wilt thou be a reprobate with Saul?
To seeke the death of him that is so
good,
For thy soules health to shed his dearest
blood.
Yea, so thou mai'st these sinful people
please,
Thou art content against all truth and
right,
To seale this act, that may procure thine
ease
With blood, and wrong, with tyrannie,
and might;
The multitude thou seekest to appease,
By base dejection of this heavenly Light:
Demanding which of these that thou
should'st loose,
Whether the Thiefe, or Christ King of
the Jewes.
Base Barrabas the Thiefe, they all desire,
And thou more base than he, perform'st
their will;
Yet when thy thoughts backe to
themselves retire,
Thou art unwilling to commit this ill:
Oh that thou couldst unto such grace
aspire,
That thy polluted lips might never kill
That Honour, which right Judgement
ever graceth,
To purchase shame, which all true worth
defaceth.
Art thou a Judge, and asketh what to do
With one, in whom no fault there can be
found?
The death of Christ wilt thou consent
unto,
Finding no cause, no reason, nor no
ground?
Shall he be scourg'd, and crucified too?
And must his miseries by thy meanes
abound?
Yet not asham'd to aske what he hath
done,
When thine owne conscience seeks this
sinne to shunne.
Three times thou ask'st, What evill hath
he done?
And saist, thou find'st in him no cause of
death,
Yet wilt thou chasten Gods beloved
Sonne,
Although to thee no word of ill he saith:
For Wrath must end, what Malice hath
begunne,
And thou must yield to stop his
18
guiltlesse breath.
This rude tumultuous rowt doth presse
so sore,
That thou condemnest him thou shouldst
adore.
Yet Pilate, this can yeeld thee no
content,
To exercise thine owne authoritie,
But unto Herod he must needes be sent,
To reconcile thy selfe by tyrannie:
Was this the greatest good in Justice
meant,
When thou perceiv'st no fault in him to
be?
If thou must make thy peace by Virtues
fall,
Much better ‘twere not to be friends at
all.
Yet neither thy sterne browe, nor his
great place,
Can draw an answer from the Holy One:
His false accusers, nor his great disgrace,
Nor Herods scoffes; to him they are all
one:
He neither cares, nor feares his owne ill
case,
Though being despis'd and mockt of
every one:
King Herods gladnesse gives him little
ease,
Neither his anger seekes he to appease.
Yet this is strange, that base Impietie
Should yeeld those robes of honour,
which were due;
Pure white, to shew his great Integritie,
His innocency, that all the world might
view;
Perfections height in lowest penury,
Such glorious poverty as they never
knew:
Purple and Scarlet well might him
beseeme,
Whose pretious blood must all the world
redeeme.
And that Imperiall Crowne of Thornes
he wore,
Was much more pretious than the
Diadem
Of any King that ever liv'd before,
Or since his time, their honour's but a
dreame
To his eternall glory, beeing so poore,
To make a purchasse of that heavenly
Realme;
Where God with all his Angels lives in
peace,
No griefes, nor sorrowes, but all joyes
increase.
Those royall robes, which they in scorne
did give,
To make him odious to the common sort,
Yeeld light of Grace to those whose
soules shall live
Within the harbour of this heavenly port;
Much doe they joy, and much more doe
they grieve,
His death, their life, should make his
foes such sport:
With sharpest thornes to pricke his
blessed face,
Our joyfull sorrow, and his greater
grace.
Three feares at once possessed Pilates
heart;
The first, Christs innocencie, which so
plaine appeares;
The next, That he which now must feele
this smart,
Is Gods deare Sonne, for any thing he
heares:
But that which proov'd the deepest
wounding dart,
Is Peoples threat'nings, which he so
much feares,
That he to Cæsar could not be a friend,
Unlesse he sent sweet JESUS to his end.
19
Now Pilate thou art proov'd a painted
wall,
A golden Sepulcher with rotten bones;
From right to wrong, from equitie to fall:
If none upbraid thee, yet the very stones
His blood, his teares, his sighes, his
bitter groanes:
All these will witnesse at the latter day,
When water cannot wash thy sinne
away.
Canst thou be innocent, that gainst all
right,
Wilt yeeld to what thy conscience doth
withstand?
Beeing a man of knowledge, powre, and
might,
To let the wicked carrie such a hand,
Before thy face to blindfold Heav'ns
bright light,
And thou to yeeld to what they did
demand?
Washing thy hands, thy conscience
cannot cleare,
But to all worlds this staine must needs
appeare.
For loe, the Guiltie doth accuse the Just,
And faultie Judge condemnes the
Innocent;
And wilfull Jewes to exercise their lust,
With whips and taunts against their Lord
are bent;
He basely us'd, blasphemed, scorn'd, and
curst,
Our heavenly King to death for us they
sent:
Reproches, slanders, spittings in his face,
Spight doing all her worst in his
disgrace.
And now this long expected houre
drawes neere,
When blessed Saints with Angels doe
condole;
His holy march, soft pace, and heavy
cheere,
In humble sort to yeeld his glorious
soule,
By his deserts the fowlest sinnes to
cleare;
And in th'eternall booke of heaven to
enroule
A satisfaction till the generall doome,
Of all sinnes past, and all that are to
come.
They that had seene this pitifull
Procession,
From Pilates Palace to Mount Calvarie,
Might thinke he answer'd for some great
transgression,
Beeing in such odious sort condemn'd to
die;
He plainely shewed that his own
profession
Was virtue, patience, grace, love, piety;
And how by suffering he could conquer
more
Than all the Kings that ever liv'd before.
First went the Crier with open mouth
proclayming
The heavy sentence of Iniquitie,
The Hangman next, by his base office
clayming
His right in Hell, where sinners never
die,
Carrying the nayles, the people still
blaspheming
Their maker, using all impiety;
The Thieves attending him on either
side,
The Serjeants watching, while the
women cri'd.
Thrice happy women that obtaind such
grace
From him whose worth the world could
not containe;
Immediately to turne about his face,
20
As not remembring his great griefe and
paine,
To comfort you, whose teares powr'd
forth apace
On Flora's bankes, like shewers of Aprils
raine:
Your cries inforced mercie, grace, and
love
From him, whom greatest Princes could
not moove:
To speake on word, nor once to lift his
eyes
Unto proud Pilate, no nor Herod, king;
By all the Questions that they could
devise,
Could make him answere to no manner
of thing;
Yet these poore women, by their pitious
cries
Did moove their Lord, their Lover, and
their King,
To take compassion, turne about, and
speake
To them whose hearts were ready now to
breake.
Poore women seeing how much they did
transgresse,
By teares, by sighes, by cries intreat,
nay° prove,
What may be done among the thickest
presse,
They labour still these tyrants hearts to
move;
In pitie and compassion to forbeare
Their whipping, spurning, tearing of his
haire.
But all in vaine, their malice hath no
end,
Their hearts more hard than flint, or
marble stone;
Now to his griefe, his greatnesse they
attend,
When he (God knowes) had rather be
alone;
They are his guard, yet seeke all meanes
to offend:
Well may he grieve, well may he sigh
and groane,
Under the burthen of a heavy crosse,
He faintly goes to make their gaine his
losse.
Most blessed daughters of Jerusalem,
Who found such favour in your Saviors
sight,
To turne his face when you did pitie
him;
Your tearefull eyes, beheld his eies more
bright;
Your Faith and Love unto such grace did
clime,
To have reflection from this Heav'nly
Light:
Your Eagles eyes did gaze against this
Sunne,
Your hearts did thinke, he dead, the
world were done.
His woefull Mother wayting on her
Sonne,
All comfortlesse in depth of sorow
drowned;
Her griefes extreame, although but new
begun,
To see his bleeding body oft shee
swouned;
How could shee choose but thinke her
selfe undone,
He dying, with whose glory shee was
crowned?
None ever lost so great a losse as shee,
Beeing Sonne, and Father of Eternitie.
When spightfull men with torments did
oppresse
Th'afflicted body of this innocent Dove,
Her teares did wash away his pretious
blood,
That sinners might not tread it under feet
21
To worship him, and that it did her good
Upon her knees, although in open street,
Knowing he was the Jessie floure and
bud,
That must be gath'red when it smell'd
most sweet:
Her Sonne, her Husband, Father,
Saviour, King,
Whose death killd Death, and tooke
away his sting.
Most blessed Virgin, in whose faultlesse
fruit,
All Nations of the earth must needes
rejoyce,
No Creature having sence though ne'r so
brute,
But joyes and trembles when they heare
his voyce;
His wisedome strikes the wisest persons
mute,
Faire chosen vessell, happy in his
choyce:
Deere Mother of our Lord, whose
reverend name,
All people Blessed call, and spread thy
fame.
He is with thee, behold thy happy case;
Marie.
What endlesse comfort did these words
afford
To thee that saw'st an Angell in the place
Proclaime thy Virtues worth, and to
record
Thee blessed among women: that thy
praise
Should last so many worlds beyond thy
daies.
Loe, this high message to thy troubled
spirit,
He doth deliver in the plainest sence;
Sayes, Thou shouldst beare a Sonne that
shal inherit
His Father Davids throne, free from
offence,
Call's him that Holy thing, by whose
pure merit
We must be sav'd, tels what he is, of
whence;
His worth, his greatnesse, what his name
must be,
Who should be call'd the Sonne of the
most High.
For the Almightie magnified thee,
And looked downe upon thy meane
estate;
Thy lowly mind, and unstain'd Chastitie,
Did pleade for Love at great Jehovaes
gate,
Who sending swift-wing'd Gabriel unto
thee,
His holy will and pleasure to relate;
To thee most beauteous Queene of
Woman-kind,
The Angell did unfold his Makers mind.
He cheeres thy troubled soule, bids thee
not feare;
When thy pure thoughts could hardly
apprehend
This salutation, when he did appeare;
Nor couldst thou judge, whereto those
words did tend;
His pure aspect did moove thy modest
cheere
To muse, yet joy that God vouchsaf'd to
send
His glorious Angel; who did thee assure
To beare a child, although a Virgin pure.
He thus beganne, Haile Mary full of
grace, The Salutation
Thou freely art beloved of the Lord, of
the Virgin
Nay more, thy Sonne should Rule and
Raigne for ever;
Yea, of his Kingdom there should be no
end;
22
Over the house of Jacob, Heavens great
Giver
Would give him powre, and to that end
did send
His faithfull servant Gabriel to deliver
To thy chast eares no word that might
offend:
But that this blessed Infant borne of thee,
Thy Sonne, The onely Sonne of God
should be.
When on the knees of thy submissive
heart
Thou humbly didst demand, How that
should be?
Thy virgin thoughts did thinke, none
could impart
This great good hap, and blessing unto
thee;
Farre from desire of any man thou art,
Knowing not one, thou art from all men
free:
When he, to answere this thy chaste
desire,
Gives thee more cause to wonder and
admire.
That thou a blessed Virgin shoulst
remaine,
Yea that the holy Ghost should come on
thee
A maiden Mother, subject to no paine,
For highest powre should overshadow
thee:
Could thy faire eyes from teares of joy
refraine,
When God look'd downe upon thy poore
degree?
Making thee Servant, Mother, Wife, and
Nurse
To Heavens bright King, that freed us
from the curse.
Thus beeing crown'd with glory from
above,
Grace and Perfection resting in thy
breast,
Thy humble answer doth approove thy
Love,
And all these sayings in thy heart doe
rest:
Thy Child a Lambe, and thou a Turtle
dove,
Above all other women highly blest;
To find such favour in his glorious sight,
In whom thy heart and soule doe most
delight.
What wonder in the world more strange
could seeme,
Than that a Virgin could conceive and
beare
Within her wombe a Sonne, That should
redeeme
All Nations on the earth, and should
repaire
Our old decaies: who in such high
esteeme,
Should prize all mortals, living in his
feare;
As not to shun Death, Povertie, and
Shame,
To save their soules, and spread his
glorious Name.
And partly to fulfil his Fathers pleasure,
Whose powrefull hand allowes it not for
strange,
If he vouchsafe the riches of his treasure,
Pure Righteousnesse to take such il
exchange;
On all Iniquitie to make a seisure,
Giving his snow-white Weed for ours in
change;
Our mortall garment in a skarlet Die,
Too base a roabe for Immortalitie.
Most happy news, that ever yet was
brought,
When Poverty and Riches met together,
The wealth of Heaven, in our fraile
clothing wrought
23
Salvation by his happy comming hither:
Mighty Messias, who so deerely bought
Us Slaves to sinne, farre lighter than a
feather:
Toss'd to and fro with every wicked
wind,
The world, the flesh, or Devill gives to
blind.
Who on his shoulders our blacke sinnes
doth beare
To that most blessed, yet accursed
Crosse;
Where fastning them, he rids us of our
feare,
Yea for our gaine he is content with
losse,
Our ragged clothing scornes he not to
weare,
Though foule, rent, torne, disgracefull,
rough and grosse,
Spunne by that monster Sinne, and
weav'd by Shame,
Which grace it selfe, disgrac'd with
impure blame.
How canst thou choose (faire Virgin)
then but mourne,
When this sweet of-spring of thy body
dies,
When thy faire eies beholds his bodie
torne,
The peoples fury, heares the womens
cries;
His holy name prophan'd, He made a
scorne,
Abusde with all their hatefull
slaunderous lies:
Bleeding and fainting in such wondrous
sort,
As scarce his feeble limbes can him
support.
Now Simon of Cyrene passeth them by,
Whom they compell sweet JESUS
Crosse to beare
To Golgatha, there doe they meane to
trie
All cruell meanes to worke in him
dispaire:
That odious place, where dead mens
skulls did lie,
There must our Lord for present death
prepare:
His sacred blood must grace that
loathsome field,
To purge more filth, than that foule place
could yield.
For now arriv'd unto this hatefull place,
In which his Crosse erected needes must
bee,
False hearts, and willing hands come on
apace,
All prest to ill, and all desire to see:
Gracelesse themselves, still seeking to
disgrace;
Bidding him, If the Sonne of God he
bee,
To save himselfe, if he could others
save,
With all th'opprobrious words that might
deprave.
His harmelesse hands unto the Crosse
they nailde,
And feet that never trode in sinners
trace,
Betweene two theeves, unpitied,
unbewailde,
Save of some few possessors of his
grace,
With sharpest pangs and terrors thus
appailde,
Sterne Death makes way, that Life might
give him place:
His eyes with teares, his body full of
wounds,
Death last of paines his sorrows all
confounds.
His joynts dis-joynted, and his legges
24
hang downe,
His alablaster breast, his bloody side,
His members torne, and on his head a
Crowne
Of sharpest Thorns, to satisfie for pride:
Anguish and Paine doe all his Sences
drowne,
While they his holy garments do divide:
His bowells drie, his heart full fraught
with griefe,
Crying to him that yeelds him no reliefe.
This with the eie of Faith thou maist
behold,
Deere Spouse of Christ, and more than I
can write;
And here both Griefe and Joy thou maist
unfold,
To view thy Love in this most heavy
plight,
Bowing his head, his bloodlesse body
cold;
Those eies waxe dimme that gave us all
our light,
His count'nance pale, yet still continues
sweet,
His blessed blood watring his pierced
feet.
O glorious miracle without compare!
Last, but not least which was by him
effected;
Uniting death, life, misery, joy and care,
By his sharpe passion in his deere
elected:
Who doth the Badges of like Liveries
weare,
Shall find how deere they are of him
respected.
No joy, griefe, paine, life, death, was
like to his,
Whose infinitie dolours wrought eternall
blisse.
What creature on the earth did then
remaine,
On whom the horror of this shamefull
deed
Did not inflict some violent touch, or
straine,
To see the Lord of all the world to
bleed?
His dying breath did rend huge rockes in
twaine,
The heavens betooke them to their
mourning weed:
The Sunne grew darke, and scorn'd to
give them light,
Who durst ecclipse a glory farre more
bright.
The Moone and Starres did hide
themselves for shame,
The earth did tremble in her loyall feare,
The Temple vaile did rent to spread his
fame,
The Monuments did open every where;
Dead Saints did rise forth of their graves,
and came
To divers people that remained there
Within that holy City; whose offence,
Did put their Maker to this large
expence.
Things reasonable, and reasonlesse
possest
The terrible impression of this fact;
For his oppression made them all
opprest,
When with his blood he seal'd so faire an
act,
In restlesse miserie to procure our rest;
His glorious deedes that dreadfull prison
sackt:
When Death, Hell, Divells, using all
their powre,
Were overcome in that most blessed
houre.
Being dead, he killed Death, and did
survive
That prowd insulting Tyrant: in whose
25
place
He sends bright Immortalitie to revive
Those whom his yron armes did long
embrace;
Who from their loathsome graves brings
them alive
In glory to behold their Saviours face:
Who tooke the keys of all Deaths powre
away,
Opening to those that would his name
obay.
they were;
Meane minds will shew of what meane
mouldes they bee;
Small griefes seeme great, yet Use doth
make them beare:
But ah! tis hard to stirre a sturdy tree;
Great dangers hardly puts great minds in
feare:
They will conceale their griefes which
mightie grow
In their stout hearts untill they overflow.
O wonder, more than man can
comprehend,
Our Joy and Griefe both at one instant
fram'd,
Compounded: Contrarieties contend
Each to exceed, yet neither to be blam'd.
Our Griefe to see our Saviours wretched
end,
Our Joy to know both Death and Hell he
tam'd:
That we may say, O Death, where is thy
sting?
Hell, yeeld thy victory to thy conq'ring
King.
If then an earthly Prince may ill endure
The least of those afflictions which he
bare,
How could this all-commaunding King
procure
Such grievous torments with his mind to
square,
Legions of Angells being at his Lure?
He might have liv'd in pleasure without
care:
None can conceive the bitter paines he
felt,
When God and man must suffer without
guilt.
Can stony hearts refraine from shedding
teares,
To view the life and death of this sweet
Saint?
His austere course in yong and tender
yeares,
When great indurements could not make
him faint:
His wants, his paines, his torments, and
his feares,
All which he undertooke without
constraint,
To shew that infinite Goodnesse must
restore,
What infinite Justice looked for, and
more.
Take all the Suffrings Thoughts can
thinke upon,
In ev'ry man that this huge world hath
bred;
Let all those Paines and Suffrings meet
in one,
Yet are they not a Mite to that he did
Endure for us: Oh let us thinke thereon,
That God should have his pretious blood
so shed:
His Greatnesse clothed in our fraile
attire,
And pay so deare a ransome for the hire.
Yet, had he beene but of a meane degree,
His suffrings had beene small to what
Loe, here was glorie, miserie, life and
death,
An union of contraries did accord;
Gladnesse and sadnesse here had one
berth,
26
This wonder wrought the Passion of our
Lord,
He suffring for all the sinnes of all
th'earth,
No satisfaction could the world afford:
But this rich Jewell, which from God
was sent,
To call all those that would in time
repent.
Which I present (deare Lady) to your
view,
Upon the Crosse depriv'd of life or
breath,
To judge if ever Lover were so true,
To yeeld himselfe unto such shamefull
death:
Now blessed Joseph doth both beg and
sue,
To have his body who possest his faith,
And thinkes, if he this small request
obtaines,
He wins more wealth than in the world
remaines.
Thus honourable Joseph is possest,
Of what his heart and soule so much
desired,
And now he goes to give that body rest,
That all his life, with griefes and paines
was tired;
He finds a Tombe, a Tombe most rarely
blest,
In which was never creature yet interred;
There this most pretious body he
incloses,
Imbalmd and deckt with Lillies and with
Roses.
Loe here the Beautie of Heav'n and
Earth is laid,
The purest coulers underneath the
Sunne,
But in this place he cannot long be staid,
Glory must end what horror hath begun;
For he the furie of the Heavens obay'd,
And now he must possesse what he hath
wonne:
The Maries doe with pretious balmes
attend,
But beeing come, they find it to no end.
For he is rize from Death t'Eternall Life,
And now those pretious oyntments he
desires
Are brought unto him, by his faithfull
Wife
The holy Church; who in those rich
attires,
Of Patience, Love, Long suffring, Voide
of strife,
Humbly presents those oyntments he
requires:
The oyles of Mercie, Charitie, and Faith,
Shee onely gives that which no other
hath.
These pretious balmes doe heale his
grievous wounds,
And water of Compunction washeth
cleane
The soares of sinnes, which in our
Soules abounds;
So faire it heales, no skarre is ever
seene;
Yet all the glory unto Christ redounds,
His pretious blood is that which must
redeeme;
Those well may make us lovely in his
sight,
But cannot save without his powrefull
might.
This is that Bridegroome that appeares
so faire,
So sweet, so lovely in his Spouses sight,
That unto Snowe we may his face
compare,
His cheekes like skarlet, and his eyes so
bright
As purest Doves that in the rivers are,
Washed with milke, to give the more
27
delight;
His head is likened to the finest gold,
His curled lockes so beauteous to
behold;
Blacke as a Raven in her blackest hew;
His lips like skarlet threeds, yet much
more sweet
Than is the sweetest hony dropping dew,
Or hony combes, where all the Bees doe
meet;
Yea, he is constant, and his words are
true,
His cheekes are beds of spices, flowers
sweet;
His lips like Lillies, dropping downe
pure mirrhe,
Whose love, before all worlds we doe
preferre.
Ah! give me leave (good Lady) now to
leave
This taske of Beauty which I tooke in
hand,
I cannot wade so deepe, I may deceave
My selfe, before I can attaine the land;
Therefore (good Madame) in your heart
I leave
His perfect picture, where it still shall
stand,
Deepely engraved in that holy shrine,
Environed with Love and Thoughts
divine.
There may you see him as a God in
glory,
And as a man in miserable case;
There may you reade his true and perfect
storie,
His bleeding body there you may
embrace,
And kisse his dying cheekes with teares
of sorrow,
With joyfull griefe, you may intreat for
grace;
And all your prayers, and your almes-
deeds
May bring to stop his cruell wounds that
bleeds.
Oft times hath he made triall of your
love,
And in your Faith hath tooke no small
delight,
By Crosses and Afflictions he doth
prove,
Yet still your heart remaineth firme and
right;
Your love so strong, as nothing can
remove,
Your thoughts beeing placed on him
both day and night,
Your constant soule doth lodge
betweene her brests,
This Sweet of sweets, in which all glory
rests.
Sometime h'appeares to thee in
Shepheards weed,
And so presents himselfe before thine
eyes,
A good old man; that goes his flocke to
feed;
Thy colour changes, and thy heart doth
rise;
Thou call'st, he comes, thou find'st tis he
indeed,
Thy Soule conceaves that he is truely
wise:
Nay more, desires that he may be the
Booke,
Whereon thine eyes continually may
looke.
Sometime imprison'd, naked, poore, and
bare,
Full of diseases, impotent, and lame,
Blind, deafe, and dumbe, he comes unto
his faire,
To see if yet shee will remaine the same;
Nay sicke and wounded, now thou do'st
prepare
28
To cherish him in thy dear Lovers name:
Yea thou bestow'st all paines, all cost, all
care,
That may relieve him, and his health
repaire.
These workes of mercy are so sweete, so
deare
To him that is the Lord of Life and Love,
That all thy prayers he vouchsafes to
heare,
And sends his holy Spirit from above;
Thy eyes are op'ned, and thou seest so
cleare,
No worldly thing can thy faire mind
remove;
Thy faith, thy prayers, and his speciall
grace
Doth open Heav'n, where thou behold'st
his face.
These are those Keyes Saint Peter did
possesse,
Which with a Spirituall powre are giv'n
to thee,
To heale the soules of those that doe
transgresse,
By thy faire virtues; which, if once they
see,
Unto the like they doe their minds
addresse,
Such as thou art, such they desire to be:
If they be blind, thou giv'st to them their
sight;
If deafe or lame, they heare, and goe
upright.
Yea, if possest with any evill spirits,
Such powre thy faire examples have
obtain'd
To cast them out, applying Christs pure
merits,
By which they are bound, and of all hurt
restrain'd:
If strangely taken, wanting sence or wits,
Thy faith appli'd unto their soules so
pain'd,
Healeth all griefes, and makes them
grow so strong,
As no defects can hang upon them long.
Thou beeing thus rich, no riches do'st
respect,
Nor do'st thou care for any outward
showe;
The proud that doe faire Virtues rules
neglect,
Desiring place, thou sittest them belowe:
All wealth and honour thou do'st quite
reject,
If thou perceiv'st that once it prooves a
foe
To virtue, learning, and the powres
divine,
Thou mai'st convert, but never wilt
incline
To fowle disorder, or licentiousnesse,
But in thy modest vaile do'st sweetly
cover
The staines of other sinnes, to make
themselves,
That by this meanes thou mai'st in time
recover
Those weake lost sheepe that did so long
transgresse,
Presenting them unto thy deerest Lover;
That when he brings them backe unto his
fold,
In their conversion then he may behold
Thy beauty shining brighter than the
Sunne,
Thine honour more than ever Monarke
gaind,
Thy wealth exceeding his that
Kingdomes wonne,
Thy Love unto his Spouse, thy Faith
unfaind,
Thy Constancy in what thou hast begun,
Till thou his heavenly Kingdom have
obtaind;
29
Respecting worldly wealth to be but
drosse,
Which, if abuz'd, doth proove the
owners losse.
Great Cleopatra's love to Anthony,
Can no way be compared unto thine;
Shee left her Love in his extremitie,
When greatest need should cause her to
combine
Her force with his, to get the Victory:
Her Love was earthly, and thy Love
Divine;
Her Love was onely to support her pride,
Humilitie thy Love and Thee doth guide.
Shee sacrificeth to her deerest Love,
With flowres of Faith, and garlands of
Good deeds;
Shee flies not from him when afflictions
prove,
Shee beares his crosse, and stops his
wounds that bleeds;
Shee love and lives chaste as the Turtle
dove,
Shee attends upon him, and his flocke
shee feeds;
Yea for one touch of death which thou
did'st trie,
A thousand deaths shee every day doth
die.
That glorious part of Death, which last
shee plai'd,
T'appease the ghost of her deceased
Love,
Had never needed, if shee could have
stai'd
When his extreames made triall, and did
prove
Her leaden love unconstant, and afraid:
Their wicked warres the wrath of God
might move
To take revenge for chast Octavia's
wrongs,
Because shee enjoyes what unto her
belongs.
Her virtuous life exceeds thy worthy
death,
Yea, she hath richer ornaments of state,
Shining more glorious than in dying
breath
Thou didst; when either pride, or cruell
fate,
Did worke thee to prevent a double
death;
To stay the malice, scorne, and cruell
hate
Of Rome; that joy'd to see thy pride
pull'd downe,
Whose Beauty wrought the hazard of her
Crowne.
No Cleopatra, though thou wert as faire
As any Creature in Antonius eyes;
Yea though thou wert as rich, as wise, as
rare,
As any Pen could write, or Wit devise;
Yet with this Lady canst thou not
compare,
Whose inward virtues all thy worth
denies:
Yet thou a blacke Egyptian do'st
appeare;
Thou false, shee true; and to her Love
more deere.
Good Madame, though your modestie be
such,
Not to acknowledge what we know and
find;
And that you thinke these prayses
overmuch,
Which doe expresse the beautie of your
mind;
Yet pardon me although I give a touch
Unto their eyes, that else would be so
blind,
As not to see thy store, and their owne
wants
From whose faire seeds of Virtue spring
30
these plants.
And knowe, when first into this world I
came,
This charge was giv'n me by th'Eternall
powres,
Th'everlasting Trophie of thy fame,
To build and decke it with the sweetest
flowres
That virtue yeelds; Then Madame, doe
not blame
Me, when I shew the World but what is
yours,
And decke you with that crowne which
is your due,
That of Heav'ns beauty Earth may take a
view.
Though famous women elder times have
knowne,
Whose glorious actions did appeare so
bright,
That powrefull men by them were
overthrowne,
And all their armies overcome in fight;
The Scythian women by their powre
alone,
Put king Darius unto shamefull flight:
All Asia yeelded to their conq'ring hand,
Great Alexander could not their powre
withstand.
Whose worth, though writ in lines of
blood and fire,
Is not to be compared unto thine;
Their powre was small to overcome
Desire,
Or to direct their wayes by Virtues line:
Were they alive, they would thy Life
admire,
And unto thee their honours would
resigne:
For thou a greater conquest do'st obtaine,
Than they who have so many thousands
slaine.
Wise Deborah that judged Israel,
Nor valiant Judeth cannot equall thee,
Unto the first, God did his will reveale,
And gave her powre to set his people
free;
Yea Judeth had the powre likewise to
queale
Proud Holifernes, that the just might see
What small defence vaine pride, and
greatnesse hath
Against the weapons of Gods word and
faith.
But thou farre greater warre do'st still
maintaine,
Against that many headed monster
Sinne,
Whose mortall sting hath many thousand
slaine,
And every day fresh combates doe
begin;
Yet cannot all his venome lay one staine
Upon thy Soule, thou do'st the conquest
winne,
Though all the world he daily doth
devoure,
Yet over thee he never could get powre.
For that one worthy deed by Deb'rah
done,
Thou hast performed many in thy time;
For that one Conquest that faire Judeth
wonne,
By which shee did the steps of honour
clime;
Thou hast the Conquest of all Conquests
wonne,
When to thy Conscience Hell can lay no
crime:
For that one head that Judeth bare away,
Thou tak'st from Sinne a hundred heads
a day.
Though virtuous Hester fasted three
dayes space,
And spent her time in prayers all that
31
while,
That by Gods powre shee might obtaine
such grace,
That shee and hers might not become a
spoyle
To wicked Hamon, in whose crabbed
face
Was seene the map of malice, envie,
guile;
Her glorious garments though shee put
apart,
So to present a pure and single heart
To God, in sack-cloth, ashes, and with
teares;
Yet must faire Hester needs give place to
thee,
Who hath continu'd dayes, weekes,
months, and yeares,
In Gods true service, yet thy heart beeing
free
From doubt of death, or any other feares:
Fasting from sinne, thou pray'st thine
eyes may see
Him that hath full possession of thine
heart,
From whose sweet love thy Soule can
never part.
His Love, not Feare, makes thee to fast
and pray,
No kinsmans counsell needs thee to
advise;
The sack-cloth thou do'st weare both
night and day,
Is worldly troubles, which thy rest
denies;
The ashes are the Vanities that play
Over thy head, and steale before thine
eyes;
Which thou shak'st off when mourning
time is past,
That royall roabes thou may'st put on at
last.
Joachims wife; that faire and constant
Dame,
Who rather chose a cruel death to die,
Than yeeld to those two Elders voide of
shame,
When both at once her chastitie did trie,
Whose Innocencie bare away the blame,
Untill th'Almighty Lord had heard her
crie;
And rais'd the spirit of a Child to speake,
Making the powrefull judged of the
weake.
Although her virtue doe deserve to be
Writ by that hand that never purchas'd
blame;
In holy Writ, where all the world may
see
Her perfit life, and ever honoured name:
Yet was she not to be compar'd to thee,
Whose many virtues doe increase thy
fame:
For shee oppos'd against old doting Lust,
Who with lifes danger she did feare to
trust.
But your chaste breast, guarded with
strength of mind,
Hates the imbracements of unchaste
desires;
You loving God, live in your selfe
confind
From unpure Love, your purest thoughts
retires,
Your perfit sight could never be so blind,
To entertaine the old or yong desires
Of idle Lovers; which the world
presents,
Whose base abuses worthy minds
prevents.
Even as the constant Lawrell, alwayes
greene,
No parching heate of Summer can
deface,
Nor pinching Winter ever yet was seene,
Whose nipping frosts could wither, or
32
disgrace:
So you (deere Ladie) still remaine as
Queene,
Subduing all affections that are base,
Unalterable by the change of times,
Not following, but lamenting others
crimes.
No feare of Death, or dread of open
shame,
Hinders your perfect heart to give
consent;
Nor loathsome age, whom Time could
never tame
From ill designes, whereto their youth
was bent;
But love of God, care to preserve your
fame,
And spend that pretious time that God
hath sent,
In all good exercises of the minde,
Whereto your noble nature is inclin'd.
That Ethyopian Queene did gaine great
fame,
Who from the Southerne world, did
come to see
Great Salomon; the glory of whose name
Had spread it selfe ore all the earth, to be
So great, that all the Princes thither
came,
To be spectators of his royaltie:
And this faire Queene of Sheba came
from farre,
To reverence this new appearing starre.
From th'utmost part of all the Earth shee
came,
To heare the Wisdom of this worthy
King;
To trie if Wonder did agree with Fame,
And many faire rich presents did she
bring:
Yea many strange hard questions did
shee frame,
All which were answer'd by this famous
King:
Nothing was hid that in her heart did
rest,
And all to proove this King so highly
blest.
Here Majestie with Majestie did meete,
Wisdome to Wisdome yeelded true
content,
One Beauty did another Beauty greet,
Bounty to Bountie never could repent;
Here all distaste is troden under feet,
No losse of time, where time was so well
spent
In virtuous exercises of the minde,
In which this Queene did much
contentment finde.
Spirits affect where they doe
sympathize,
Wisdom desires Wisdome to embrace,
Virtue covets her like, and doth devize
How she her friends may entertaine with
grace;
Beauty sometime is pleas'd to feed her
eyes,
With viewing Beautie in anothers face:
Both good and bad in this point doe
agree,
That each desireth with his like to be.
And this Desire did worke a strange
effect,
To drawe a Queene forth of her native
Land,
Not yeelding to the nicenesse and
respect
Of woman-kind; shee past both sea and
land,
All feare of dangers shee did quite
neglect,
Onely to see, to heare, and understand
That beauty, wisedome, majestie, and
glorie,
That in her heart imprest his perfect
storie.
33
Yet this faire map of majestie and might,
Was but a figure of thy deerest Love
Borne t'expresse that true and heavenly
light,
That doth all other joyes imperfect
prove;
If this faire Earthly starre did shine so
bright,
What doth that glorious Sonne that is
above?
Who weares th'imperiall crowne of
heaven and earth,
And made all Christians blessed in his
berth.
If that small sparke could yeeld so great
a fire,
As to inflame the hearts of many Kings
To come to see, to heare, and to admire
His wisdome, tending but to worldly
things;
Then much more reason have we to
desire
That heav'nly wisedome, which
salvation brings;
The Sonne of righteousnesse, that gives
true joyes,
When all they fought for, were but
Earthly toyes.
No travels ought th'affected soule to
shunne,
That this faire heavenly Light desires to
see:
This King of kings to whom we all
should runne,
To view his Glory and his Majestie;
He without whom we all had beene
undone,
He that from Sinne and Death hath set us
free,
And overcome Satan, the world, and
sinne,
That by his merits we those joyes might
winne.
Prepar'd by him, whose everlasting
throne
Is plac'd in heaven, above the starrie
skies,
Where he that sate, was like the Jasper
stone,
Who rightly knowes him shall be truely
wise,
A Rainebow round about his glorious
throne;
Nay more, those winged beasts so full of
eies,
That never cease to glorifie his Name,
Who was, and will be, and is now the
same.
This is that great almightie Lord that
made
Both heaven and earth, and lives for
evermore;
By him the worlds foundation first was
laid:
He fram'd the things that never were
before:
The Sea within his bounds by him is
staid,
He judgeth all alike, both rich and poore:
All might, all majestie, all love, all lawe
Remaines in him that keepes all worlds
in awe.
From his eternall throne the lightning
came,
Thundrings and Voyces did from thence
proceede;
And all the creatures glorifi'd his name,
In heaven, in earth, and seas, they all
agreed,
When loe that spotlesse Lambe so voyd
of blame,
That for us di'd, whose sinnes did make
him bleed:
That true Physition that so many heales,
Opened the Booke, and did undoe the
Seales.
34
He onely worthy to undoe the Booke
Of our charg'd soules, full of iniquitie,
Where with the eyes of mercy he doth
looke
Upon our weakenesse and infirmitie;
This is that corner stone that was
forsooke,
Who leaves it, trusts but to uncertaintie:
This is Gods Sonne, in whom he is well
pleased,
His deere beloved, that his wrath
appeased.
He that had powre to open all the Seales,
And summon up our sinnes of blood and
wrong,
He unto whom the righteous soules
appeales,
That have bin martyrd, and doe thinke it
long,
To whom in mercie he his will reveales,
That they should rest a little in their
wrong,
Untill their fellow servants should be
killed,
Even as they were, and that they were
fulfilled.
Pure thoughted Lady, blessed be thy
choyce
Of this Almightie, everlasting King;
In thee his Saints and Angels doe
rejoyce,
And to their Heav'nly Lord doe daily
sing
Thy perfect praises in their lowdest
voyce;
And all their harpes and golden vials
bring
Full of sweet odours, even thy holy
prayers
Unto that spotlesse Lambe, that all
repaires.
Of whom that Heathen Queene obtain'd
such grace,
By honouring but the shadow of his
Love,
That great Judiciall day to have a place,
Condemning those that doe unfaithfull
prove;
Among the haplesse, happie is her case,
That her deere Saviour spake for her
behove;
And that her memorable Act should be
Writ by the hand of true Eternitie.
Yet this rare Phoenix of that worne-out
age,
This great majesticke Queene comes
short of thee
Who to an earthly Prince did then ingage
Her hearts desires, her love, her libertie,
Acting her glorious part upon a Stage
Of weaknesse, frailtie, and infirmity:
Giving all honour to a Creature, due
To her Creator, whom shee never knew.
But loe, a greater thou hast sought and
found
Than Salomon in all his royaltie;
And unto him thy faith most firmely
bound
To serve and honour him continually;
That glorious God, whose terror doth
confound
All sinfull workers of iniquitie:
Him hast thou truely served all thy life,
And for his love, liv'd with the world at
strife.
To this great Lord, thou onely art
affected,
Yet came he not in pompe or royaltie,
But in an humble habit, base, dejected;
A King, a God, clad in mortalitie,
He hath thy love, thou art by him
directed,
His perfect path was faire humilitie:
Who being Monarke of heav'n, earth,
and seas,
35
Indur'd all wrongs, yet no man did
displease.
Then how much more art thou to be
commended,
That seek'st thy love in lowly shepheards
weed?
A seeming Trades-mans sonne, of none
attended,
Save of a few in povertie and need;
Poore Fishermen that on his love
attended,
His love that makes so many thousands
bleed:
Thus did he come, to trie our faiths the
more,
Possessing worlds, yet seeming
extreame poore.
The Pilgrimes travels, and the
Shepheards cares,
He tooke upon him to enlarge our soules,
What pride hath lost, humilitie repaires,
For by his glorious death he us inroules
In deepe Characters, writ with blood and
teares,
Upon those blessed Everlasting scroules;
His hands, his feete, his body, and his
face,
Whence freely flow'd the rivers of his
grace.
Sweet holy rivers, pure celestiall springs,
Proceeding from the fountaine of our
life;
Swift sugred currents that salvation
brings,
Cleare christall streames, purging all
sinne and strife,
Faire floods, where souls do bathe their
snow-white wings,
Before they flie to true eternall life:
Sweet Nectar and Ambrosia, food of
Saints,
Which, whoso tasteth, never after faints.
This hony dropping dew of holy love,
Sweet milke, wherewith we weaklings
are restored,
Who drinkes thereof, a world can never
move,
All earthly pleasures are of them
abhorred;
This love made Martyrs many deaths to
prove,
To taste his sweetnesse, whom they so
adored:
Sweetnesse that makes our flesh a
burthen to us,
Knowing it serves but onely to undoe us.
His sweetnesse sweet'ned all the sowre
of death,
To faithfull Stephen his appointed Saint;
Who by the river stones did loose his
breath,
When paines nor terrors could not make
him faint:
So was this blessed Martyr turn'd to
earth,
To glorifie his soule by deaths attaint:
This holy Saint was humbled and cast
downe,
To winne in heaven an everlasting
crowne.
Whose face repleat with Majestie and
Sweetnesse,
Did as an Angel unto them appeare,
That sate in Counsell hearing his
discreetnesse,
Seeing no change, or any signe of a
feare;
But with a constant browe did there
confesse
Christs high deserts, which were to him
so deare:
Yea when these Tyrants stormes did
most oppresse,
Christ did appeare to make his griefe the
lesse.
36
For beeing filled with the holy Ghost,
Up unto Heav'n he look'd with stedfast
eies,
Where God appeared with his heavenly
hoste
In glory to this Saint before he dies;
Although he could no Earthly pleasures
boast,
At Gods right hand sweet JESUS he
espies;
Bids them behold Heavens open, he doth
see
The Sonne of Man at Gods right hand to
be.
Wherewith he feedes his deere adopted
Heires;
Sweet foode of life that doth revive the
dead,
And from the living takes away all cares;
To taste this sweet Saint Laurence did
not dread,
The broyling gridyorne cool'd with holy
teares:
Yeelding his naked body to the fire,
To taste this sweetnesse, such was his
desire.
Whose sweetnesse sweet'ned that short
sowre of Life,
Making all bitternesse delight his taste,
Yeelding sweet quietnesse in bitter
strife,
And most contentment when he di'd
disgrac'd;
Heaping up joyes where sorrows were
most rife;
Such sweetnesse could not choose but be
imbrac'd:
The food of Soules, the Spirits onely
treasure,
The Paradise of our celestiall pleasure.
Nay, what great sweetnesse did
th'Apostles taste,
Condemn'd by Counsell, when they did
returne;
Rejoycing that for him they di'd
disgrac'd,
Whose sweetnes made their hearts and
soules so burne
With holy zeale and love most pure and
chaste;
For him they sought from whome they
might not turne:
Whose love made Andrew goe most
joyfully,
Unto the Crosse, on which he meant to
die.
This Lambe of God, who di'd, and was
alive,
Presenting us the bread of life Eternall,
His bruised body powrefull to revive
Our sinking soules, out of the pit
infernall;
For by this blessed food he did contrive
A worke of grace, by this his gift
externall,
With heav'nly Manna, food of his
elected,
To feed their soules, of whom he is
respected.
The Princes of th'Apostles were so filled
With the delicious sweetnes of his grace,
That willingly they yeelded to be killed,
Receiving deaths that were most vile and
base,
For his name sake, that all might be
fulfilled.
They with great joy all torments did
imbrace:
The ugli'st face that Death could ever
yeeld,
Could never feare these Champions from
the field.
This wheate of Heaven the blessed
Angells bread,
They still continued in their glorious
fight,
37
Against the enemies of flesh and blood;
And in Gods law did set their whole
delight,
Suppressing evill, and erecting good:
Not sparing Kings in what they did not
right;
Their noble Actes they seal'd with
deerest blood:
One chose the Gallowes, that unseemely
death,
The other by the Sword did loose his
breath.
Your rarest Virtues did my soule delight,
Great Ladie of my heart: I must
commend
You that appeare so faire in all mens
sight:
On your Deserts my Muses doe attend:
You are the Articke Starre that guides
my hand,
All what I am, I rest at your command.
His Head did pay the dearest rate of sin,
Yeelding it joyfully unto the Sword,
To be cut off as he had never bin,
For speaking truth according to Gods
word,
Telling king Herod of incestuous sin,
That hatefull crime of God and man
abhorr'd:
His brothers wife, that prowd licentious
Dame,
Cut off his Head to take away his shame.
_________________________________
Virginia Woolf
Loe Madame, heere you take a view of
those,
Whose worthy steps you doe desire to
tread,
Deckt in those colours which our
Saviour chose;
The purest colours both of White and
Red,
Their freshest beauties would I faine
disclose,
By which our Saviour most was
honoured:
But my weake Muse desireth now to
rest,
Folding up all their Beauties in your
breast.
Whose excellence hath rais'd my sprites
to write,
Of what my thoughts could hardly
apprehend;
http://drakesdoor.org/podcasts/al/amelial
anyer.html
The Death of the Moth, and other
essays
PROFESSIONS FOR WOMEN
When your secretary invited me to come
here, she told me that your Society is
concerned with the employment of
women and she suggested that I might
tell you something about my own
professional experiences. It is true I am a
woman; it is true I am employed; but
what professional experiences have I
had? It is difficult to say. My profession
is literature; and in that profession there
are fewer experiences for women than in
any other, with the exception of the
stage—fewer, I mean, that are peculiar
to women. For the road was cut many
years ago—by Fanny Burney, by Aphra
Behn, by Harriet Martineau, by Jane
Austen, by George Eliot—many famous
women, and many more unknown and
forgotten, have been before me, making
the path smooth, and regulating my
steps. Thus, when I came to write, there
were very few material obstacles in my
way. Writing was a reputable and
harmless occupation. The family peace
was not broken by the scratching of a
38
pen. No demand was made upon the
family purse. For ten and sixpence one
can buy paper enough to write all the
plays of Shakespeare—if one has a mind
that way. Pianos and models, Paris,
Vienna and Berlin, masters and
mistresses, are not needed by a writer.
The cheapness of writing paper is, of
course, the reason why women have
succeeded as writers before they have
succeeded in the other professions.
But to tell you my story—it is a simple
one. You have only got to figure to
yourselves a girl in a bedroom with a
pen in her hand. She had only to move
that pen from left to right—from ten
o’clock to one. Then it occurred to her to
do what is simple and cheap enough
after all—to slip a few of those pages
into an envelope, fix a penny stamp in
the corner, and drop the envelope into
the red box at the corner. It was thus that
I became a journalist; and my effort was
rewarded on the first day of the
following month—a very glorious day it
was for me—by a letter from an editor
containing a cheque for one pound ten
shillings and sixpence. But to show you
how little I deserve to be called a
professional woman, how little I know
of the struggles and difficulties of such
lives, I have to admit that instead of
spending that sum upon bread and
butter, rent, shoes and stockings, or
butcher’s bills, I went out and bought a
cat—a beautiful cat, a Persian cat, which
very soon involved me in bitter disputes
with my neighbours.
What could be easier than to write
articles and to buy Persian cats with the
profits? But wait a moment. Articles
have to be about something. Mine, I
seem to remember, was about a novel by
a famous man. And while I was writing
this review, I discovered that if I were
going to review books I should need to
do battle with a certain phantom. And
the phantom was a woman, and when I
came to know her better I called her after
the heroine of a famous poem, The
Angel in the House. It was she who used
to come between me and my paper when
I was writing reviews. It was she who
bothered me and wasted my time and so
tormented me that at last I killed her.
You who come of a younger and happier
generation may not have heard of her—
you may not know what I mean by the
Angel in the House. I will describe her
as shortly as I can. She was intensely
sympathetic. She was immensely
charming. She was utterly unselfish. She
excelled in the difficult arts of family
life. She sacrificed herself daily. If there
was chicken, she took the leg; if there
was a draught she sat in it—in short she
was so constituted that she never had a
mind or a wish of her own, but preferred
to sympathize always with the minds and
wishes of others. Above all—I need not
say it—–she was pure. Her purity was
supposed to be her chief beauty—her
blushes, her great grace. In those days—
the last of Queen Victoria—every house
had its Angel. And when I came to write
I encountered her with the very first
words. The shadow of her wings fell on
my page; I heard the rustling of her
skirts in the room. Directly, that is to
say, I took my pen in my hand to review
that novel by a famous man, she slipped
behind me and whispered: “My dear,
you are a young woman. You are writing
about a book that has been written by a
man. Be sympathetic; be tender; flatter;
deceive; use all the arts and wiles of our
sex. Never let anybody guess that you
have a mind of your own. Above all, be
pure.” And she made as if to guide my
pen. I now record the one act for which I
take some credit to myself, though the
credit rightly belongs to some excellent
39
ancestors of mine who left me a certain
sum of money—shall we say five
hundred pounds a year?—so that it was
not necessary for me to depend solely on
charm for my living. I turned upon her
and caught her by the throat. I did my
best to kill her. My excuse, if I were to
be had up in a court of law, would be
that I acted in self–defence. Had I not
killed her she would have killed me. She
would have plucked the heart out of my
writing. For, as I found, directly I put
pen to paper, you cannot review even a
novel without having a mind of your
own, without expressing what you think
to be the truth about human relations,
morality, sex. And all these questions,
according to the Angel of the House,
cannot be dealt with freely and openly
by women; they must charm, they must
conciliate, they must—to put it bluntly—
tell lies if they are to succeed. Thus,
whenever I felt the shadow of her wing
or the radiance of her halo upon my
page, I took up the inkpot and flung it at
her. She died hard. Her fictitious nature
was of great assistance to her. It is far
harder to kill a phantom than a reality.
She was always creeping back when I
thought I had despatched her. Though I
flatter myself that I killed her in the end,
the struggle was severe; it took much
time that had better have been spent
upon learning Greek grammar; or in
roaming the world in search of
adventures. But it was a real experience;
it was an experience that was bound to
befall all women writers at that time.
Killing the Angel in the House was part
of the occupation of a woman writer.
But to continue my story. The Angel was
dead; what then remained? You may say
that what remained was a simple and
common object—a young woman in a
bedroom with an inkpot. In other words,
now that she had rid herself of
falsehood, that young woman had only
to be herself. Ah, but what is “herself”? I
mean, what is a woman? I assure you, I
do not know. I do not believe that you
know. I do not believe that anybody can
know until she has expressed herself in
all the arts and professions open to
human skill. That indeed is one of the
reasons why I have come here out of
respect for you, who are in process of
showing us by your experiments what a
woman is, who are in process Of
providing us, by your failures and
successes, with that extremely important
piece of information.
But to continue the story of my
professional experiences. I made one
pound ten and six by my first review;
and I bought a Persian cat with the
proceeds. Then I grew ambitious. A
Persian cat is all very well, I said; but a
Persian cat is not enough. I must have a
motor car. And it was thus that I became
a novelist—for it is a very strange thing
that people will give you a motor car if
you will tell them a story. It is a still
stranger thing that there is nothing so
delightful in the world as telling stories.
It is far pleasanter than writing reviews
of famous novels. And yet, if I am to
obey your secretary and tell you my
professional experiences as a novelist, I
must tell you about a very strange
experience that befell me as a novelist.
And to understand it you must try first to
imagine a novelist’s state of mind. I
hope I am not giving away professional
secrets if I say that a novelist’s chief
desire is to be as unconscious as
possible. He has to induce in himself a
state of perpetual lethargy. He wants life
to proceed with the utmost quiet and
regularity. He wants to see the same
faces, to read the same books, to do the
same things day after day, month after
month, while he is writing, so that
40
nothing may break the illusion in which
he is living—so that nothing may disturb
or disquiet the mysterious nosings about,
feelings round, darts, dashes and sudden
discoveries of that very shy and illusive
spirit, the imagination. I suspect that this
state is the same both for men and
women. Be that as it may, I want you to
imagine me writing a novel in a state of
trance. I want you to figure to yourselves
a girl sitting with a pen in her hand,
which for minutes, and indeed for hours,
she never dips into the inkpot. The
image that comes to my mind when I
think of this girl is the image of a
fisherman lying sunk in dreams on the
verge of a deep lake with a rod held out
over the water. She was letting her
imagination sweep unchecked round
every rock and cranny of the world that
lies submerged in the depths of our
unconscious being. Now came the
experience, the experience that I believe
to be far commoner with women writers
than with men. The line raced through
the girl’s fingers. Her imagination had
rushed away. It had sought the pools, the
depths, the dark places where the largest
fish slumber. And then there was a
smash. There was an explosion. There
was foam and confusion. The
imagination had dashed itself against
something hard. The girl was roused
from her dream. She was indeed in a
state of the most acute and difficult
distress. To speak without figure she had
thought of something, something about
the body, about the passions which it
was unfitting for her as a woman to say.
Men, her reason told her, would be
shocked. The consciousness of—what
men will say of a woman who speaks the
truth about her passions had roused her
from her artist’s state of
unconsciousness. She could write no
more. The trance was over. Her
imagination could work no longer. This I
believe to be a very common experience
with women writers—they are impeded
by the extreme conventionality of the
other sex. For though men sensibly
allow themselves great freedom in these
respects, I doubt that they realize or can
control the extreme severity with which
they condemn such freedom in women.
These then were two very genuine
experiences of my own. These were two
of the adventures of my professional life.
The first—killing the Angel in the
House—I think I solved. She died. But
the second, telling the truth about my
own experiences as a body, I do not
think I solved. I doubt that any woman
has solved it yet. The obstacles against
her are still immensely powerful—and
yet they are very difficult to define.
Outwardly, what is simpler than to write
books? Outwardly, what obstacles are
there for a woman rather than for a man?
Inwardly, I think, the case is very
different; she has still many ghosts to
fight, many prejudices to overcome.
Indeed it will be a long time still, I think,
before a woman can sit down to write a
book without finding a phantom to be
slain, a rock to be dashed against. And if
this is so in literature, the freest of all
professions for women, how is it in the
new professions which you are now for
the first time entering?
Those are the questions that I should
like, had I time, to ask you. And indeed,
if I have laid stress upon these
professional experiences of mine, it is
because I believe that they are, though in
different forms, yours also. Even when
the path is nominally open—when there
is nothing to prevent a woman from
being a doctor, a lawyer, a civil
servant—there are many phantoms and
obstacles, as I believe, looming in her
way. To discuss and define them is I
41
think of great value and importance; for
thus only can the labour be shared, the
difficulties be solved. But besides this, it
is necessary also to discuss the ends and
the aims for which we are fighting, for
which we are doing battle with these
formidable obstacles. Those aims cannot
be taken for granted; they must be
perpetually questioned and examined.
The whole position, as I see it—here in
this hall surrounded by women
practising for the first time in history I
know not how many different
professions—is one of extraordinary
interest and importance. You have won
rooms of your own in the house hitherto
exclusively owned by men. You are
able, though not without great labour
and effort, to pay the rent. You are
earning your five hundred pounds a year.
But this freedom is only a beginning—
the room is your own, but it is still bare.
It has to be furnished; it has to be
decorated; it has to be shared. How are
you going to furnish it, how are you
going to decorate it? With whom are you
going to share it, and upon what terms?
These, I think are questions of the
utmost importance and interest. For the
first time in history you are able to ask
them; for the first time you are able to
decide for yourselves what the answers
should be. Willingly would I stay and
discuss those questions and answers—
but not to–night. My time is up; and I
must cease.
http://s.spachman.tripod.com/Woolf/prof
essions.htm
_________________________________
H. L. Mencken
In Defense of Women
Author's Introduction
AS A PROFESSIONAL critic of life and
letters, my principal business in the
world is that of manufacturing platitudes
for tomorrow, which is to say, ideas so
novel that they will be instantly rejected
as insane and outrageous by all rightthinking men, and so apposite and sound
that they will eventually conquer that
instinctive opposition, and force
themselves into the traditional wisdom
of the race. I hope I need not confess that
a large part of my stock in trade consists
of platitudes rescued from the
cobwebbed shelves of yesterday, with
new labels stuck rakishly upon them.
This borrowing and refurbishing of
shop-worn goods, as a matter of fact, is
the invariable habit of traders in ideas, at
all times and everywhere. It is not,
however, that all the conceivable human
notions have been thought out; it is
simply, to be quite honest, that the sort
of men who volunteer to think out new
ones seldom, if ever, have wind enough
for a full day's work. The most they can
ever accomplish in the way of genuine
originality is an occasional brilliant
spurt, and half a dozen such spurts,
particularly if they come close together
and show a certain co-ordination, are
enough to make a practitioner
celebrated, and even immortal. Nature,
indeed, conspires against all such
genuine originality, and I have no doubt
that God is against it on His heavenly
throne, as His vicars and partisans
unquestionably are on this earth. The
dead hand pushes all of us into
intellectual cages; there is in all of us a
strange tendency to yield and have done.
Thus the impertinent colleague of
Aristotle is doubly beset, first by a
public opinion that regards his enterprise
as subversive and in bad taste, and
secondly by an inner weakness that
limits his capacity for it, and especially
42
his capacity to throw off the prejudices
and superstitions of his race, culture and
time. The cell, said Haeckel, does not
act, it reacts--and what is the instrument
of reflection and speculation save a
congeries of cells? At the moment of the
contemporary metaphysician's loftiest
flight, when he is most gratefully
warmed by the feeling that he is far
above all the ordinary air lanes and has
an absolutely novel concept by the tail,
he is suddenly pulled up by the
discovery that what is entertaining him is
simply the ghost of some ancient idea
that his school-master forced into him in
1887, or the mouldering corpse of a
doctrine that was made official in his
country during the late war, or a sort of
fermentation-product, to mix the figure,
of a banal heresy launched upon him
recently by his wife. This is the penalty
that the man of intellectual curiosity and
vanity pays for his violation of the
divine edict that what has been revealed
from Sinai shall suffice for him, and for
his resistance to the natural process
which seeks to reduce him to the
respectable level of a patriot and
taxpayer.
I was, of course, privy to this difficulty
when I planned the present work, and
entered upon it with no expectation that I
should be able to embellish it with, at
most, more than a very small number of
hitherto unutilized notions. Moreover, I
faced the additional handicap of having
an audience of extraordinary antipathy to
ideas before me, for I wrote it in wartime, with all foreign markets cut off,
and so my only possible customers were
Americans. Of their unprecedented
dislike for novelty in the domain of the
intellect I have often discoursed in the
past, and so there is no need to go into
the matter again. All I need do here is to
recall the fact that, in the United States,
alone among the great nations of history,
there is a right way to think and a wrong
way to think in everything--not only in
theology, or politics, or economics, but
in the most trivial matters of everyday
life. Thus, in the average American city
the citizen who, in the face of an
organized public clamour (usually
managed by interested parties) for the
erection of an equestrian statue of Susan
B. Anthony, the apostle of woman
suffrage, in front of the chief railway
station, or the purchase of a dozen
leopards for the municipal zoo, or the
dispatch of an invitation to the Structural
Iron Workers' Union to hold its next
annual convention in the town
Symphony Hall--the citizen who, for any
logical reason, opposes such a proposal-on the ground, say, that Miss Anthony
never mounted a horse in her life, or that
a dozen leopards would be less useful
than a gallows to hang the City Council,
or that the Structural Iron Workers
would spit all over the floor of
Symphony Hall and knock down the
busts of Bach, Beethoven and Brahms-this citizen is commonly denounced as
an anarchist and a public enemy. It is not
only erroneous to think thus; it has come
to be immoral. And so on many other
planes, high and low. For an American
to question any of the articles of
fundamental faith cherished by the
majority is for him to run grave risks of
social disaster. The old English offence
of "imagining the King's death" has been
formally revived by the American
courts, and hundreds of men and women
are in jail for committing it, and it has
been so enormously extended that, in
some parts of the country at least, it now
embraces such remote acts as believing
that the negroes should have equality
before the law, and speaking the
language of countries recently at war
43
with the Republic, and conveying to a
private friend a formula for making
synthetic gin. All such toyings with
illicit ideas are construed as attentats
against democracy, which, in a sense,
perhaps they are. For democracy is
grounded upon so childish a complex of
fallacies that they must be protected by a
rigid system of taboos, else even halfwits would argue it to pieces. Its first
concern must thus be to penalize the free
play of ideas. In the United States this is
not only its first concern, but also its last
concern. No other enterprise, not even
the trade in public offices and contracts,
occupies the rulers of the land so
steadily, or makes heavier demands upon
their ingenuity and their patriotic
passion.
Familiar with the risks flowing out of it-and having just had to change the plates
of my "Book of Prefaces," a book of
purely literary criticism, wholly without
political purpose or significance, in order
to get it through the mails, I determined
to make this brochure upon the woman
question extremely pianissimo in tone,
and to avoid burdening it with any ideas
of an unfamiliar, and hence illegal
nature. So deciding, I presently added a
bravura touch: the unquenchable vanity
of the intellectual snob asserting itself
over all prudence. That is to say, I laid
down the rule that no idea should go into
the book that was not already so obvious
that it had been embodied in the
proverbial philosophy, or folk-wisdom,
of some civilized nation, including the
Chinese. To this rule I remained faithful
throughout. In its original form, as
published in 1918, the book was actually
just such a pastiche of proverbs, many of
them English, and hence familiar even to
Congressmen, newspaper editors and
other such illiterates. It was not always
easy to hold to this program; over and
over again I was tempted to insert
notions that seemed to have escaped the
peasants of Europe and Asia. But in the
end, at some cost to the form of the
work, I managed to get through it
without compromise, and so it was put
into type. There is no need to add that
my ideational abstinence went
unrecognized and unrewarded. In fact,
not a single American reviewer noticed
it, and most of them slated the book
violently as a mass of heresies and
contumacies, a deliberate attack upon all
the known and revered truths about the
woman question, a headlong assault
upon the national decencies. In the
South, where the suspicion of ideas goes
to extraordinary lengths, even for the
United States, some of the newspapers
actually denounced the book as German
propaganda, designed to break down
American morale, and called upon the
Department of Justice to proceed against
me for the crime known to American
law as "criminal anarchy," i.e.,
"imagining the King's death." Why the
Comstocks did not forbid it the mails as
lewd and lascivious I have never been
able to determine. Certainly, they
received many complaints about it. I
myself, in fact, caused a number of these
complaints to be lodged, in the hope that
the resultant buffooneries would give me
entertainment in those dull days of war,
with all intellectual activities adjourned,
and maybe promote the sale of the book.
But the Comstocks were pursuing larger
fish, and so left me to the righteous
indignation of right-thinking reviewers,
especially the suffragists. Their concern,
after all, is not with books that are
denounced; what they concentrate their
moral passion on is the book that is
praised.
The present edition is addressed to a
wider audience, in more civilized
44
countries, and so I have felt free to
introduce a number of propositions, not
to be found in popular proverbs, that had
to be omitted from the original edition.
But even so, the book by no means
pretends to preach revolutionary
doctrines, or even doctrines of any
novelty. All I design by it is to set down
in more or less plain form certain ideas
that practically every civilized man and
woman holds in petto, but that have been
concealed hitherto by the vast mass of
sentimentalities swathing the whole
woman question. It is a question of
capital importance to all human beings,
and it deserves to be discussed honestly
and frankly, but there is so much of
social reticence, of religious superstition
and of mere emotion intermingled with it
that most of the enormous literature it
has thrown off is hollow and useless. I
point for example, to the literature of the
subsidiary question of woman suffrage.
It fills whole libraries, but nine-tenths of
it is merely rubbish, for it starts off from
assumptions that are obviously untrue
and it reaches conclusions that are at war
with both logic and the facts. So with the
question of sex specifically. I have read,
literally, hundreds of volumes upon it,
and uncountable numbers of pamphlets,
handbills and inflammatory wall-cards,
and yet it leaves the primary problem
unsolved, which is to say, the problem as
to what is to be done about the conflict
between the celibacy enforced upon
millions by civilization and the appetites
implanted in all by God. In the main, it
counsels yielding to celibacy, which is
exactly as sensible as advising a dog to
forget its fleas. Here, as in other fields, I
do not presume to offer a remedy of my
own. In truth, I am very suspicious of all
remedies for the major ills of life, and
believe that most of them are incurable.
But I at least venture to discuss the
matter realistically, and if what I have to
say is not sagacious, it is at all events not
evasive. This, I hope, is something.
Maybe some later investigator will bring
a better illumination to the subject.
--H. L. MENCKEN
I
The Feminine Mind
1. The Maternal Instinct
A MAN'S WOMEN FOLK, whatever
their outward show of respect for his
merit and authority, always regard him
secretly as an ass, and with something
akin to pity. His most gaudy sayings and
doings seldom deceive them; they see
the actual man within, and know him for
a shallow and pathetic fellow. In this
fact, perhaps, lies one of the best proofs
of feminine intelligence, or, as the
common phrase makes it, feminine
intuition. The mark of that so-called
intuition is simply a sharp and accurate
perception of reality, an habitual
immunity to emotional enchantment, a
relentless capacity for distinguishing
clearly between the appearance and the
substance. The appearance, in the
normal family circle, is a hero, a
magnifico, a demigod. The substance is
a poor mountebank.
The proverb that no man is a hero to his
valet is obviously of masculine
manufacture. It is both insincere and
untrue: insincere because it merely
masks the egotistic doctrine that he is
potentially a hero to every one else, and
untrue because a valet, being a fourthrate man himself, is likely to be the last
person in the world to penetrate his
master's charlatanry. Who ever heard of
45
a valet who didn't envy his master
wholeheartedly? who wouldn't willingly
change places with his master? who
didn't secretly wish that he was his
master? A man's wife labours under no
such naïve folly. She may envy her
husband, true enough, certain of his
more soothing prerogatives and
sentimentalities. She may envy him his
masculine liberty of movement and
occupation, his impenetrable
complacancy, his peasant-like delight in
petty vices, his capacity for hiding the
harsh face of reality behind the cloak of
romanticism, his general innocence and
childishness. But she never envies him
his puerile ego; she never envies him his
shoddy and preposterous soul.
This shrewd perception of masculine
bombast and make-believe, this acute
understanding of man as the eternal
tragic comedian, is at the bottom of that
compassionate irony which passes under
the name of the maternal instinct. A
woman wishes to mother a man simply
because she sees into his helplessness,
his need of an amiable environment, his
touching self-delusion. That ironical
note is not only daily apparent in real
life; it sets the whole tone of feminine
fiction. The woman novelist, if she be
skilful enough to arise out of mere
imitation into genuine self-expression,
never takes her heroes quite seriously.
From the day of George Sand to the day
of Selma Lagerlöf she has always got
into her character study a touch of
superior aloofness, of ill-concealed
derision. I can't recall a single masculine
figure created by a woman who is not, at
bottom, a booby.
2. Women's Intelligence
THAT IT SHOULD still be necessary, at
this late stage of the senility of the
human race to argue that women have a
fine and fluent intelligence is surely an
eloquent proof of the defective
observation, incurable prejudice, and
general imbecility of their lords and
masters. One finds very few professors
of the subject, even among admitted
feminists, approaching the fact as
obvious; practically all of them think it
necessary to bring up a vast mass of
evidence to establish what should be an
axiom. Even the Franco-Englishman, W.
L. George, one of the most sharp-witted
of the faculty, wastes a whole book upon
the demonstration, and then, with a great
air of uttering something new, gives it
the humourless title of "The Intelligence
of Women." The intelligence of women,
forsooth! As well devote a laborious
time to the sagacity of serpents,
pickpockets, or Holy Church!
Women, in truth, are not only intelligent;
they have almost a monopoly of certain
of the subtler and more utile forms of
intelligence. The thing itself, indeed,
might be reasonably described as a
special feminine character; there is in it,
in more than one of its manifestations, a
femaleness as palpable as the femaleness
of cruelty, masochism or rouge. Men are
strong. Men are brave in physical
combat. Men have sentiment. Men are
romantic, and love what they conceive to
be virtue and beauty. Men incline to
faith, hope and charity. Men know how
to sweat and endure. Men are amiable
and fond. But in so far as they show the
true fundamentals of intelligence--in so
far as they reveal a capacity for
discovering the kernel of eternal verity
in the husk of delusion and hallucination
and a passion for bringing it forth--to
that extent, at least, they are feminine,
and still nourished by the milk of their
mothers. "Human creatures," says
George, borrowing from Weininger, "are
46
never entirely male or entirely female;
there are no men, there are no women,
but only sexual majorities." Find me an
obviously intelligent man, a man free
from sentimentality and illusion, a man
hard to deceive, a man of the first class,
and I'll show you a man with a wide
streak of woman in him. Bonaparte had
it; Goethe had it; Schopenhauer had it;
Bismarck and Lincoln had it; in
Shakespeare, if the Freudians are to be
believed, it amounted to downright
homosexuality. The essential traits and
qualities of the male, the hallmarks of
the unpolluted masculine, are at the
same time the hallmarks of the
Schafskopf. The caveman is all muscles
and mush. Without a woman to rule him
and think for him, he is a truly
lamentable spectacle: a baby with
whiskers, a rabbit with the frame of an
aurochs, a feeble and preposterous
caricature of God.
It would be an easy matter, indeed, to
demonstrate that superior talent in man
is practically always accompanied by
this feminine flavour--that complete
masculinity and stupidity are often
indistinguishable. Lest I be
misunderstood I hasten to add that I do
not mean to say that masculinity
contributes nothing to the complex of
chemico-physiological reactions which
produces what we call talent; all I mean
to say is that this complex is impossible
without the feminine contribution--that it
is a product of the interplay of the two
elements. In women of genius we see the
opposite picture. They are commonly
distinctly mannish, and shave as well as
shine. Think of George Sand, Catherine
the Great, Elizabeth of England, Rosa
Bonheur, Teresa Carreñ&o or Cosima
Wagner. The truth is that neither sex,
without some fertilization by the
complementary characters of the other,
is capable of the highest reaches of
human endeavour. Man, without a
saving touch of woman in him, is too
doltish, too naïve and romantic, too
easily deluded and lulled to sleep by his
imagination to be anything above a
cavalryman, a theologian or a bank
director. And woman, without some
trace of that divine innocence which is
masculine, is too harshly the realist for
those vast projections of the fancy which
lie at the heart of what we call genius.
Here, as elsewhere in the universe, the
best effects are obtained by a mingling
of elements. The wholly manly man
lacks the wit necessary to give objective
form to his soaring and secret dreams,
and the wholly womanly woman is apt
to be too cynical a creature to dream at
all.
3. The Masculine Bag of Tricks
WHAT MEN, in their egoism,
constantly mistake for a deficiency of
intelligence in woman is merely an
incapacity for mastering that mass of
small intellectual tricks, that complex of
petty knowledges, that collection of
cerebral rubberstamps, which constitutes
the chief mental equipment of the
average male. A man thinks that he is
more intelligent than his wife because he
can add up a column of figures more
accurately, and because he understands
the imbecile jargon of the stock market,
and because he is able to distinguish
between the ideas of rival politicians,
and because he is privy to the minutiae
of some sordid and degrading business
or profession, say soap-selling or the
law. But these empty talents, of course,
are not really signs of a profound
intelligence; they are, in fact, merely
superficial accomplishments, and their
acquirement puts little more strain on the
47
mental powers than a chimpanzee
suffers in learning how to catch a penny
or scratch a match. The whole bag of
tricks of the average business man, or
even of the average professional man, is
inordinately childish. It takes no more
actual sagacity to carry on the everyday
hawking and haggling of the world, or to
ladle out its normal doses of bad
medicine and worse law, than it takes to
operate a taxicab or fry a pan of fish. No
observant person, indeed, can come into
close contact with the general run of
business and professional men--I confine
myself to those who seem to get on in
the world, and exclude the admitted
failures--without marvelling at their
intellectual lethargy, their incurable
ingenuousness, their appalling lack of
ordinary sense. The late Charles Francis
Adams, a grandson of one American
President and a great-grandson of
another, after a long lifetime in intimate
association with some of the chief
business "geniuses" of that paradise of
traders and usurers, the United States,
reported in his old age that he had never
heard a single one of them say anything
worth hearing. These were vigorous and
masculine men, and in a man s world
they were successful men, but
intellectually they were all blank
cartridges.
There is, indeed, fair ground for arguing
that, if men of that kidney were
genuinely intelligent, they would never
succeed at their gross and drivelling
concerns--that their very capacity to
master and retain such balderdash as
constitutes their stock in trade is proof of
their inferior mentality. The notion is
certainly supported by the familiar
incompetency of firstrate men for what
are called practical concerns. One could
not think of Aristotle or Beethoven
multiplying 3,472,701 by 99,999 without
making a mistake, nor could one think of
him remembering the range of this or
that railway share for two years, or the
number of ten-penny nails in a
hundredweight, or the freight on lard
from Galveston to Rotterdam. And by
the same token one could not imagine
him expert at billiards, or at grouseshooting, or at golf, or at any other of the
idiotic games at which what are called
successful men commonly divert
themselves. In his great study of British
genius, Havelock Ellis found that an
incapacity for such petty expertness was
visible in almost all first-rate men. They
are bad at tying cravats. They do not
understand the fashionable card-games.
They are puzzled by book-keeping. They
know nothing of party politics. In brief,
they are inert and impotent in the very
fields of endeavour that see the average
men's highest performances, and are
easily surpassed by men who, in actual
intelligence, are about as far below them
as the Simidae.
This lack of skill at manual and mental
tricks of a trivial character--which must
inevitably appear to a barber or a dentist
as stupidity, and to a successful
haberdasher as downright imbecility--is
a character that men of the first class
share with women of the first, second
and even third classes. There is at the
bottom of it, in truth, something
unmistakably feminine; its appearance in
a man is almost invariably accompanied
by the other touch of femaleness that I
have described. Nothing, indeed, could
be plainer than the fact that women, as a
class, are sadly deficient in the small
expertness of men as a class. One
seldom, if ever, hears of them
succeeding in the occupations which
bring out such expertness most lavishly-for example, tuning pianos, repairing
clocks, practising law, (i.e., matching
48
petty tricks with some other lawyer),
painting portraits, keeping books, or
managing factories--despite the
circumstance that the great majority of
such occupations are well within their
physical powers, and that few of them
offer any very formidable social barriers
to female entrance. There is no external
reason why women shouldn't succeed as
operative surgeons; the way is wide
open, the rewards are large, and there is
a special demand for them on grounds of
modesty. Nevertheless, not many women
graduates in medicine undertake surgery
and it is rare for one of them to make a
success of it. There is, again, no external
reason why women should not prosper at
the bar, or as editors of newspapers, or
as managers of the lesser sort of
factories, or in the wholesale trade, or as
hotel-keepers. The taboos that stand in
the way are of very small force; various
adventurous women have defied them
with impunity; once the door is entered
there remains no special handicap
within. But, as every one knows, the
number of women actually practising
these trades and professions is very
small, and few of them have attained to
any distinction in competition with men.
4. Why Women Fail
THE CAUSE thereof, as I say, is not
external, but internal. It lies in the same
disconcerting apprehension of the larger
realities, the same impatience with the
paltry and meretricious, the same
disqualification for mechanical routine
and empty technic which one finds in the
higher varieties of men. Even in the
pursuits which, by the custom of
Christendom, are especially their own,
women seldom show any of that
elaborately conventionalized and half
automatic proficiency which is the pride
and boast of most men. It is a
commonplace of observation, indeed,
that a housewife who actually knows
how to cook, or who can make her own
clothes with enough skill to conceal the
fact from the most casual glance, or who
is competent to instruct her children in
the elements of morals, learning and
hygiene--it is a platitude that such a
woman is very rare indeed, and that
when she is encountered she is not
usually esteemed for her general
intelligence. This is particularly true in
the United States, where the position of
women is higher than in any other
civilized or semi-civilized country, and
the old assumption of their intellectual
inferiority has been most successfully
challenged. The American dinner-table,
in truth, becomes a monument to the
defective technic of the American
housewife. The guest who respects his
oesophagus, invited to feed upon its
discordant and ill-prepared victuals,
evades the experience as long and as
often as he can, and resigns himself to it
as he might resign himself to being
shaved by a paralytic. Nowhere else in
the world have women more leisure and
freedom to improve their minds, and
nowhere else do they show a higher
level of intelligence, or take part more
effectively in affairs of the first
importance. But nowhere else is there
worse cooking in the home, or a more
inept handling of the whole domestic
economy, or a larger dependence upon
the aid of external substitutes, by men
provided, for the skill that is wanting
where it theoretically exists. It is surely
no mere coincidence that the land of the
emancipated and enthroned woman is
also the land of canned soup, of canned
pork and beans, of whole meals in cans,
and of everything else ready-made. And
nowhere else is there a more striking
49
tendency to throw the whole business of
training the minds of children upon
professional teachers, and the whole
business of instructing them in morals
and religion upon so-called Sundayschools, and the whole business of
developing and caring for their bodies
upon playground experts, sex hygienists
and other such professionals, most of
them mountebanks.
In brief, women rebel--often
unconsciously, sometimes even
submitting all the while--against the dull,
mechanical tricks of the trade that the
present organization of society compels
them to practise for a living, and that
rebellion testifies to their intelligence. If
they enjoyed and took pride in those
tricks, and showed it by diligence and
skill, they would be on all fours with
such men as are head waiters, ladies'
tailors, schoolmasters or carpet-beaters,
and proud of it. The inherent tendency of
any woman above the most stupid is to
evade the whole obligation, and, if she
cannot actually evade it, to reduce its
demands to the minimum. And when
some accident purges her, either
temporarily or permanently, of the
inclination to marriage (of which much
more anon), and she enters into
competition with men in the general
business of the world, the sort of career
that she commonly carves out offers
additional evidence of her mental
peculiarity. In whatever calls for no
more than an invariable technic and a
feeble chicanery she usually fails; in
whatever calls for independent thought
and resourcefulness she usually
succeeds. Thus she is almost always a
failure as a lawyer, for the law requires
only an armament of hollow phrases and
stereotyped formulae, and a mental habit
which puts these phantasms above sense,
truth and justice; and she is almost
always a failure in business, for
business, in the main, is so foul a
compound of trivialities and rogueries
that her sense of intellectual integrity
revolts against it. But she is usually a
success as a sick-nurse, for that
profession requires ingenuity, quick
comprehension, courage in the face of
novel and disconcerting situations, and
above all, a capacity for penetrating and
dominating character; and whenever she
comes into competition with men in the
arts, particularly on those secondary
planes where simple nimbleness of mind
is unaided by the master strokes of
genius, she holds her own invariably.
The best and most intellectual--i.e., most
original and enterprising--play-actors are
not men, but women, and so are the best
teachers and blackmailers, and a fair
share of the best writers, and public
functionaries, and executants of music.
In the demimonde one will find enough
acumen and daring, and enough
resilience in the face of special
difficulties, to put the equipment of any
exclusively male profession to shame. If
the work of the average man required
half the mental agility and readiness of
resource of the work of the average
prostitute, the average man would be
constantly on the verge of starvation.
5. The Thing Called Intuition
MEN, AS EVERY one knows, are
disposed to question this superior
intelligence of women; their egoism
demands the denial, and they are seldom
reflective enough to dispose of it by
logical and evidential analysis.
Moreover, as we shall see a bit later on,
there is a certain specious appearance of
soundness in their position; they have
forced upon women an artificial
character which well conceals their real
50
character, and women have found it
profitable to encourage the deception.
But though every normal man thus
cherishes the soothing unction that he is
the intellectual superior of all women,
and particularly of his wife, he
constantly gives the lie to his pretension
by consulting and deferring to what he
calls her intuition. That is to say, he
knows by experience that her judgment
in many matters of capital concern is
more subtle and searching than his own,
and, being disinclined to accredit this
greater sagacity to a more competent
intelligence, he takes refuge behind the
doctrine that it is due to some
impenetrable and intangible talent for
guessing correctly, some half mystical
supersense, some vague (and, in essence,
infra-human) instinct.
The true nature of this alleged instinct,
however, is revealed by an examination
of the situations which inspire a man to
call it to his aid. These situations do not
arise out of the purely technical
problems that are his daily concern, but
out of the rarer and more fundamental,
and hence enormously more difficult
problems which beset him only at long
and irregular intervals, and so offer a
test, not of his mere capacity for being
drilled, but of his capacity for genuine
ratiocination. No man, I take it, save one
consciously inferior and hen-pecked,
would consult his wife about hiring a
clerk, or about extending credit to some
paltry customer, or about some routine
piece of tawdry swindling; but not even
the most egoistic man would fail to
sound the sentiment of his wife about
taking a partner into his business, or
about standing for public office, or about
combating unfair and ruinous
competition, or about marrying off their
daughter. Such things are of massive
importance; they lie at the foundation of
well-being; they call for the best thought
that the man confronted by them can
muster; the perils hidden in a wrong
decision overcome even the clamours of
vanity. It is in such situations that the
superior mental grasp of women is of
obvious utility, and has to be admitted, it
is here that they rise above the
insignificant sentimentalities,
superstitions and formulae of men, and
apply to the business their singular talent
for separating the appearance from the
substance, and so exercise what is called
their intuition.
Intuition? With all respect, bosh! Then it
was intuition that led Darwin to work
out the hypothesis of natural selection.
Then it was intuition that fabricated the
gigantically complex score of "Die
Walküre." Then it was intuition that
convinced Columbus of the existence of
land to the west of the Azores. All this
intuition of which so much
transcendental rubbish is merchanted is
no more and no less than intelligence-intelligence so keen that it can penetrate
to the hidden truth through the most
formidable wrappings of false semblance
and demeanour, and so little corrupted
by sentimental prudery that it is equal to
the even more difficult task of hauling
that truth out into the light, in all its
naked hideousness. Women decide the
larger questions of life correctly and
quickly, not because they are lucky
guessers, not because they are divinely
inspired, not because they practise a
magic inherited from savagery, but
simply and solely because they have
sense. They see at a glance what most
men could not see with searchlights and
telescopes; they are at grips with the
essentials of a problem before men have
finished debating its mere externals.
They are the supreme realists of the race.
Apparently illogical, they are the
51
possessors of a rare and subtle superlogic. Apparently whimsical, they hang
to the truth with a tenacity which carries
them through every phase of its
incessant, jelly-like shifting of form.
Apparently unobservant and easily
deceived, they see with bright and
horrible eyes. . . . In men, too, the same
merciless perspicacity sometimes shows
itself--men recognized to be more aloof
and uninflammable than the general-men of special talent for the logical-sardonic men, cynics. Men, too,
sometimes have brains. But that is a rare,
rare man, I venture, who is as steadily
intelligent, as constantly sound in
judgment, as little put off by
appearances, as the average women of
forty-eight.
II
The War between the Sexes
6. How Marriages Are Arranged
I HAVE SAID that women are not
sentimental, i.e., not prone to permit
mere emotion and illusion to corrupt
their estimation of a situation. The
doctrine, perhaps, will raise a protest.
The theory that they are is itself a
favourite sentimentality, one
sentimentality will be brought up to
substantiate another; dog will eat dog.
But an appeal to a few obvious facts will
be enough to sustain my contention,
despite the vast accumulation of
romantic rubbish to the contrary.
Turn, for example, to the field in which
the two sexes come most constantly into
conflict, and in which, as a result, their
habits of mind are most clearly
contrasted--to the field, to wit, of
monogamous marriage. Surely no long
argument is needed to demonstrate the
superior competence and effectiveness
of women here, and therewith their
greater self-possession, their saner
weighing of considerations, their higher
power of resisting emotional suggestion.
The very fact that marriages occur at all
is a proof, indeed, that they are more
cool-headed than men, and more adept
in employing their intellectual resources,
for it is plainly to a man's interest to
avoid marriage as long as possible, and
as plainly to a woman's interest to make
a favourable marnage as soon as she can.
The efforts of the two sexes are thus
directed, in one of the capital concerns
of life, to diametrically antagonistic
ends. Which side commonly prevails? I
leave the verdict to the jury. All normal
men fight the thing off; some men are
successful for relatively long periods; a
few extraordinarily intelligent and
courageous men (or perhaps lucky ones)
escape altogether. But, taking one
generation with another, as every one
knows, the average man is duly married
and the average woman gets a husband.
Thus the great majority of women, in
this clear-cut and endless conflict, make
manifest their substantial superiority to
the great majority of men.
Not many men, worthy of the name, gain
anything of net value by marriage, at
least as the institution is now met with in
Christendom. Even assessing its benefits
at their most inflated worth, they are
plainly overborne by crushing
disadvantages. When a man marries it is
no more than a sign that the feminine
talent for persuasion and intimidation-i.e., the feminine talent for survival in a
world of clashing concepts and desires,
the feminine competence and
intelligence--has forced him into a more
or less abhorrent compromise with his
own honest inclinations and best
interests. Whether that compromise be a
sign of his relative stupidity or of his
52
relative cowardice it is all one: the two
things, in their symptoms and effects, are
almost identical. In the first case he
marries because he has been clearly
bowled over in a combat of wits; in the
second he resigns himself to marriage as
the safest form of liaison. In both cases
his inherent sentimentality is the chief
weapon in the hand of his opponent. It
makes him cherish the fiction of his
enterprise, and even of his daring, in the
midst of the most crude and obvious
operations against him. It makes him
accept as real the bold play-acting that
women always excel at, and at no time
more than when stalking a man. It makes
him, above all, see a glamour of
romance in a transaction which, even at
its best, contains almost as much gross
trafficking, at bottom, as the sale of a
mule.
A man in full possession of the modest
faculties that nature commonly
apportions to him is at least far enough
above idiocy to realize that marriage is a
bargain in which he gets the worse of it,
even when, in some detail or other, he
makes a visible gain. He never, I believe,
wants all that the thing offers and
implies. He wants, at most, no more than
certain parts. He may desire, let us say, a
housekeeper to protect his goods and
entertain his friends--but he may shrink
from the thought of sharing his bathtub
with any one, and home cooking may be
downright poisonous to him. He may
yearn for a son to pray at his tomb--and
yet suffer acutely at the mere approach
of relatives-in-law. He may dream of a
beautiful and complaisant mistress, less
exigent and mercurial than any a
bachelor may hope to discover--and
stand aghast at admitting her to his bankbook, his family-tree and his secret
ambitions. He may want company and
not intimacy, or intimacy and not
company. He may want a cook and not a
partner in his business, or a partner in his
business and not a cook. But in order to
get the precise thing or things that he
wants, he has to take a lot of other things
that he doesn't want--that no sane man,
in truth, could imaginably want--and it is
to the enterprise of forcing him into this
almost Armenian bargain that the
woman of his "choice" addresses herself.
Once the game is fairly set, she searches
out his weaknesses with the utmost
delicacy and accuracy, and plays upon
them with all her superior resources. He
carries a handicap from the start. His
sentimental and unintelligent belief in
theories that she knows quite well are
not true e.g., the theory that she shrinks
from him, and is modestly appalled by
the banal carnalities of marriage itself-gives her a weapon against him which
she drives home with instinctive and
compelling art. The moment she discerns
this sentimentality bubbling within him-that is, the moment his oafish smirks and
eyerollings signify that he has achieved
the intellectual disaster that is called
falling in love--he is hers to do with as
she will. Save for acts of God, he is
forthwith as good as married.
7. The Feminine Attitude
THIS SENTIMENTALITY in marriage
is seldom if ever observed in women.
For reasons that we shall examine later,
they have much more to gain by the
business than men, and so they are
prompted by their cooler sagacity to
enter upon it on the most favourable
terms possible, and with the minimum
admixture of disarming emotion. Men
almost invariably get their mates by the
process called falling in love; save
among the aristocracies of the North and
Latin men, the marriage of convenience
53
is relatively rare; a hundred men marry
"beneath" them to every woman who
perpetrates the same folly. And what is
meant by this so-called falling in love?
What is meant by it is a procedure
whereby a man accounts for the fact of
his marriage, after feminine initiative
and generalship have made it inevitable,
by enshrouding it in a purple maze of
romance--in brief, by setting up the
doctrine that an obviously self-possessed
and mammalian woman, engaged
deliberately in the most important
adventure of her life, and with the
keenest understanding of its utmost
implications, is a naïve, tender, moony
and almost disembodied creature,
enchanted and made perfect by a passion
that has stolen upon her unawares, and
which she could not acknowledge, even
to herself, without blushing to death. By
this preposterous doctrine, the defeat and
enslavement of the man is made
glorious, and even gifted with a touch of
flattering naughtiness. The sheer
horsepower of his wooing has assailed
and overcome her maiden modesty; she
trembles in his arms; he has been
granted a free franchise to work his
wicked will upon her. Thus do the
ambulant images of God cloak their
shackles proudly, and divert the
judicious with their boastful shouts.
Women, it is almost needless to point
out, are much more cautious about
embracing the conventional hocus-pocus
of the situation. They never
acknowledge that they have fallen in
love, as the phrase is, until the man has
formally avowed the delusion, and so cut
off his retreat; to do otherwise would be
to bring down upon their heads the
mocking and contumely of all their
sisters. With them, falling in love thus
appears in the light of an afterthought,
or, perhaps more accurately, in the light
of a contagion. The theory, it would
seem, is that the love of the man,
laboriously avowed, has inspired it
instantly, and by some unintelligible
magic; that it was non-existent until the
heat of his own flames set it off. This
theory, it must be acknowledged, has a
certain element of fact in it. A woman
seldom allows herself to be swayed by
emotion while the principal business is
yet afoot and its issue still in doubt; to
do so would be to expose a degree of
imbecility that is confined only to the
half-wits of the sex. But once the man is
definitely committed, she frequently
unbends a bit, if only as a relief from the
strain of a fixed purpose, and so,
throwing off her customary inhibitions,
she indulges in the luxury of a more or
less forced and mawkish sentiment. It is,
however, almost unheard of for her to
permit herself this relaxation before the
sentimental intoxication of the man is
assured. To do otherwise--that is, to
confess, even post facto, to an anterior
descent,--would expose her, as I have
said, to the scorn of all other women.
Such a confession would be an
admission that emotion had got the
better of her at a critical intellectual
moment, and in the eyes of women, as in
the eyes of the small minority of
genuinely intelligent men, no treason to
the higher cerebral centres could be
more disgraceful.
8. The Male Beauty
THIS DISDAIN of sentimental
weakness, even in those higher reaches
where it is mellowed by æsthetic
sensibility, is well revealed by the fact
that women are seldom bemused by
mere beauty in men. Save on the stage,
the handsome fellow has no appreciable
advantage in amour over his more
54
Gothic brother. In real life, indeed, he is
viewed with the utmost suspicion by all
women save the most stupid. In him the
vanity native to his sex is seen to mount
to a degree that is positively intolerable.
It not only irritates by its very nature; it
also throws about him a sort of unnatural
armour, and so makes him resistant to
the ordinary approaches. For this reason,
the matrimonial enterprises of the more
reflective and analytical sort of women
are almost always directed to men whose
lack of pulchritude makes them easier to
bring down, and, what is more important
still, easier to hold down. The weight of
opinion among women is decidedly
against the woman who falls in love with
an Apollo. She is regarded, at best, as a
flighty creature, and at worst, as one
pushing bad taste to the verge of
indecency. Such weaknesses are
resigned to women approaching senility,
and to the more ignoble variety of
women labourers. A shop girl, perhaps,
may plausibly fall in love with a
moving-picture actor, and a half-idiotic
old widow may succumb to a youth with
shoulders like the Parthenon, but no
woman of poise and self-respect, even
supposing her to be transiently flustered
by a lovely buck, would yield to that
madness for an instant, or confess it to
her dearest friend. Women know how
little such purely superficial values are
worth. The voice of their order, the first
taboo of their freemasonry, is firmly
against making a sentimental debauch of
the serious business of marriage.
This disdain of the pretty fellow is often
accounted for by amateur psychologists
on the ground that women are anæsthetic
to beauty--that they lack the quick and
delicate responsiveness of man. Nothing
could be more absurd. Women, in point
of fact, commonly have a far keener
æshetic sense than men. Beauty is more
important to them; they give more
thought to it; they crave more of it in
their immediate surroundings. The
average man, at least in England and
America, takes a sort of bovine pride in
his anæsthesia to the arts; he can think of
them only as sources of tawdry and
somewhat discreditable amusement; one
seldom hears of him showing half the
enthusiasm for any beautiful thing that
his wife displays in the presence of a
fine fabric, an effective colour, or a
graceful form, say in millinery. The truth
is that women are resistant to so-called
beauty in men for the simple and
sufficient reason that such beauty is
chiefly imaginary. A truly beautiful man,
indeed, is as rare as a truly beautiful
piece of jewelry. What men mistake for
beauty in themselves is usually nothing
save a certain hollow gaudiness, a
revolting flashiness, the superficial
splendour of a prancing animal. The
most lovely moving-picture actor,
considered in the light of genuine
æsthetic values, is no more than a piece
of vulgarity; his like is to be found, not
in the Uffizi gallery or among the
harmonies of Brahms, but among the
plush sofas, rococo clocks and handpainted oil-paintings of a third-rate
auction-room. All women, save the least
intelligent, penetrate this imposture with
sharp eyes. They know that the human
body, except for a brief time in infancy,
is not a beautiful thing, but a hideous
thing. Their own bodies give them no
delight; it is their constant effort to
disguise and conceal them; they never
expose them æsthetically, but only as an
act of the grossest sexual provocation. If
it were advertised that a troupe of men of
easy virtue were to appear half-clothed
upon a public stage, exposing their
chests, thighs, arms and calves, the only
women who would go to the
55
entertainment would be a few delayed
adolescents, a psychopathic old maid or
two, and a guard of indignant members
of the parish Ladies Aid Society.
9. Men as Æsthetes
MEN SHOW NO such sagacious
apprehension of the relatively feeble
loveliness of the human frame. The most
effective lure that a woman can hold out
to a man is the lure of what he fatuously
conceives to be her beauty. This socalled beauty, of course, is almost
always a pure illusion. The female body,
even at its best, is very defective in
form; it has harsh curves and very
clumsily distributed masses; compared
to it the average milk-jug, or even
cuspidor, is a thing of intelligent and
gratifying design--in brief, an objet d'art.
The fact was curiously (and humorously)
displayed during the late war, when
great numbers of women in all the
belligerent countries began putting on
uniforms. Instantly they appeared in
public in their grotesque burlesques of
the official garb of aviators, elevator
boys, bus conductors, train guards, and
so on, their deplorable deficiency in
design was unescapably revealed. A
man, save he be fat, i.e., of womanish
contours, usually looks better in uniform
than in mufti; the tight lines set off his
figure. But a woman is at once given
away: she looks like a dumbbell run over
by an express train. Below the neck by
the bow and below the waist astern there
are two masses that simply refuse to fit
into a balanced composition. Viewed
from the side, she presents an
exaggerated S bisected by an imperfect
straight line, and so she inevitably
suggests a drunken dollar-mark. Her
ordinary clothing cunningly conceals
this fundamental imperfection. It
swathes those impossible masses in
draperies soothingly uncertain of outline.
But putting her into uniform is like
stripping her. Instantly all her alleged
beauty vanishes.
Moreover, it is extremely rare to find a
woman who shows even the modest
sightliness that her sex is theoretically
capable of; it is only the rare beauty who
is even tolerable. The average woman,
until art comes to her aid, is ungraceful,
misshapen, badly calved and crudely
articulated, even for a woman. If she has
a good torso, she is almost sure to be
bow-legged. If she has good legs, she is
almost sure to have bad teeth. If she has
good teeth, she is almost sure to have
scrawny hands, or muddy eyes, or hair
like oakum, or no chin. A woman who
meets fair tests all 'round is so
uncommon that she becomes a sort of
marvel, and usually gains a livelihood by
exhibiting herself as such, either on the
stage, in the half-world, or as the private
jewel of some wealthy connoisseur.
But this lack of genuine beauty in
women lays on them no practical
disadvantage in the primary business of
their sex, for its effects are more than
overborne by the emotional
suggestibility, the herculean capacity for
illusion, the almost total absence of
critical sense of men. Men do not
demand genuine beauty, even in the
most modest doses; they are quite
content with the mere appearance of
beauty. That is to say, they show no
talent whatever for differentiating
between the artificial and the real. A film
of face powder, skilfully applied, is as
satisfying to them as an epidermis of
damask. The hair of a dead Chinaman,
artfully dressed and dyed, gives them as
much delight as the authentic tresses of
Venus. A false hip intrigues them as
effectively as the soundest one of living
56
fascia. A pretty frock fetches them quite
as surely and securely as lovely legs,
shoulders, hands or eyes. In brief, they
estimate women, and hence acquire their
wives, by reckoning up purely
superficial aspects, which is just as
intelligent as estimating an egg by purely
superficial aspects. They never go
behind the returns; it never occurs to
them to analyze the impressions they
receive. The result is that many a man,
deceived by such paltry sophistications,
never really sees his wife--that is, as God
is supposed to see her, and as the
embalmer will see her--until they have
been married for years. All the tricks
may be infantile and obvious, but in the
face of so naïve a spectator the
temptation to continue practising them is
irresistible. A trained nurse tells me that
even when undergoing the extreme
discomforts of parturition the great
majority of women continue to modify
their complexions with pulverized talcs,
and to give thought to the arrangement
of their hair. Such transparent devices, to
be sure, reduce the psychologist to a sour
sort of mirth, and yet it must be plain
that they suffice to entrap and make
fools of men, even the most discreet. I
know of no man, indeed, who is wholly
resistant to female beauty, and I know of
no man, even among those engaged
professionally by æsthetic problems,
who habitually and automatically
distinguishes the genuine from the
imitation. He may do it now and then; he
may even preen himself upon his
unusual discrimination; but given the
right woman and the right stage setting,
and he will be deceived almost as readily
as a yokel fresh from the cabbage-field.
10. The Process of Delusion
SUCH POOR FOOLS, rolling their eyes
in appraisement of such meagre female
beauty as is on display in Christendom,
bring to their judgments a capacity but
slightly greater than that a cow would
bring to the estimation of
epistemologies. They are so unfitted for
the business that they are even unable to
agree upon its elements. Let one such
man succumb to the plaster charms of
some prancing miss, and all his friends
will wonder what is the matter with him.
No two are in accord as to which is the
most beautiful woman in their own town
or street. Turn six of them loose in a
millinery shop or the parlour of a
bordello, and there will be no dispute
whatsoever; each will offer the crown of
love and beauty to a different girl.
And what æsthetic deafness, dumbness
and blindness thus open the way for,
vanity instantly reinforces. That is to
say, once a normal man has succumbed
to the meretricious charms of a definite
fair one (or, more accurately, once a
definite fair one has marked him out and
grabbed him by the nose), he defends his
choice with all the heat and steadfastness
appertaining to the defense of a point of
the deepest honour. To tell a man flatly
that his wife is not beautiful, or even that
his stenographer or manicurist is not
beautiful, is so harsh and intolerable an
insult to his taste that even an enemy
seldom ventures upon it. One would
offend him far less by arguing that his
wife is an idiot. One would, relatively
speaking, almost caress him by spitting
into his eye. The ego of the male is
simply unable to stomach such an
affront. It is a weapon as discreditable as
the poison of the Borgias.
Thus, on humane grounds, a conspiracy
of silence surrounds the delusion of
female beauty, and so its victim is
permitted to get quite as much delight
57
out of it as if it were sound. The baits he
swallows most are not edible and
nourishing baits, but simply bright and
gaudy ones. He succumbs to a pair of
well-managed eyes, a graceful twist of
the body, a synthetic complexion or a
skilful display of ankles without giving
the slightest thought to the fact that a
whole woman is there, and that within
the cranial cavity of the woman lies a
brain, and that the idiosyncrasies of that
brain are of vastly more importance than
all imaginable physical stigmata
combined. Those idiosyncrasies may
make for amicable relations in the
complex and difficult bondage called
marriage; they may, on the contrary,
make for joustings of a downright
impossible character. But not many men,
lost in the emotional maze preceding, are
capable of any very clear examination of
such facts. The truth is that they dodge
the facts, even when they are favourable,
and lay all stress upon the surrounding
and concealing superficialities. The
average stupid and sentimental man, if
he has a noticeably sensible wife, is
almost apologetic about it. The ideal of
his sex is always a pretty wife, and the
vanity and coquetry that so often go with
prettiness are erected into charms. In
other words, men play the love game so
unintelligently that they often esteem a
woman in proportion as she seems to
disdain and make a mock of her
intelligence. Women seldom, if ever,
make that blunder. What they commonly
value in a man is not mere showiness,
whether physical or spiritual, but that
compound of small capacities which
makes up masculine efficiency and
passes for masculine intelligence. This
intelligence, at its highest, has a human
value substantially equal to that of their
own. In a man's world it at least gets its
definite rewards; it guarantees security,
position, a livelihood; it is a commodity
that is merchantable. Women thus
accord it a certain respect, and esteem it
in their husbands, and so seek it out.
11. Biological Considerations
SO FAR AS I can make out by
experiments on laboratory animals and
by such discreet vivisections as are
possible under our laws, there is no
biological necessity for the superior
acumen and circumspection of women.
That is to say, it does not lie in any
anatomical or physiological advantage.
The essential feminine machine is no
better than the essential masculine
machine; both are monuments to the
maladroitness of a much over-praised
Creator. Women, it would seem, actually
have smaller brains than men, though
perhaps not in proportion to weight.
Their nervous responses, if anything, are
a bit duller than those of men; their
muscular co-ordinations are surely no
prompter. One finds quite as many
obvious botches among them; they have
as many bodily blemishes; they are
infested by the same microscopic
parasites; their senses are as obtuse; their
ears stand out as absurdly. Even
assuming that their special malaises are
wholly offset by the effects of
alcoholism in the male, they suffer
patently from the same adenoids,
gastritis, cholelithiasis, nephritis,
tuberculosis, carcinoma, arthritis and so
on--in short, from the same disturbances
of colloidal equilibrium that produce
religion, delusions of grandeur,
democracy, pyaemia, night sweats, the
yearning to save humanity, and all other
such distempers in men. They have, at
bottom, the same weaknesses and
appetites. They react in substantially the
same way to all chemical and
58
mechanical agents. A dose of
hydrocyanic acid, administered per ora
to the most sagacious woman
imaginable, affects her just as swiftly
and just as deleteriously as it affects a
tragedian, a crossing-sweeper, or an
ambassador to the Court of St. James.
And once a bottle of Côte Rôtie or
Scharlachberger is in her, even the least
emotional woman shows the same
complex of sentimentalities that a man
shows, and is as maudlin and idiotic as
he is.
Nay; the superior acumen and selfpossession of women is not inherent in
any peculiarity of their constitutions, and
above all, not in any advantage of a
purely physical character. Its springs are
rather to be sought in a physical
disadvantage--that is, in the mechanical
inferiority of their frames, their relative
lack of tractive capacity, their deficiency
as brute engines. That deficiency, as
every one knows, is partly a direct
heritage from those females of the
Pongo pygmaeus who were their
probable fore-runners in the world; the
same thing is to be observed in the
females of almost all other species of
mammals. But it is also partly due to the
effects of use under civilization, and,
above all, to what evolutionists call
sexual selection. In other words, women
were already measurably weaker than
men at the dawn of human history, and
that relative weakness has been
progressively augmented in the interval
by the conditions of human life. For one
thing, the process of bringing forth
young has become so much more
exhausting as refinement has replaced
savage sturdiness and callousness, and
the care of them in infancy has become
so much more onerous as the growth of
cultural complexity has made education
more intricate, that the two functions
now lay vastly heavier burdens upon the
strength and attention of a woman than
they lay upon the strength and attention
of any other female. And for another
thing, the consequent disability and need
of physical protection, by feeding and
inflaming the already large vanity of
man, have caused him to attach a
concept of attractiveness to feminine
weakness, so that he has come to esteem
his woman, not in proportion as she is
self-sufficient as a social animal hut in
proportion as she is dependent. In this
vicious circle of influences women have
been caught, and as a result their chief
physical character today is their fragility.
A woman cannot lift as much as a man.
She cannot walk as far. She cannot exert
as much mechanical energy in any other
way. Even her alleged superior
endurance, as Havelock Ellis has
demonstrated in "Man and Woman," is
almost wholly mythical; she cannot, in
point of fact, stand nearly so much
hardship as a man can stand, and so the
law, usually an ass, exhibits an
unaccustomed accuracy of observation
in its assumption that, whenever husband
and wife are exposed alike to fatal
suffering, say in a shipwreck, the wife
dies first.
So far we have been among platitudes.
There is less of overt platitude in the
doctrine that it is precisely this physical
frailty that has given women their
peculiar nimbleness and effectiveness on
the intellectual side. Nevertheless, it is
equally true. What they have done is
what every healthy and elastic organism
does in like case; they have sought
compensation for their impotence in one
field by employing their resources in
another field to the utmost, and out of
that constant and maximum use has
come a marked enlargement of those
resources. On the one hand the sum of
59
them present in a given woman has been
enormously increased by natural
selection, so that every woman, so to
speak, inherits a certain extramasculine
mental dexterity as a mere function of
her femaleness. And on the other hand
every woman, over and above this
almost unescapable legacy from her
actual grandmothers, also inherits
admission to that traditional wisdom
which constitutes the esoteric philosophy
of woman as a whole. The virgin at
adolescence is thus in the position of an
unusually fortunate apprentice, for she is
not only naturally gifted but also
apprenticed to extraordinarily competent
masters. While a boy at the same period
is learning from his elders little more
than a few empty technical tricks, a few
paltry vices and a few degrading
enthusiasms, his sister is under
instruction in all those higher exercises
of the wits that her special deficiencies
make necessary to her security, and in
particular in all those exercises which
aim at overcoming the physical, and
hence social and economic superiority of
man by attacks upon his inferior capacity
for clear reasoning, uncorrupted by
illusion and sentimentality.
12. Honour
HERE, IT IS obvious, the process of
intellectual development takes colour
from the Sklavenmoral, and is, in a
sense, a product of it. The Jews, as
Nietzsche has demonstrated, got their
unusual intelligence by the same
process; a contrary process is working in
the case of the English and the
Americans, and has begun to show itself
in the case of the French and Germans.
The sum of feminine wisdom that I have
just mentioned--the body of feminine
devices and competences that is handed
down from generation to generation of
women--is, in fact, made up very largely
of doctrines and expedients that
infallibly appear to the average
sentimental man, helpless as he is before
them, as cynical and immoral. He
commonly puts this aversion into the
theory that women have no sense of
honour. The criticism, of course, is
characteristically banal. Honour is a
concept too tangled to be analyzed here,
but it may be sufficient to point out that
it is predicated upon a feeling of
absolute security, and that, in that capital
conflict between man and woman out of
which rises most of man s complaint of
its absence--to wit, the conflict
culminating in marriage, already
described--the security of the woman is
not something that is in actual being, but
something that she is striving with all
arms to attain. In such a conflict it must
be manifest that honour can have no
place. An animal fighting for its very
existence uses all possible means of
offence and defence, however foul. Even
man, for all his boasting about honour,
seldom displays it when he has anything
of the first value at hazard. He is
honourable, perhaps, in gambling, for
gambling is a mere vice, but it is quite
unusual for him to be honourable in
business, for business is bread and
butter. He is honourable (so long as the
stake is trivial) in his sports, but he
seldom permits honour to interfere with
his perjuries in a lawsuit, or with hitting
below the belt in any other sort of
combat that is in earnest. The history of
all his wars is a history of mutual
allegations of dishonourable practices,
and such allegations are nearly always
well grounded. The best imitation of
honour that he ever actually achieves in
them is a highly self-conscious
sentimentality which prompts him to be
60
humane to the opponent who has been
wounded, or disarmed, or otherwise
made innocuous. Even here his so-called
honour is little more than a form of playacting, both maudlin and dishonest. In
the actual death-struggle he invariably
bites.
Perhaps one of the chief charms of
woman lies precisely in the fact that they
are dishonourable, i.e., that they are
relatively uncivilized. In the midst of all
the puerile repressions and inhibitions
that hedge them round, they continue to
show a gipsy spirit. No genume woman
ever gives a hoot for law if law happens
to stand in the way of her private
interest. She is essentially an outlaw, a
rebel, what H. G. Wells calls a nomad.
The boons of civilization are so noisily
cried up by sentimentalists that we are
all apt to overlook its disadvantages.
Intrinsically, it is a mere device for
regimenting men. Its perfect symbol is
the goose-step. The most civilized man
is simply that man who has been most
successful in caging and harnessing his
honest and natural instincts--that is, the
man who has done most cruel violence
to his own ego in the interest of the
commonweal. The value of this
commonweal is always overestimated.
What is it at bottom? Simply the greatest
good to the greatest number--of petty
rogues, ignoramuses and poltroons.
The capacity for submitting to and
prospering comfortably under this
cheese-monger's civilization is far more
marked in men than in women, and far
more in inferior men than in men of the
higher categories. It must be obvious to
even so pathetic an ass as a university
professor of history that very few of the
genuinely firstrate men of the race have
been wholly civilized, in the sense that
the term is employed in newspapers and
in the pulpit. Think of Caesar,
Bonaparte, Luther, Frederick the Great,
Cromwell, Barbarossa, Innocent III,
Bolivar, Hannibal, Alexander, and to
come down to our own time, Grant,
Stonewall Jackson, Bismarck, Wagner,
Garibaldi and Cecil Rhodes.
13. Women and the Emotions
THE FACT THAT women have a
greater capacity for controlling and
concealing their emotions is not an
indication that they are more civilized,
but a proof that they are less civilized.
This capacity, so rare today, and withal
so valuable and worthy of respect, is a
characteristic of savages, not of civilized
men, and its loss is one of the penalties
that the race has paid for the tawdry
boon of civilization. Your true savage,
reserved, dignified, and courteous,
knows how to mask his feelings, even in
the face of the most desperate assault
upon them; your civilized man is forever
yielding to them. Civilization, in fact,
grows more and more maudlin and
hysterical; especially under democracy it
tends to degenerate into a mere combat
of crazes; the whole aim of practical
politics is to keep the populace alarmed
(and hence clamorous to be led to safety)
by an endless series of hobgoblins, most
of them imaginary. Wars are no longer
waged by the will of superior men,
capable of judging dispassionately and
intelligently the causes behind them and
the effects flowing out of them. They are
now begun by first throwing a mob into
a panic; they are ended only when it has
spent its ferine fury. Here the effect of
civilization has been to reduce the
noblest of the arts, once the repository of
an exalted etiquette and the chosen
avocation of the very best men of the
race, to the level of a riot of peasants.
All the wars of Christendom are now
61
disgusting and degrading; the conduct of
them has passed out of the hands of
nobles and knights and into the hands of
mob-orators, money-lenders, and
atrocity-mongers. To recreate one's self
with war in the grand manner, as Prince
Eugene, Marlborough and the Old
Dessauer knew it, one must now go
among barbarian peoples. Women are
nearly always against war in modern
times, for the reasons brought forward to
justify it are usually either transparently
dishonest or childishly sentimental, and
hence provoke their scorn. But once the
business is begun, they commonly
favour its conduct à outrance, and are
thus in accord with the theory of the
great captains of more spacious days. In
Germany, during the late war, the
protests against the Schrecklichkeit
practised by the imperial army and navy
did not come from women, but from
sentimental men; in England and the
United States there is no record that any
woman ever raised her voice against the
blockade which destroyed hundreds of
thousands of German children. I was on
both sides of the bloody chasm during
the war, and I cannot recall meeting a
single woman who subscribed to the
puerile doctrine that, in so vast a combat
between nations, there could still be
categories of non-combatants, with a
right of asylum on armed ships and in
garrisoned towns. This imbecility was
maintained only by men, large numbers
of whom simultaneously took part in
wholesale massacres of such noncombatants. The women were superior
to such hypocrisy. They recognized the
nature of modern war instantly and
accurately, and advocated no
disingenuous efforts to conceal it.
14. Pseudo-Anæsthesia
THE FEMININE TALENT for
concealing emotion is probably largely
responsible for the common masculine
belief that women are devoid of passion,
and contemplate its manifestations in the
male with something akin to trembling.
Here the talent itself is helped out by the
fact that very few masculine observers,
on the occasions when they give
attention to the matter, are in a state of
mind conducive to exact observation.
The truth is, of course, that there is
absolutely no reason to believe that the
normal woman is passionless, or that the
minority of women who unquestionably
are is of formidable dimensions. To be
sure, the peculiar vanity of men,
particularly in the Northern countries,
makes them place a high value upon the
virginal type of woman, and so this type
tends to grow more common by sexual
selection, but despite that fact, it has by
no means superseded the normal type, so
realistically described by the theologians
and publicists of the Middle Ages. It
would, however, be rash to assert that
this long-continued sexual selection has
not made itself felt, even in the normal
type. Its chief effect, perhaps, is to make
it measurably easier for a woman to
conquer and conceal emotion than it is
for a man. But this is a mere
reinforcement of a native quality or, at
all events, a quality long antedating the
rise of the curious preference just
mentioned. That preference obviously
owes its origin to the concept of private
property and is most evident in those
countries in which the largest proportion
of males are property owners, i.e., in
which the property-owning caste reaches
down into the lowest conceivable strata
of bounders and ignoramuses. The lowcaste man is never quite sure of his wife
unless he is convinced that she is
entirely devoid of amorous
62
susceptibility. Thus he grows uneasy
whenever she shows any sign of
responding in kind to his own
elephantine emotions, and is apt to be
suspicious of even so trivial a thing as a
hearty response to a connubial kiss. If he
could manage to rid himself of such
suspicions, there would be less public
gabble about anæsthetic wives, and
fewer books written by quacks with sure
cures for them, and a good deal less
cold-mutton formalism and boredom at
the domestic hearth.
I have a feeling that the husband of this
sort--he is very common in the United
States, and almost as common among
the middle classes of England, Germany
and Scandinavia--does himself a serious
disservice, and that he is uneasily
conscious of it. Having got himself a
wife to his austere taste, he finds that she
is rather depressing--that his vanity is
almost as painfully damaged by her
emotional inertness as it would have
been by a too provocative and hedonistic
spirit. For the thing that chiefly delights
a man, when some woman has gone
through the solemn buffoonery of
yielding to his great love, is the sharp
and flattering contrast between her
reserve in the presence of other men and
her enchanting complaisance in the
presence of himself. Here his vanity is
enormously tickled. To the world in
general she seems remote and
unapproachable; to him she is docile,
fluttering, gurgling, even a bit
abandoned. It is as if some great
magnifico male, some inordinate czar or
kaiser, should step down from the throne
to play dominoes with him behind the
door. The greater the contrast between
the lady's two fronts, the greater his
satisfaction--up to, of course, the point
where his suspicions are aroused. Let her
diminish that contrast ever so little on
the public side--by smiling at a
handsome actor, by saying a word too
many to an attentive head-waiter, by
holding the hand of the rector of the
parish, by winking amiably at his brother
or at her sister's husband--and at once
the poor fellow begins to look for
clandestine notes, to employ private
inquiry agents, and to scrutinize the
eyes, ears, noses and hair of his children
with shameful doubts. This explains
many domestic catastrophes.
15. Mythical Anthropophagi
THE MAN-HATING woman, like the
cold woman, is largely imaginary. One
often encounters references to her in
literature, but who has ever met her in
real life? As for me, I doubt that such a
monster has ever actually existed. There
are, of course, women who spend a great
deal of time denouncing and reviling
men, but these are certainly not genuine
man-haters; they are simply women who
have done their utmost to snare men, and
failed. Of such sort are the majority of
inflammatory suffragettes of the
sexhygiene and birth-control species.
The rigid limitation of offspring, in fact,
is chiefly advocated by women who run
no more risk of having unwilling
motherhood forced upon them than so
many mummies of the Tenth Dynasty.
All their unhealthy interest in such
noisome matters has behind it merely a
subconscious yearning to attract the
attention of men, who are supposed to be
partial to enterprises that are difficult or
forbidden. But certainly the enterprise of
dissuading such a propagandist from her
gospel would not be difficult, and I
know of no law forbidding it.
I'll begin to believe in the man-hater the
day I am introduced to a woman who has
definitely and finally refused a chance of
63
marriage to a man who is of her own
station in life, able to support her,
unafflicted by any loathsome disease,
and of reasonably decent aspect and
manners--in brief a man who is
thoroughly eligible. I doubt that any
such woman breathes the air of
Christendom. Whenever one comes to
confidential terms with an unmarried
woman, of course, she favours one with
a long chronicle of the men she has
refused to marry, greatly to their grief.
But unsentimental cross-examination, at
least in my experience, always develops
the fact that every one of these men
suffered from some obvious and
intolerable disqualification Either he had
a wife already and was vague about his
ability to get rid of her, or he was drunk
when he was brought to his proposal and
repudiated it or forgot it the next day, or
he was a bankrupt, or he was old and
decrepit, or he was young and plainly
idiotic, or he had diabetes or a bad heart,
or his relatives were impossible, or he
believed in spiritualism, or democracy,
or the Baconian theory, or some other
such nonsense. Restricting the thing to
men palpably eligible, I believe
thoroughly that no sane woman has ever
actually muffed a chance. Now and then,
perhaps, a miraculously fortunate girl
has two victims on the mat
simultaneously, and has to lose one. But
they are seldom, if ever, both good
chances; one is nearly always a duffer,
thrown in in the telling to make the
bourgeoisie marvel.
16. A Conspiracy of Silence
THE REASON WHY all this has to be
stated here is simply that women, who
could state it much better, have almost
unanimously refrained from discussing
such matters at all. One finds, indeed, a
sort of general conspiracy, infinitely
alert and jealous, against the publication
of the esoteric wisdom of the sex, and
even against the acknowledgment that
any such body of erudition exists at all.
Men, having more vanity and less
discretion, are a good deal less cautious.
There is, in fact, a whole literature of
masculine babbling, ranging from
Machiavelli's appalling confession of
political theory to the egoistic
confidences of such men as Nietzsche,
Jean Jacques Rousseau, Casanova, Max
Stirner, Benvenuto Cellini, Napoleon
Bonaparte and Lord Chesterfield. But it
is very rarely that a Marie Bashkirtsev or
Margot Asquith lets down the veils
which conceal the acroamatic doctrine of
the other sex. It is transmitted from
mother to daughter, so to speak, behind
the door. One observes its practical
workings, but hears little about its
principles. The causes of this secrecy are
obvious. Women, in the last analysis,
can prevail against men in the great
struggle for power and security only by
keeping them disarmed, and, in the
main, unwarned. In a pitched battle, with
the devil taking the hindmost, their
physical and economic inferiority would
inevitably bring them to disaster. Thus
they have to apply their peculiar talents
warily, and with due regard to the danger
of arousing the foe. He must be attacked
without any formal challenge, and even
without any suspicion of challenge. This
strategy lies at the heart of what
Nietzsche called the slave morality--in
brief, a morality based upon a
concealment of egoistic purpose, a code
of ethics having for its foremost
character a bold denial of its actual aim.
64
III
Marriage
17. Fundamental Motives
HOW SUCCESSFUL such a
concealment may be is well displayed by
the general acceptance of the notion that
women are reluctant to enter into
marriage--that they have to be persuaded
to it by eloquence and pertinacity, and
even by a sort of intimidation. The truth
is that, in a world almost divested of
intelligible idealism, and hence
dominated by a senseless worship of the
practical, marriage offers the best career
that the average woman can reasonably
aspire to, and, in the case of very many
women, the only one that actually offers
a livelihood. What is esteemed and
valuable, in our materialistic and
unintelligent society, is precisely that
petty practical efficiency at which men
are expert, and which serves them in
place of free intelligence. A woman,
save she show a masculine strain that
verges upon the pathological, cannot
hope to challenge men in general in this
department, but it is always open to her
to exchange her sexual charm for a lion's
share in the earnings of one man, and
this is what she almost invariably tries to
do. That is to say, she tries to get a
husband, for getting a husband means, in
a sense, enslaving an expert, and so
covering up her own lack of expertness,
and escaping its consequences.
Thereafter she has at least one stout line
of defence against a struggle for
existence in which the prospect of
survival is chiefly based, not upon the
talents that are typically hers, but upon
those that she typically lacks. Before the
average woman succumbs in this
struggle, some man or other must
succumb first. Thus her craft converts
her handicap into an advantage.
In this security lies the most important of
all the benefits that a woman attains by
marriage. It is, in fact, the most
important benefit that the mind can
imagine, for the whole effort of the
human race, under our industrial society,
is concentrated upon the attainment of it.
But there are other benefits, too. One of
them is that increase in dignity which
goes with an obvious success; the
woman who has got herself a
satisfactory husband, or even a highly
imperfect husband, is regarded with
respect by other women, and has a
contemptuous patronage for those who
have failed to do likewise. Again,
marriage offers her the only safe
opportunity, considering the levantine
view of women as property which
Christianity has preserved in our
civilization, to obtain gratification for
that powerful complex of instincts which
we call the sexual, and, in particular, for
the instinct of maternity. The woman
who has not had a child remains
incomplete, ill at ease, and more than a
little ridiculous. She is in the position of
a man who has never stood in battle; she
has missed the most colossal experience
of her sex. Moreover, a social odium
goes with her loss. Other women regard
her as a sort of permanent tyro, and treat
her with ill-concealed disdain, and
deride the very virtue which lies at the
bottom of her experiential penury. There
would seem to be, indeed, but small
respect among women for virginity per
se. They are against the woman who has
got rid of hers outside marriage, not
because they think she has lost anything
intrinsically valuable, but because she
has made a bad bargain, and one that
materially diminishes the sentimental
respect for virtue held by men, and
65
hence one against the general advantage
and well-being of the sex. In other
words, it is a guild resentment that they
feel, not a moral resentment. Women, in
general, are not actively moral, nor, for
that matter, noticeably modest. Every
man, indeed, who is in wide practice
among them is occasionally astounded
and horrified to discover, on some rainy
afternoon, an almost complete absence
of modesty in some women of the
highest respectability.
But of all things that a woman gains by
marriage the most valuable is economic
security. Such security, of course, is
seldom absolute, but usually merely
relative: the best provider among
husbands may die without enough life
insurance, or run off with some
preposterous light of love, or become an
invalid or insane, or step over the
intangible and wavering line which
separates business success from a prison
cell. Again, a woman may be deceived:
there are stray women who are credulous
and sentimental, and stray men who are
cunning. Yet again, a woman may make
false deductions from evidence
accurately before her, ineptly guessing
that the clerk she marries today will be
the head of the firm tomorrow, instead of
merely the bookkeeper tomorrow. But
on the whole it must be plain that a
woman, in marrying, usually obtains for
herself a reasonably secure position in
that station of life to which she is
accustomed. She seeks a husband, not
sentimentally, but realistically; she
always gives thought to the economic
situation; she seldom takes a chance if it
is possible to avoid it. It is common for
men to marry women who bring nothing
to the joint capital of marriage save good
looks and an appearance of vivacity; it is
almost unheard of for women to neglect
more prosaic inquiries. Many a rich man,
at least in America, marries his typist or
the governess of his sister's children and
is happy thereafter, but when a rare
woman enters upon a comparable
marriage she is commonly set down as
insane, and the disaster that almost
always ensues quickly confirms the
diagnosis.
The economic and social advantage that
women thus seek in marriage--and the
seeking is visible no less in the kitchen
wench who aspires to the heart of a
policeman than in the fashionable
flapper who looks for a husband with a
Rolls-Royce--is, by a curious twist of
fate, one of the underlying causes of
their precarious economic condition
before marriage rescues them. In a
civilization which lays its greatest stress
upon an uninspired and almost automatic
expertness, and offers its highest rewards
to the more intricate forms thereof, they
suffer the disadvantage of being less
capable of it than men. Part of this
disadvantage, as we have seen, is
congenital; their very intellectual
enterprise makes it difficult for them to
become the efficient machines that men
are. But part of it is also due to the fact
that, with marriage always before them,
colouring their every vision of the
future, and holding out a steady promise
of swift and complete relief, they are
under no such implacable pressure as
men are to acquire the sordid arts they
revolt against. The time is too short and
the incentive too feeble. Before the
woman employé of twentyone can
master a tenth of the idiotic "knowledge"
in the head of the male clerk of thirty, or
even convince herself that it is worth
mastering, she has married the head of
the establishment or maybe the clerk
himself, and so abandons the business. It
is, indeed, not until a woman has
definitely put away the hope of
66
marriage, or, at all events, admitted the
possibility that she may have to do so
soon or late, that she buckles down in
earnest to whatever craft she practises,
and makes a genuine effort to develop
competence. No sane man, seeking a
woman for a post requiring laborious
training and unremitting diligence,
would select a woman still definitely
young and marriageable. To the
contrary, he would choose either a
woman so unattractive sexually as to be
palpably incapable of snaring a man, or
one so embittered by some catastrophe
of amour as to be pathologically emptied
of the normal aspirations of her sex.
18. The Process of Courtship
THIS BEMUSEMENT of the typical
woman by the notion marriage has been
noted as self-evident by every literate
student of the phenomena of sex, from
the early Christian fathers down to
Nietzsche, Ellis and Shaw. That it is
denied by the current sentimentality of
Christendom is surely no evidence
against it. What we have in this denial,
as I have said, is no more than a proof of
woman's talent for a high and sardonic
form of comedy and of man's infinite
vanity. "I wooed and won her," says
Sganarelle of his wife. "I made him run,"
says the hare of the hound. When the
thing is maintained, not as a mere windy
sentimentality, but with some notion of
carrying it logically, the result is
invariably a display of paralogy so
absurd that it becomes pathetic. Such
nonsense one looks for in the works of
gyneophile theorists with no experience
of the world, and there is where one
finds it. It is almost always wedded to
the astounding doctrine that sexual
frigidity, already disposed of, is normal
in the female, and that the approach of
the male is made possible, not by its
melting into passion, but by a purely
intellectual determination, inwardly
revolting, to avoid his ire by pandering
to his gross appetites. Thus the thing is
stated in a book called "The Sexes in
Science and History," by Eliza Burt
Gamble, an American lady
anthropologist:
The beautiful coloring of male birds and
fishes, and the various appendages
acquired by males throughout the
various orders below man, and which, so
far as they themselves are concerned,
serve no other useful purpose than to aid
them in securing the favours of the
females, have by the latter been turned to
account in the processes of reproduction.
The female made the male beautiful that
she might endure his caresses.
The italics are mine. From this premiss
the learned doctor proceeds to the
classical sentimental argument that the
males of all species, including man, are
little more than chronic seducers, and
that their chief energies are devoted to
assaulting and breaking down the native
reluctance of the æsthetic and anæsthetic
females. In her own words: "Regarding
males, outside of the instinct for selfpreservation, which, by the way is often
overshadowed by their great sexual
eagerness, no discriminating characters
have been acquired and transmitted,
other than those which have been the
result of passion, namely, pugnacity and
perseverance." Again the italics are
mine. What we have here is merely the
old, old delusion of masculine enterprise
in amour--the concept of man as a
lascivious monster and of woman as his
shrinking victim--in brief, the Don Juan
idea in fresh bib and tucker. In such
bilge lie the springs of many of the most
vexatious delusions of the world, and of
some of its loudest farce no less. It is
67
thus that fatuous old maids are led to
look under their beds for fabulous
ravishers, and to cry out that they have
been stabbed with hypodermic needles
in cinema theatres, and to watch
furtively for white slavers in railroad
stations. It is thus, indeed, that the whole
white-slave mountebankery has been
launched, with its gaudy fictions and
preposterous alarms. And it is thus, more
importantly, that whole regiments of
neurotic wives have been convinced that
their children are monuments, not to a
co-operation in which their own share
was innocent and cordial, but to the
solitary libidinousness of their swinish
and unconscionable husbands. Dr.
Gamble, of course, is speaking of the
lower fauna in the time of Noah. A
literal application of her theory to man
today is enough to bring it to a reductio
ad absurdum. Which sex of Homo
sapiens actually does the primping and
parading that she describes? Which runs
to "beautiful colouring," sartorial,
hirsute, facial? Which encases itself in
vestments which "serve no other useful
purpose than to aid in securing the
favours" of the other? The insecurity of
the gifted savante's position is at once
apparent. The more convincingly she
argues that the primeval mud-hens and
she-mackerel had to be anæsthetized
with spectacular decorations in order to
"endure the caresses" of their beaux, the
more she supports the thesis that men
have to be decoyed and bamboozled into
love today. In other words, her
arguments turns upon and destroys itself.
Carried to its last implication, it holds
that women are all Donna Juanitas, and
that if they put off their millinery and
cosmetics, and abandoned the shameless
sexual allurements of their scanty dress,
men could not "endure their caresses.
To be sure, Dr. Gamble by no means
draws this disconcerting conclusion
herself. To the contrary, she clings to the
conventional theory that the human
female of today is no more than the
plaything of the concupiscent male, and
that she must wait for the feminist
millennium to set her free from his
abominable pawings. But she can reach
this notion only by standing her whole
structure of reasoning on its head--in
fact, by knocking it over and repudiating
it. On the one hand, she argues that
splendour of attire is merely a bait to
overcome the reluctance of the opposite
sex, and on the other hand she argues, at
least by fair inference, that it is not. This
grotesque switching of horses, however,
need not detain us. The facts are too
plain to be disposed of by a lady
anthropologist's theorizings. Those facts
are supported, in the field of animal
behaviour, by the almost unanimous
evidence of zoologists, including that of
Dr. Gamble herself. They are supported,
in the field of human behaviour, by a
body of observation and experience so
colossal that it would be quite out of the
question to dispose of it. Women, as I
have shown, have a more delicate
æsthetic sense than men; in a world
wholly rid of men they would probably
still array themselves with vastly more
care and thought of beauty than men
would ever show in like case. But with
the world what it is, it must be obvious
that their display of finery--to say
nothing of their display of epidermis-has the conscious purpose of attracting
the masculine eye. A normal woman,
indeed, never so much as buys a pair of
shoes or has her teeth plugged without
considering, in the back of her mind, the
effect upon some unsuspecting candidate
for her "reluctant" affections.
68
19. The Actual Husband
AS FAR AS I can make out, no woman
of the sort worth hearing--that is, no
woman of intelligence, umour and
charm, and hence of success in the duel
of sex--has ever publicly denied this; the
denial is confined entirely to the absurd
sect of female bachelors of arts and to
the generality of vain and unobservant
men. The former, having failed to attract
men by the devices described, tak
e refuge behind the sour-grapes doctrine
that they have never tried, and the latter,
having fallen victims, sooth their egoism
by arrogating the whole agency to
themselves, thus giving it a specious
appearance of the volitional, and even of
the audacious. The average man is an
almost incredible popinjay; he can think
of himself only as at the centre of
situations. All the sordid transactions of
his life appear to him, and are depicted
in his accounts of them, as feats,
successes, proofs of his acumen. He
regards it as an almost magical exploit to
operate a stock-brokerage shop, or to get
elected to public office, or to swindle his
fellow knaves in some degrading
commercial enterprise, or to profess
some nonsense or other in a college, or
to write so platitudinous a book as this
one. And in the same way he views it as
a great testimony to his prowess at
amour to yield up his liberty, his
property and his soul to the first woman
who, in despair of finding better game,
turns her appraising eye upon him. But if
you want to hear a mirthless laugh, just
present this masculine theory to a
bridesmaid at a wedding, particularly
after alcohol and crocodile tears have
done their disarming work upon her.
That is to say, just hint to her that the
bride harboured no notion of marriage
until stormed into acquiescence by the
moonstruck and impetuous bridegroom.
I have used the phrase, "in despair of
finding better game." What I mean is
this: that not one woman in a hundred
ever marries her first choice among
marriageable men. That first choice is
almost invariably one who is beyond her
talents, for reasons either fortuitous or
intrinsic. Let us take, for example, a
woman whose relative naiveté makes the
process clearly apparent, to wit, a simple
shop-girl. Her absolute first choice,
perhaps, is not a living man at all, but a
supernatural abstraction in a book, say,
one of the heroes of Hall Caine, Ethel M.
Dell, or Marie Corelli. After him comes
a moving-picture actor. Then another
moving-picture actor. Then, perhaps,
many more--ten or fifteen head. Then a
sebaceous young clergyman. Then the
junior partner in the firm she works for.
Then a couple of department managers.
Then a clerk. Then a young man with no
definite profession or permanent job-one of the innumerable host which flits
from post to post, always restive, always
trying something new--perhaps a
neighbourhood garage-keeper in the end.
Well, the girl begins with the Caine
colossus: he vanishes into thin air. She
proceeds to the moving picture actors:
they are almost as far beyond her. And
then to the man of God, the junior
partner, the department manager, the
clerk: one and all they are carried off by
girls of greater attractions and greater
skill--girls who can cast gaudier flies. In
the end, suddenly terrorized by the first
faint shadows of spinsterhood, she turns
to the ultimate num-skull--and marries
him out of hand.
This, allowing for class modifications, is
almost the normal history of a marriage,
or, more accurately, of the genesis of a
marriage, under Protestant Christianity.
69
Under other rites the business is taken
out of the woman's hands, at least partly,
and so she is less enterprising in her
assembling of candidates and
possibilities. But when the whole thing
is left to her own heart--i.e., to her head-it is but natural that she should seek as
wide a range of choice as the conditions
of her life allow, and in a democratic
society those conditions put few if any
fetters upon her fancy. The servant girl,
or factory operative, or even prostitute of
today may be the chorus girl or moving
picture vampire of tomorrow and the
millionaire's wife of next year. In
America, especially, men have no settled
antipathy to such stooping alliances; in
fact, it rather flatters their vanity to play
Prince Charming to Cinderella. The
result is that every normal American
young woman, with the practicality of
her sex and the inner confidence that
goes therewith, raises her amorous eye
as high as it will roll. And the second
result is that every American man of
presentable exterior and easy means is
surrounded by an aura of discreet
provocation: he cannot even dictate a
letter, or ask for a telephone number
without being measured for his wedding
coat. On the Continent of Europe, and
especially in the Latin countries, where
class barriers are more formidable, the
situation differs materially, and to the
disadvantage of the girl. If she makes an
overture, it is an invitation to disaster;
her hope of lawful marriage by such
means is almost nil. In consequence, the
prudent and decent girl avoids such
overtures, and they must be made by
third parties or by the man himself. This
is the explanation of the fact that a
Frenchman, say, is habitually
enterprising in amour, and hence bold
and often offensive, whereas an
American is what is called chivalrous.
The American is chivalrous for the
simple reason that the initiative is not in
his hands. His chivalry is really a sort of
coquetry.
20. The Unattainable Ideal
BUT HERE I rather depart from the
point, which is: that the average woman
is not strategically capable of bringing
down the most tempting game within her
purview, and must thus content herself
with a second, third, or nth choice. The
only women who get their first choices
are those who run in almost miraculous
luck and those too stupid to formulate an
ideal--two very small classes, it must be
obvious. A few women, true enough, are
so pertinacious that they prefer defeat to
compromise. That is to say, they prefer
to put off marriage indefinitely rather
than to marry beneath the highest leap of
their fancy. But such women may be
quickly dismissed as abnormal, and
perhaps as downright diseased in mind;
the average woman is well aware that
marriage is far better for her than
celibacy, even when it falls a good deal
short of her primary hopes, and she is
also well aware that the differences
between man and man, once mere
money is put aside, are so slight as to be
practically almost negligible. Thus the
average woman is under none of the
common masculine illusions about
elective affinities, soul mates, love at
first sight, and such phantasms. She is
quite ready to fall in love, as the phrase
is, with any man who is plainly eligible,
and she usually knows a good many
more such men than one. Her primary
demand in marriage is not for the
agonies of romance, but for comfort and
security; she is thus easier satisfied than
a man, and oftener happy. One
frequently hears of remarried widowers
70
who continue to moon about their dead
first wives, but for a remarried widow to
show any such sentimentality would be a
nine days' wonder. Once replaced, a
dead husband is expunged from the
minutes. And so is a dead love.
One of the results of all this is a subtle
reinforcement of the contempt with
which women normally regard their
husbands--a contempt grounded, as I
have shown, upon a sense of intellectual
superiority. To this primary sense of
superiority is now added the
disparagement of a concrete comparison,
and over all is an ineradicable
resentment of the fact that such a
comparison has been necessary. In other
words, the typical husband is a secondrater, and no one is better aware of it
than his wife. He is, taking averages, one
who has been loved, as the saying goes,
by but one woman, and then only as a
second, third or nth choice. If any other
woman had ever loved him, as the idiom
has it, she would have married him, and
so made him ineligible for his present
happiness. But the average bachelor is a
man who has been loved, so to speak, by
many women, and is the lost first choice
of at least some of them. He represents
the unattainable, and hence the
admirable; the husband is the attained
and disdained.
Here we have a sufficient explanation of
the general superiority of bachelors, so
often noted by students of mankind--a
superiority so marked that it is difficult,
in all history, to find six first-rate
philosophers who were married men.
The bachelor's very capacity to avoid
marriage is no more than a proof of his
relative freedom from the ordinary
sentimentalism of his sex--in other
words, of his greater approximation to
the clearheadedness of the enemy sex.
He is able to defeat the enterprise of
women because he brings to the business
an equipment almost comparable to their
own. Herbert Spencer, until he was fifty,
was ferociously harassed by women of
all sorts. Among others, George Eliot
tried very desperately to marry him. But
after he had made it plain, over a long
series of years, that he was prepared to
resist marriage to the full extent of his
military and naval power, the girls
dropped off one by one, and so his last
decades were full of peace and he got a
great deal of very important work done.
21. The Effect on the Race
IT IS, OF COURSE, not well for the
world that the highest sort of men are
thus selected out, as the biologists say,
and that their superiority dies with them,
whereas the ignoble tricks and
sentimentalities of lesser men are
infinitely propagated. Despite a popular
delusion that the sons of great men are
always dolts, the fact is that intellectual
superiority is inheritable quite as easily
as bodily strength; and that fact has been
established beyond cavil by the
laborious inquiries of Galton, Pearson
and the other anthropometricians of the
English school. If such men as Spinoza,
Kant, Schopenhauer, Spencer, and
Nietzsche had married and begotten
sons, those sons, it is probable, would
have contributed as much to philosophy
as the sons and grandsons of Veit Bach
contributed to music, or those of
Erasmus Darwin to biology, or those of
Henry Adams to politics, or those of
Hamilcar Barca to the art of war. I have
said that Herbert Spencer's escape from
marriage facilitated his life-work, and so
served the immediate good of English
philosophy, but in the long run it will
work a detriment, for he left no sons to
carry on his labours, and the remaining
71
Englishmen of his time were unable to
supply the lack. His celibacy, indeed,
made English philosophy co-extensive
with his life; since his death the whole
body of metaphysical speculation
produced in England has been of little
more practical value to the world than a
drove of hogs. In precisely the same way
the celibacy of Schopenhauer, Kant and
Nietzsche has reduced German
philosophy to feebleness.
Even setting aside this direct influence
of heredity, there is the equally potent
influence of example and tuition. It is a
gigantic advantage to live on intimate
terms with a first-rate man, and have his
care. Hamilcar not only gave the
Carthagenians a great general in his
actual son; he also gave them a great
general in his son-in-law, trained in his
camp. But the tendency of the first-rate
man to remain a bachelor is very strong,
and Sidney Lee once showed that, of all
the great writers of England since the
Renaissance, more than half were either
celibates or lived apart from their wives.
Even the married ones revealed the
tendency plainly. For example, consider
Shakespeare. He was forced into
marriage while still a minor by the
brothers of Ann Hathaway, who was
several years his senior, and had
debauched him and gave out that she
was enceinte by him. He escaped from
her abhorrent embraces as quickly as
possible, and thereafter kept as far away
from her as he could. His very distaste
for marriage, indeed, was the cause of
his residence in London, and hence, in
all probability, of the labours which
made him immortal,
In different parts of the world various
expedients have been resorted to to
overcome this reluctance to marriage
among the better sort of men.
Christianity, in general, combats it on
the ground that it is offensive to God-though at the same time leaning toward
an enforced celibacy among its own
agents. The discrepancy is fatal to the
position. On the one hand, it is
impossible to believe that the same God
who permitted His own son to die a
bachelor regards celibacy as an actual
sin, and on the other hand, it is obvious
that the average cleric would be
damaged but little, and probably
improved appreciably, by having a wife
to think for him, and to force him to
virtue and industry, and to aid him
otherwise in his sordid profession.
Where religious superstitions have died
out the institution of the dot prevails--an
idea borrowed by Christians from the
Jews. The dot is simply a bribe designed
to overcome the disinclination of the
male. It involves a frank recognition of
the fact that he loses by marriage, and it
seeks to make up for that loss by a
money payment. Its obvious effect is to
give young women a wider and better
choice of husbands. A relatively superior
man, otherwise quite out of reach, may
be brought into camp by the assurance of
economic ease, and what is more, he
may be kept in order after he has been
taken by the consciousness of his gain.
Among hardheaded and highly practical
peoples, such as the Jews and the
French, the dot flourishes, and its effect
is to promote intellectual suppleness in
the race, for the average child is thus not
inevitably the offspring of a woman and
a noodle, as with us, but may be the
offspring of a woman and a man of
reasonable intelligence. But even in
France, the very highest class of men
tend to evade marriage; they resist
money almost as unanimously as their
Anglo-Saxon brethren resist
sentimentality.
72
In America the dot is almost unknown,
partly because money-getting is easier to
men than in Europe and is regarded as
less degrading, and partly because
American men are more naïve than
Frenchmen and are thus readily intrigued
without actual bribery. But the best of
them nevertheless lean to celibacy, and
plans for overcoming their habit are
frequently proposed and discussed. One
such plan involves a heavy tax on
bachelors. The defect in it lies in the fact
that the average bachelor, for obvious
reasons, is relatively well to do, and
would pay the tax rather than marry.
Moreover, the payment of it would help
to salve his conscience, which is now
often made restive, I believe, by a
maudlin feeling that he is shirking his
duty to the race, and so he would be
confirmed and supported in his
determination to avoid the altar. Still
further, he would escape the social
odium which now attaches to his
celibacy, for whatever a man pays for is
regarded as his right. As things stand,
that odium is of definite potency, and
undoubtedly has its influence upon a
certain number of men in the lower
ranks of bachelors. They stand, so to
speak, in the twilight zone of
bachelorhood, with one leg furtively
over the altar rail; it needs only an extra
pull to bring them to the sacrifice. But if
they could compound for their immunity
by a cash indemnity it is highly probable
that they would take on new resolution,
and in the end they would convert what
remained of their present disrepute into a
source of egoistic satisfaction, as is
done, indeed, by a great many bachelors
even today. These last immoralists are
privy to the elements which enter into
that disrepute: the ire of women whose
devices they have resisted and the envy
of men who have succumbed.
22. Compulsory Marriage
I MYSELF ONCE proposed an
alternative scheme, to wit, the
prohibition of sentimental marriages by
law, and the substitution of
matchmaking by the common hangman.
This plan, as revolutionary as it may
seem, would have several plain
advantages. For one thing, it would
purge the serious business of marriage of
the romantic fol-de-rol that now corrupts
it, and so make for the peace and
happiness of the race. For another thing,
it would work against the process which
now selects out, as I have said, those
men who are most fit, and so throws the
chief burden of paternity upon the
inferior, to the damage of posterity. The
hangman, if he made his selections
arbitrarily, would try to give his office
permanence and dignity by choosing
men whose marriage would meet with
publie approbation, i.e., men obviously
of sound stock and talents, i.e., the sort
of men who now habitually escape. And
if he made his selection by the hazard of
the die, or by drawing numbers out of a
hat, or by any other such method of pure
chance, that pure chance would fall
indiscriminately upon all orders of men,
and the upper orders would thus lose
their present comparative immunity.
True enough, a good many men would
endeavour to influence him privately to
their own advantage, and it is probable
that he would occasionally succumb, but
it must be plain that the men most likely
to prevail in that enterprise would not be
philosophers, but politicians, and so
there would be some benefit to the race
even here. Posterity surely suffers no
very heavy loss when a Congressman, a
member of the House of Lords or even
an ambassador or Prime Minister dies
73
childless, but when a Herbert Spencer
goes to the grave without leaving sons
behind him there is a detriment to all the
generations of the future.
I did not offer the plan, of course, as a
contribution to practical politics, but
merely as a sort of hypothesis, to help
clarify the problem. Many other
theoretical advantages appear in it, but
its execution is made impossible, not
only by inherent defects, but also by a
general disinclination to abandon the
present system, which at least offers
certain attractions to concrete men and
women, despite its unfavourable effects
upon the unborn. Women would oppose
the substitution of chance or arbitrary
fiat for the existing struggle for the plain
reason that every woman is convinced,
and no doubt rightly, that her own
judgment is superior to that of either the
common hangman or the gods, and that
her own enterprise is more favourable to
her opportunities. And men would
oppose it because it would restrict their
liberty. This liberty, of course, is largely
imaginary. In its common manifestation,
it is no more, at bottom, than the
privilege of being bamboozled and made
a mock of by the first woman who
ventures to essay the business. But none
the less it is quite as precious to men as
any other of the ghosts that their vanity
conures up for their enchantment. They
cherish the notion that unconditioned
volition enters into the matter, and that
under volition there is not only a high
degree of sagacity but also a touch of the
daring and the devilish. A man is often
almost as much pleased and flattered by
his own marriage as he would be by the
achievement of what is currently called a
seduction. In the one case, as in the
other, his emotion is one of triumph. The
substitution of pure chance would take
away that soothing unction.
The present system, to be sure, also
involves chance. Every man realizes it,
and even the most bombastic bachelor
has moments in which he humbly
whispers: "There, but for the grace of
God, go I." But that chance has a sugarcoating; it is swathed in egoistic illusion;
it shows less stark and intolerable
chanciness, so to speak, than the bald
hazard of the die. Thus men prefer it,
and shrink from the other. In the same
way, I have no doubt, the majority of
foxes would object to choosing lots to
determine the victim of a projected foxhunt. They prefer to take their chances
with the dogs.
23. Extra-Legal Devices
IT IS, OF COURSE, a rhetorical
exaggeration to say that all first-class
men escape marriage, and even more of
an exaggeration to say that their high
qualities go wholly untransmitted to
posterity. On the one hand it must be
obvious that an appreciable number of
them, perhaps by reason of their very
detachment and preoccupation, are
intrigued into the holy estate, and that
not a few of them enter it deliberately,
convinced that it is the safest form of
liaison possible under Christianity. And
on the other hand one must not forget the
biological fact that it is quite feasible to
achieve offspring without the imprimatur
of Church and State. The thing, indeed,
is so commonplace that I need not risk a
scandal by uncovering it in detail. What
I allude to, I need not add, is not that
form of irregularity which curses
innocent children with the stigma of
illegitimacy, but that more refined and
thoughtful form which safeguards their
social dignity while protecting them
against inheritance from their legal
fathers. English philosophy, as I have
74
shown, suffers by the fact that Herbert
Spencer was too busy to permit himself
any such romantic altruism--just as
American literature gains enormously by
the fact that Walt Whitman adventured,
leaving seven sons behind him, three of
whom are now well-known American
poets and in the forefront of the New
Poetry movement.
The extent of this correction of a salient
evil of monogamy is very considerable;
its operations explain the private
disrepute of perhaps a majority of
firstrate men; its advantages have been
set forth in George Moore's "Euphorion
in Texas," though in a clumsy and
sentimental way. What is behind it is the
profound race-sense of women--the
instinct which makes them regard the
unborn in their every act--perhaps, too,
the fact that the interests of the unborn
are here identical, as in other situations,
with their own egoistic aspirations. As a
popular philosopher has shrewdly
observed, the objections to polygamy do
not come from women, for the average
woman is sensible enough to prefer half
or a quarter or even a tenth of a first-rate
man to the whole devotion of a third-rate
man. Considerations of much the same
sort also justify polyandry--if not
morally, then at least biologically. The
average woman, as I have shown, must
inevitably view her actual husband with
a certain disdain; he is anything but her
ideal. In consequence, she cannot help
feeling that her children are cruelly
handicapped by the fact that he is their
father, nor can she help feeling guilty
about it; for she knows that he is their
father only by reason of her own
initiative in the proceedings anterior to
her marriage. If, now, an opportunity
presents itself to remove that handicap
from at least some of them, and at the
same time to realize her ideal and satisfy
her vanity--if such a chance offers it is
no wonder that she occasionally
embraces it.
Here we have an explanation of many
lamentable and otherwise inexplicable
violations of domestic integrity. The
woman in the case is commonly
dismissed as vicious, but that is no more
than a new example of the common
human tendency to attach the concept of
viciousness to whatever is natural, and
intelligent, and above the comprehension
of politicians, theologians and greengrocers.
24. Intermezzo on Monogamy
THE PREVALENCE of monogamy in
Christendom is commonly ascribed to
ethical motives. This is quite as absurd
as ascribing wars to ethical motives-which is, of course, frequently done. The
simple truth is that ethical motives are
no more than deductions from
experience, and that they are quickly
abandoned whenever experience turns
against them. In the present case
experience is still overwhelming on the
side of monogamy; civilized men are in
favour of it because they find that it
works. And why does it work? Because
it is the most effective of all available
antidotes to the alarms and terrors of
passion. Monogamy, in brief, kills
passion--and passion is the most
dangerous of all the surviving enemies to
what we call civilization, which is based
upon order, decorum, restraint,
formality, industry, regimentation. The
civilized man--the ideal civilized man--is
simply one who never sacrifices the
common security to his private passions.
He reaches perfection when he even
ceases to love passionately--when he
reduces the most profound of all his
instinctive experiences from the level of
75
an ecstasy to the level of a mere device
for replenishing the armies and
workshops of the world, keeping clothes
in repair, reducing the infant deathrate,
providing enough tenants for every
landlord, and making it possible for the
Polizei to know where every citizen is at
any hour of the day or night. Monogamy
accomplishes this, not by producing
satiety, but by destroying appetite. It
makes passion formal and uninspiring,
and so gradually kills it.
The advocates of monogamy, deceived
by its moral overtones, fail to get all the
advantage out of it that is in it. Consider,
for example, the important moral
business of safeguarding the virtue of the
unmarried--that is, of the still passionate.
The present plan in dealing, say, with a
young man of twenty, is to surround him
with scare-crows and prohibitions--to try
to convince him logically that passion is
dangerous. This is both supererogation
and imbecility--supererogation because
he already knows that it is dangerous,
and imbecility because it is quite
impossible to kill a passion by arguing
against it. The way to kill it is to give it
rein under unfavourable and dispiriting
conditions--to bring it down, by slow
stages, to the estate of an absurdity and a
horror. How much more, then, could be
accomplished if the wild young man
were forbidden polygamy, before
marriage, but permitted monogamy! The
prohibition in this case would be
relatively easy to enforce, instead of
impossible, as in the other. Curiosity
would be satisfied; nature would get out
of her cage; even romance would get an
inning. Ninety-nine young men out of a
hundred would submit, if only because it
would be much easier to submit than to
resist.
And the result? Obviously, it would be
laudable--that is, accepting current
definitions of the laudable. The product,
after six months, would be a wellregimented and disillusioned young
man, as devoid of disquieting and
demoralizing passion as an ancient of
eighty--in brief, the ideal citizen of
Christendom. The present plan surely
fails to produce a satisfactory crop of
such ideal citizens. On the one hand its
impossible prohibitions cause a
multitude of lamentable revolts, often
ending in a silly sort of running amok.
On the other hand they fill the Y. M. C.
A.'s with scared poltroons full of
indescribably disgusting Freudian
suppressions. Neither group supplies
many ideal citizens. Neither promotes
the sort of public morality that is aimed
at.
25. Late Marriages
THE MARRIAGE of a first-rate man,
when it takes place at all, commonly
takes place relatively late. He may
succumb in the end, but he is almost
always able to postpone the disaster a
good deal longer than the average poor
clodpate, or normal man. If he actually
marries early, it is nearly always proof
that some intolerable external pressure
has been applied to him, as in
Shakespeare's case, or that his mental
sensitiveness approaches downright
insanity, as in Shelley's. This fact,
curiously enough, has escaped the
observation of an otherwise extremely
astute observer, namely Havelock Ellis.
In his study of British genius he notes
the fact that most men of unusual
capacities are the sons of relatively old
fathers, but instead of exhibiting the true
cause thereof, he ascribes it to a
mysterious quality whereby a man
already in decline is capable of begetting
better offspring than one in full vigour.
76
This is a palpable absurdity, not only
because it goes counter to facts long
established by animal breeders, but also
because it tacitly assumes that talent, and
hence the capacity for transmitting it, is
an acquired character, and that this
character may be transmitted. Nothing
could be more unsound. Talent is not an
acquired character, but a congenital
character, and the man who is born with
it has it in early life quite as well as in
later life, though its manifestation may
have to wait. James Mill was yet a
young man when his son, John Stuart
Mill, was born, and not one of his
principle books had been written. But
though the "Elements of Political
Economy" and the "Analysis of the
Human Mind" were thus but vaguely
formulated in his mind, if they were
actually so much as formulated at all,
and it was fifteen years before he wrote
them, he was still quite able to transmit
the capacity to write them to his son, and
that capacity showed itself, years
afterward, in the latter's "Principles of
Political Economy" and "Essay on
Liberty."
But Ellis' faulty inference is still based
upon a sound observation, to wit, that
the sort of man capable of transmitting
high talents to a son is ordinarily a man
who does not have a son at all, at least in
wedlock, until he has advanced into
middle life. The reasons which impel
him to yield even then are somewhat
obscure, but two or three of them,
perhaps, may be vaguely discerned. One
lies in the fact that every man, whether
of the first class or of any other class,
tends to decline in mental agility as he
grows older, though in the actual range
and profundity of his intelligence he may
keep on improving until he collapses
into senility. Obviously, it is mere agility
of mind, and not profundity, that is of
most value and effect in so tricky and
deceptive a combat as the duel of sex.
The aging man, with his agility
gradually withering, is thus confronted
by women in whom it still luxuriates as a
function of their relative youth. Not only
do women of his own age aspire to
ensnare him, but also women of all ages
back to adolescence. Hence his average
or typical opponent tends to be
progressively younger and younger than
he is, and in the end the mere advantage
of her youth may be sufficient to tip over
his tottering defences. This, I take it, is
why oldish men are so often intrigued by
girls in their teens. It is not that age calls
maudlinly to youth, as the poets would
have it; it is that age is no match for
youth, especially when age is male and
youth is female. The case of the late
Henrik Ibsen was typical. At forty Ibsen
was a sedate family man, and it is
doubtful that he ever so much as glanced
at a woman; all his thoughts were upon
the composition of "The League of
Youth," his first social drama. At fifty he
was almost as preoccupied; "A Doll's
House" was then hatching. But at sixty,
with his best work all done and his
decline begun, he succumbed
preposterously to a flirtatious damsel of
eighteen, and thereafter, until actual
insanity released him, he mooned like a
provincial actor in a sentimental
melodrama. Had it not been, indeed, for
the fact that he was already married, and
to a very sensible wife, he would have
run off with this flapper, and so made
himself publicly ridiculous.
Another reason for the relatively late
marriages of superior men is found,
perhaps, in the fact that, as a man grows
older, the disabilities he suffers by
marriage tend to diminish and the
advantages to increase. At thirty a man is
terrified by the inhibitions of monogamy
77
and has little taste for the so-called
comforts of a home; at sixty he is
beyond amorous adventure and is in
need of creature ease and security. What
he is oftenest conscious of, in these later
years, is his physical decay; he sees
himself as in imminent danger of falling
into neglect and helplessness. He is thus
confronted by a choice between getting a
wife or hiring a nurse, and he commonly
chooses the wife as the less expensive
and exacting. The nurse, indeed, would
probably try to marry him anyhow; if he
employs her in place of a wife he
commonly ends by finding himself
married and minus a nurse, to his
confusion and discomfiture, and to the
far greater discomfiture of his heirs and
assigns. This process is so obvious and
so commonplace that I apologize
formally for rehearsing it. What it
indicates is simply this: that a man's
instinctive aversion to marriage is
grounded upon a sense of social and
economic self-sufficiency, and that it
descends into a mere theory when this
self-sufficiency disappears. After all,
nature is on the side of mating, and
hence on the side of marriage, and vanity
is a powerful ally of nature. If men, at
the normal mating age, had half as much
to gain by marriage as women gain, then
all men would be as ardently in favour of
it as women are.
26. Disparate Unions
THIS BRINGS US to a fact frequently
noted by students of the subject: that
first-rate men, when they marry at all,
tend to marry noticeably inferior wives.
The causes of the phenomenon, so often
discussed and so seldom illuminated,
should be plain by now. The first-rate
man, by postponing marriage as long as
possible, often approaches it in the end
with his faculties crippled by senility,
and is thus open to the advances of
women whose attractions are wholly
meretricious, e.g., empty flappers,
scheming widows, and trained nurses
with a highly developed professional
technic of sympathy. If he marries at all,
indeed, he must commonly marry badly,
for women of genuine merit are no
longer interested in him; what was once
a lodestar is now no more than a
smoking smudge. It is this circumstance
that accounts for the low calibre of a
good many first-rate men's sons, and
gives a certain support to the common
notion that they are always third-raters.
Those sons inherit from their mothers as
well as from their fathers, and the bad
strain is often sufficient to obscure and
nullify the good strain. Mediocrity, as
every Mendelian knows, is a dominant
character, and extraordinary ability is a
recessive character. In a marriage
between an able man and a
commonplace woman, the chances that
any given child will resemble the mother
are, roughly speaking, three to one.
The fact suggests the thought that nature
is secretly against the superman, and
seeks to prevent his birth. We have,
indeed, no ground for assuming that the
continued progress visualized by man is
in actual accord with the great flow of
the elemental forces. Devolution is quite
as natural as evolution, and may be just
as pleasing, or even a good deal more
pleasing, to God. If the average man is
made in God's image, then a man such as
Beethoven or Aristotle is plainly
superior to God, and so God may be
jealous of him, and eager to see his
superiority perish with his bodily frame.
All animal breeders know how difficult
it is to maintain a fine strain. The
universe seems to be in a conspiracy to
encourage the endless reproduction of
78
peasants and Socialists, but a subtle and
mysterious opposition stands eternally
against the reproduction of philosophers.
Per corollary, it is notorious that women
of merit frequently marry second-rate
men, and bear them children, thus aiding
in the war upon progress. One is often
astonished to discover that the wife of
some sordid and prosaic manufacturer or
banker or professional man is a woman
of quick intelligence and genuine charm,
with intellectual interests so far above
his comprehension that he is scarcely so
much as aware of them. Again, there are
the leading feminists, women artists and
other such captains of the sex; their
husbands are almost always inferior
men, and sometimes downright fools.
But not paupers! Not incompetents in a
man's world! Not bad husbands! What
we here encounter, of course, is no more
than a fresh proof of the sagacity of
women. The first-rate woman is a realist.
She sees clearly that, in a world
dominated by second-rate men, the
special capacities of the second-rate man
are esteemed above all other capacities
and given the highest rewards, and she
endeavours to get her share of those
rewards by marrying a second-rate man
at the top of his class. The first-rate man
is an admirable creature; his qualities are
appreciated by every intelligent woman;
as I have just said, it may be reasonably
argued that he is actually superior to
God. But his attractions, after a certain
point, do not run in proportion to his
deserts; beyond that he ceases to be a
good husband. Hence the pursuit of him
is chiefly maintained, not by women
who are his peers, but by women who
are his inferiors.
Here we unearth another factor: the
fascination of what is strange, the charm
of the unlike, héliogabalisme. As
Shakespeare has put it, there must be
some mystery in love--and there can be
no mystery between intellectual equals. I
daresay that many a woman marries an
inferior man, not primarily because he is
a good provider (though it is impossible
to imagine her overlooking this), but
because his very inferiority interests her,
and makes her want to remedy it and
mother him. Egoism is in the impulse: it
is pleasant to have a feeling of
superiority, and to be assured that it can
be maintained. If now, that feeling be
mingled with sexual curiosity and
economic self-interest, it obviously
supplies sufficient motivation to account
for so natural and banal a thing as a
marriage. Perhaps the greatest of all
these factors is the mere disparity, the
naked strangeness. A woman could not
love a man, as the phrase is, who wore
skirts and pencilled his eyebrows, and by
the same token she would probably find
it difficult to love a man who matched
perfectly her own sharpness of mind.
What she most esteems in marriage, on
the psychic plane, is the chance it offers
for the exercise of that caressing irony
which I have already described. She
likes to observe that her man is a fool-dear, perhaps, but none the less damned.
Her so-called love for him, even at its
highest, is always somewhat pitying and
patronizing.
27. The Charm of Mystery
MONOGAMOUS MARRIAGE, by its
very conditions, tends to break down this
strangeness. It forces the two contracting
parties into an intimacy that is too
persistent and unmitigated; they are in
contact at too many points, and too
steadily. By and by all the mystery of the
relation is gone, and they stand in the
unsexed position of brother and sister.
Thus that "maximum of temptation" of
79
which Shaw speaks has within itself the
seeds of its own decay. A husband
begins by kissing a pretty girl, his wife;
it is pleasant to have her so handy and so
willing. He ends by making
machiavellian efforts to avoid kissing
the every day sharer of his meals, books,
bath towels, pocketbook, relatives,
ambitions, secrets, malaises and
business: a proceeding about as romantic
as having his boots blacked. The thing is
too horribly dismal for words. Not all the
native sentimentalism of man can
overcome the distaste and boredom that
get into it. Not all the histrionic capacity
of woman can attach any appearance of
gusto and spontaneity to it.
An estimable lady psychologist of the
American Republic, Mrs. Marion Cox,
in a somewhat florid book entitled
"Ventures into Worlds," has a sagacious
essay upon this subject. She calls the
essay "Our Incestuous Marriage," and
argues accurately that, once the
adventurous descends to the habitual, it
takes on an offensive and degrading
character. The intimate approach, to give
genuine joy, must be a concession, a feat
of persuasion, a victory; once it loses
that character it loses everything. Such a
destructive conversion is effected by the
average monogamous marriage. It
breaks down all mystery and reserve, for
how can mystery and reserve survive the
use of the same hot water bag and a joint
concern about butter and egg bills? What
remains, at least on the husband's side, is
esteem--the feeling one has for an
amiable aunt. And confidence-the
emotion evoked by a lawyer, a dentist or
a fortune-teller. And habit--the thing
which makes it possible to eat the same
breakfast every day, and to wind up
one's watch regularly, and to earn a
living.
Mrs. Cox, if I remember her dissertation
correctly, proposes to prevent this stodgy
dephlogistication of marriage by
interrupting its course--that is, by
separating the parties now and then, so
that neither will become too familiar and
commonplace to the other. By this
means, she argues, curiosity will be
periodically revived, and there will be a
chance for personality to expand a
cappella, and so each reunion will have
in it something of the surprise, the
adventure and the virtuous satanry of the
honeymoon. The husband will not come
back to precisely the same wife that he
parted from, and the wife will not
welcome precisely the same husband.
Even supposing them to have gone on
substantially as if together, they will
have gone on out of sight and hearing of
each other. Thus each will find the other,
to some extent at least, a stranger, and
hence a bit challenging, and hence a bit
charming. The scheme has merit. More,
it has been tried often, and with success.
It is, indeed, a familiar observation that
the happiest couples are those who are
occasionally separated, and the fact has
been embalmed in the trite maxim that
absence makes the heart grow fonder.
Perhaps not actually fonder, but at any
rate more tolerant, more curious, more
eager. Two difficulties, however, stand
in the way of the widespread adoption of
the remedy. One lies in its costliness: the
average couple cannot afford a double
establishment, even temporarily. The
other lies in the fact that it inevitably
arouses the envy and ill-nature of those
who cannot adopt it, and so causes a
gabbling of scandal. The world
invariably suspects the worst. Let man
and wife separate to save their happiness
from suffocation in the kitchen, the
dining room and the connubial chamber,
and it will immediately conclude that the
80
corpse is already laid out in the drawingroom.
28. Woman as Wife
THIS BOREDOM of marriage,
however, is not nearly as dangerous a
menace to the institution as Mrs. Cox,
with evangelistic enthusiasm, permits
herself to think it is. It bears most
harshly upon the wife, who is almost
always the more intelligent of the pair;
in the case of the husband its pains are
usually lightened by that sentimentality
with which men dilute the disagreeable,
particularly in marriage. Moreover, the
average male gets his living by such
depressing devices that boredom
becomes a sort of natural state to him. A
man who spends six or eight hours a day
acting as teller in a bank, or sitting upon
the bench of a court, or looking to the
inexpressibly trivial details of some
process of manufacturing, or writing
imbecile articles for a newspaper, or
managing a tramway, or administering
ineffective medicines to stupid and
uninteresting patients--a man so engaged
during all his hours of labour, which
means a normal, typical man, is surely
not one to be oppressed unduly by the
dull round of domesticity. His wife may
bore him hopelessly as mistress, just as
any other mistress inevitably bores a
man (though surely not so quickly and
so painfully as a lover bores a woman),
but she is not apt to bore him so badly in
her other capacities. What he commonly
complains about in her, in truth, is not
that she tires him by her monotony, but
that she tires him by her variety--not that
she is too static, but that she is too
dynamic. He is weary when he gets
home, and asks only the dull peace of a
hog in a comfortable sty. This peace is
broken by the greater restlessness of his
wife, the fruit of her greater intellectual
resilience and curiosity.
Of far more potency as a cause of
connubial discord is the general
inefficiency of a woman at the business
of what is called keeping house--a
business founded upon a complex of
trivial technicalities. As I have argued at
length, women are congenitally less
fitted for mastering these technicalities
than men; the enterprise always costs
them more effort, and they are never
able to reinforce mere diligent
application with that obtuse enthusiasm
which men commonly bring to their
tawdry and childish concerns. But in
addition to their natural incapacity, there
is a reluctance based upon a deficiency
in incentive, and that deficiency in
incentive is due to the maudlin
sentimentality with which men regard
marriage. In this sentimentality lie the
germs of most of the evils which beset
the institution in Christendom, and
particularly in the United States, where
sentiment is always carried to inordinate
lengths. Having abandoned the
mediaeval concept of woman as
temptress, the men of the Nordic race
have revived the correlative mediaeval
concept of woman as angel, and to
bolster up that character they have
created for her a vast and growing mass
of immunities, culminating of late years
in the astounding doctrine that, under the
contract of marriage, all the duties lie
upon the man and all the privileges
appertain to the woman. In part this
doctrine has been established by the
intellectual enterprise and audacity of
woman. Bit by bit, playing upon
masculine stupidity, sentimentality and
lack of strategical sense, they have
formulated it, developed it, and
entrenched it in custom and law. But in
other part it is the plain product of the
81
donkeyish vanity which makes almost
every man view the practical incapacity
of his wife as, in some vague way, a
tribute to his own high mightiness and
consideration. Whatever his revolt
against her immediate indolence and
efficiency, his ideal is nearly always a
situation in which she will figure as a
magnificent drone, a sort of empress
without portfolio, entirely discharged
from every unpleasant labour and
responsibility.
29. Marriage and the Law
THIS WAS NOT always the case. No
more than a century ao, even by
American law, the most sentimental in
the world, the husband was the head of
the family firm, lordly and autonomous.
He had authority over the purse-strings,
over the children, and even over his
wife. He could enforce his mandates by
appropriate punishment, including the
corporal. His sovereignty and dignity
were carefully guarded by legislation,
the product of thousands of years of
experience and ratiocination. He was
safeguarded in his self-respect by the
most elaborate and efficient devices, and
they had the support of public opinion.
Consider, now, the changes that a few
short years have wrought. Today, by the
laws of most American states--laws
proposed, in most cases, by maudlin and
often notoriously extravagant agitators,
and passed by sentimental orgy--all of
the old rights of the husband have been
converted into obligations. He no longer
has any control over his wife's property;
she may devote its income to the family
or she may squander that income upon
idle follies, and he can do nothing. She
has equal authority in regulating and
disposing of the children, and, in the
case of infants, more than he. There is no
law compelling her to do her share of the
family labour: she may spend her whole
time in cinema theatres or gadding about
the shops as she will. She cannot be
forced to perpetuate the family name if
she does not want to. She cannot be
attacked with masculine weapons, e.g..
fists and firearms, when she makes an
assault with feminine weapons, e.g..
snuffling, invective and sabotage.
Finally, no lawful penalty can be visited
upon her if she fails absolutely, either
deliberately or through mere incapacity,
to keep the family habitat clean, the
children in order, and the victuals
eatable.
Now view the situation of the husband.
The instant he submits to marriage, his
wife obtains a large and inalienable
share in his property, including all he
may acquire in future; in most American
states the minimum is one-third, and,
failing children, one-half. He cannot
dispose of his real estate without her
consent; he cannot even deprive her of it
by will. She may bring up his children
carelessly and idiotically, cursing them
with abominable manners and poisoning
their nascent minds against him, and he
has no redress. She may neglect her
home, gossip and lounge about all day,
put impossible food upon his table, steal
his small change, pry into his private
papers, hand over his home to the
Periplaneta americana, accuse him
falsely of preposterous adulteries, affront
his friends, and lie about him to the
neighbours--and he can do nothing. She
may compromise his honour by indecent
dressing, write letters to moving-picture
actors, and expose him to ridicule by
going into politics--and he is helpless.
Let him undertake the slightest rebellion,
over and beyond mere rhetorical protest,
and the whole force of the state comes
down upon him. If he corrects her with
82
the bastinado or locks her up, he is good
for six months in jail. If he cuts off her
revenues, he is incarcerated until he
makes them good. And if he seeks
surcease in flight, taking the children
with him, he is pursued by the
gendarmerie, brought back to his duties,
and depicted in the public press as a
scoundrelly kidnapper, fit only for the
knout. In brief, she is under no legal
necessity whatsoever to carry out her
part of the compact at the altar of God,
whereas he faces instant disgrace and
punishment for the slightest failure to
observe its last letter. For a few grave
crimes of commission, true enough, she
may be proceeded against. Open
adultery is a recreation that is denied to
her. She cannot poison her husband. She
must not assault him with edged tools, or
leave him altogether, or strip off her few
remaining garments and go naked. But
for the vastly more various and
numerous crimes of omission--and in
sum they are more exasperating and
intolerable than even overt felony--she
cannot be brought to book at all.
The scene I depict is American, but it
will soon extend its horrors to all
Protestant countries. The newlyenfranchised women of every one of
them cherish long programs of what they
call social improvement, and practically
the whole of that improvement is based
upon devices for augmenting their own
relative autonomy and power. The
English wife of tradition, so thoroughly
a femme covert, is being displaced by a
gadabout, truculent, irresponsible
creature, full of strange new ideas about
her rights, and strongly disinclined to
submit to her husband's authority, or to
devote herself honestly to the upkeep of
his house, or to bear him a biological
sufficiency of heirs. And the German
Hausfrau, once so innocently
consecrated to Kirche, Küche und
Kinder, is going the same way.
30. The Emancipated Housewife
WHAT HAS GONE on in the United
States during the past two generations is
full of lessons and warnings or the rest
of the world. The American housewife
of an earlier day was famous for her
unremitting diligence. She not only
cooked, washed and ironed; she also
made shift to master such more complex
arts as spinning, baking and brewing.
Her expertness, perhaps, never reached a
high level, but at all events she made a
gallant effort. But that was long, long
ago, before the new enlightenment
rescued her. Today, in her average
incarnation, she is not only incompetent
(a lack, as I have argued, rather beyond
her control); she is also filled with the
notion that a conscientious discharge of
her few remaining duties is, in some
vague way, discreditable and degrading.
To call her a good cook, I daresay, was
never anything but flattery; the early
American cuisine was probably a fearful
thing, indeed. But today the flattery turns
into a sort of libel, and she resents it, or,
at all events, does not welcome it. I used
to know an American literary man,
educated on the Continent, who married
a woman because she had exceptional
gifts in this department. Years later, at
one of her dinners, a friend of her
husband's tried to please her by
mentioning the fact, to which he had
always been privy. But instead of being
complimented, as a man might have
been if told that his wife had married
him because he was a good lawyer, or
surgeon, or blacksmith, this unusual
housekeeper, suffering a renaissance of
usualness, denounced the guest as a liar,
83
ordered him out of the house, and
threatened to leave her husband.
This disdain of offices that, after all, are
necessary, and might as well be faced
with some show of cheerfulness, takes
on the character of a definite cult in the
United States, and the stray woman who
attends to them faithfully is laughed at as
a drudge and a fool, just as she is apt to
be dismissed as a "brood sow" (I quote
literally, craving absolution for the
phrase: a jury of men during the late
war, on very thin patriotic grounds,
jailed the author of it) if she favours her
lord with viable issue. One result is the
notorious villainousness of American
cookery--a villainousness so painful to a
cultured uvula that a French hack-driver,
if his wife set its masterpieces before
him, would brain her with his linoleum
hat. To encounter a decent meal in an
American home of the middle class,
simple, sensibly chosen and competently
cooked, becomes almost as startling as
to meet a Y.M.C.A. secretary in a
bordello, and a good deal rarer. Such a
thing, in most of the large cities of the
Republic, scarcely has any existence. If
the average American husband wants a
sound dinner he must go to a restaurant
to get it, just as if he wants to refresh
himself with the society of charming and
well-behaved children, he has to go to an
orphan asylum. Only the immigrant can
take his ease and invite his soul within
his own house.
IV
Woman Suffrage
31. The Crowning Victory
IT IS MY sincere hope that nothing I
have here exhibited will be mistaken by
the nobility and gentry for moral
indignation. No such feeling, in truth, is
in my heart. Moral judgments, as old
Friedrich used to say, are foreign to my
nature. Setting aside the vast herd which
shows no definable character at all, it
seems to me that the minority
distinguished by what is commonly
regarded as an excess of sin is very
much more admirable than the minority
distinguished by an excess of virtue. My
experience of the world has taught me
that the average wine-bibber is a far
better fellow than the average
prohibitionist, and that the average rogue
is better company than the average poor
drudge, and that the worst white-slave
trader of my acquaintance is a decenter
man than the best vice crusader. In the
same way I am convinced that the
average woman, whatever her
deficiencies, is greatly superior to the
average man. The very ease with which
she defies and swindles him in several
capital situations of life is the clearest of
proofs of her general superiority. She did
not obtain her present high immunities
as a gift from the gods, but only after a
long and often bitter fight, and in that
fight she exhibited forensic and tactical
talents of a truly admirable order. There
was no weakness of man that she did not
penetrate and take advantage of. There
was no trick that she did not put to
effective use. There was no device so
bold and inordinate that it daunted her.
The latest and greatest fruit of this
feminine talent for combat is the
extension of the suffrage, now universal
in the Protestant countries, and even
advancing in those of the Greek and
Latin rites. This fruit was garnered, not
by an attack en masse, but by a mere
foray. I believe that the majority of
women, for reasons that I shall presently
expose, were not eager for the extension,
and regard it as of small value today.
They know that they can get what they
84
want without going to the actual polls
for it; moreover, they are out of
sympathy with most of the brummagem
reforms advocated by the professional
suffragists, male and female. The mere
statement of the current suffragist
platform, with its long list of quack surecures for all the sorrows of the world, is
enough to make them smile sadly. In
particular, they are sceptical of all
reforms that depend upon the mass
action of immense numbers of voters,
large sections of whom are wholly
devoid of sense. A normal woman,
indeed, no more believes in democracy
in the nation than she believes in
democracy at her own fireside; she
knows that there must be a class to order
and a class to obey, and that the two can
never coalesce. Nor is she susceptible to
the stock sentimentalities upon which
the whole democratic process is based.
This was shown very dramatically in the
United States at the national election of
1920, in which the late Woodrow
Wilson was brought down to colossal
and ignominious defeat--the first general
election in which all American women
could vote. All the sentimentality of the
situation was on the side of Wilson, and
yet fully three-fourths of the
newlyenfranchised women voters voted
against him. He is, despite his talents for
deception, a poor popular psychologist,
and so he made an inept effort to fetch
the girls by tear-squeezing: every
connoisseur will remember his bathos
about breaking the heart of the world.
Well, very few women believe in broken
hearts, and the cause is not far to seek:
practically every woman above the age
of twenty-five has a broken heart. That
is to say, she has been vastly
disappointed, either by failing to nab
some pretty fellow that her heart was set
on, or, worse, by actually nabbing him,
and then discovering him to be a
bounder or an imbecile, or both. Thus
walking the world with broken hearts,
women know that the injury is not
serious. When he pulled out the Vox
angelica stop and began sobbing and
snuffling and blowing his nose
tragically, the learned doctor simply
drove all the women voters into the arms
of the Hon. Warren Gamaliel Harding,
who was too stupid to invent any issues
at all, but simply took negative
advantage of the distrust aroused by his
opponent.
Once the women of Christendom
become at ease in the use of the ballot,
and get rid of the preposterous harridans
who got it for them and who now seek to
tell them what to do with it, they will
proceed to a scotching of many of the
sentimentalities which currently corrupt
politics. For one thing, I believe that
they will initiate measures against
democracy--the worst evil of the
present-day world. When they come to
the matter, they will certainly not ordain
the extension of the suffrage to children,
criminals and the insane--in brief, to
those even more inflammable and
knavish than the male hinds who have
enjoyed it for so long; they will try to
bring about its restriction, bit by bit, to
the small minority that is intelligent,
agnostic and self-possessed--say six
women to one man. Thus, out of their
greater instinct for reality, they will
make democracy safe for a democracy.
The curse of man, and the cause of
nearly all his woes, is his stupendous
capacity for believing the incredible. He
is forever embracing delusions, and each
new one is worse than all that have gone
before. But where is the delusion that
women cherish--I mean habitually,
firmly, passionately? Who will draw up
a list of propositions, held and
85
maintained by them in sober earnest, that
are obviously not true? (I allude here, of
course, to genuine women, not to
suffragettes and other such pseudomales) . As for me, I should not like to
undertake such a list. I know of nothing,
in fact, that properly belongs to it.
Women, as a class, believe in none of
the ludicrous rights, duties and pious
obligations that men are forever
gabbling about. Their superior
intelligence is in no way more
eloquently demonstrated than by their
ironical view of all such phantasmagoria.
Their habitual attitude toward men is one
of aloof disdain, and their habitual
attitude toward what men believe in, and
get into sweats about, and bellow for, is
substantially the same. It takes twice as
long to convert a body of women to
some new fallacy as it takes to convert a
body of men, and even then they halt,
hesitate and are full of mordant
criticisms. The women of Colorado had
been voting for 21 years before they
succumbed to prohibition sufficiently to
allow the man voters of the state to adopt
it; their own majority voice was against
it to the end. During the interval the men
voters of a dozen non-suffrage American
states had gone shrieking to the
mourners' bench. In California,
enfranchised in 1911, the women
rejected the dry revelation in 1914.
National prohibition was adopted during
the war without their votes--they did not
get the franchise throughout the country
until it was in the Constitution--and it is
without their support today. The
American man, despite his reputation for
lawlessness, is actually very much afraid
of the police, and in all the regions
where prohibition is now actually
enforced he makes excuses for his
poltroonish acceptance of it by arguing
that it will do him good in the long run,
or that he ought to sacrifice his private
desires to the common weal. But it is
almost impossible to find an American
woman of any culture who is in favour
of it. One and all, they are opposed to
the turmoil and corruption that it
involves, and resentful of the invasion of
liberty underlying it. Being realists, they
have no belief in any program which
proposes to cure the natural swinishness
of men by legislation. Every normal
woman believes, and quite accurately,
that the average man is very much like
her husband, John, and she knows very
well that John is a weak, silly and
knavish fellow, and that any effort to
convert him into an archangel overnight
is bound to come to grief. As for her
view of the average creature of her own
sex, it is marked by a cynicism so
penetrating and so destructive that a
clear statement of it would shock beyond
endurance.
32. The Woman Voter
THUS THERE is not the slightest
chance that the enfranchised women of
Protestantdom, once they become at ease
in the use of the ballot, will give any
heed to the ex-suffragettes who now
presume to lead and instruct them in
politics. Years ago I predicted that these
suffragettes, tried out by victory, would
turn out to be idiots. They are now hard
at work proving it. Half of them devote
themselves to advocating reforms,
chiefly of a sexual character, so utterly
preposterous that even male politicians
and newspaper editors laugh at them; the
other half succumb absurdly to the
blandishments of the old-time male
politicians, and so enroll themselves in
the great political parties. A woman who
joins one of these parties simply
becomes an imitation man, which is to
86
say, a donkey. Thereafter she is nothing
but an obscure cog in an ancient and
creaking machine, the sole intelligible
purpose of which is to maintain a horde
of scoundrels in public office. Her vote
is instantly set off by the vote of some
sister who joins the other camorra.
Parenthetically, I may add that all of the
ladies to take to this political immolation
seem to me to be frightfully plain. I
know those of England, Germany and
Scandinavia only by their portraits in the
illustrated papers, but those of the
United States I have studied at close
range at various large political
gatherings, including the two national
conventions first following the extension
of the suffrage. I am surely no fastidious
fellow--in fact, I prefer a certain
melancholy decay in women to the loud,
circus-wagon brilliance of youth--but I
give you my word that there were not
five women at either national convention
who could have embraced me in camera
without first giving me chloral. Some of
the chief stateswomen on show, in fact,
were so downright hideous that I felt
faint every time I had to look at them.
The reform-monging suffragists seem to
be equally devoid of the more caressing
gifts. They may be filled with altruistic
passion, but they certainly have bad
complexions, and not many of them
know how to dress their hair. Ninetenths of them advocate reforms aimed
at the alleged lubricity of the male--the
single standard, medical certificates for
bridegrooms, birth-control, and so on.
The motive here, I believe, is mere rage
and jealousy. The woman who is not
pursued sets up the doctrine that pursuit
is offensive to her sex, and wants to
make it a felony. No genuinely attractive
woman has any such desire. She likes
masculine admiration, however violently
expressed, and is quite able to take care
of herself. More, she is well aware that
very few men are bold enough to offer it
without a plain invitation, and this
awareness makes her extremely cynical
of all women who complain of being
harassed, beset, stormed, and seduced.
All the more intelligent women that I
know, indeed, are unanimously of the
opinion that no girl in her right senses
has ever been actually seduced since the
world began; whenever they hear of a
case, they sympathize with the man. Yet
more, the normal woman of lively
charms, roving about among men,
always tries to draw the admiration of
those who have previously admired
elsewhere; she prefers the professional
to the amateur, and estimates her skill by
the attractiveness of the huntresses who
have hitherto stalked the game. The ironfaced suffragist propagandist, if she gets
a man at all, must get one wholly
without sentimental experience. If he has
any, her crude manoeuvres make him
laugh and he is repelled by her lack of
pulchritude and amiability. All such
suffragists (save a few miraculous
beauties) marry ninth-rate men when
they marry at all. They have to put up
with the sort of cast-offs who are almost
ready to fall in love with lady physicists,
embryologists, and embalmers.
Fortunately for the human race, the
campaigns of these indignant viragoes
will come to naught. Men will keep on
pursuing women until hell freezes over,
and women will keep luring them on. If
the latter enterprise were abandoned, in
fact, the whole game of love would play
out, for not many men take any notice of
women spontaneously. Nine men out of
ten would be quite happy, I believe, if
there were no women in the world, once
they had grown accustomed to the quiet.
Practically all men are their happiest
when they are engaged upon activities--
87
for example, drinking, gambling,
hunting, business, adventure--to which
women are not ordinarily admitted. It is
women who seduce them from such
celibate doings. The hare postures and
gyrates in front of the hound. The way to
put an end to the gaudy crimes that the
suffragist alarmists talk about is to shave
the heads of all the pretty girls in the
world, and pluck out their eyebrows, and
pull their teeth, and put them in khaki,
and forbid them to wriggle on dancefloors, or to wear scents, or to use lipsticks, or to roll their eyes. Reform, as
usual, mistakes the fish for the fly.
33. A Glance Into the Future
THE PRESENT public prosperity of the
exsuffragettes is chiefly due to the fact
that the old-time male politicians, being
naturally very stupid, mistake them for
spokesmen for the whole body of
women, and so show them politeness.
But soon or late--and probably
disconcertingly soon--the great mass of
sensible and agnostic women will turn
upon them and depose them, and
thereafter the woman vote will be no
longer at the disposal of bogus Great
Thinkers and messiahs. If the
suffragettes continue to fill the
newspapers with nonsense, once that
change has been effected, it will be only
as a minority sect of tolerated idiots, like
the Swedenborgians, Christian
Scientists, Seventh Day Adventists and
other such fanatics of today. This was
the history of the extension of the
suffrage in all of the American states
that made it before the national
enfranchisement of women and it will be
repeated in the nation at large, and in
Great Britain and on the Continent.
Women are not taken in by quackery as
readily as men are; the hardness of their
shell of logic makes it difficult to
penetrate to their emotions. For one
woman who testifies publicly that she
has been cured of cancer by some
swindling patent medicine, there are at
least twenty masculine witnesses. Even
such frauds as the favourite American
elixir, Lydia Pinkham's Vegetable
Compound, which are ostensibly
remedies for specifically feminine ills,
anatomically impossible in the male, are
chiefly swallowed, so an intelligent
druggist tells me, by men.
My own belief, based on elaborate
inquiries and long meditation, is that the
grant of the ballot to women marks the
concealed but none the less real
beginning of an improvement in our
politics, and, in the end, in our whole
theory of government. As things stand,
an intelligent grappling with some of the
capital problems of the commonwealth
is almost impossible. A politician
normally prospers under democracy, not
in proportion as his principles are sound
and his honour incorruptible, but in
proportion as he excels in the
manufacture of sonorous phrases, and
the invention of imaginary perils and
imaginary defences against them. Our
politics thus degenerates into a mere
pursuit of hobgoblins; the male voter, a
coward as well as an ass, is forever
taking fright at a new one and electing
some mountebank to lay it. For a
hundred years past the people of the
United States, the most terrible existing
democratic state, have scarcely had a
political campaign that was not based
upon some preposterous fear--first of
slavery and then of the manumitted
slave, first of capitalism and then of
communism, first of the old and then of
the novel. It is a peculiarity of women
that they are not easily set off by such
alarms, that they do not fall readily into
88
such facile tumults and phobias. What
starts a male meeting to snuffling and
trembling most violently is precisely the
thing that would cause a female meeting
to sniff. What we need, to ward off
mobocracy and safeguard a civilized
form of government, is more of this
sniffing. What we need--and in the end it
must come--is a sniff so powerful that it
will call a halt upon the navigation of the
ship from the forecastle, and put a
competent staff on the bridge, and lay a
course that is describable in intelligible
terms.
The officers nominated by the male
electorate in modern democracies before
the extension of the suffrage were
usually chosen, not for their competence
but for their mere talent for idiocy; they
reflected accurately the male weakness
for whatever is rhetorical and
sentimental and feeble and untrue.
Consider, for example, what happened in
a salient case. Every four years the male
voters of the United States chose from
among themselves one who was put
forward as the man most fit, of all
resident men, to be the first citizen of the
commonwealth. He was chosen after
interminable discussion; his
qualifications were thoroughly
canvassed; very large powers and
dignities were put into his hands. Well,
what did we commonly find when we
examined this gentleman? We found, not
a profound thinker, not a leader of sound
opinion, not a man of notable sense, but
merely a wholesaler of notions so
infantile that they must needs disgust a
sentient suckling--in brief, a spouting
geyser of fallacies and sentimentalities, a
cataract of unsupported assumptions and
hollow moralizings, a tedious phrasemerchant and platitudinarian, a fellow
whose noblest flights of thought were
flattered when they were called
comprehensible--specifically, a Wilson,
a Taft, a Roosevelt, or a Harding.
This was the male champion. I do not
venture upon the cruelty of comparing
his bombastic flummeries to the clear
reasoning of a woman of like fame and
position; all I ask of you is that you
weigh them, for sense, for shrewdness,
for intelligent grasp of obscure relations,
for intellectual honesty and courage,
with the ideas of the average midwife.
34. The Suffragette
I HAVE SPOKEN with some disdain of
the suffragette. What is the matter with
her, fundamentally, is simple: she is a
woman who has stupidly carried her
envy of certain of the superficial
privileges of men to such a point that it
takes on the character of an obsession,
and makes her blind to their valueless
and often chiefly imaginary character. In
particular, she centres this frenzy of hers
upon one definite privilege, to wit, the
alleged privilege of promiscuity in
amour, the modern droit du seigneur.
Read the books of the chief lady
Savonarolas, and you will find running
through them an hysterical denunciation
of what is called the double standard of
morality; there is, indeed, a whole
literature devoted exclusively to it. The
existence of this double standard seems
to drive the poor girls half frantic. They
bellow raucously for its abrogation, and
demand that the frivolous male be
visited with even more idiotic penalties
than those which now visit the aberrant
female; some even advocate gravely his
mutilation by surgery, that he may be
forced into rectitude by a physical
disability for sin.
All this, of course, is hocus-pocus, and
the judicious are not deceived by it for
an instant. What these virtuous beldames
89
actually desire in their hearts is not that
the male be reduced to chemical purity,
but that the franchise of dalliance be
extended to themselves. The most
elementary acquaintance with Freudian
psychology exposes their secret animus.
Unable to ensnare males under the
present system, or at all events, unable to
ensnare males sufficiently appetizing to
arouse the envy of other women, they
leap to the theory that it would be easier
if the rules were less exacting. This
theory exposes their deficiency in the
chief character of their sex: accurate
observation. The fact is that, even if they
possessed the freedom that men are
supposed to possess, they would still
find it difficult to achieve their ambition,
for the average man, whatever his
stupidity, is at least keen enough in
judgment to prefer a single wink from a
genuinely attractive woman to the last
delirious favours of the typical
suffragette. Thus the theory of the
whoopers and snorters of the cause, in its
esoteric as well as in its public aspect, is
unsound. They are simply women who,
in their tastes and processes of mind, are
two-thirds men, and the fact explains
their failure to achieve presentable
husbands, or even consolatory betrayal,
quite as effectively as it explains the
ready credence they give to political and
philosophical absurdities.
35. A Mythical Dare-Devil
THE TRUTH IS that the picture of male
carnality that such women conjure up
belongs almost wholly to fable, as I have
already observed in dealing with the
sophistries of Dr. Eliza Burt Gamble, a
paralogist on a somewhat higher plane.
As they depict him in their fevered
treatises on illegitimacy, white-slave
trading and ophthalmia neonatorum the
average male adult of the Christian and
cultured countries leads a life of gaudy
lubricity, rolling magnificently from one
liaison to another, and with an almost
endless queue of ruined milliners,
dancers, charwomen, parlour-maids and
waitresses behind him, all dying of
poison and despair. The life of man, as
these furiously envious ones see it, is the
life of a leading actor in a boulevard
revue. He is a polygamous,
multigamous, myriadigamous; an
insatiable and unconscionable débauché,
a monster of promiscuity; prodigiously
unfaithful to his wife, and even to his
friends' wives; fathomlessly libidinous
and superbly happy.
Needless to say, this picture bears no
more relation to the facts than a
dissertation on major strategy by a
military "expert" promoted from
dramatic critic. If the chief suffragette
scare mongers (I speak without any
embarrassing naming of names) were
attractive enough to men to get near
enough to enough men to know enough
about them for their purpose they would
paralyze the Dorcas societies with no
such cajoling libels. As a matter of sober
fact, the average man of our time and
race is quite incapable of all these
incandescent and intriguing
divertisements. He is far more virtuous
than they make him out, far less
schooled in sin, far less enterprising and
ruthless. I do not say, of course, that he
is pure in heart, for the chances are that
he isn't; what I do say is that, in the
overwhelming majority of cases, he is
pure in act, even in the face of
temptation. And why? For several main
reasons, not to go into minor ones. One
is that he lacks the courage. Another is
that he lacks the money. Another is that
he is fundamentally moral, and has a
conscience. It takes more sinful initiative
90
than he has in him to plunge into any
affair save the most casual and sordid; it
takes more ingenuity and intrepidity than
he has in him to carry it off; it takes
more money than he can conceal from
his consort to finance it. A man may
force his actual wife to share the direst
poverty, but even the least vampirish
woman of the third part demands to be
courted in what, considering his station
in life, is the grand manner, and the
expenses of that grand manner scare off
all save a small minority of specialists in
deception. So long, indeed, as a wife
knows her husband's income accurately,
she has a sure means of holding him to
his oaths.
Even more effective than the fiscal
barrier is the barrier of poltroonery. The
one character that distinguishes man
from the other higher vertebrata, indeed,
is his excessive timorousness, his easy
yielding to alarms, his incapacity for
adventure without a crowd behind him.
In his normal incarnation he is no more
capable of initiating an extra-legal affair-at all events, above the mawkish
harmlessness of a flirting match with a
cigar girl in a café--than he is of scaling
the battlements of hell. He likes to think
of himself doing it, just as he likes to
think of himself leading a cavalry charge
or climbing the Matterhorn. Often,
indeed, his vanity leads him to imagine
the thing done, and he admits by winks
and blushes that he is a bad one. But at
the bottom of all that tawdry pretence
there is usually nothing more material
than an oafish smirk at some disgusted
shop-girl, or a scraping of shins under
the table. Let any woman who is
disquieted by reports of her husband's
derelictions figure to herself how long it
would have taken him to propose to her
if left to his own enterprise, and then let
her ask herself if so pusillanimous a
creature could be imagined in the rôle of
Don Giovanni.
Finally, there is his conscience--the
accumulated sediment of ancestral faintheartedness in countless generations,
with vague religious fears and
superstitions to leaven and mellow it.
What! a conscience? Yes, dear friends, a
conscience. That conscience may be
imperfect, inept, unintelligent,
brummagem. It may be
indistinguishable, at times, from the
mere fear that some one may be looking.
It may be shot through with hypocrisy,
stupidity, play-acting. But nevertheless,
as consciences go in Christendom, it is
genuinely entitled to the name--and it is
always in action. A man, remember, is
not a being in vacuo; he is the fruit and
slave of the environment that bathes
him. One cannot enter the House of
Commons, the United States Senate, or a
prison for felons without becoming, in
some measure, a rascal. One cannot fall
overboard without shipping water. One
cannot pass through a modern university
without carrying away scars. And by the
same token one cannot live and have
one's being in a modern democratic
state, year in and year out, without
falling, to some extent at least, under
that moral obsession which is the hallmark of the mob-man set free. A citizen
of such a state, his nose buried in
Nietzsche, "Man and Superman," and
other such advanced literature, may
caress himself with the notion that he is
an immoralist, that his soul is full of
soothing sin, that he has cut himself
loose from the revelation of God. But all
the while there is a part of him that
remains a sound Christian, a moralist, a
right-thinking and forwardlooking man.
And that part, in times of stress, asserts
itself. It may not worry him on ordinary
occasions. It may not stop him when he
91
swears, or takes a nip of whiskey behind
the door, or goes motoring on Sunday; it
may even let him alone when he goes to
a leg-show. But the moment a concrete
Temptress rises before him, her nose
snow-white, her lips rouged, her
eyelashes drooping provokingly--the
moment such an abandoned wench has
at him, and his lack of ready funds
begins to conspire with his lack of
courage to assault and wobble him--at
that precise moment his conscience
flares into function, and so finishes his
business. First he sees difficulty, then he
sees danger, then he sees wrong. The
result? The result is that he slinks off in
trepidation, and another vampire is
baffled of her prey.
It is, indeed, the secret scandal of
Christendom, at least in the Protestant
regions, that most men are faithful to
their wives. You will travel a long way
before you find a married man who will
admit that he is, but the facts are the
facts, and I am surely not one to flout
them.
36. The Origin of a Delusion
THE ORIGIN of the delusion that the
average man is a Leopold II or Augustus
the Strong, with the amorous experience
of a guinea pig, is not far to seek. It lies
in three factors, the which I rehearse
briefly:
1. The idiotic vanity of men,
leading to their eternal boasting,
either by open lying or sinister
hints.
2. The notions of vice crusaders,
nonconformist divines, Y.M.C.A.
secretaries, and other such
libidinous poltroons as to what
they would do themselves if they
had the courage.
3. The ditto of certain suffragettes
as to ditto ditto.
Here you have the genesis of a
generalization that gives the less critical
sort of women a great deal of needless
uneasiness and vastly augments the
natural conceit of men. Some
pornographic old fellow, in the discharge
of his duties as director of an anti-vice
society, puts in an evening ploughing
through such books as "The Memoirs of
Fanny Hill," Casanova's Confessions,
the Cena Trimalchionis of Gaius
Petronius, and II Samuel. From this
perusal he arises with the conviction that
life amid the red lights must be one
stupendous whirl of deviltry, that the
clerks he sees in Broadway or Piccadilly
at night are out for revels that would
have caused protests in Sodom and
Nineveh, that the average man who
chooses hell leads an existence
comparable to that of a Mormon bishop,
that the world outside the Bible class is
packed like a sardine-can with betrayed
salesgirls, that every man who doesn't
believe that Jonah swallowed the whale
spends his whole leisure leaping through
the seventh hoop of the Decalogue. "If I
were not saved and anointed of God,"
whispers the vice director into his own
ear, "that is what I, the Rev. Dr. Jasper
Barebones, would be doing. The late
King David did it; he was human, and
hence immoral. The late King Edward
VII was not beyond suspicion: the very
numeral in his name has its suggestions.
Millions of others go the same route. . . .
Ergo, Up, guards, and at em! Bring me
the pad of blank warrants! Order out the
searchlights and scaling-ladders! Swear
in four hundred more policemen! Let us
chase these hellhounds out of
Christendom, and make the world safe
for monogamy, poor working girls, and
infant damnation!"
92
Thus the hound of heaven, arguing
fallaciously from his own secret
aspirations. Where he makes his mistake
is in assuming that the unconsecrated,
while sharing his longing to debauch and
betray, are free from his other
weaknesses, e.g., his timidity, his lack of
resourcefulness, his conscience. As I
have said, they are not. The vast
majority of those who appear in the
public haunts of sin are there, not to
engage in overt acts of ribaldry, but
merely to tremble agreeably upon the
edge of the abyss. They are the same
skittish experimentalists, precisely, who
throng the midway at a world's fair, and
go to smutty shows, and take in sex
magazines, and read the sort of books
that our vice-crusading friend reads.
They like to conjure up the charms of
carnality, and to help out their somewhat
sluggish imaginations by actual peeps at
it, but when it comes to taking a
forthright header into the sulphur they
usually fail to muster up the courage. For
one clerk who succumbs to the houris of
the pave, there are five hundred who
succumb to lack of means, the warnings
of the sex hygienists, and their own
depressing consciences. For one
"clubman"--i.e., bagman or suburban
vestryman--who invades the women's
shops, engages the affection of some
innocent miss, lures her into infamy and
then sells her to the Italians, there are
one thousand who never get any further
than asking the price of cologne water
and discharging a few furtive winks.
And for one husband of the Nordic race
who maintains a blonde chorus girl in
oriental luxury around the corner, there
are ten thousand who are as true to their
wives, year in and year out, as so many
convicts in the death-house, and would
be no more capable of any such
loathsome malpractice, even in the face
of free opportunity, than they would be
of cutting off the ears of their young.
[Editor's note: the following is a footnote
HLM added about 1955.] I see nothing
in the Kinsey Report to change my
conclusions here. All that humorless
document really proves is (a) that all
men lie when they are asked about their
adventures in amour, and (b) that
pedagogues are singluarly naïve and
credulous creatures.
I am sorry to blow up so much romance.
In particular, I am sorry for the
suffragettes who specialize in the double
standard, for when they get into
pantaloons at last, and have the new
freedom, they will discover to their
sorrow that they have been pursuing a
chimera--that there is really no such
animal as the male anarchist they have
been denouncing and envying--that the
wholesale fornication of man, at least
under Christian democracy, has little
more actual existence than honest
advertising or sound cooking. They have
followed the pornomaniacs in embracing
a piece of buncombe, and when the day
of deliverance comes it will turn to ashes
in their arms.
Their error, as I say, lies in
overestimating the courage and
enterprise of man. They themselves,
barring mere physical valour, a quality
in which the average man is far
exceeded by the average jackal or wolf,
have more of both. If the consequences,
to a man, of the slightest descent from
virginity were one-tenth as swift and
barbarous as the consequences to a
young girl in like case, it would take a
division of infantry to dredge up a single
male flouter of that lex talionis in the
whole western world. As things stand
today, even with the odds so greatly in
his favour, the average male hesitates
and is thus not lost. Turn to the statistics
93
of the vice crusaders if you doubt it.
They show that the weekly receipts of
female recruits upon the wharves of sin
are always more than the demand; that
more young women enter upon the
vermilion career than can make
respectable livings at it; that the pressure
of the temptation they hold out is the
chief factor in corrupting our
undergraduates. What was the first act of
the American Army when it began
summoning its young clerks and college
boys and plough hands to conscription
camps? Its first act was to mark off a socalled moral zone around each camp,
and to secure it with trenches and
machine guns, and to put a lot of
volunteer termagants to patrolling it, that
the assembled jeunesse might be
protected in their rectitude from the
immoral advances of the adjacent
milkmaids and poor working girls.
37. Women as Martyrs
I HAVE GIVEN three reasons for the
prosperity of the notion that man is a
natural polygamist, bent eternally upon
fresh dives into Lake of Brimstone No.
7. To these another should be added: the
thirst for martyrdom which shows itself
in so many women, particularly under
the higher forms of civilization. This
unhealthy appetite, in fact, may be
described as one of civilization's
diseases; it is almost unheard of in more
primitive societies. The savage woman,
unprotected by her rude culture and
forced to heavy and incessant labour, has
retained her physical strength and with it
her honesty and self-respect. The
civilized woman, gradually degenerated
by a greater ease, and helped down that
hill by the pretensions of civilized man,
has turned her infirmity into a virtue, and
so affects a feebleness that is actually far
beyond the reality. It is by this route that
she can most effectively disarm
masculine distrust, and get what she
wants. Man is flattered by any
acknowledgement, however insincere, of
his superior strength and capacity. He
likes to be leaned upon, appealed to,
followed docilely. And this tribute to his
might caresses him on the psychic plane
as well as on the plane of the obviously
physical. He not only enjoys helping a
woman over a gutter; he also enjoys
helping her dry her tears. The result is
the vast pretence that characterizes the
relations of the sexes under civilization-the double pretence of man s cunning
and autonomy and of woman's
dependence and deference. Man is
always looking for some one to boast to;
woman is always looking for a shoulder
to put her head on.
This feminine affectation, of course, has
gradually taken on the force of a fixed
habit, and so it has got a certain support,
by a familiar process of self-delusion, in
reality. The civilized woman inherits that
habit as she inherits her cunning. She is
born half convinced that she is really as
weak and helpless as she later pretends
to be, and the prevailing folklore offers
her endless corroboration. One of the
resultant phenomena is the delight in
martyrdom that one so often finds in
women, and particularly in the least alert
and introspective of them. They take a
heavy, unhealthy pleasure in suffering; it
subtly pleases them to be hard put upon;
they like to picture themselves as
slaughtered saints. Thus they always find
something to complain of; the very
conditions of domestic life give them a
superabundance of clinical material. And
if, by any chance, such material shows a
falling off, they are uneasy and unhappy.
Let a woman have a husband whose
conduct is not reasonably open to
94
question, and she will invent mythical
offences to make him bearable. And if
her invention fails she will be plunged
into the utmost misery and humiliation.
This fact probably explains many
mysterious divorces: the husband was
not too bad, but too good. For public
opinion among women, remember, does
not favour the woman who is full of a
placid contentment and has no masculine
torts to report; if she says that her
husband is wholly satisfactory she is
looked upon as a numskull even more
dense than he is himself. A man,
speaking of his wife to other men,
always praises her extravagantly.
Boasting about her soothes his vanity; he
likes to stir up the envy of his fellows.
But when two women talk of their
husbands it is mainly atrocities that they
describe. The most esteemed woman
gossip is the one with the longest and
most various repertoire of complaints.
This yearning for martyrdom explains
one of the commonly noted characters of
women: their eager flair for bearing
physical pain. As we have seen, they
have actually a good deal less endurance
than men; massive injuries shock them
more severely and kill them more
quickly. But when acute algesia is
unaccompanied by any profounder
phenomena they are undoubtedly able to
bear it with a far greater show of
resignation. The reason is not far to seek.
In pain a man sees only an invasion of
his liberty, strength and selfesteem. It
floors him, masters him, and makes him
ridiculous. But a woman, more subtle
and devious in her processes of mind,
senses the dramatic effect that the
spectacle of her suffering makes upon
the spectators, already filled with
compassion for her feebleness. She
would thus much rather be praised for
facing pain with a martyr's fortitude than
for devising some means of getting rid
of it--the first thought of a man. No
woman could have invented chloroform,
nor, for that matter, alcohol. Both drugs
offer an escape from situations and
experiences that, even in aggravated
forms, women relish. The woman who
drinks as men drink--that is, to raise her
threshold of sensation and ease the
agony of living--nearly always shows a
deficiency in feminine characters and an
undue preponderance of masculine
characters. Almost invariably you will
find her vain and boastful, and full of
other marks of that bombastic
exhibitionism which is so sterlingly
male.
38. Pathological Effects
THIS FEMININE CRAVING for
martyrdom, of course, often takes on a
downright pathological character, and so
engages the psychiatrist. Women show
many other traits of the same sort. To be
a woman under our Christian
civilization, indeed, means to live a life
that is heavy with repression and
dissimulation, and this repression and
dissimulation, in the long run, cannot fail
to produce effects that are
indistinguishable from disease. You will
find some of them described at length in
any handbook on psychoanalysis. The
Viennese, Adler, and the Dane, Poul
Bjerre, argue, indeed, that womanliness
itself, as it is encountered under
Christianity, is a disease. All women
suffer from a suppressed revolt against
the inhibitions forced upon them by our
artificial culture, and this suppressed
revolt, by well known Freudian means,
produces a complex of mental symptoms
that is familiar to all of us. At one end of
the scale we observe the suffragette,
with her grotesque adoption of the male
95
belief in laws, phrases and talismans,
and her hysterical demand for a sexual
libertarianism that she could not put to
use if she had it. And at the other end we
find the snuffling and neurotic woman,
with her bogus martyrdom, her
extravagant pruderies and her
pathological delusions. As Ibsen
observed long ago, this is a man's world.
Women have broken many of their old
chains, but they are still enmeshed in a
formidable network of man-made taboos
and sentimentalities, and it will take
them another generation, at least, to get
genuine freedom. That this is true is
shown by the deep unrest that yet marks
the sex, despite its recent progress
toward social, political and economic
equality. It is almost impossible to find a
man who honestly wishes that he were a
woman, but almost every woman, at
some time or other in her life, is gnawed
by a regret that she is not a man.
Two of the hardest things that women
have to bear are (a) the stupid masculine
disinclination to admit their intellectual
superiority, or even their equality, or
even their possession of a normal human
equipment for thought, and (b) the
equally stupid masculine doctrine that
they constitute a special and ineffable
species of vertebrata, without the natural
instincts and appetites of the order--to
adapt a phrase from Haeckel, that they
are transcendental and almost gaseous
mammals, and marked by a complete
lack of certain salient mammalian
characters. The first imbecility has
already concerned us at length. One
finds traces of it even in works
professedly devoted to disposing of it. In
one such book, for example, I come
upon this: "What all the skill and
constructive capacity of the physicians
in the Crimean War failed to accomplish
Florence Nightingale accomplished by
her beautiful femininity and nobility of
soul." In other words, by her possession
of some recondite and indescribable
magic, sharply separated from the
ordinary mental processes of man. The
theory is unsound and preposterous.
Miss Nightingale accomplished her
useful work, not by magic, but by hard
common sense. The problem before her
was simply one of organization. Many
men had tackled it, and all of them had
failed stupendously. What she did was to
bring her feminine sharpness of wit, her
feminine clear-thinking, to bear upon it.
Thus attacked, it yielded quickly, and
once it had been brought to order it was
easy for other persons to carry on what
she had begun. But the opinion of a
man's world still prefers to credit her
success to some mysterious angelical
quality, unstatable in lucid terms and
having no more reality than the divine
inspiration of an archbishop. Her
extraordinarily acute and accurate
intelligence is thus conveniently put
upon the table, and the amour propre of
man is kept inviolate. To confess frankly
that she had more sense than any male
Englishman of her generation would be
to utter a truth too harsh to be bearable.
The second delusion commonly shows
itself in the theory, already discussed,
that women are devoid of any sex
instinct--that they submit to the odious
caresses of the lubricious male only by a
powerful effort of the will, and with the
sole object of discharging their duty to
posterity. It would be impossible to go
into this delusion with proper candour
and at due length in a work designed for
reading aloud in the domestic circle; all I
can do is to refer the student to the books
of any competent authority on the
psychology of sex, say Ellis, or to the
confidences (if they are obtainable) of
96
any complaisant bachelor of his
acquaintance.
39. Women as Christians
THE GLAD TIDINGS preached by
Christ were obviously highly favourable
to women. He lifted them to equality
before the Lord when their very
possession of souls was still doubted by
the majority of rival theologians.
Moreover, He esteemed them socially
and set value upon their sagacity, and
one of the most disdained of their sex, a
lady formerly in public life, was among
His regular advisers. Mariolatry is thus
by no means the invention of the
mediaeval popes, as Protestant
theologians would have us believe. On
the contrary, it is plainly discernible in
the Four Gospels. What the mediaeval
popes actually invented (or, to be
precise, reinvented, for they simply
borrowed the elements of it from St.
Paul) was the doctrine of women's
inferiority, the precise opposite of the
thing credited to them. Committed, for
sound reasons of discipline, to the
celibacy of the clergy, they had to
support it by depicting all traffic with
women in the light of a hazardous and
ignominious business. The result was the
deliberate organization and development
of the theory of female triviality, lack of
responsibility and general looseness of
mind. Woman became a sort of devil,
but without the admired intelligence of
the regular demons. The appearance of
women saints, however, offered a
constant and embarrassing criticism of
this idiotic doctrine. If occasional
women were fit to sit upon the right
hand of God--and they were often
proving it, and forcing the church to
acknowledge it--then surely all women
could not be as bad as the books made
them out. There thus arose the concept
of the angelic woman, the natural vestal;
we see her at full length in the romances
of mediaeval chivalry. What emerged in
the end was a sort of double doctrine,
first that women were devils and
secondly that they were angels. This
preposterous dualism has merged, as we
have seen, into a compromise dogma in
modern times. By that dogma it is held,
on the one hand, that women are
unintelligent and immoral, and on the
other hand, that they are free from all
those weaknesses of the flesh which
distinguish men. This, roughly speaking,
is the notion of the average male
numskull today.
Christianity has thus both libelled
women and flattered them, but with the
weight always on the side of the libel. It
is therefore, at bottom, their enemy, as
the religion of Christ, now wholly
extinct, was their friend. And as they
gradually throw off the shackles that
have bound them for a thousand years
they show appreciation of the fact.
Women, indeed, are not naturally
religious, and they are growing less and
less religious as year chases year. Their
ordinary devotion has little if any pious
exaltation in it; it is a routine practice,
forced on them by the masculine notion
that an appearance of holiness is proper
to their lowly station, and a masculine
feeling that church-going somehow
keeps them in order, and out of doings
that would be less reassuring. When they
exhibit any genuine religious fervour, its
sexual character is usually so obvious
that even the majority of men are
cognizant of it. Women never go
flocking ecstatically to a church in which
the agent of God in the pulpit is an
elderly asthmatic with a watchful wife.
When one finds them driven to frenzies
by the merits of the saints, and weeping
97
over the sorrows of the heathen, and
rushing out to haul the whole vicinage
up to grace, and spending hours on their
knees in hysterical abasement before the
heavenly throne, it is quite safe to
assume, even without an actual visit, that
the ecclesiastic who has worked the
miracle is a fair and toothsome fellow,
and a good deal more aphrodisiacal than
learned. All the great preachers to
women in modern times have been men
of suave and ingratiating habit, and the
great majority of them, from Henry
Ward Beecher up and down, have been
taken, soon or late, in transactions far
more suitable to the boudoir than to the
footstool of the Almighty. Their famous
killings have always been made among
the silliest sort of women--the sort, in
brief, who fall so short of the normal
acumen of their sex that they are
bemused by mere beauty in men.
Such women are in a minority, and so
the sex shows a good deal fewer
religious enthusiasts per mille than the
sex of sentiment and belief. Attending,
several years ago, the gladiatorial shows
of the Rev. Dr. Billy Sunday, the
celebrated American pulpit-clown, I was
constantly struck by the great
preponderance of males in the pen
devoted to the saved. Men of all ages
and in enormous numbers came
swarming to the altar, loudly bawling for
help against their sins, but the women
were anything but numerous, and the
few who appeared were chiefly either
chlorotic adolescents or pathetic old
Saufschwestern. For six nights running I
sat directly beneath the gifted exhorter
without seeing a single female convert of
what statisticians call the child-bearing
age--that is, the age of maximum
intelligence and charm. Among the male
simpletons bagged by his yells during
this time were the president of a railroad,
half a dozen rich bankers and merchants,
and the former governor of an American
state. But not a woman of comparable
position or dignity. Not a woman that
any self-respecting bachelor would care
to chuck under the chin.
This cynical view of religious
emotionalism, and with it of the whole
stock of ecclesiastical balderdash, is
probably responsible, at least in part, for
the reluctance of women to enter upon
the sacerdotal career. In those Christian
sects which still bar them from the
pulpit--usually on the imperfectly
concealed ground that they are not equal
to its alleged demands upon the morals
and the intellect--one never hears of
them protesting against the prohibition;
they are quite content to leave the
degrading imposture to men, who are
better fitted for it by talent and
conscience. And in those baroque sects,
chiefly American, which admit them
they show no eagerness to put on the
stole and chasuble. When the first
clergywoman appeared in the United
States, it was predicted by alarmists that
men would be driven out of the pulpit by
the new competition. Nothing of the sort
has occurred, nor is it in prospect. The
whole corps of female divines in the
country might be herded into one small
room. Women, when literate at all, are
far too intelligent to make effective
ecclesiastics. Their sharp sense of reality
is in endless opposition to the whole
sacerdotal masquerade, and their cynical
humour stands against the snorting that
is inseparable from pulpit oratory.
Those women who enter upon the
religious life are almost invariably
moved by some motive distinct from
mere pious inflammation. It is a
commonplace, indeed, that, in Catholic
countries, girls are driven into convents
by economic considerations or by
98
disasters of amour far oftener than they
are drawn there by the hope of heaven.
Read the lives of the female saints, and
you will see how many of them tried
marriage and failed at it before ever they
turned to religion. In Protestant lands
very few women adopt it as a profession
at all, and among the few a secular
impulse is almost always visible. The
girl who is suddenly overcome by a
desire to minister to the heathen in
foreign lands is nearly invariably found,
on inspection, to be a girl harbouring a
theory that it would be agreeable to
marry some heroic missionary. In point
of fact, she duly marries him. At home,
perhaps, she has found it impossible to
get a husband, but in the remoter
marches of China, Senegal and
Somaliland, with no white competition
present, it is equally impossible to fail.
40. Piety as a Social Habit
WHAT REMAINS of the alleged piety
of women is little more than a social
habit, reinforced in most communities by
a paucity of other and more inviting
divertissements. If you have ever
observed the women of Spain and Italy
at their devotions you need not be told
how much the worship of God may be a
mere excuse for relaxation and gossip.
These women, in their daily lives, are
surrounded by a formidable network of
mediaeval taboos; their normal human
desire for ease and freedom in
intercourse is opposed by masculine
distrust and superstition; they meet no
strangers; they see and hear nothing
new. In the house of the Most High they
escape from that vexing routine. Here
they may brush shoulders with a crowd.
Here, so to speak, they may crane their
mental necks and stretch their spiritual
legs. Here, above all, they may come
into some sort of contact with men
relatively more affable, cultured and
charming than their husbands and
fathers--to wit, with the rev. clergy.
Elsewhere in Christendom, though
women are not quite so relentlessly
watched and penned up, they feel much
the same need of variety and excitement,
and both are likewise on tap in the
temples of the Lord. No one, I am sure,
need be told that the average missionary
society or church sewing circle is not
primarily a religious organization. Its
actual purpose is precisely that of the
absurd clubs and secret orders to which
the lower and least resourceful classes of
men belong: it offers a means of
refreshment, of self-expression, of
personal display, of political
manipulation and boasting, and, if the
pastor happens to be interesting, of
discreet and almost lawful intrigue. In
the course of a life largely devoted to the
study of pietistic phenomena, I have
never met a single woman who cared an
authentic damn for the actual heathen.
The attraction in their salvation is always
almost purely social. Women go to
church for the same reason that farmers
and convicts go to church.
Finally, there is the æsthetic lure.
Religion, in most parts of Christendom,
holds out the only bait of beauty that the
inhabitants are ever cognizant of. It
offers music, dim lights, relatively
ambitious architecture, eloquence,
formality and mystery, the caressing
meaninglessness that is at the heart of
poetry. Women are far more responsive
to such things than men, who are
ordinarily quite as devoid of æsthetic
sensitiveness as so many oxen. The
attitude of the typical man toward beauty
in its various forms is, in fact, an attitude
of suspicion and hostility. He does not
regard a work of art as merely inert and
99
stupid; he regards it as, in some
indefinable way, positively offensive. He
sees the artist as a professional
voluptuary and scoundrel, and would no
more trust him in his household than he
would trust a coloured clergy-man in his
hen-yard. It was men, and not women,
who invented such sordid and literal
faiths as those of the Mennonites,
Dunkards, Wesleyans and Scotch
Presbyterians, with their antipathy to
beautiful ritual, their obscene
buttonholing of God, their great talent
for reducing the ineffable mystery of
religion to a mere bawling of idiots. The
normal woman, in so far as she has any
religion at all, moves irresistibly toward
Catholicism, with its poetical
obscurantism. The evangelical Protestant
sects have a hard time holding her. She
can no more be an actual Methodist than
a gentleman can be a Methodist. This
inclination toward beauty, of course, is
dismissed by the average male
blockhead as no more than a feeble
sentimentality. The truth is that it is
precisely the opposite. It is surely not
sentimentality to be moved by the stately
and mysterious ceremony of the mass, or
even, say, by those timid imitations of it
which one observes in certain Protestant
churches. Such proceedings, whatever
their defects from the standpoint of a
pure æsthetic, are at all events vastly
more beautiful than any of the private
acts of the folk who take part in them.
They lift themselves above the barren
utilitarianism of everyday life, and no
less above the maudlin sentimentalities
that men seek pleasure in. They offer a
means of escape, convenient and
inviting, from that sordid routine of
thought and occupation which women
revolt against so pertinaciously.
41. The Ethics of Women
I HAVE SAID that the religion preached
by Jesus (now wholly extinct in the
world) was highly favourable to women.
This was not saying, of course, that
women have repaid the compliment by
adopting it. They are, in fact, indifferent
Christians in the primitive sense, just as
they are bad Christians in the
antagonistic modern sense, and
particularly on the side of ethics. If they
actually accept the renunciations
commanded by the Sermon on the
Mount, it is only in an effort to flout
their substance under cover of their
appearance. No woman is really humble;
she is merely politic. No woman, with a
free choice before her, chooses selfimmolation; the most she genuinely
desires in that direction is a spectacular
martyrdom. No woman delights in
poverty. No woman yields when she can
prevail. No woman is honestly meek.
In their practical ethics, indeed, women
pay little heed to the precepts of the
Founder of Christianity, and the fact has
passed into proverb. Their gentleness,
like the so-called honour of men, is
visible only in situations which offer
them no menace. The moment a woman
finds herself confronted by an antagonist
genuinely dangerous, either to her own
security or to the well-being of those
under her protection--say a child or a
husband--she displays a bellicosity
which stops at nothing, however
outrageous. In the courts of law one
occasionally encounters a male extremist
who tells the truth, the whole truth and
nothing but the truth, even when it is
against his cause, but no such woman
has ever been on view since the days of
Justinian. It is, indeed, an axiom of the
bar that women invariably lie upon the
stand, and the whole effort of a barrister
who has one for a client is devoted to
100
keeping her within bounds, that the
obtuse suspicions of the male jury may
not be unduly aroused. Women litigants
almost always win their cases, not, as is
commonly assumed, because the
jurymen fall in love with them, but
simply and solely because they are clearheaded, resourceful, implacable and
without qualms.
What is here visible in the halls of
justice, in the face of a vast technical
equipment for combating mendacity, is
ten times more obvious in freer fields.
Any man who is so unfortunate as to
have a serious controversy with a
woman, say in the departments of
finance, theology or amour, must
inevitably carry away from it a sense of
having passed through a dangerous and
almost gruesome experience. Women
not only bite in the clinches; they bite
even in open fighting; they have a dental
reach, so to speak, of amazing length.
No attack is so desperate that they will
not undertake it, once they are aroused;
no device is so unfair and horrifying that
it stays them. In my early days, desiring
to improve my prose, I served for a year
or so as reporter for a newspaper in a
police court, and during that time I heard
perhaps four hundred cases of so-called
wife-beating. The husbands, in their
defence, almost invariably pleaded
justification, and some of them told such
tales of studied atrocity at the domestic
hearth, both psychic and physical, that
the learned magistrate discharged them
with tears in his eyes and the very
catchpolls in the courtroom had to blow
their noses. Many more men than
women go insane, and many more
married men than single men. The fact
puzzles no one who has had the same
opportunity that I had to find out what
goes on, year in and year out, behind the
doors of apparently happy homes. A
woman, if she hates her husband (and
many of them do), can make life so sour
and obnoxious to him that even death
upon the gallows seems sweet by
comparison. This hatred, of course, is
often, and perhaps almost invariably,
quite justified. To be the wife of an
ordinary man, indeed, is an experience
that must be very hard to bear. The
hollowness and vanity of the fellow, his
petty meanness and stupidity, his puling
sentimentality and credulity, his
bombastic air of a cock on a dung-hill,
his anæsthesia to all whispers and
summonings of the spirit, above all, his
loathsome clumsiness in amour--all
these things must revolt any woman
above the lowest. To be the object of the
oafish affections of such a creature, even
when they are honest and profound,
cannot be expected to give any genuine
joy to a woman of sense and refinement.
His performance as a gallant, as Honoré
de Baizac long ago observed, escapably
suggests a gorilla's efforts to play the
violin. Women survive the tragi-comedy
only by dint of their great capacity for
play-acting. They are able to act so
realistically that often they deceive even
themselves; the average woman's
contentment, indeed, is no more than a
tribute to her histrionism. But there must
be innumerable revolts in secret, even
so, and one sometimes wonders that so
few women, with the thing so facile and
so safe, poison their husbands. Perhaps it
is not quite as rare as vital statistics
make it out; the death rate among
husbands is very much higher than
among wives. More than once, indeed, I
have gone to the funeral of an
acquaintance who died suddenly, and
observed a curious glitter in the eyes of
the inconsolable widow.
Even in this age of emancipation, normal
women have few serious transactions in
101
life save with their husbands and
potential husbands; the business of
marriage is their dominant concern from
adolescence to senility. When they step
outside their habitual circle they show
the same alert and eager wariness that
they exhibit within it. A man who has
dealings with them must keep his wits
about him, and even when he is most
cautious he is often flabbergasted by
their sudden and unconscionable forays.
Whenever a woman goes into trade she
quickly gets a reputation as a sharp
trader. Every little town in America has
its Hetty Green, each sweating blood
from turnips, each the terror of all the
male usurers of the neighbourhood. The
man who tackles such an amazon of
barter takes his fortune into his hands; he
has little more chance of success against
the feminine technique in business than
he has against the feminine technique in
marriage. In both arenas the advantage
of women lies in their freedom from
sentimentality. In business they address
themselves wholly to their own profit,
and give no thought whatever to the
hopes, aspirations and amour propre of
their antagonists. And in the duel of sex
they fence, not to make points, but to
disable and disarm. A man, when he
succeeds in throwing off a woman who
has attempted to marry him, always
carries away a maudlin sympathy for her
in her defeat and dismay. But no one
ever heard of a woman who pitied the
poor fellow whose honest passion she
had found it expedient to spurn. On the
contrary, women take delight in such
clownish agonies, and exhibit them
proudly, and boast about them to other
women.
V
The New Age
42. The Transvaluation of Values
THE GRADUAL emancipation of
women that has been going on for the
last century has still a long way to
proceed before they are wholly delivered
from their traditional burdens and so
stand clear of the oppressions of men.
But already, it must be plain, they have
made enormous progress--perhaps more
than they made in the ten thousand years
preceding. The rise of the industrial
system, which has borne so harshly upon
the race in general, has brought them
certain unmistakable benefits. Their
economic dependence, though still
sufficient to make marriage highly
attractive to them, is nevertheless so far
broken down that large classes of
women are now almost free agents, and
quite independent of the favour of men.
Most of these women, responding to
ideas that are still powerful, are yet
intrigued, of course, by marriage, and
prefer it to the autonomy that is coming
in, but the fact remains that they now
have a free choice in the matter, and that
dire necessity no longer controls them.
After all, they needn't marry if they don't
want to; it is possible to get their bread
by their own labour in the workshops of
the world. Their grandmothers were in a
far more difficult position. Failing
marriage, they not only suffered a cruel
ignominy, but in many cases faced the
menace of actual starvation. There was
simply no respectable place in the
economy of those times for the free
woman. She either had to enter a
nunnery or accept a disdainful patronage
that was as galling as charity.
Nothing could be plainer than the effect
that the increasing economic security of
women is having upon their whole habit
of life and mind. The diminishing
marriage rate and the even more rapidly
102
diminishing birth rate show which way
the wind is blowing. It is common for
male statisticians, with characteristic
imbecility, to ascribe the fall in the
marriage rate to a growing disinclination
on the male side. This growing
disinclination is actually on the female
side. Even though no considerable body
of women has yet reached the definite
doctrine that marriage is less desirable
than freedom, it must be plain that large
numbers of them now approach the
business with far greater fastidiousness
than their grandmothers or even their
mothers exhibited. They are harder to
please, and hence pleased less often. The
woman of a century ago could imagine
nothing more favourable to her than
marriage; even marriage with a fifth-rate
man was better than no marriage at all.
This notion is gradually feeling the
opposition of a contrary notion. Women
in general may still prefer marriage to
work, but there is an increasing minority
which begins to realize that work may
offer the greater contentment,
particularly if it be mellowed by a
certain amount of philandering.
There already appears in the world,
indeed, a class of women, who, while
still not genuinely averse to marriage,
are yet free from any theory that it is
necessary, or even invariably desirable.
Among these women are a good many
somewhat vociferous propagandists,
almost male in their violent earnestness;
they range from the man-eating
suffragettes to such preachers of free
motherhood as Ellen Key and such
professional shockers of the bourgeoisie
as the American prophetess of birthcontrol, Margaret Sanger. But among
them are many more who wake the
world with no such noisy eloquence, but
content themselves with carrying out
their ideas in a quiet and respectable
manner. The number of such women is
much larger than is generally imagined,
and that number tends to increase
steadily. They are women who, with
their economic independence assured,
either by inheritance or by their own
efforts, chiefly in the arts and
professions, do exactly as they please,
and make no pother about it. Naturally
enough, their superiority to convention
and the common frenzy makes them
extremely attractive to the better sort of
men, and so it is not uncommon for one
of them to find herself voluntarily sought
in marriage, without any preliminary
scheming by herself--surely an
experience that very few ordinary
women ever enjoy, save perhaps in
dreams or delirium.
The old order changeth and giveth place
to the new. Among the women's clubs
and in the women's colleges, I have no
doubt, there is still much debate of the
old and silly question: Are platonic
relations possible between the sexes? In
other words, is friendship possible
without sex? Many a woman of the new
order dismisses the problem with
another question: Why without sex?
With the decay of the ancient concept of
women as property there must come
inevitably a reconsideration of the whole
sex question, and out of that
reconsideration there must come a
revision of the mediaeval penalties
which now punish the slightest frivolity
in the female. The notion that honour in
women is exclusively a physical matter,
that a single aberrance may convert a
woman of the highest merits into a
woman of none at all, that the sole
valuable thing a woman can bring to
marriage is virginity--this notion is so
preposterous that no intelligent person,
male or female, actually cherishes it. It
survives as one of the hollow
103
conventions of Christianity; nay, of the
levantine barbarism that preceded
Christianity. As women throw off the
other conventions which now bind them
they will throw off this one, too, and so
their virtue, grounded upon
fastidiousness and self-respect instead of
upon mere fear and conformity, will
become a far more laudable thing than it
ever can be under the present system.
And for its absence, if they see fit to
dispose of it, they will no more
apologize than a man apologizes today.
43. The Lady of Joy
EVEN PROSTITUTION, in the long
run, may become more or less
respectable profession, as it was in the
great days of the Greeks. That quality
will surely attach to it if ever it grows
quite unnecessary; whatever is
unnecessary is always respectable, for
example, religion, fashionable clothing,
and a knowledge of Latin grammar. The
prostitute is disesteemed today, not
because her trade involves anything
intrinsically degrading or even
disagreeable, but because she is
currently assumed to have been driven
into it by dire necessity, against her
dignity and inclination. That this
assumption is usually unsound is no
objection to it; nearly all the thinking of
the world, particularly in the field of
morals, is based upon unsound
assumption, e.g., that God observes the
fall of a sparrow and is shocked by the
fall of a Sunday-school superintendent.
The truth is that prostitution is one of the
most attractive of the occupations
practically open to the sort of women
who engage in it, and that the prostitute
commonly likes her work, and would not
exchange places with a shop-girl or a
waitress for anything in the world. The
notion to the contrary is propagated by
unsuccessful prostitutes who fall into the
hands of professional reformers, and
who assent to the imbecile theories of
the latter in order to cultivate their good
will, just as convicts in prison,
questioned by teetotalers, always ascribe
their rascality to alcohol. No prostitute
of anything resembling normal
intelligence is under the slightest duress;
she is perfectly free to abandon her trade
and go into a shop or factory or into
domestic service whenever the impulse
strikes her; all the prevailing gabble
about white slave jails and kidnappers
comes from pious rogues who make a
living by feeding such nonsense to the
credulous. So long as the average
prostitute is able to make a good living,
she is quite content with her lot, and
disposed to contrast it egotistically with
the slavery of her virtuous sisters. If she
complains of it, then you may be sure
that her success is below her
expectations. A starving lawyer always
sees injustice in the courts. A bad
physician is a bitter critic of Ehrlich and
Pasteur. And when a suburban
clergyman is forced out of his cure by a
vestry-room revolution he almost
invariably concludes that the sinfulness
of man is incurable, and sometimes he
even begins to doubt some of the
typographical errors in Holy Writ.
The high value set upon virginity by
men, whose esteem of it is based upon a
mixture of vanity and voluptuousness,
causes many women to guard it in their
own persons with a jealousy far beyond
their private inclinations and interests. It
is their theory that the loss of it would
materially impair their chances of
marriage. This theory is not supported
by the facts. The truth is that the woman
who sacrifices her chastity, everything
else being equal, stands a much better
104
chance of making a creditable marriage
than the woman who remains chaste.
This is especially true of women of the
lower economic classes. At once they
come into contact, hitherto socially
difficult and sometimes almost
impossible, with men of higher classes,
and begin to take on, with the curious
facility of their sex, the refinements and
tastes and points of view of those
classes. The mistress thus gathers charm,
and what has begun as a sordid sale of
amiability not uncommonly ends with
formal marriage. The number of such
marriages is enormously greater than
appears superficially, for both parties
obviously make every effort to conceal
the facts. Within the circle of my
necessarily limited personal
acquaintance I know of scores of men,
some of them of wealth and position,
who have made such marriages, and who
do not seem to regret it. It is an old
observation, indeed, that a woman who
has previously disposed of her virtue
makes a good wife. The common theory
is that this is because she is grateful to
her husband for rescuing her from social
outlawry; the truth is that she makes a
good wife because she is a shrewd
woman, and has specialized
professionally in masculine weakness,
and is thus extra-competent at the
traditional business of her sex. Such a
woman often shows a truly magnificent
sagacity. It is very difficult to deceive
her logically, and it is impossible to
disarm her emotionally. Her revolt
against the pruderies and sentimentalities
of the world was evidence, to begin
with, of her intellectual enterprise and
courage, and her success as a rebel is
proof of her extraordinary pertinacity,
resourcefulness and acumen.
Even the most lowly prostitute is better
off, in all worldly ways, than the
virtuous woman of her own station in
life. She has less work to do, it is less
monotonous and dispiriting, she meets a
far greater variety of men, and they are
of classes distinctly beyond her own.
Nor is her occupation hazardous and her
ultimate fate tragic. A dozen or more
years ago I observed a somewhat
amusing proof of this last. At that time
certain sentimental busybodies of the
American city in which I lived
undertook an elaborate inquiry into
prostitution therein, and some of them
came to me in advance, as a practical
journalist, for advice as to how to
proceed. I found that all of them shared
the common superstition that the
professional life of the average prostitute
is only five years long, and that she
invariably ends in the gutter. They were
enormously amazed when they
unearthed the truth. This truth was to the
effect that the average prostitute of that
town ended her career, not in the morgue
but at the altar of God, and that those
who remained unmarried often
continued in practice for ten, fifteen and
even twenty years, and then retired on
competences. It was established, indeed,
that fully eighty per cent. married, and
that they almost always got husbands
who would have been far beyond their
reach had they remained virtuous. For
one who married a cabman or petty
pugilist there were a dozen who married
respectable mechanics, policemen, small
shopkeepers and minor officials, and at
least two or three who married well-todo tradesmen and professional men.
Among the thousands whose careers
were studied there was actually one who
ended as the wife of the town's richest
banker--that is, one who bagged the best
catch in the whole community. This
woman had begun as a domestic servant,
and abandoned that harsh and dreary life
105
to enter a brothel. Her experiences there
polished and civilized her, and in her old
age she was a grande dame of great
dignity. Much of the sympathy wasted
upon women of the ancient profession is
grounded upon an error as to their own
attitude toward it. An educated woman,
hearing that a frail sister in a public stew
is expected to be amiable to all sorts of
bounders, thinks of how she would
shrink from such contacts, and so
concludes that the actual prostitute
suffers acutely. What she overlooks is
that these men, however gross and
repulsive they may appear to her, are
measurably superior to men of the
prostitute's own class--say her father and
brothers--and that communion with
them, far from being disgusting, is often
rather romantic. I well remember
observing, during my collaboration with
the vice-crusaders aforesaid, the delight
of a lady of joy who had attracted the
notice of a police lieutenant; she was
intensely pleased by the idea of having a
client of such haughty manners, such
brilliant dress, and what seemed to her to
be so dignified a profession. It is always
forgotten that this weakness is not
confined to prostitutes, but runs through
the whole female sex. The woman who
could not imagine an illicit affair with a
wealthy soap manufacturer or even with
a lawyer finds it quite easy to imagine
herself succumbing to an ambassador or
a duke. There are very few exceptions to
this rule. In the most reserved of modern
societies the women who represent their
highest flower are notoriously
complaisant to royalty. And royal
women, to complete the circuit, not
infrequently yield to actors and
musicians, i.e., to men radiating a
glamour not encountered even in
princes.
44. The Future of Marriage
THE TRANSVALUATION of values
that is now in progress will go oon
slowly and for a very long while. That it
will ever be quite complete is, of course,
impossible. There are inherent
differences that will continue to show
themselves until the end of time. As
woman gradually becomes convinced,
not only of the possibility of economic
independence, but also of its value, she
will probably lose her present
overmastering desire for marriage, and
address herself to meeting men in free
economic competition. That is to say,
she will address herself to acquiring that
practical competence, that high talent for
puerile and chiefly mechanical
expertness, which now sets man ahead
of her in the labour market of the world.
To do this she will have to sacrifice
some of her present intelligence; it is
impossible to imagine a genuinely
intelligent human being becoming a
competent trial lawyer, or buttonhole
worker, or newspaper sub-editor, or
piano tuner, or house painter. Women, to
get upon all fours with men in such
stupid occupations, will have to commit
spiritual suicide, which is probably much
further than they will ever actually go.
Thus a shade of their present superiority
to men will always remain, and with it a
shade of their relative inefficiency, and
so marriage will remain attractive to
them, or at all events to most of them,
and its overthrow will be prevented. To
abolish it entirely, as certain fevered
reformers propose, would be as difficult
as to abolish the precession of the
equinoxes.
At the present time women vacillate
somewhat absurdly between two
schemes of life, the old and the new. On
the one hand, their economic
106
independence is still full of conditions,
and on the other hand they are in revolt
against the immemorial conventions.
The result is a general unrest, with many
symptoms of extravagant and
unintelligent revolt. One of those
symptoms is the appearance of
intellectual striving in women--not a
striving, alas, toward the genuine pearls
and rubies of the mind, but one merely
toward the acquirement of the rubber
stamps that men employ in their socalled thinking. Thus we have women
who launch themselves into party
politics, and fill their heads with a vast
mass of useless knowledge about
political tricks, customs, theories and
personalities. Thus, too, we have the
woman social reformer, trailing along
ridiculously behind a tatterdemalion
posse of male utopians, each with
something to sell. And thus we have the
woman who goes in for advanced
wisdom of the sort on draught in
women's clubs--in brief, the sort of
wisdom which consists entirely of a
body of beliefs and propositions that are
ignorant, unimportant and untrue. Such
banal striving is most prodigally on
display in the United States, where
superficiality amounts to a national
disease. Its popularity is due to the
relatively greater leisure of the American
people, who work less than any other
people in the world, and, above all, to
the relatively greater leisure of American
women. Thousands of them have been
emancipated from any compulsion to
productive labour without having
acquired any compensatory intellectual
or artistic interest or social duty. The
result is that they swarm in the women
clubs, and waste their time listening to
bad poetry, worse music, and still worse
lectures on Maeterlinck, Balkan politics
and the subconscious. It is among such
women that one observes the periodic
rages for Bergsonism, the Montessori
method, the twilight sleep and other such
follies, so pathetically characteristic of
American culture.
One of the evil effects of this tendency I
have hitherto descanted upon, to wit, the
growing disposition of American women
to regard all routine labour, particularly
in the home, as infra dignitatem and
hence intolerable. Out of that notion
arise many lamentable phenomena. On
the one hand, we have the spectacle of a
great number of healthy and well-fed
women engaged in public activities that,
nine times out of ten, are meaningless,
mischievous and a nuisance, and on the
other hand we behold such a decay in the
domestic arts that, at the first onslaught
of the late war, the national government
had to import a foreign expert to teach
the housewives of the country the veriest
elements of thrift. No such instruction
was needed by the housewives of the
Continent. They were simply told how
much food they could have, and their
natural competence did the rest. There is
never any avoidable waste there, either
in peace or in war. A French housewife
has little use for a garbage can, save as a
depository for uplifting literature. She
does her best with the means at her
disposal, not only in war time but at all
times.
As I have said over and over again in
this inquiry, a woman's disinclination to
acquire the intricate expertness that lies
at the bottom of good housekeeping is
due primarily to her active intelligence;
it is difficult for her to concentrate her
mind upon such stupid and meticulous
enterprises. But whether difficult or
easy, it is obviously important for the
average woman to make some effort in
that direction, for if she fails to do so
there is chaos. That chaos is duly visible
107
in the United States. Here women reveal
one of their subterranean qualities: their
deficiency in conscientiousness. They
are quite without that dog-like fidelity to
duty which is one of the shining marks
of men. They never summon up a high
pride in doing what is inherently
disagreeable; they always go to the
galleys under protest, and with vows of
sabotage; their fundamental philosophy
is almost that of the syndicalists. The
sentimentality of men connives at this,
and is thus largely responsible for it.
Before the average puella, apprenticed in
the kitchen, can pick up a fourth of the
culinary subtleties that are commonplace
even to the chefs on dining cars, she has
caught a man and need concern herself
about them no more, for he has to eat, in
the last analysis, whatever she sets
before him, and his lack of intelligence
makes it easy for her to shut off his
academic criticisms by bald appeals to
his emotions. By an easy process he
finally attaches a positive value to her
indolence. It is a proof, he concludes, of
her fineness of soul. In the presence of
her lofty incompetence he is abashed.
But as women, gaining economic
autonomy, meet men in progressively
bitterer competition, the rising masculine
distrust and fear of them will be
reflected even in the enchanted domain
of marriage, and the husband, having
yielded up most of his old rights, will
begin to reveal a new jealousy of those
that remain, and particularly of the right
to a fair quid pro quo for his own docile
industry. In brief, as women shake off
their ancient disabilities they will also
shake off some of their ancient
immunities, and their doings will come
to be regarded with a soberer and more
exigent scrutiny than now prevails. The
extension of the suffrage, I believe, will
encourage this awakening; in wresting it
from the reluctant male the women of
the western world have planted dragons'
teeth, the which will presently leap up
and gnaw them. Now that women have
the political power to obtain their just
rights, they will begin to lose their old
power to obtain special privileges by
sentimental appeals. Men, facing them
squarely, will consider them anew, not
as romantic political and social invalids,
to be coddled and caressed, but as free
competitors in a harsh world. When that
reconsideration gets under way there
will be a general overhauling of the
relations between the sexes, and some of
the fair ones, I suspect, will begin to
wonder why they didn't let well enough
alone.
45. Effects of the War
THE PRESENT SERIES of wars, it
seems likely, will continue for twenty or
thirty years, and perhaps longer. That the
first clash was inconclusive was shown
brilliantly by the preposterous nature of
the peace finally reached--a peace so
artificial and dishonest that the signing
of it was almost equivalent to a new
declaration of war. At least three new
contests in the grand manner are plainly
in sight--one between Germany and
France to rectify the unnatural tyranny of
a weak and incompetent nation over a
strong and enterprising nation, one
between Japan and the United States for
the mastery of the Pacific, and one
between England and the United States
for the control of the sea. To these must
be added various minor struggles, and
perhaps one or two of almost major
character: the effort of Russia to regain
her old unity and power, the effort of the
Turks to put down the slave rebellion (of
Greeks, Armenians, Arabs, etc.) which
now menaces them, the effort of the
108
Latin Americans to throw off the galling
Yankee yoke, and the joint effort of
Russia and Germany (perhaps with
England and Italy aiding) to get rid of
such international nuisances as the
insane Polish republic, the petty states of
the Baltic, and perhaps also most of the
Balkan states. I pass over the probability
of a new mutiny in India, of the rising of
China against the Japanese, and of a
general struggle for a new alignment of
boundaries in South America. All of
these wars, great and small, are
probable; most of them are humanly
certain. They will be fought ferociously,
and with the aid of destructive engines
of the utmost efficiency. They will bring
about an unparalleled butchery of men,
and a large proportion of these men will
be under forty years of age.
As a result there will be a shortage of
husbands in Christendom, and as a
second result the survivors will be
appreciably harder to snare than the men
of today. Every man of agreeable
exterior and easy means will be pursued,
not merely by a few dozen or score of
women, as now, but by whole battalions
and brigades of them, and he will be
driven in sheer self-defence into very
sharp bargaining. Perhaps in the end the
state will have to interfere in the
business, to prevent the potential
husband going to waste in the turmoil of
opportunity.
Just what form this interference is likely
to take has not yet appeared clearly. In
France there is already a wholesale
legitimization of children born out of
wedlock and in Eastern Europe there has
been a clamour for the legalization of
polygamy, but these devices do not meet
the main problem, which is the
encouragement of monogamy to the
utmost. A plan that suggests itself is the
amelioration of the position of the
monogamous husband, now rendered
increasingly uncomfortable by the laws
of most Christian states. I do not think
that the more intelligent sort of women,
faced by a perilous shortage of men,
would object seriously to that
amelioration. They must see plainly that
the present system, if it is carried much
further, will begin to work powerfully
against their best interests, if only by
greatly reinforcing the disinclination to
marriage that already exists among the
better sort of men. The woman of true
discretion, I am convinced, would much
rather marry a superior man, even on
unfavourable terms, than make John
Smith her husband, serf and prisoner at
one stroke.
The law must eventually recognize this
fact and make provision for it. The
average husband, perhaps, deserves little
succour. The woman who pursues and
marries him, though she may be moved
by selfish aims, should be properly
rewarded by the state for her service to
it--a service surely not to be lightly
estimated in a military age. And that
reward may conveniently take the form,
as in the United States, of statutes giving
her title to a large share of his real
property and requiring him to surrender
most of his income to her, and releasing
her from all obedience to him and from
all obligation to keep his house in order.
But the woman who aspires to higher
game should be quite willing, it seems to
me, to resign some of these advantages
in compensation for the greater honour
and satisfaction of being wife to a man
of merit, and mother to his children. All
that is needed is laws allowing her, if she
will, to resign her right of dower, her
right to maintenance and her immunity
from discipline, and to make any other
terms that she may be led to regard as
equitable. At present women are unable
109
to make most of these concessions even
if they would: the laws of the majority of
western nations are inflexible. If, for
example, an Englishwoman should
agree, by an ante-nuptial contract, to
submit herself to the discipline, not of
the current statutes, but of the elder
common law, which allowed a husband
to correct his wife corporally with a stick
no thicker than his thumb, it would be
competent for any sentimental neighbour
to set the agreement at naught by haling
her husband before a magistrate for
carrying it out, and it is a safe wager that
the magistrate would jail him.
This plan, however novel it may seem, is
actually already in operation. Many a
married woman, in order to keep her
husband from revolt, makes more or less
disguised surrenders of certain of the
rights and immunities that she has under
existing laws. There are, for example,
even in America, women who practise
the domestic arts with competence and
diligence, despite the plain fact that no
legal penalty would be visited upon them
if they failed to do so. There are women
who follow external trades and
professions, contributing a share to the
family exchequer. There are women who
obey their husbands, even against their
best judgments. There are, most
numerous of all, women who wink
discreetly at husbandly departures, overt
or in mere intent, from the oath of
chemical purity taken at the altar. It is a
commonplace, indeed, that many happy
marriages admit a party of the third part.
There would be more of them if there
were more women with enough serenity
of mind to see the practical advantage of
the arrangement. The trouble with such
triangulations is not primarily that they
involve perjury or that they offer any
fundamental offence to the wife; if she
avoids banal theatricals, in fact, they
commonly have the effect of augmenting
the husband's devotion to her and respect
for her, if only as the fruit of
comparison. The trouble with them is
that very few men among us have sense
enough to manage them intelligently.
The masculine mind is readily taken in
by specious values; the average married
man of Protestant Christendom, if he
succumbs at all, succumbs to some
meretricious and flamboyant creature,
bent only upon fleecing him. Here is
where the harsh realism of the
Frenchman shows its superiority to the
sentimentality of the men of the
Teutonic races. A Frenchman would no
more think of taking a mistress without
consulting his wife than he would think
of standing for office without consulting
his wife. The result is that he is seldom
victimized. For one Frenchman ruined
by women there are at least a hundred
Englishmen and Americans, despite the
fact that a hundred times as many
Frenchmen engage in that sort of
recreation. The case of Zola is typical.
As is well known, his amours were
carefully supervised by Mme. Zola from
the first days of their marriage, and in
consequence his life was wholly free
from scandals and his mind was never
distracted from his work.
46. The Eternal Romance
BUT WHATEVER the future of
monogamous marriage, there will never
be any decay of that agreeable
adventurousness which now lies at the
bottom of all transactions between the
sexes. Women may emancipate
themselves, they may borrow the whole
bag of masculine tricks, and they may
cure themselves of their present desire
for the vegetable security of marriage,
but they will never cease to be women,
110
and so long as they are women they will
remain provocative to men. Their chief
charm today lies precisely in the fact that
they are dangerous, that they threaten
masculine liberty and autonomy, that
their sharp minds present a menace
vastly greater than that of acts of God
and the public enemy--and they will be
dangerous for ever. Men fear them, and
are fascinated by them. They know how
to show their teeth charmingly; the more
enlightened of them have perfected a
superb technique of fascination. It was
Nietzsche who called them the
recreation of the warrior--not of the
poltroon, remember, but of the warrior.
A profound saying. They have an
infinite capacity for rewarding masculine
industry and enterprise with small and
irresistible flatteries; their acute
understanding combines with their
capacity for evoking ideas of beauty to
make them incomparable companions
when the serious business of the day is
done, and the time has come to expand
comfortably in the interstellar ether.
Every man, I daresay, has his own
notion of what constitutes perfect peace
and contentment, but all of those
notions, despite the fundamental conflict
of the sexes, revolve around women. As
for me--and I hope I may be pardoned, at
this late stage in my inquiry, for
intruding my own personality--I reject
the two commonest of them: passion, at
least in its more adventurous and
melodramatic aspects, is too exciting and
alarming for so indolent a man, and I am
too egoistic to have much desire to be
mothered. What, then, remains for me?
Let me try to describe it to you.
It is the close of a busy and vexatious
day--say half past five or six o'clock of a
winter afternoon. I have had a cocktail or
two, and am stretched out on a divan in
front of a fire, smoking. At the edge of
the divan, close enough for me to reach
her with my hand, sits a woman not too
young, but still good-looking and welldressed--above all, a woman with a soft,
low-pitched, agreeable voice. As I
snooze she talks--of anything,
everything, all the things that women
talk of: books, music, the play, men,
other women. No politics. No business.
No religion. No metaphysics. Nothing
challenging and vexatious--but
remember, she is intelligent; what she
says is clearly expressed, and often
picturesquely. I observe the fine sheen of
her hair, the pretty cut of her frock, the
glint of her white teeth, the arch of her
eye-brow, the graceful curve of her arm.
I listen to the exquisite murmur of her
voice. Gradually I fall asleep--but only
for an instant. At once, observing it, she
raises her voice ever so little, and I am
awake. Then to sleep again--slowly and
charmingly down that slippery hill of
dreams. And then awake again, and then
asleep again, and so on.
I ask you seriously: could anything be
more unutterably beautiful? The
sensation of falling asleep is to me the
most exquisite in the world. I delight in
it so much that I even look forward to
death itself with a sneaking wonder and
desire. Well, here is sleep poetized and
made doubly sweet. Here is sleep set to
the finest music in the world. I match
this situation against any that you can
think of. It is not only enchanting; it is
also, in a very true sense, ennobling. In
the end, when the girl grows prettily
miffed and throws me out, I return to my
sorrows somehow purged and glorified. I
am a better man in my own sight. I have
grazed upon the fields of asphodel. I
have been genuinely, completely and
unregrettably happy.
47. Apologia in Conclusion
111
AT THE END I crave the indulgence of
the reader for the imperfections
necessarily visible in all that I have here
set down--imperfections not only due to
incomplete information and fallible
logic, but also, and perhaps more
importantly, to certain fundamental
weaknesses of the sex to which I have
the honour to belong. A man is
inseparable from his congenital vanities
and stupidities, as a dog is inseparable
from its fleas. They reveal themselves in
everything he says and does, but they
reveal themselves most of all when he
discusses the majestic mystery of
woman. Just as he smirks and rolls his
eyes in her actual presence, so he puts on
a pathetic and unescapable clownishness
when he essays to dissect her in the
privacy of the laboratory. There is no
book on woman by a man that is not a
stupendous compendium of posturings
and imbecilities. There are but two
books that show even a superficial desire
to be honest--"The Unexpurgated Case
Against Woman Suffrage," by Sir
Alinroth Wright, and this one. Wright
made a gallant attempt to tell the truth,
but before he got half way through his
task his ineradicable donkeyishness as a
male overcame his scientific frenzy as a
psychologist, and so he hastily washed
his hands of the business, and affronted
the judicious with a half-baked and
preposterous book. Perhaps I have failed
too, and even more ingloriously. If so, I
am full of sincere and indescribable
regret.
http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/hlm/defe
nse.htm
_______________________________
Emma Goldman: The Traffic in
Women
From the 1917 edition of Emma
Goldman's Anarchism and Other
Essays
- on white slave traffic and
prostitution in America
Our reformers have suddenly made a
great discovery--the white slave traffic.
The papers are full of these "unheard of
conditions," and lawmakers are already
planning a new set of laws to check the
horror.
It is significant that whenever the public
mind is to be diverted from a great social
wrong, a crusade is inaugurated against
indecency, gambling, saloons, etc. And
what is the result of such crusades?
Gambling is increasing, saloons are
doing a lively business through back
entrances, prostitution is at its height,
and the system of pimps and cadets is
but aggravated.
How is it that an institution, known
almost to every child, should have been
discovered so suddenly? How is it that
this evil, known to all sociologists,
should now be made such an important
issue?
To assume that the recent investigation
of the white slave traffic (and, by the
way, a very superficial investigation) has
discovered anything new, is, to say the
least, very foolish. Prostitution has
been, and is, a widespread evil, yet
mankind goes on its business, perfectly
indifferent to the sufferings and distress
of the victims of prostitution. As
indifferent, indeed, as mankind has
remained to our industrial system, or to
economic prostitution.
Only when human sorrows are turned
into a toy with glaring colors will baby
people become interested--for a while at
112
least. The people are a very fickle baby
that must have new toys every day. The
"righteous" cry against the white slave
traffic is such a toy. It serves to amuse
the people for a little while, and it will
help to create a few more fat political
jobs--parasites who stalk about the world
as inspectors, investigators, detectives,
and so forth.
What is really the cause of the trade in
women? Not merely white women, but
yellow and black women as well.
Exploitation, of course; the merciless
Moloch of capitalism that fattens on
underpaid labor, thus driving thousands
of women and girls into prostitution.
With Mrs. Warren these girls feel, "Why
waste your life working for a few
shillings a week in a scullery, eighteen
hours a day?"
Naturally our reformers say nothing
about this cause. They know it well
enough, but it doesn't pay to say
anything about it. It is much more
profitable to play the Pharisee, to
pretend an outraged morality, than to go
to the bottom of things.
However, there is one commendable
exception among the young writers:
Reginald Wright Kauffman, whose
work, THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE, is
the first earnest attempt to treat the
social evil, not from a sentimental
Philistine viewpoint. A journalist of
wide experience, Mr. Kauffman proves
that our industrial system leaves most
women no alternative except
prostitution. The women portrayed in
THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE belong to
the working class. Had the author
portrayed the life of women in other
spheres, he would have been confronted
with the same state of affairs.
Nowhere is woman treated according to
the merit of her work, but rather as a
sex. It is therefore almost inevitable that
she should pay for her right to exist, to
keep a position in whatever line, with
sex favors. Thus it is merely a question
of degree whether she sells herself to
one man, in or out of marriage, or to
many men. Whether our reformers
admit it or not, the economic and social
inferiority of woman is responsible for
prostitution.
Just at present our good people are
shocked by the disclosures that in New
York City alone, one out of every ten
women works in a factory, that the
average wage received by women is six
dollars per week for forty-eight to sixty
hours of work, and that the majority of
female wage workers face many months
of idleness which leaves the average
wage about $280 a year. In view of
these economic horrors, is it to be
wondered at that prostitution and the
white slave trade have become such
dominant factors?
Lest the preceding figures be considered
an exaggeration, it is well to examine
what some authorities on prostitution
have to say:
"A prolific cause of female depravity
can be found in the several tables,
showing the description of the
employment pursued, and the wages
received, by the women previous to their
fall, and it will be a question for the
political economist to decide how far
mere business consideration should be
an apology on the part of employers for
a reduction in their rates of
remuneration, and whether the savings
of a small percentage on wages is not
more than counter-balanced by the
enormous amount of taxation enforced
on the public at large to defray the
expenses incurred on account of a
system of vice, WHICH IS THE
DIRECT RESULT, IN MANY CASES,
113
OF INSUFFICIENT COMPENSATION
OF HONEST LABOR."
Our present-day reformers would do
well to look into Dr. Sanger's book.
There they will find that out of 2,000
cases under his observation, but few
came from the middle classes, from
well-ordered conditions, or pleasant
homes. By far the largest majority were
working girls and working women; some
driven into prostitution through sheer
want, others because of a cruel, wretched
life at home, others again because of
thwarted and crippled physical natures
(of which I shall speak later on). Also it
will do the maintainers of purity and
morality good to learn that out of two
thousand cases, 490 were married
women, women who lived with their
husbands. Evidently there was not much
of a guaranty for their "safety and
purity" in the sanctity of marriage.*
Dr. Alfred Blaschko, in
PROSTITUTION IN THE
NINETEENTH CENTURY, is even
more emphatic in characterizing
economic conditions as one of the most
vital factors of prostitution.
"Although prostitution has existed in all
ages, it was left to the nineteenth century
to develop it into a gigantic social
institution. The development of industry
with vast masses of people in the
competitive market, the growth and
congestion of large cities, the insecurity
and uncertainty of employment, has
given prostitution an impetus never
dreamed of at any period in human
history."
And again Havelock Ellis, while not so
absolute in dealing with the economic
cause, is nevertheless compelled to
admit that it is indirectly and directly the
main cause. Thus he finds that a large
percentage of prostitutes is recruited
from the servant class, although the
latter have less care and greater security.
On the other hand, Mr. Ellis does not
deny that the daily routine, the drudgery,
the monotony of the servant girl's lot,
and especially the fact that she may
never partake of the companionship and
joy of a home, is no mean factor in
forcing her to seek recreation and
forgetfulness in the gaiety and glimmer
of prostitution. In other words, the
servant girl, being treated as a drudge,
never having the right to herself, and
worn out by the caprices of her mistress,
can find an outlet, like the factory or
shopgirl, only in prostitution.
The most amusing side of the question
now before the public is the indignation
of our "good, respectable people,"
especially the various Christian
gentlemen, who are always to be found
in the front ranks of every crusade. Is it
that they are absolutely ignorant of the
history of religion, and especially of the
Christian religion? Or is it that they
hope to blind the present generation to
the part played in the past by the Church
in relation to prostitution? Whatever
their reason, they should be the last to
cry out against the unfortunate victims of
today, since it is known to every
intelligent student that prostitution is of
religious origin, maintained and fostered
for many centuries, not as a shame but as
a virtue, hailed as such by the Gods
themselves.
"It would seem that the origin of
prostitution is to be found primarily in a
religious custom, religion, the great
conserver of social tradition, preserving
in a transformed shape a primitive
freedom that was passing out of the
general social life. The typical example
is that recorded by Herodotus, in the
fifth century before Christ, at the Temple
of Mylitta, the Babylonian Venus, where
every woman, once in her life, had to
114
come and give herself to the first
stranger, who threw a coin in her lap, to
worship the goddess. Very similar
customs existed in other parts of
Western Asia, in North Africa, in
Cyprus, and other islands of the Eastern
Mediterranean, and also in Greece,
where the temple of Aphrodite on the
fort at Corinth possessed over a thousand
hierodules, dedicated to the service of
the goddess.
"The theory that religious prostitution
developed, as a general rule, out of the
belief that the generative activity of
human beings possessed a mysterious
and sacred influence in promoting the
fertility of Nature, is maintained by all
authoritative writers on the subject.
Gradually, however, and when
prostitution became an organized
institution under priestly influence,
religious prostitution developed
utilitarian sides, thus helping to increase
public revenue.
"The rise of Christianity to political
power produced little change in policy.
The leading fathers of the Church
tolerated prostitution. Brothels under
municipal protection are found in the
thirteenth century. They constituted a
sort of public service, the directors of
them being considered almost as public
servants."*
To this must be added the following
from Dr. Sanger's work:
"Pope Clement II. issued a bull that
prostitutes would be tolerated if they pay
a certain amount of their earnings to the
Church.
"Pope Sixtus IV. was more practical;
from one single brothel, which he
himself had built, he received an income
of 20,000 ducats."
In modern times the Church is a little
more careful in that direction. At least
she does not openly demand tribute from
prostitutes. She finds it much more
profitable to go in for real estate, like
Trinity Church, for instance, to rent out
death traps at an exorbitant price to those
who live off and by prostitution.
Much as I should like to, my space will
not admit speaking of prostitution in
Egypt, Greece, Rome, and during the
Middle Ages. The conditions in the
latter period are particularly interesting,
inasmuch as prostitution was organized
into guilds, presided over by a brothel
Queen. These guilds employed strikes
as a medium of improving their
condition and keeping a standard price.
Certainly that is more practical a method
than the one used by the modern wage
slave in society.
It would be one-sided and extremely
superficial to maintain that the economic
factor is the only cause of prostitution.
There are others no less important and
vital. That, too, our reformers know, but
dare discuss even less than the institution
that saps the very life out of both men
and women. I refer to the sex question,
the very mention of which causes most
people moral spasms.
It is a conceded fact that woman is being
reared as a sex commodity, and yet she
is kept in absolute ignorance of the
meaning and importance of sex.
Everything dealing with the subject is
suppressed, and persons who attempt to
bring light into this terrible darkness are
persecuted and thrown into prison. Yet
it is nevertheless true that so long as a
girl is not to know how to take care of
herself, not to know the function of the
most important part of her life, we need
not be surprised if she becomes an easy
prey to prostitution, or to any other form
of a relationship which degrades her to
the position of an object for mere sex
gratification.
115
It is due to this ignorance that the entire
life and nature of the girl is thwarted and
crippled. We have long ago taken it as a
self-evident fact that the boy may follow
the call of the wild; that is to say, that
the boy may, as soon has his sex nature
asserts itself, satisfy that nature; but our
moralists are scandalized at the very
thought that the nature of a girl should
assert itself. To the moralist prostitution
does not consist so much in the fact that
the woman sells her body, but rather that
she sells it out of wedlock. That this is
no mere statement is proved by the fact
that marriage for monetary
considerations is perfectly legitimate,
sanctified by law and public opinion,
while any other union is condemned and
repudiated. Yet a prostitute, if properly
defined, means nothing else than "any
person for whom sexual relationships are
subordinated to gain."*
"Those women are prostitutes who sell
their bodies for the exercise of the sexual
act and make of this a profession."*
In fact, Banger goes further; he
maintains that the act of prostitution is
"intrinsically equal to that of a man or
woman who contracts a marriage for
economic reasons."
Of course, marriage is the goal of every
girl, but as thousands of girls cannot
marry, our stupid social customs
condemn them either to a life of celibacy
or prostitution. Human nature asserts
itself regardless of all laws, nor is there
any plausible reason why nature should
adapt itself to a perverted conception of
morality.
Society considers the sex experiences of
a man as attributes of his general
development, while similar experiences
in the life of a woman are looked upon
as a terrible calamity, a loss of honor and
of all that is good and noble in a human
being. This double standard of morality
has played no little part in the creation
and perpetuation of prostitution. It
involves the keeping of the young in
absolute ignorance on sex matters, which
alleged "innocence," together with an
overwrought and stifled sex nature, helps
to bring about a state of affairs that our
Puritans are so anxious to avoid or
prevent.
Not that the gratification of sex must
needs lead to prostitution; it is the cruel,
heartless, criminal persecution of those
who dare divert from the beaten paths,
which is responsible for it.
Girls, mere children, work in crowded,
over-heated rooms ten to twelve hours
daily at a machine, which tends to keep
them in a constant over-excited sex
state. Many of these girls have no home
or comforts of any kind; therefore the
street or some place of cheap amusement
is the only means of forgetting their
daily routine. This naturally brings them
into close proximity with the other sex.
It is hard to say which of the two factors
brings the girl's over-sexed condition to
a climax, but it is certainly the most
natural thing that a climax should result.
That is the first step toward prostitution.
Nor is the girl to be held responsible for
it. On the contrary, it is altogether the
fault of society, the fault of our lack of
understanding, of our lack of
appreciation of life in the making;
especially is it the criminal fault of our
moralists, who condemn a girl for all
eternity, because she has gone from the
"path of virtue"; that is, because her first
sex experience has taken place without
the sanction of the Church.
The girl feels herself a complete outcast,
with the doors of home and society
closed in her face. Her entire training
and tradition is such that the girl herself
feels depraved and fallen, and therefore
has no ground to stand upon, or any hold
116
that will lift her up, instead of dragging
her down. Thus society creates the
victims that it afterwards vainly attempts
to get rid of. The meanest, most
depraved and decrepit man still
considers himself too good to take as his
wife the woman whose grace he was
quite willing to buy, even though he
might thereby save her from a life of
horror. Nor can she turn to her own
sister for help. In her stupidity the latter
deems herself too pure and chaste, not
realizing that her own position is in
many respects even more deplorable
than her sister's of the street.
"The wife who married for money,
compared with the prostitute," says
Havelock Ellis, "is the true scab. She is
paid less, gives much more in return in
labor and care, and is absolutely bound
to her master. The prostitute never signs
away the right over her own person, she
retains her freedom and personal rights,
nor is she always compelled to submit to
a man's embrace."
Nor does the better-than-thou woman
realize the apologist claim of Lecky that
"though she may be the supreme type of
vice, she is also the most efficient
guardian of virtue. But for her, happy
homes would be polluted, unnatural and
harmful practice would abound."
Moralists are ever ready to sacrifice onehalf of the human race for the sake of
some miserable institution which they
can not outgrow. As a matter of fact,
prostitution is no more a safeguard for
the purity of the home than rigid laws
are a safeguard against prostitution.
Fully fifty per cent. of married men are
patrons of brothels. It is through this
virtuous element that the married
women--nay, even the children--are
infected with venereal diseases. Yet
society has not a word of condemnation
for the man, while no law is too
monstrous to be set in motion against the
helpless victim. She is not only preyed
upon by those who use her. but she is
also absolutely at the mercy of every
policeman and miserable detective on
the beat, the officials at the station
house, the authorities in every prison.
In a recent book by a woman who was
for twelve years the mistress of a
"house," are to be found the following
figures: "The authorities compelled me
to pay every month fines between
$14.70 to $29.70, the girls would pay
from $5.70 to $9.70 to the police."
Considering that the writer did her
business in a small city, that the amounts
she gives do not include extra bribes and
fines, one can readily see the tremendous
revenue the police department derives
from the blood money of its victims,
whom it will not even protect. Woe to
those who refuse to pay their toll; they
would be rounded up like cattle, "if only
to make a favorable impression upon the
good citizens of the city, or if the powers
needed extra money on the side. For the
warped mind who believes that a fallen
woman is incapable of human emotion it
would be impossible to realize the grief,
the disgrace, the tears, the wounded
pride that was ours every time we were
pulled in."
Strange, isn't it, that a woman who has a
kept a "house" should be able to feel that
way? But stranger still that a good
Christian world should bleed and fleece
such women, and give them nothing in
return except obloquy and persecution.
Oh, for the charity of a Christian world!
Much stress is laid on white slaves being
imported into America. How would
America ever retain her virtue if Europe
did not help her out? I will not deny that
this may be the case in some instances,
any more than I will deny that there are
emissaries of Germany and other
117
countries luring economic slaves into
America; but I absolutely deny that
prostitution is recruited to any
appreciable extent from Europe. It may
be true that the majority of prostitutes in
New York City are foreigners, but that is
because the majority of the population is
foreign. The moment we go to any other
American city, to Chicago or the Middle
West, we shall find that the number of
foreign prostitutes is by far a minority.
Equally exaggerated is the belief that the
majority of street girls in this city were
engaged in this business before they
came to America. Most of the girls
speak excellent English, are
Americanized in habits and appearance,-a thing absolutely impossible unless
they had lived in this country many
years. That is, they were driven into
prostitution by American conditions, by
the thoroughly American custom for
excessive display of finery and clothes,
which, of course, necessitates money,-money that cannot be earned in shops or
factories.
In other words, there is no reason to
believe that any set of men would go to
the risk and expense of getting foreign
products, when American conditions are
overflooding the market with thousands
of girls. On the other hand, there is
sufficient evidence to prove that the
export of American girls for the purpose
of prostitution is by no means a small
factor.
Thus Clifford G. Roe, ex-Assistant State
Attorney of Cook County, Ill., makes the
open charge that New England girls are
shipped to Panama for the express use of
men in the employ of Uncle Sam. Mr.
Roe adds that "there seems to be an
underground railroad between Boston
and Washington which many girls
travel." Is it not significant that the
railroad should lead to the very seat of
Federal authority? That Mr. Roe said
more than was desired in certain quarters
is proved by the fact that he lost his
position. It is not practical for men in
office to tell tales from school.
The excuse given for the conditions in
Panama is that there are no brothels in
the Canal Zone. That is the usual
avenue of escape for a hypocritical
world that dares not face the truth. Not
in the Canal Zone, not in the city limits,-therefore prostitution does not exist.
Next to Mr. Roe, there is James Bronson
Reynolds, who has made a thorough
study of the white slave traffic in Asia.
As a staunch American citizen and
friend of the future Napoleon of
America, Theodore Roosevelt, he is
surely the last to discredit the virtue of
his country. Yet we are informed by
him that in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and
Yokohama, the Augean stables of
American vice are located. There
American prostitutes have made
themselves so conspicuous that in the
Orient "American girl" is synonymous
with prostitute. Mr. Reynolds reminds
his countrymen that while Americans in
China are under the protection of our
consular representatives, the Chinese in
America have no protection at all. Every
one who knows the brutal and barbarous
persecution Chinese and Japanese
endure on the Pacific Coast, will agree
with Mr. Reynolds.
In view of the above facts it is rather
absurd to point to Europe as the swamp
whence come all the social diseases of
America. Just as absurd is it to proclaim
the myth that the Jews furnish the largest
contingent of willing prey. I am sure
that no one will accuse me of
nationalistic tendencies. I am glad to say
that I have developed out of them, as out
of many other prejudices. If, therefore, I
resent the statement that Jewish
118
prostitutes are imported, it is not because
of any Judaistic sympathies, but because
of the facts inherent in the lives of these
people. No one but the most superficial
will claim that Jewish girls migrate to
strange lands, unless they have some tie
or relation that brings them there. The
Jewish girl is not adventurous. Until
recent years she had never left home, not
even so far as the next village or town,
except it were to visit some relative. Is it
then credible that Jewish girls would
leave their parents or families, travel
thousands of miles to strange lands,
through the influence and promises of
strange forces? Go to any of the large
incoming steamers and see for yourself
if these girls do not come either with
their parents, brothers, aunts, or other
kinsfolk. There may be exceptions, of
course, but to state that large numbers of
Jewish girls are imported for
prostitution, or any other purpose, is
simply not to know Jewish psychology.
Those who sit in a glass house do wrong
to throw stones about them; besides, the
American glass house is rather thin, it
will break easily, and the interior is
anything but a gainly sight.
To ascribe the increase in prostitution to
alleged importation, to the growth of the
cadet system, or similar causes, is highly
superficial. I have already referred to
the former. As to the cadet system,
abhorrent as it is, we must not ignore the
fact that it is essentially a phase of
modern prostitution,--a phase
accentuated by suppression and graft,
resulting from sporadic crusades against
the social evil.
The procurer is no doubt a poor
specimen of the human family, but in
what manner is he more despicable than
the policeman who takes the last cent
from the street walker, and then locks
her up in the station house? Why is the
cadet more criminal, or a greater menace
to society, than the owners of
department stores and factories, who
grow fat on the sweat of their victims,
only to drive them to the streets? I make
no plea for the cadet, but I fail to see
why he should be mercilessly hounded,
while the real perpetrators of all social
iniquity enjoy immunity and respect.
Then, too, it is well to remember that it
is not the cadet who makes the
prostitute. It is our sham and hypocrisy
that create both the prostitute and the
cadet.
Until 1894 very little was known in
America of the procurer. Then we were
attacked by an epidemic of virtue. Vice
was to be abolished, the country purified
at all cost. The social cancer was
therefore driven out of sight, but deeper
into the body. Keepers of brothels, as
well as their unfortunate victims, were
turned over to the tender mercies of the
police. The inevitable consequence of
exorbitant bribes, and the penitentiary,
followed.
While comparatively protected in the
brothels, where they represented a
certain monetary value, the girls now
found themselves on the street,
absolutely at the mercy of the graftgreedy police. Desperate, needing
protection and longing for affection,
these girls naturally proved an easy prey
for cadets, themselves the result of the
spirit of our commercial age. Thus the
cadet system was the direct outgrowth of
police persecution, graft, and attempted
suppression of prostitution. It were
sheer folly to confound this modern
phase of the social evil with the causes
of the latter.
Mere suppression and barbaric
enactments can serve but to embitter,
and further degrade, the unfortunate
victims of ignorance and stupidity. The
119
latter has reached its highest expression
in the proposed law to make humane
treatment of prostitutes a crime,
punishing any one sheltering a prostitute
with five years' imprisonment and
$10,000 fine. Such an attitude merely
exposes the terrible lack of
understanding of the true causes of
prostitution, as a social factor, as well as
manifesting the Puritanic spirit of the
Scarlet Letter days.
There is not a single modern writer on
the subject who does not refer to the
utter futility of legislative methods in
coping with the issue. Thus Dr.
Blaschko finds that governmental
suppression and moral crusades
accomplish nothing save driving the evil
into secret channels, multiplying its
dangers to society. Havelock Ellis, the
most thorough and humane student of
prostitution, proves by a wealth of data
that the more stringent the methods of
persecution the worse the condition
becomes. Among other data we learn
that in France, "in 1560, Charles IX.
abolished brothels through an edict, but
the numbers of prostitutes were only
increased, while many new brothels
appeared in unsuspected shapes, and
were more dangerous. In spite of all
such legislation, OR BECAUSE OF IT,
there has been no country in which
prostitution has played a more
conspicuous part."*
An educated public opinion, freed from
the legal and moral hounding of the
prostitute, can alone help to ameliorate
present conditions. Wilful shutting of
eyes and ignoring of the evil as a social
factor of modern life, can but aggravate
matters. We must rise above our foolish
notions of "better than thou," and learn
to recognize in the prostitute a product
of social conditions. Such a realization
will sweep away the attitude of
hypocrisy, and insure a greater
understanding and more humane
treatment. As to a thorough eradication
of prostitution, nothing can accomplish
that save a complete transvaluation of all
accepted values--especially the moral
ones--coupled with the abolition of
industrial slavery.
http://womenshistory.about.com/library/
etext/bl_eg_an8_traffic_in_women.htm
_________________________________
Emma Goldman: Woman Suffrage
From the 1917 edition of Emma
Goldman's Anarchism and Other Essays
We boast of the age of advancement, of
science, and progress. Is it not strange,
then, that we still believe in fetich [sic]
worship? True, our fetiches have
different form and substance, yet in their
power over the human mind they are still
as disastrous as were those of old.
Our modern fetich is universal suffrage.
Those who have not yet achieved that
goal fight bloody revolutions to obtain it,
and those who have enjoyed its reign
bring heavy sacrifice to the altar of this
omnipotent deity. Woe to the heretic
who dare question that divinity!
Woman, even more than man, is a fetich
worshipper, and though her idols may
change, she is ever on her knees, ever
holding up her hands, ever blind to the
fact that her god has feet of clay. Thus
woman has been the greatest supporter
of all deities from time immemorial.
Thus, too, she has had to pay the price
that only gods can exact,--her freedom,
her heart's blood, her very life.
Nietzsche's memorable maxim, "When
you go to woman, take the whip along,"
is considered very brutal, yet Nietzsche
expressed in one sentence the attitude of
woman towards her gods.
120
Religion, especially the Christian
religion, has condemned woman to the
life of an inferior, a slave. It has
thwarted her nature and fettered her soul,
yet the Christian religion has no greater
supporter, none more devout, than
woman. Indeed, it is safe to say that
religion would have long ceased to be a
factor in the lives of the people, if it
were not for the support it receives from
woman. The most ardent churchworkers,
the most tireless missionaries the world
over, are women, always sacrificing on
the altar of the gods that have chained
her spirit and enslaved her body.
The insatiable monster, war, robs
woman of all that is dear and precious to
her. It exacts her brothers, lovers, sons,
and in return gives her a life of
loneliness and despair. Yet the greatest
supporter and worshiper of war is
woman. She it is who instills the love of
conquest and power into her children;
she it is who whispers the glories of war
into the ears of her little ones, and who
rocks her baby to sleep with the tunes of
trumpets and the noise of guns. It is
woman, too, who crowns the victor on
his return from the battlefield. Yes, it is
woman who pays the highest price to
that insatiable monster, war.
Then there is the home. What a terrible
fetich it is! How it saps the very lifeenergy of woman,--this modern prison
with golden bars. Its shining aspect
blinds woman to the price she would
have to pay as wife, mother, and
housekeeper. Yet woman clings
tenaciously to the home, to the power
that holds her in bondage.
It may be said that because woman
recognizes the awful toll she is made to
pay to the Church, State, and the home,
she wants suffrage to set herself free.
That may be true of the few; the majority
of suffragists repudiate utterly such
blasphemy. On the contrary, they insist
always that it is woman suffrage which
will make her a better Christian and
homekeeper, a staunch citizen of the
State. Thus suffrage is only a means of
strengthening the omnipotence of the
very Gods that woman has served from
time immemorial.
What wonder, then, that she should be
just as devout, just as zealous, just as
prostrate before the new idol, woman
suffrage. As of old, she endures
persecution, imprisonment, torture, and
all forms of condemnation, with a smile
on her face. As of old, the most
enlightened, even, hope for a miracle
from the twentieth century deity,-suffrage. Life, happiness, joy, freedom,
independence,--all that, and more, is to
spring from suffrage. In her blind
devotion woman does not see what
people of intellect perceived fifty years
ago: that suffrage is an evil, that it has
only helped to enslave people, that it has
but closed their eyes that they may not
see how craftily they were made to
submit.
Woman's demand for equal suffrage is
based largely on the contention that
woman must have the equal right in all
affairs of society. No one could,
possibly, refute that, if suffrage were a
right. Alas, for the ignorance of the
human mind, which can see a right in an
imposition. Or is it not the most brutal
imposition for one set of people to make
laws that another set is coerced by force
to obey? Yet woman clamors for that
"golden opportunity" that has wrought
so much misery in the world, and robbed
man of his integrity and self-reliance; an
imposition which has thoroughly
corrupted the people, and made them
absolute prey in the hands of
unscrupulous politicians.
121
The poor, stupid, free American citizen!
Free to starve, free to tramp the
highways of this great country, he enjoys
universal suffrage, and, by that right, he
has forged chains about his limbs. The
reward that he receives is stringent labor
laws prohibiting the right of boycott, of
picketing, in fact, of everything, except
the right to be robbed of the fruits of his
labor. Yet all these disastrous results of
the twentieth century fetich have taught
woman nothing. But, then, woman will
purify politics, we are assured.
Needless to say, I am not opposed to
woman suffrage on the conventional
ground that she is not equal to it. I see
neither physical, psychological, nor
mental reasons why woman should not
have the equal right to vote with man.
But that can not possibly blind me to the
absurd notion that woman will
accomplish that wherein man has failed.
If she would not make things worse, she
certainly could not make them better.
To assume, therefore, that she would
succeed in purifying something which is
not susceptible of purification, is to
credit her with supernatural powers.
Since woman's greatest misfortune has
been that she was looked upon as either
angel or devil, her true salvation lies in
being placed on earth; namely, in being
considered human, and therefore subject
to all human follies and mistakes. Are
we, then, to believe that two errors will
make a right? Are we to assume that the
poison already inherent in politics will
be decreased, if women were to enter the
political arena? The most ardent
suffragists would hardly maintain such a
folly.
As a matter of fact, the most advanced
students of universal suffrage have come
to realize that all existing systems of
political power are absurd, and are
completely inadequate to meet the
pressing issues of life. This view is also
borne out by a statement of one who is
herself an ardent believer in woman
suffrage, Dr. Helen L. Sumner. In her
able work on EQUAL SUFFRAGE, she
says: "In Colorado, we find that equal
suffrage serves to show in the most
striking way the essential rottenness and
degrading character of the existing
system." Of course, Dr. Sumner has in
mind a particular system of voting, but
the same applies with equal force to the
entire machinery of the representative
system. With such a basis, it is difficult
to understand how woman, as a political
factor, would benefit either herself or the
rest of mankind.
But, say our suffrage devotees, look at
the countries and States where female
suffrage exists. See what woman has
accomplished--in Australia, New
Zealand, Finland, the Scandinavian
countries, and in our own four States,
Idaho, Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah.
Distance lends enchantment--or, to quote
a Polish formula--"it is well where we
are not." Thus one would assume that
those countries and States are unlike
other countries or States, that they have
greater freedom, greater social and
economic equality, a finer appreciation
of human life, deeper understanding of
the great social struggle, with all the
vital questions it involves for the human
race.
The women of Australia and New
Zealand can vote, and help make the
laws. Are the labor conditions better
there than they are in England, where the
suffragettes are making such a heroic
struggle? Does there exist a greater
motherhood, happier and freer children
than in England? Is woman there no
longer considered a mere sex
commodity? Has she emancipated
herself from the Puritanical double
122
standard of morality for men and
women? Certainly none but the ordinary
female stump politician will dare answer
these questions in the affirmative. If that
be so, it seems ridiculous to point to
Australia and New Zealand as the Mecca
of equal suffrage accomplishments.
On the other hand, it is a fact to those
who know the real political conditions in
Australia, that politics have gagged labor
by enacting the most stringent labor
laws, making strikes without the
sanction of an arbitration committee a
crime equal to treason.
Not for a moment do I mean to imply
that woman suffrage is responsible for
this state of affairs. I do mean, however,
that there is no reason to point to
Australia as a wonder-worker of
woman's accomplishment, since her
influence has been unable to free labor
from the thralldom of political bossism.
Finland has given woman equal
suffrage; nay, even the right to sit in
Parliament. Has that helped to develop a
greater heroism, an intenser zeal than
that of the women of Russia? Finland,
like Russia, smarts under the terrible
whip of the bloody Tsar. Where are the
Finnish Perovskaias, Spiridonovas,
Figners, Breshkovskaias? Where are the
countless numbers of Finnish young
girls who cheerfully go to Siberia for
their cause? Finland is sadly in need of
heroic liberators. Why has the ballot not
created them? The only Finnish avenger
of his people was a man, not a woman,
and he used a more effective weapon
than the ballot.
As to our own States where women vote,
and which are constantly being pointed
out as examples of marvels, what has
been accomplished there through the
ballot that women do not to a large
extent enjoy in other States; or that they
could not achieve through energetic
efforts without the ballot?
True, in the suffrage States women are
guaranteed equal rights to property; but
of what avail is that right to the mass of
women without property, the thousands
of wage workers, who live from hand to
mouth? That equal suffrage did not, and
cannot, affect their condition is admitted
even by Dr. Sumner, who certainly is in
a position to know. As an ardent
suffragist, and having been sent to
Colorado by the Collegiate Equal
Suffrage League of New York State to
collect material in favor of suffrage, she
would be the last to say anything
derogatory; yet we are informed that
"equal suffrage has but slightly affected
the economic conditions of women.
That women do not receive equal pay for
equal work, and that, though woman in
Colorado has enjoyed school suffrage
since 1876, women teachers are paid less
than in California." On the other hand,
Miss Sumner fails to account for the fact
that although women have had school
suffrage for thirty-four years, and equal
suffrage since 1894, the census in
Denver alone a few months ago
disclosed the fact of fifteen thousand
defective school children. And that, too,
with mostly women in the educational
department, and also notwithstanding
that women in Colorado have passed the
"most stringent laws for child and
animal protection." The women of
Colorado "have taken great interest in
the State institutions for the care of
dependent, defective, and delinquent
children." What a horrible indictment
against woman's care and interest, if one
city has fifteen thousand defective
children. What about the glory of
woman suffrage, since it has failed
utterly in the most important social
issue, the child? And where is the
123
superior sense of justice that woman was
to bring into the political field? Where
was it in 1903, when the mine owners
waged a guerilla war against the Western
Miners' Union; when General Bell
established a reign of terror, pulling men
out of beds at night, kidnapping them
across the border line, throwing them
into bull pens, declaring "to hell with the
Constitution, the club is the
Constitution"? Where were the women
politicians then, and why did they not
exercise the power of their vote? But
they did. They helped to defeat the most
fair-minded and liberal man, Governor
Waite. The latter had to make way for
the tool of the mine kings, Governor
Peabody, the enemy of labor, the Tsar of
Colorado. "Certainly male suffrage
could have done nothing worse."
Granted. Wherein, then, are the
advantages to woman and society from
woman suffrage? The oft-repeated
assertion that woman will purify politics
is also but a myth. It is not borne out by
the people who know the political
conditions of Idaho, Colorado,
Wyoming, and Utah.
Woman, essentially a purist, is naturally
bigotted and relentless in her effort to
make others as good as she thinks they
ought to be. Thus, in Idaho, she has
disfranchised her sister of the street, and
declared all women of "lewd character"
unfit to vote. "Lewd" not being
interpreted, of course, as prostitution IN
marriage. It goes without saying that
illegal prostitution and gambling have
been prohibited. In this regard the law
must needs be of feminine nature: it
always prohibits. Therein all laws are
wonderful. They go no further, but their
very tendencies open all the floodgates
of hell. Prostitution and gambling have
never done a more flourishing business
than since the law has been set against
them.
In Colorado, the Puritanism of woman
has expressed itself in a more drastic
form. "Men of notoriously unclean
lives, and men connected with saloons,
have been dropped from politics since
women have the vote."* Could brother
Comstock do more? Could all the
Puritan fathers have done more? I
wonder how many women realize the
gravity of this would-be feat. I wonder
if they understand that it is the very thing
which, instead of elevating woman, has
made her a political spy, a contemptible
pry into the private affairs of people, not
so much for the good of the cause, but
because, as a Colorado woman said,
"they like to get into houses they have
never been in, and find out all they can,
politically and otherwise."** Yes, and
into the human soul and its minutest
nooks and corners. For nothing satisfies
the craving of most women so much as
scandal. And when did she ever enjoy
such opportunities as are hers, the
politician's?
"Notoriously unclean lives, and men
connected with the saloons." Certainly,
the lady vote gatherers can not be
accused of much sense of proportion.
Granting even that these busybodies can
decide whose lives are clean enough for
that eminently clean atmosphere,
politics, must it follow that saloonkeepers belong to the same category?
Unless it be American hypocrisy and
bigotry, so manifest in the principle of
Prohibition, which sanctions the spread
of drunkenness among men and women
of the rich class, yet keeps vigilant watch
on the only place left to the poor man. If
no other reason, woman's narrow and
purist attitude toward life makes her a
greater danger to liberty wherever she
has political power. Man has long
124
overcome the superstitions that still
engulf woman. In the economic
competitive field, man has been
compelled to exercise efficiency,
judgment, ability, competency. He
therefore had neither time nor inclination
to measure everyone's morality with a
Puritanic yardstick. In his political
activities, too, he has not gone about
blindfolded. He knows that quantity and
not quality is the material for the
political grinding mill, and, unless he is
a sentimental reformer or an old fossil,
he knows that politics can never be
anything but a swamp.
Women who are at all conversant with
the process of politics, know the nature
of the beast, but in their self-sufficiency
and egotism they make themselves
believe that they have but to pet the
beast, and he will become as gentle as a
lamb, sweet and pure. As if women
have not sold their votes, as if women
politicians can not be bought! If her
body can be bought in return for material
consideration, why not her vote? That it
is being done in Colorado and in other
States, is not denied even by those in
favor of woman suffrage.
As I have said before, woman's narrow
view of human affairs is not the only
argument against her as a politician
superior to man. There are others. Her
life-long economic parasitism has utterly
blurred her conception of the meaning of
equality. She clamors for equal rights
with men, yet we learn that "few women
care to canvas in undesirable districts."*
How little equality means to them
compared with the Russian women, who
face hell itself for their ideal!
Woman demands the same rights as
man, yet she is indignant that her
presence does not strike him dead: he
smokes, keeps his hat on, and does not
jump from his seat like a flunkey. These
may be trivial things, but they are
nevertheless the key to the nature of
American suffragists. To be sure, their
English sisters have outgrown these silly
notions. They have shown themselves
equal to the greatest demands on their
character and power of endurance. All
honor to the heroism and sturdiness of
the English suffragettes. Thanks to their
energetic, aggressive methods, they have
proved an inspiration to some of our
own lifeless and spineless ladies. But
after all, the suffragettes, too, are still
lacking in appreciation of real equality.
Else how is one to account for the
tremendous, truly gigantic effort set in
motion by those valiant fighters for a
wretched little bill which will benefit a
handful of propertied ladies, with
absolutely no provision for the vast mass
of workingwomen? True, as politicians
they must be opportunists, must take half
measures if they can not get all. But as
intelligent and liberal women they ought
to realize that if the ballot is a weapon,
the disinherited need it more than the
economically superior class, and that the
latter already enjoy too much power by
virtue of their economic superiority.
The brilliant leader of the English
suffragettes, Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst,
herself admitted, when on her American
lecture tour, that there can be no equality
between political superiors and inferiors.
If so, how will the workingwoman of
England, already inferior economically
to the ladies who are benefited by the
Shackleton bill,* be able to work with
their political superiors, should the bill
pass? Is it not probable that the class of
Annie Keeney, so full of zeal, devotion,
and martyrdom, will be compelled to
carry on their backs their female political
bosses, even as they are carrying their
economic masters. They would still
have to do it, were universal suffrage for
125
men and women established in England.
No matter what the workers do, they are
made to pay, always. Still, those who
believe in the power of the vote show
little sense of justice when they concern
themselves not at all with those whom,
as they claim, it might serve most.
The American suffrage movement has
been, until very recently, altogether a
parlor affair, absolutely detached from
the economic needs of the people. Thus
Susan B. Anthony, no doubt an
exceptional type of woman, was not only
indifferent but antagonistic to labor; nor
did she hesitate to manifest her
antagonism when, in 1869, she advised
women to take the places of striking
printers in New York.* I do not know
whether her attitude had changed before
her death.
There are, of course, some suffragists
who are affiliated with workingwomen-the Women's Trade Union League, for
instance; but they are a small minority,
and their activities are essentially
economic. The rest look upon toil as a
just provision of Providence. What
would become of the rich, if not for the
poor? What would become of these idle,
parasitic ladies, who squander more in a
week than their victims earn in a year, if
not for the eighty million wage workers?
Equality, who ever heard of such a
thing?
Few countries have produced such
arrogance and snobbishness as America.
Particularly this is true of the American
woman of the middle class. She not
only considers herself the equal of man,
but his superior, especially in her purity,
goodness, and morality. Small wonder
that the American suffragist claims for
her vote the most miraculous powers. In
her exalted conceit she does not see how
truly enslaved she is, not so much by
man, as by her own silly notions and
traditions. Suffrage can not ameliorate
that sad fact; it can only accentuate it, as
indeed it does.
One of the great American women
leaders claims that woman is entitled not
only to equal pay, but that she ought to
be legally entitled even to the pay of her
husband. Failing to support her, he
should be put in convict stripes, and his
earnings in prison be collected by his
equal wife. Does not another brilliant
exponent of the cause claim for woman
that her vote will abolish the social evil,
which has been fought in vain by the
collective efforts of the most illustrious
minds the world over? It is indeed to be
regretted that the alleged creator of the
universe has already presented us with
his wonderful scheme of things, else
woman suffrage would surely enable
woman to outdo him completely.
Nothing is so dangerous as the dissection
of a fetich. If we have outlived the time
when such heresy was punishable at the
stake, we have not outlived the narrow
spirit of condemnation of those who dare
differ with accepted notions. Therefore I
shall probably be put down as an
opponent of woman. But that can not
deter me from looking the question
squarely in the face. I repeat what I have
said in the beginning: I do not believe
that woman will make politics worse;
nor can I believe that she could make it
better. If, then, she cannot improve on
man's mistakes, why perpetuate the
latter?
History may be a compilation of lies;
nevertheless, it contains a few truths, and
they are the only guide we have for the
future. The history of the political
activities of men proves that they have
given him absolutely nothing that he
could not have achieved in a more direct,
less costly, and more lasting manner. As
a matter of fact, every inch of ground he
126
has gained has been through a constant
fight, a ceaseless struggle for selfassertion, and not through suffrage.
There is no reason whatever to assume
that woman, in her climb to
emancipation, has been, or will be,
helped by the ballot.
In the darkest of all countries, Russia,
with her absolute despotism, woman has
become man's equal, not through the
ballot, but by her will to be and to do.
Not only has she conquered for herself
every avenue of learning and vocation,
but she has won man's esteem, his
respect, his comradeship; aye, even more
than that: she has gained the admiration,
the respect of the whole world. That,
too, not through suffrage, but by her
wonderful heroism, her fortitude, her
ability, will power, and her endurance in
the struggle for liberty. Where are the
women in any suffrage country or State
that can lay claim to such a victory?
When we consider the accomplishments
of woman in America, we find also that
something deeper and more powerful
than suffrage has helped her in the
march to emancipation.
It is just sixty-two years ago since a
handful of women at the Seneca Falls
Convention set forth a few demands for
their right to equal education with men,
and access to the various professions,
trades, etc. What wonderful
accomplishment, what wonderful
triumphs! Who but the most ignorant
dare speak of woman as a mere domestic
drudge? Who dare suggest that this or
that profession should not be open to
her? For over sixty years she has
molded a new atmosphere and a new life
for herself. She has become a world
power in every domain of human
thought and activity. And all that
without suffrage, without the right to
make laws, without the "privilege" of
becoming a judge, a jailer, or an
executioner.
Yes, I may be considered an enemy of
woman; but if I can help her see the
light, I shall not complain.
The misfortune of woman is not that she
is unable to do the work of man, but that
she is wasting her life force to outdo
him, with a tradition of centuries which
has left her physically incapable of
keeping pace with him. Oh, I know
some have succeeded, but at what cost,
at what terrific cost! The import is not
the kind of work woman does, but rather
the quality of the work she furnishes.
She can give suffrage or the ballot no
new quality, nor can she receive
anything from it that will enhance her
own quality. Her development, her
freedom, her independence, must come
from and through herself. First, by
asserting herself as a personality, and not
as a sex commodity. Second, by
refusing the right to anyone over her
body; by refusing to bear children,
unless she wants them; by refusing to be
a servant to God, the State, society, the
husband, the family, etc.; by making her
life simpler, but deeper and richer. That
is, by trying to learn the meaning and
substance of life in all its complexities,
by freeing herself from the fear of public
opinion and public condemnation. Only
that, and not the ballot, will set woman
free, will make her a force hitherto
unknown in the world, a force for real
love, for peace, for harmony; a force of
divine fire, of life giving; a creator of
free men and women.
http://womenshistory.about.com/library/
etext/bl_eg_an9_woman_suffrage.htm
_________________________________
127
Emma Goldman: The Tragedy of
Woman's Emancipation
From the 1917 edition of Emma
Goldman's Anarchism and Other
Essays
I begin with an admission: Regardless of
all political and economic theories,
treating of the fundamental differences
between various groups within the
human race, regardless of class and race
distinctions, regardless of all artificial
boundary lines between woman's rights
and man's rights, I hold that there is a
point where these differentiations may
meet and grow into one perfect whole.
With this I do not mean to propose a
peace treaty. The general social
antagonism which has taken hold of our
entire public life today, brought about
through the force of opposing and
contradictory interests, will crumble to
pieces when the reorganization of our
social life, based upon the principles of
economic justice, shall have become a
reality.
Peace or harmony between the sexes and
individuals does not necessarily depend
on a superficial equalization of human
beings; nor does it call for the
elimination of individual traits and
peculiarities. The problem that
confronts us today, and which the
nearest future is to solve, is how to be
one's self and yet in oneness with others,
to feel deeply with all human beings and
still retain one's own characteristic
qualities. This seems to me to be the
basis upon which the mass and the
individual, the true democrat and the
true individuality, man and woman, can
meet without antagonism and
opposition. The motto should not be:
Forgive one another; rather, Understand
one another. The oft-quoted sentence of
Madame de Stael: "To understand
everything means to forgive everything,"
has never particularly appealed to me; it
has the odor of the confessional; to
forgive one's fellow-being conveys the
idea of pharisaical superiority. To
understand one's fellow-being suffices.
The admission partly represents the
fundamental aspect of my views on the
emancipation of woman and its effect
upon the entire sex.
Emancipation should make it possible
for woman to be human in the truest
sense. Everything within her that craves
assertion and activity should reach its
fullest expression; all artificial barriers
should be broken, and the road towards
greater freedom cleared of every trace of
centuries of submission and slavery.
This was the original aim of the
movement for woman's emancipation.
But the results so far achieved have
isolated woman and have robbed her of
the fountain springs of that happiness
which is so essential to her. Merely
external emancipation has made of the
modern woman an artificial being, who
reminds one of the products of French
arboriculture with its arabesque trees and
shrubs, pyramids, wheels, and wreaths;
anything, except the forms which would
be reached by the expression of her own
inner qualities. Such artificially grown
plants of the female sex are to be found
in large numbers, especially in the socalled intellectual sphere of our life.
Liberty and equality for woman! What
hopes and aspirations these words
awakened when they were first uttered
by some of the noblest and bravest souls
of those days. The sun in all his light
and glory was to rise upon a new world;
in this world woman was to be free to
direct her own destiny--an aim certainly
worthy of the great enthusiasm, courage,
perseverance, and ceaseless effort of the
128
tremendous host of pioneer men and
women, who staked everything against a
world of prejudice and ignorance.
My hopes also move towards that goal,
but I hold that the emancipation of
woman, as interpreted and practically
applied today, has failed to reach that
great end. Now, woman is confronted
with the necessity of emancipating
herself from emancipation, if she really
desires to be free. This may sound
paradoxical, but is, nevertheless, only
too true.
What has she achieved through her
emancipation? Equal suffrage in a few
States. Has that purified our political
life, as many well-meaning advocates
predicted? Certainly not. Incidentally, it
is really time that persons with plain,
sound judgment should cease to talk
about corruption in politics in a
boarding-school tone. Corruption of
politics has nothing to do with the
morals, or the laxity of morals, of
various political personalities. Its cause
is altogether a material one. Politics is
the reflex of the business and industrial
world, the mottos of which are: "To take
is more blessed than to give"; "buy
cheap and sell dear"; "one soiled hand
washes the other." There is no hope
even that woman, with her right to vote,
will ever purify politics.
Emancipation has brought woman
economic equality with man; that is, she
can choose her own profession and
trade; but as her past and present
physical training has not equipped her
with the necessary strength to compete
with man, she is often compelled to
exhaust all her energy, use up her
vitality, and strain every nerve in order
to reach the market value. Very few
ever succeed, for it is a fact that women
teachers, doctors, lawyers, architects,
and engineers are neither met with the
same confidence as their male
colleagues, nor receive equal
remuneration. And those that do reach
that enticing equality, generally do so at
the expense of their physical and
psychical well-being. As to the great
mass of working girls and women, how
much independence is gained if the
narrowness and lack of freedom of the
home is exchanged for the narrowness
and lack of freedom of the factory,
sweat-shop, department store, or office?
In addition is the burden which is laid on
many women of looking after a "home,
sweet home"--cold, dreary, disorderly,
uninviting--after a day's hard work.
Glorious independence! No wonder that
hundreds of girls are willing to accept
the first offer of marriage, sick and tired
of their "independence" behind the
counter, at the sewing or typewriting
machine. They are just as ready to
marry as girls of the middle class, who
long to throw off the yoke of parental
supremacy. A so-called independence
which leads only to earning the merest
subsistence is not so enticing, not so
ideal, that one could expect woman to
sacrifice everything for it. Our highly
praised independence is, after all, but a
slow process of dulling and stifling
woman's nature, her love instinct, and
her mother instinct.
Nevertheless, the position of the working
girl is far more natural and human than
that of her seemingly more fortunate
sister in the more cultured professional
walks of life--teachers, physicians,
lawyers, engineers, etc., who have to
make a dignified, proper appearance,
while the inner life is growing empty
and dead.
The narrowness of the existing
conception of woman's independence
and emancipation; the dread of love for a
man who is not her social equal; the fear
129
that love will rob her of her freedom and
independence; the horror that love or the
joy of motherhood will only hinder her
in the full exercise of her profession--all
these together make of the emancipated
modern woman a compulsory vestal,
before whom life, with its great
clarifying sorrows and its deep,
entrancing joys, rolls on without
touching or gripping her soul.
Emancipation, as understood by the
majority of its adherents and exponents,
is of too narrow a scope to permit the
boundless love and ecstasy contained in
the deep emotion of the true woman,
sweetheart, mother, in freedom.
The tragedy of the self-supporting or
economically free woman does not lie in
too many but in too few experiences.
True, she surpasses her sister of past
generations in knowledge of the world
and human nature; it is just because of
this that she feels deeply the lack of life's
essence, which alone can enrich the
human soul, and without which the
majority of women have become mere
professional automatons.
That such a state of affairs was bound to
come was foreseen by those who
realized that, in the domain of ethics,
there still remained many decaying ruins
of the time of the undisputed superiority
of man; ruins that are still considered
useful. And, what is more important, a
goodly number of the emancipated are
unable to get along without them. Every
movement that aims at the destruction of
existing institutions and the replacement
thereof with something more advanced,
more perfect, has followers who in
theory stand for the most radical ideas,
but who, nevertheless, in their every-day
practice, are like the average Philistine,
feigning respectability and clamoring for
the good opinion of their opponents.
There are, for example, Socialists, and
even Anarchists, who stand for the idea
that property is robbery, yet who will
grow indignant if anyone owe them the
value of a half-dozen pins.
The same Philistine can be found in the
movement for woman's emancipation.
Yellow journalists and milk-and-water
litterateurs have painted pictures of the
emancipated woman that make the hair
of the good citizen and his dull
companion stand up on end. Every
member of the woman's rights
movement was pictured as a George
Sand in her absolute disregard of
morality. Nothing was sacred to her.
She had no respect for the ideal relation
between man and woman. In short,
emancipation stood only for a reckless
life of lust and sin; regardless of society,
religion, and morality. The exponents of
woman's rights were highly indignant at
such representation, and, lacking humor,
they exerted all their energy to prove
that they were not at all as bad as they
were painted, but the very reverse. Of
course, as long as woman was the slave
of man, she could not be good and pure,
but now that she was free and
independent she would prove how good
she could be and that her influence
would have a purifying effect on all
institutions in society. True, the
movement for woman's rights has
broken many old fetters, but it has also
forged new ones. The great movement
of TRUE emancipation has not met with
a great race of women who could look
liberty in the face. Their narrow,
Puritanical vision banished man, as a
disturber and doubtful character, out of
their emotional life. Man was not to be
tolerated at any price, except perhaps as
the father of a child, since a child could
not very well come to life without a
father. Fortunately, the most rigid
Puritans never will be strong enough to
130
kill the innate craving for motherhood.
But woman's freedom is closely allied
with man's freedom, and many of my socalled emancipated sisters seem to
overlook the fact that a child born in
freedom needs the love and devotion of
each human being about him, man as
well as woman. Unfortunately, it is this
narrow conception of human relations
that has brought about a great tragedy in
the lives of the modern man and woman.
About fifteen years ago appeared a work
from the pen of the brilliant Norwegian,
Laura Marholm, called WOMAN, A
CHARACTER STUDY. She was one of
the first to call attention to the emptiness
and narrowness of the existing
conception of woman's emancipation,
and its tragic effect upon the inner life of
woman. In her work Laura Marholm
speaks of the fate of several gifted
women of international fame: the genius,
Eleonora Duse; the great mathematician
and writer, Sonya Kovalevskaia; the
artist and poet-nature, Marie
Bashkirtzeff, who died so young.
Through each description of the lives of
these women of such extraordinary
mentality runs a marked trail of
unsatisfied craving for a full, rounded,
complete, and beautiful life, and the
unrest and loneliness resulting from the
lack of it. Through these masterly
psychological sketches, one cannot help
but see that the higher the mental
development of woman, the less possible
it is for her to meet a congenial mate
who will see in her, not only sex, but
also the human being, the friend, the
comrade and strong individuality, who
cannot and ought not lose a single trait
of her character.
The average man with his selfsufficiency, his ridiculously superior airs
of patronage towards the female sex, is
an impossibility for woman as depicted
in the CHARACTER STUDY by Laura
Marholm. Equally impossible for her is
the man who can see in her nothing more
than her mentality and her genius, and
who fails to awaken her woman nature.
A rich intellect and a fine soul are
usually considered necessary attributes
of a deep and beautiful personality. In
the case of the modern woman, these
attributes serve as a hindrance to the
complete assertion of her being. For
over a hundred years the old form of
marriage, based on the Bible, "till death
doth part," has been denounced as an
institution that stands for the sovereignty
of the man over the woman, of her
complete submission to his whims and
commands, and absolute dependence on
his name and support. Time and again it
has been conclusively proved that the
old matrimonial relation restricted
woman to the function of a man's servant
and the bearer of his children. And yet
we find many emancipated women who
prefer marriage, with all its deficiencies,
to the narrowness of an unmarried life;
narrow and unendurable because of the
chains of moral and social prejudice that
cramp and bind her nature.
The explanation of such inconsistency
on the part of many advanced women is
to be found in the fact that they never
truly understood the meaning of
emancipation. They thought that all that
was needed was independence from
external tyrannies; the internal tyrants,
far more harmful to life and growth-ethical and social conventions--were left
to take care of themselves; and they have
taken care of themselves. They seem to
get along as beautifully in the heads and
hearts of the most active exponents of
woman's emancipation, as in the heads
and hearts of our grandmothers.
These internal tyrants, whether they be
in the form of public opinion or what
131
will mother say, or brother, father, aunt,
or relative of any sort; what will Mrs.
Grundy, Mr. Comstock, the employer,
the Board of Education say? All these
busybodies, moral detectives, jailers of
the human spirit, what will they say?
Until woman has learned to defy them
all, to stand firmly on her own ground
and to insist upon her own unrestricted
freedom, to listen to the voice of her
nature, whether it call for life's greatest
treasure, love for a man, or her most
glorious privilege, the right to give birth
to a child, she cannot call herself
emancipated. How many emancipated
women are brave enough to
acknowledge that the voice of love is
calling, wildly beating against their
breasts, demanding to be heard, to be
satisfied.
The French writer, Jean Reibrach, in one
of his novels, NEW BEAUTY, attempts
to picture the ideal, beautiful,
emancipated woman. This ideal is
embodied in a young girl, a physician.
She talks very cleverly and wisely of
how to feed infants; she is kind, and
administers medicines free to poor
mothers. She converses with a young
man of her acquaintance about the
sanitary conditions of the future, and
how various bacilli and germs shall be
exterminated by the use of stone walls
and floors, and by the doing away with
rugs and hangings. She is, of course,
very plainly and practically dressed,
mostly in black. The young man, who,
at their first meeting, was overawed by
the wisdom of his emancipated friend,
gradually learns to understand her, and
recognizes one fine day that he loves
her. They are young, and she is kind and
beautiful, and though always in rigid
attire, her appearance is softened by a
spotlessly clean white collar and cuffs.
One would expect that he would tell her
of his love, but he is not one to commit
romantic absurdities. Poetry and the
enthusiasm of love cover their blushing
faces before the pure beauty of the lady.
He silences the voice of his nature, and
remains correct. She, too, is always
exact, always rational, always well
behaved. I fear if they had formed a
union, the young man would have risked
freezing to death. I must confess that I
can see nothing beautiful in this new
beauty, who is as cold as the stone walls
and floors she dreams of. Rather would
I have the love songs of romantic ages,
rather Don Juan and Madame Venus,
rather an elopement by ladder and rope
on a moonlight night, followed by the
father's curse, mother's moans, and the
moral comments of neighbors, than
correctness and propriety measured by
yardsticks. If love does not know how
to give and take without restrictions, it is
not love, but a transaction that never
fails to lay stress on a plus and a minus.
The greatest shortcoming of the
emancipation of the present day lies in
its artificial stiffness and its narrow
respectabilities, which produce an
emptiness in woman's soul that will not
let her drink from the fountain of life. I
once remarked that there seemed to be a
deeper relationship between the oldfashioned mother and hostess, ever on
the alert for the happiness of her little
ones and the comfort of those she loved,
and the truly new woman, than between
the latter and her average emancipated
sister. The disciples of emancipation
pure and simple declared me a heathen,
fit only for the stake. Their blind zeal
did not let them see that my comparison
between the old and the new was merely
to prove that a goodly number of our
grandmothers had more blood in their
veins, far more humor and wit, and
certainly a greater amount of
132
naturalness, kind-heartedness, and
simplicity, than the majority of our
emancipated professional women who
fill the colleges, halls of learning, and
various offices. This does not mean a
wish to return to the past, nor does it
condemn woman to her old sphere, the
kitchen and the nursery.
Salvation lies in an energetic march
onward towards a brighter and clearer
future. We are in need of unhampered
growth out of old traditions and habits.
The movement for woman's
emancipation has so far made but the
first step in that direction. It is to be
hoped that it will gather strength to make
another. The right to vote, or equal civil
rights, may be good demands, but true
emancipation begins neither at the polls
nor in courts. It begins in woman's soul.
History tells us that every oppressed
class gained true liberation from its
masters through its own efforts. It is
necessary that woman learn that lesson,
that she realize that her freedom will
reach as far as her power to achieve her
freedom reaches. It is, therefore, far
more important for her to begin with her
inner regeneration, to cut loose from the
weight of prejudices, traditions, and
customs. The demand for equal rights in
every vocation of life is just and fair;
but, after all, the most vital right is the
right to love and be loved. Indeed, if
partial emancipation is to become a
complete and true emancipation of
woman, it will have to do away with the
ridiculous notion that to be loved, to be
sweetheart and mother, is synonymous
with being slave or subordinate. It will
have to do away with the absurd notion
of the dualism of the sexes, or that man
and woman represent two antagonistic
worlds.
Pettiness separates; breadth unites. Let
us be broad and big. Let us not overlook
vital things because of the bulk of trifles
confronting us. A true conception of the
relation of the sexes will not admit of
conqueror and conquered; it knows of
but one great thing: to give of one's self
boundlessly, in order to find one's self
richer, deeper, better. That alone can fill
the emptiness, and transform the tragedy
of woman's emancipation into joy,
limitless joy.
http://womenshistory.about.com/library/
etext/bl_eg_ana_tragedy_womans_eman
cipation.htm
________________________________
Emma Goldman: Marriage and Love
The popular notion about marriage and
love is that they are synonymous, that
they spring from the same motives, and
cover the same human needs. Like most
popular notions this also rests not on
actual facts, but on superstition.
Marriage and love have nothing in
common; they are as far apart as the
poles; are, in fact, antagonistic to each
other. No doubt some marriages have
been the result of love. Not, however,
because love could assert itself only in
marriage; much rather is it because few
people can completely outgrow a
convention. There are today large
numbers of men and women to whom
marriage is naught but a farce, but who
submit to it for the sake of public
opinion. At any rate, while it is true that
some marriages are based on love, and
while it is equally true that in some cases
love continues in married life, I maintain
that it does so regardless of marriage,
and not because of it.
On the other hand, it is utterly false that
love results from marriage. On rare
occasions one does hear of a miraculous
case of a married couple falling in love
after marriage, but on close examination
133
it will be found that it is a mere
adjustment to the inevitable. Certainly
the growing-used to each other is far
away from the spontaneity, the intensity,
and beauty of love, without which the
intimacy of marriage must prove
degrading to both the woman and the
man.
Marriage is primarily an economic
arrangement, an insurance pact. It
differs from the ordinary life insurance
agreement only in that it is more
binding, more exacting. Its returns are
insignificantly small compared with the
investments. In taking out an insurance
policy one pays for it in dollars and
cents, alway at liberty to discontinue
payments. If, however, woman's
premium is her husband, she pays for it
with her name, her privacy, her selfrespect, her very life, "until death doth
part." Moreover, the marriage insurance
condemns her to life-long dependency,
to parasitism, to complete uselessness,
individual as well as social. Man, too,
pays his toll, but as his sphere is wider,
marriage does not limit him as much as
woman. He feels his chains more in an
economic sense.
Thus Dante's motto over Inferno applies
with equal force to marriage. "Ye who
enter here leave all hope behind."
That marriage is a failure none but the
very stupid will deny. One has but to
glance over the statistics of divorce to
realize how bitter a failure marriage
really is. Nor will the stereotyped
Philistine argument that the laxity of
divorce laws and the growing looseness
of woman account for the fact that: first,
every twelfth marriage ends in divorce;
second, that since 1870 divorces have
increased from 28 to 73 for every
hundred thousand population; third, that
adultery, since 1867, as ground for
divorce, has increased 270.8 per cent.;
fourth, that desertion increased 369.8 per
cent.
Added to these startling figures is a vast
amount of material, dramatic and
literary, further elucidating this subject.
Robert Herrick, in TOGETHER; Pinero,
in MID-CHANNEL; Eugene Walter, in
PAID IN FULL, and scores of other
writers are discussing the barrenness, the
monotony, the sordidness, the
inadequacy of marriage as a factor for
harmony and understanding.
The thoughtful social student will not
content himself with the popular
superficial excuse for this phenomenon.
He will have to dig deeper into the very
life of the sexes to know why marriage
proves so disastrous.
Edward Carpenter says that behind every
marriage stands the life-long
environment of the two sexes; an
environment so different from each other
that man and woman must remain
strangers. Separated by an
insurmountable wall of superstition,
custom, and habit, marriage has not the
potentiality of developing knowledge of,
and respect for, each other, without
which every union is doomed to failure.
Henrik Ibsen, the hater of all social
shams, was probably the first to realize
this great truth. Nora leaves her
husband, not--as the stupid critic would
have it--because she is tired of her
responsibilities or feels the need of
woman's rights, but because she has
come to know that for eight years she
had lived with a stranger and borne him
children. Can there be anything more
humiliating, more degrading than a lifelong proximity between two strangers?
No need for the woman to know
anything of the man, save his income.
As to the knowledge of the woman-what is there to know except that she has
a pleasing appearance? We have not yet
134
outgrown the theologic myth that
woman has no soul, that she is a mere
appendix to man, made out of his rib just
for the convenience of the gentleman
who was so strong that he was afraid of
his own shadow.
Perchance the poor quality of the
material whence woman comes is
responsible for her inferiority. At any
rate, woman has no soul--what is there to
know about her? Besides, the less soul a
woman has the greater her asset as a
wife, the more readily will she absorb
herself in her husband. It is this slavish
acquiescence to man's superiority that
has kept the marriage institution
seemingly intact for so long a period.
Now that woman is coming into her
own, now that she is actually growing
aware of herself as being outside of the
master's grace, the sacred institution of
marriage is gradually being undermined,
and no amount of sentimental
lamentation can stay it.
From infancy, almost, the average girl is
told that marriage is her ultimate goal;
therefore her training and education
must be directed towards that end. Like
the mute beast fattened for slaughter, she
is prepared for that. Yet, strange to say,
she is allowed to know much less about
her function as wife and mother than the
ordinary artisan of his trade. It is
indecent and filthy for a respectable girl
to know anything of the marital relation.
Oh, for the inconsistency of
respectability, that needs the marriage
vow to turn something which is filthy
into the purest and most sacred
arrangement that none dare question or
criticize. Yet that is exactly the attitude
of the average upholder of marriage.
The prospective wife and mother is kept
in complete ignorance of her only asset
in the competitive field--sex. Thus she
enters into life-long relations with a man
only to find herself shocked, repelled,
outraged beyond measure by the most
natural and healthy instinct, sex. It is
safe to say that a large percentage of the
unhappiness, misery, distress, and
physical suffering of matrimony is due
to the criminal ignorance in sex matters
that is being extolled as a great virtue.
Nor is it at all an exaggeration when I
say that more than one home has been
broken up because of this deplorable
fact.
If, however, woman is free and big
enough to learn the mystery of sex
without the sanction of State or Church,
she will stand condemned as utterly unfit
to become the wife of a "good" man, his
goodness consisting of an empty brain
and plenty of money. Can there be
anything more outrageous than the idea
that a healthy, grown woman, full of life
and passion, must deny nature's demand,
must subdue her most intense craving,
undermine her health and break her
spirit, must stunt her vision, abstain from
the depth and glory of sex experience
until a "good" man comes along to take
her unto himself as a wife? That is
precisely what marriage means. How
can such an arrangement end except in
failure? This is one, though not the least
important, factor of marriage, which
differentiates it from love.
Ours is a practical age. The time when
Romeo and Juliet risked the wrath of
their fathers for love, when Gretchen
exposed herself to the gossip of her
neighbors for love, is no more. If, on
rare occasions, young people allow
themselves the luxury of romance, they
are taken in care by the elders, drilled
and pounded until they become
"sensible."
The moral lesson instilled in the girl is
not whether the man has aroused her
love, but rather is it, "How much?" The
135
important and only God of practical
American life: Can the man make a
living? can he support a wife? That is
the only thing that justifies marriage.
Gradually this saturates every thought of
the girl; her dreams are not of moonlight
and kisses, of laughter and tears; she
dreams of shopping tours and bargain
counters. This soul poverty and
sordidness are the elements inherent in
the marriage institution. The State and
Church approve of no other ideal, simply
because it is the one that necessitates the
State and Church control of men and
women.
Doubtless there are people who continue
to consider love above dollars and cents.
Particularly this is true of that class
whom economic necessity has forced to
become self-supporting. The
tremendous change in woman's position,
wrought by that mighty factor, is indeed
phenomenal when we reflect that it is
but a short time since she has entered the
industrial arena. Six million women
wage workers; six million women, who
have equal right with men to be
exploited, to be robbed, to go on strike;
aye, to starve even. Anything more, my
lord? Yes, six million wage workers in
every walk of life, from the highest brain
work to the mines and railroad tracks;
yes, even detectives and policemen.
Surely the emancipation is complete.
Yet with all that, but a very small
number of the vast army of women wage
workers look upon work as a permanent
issue, in the same light as does man. No
matter how decrepit the latter, he has
been taught to be independent, selfsupporting. Oh, I know that no one is
really independent in our economic
treadmill; still, the poorest specimen of a
man hates to be a parasite; to be known
as such, at any rate.
The woman considers her position as
worker transitory, to be thrown aside for
the first bidder. That is why it is
infinitely harder to organize women than
men. "Why should I join a union? I am
going to get married, to have a home."
Has she not been taught from infancy to
look upon that as her ultimate calling?
She learns soon enough that the home,
though not so large a prison as the
factory, has more solid doors and bars.
It has a keeper so faithful that naught can
escape him. The most tragic part,
however, is that the home no longer
frees her from wage slavery; it only
increases her task.
According to the latest statistics
submitted before a Committee "on labor
and wages, and congestion of
population," ten per cent. of the wage
workers in New York City alone are
married, yet they must continue to work
at the most poorly paid labor in the
world. Add to this horrible aspect the
drudgery of housework, and what
remains of the protection and glory of
the home? As a matter of fact, even the
middle-class girl in marriage can not
speak of her home, since it is the man
who creates her sphere. It is not
important whether the husband is a brute
or a darling. What I wish to prove is that
marriage guarantees woman a home only
by the grace of her husband. There she
moves about in HIS home, year after
year, until her aspect of life and human
affairs becomes as flat, narrow, and drab
as her surroundings. Small wonder if
she becomes a nag, petty, quarrelsome,
gossipy, unbearable, thus driving the
man from the house. She could not go,
if she wanted to; there is no place to go.
Besides, a short period of married life, of
complete surrender of all faculties,
absolutely incapacitates the average
woman for the outside world. She
136
becomes reckless in appearance, clumsy
in her movements, dependent in her
decisions, cowardly in her judgment, a
weight and a bore, which most men
grow to hate and despise. Wonderfully
inspiring atmosphere for the bearing of
life, is it not?
But the child, how is it to be protected, if
not for marriage? After all, is not that
the most important consideration? The
sham, the hypocrisy of it! Marriage
protecting the child, yet thousands of
children destitute and homeless.
Marriage protecting the child, yet orphan
asylums and reformatories overcrowded,
the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty
to Children keeping busy in rescuing the
little victims from "loving" parents, to
place them under more loving care, the
Gerry Society. Oh, the mockery of it!
Marriage may have the power to bring
the horse to water, but has it ever made
him drink? The law will place the father
under arrest, and put him in convict's
clothes; but has that ever stilled the
hunger of the child? If the parent has no
work, or if he hides his identity, what
does marriage do then? It invokes the
law to bring the man to "justice," to put
him safely behind closed doors; his
labor, however, goes not to the child, but
to the State. The child receives but a
blighted memory of his father's stripes.
As to the protection of the woman,-therein lies the curse of marriage. Not
that it really protects her, but the very
idea is so revolting, such an outrage and
insult on life, so degrading to human
dignity, as to forever condemn this
parasitic institution.
It is like that other paternal arrangement-capitalism. It robs man of his
birthright, stunts his growth, poisons his
body, keeps him in ignorance, in
poverty, and dependence, and then
institutes charities that thrive on the last
vestige of man's self-respect.
The institution of marriage makes a
parasite of woman, an absolute
dependent. It incapacitates her for life's
struggle, annihilates her social
consciousness, paralyzes her
imagination, and then imposes its
gracious protection, which is in reality a
snare, a travesty on human character.
If motherhood is the highest fulfillment
of woman's nature, what other protection
does it need, save love and freedom?
Marriage but defiles, outrages, and
corrupts her fulfillment. Does it not say
to woman, Only when you follow me
shall you bring forth life? Does it not
condemn her to the block, does it not
degrade and shame her if she refuses to
buy her right to motherhood by selling
herself? Does not marriage only
sanction motherhood, even though
conceived in hatred, in compulsion?
Yet, if motherhood be of free choice, of
love, of ecstasy, of defiant passion, does
it not place a crown of thorns upon an
innocent head and carve in letters of
blood the hideous epithet, Bastard?
Were marriage to contain all the virtues
claimed for it, its crimes against
motherhood would exclude it forever
from the realm of love.
Love, the strongest and deepest element
in all life, the harbinger of hope, of joy,
of ecstasy; love, the defier of all laws, of
all conventions; love, the freest, the most
powerful moulder of human destiny;
how can such an all-compelling force be
synonymous with that poor little State
and Church-begotten weed, marriage?
Free love? As if love is anything but
free! Man has bought brains, but all the
millions in the world have failed to buy
love. Man has subdued bodies, but all
the power on earth has been unable to
subdue love. Man has conquered whole
137
nations, but all his armies could not
conquer love. Man has chained and
fettered the spirit, but he has been utterly
helpless before love. High on a throne,
with all the splendor and pomp his gold
can command, man is yet poor and
desolate, if love passes him by. And if it
stays, the poorest hovel is radiant with
warmth, with life and color. Thus love
has the magic power to make of a beggar
a king. Yes, love is free; it can dwell in
no other atmosphere. In freedom it gives
itself unreservedly, abundantly,
completely. All the laws on the statutes,
all the courts in the universe, cannot tear
it from the soil, once love has taken root.
If, however, the soil is sterile, how can
marriage make it bear fruit? It is like the
last desperate struggle of fleeting life
against death.
Love needs no protection; it is its own
protection. So long as love begets life
no child is deserted, or hungry, or
famished for the want of affection. I
know this to be true. I know women
who became mothers in freedom by the
men they loved. Few children in
wedlock enjoy the care, the protection,
the devotion free motherhood is capable
of bestowing.
The defenders of authority dread the
advent of a free motherhood, lest it will
rob them of their prey. Who would fight
wars? Who would create wealth? Who
would make the policeman, the jailer, if
woman were to refuse the indiscriminate
breeding of children? The race, the race!
shouts the king, the president, the
capitalist, the priest. The race must be
preserved, though woman be degraded to
a mere machine,--and the marriage
institution is our only safety valve
against the pernicious sex awakening of
woman. But in vain these frantic efforts
to maintain a state of bondage. In vain,
too, the edicts of the Church, the mad
attacks of rulers, in vain even the arm of
the law. Woman no longer wants to be a
party to the production of a race of
sickly, feeble, decrepit, wretched human
beings, who have neither the strength
nor moral courage to throw off the yoke
of poverty and slavery. Instead she
desires fewer and better children,
begotten and reared in love and through
free choice; not by compulsion, as
marriage imposes. Our pseudo-moralists
have yet to learn the deep sense of
responsibility toward the child, that love
in freedom has awakened in the breast of
woman. Rather would she forego
forever the glory of motherhood than
bring forth life in an atmosphere that
breathes only destruction and death.
And if she does become a mother, it is to
give to the child the deepest and best her
being can yield. To grow with the child
is her motto; she knows that in that
manner alone can she help build true
manhood and womanhood.
Ibsen must have had a vision of a free
mother, when, with a master stroke, he
portrayed Mrs. Alving. She was the
ideal mother because she had outgrown
marriage and all its horrors, because she
had broken her chains, and set her spirit
free to soar until it returned a
personality, regenerated and strong.
Alas, it was too late to rescue her life's
joy, her Oswald; but not too late to
realize that love in freedom is the only
condition of a beautiful life. Those who,
like Mrs. Alving, have paid with blood
and tears for their spiritual awakening,
repudiate marriage as an imposition, a
shallow, empty mockery. They know,
whether love last but one brief span of
time or for eternity, it is the only
creative, inspiring, elevating basis for a
new race, a new world.
In our present pygmy state love is indeed
a stranger to most people.
138
Misunderstood and shunned, it rarely
takes root; or if it does, it soon withers
and dies. Its delicate fiber can not
endure the stress and strain of the daily
grind. Its soul is too complex to adjust
itself to the slimy woof of our social
fabric. It weeps and moans and suffers
with those who have need of it, yet lack
the capacity to rise to love's summit.
Some day, some day men and women
will rise, they will reach the mountain
peak, they will meet big and strong and
free, ready to receive, to partake, and to
bask in the golden rays of love. What
fancy, what imagination, what poetic
genius can foresee even approximately
the potentialities of such a force in the
life of men and women. If the world is
ever to give birth to true companionship
and oneness, not marriage, but love will
be the parent.
http://womenshistory.about.com/library/
etext/bl_eg_anb_marriage_love.htm
_________________________________
The Case for Birth Control
first published in the Woman Citizen,
Vol. 8, February 23, 1924, pages 1718.
by Margaret Sanger
Everywhere we look, we see poverty and
large families going hand in hand. We
see hordes of children whose parents
cannot feed, clothe, or educate even one
half of the number born to them. We see
sick, harassed, broken mothers whose
health and nerves cannot bear the strain
of further child-bearing. We see fathers
growing despondent and desperate,
because their labor cannot bring the
necessary wage to keep their growing
families. We see that those parents who
are least fit to reproduce the race are
having the largest number of children;
while people of wealth, leisure, and
education are having small families.
It is generally conceded by sociologists
and scientists that a nation cannot go on
indefinitely multiplying without
eventually reaching the point when
population presses upon means of
subsistence. While in this country there
is perhaps no need for immediate alarm
on this account, there are many other
reasons for demanding birth control. At
present, for the poor mother, there is
only one alternative to the necessity of
bearing children year after year,
regardless of her health, of the welfare of
the children she already has, and of the
income of the family. This alternative is
abortion, which is so common as to be
almost universal, especially where there
are rigid laws against imparting
information for the prevention of
conception. It has been estimated that
there are about one million abortions in
the United States each year.
To force poor mothers to resort to this
dangerous and healthdestroying method
of curtailing their families is cruel,
wicked, and heartless, and it is often the
mothers who care most about the welfare
of their children who are willing to
undergo any pain or risk to prevent the
coming of infants for whom they cannot
properly care.
There are definite reasons when and why
parents should not have children, which
will be conceded by most thoughtful
people.
First -- Children should not be born
when either parent has an inheritable
disease, such as insanity, feeblemindedness, epilepsy, or syphilis.
139
Second -- When the mother is suffering
from tuberculosis, kidney disease, heart
disease, or pelvic deformity.
Third -- When either parent has
gonorrhea. This disease in the mother is
the cause of 90 percent of blindness in
newborn babies.
Fourth -- When children already born are
not normal, even though both parents are
in good physical and mental condition.
Fifth -- Not until the woman is twentythree years old and the man twenty-five.
Sixth -- Not until the previous baby is at
least three years old. This gives a year to
recover from the physical ordeal of the
birth of the baby, a year to rest, be
normal and enjoy her motherhood, and
another year to prepare for the coming of
the next.
We want mothers to be fit. We want
them to conceive in joy and gladness.
We want them to carry their babies
during the nine months in a sound and
healthy body and with a happy, joyous,
hopeful mind. It is almost impossible to
imagine the suffering caused to women,
the mental agony they endure, when
their days and nights are haunted by the
fear of undesired pregnancy.
Seventh -- Children should not be born
to parents whose economic
circumstances do not guarantee enough
to provide the children with the
necessities of life.
A couple who can take care of two
children and bring them up decently in
health and comfort, give them an
education and start them fairly in life, do
more for their country and for mankind
than the couple who recklessly
reproduce ten or twelve children, some
of them to die in infancy, others to
survive but to enter the mill or factory at
an early age, and all to sink to that level
of degradation where charity, either state
or private, is necessary to keep them
alive. The man who cannot support three
children should not have ten,
notwithstanding all pleas of the
militarists for numbers.
Eighth -- A woman should not bear
children when exhausted from labor.
This especially applies to women who
marry after spending several years in
industrial or commercial life.
Conception should not take place until
she is in good health and has overcome
her fatigue.
Ninth -- Not for two years after marriage
should a couple undertake the great
responsibility of becoming parents.
Thousands of young people enter
marriage without the faintest idea of
what marriage involves. They do not
know its spiritual responsibilities. If
children are born quickly and plentifully,
people consider that the marriage is
justified. I claim that this is barbaric and
wrong. It is wrong for the wife, for the
man, for the children.
It is impossible for two young people to
really know each other until they have
lived together in marriage. After the
closeness and intimacy of that relation
there often comes to the woman a rude
awakening; the devoted lover becomes
careless and dissatisfied. If she becomes
pregnant immediately, she becomes
physically disturbed, nervous, and
irritable. The girl has changed, and the
boy who knew her as a happy smiling
sweetheart finds her disagreeable and
disgruntled. Of course thousands of
people learn to adjust themselves.
Nevertheless, I maintain that young
140
people should marry early and wait at
least two years to adjust their own lives,
to play and read together and to build up
a cultural and spiritual friendship. Then
will come the intense desire to call into
being a little child to share their love and
happiness. When children are conceived
in love and born into an atmosphere of
happiness, then will parenthood be a
glorious privilege, and the children will
grow to resemble gods. This can only be
obtained through the knowledge and
practice of Birth Control.
P.S. -- The American Birth Control
League desires that the instruction in
birth control should be given by the
medical profession. Only through
individual care and treatment can a
woman be given the best and safest
means of controlling her offspring. We
do not favor the indiscriminate diffusion
of unreliable and unsafe birth control
advice.
http://womenshistory.about.com/library/
etext/bl_sanger_1924.htm
_________________________________
Joyce Carol Oates: I Saw A Woman
Walking Into A Plate Glass Window
I saw a woman walking into a plate glass
window
as if walking into the sky.
I saw her death striding forward to meet
her,
shadowed in flawless glass.
Dogwood blossoms drew her, a lilacdrugged air,
it was beauty's old facade,
blinding,
blind: the transparency
that, touched, turns opaque.
buckled in anger
and dissolved in puzzle parts about her
head.
*
*
*
I saw a woman walking into sunshine
confident and composed
and tranquil to the last.
I saw a woman walking into something
that had seemed nothing.
As we commonly tell ourselves.
The trick to beauty is its being
unassimilable,
a galaxy of glittering reflections,
each puzzle part in place.
Not this raining of glass and blood
about the amazed head.
The unfathomable depths into which she
stepped became
the merest surface,
Pain and noise.
*
*
*
I saw a woman walking into her broken
body
as if she were a bride.
I saw her soul struck to the ground
because mere space
could not bear it aloft.
I saw how the window at last framed
only what was there,
beyond the frame,
that could not fall.
My throat filled with blood:
you would not have believed how
swiftly.
http://jco.usfca.edu/time.html#excerpt
_________________________________
The frieze into which she stepped
141
GETTING MARRIED, PREFACE
TO
Bernard Shaw
1908
THE REVOLT AGAINST
MARRIAGE
There is no subject on which more
dangerous nonsense is talked and
thought than marriage. If the mischief
stopped at talking and
thinking it would be bad enough; but it
goes further, into
disastrous anarchical action. Because our
marriage law is inhuman
and unreasonable to the point of
downright abomination, the bolder
and more rebellious spirits form illicit
unions, defiantly sending
cards round to their friends announcing
what they have
done. Young women come to me and
ask me whether I think they ought
to consent to marry the man they have
decided to live with; and
they are perplexed and astonished when
I, who am supposed (heaven
knows why!) to have the most advanced
views attainable on the
subject, urge them on no account to
compromize themselves without
the security of an authentic wedding
ring. They cite the example
of George Eliot, who formed an illicit
union with Lewes. They
quote a saying attributed to Nietzsche,
that a married philosopher
is ridiculous, though the men of their
choice are not
philosophers. When they finally give up
the idea of reforming our
marriage institutions by private
enterprise and personal
righteousness, and consent to be led to
the Registry or even to
the altar, they insist on first arriving at
an explicit
understanding that both parties are to be
perfectly free to sip
every flower and change every hour, as
their fancy may dictate, in
spite of the legal bond. I do not observe
that their unions prove
less monogamic than other people's:
rather the contrary, in fact;
consequently, I do not know whether
they make less fuss than
ordinary people when either party claims
the benefit of the
treaty; but the existence of the treaty
shews the same anarchical
notion that the law can be set aside by
any two private persons by
the simple process of promising one
another to ignore it.
MARRIAGE NEVERTHELESS
INEVITABLE
Now most laws are, and all laws ought
to be, stronger than the
strongest individual. Certainly the
marriage law is. The only
people who successfully evade it are
those who actually avail
themselves of its shelter by pretending to
be married when they
are not, and by Bohemians who have no
position to lose and no
career to be closed. In every other case
open violation of the
marriage laws means either downright
ruin or such inconvenience
and disablement as a prudent man or
woman would get married ten
times over rather than face. And these
disablements and
142
inconveniences are not even the price of
freedom; for, as Brieux
has shewn so convincingly in Les
Hannetons, an avowedly illicit
union is often found in practice to be as
tyrannical and as hard
to escape from as the worst legal one.
We may take it then that when a joint
domestic establishment,
involving questions of children or
property, is contemplated,
marriage is in effect compulsory upon all
normal people; and until
the law is altered there is nothing for us
but to make the best of
it as it stands. Even when no such
establishment is desired,
clandestine irregularities are negligible
as an alternative to
marriage. How common they are nobody
knows; for in spite of the
powerful protection afforded to the
parties by the law of libel,
and the readiness of society on various
other grounds to be
hoodwinked by the keeping up of the
very thinnest appearances,
most of them are probably never
suspected. But they are neither
dignified nor safe and comfortable,
which at once rules them out
for normal decent people. Marriage
remains practically inevitable;
and the sooner we acknowledge this, the
sooner we shall set to
work to make it decent and reasonable.
WHAT DOES THE WORD
MARRIAGE MEAN
However much we may all suffer
through marriage, most of us think
so little about it that we regard it as a
fixed part of the order
of nature, like gravitation. Except for
this error, which may be
regarded as constant, we use the word
with reckless looseness,
meaning a dozen different things by it,
and yet always assuming
that to a respectable man it can have
only one meaning. The pious
citizen, suspecting the Socialist (for
example) of unmentionable
things, and asking him heatedly whether
he wishes to abolish
marriage, is infuriated by a sense of
unanswerable quibbling when
the Socialist asks him what particular
variety of marriage he
means: English civil marriage,
sacramental marriage, indissoluble
Roman Catholic marriage, marriage of
divorced persons, Scotch
marriage, Irish marriage, French,
German, Turkish, or South
Dakotan marriage. In Sweden, one of the
most highly civilized
countries in the world, a marriage is
dissolved if both parties
wish it, without any question of conduct.
That is what marriage
means in Sweden. In Clapham that is
what they call by the
senseless name of Free Love. In the
British Empire we have
unlimited Kulin polygamy, Muslim
polygamy limited to four wives,
child marriages, and, nearer home,
marriages of first cousins: all
of them abominations in the eyes of
many worthy persons. Not only
may the respectable British champion of
marriage mean any of these
widely different institutions; sometimes
he does not mean marriage
at all. He means monogamy, chastity,
temperance, respectability,
morality, Christianity, anti-socialism,
and a dozen other things
that have no necessary connection with
marriage. He often means
143
something that he dare not avow:
ownership of the person of
another human being, for instance. And
he never tells the truth
about his own marriage either to himself
or any one else.
With those individualists who in the
mid-XIXth century dreamt of
doing away with marriage altogether on
the ground that it is a
private concern between the two parties
with which society has
nothing to do, there is now no need to
deal. The vogue of "the
self-regarding action" has passed; and it
may be assumed without
argument that unions for the purpose of
establishing a family
will continue to be registered and
regulated by the State.
Such registration is marriage, and will
continue to be called
marriage long after the conditions of the
registration have
changed so much that no citizen now
living would recognize them as
marriage conditions at all if he revisited
the earth. There is
therefore no question of abolishing
marriage; but there is a very
pressing question of improving its
conditions. I have never met
anybody really in favor of maintaining
marriage as it exists in
England to-day. A Roman Catholic may
obey his Church by assenting
verbally to the doctrine of indissoluble
marriage. But nobody
worth counting believes directly,
frankly, and instinctively that
when a person commits a murder and is
put into prison for twenty
years for it, the free and innocent
husband or wife of that
murderer should remain bound by the
marriage. To put it briefly, a
contract for better for worse is a contract
that should not be
tolerated. As a matter of fact it is not
tolerated fully even by
the Roman Catholic Church; for Roman
Catholic marriages can be
dissolved, if not by the temporal Courts,
by the Pope.
Indissoluble marriage is an academic
figment, advocated only by
celibates and by comfortably married
people who imagine that if
other couples are uncomfortable it must
be their own fault, just
as rich people are apt to imagine that if
other people are poor it
serves them right. There is always some
means of dissolution. The
conditions of dissolution may vary
widely, from those on which
Henry VIII. procured his divorce from
Katharine of Arragon to the
pleas on which American wives obtain
divorces (for instance,
"mental anguish" caused by the
husband's neglect to cut his
toenails); but there is always some point
at which the theory
of the inviolable better-for-worse
marriage breaks down in
practice. South Carolina has indeed
passed what is called a freak
law declaring that a marriage shall not
be dissolved under any
circumstances; but such an absurdity
will probably be repealed or
amended by sheer force of
circumstances before these words are in
print. The only question to be considered
is, What shall the
conditions of the dissolution be?
SURVIVALS OF SEX SLAVERY
144
If we adopt the common romantic
assumption that the object of
marriage is bliss, then the very strongest
reason for dissolving a
marriage is that it shall be disagreeable
to one or other or both
of the parties. If we accept the view that
the object of marriage
is to provide for the production and
rearing of children, then
childlessness should be a conclusive
reason for dissolution. As
neither of these causes entitles married
persons to divorce it is
at once clear that our marriage law is not
founded on either
assumption. What it is really founded on
is the morality of the
tenth commandment, which English
women will one day succeed in
obliterating from the walls of our
churches by refusing to enter
any building where they are publicly
classed with a man's house,
his ox, and his ass, as his purchased
chattels. In this morality
female adultery is malversation by the
woman and theft by the man,
whilst male adultery with an unmarried
woman is not an offence at
all. But though this is not only the theory
of our marriage laws,
but the practical morality of many of us,
it is no longer an
avowed morality, nor does its
persistence depend on marriage; for
the abolition of marriage would, other
things remaining unchanged,
leave women more effectually enslaved
than they now are. We shall
come to the question of the economic
dependence of women on men
later on; but at present we had better
confine ourselves to the
theories of marriage which we are not
ashamed to acknowledge and
defend, and upon which, therefore,
marriage reformers will be
obliged to proceed.
We may, I think, dismiss from the field
of practical politics the
extreme sacerdotal view of marriage as a
sacred and indissoluble
covenant, because though reinforced by
unhappy marriages as all
fanaticisms are reinforced by human
sacrifices, it has been
reduced to a private and socially
inoperative eccentricity by the
introduction of civil marriage and
divorce. Theoretically, our
civilly married couples are to a Catholic
as unmarried couples
are: that is, they are living in open sin.
Practically, civilly
married couples are received in society,
by Catholics and everyone
else, precisely as sacramentally married
couples are; and so are
people who have divorced their wives or
husbands and married
again. And yet marriage is enforced by
public opinion with such
ferocity that the least suggestion of
laxity in its support is
fatal to even the highest and strongest
reputations, although
laxity of conduct is winked at with
grinning indulgence; so that
we find the austere Shelley denounced as
a fiend in human form,
whilst Nelson, who openly left his wife
and formed a menage a
trois with Sir William and Lady
Hamilton, was idolized. Shelley
might have had an illegitimate child in
every county in England if
he had done so frankly as a sinner. His
unpardonable offence was
that he attacked marriage as an
institution. We feel a strange
145
anguish of terror and hatred against him,
as against one who
threatens us with a mortal injury. What
is the element in his
proposals that produces this effect?
The answer of the specialists is the one
already alluded to: that
the attack on marriage is an attack on
property; so that Shelley
was something more hateful to a
husband than a horse thief: to
wit, a wife thief, and something more
hateful to a wife than a
burglar: namely, one who would steal
her husband's house from over
her head, and leave her destitute and
nameless on the streets.
Now, no doubt this accounts for a good
deal of anti-Shelleyan
prejudice: a prejudice so deeply rooted
in our habits that, as I
have shewn in my play, men who are
bolder freethinkers than
Shelley himself can no more bring
themselves to commit adultery
than to commit any common theft,
whilst women who loathe sex
slavery more fiercely than Mary
Wollstonecraft are unable to face
the insecurity and discredit of the
vagabondage which is the
masterless woman's only alternative to
celibacy. But in spite of
all this there is a revolt against marriage
which has spread so
rapidly within my recollection that
though we all still assume the
existence of a huge and dangerous
majority which regards the least
hint of scepticism as to the beauty and
holiness of marriage as
infamous and abhorrent, I sometimes
wonder why it is so difficult
to find an authentic living member of
this dreaded army of
convention outside the ranks of the
people who never think about
public questions at all, and who, for all
their numerical weight
and apparently invincible prejudices,
accept social changes to-day
as tamely as their forefathers accepted
the Reformation under
Henry and Edward, the Restoration
under Mary, and, after Mary's
death, the shandygaff which Elizabeth
compounded from both
doctrines and called the Articles of the
Church of England. If
matters were left to these simple folk,
there would never be any
changes at all; and society would perish
like a snake that could
not cast its skins. Nevertheless the snake
does change its skin in
spite of them; and there are signs that
our marriage-law skin is
causing discomfort to thoughtful people
and will presently be cast
whether the others are satisfied with it or
not. The question
therefore arises: What is there in
marriage that makes the
thoughtful people so uncomfortable?
A NEW ATTACK ON MARRIAGE
The answer to this question is an answer
which everybody knows and
nobody likes to give. What is driving our
ministers of religion
and statesmen to blurt it out at last is the
plain fact that
marriage is now beginning to depopulate
the country with such
alarming rapidity that we are forced to
throw aside our modesty
like people who, awakened by an alarm
of fire, rush into the
streets in their nightdresses or in no
dresses at all. The
146
fictitious Free Lover, who was supposed
to attack marriage
because it thwarted his inordinate
affections and prevented him
from making life a carnival, has
vanished and given place to the
very real, very strong, very austere
avenger of outraged decency
who declares that the licentiousness of
marriage, now that it no
longer recruits the race, is destroying it.
As usual, this change of front has not yet
been noticed by our
newspaper controversialists and by the
suburban season-ticket
holders whose minds the newspapers
make. They still defend the
citadel on the side on which nobody is
attacking it, and leave its
weakest front undefended.
The religious revolt against marriage is a
very old one.
Christianity began with a fierce attack on
marriage; and to this
day the celibacy of the Roman Catholic
priesthood is a standing
protest against its compatibility with the
higher life. St. Paul's
reluctant sanction of marriage; his
personal protest that he
countenanced it of necessity and against
his own conviction; his
contemptuous "better to marry than to
burn" is only out of date in
respect of his belief that the end of the
world was at hand and
that there was therefore no longer any
population question. His
instinctive recoil from its worst aspect as
a slavery to pleasure
which induces two people to accept
slavery to one another has
remained an active force in the world to
this day, and is now
stirring more uneasily than ever. We
have more and more Pauline
celibates whose objection to marriage is
the intolerable indignity
of being supposed to desire or live the
married life as ordinarily
conceived. Every thoughtful and
observant minister of religion is
troubled by the determination of his
flock to regard marriage as a
sanctuary for pleasure, seeing as he does
that the known
libertines of his parish are visibly
suffering much less from
intemperance than many of the married
people who stigmatize them
as monsters of vice.
A FORGOTTEN CONFERENCE OF
MARRIED MEN
The late Hugh Price Hughes, an eminent
Methodist divine, once
organized in London a conference of
respectable men to consider
the subject. Nothing came of it (nor
indeed could have come of it
in the absence of women); but it had its
value as giving the young
sociologists present, of whom I was one,
an authentic notion of
what a picked audience of respectable
men understood by married
life. It was certainly a staggering
revelation. Peter the Great
would have been shocked; Byron would
have been horrified; Don Juan
would have fled from the conference
into a monastery. The
respectable men all regarded the
marriage ceremony as a rite which
absolved them from the laws of health
and temperance; inaugurated
a life-long honeymoon; and placed their
pleasures on exactly the
147
same footing as their prayers. It seemed
entirely proper and
natural to them that out of every twentyfour hours of their lives
they should pass eight shut up in one
room with their wives alone,
and this, not birdlike, for the mating
season, but all the year
round and every year. How they settled
even such minor questions
as to which party should decide whether
and how much the window
should be open and how many blankets
should be on the bed, and at
what hour they should go to bed and get
up so as to avoid
disturbing one another's sleep, seemed
insoluble questions to me.
But the members of the conference did
not seem to mind. They were
content to have the whole national
housing problem treated on a
basis of one room for two people. That
was the essence of marriage
for them.
Please remember, too, that there was
nothing in their
circumstances to check intemperance.
They were men of business:
that is, men for the most part engaged in
routine work which
exercized neither their minds nor their
bodies to the full pitch
of their capacities. Compared with
statesmen, first-rate
professional men, artists, and even with
laborers and artisans as
far as muscular exertion goes, they were
underworked, and could
spare the fine edge of their faculties and
the last few inches of
their chests without being any the less fit
for their daily
routine. If I had adopted their habits, a
startling deterioration
would have appeared in my writing
before the end of a fortnight,
and frightened me back to what they
would have considered an
impossible asceticism. But they paid no
penalty of which they were
conscious. They had as much health as
they wanted: that is, they
did not feel the need of a doctor. They
enjoyed their smokes,
their meals, their respectable clothes,
their affectionate games
with their children, their prospects of
larger profits or higher
salaries, their Saturday half holidays and
Sunday walks, and the
rest of it. They did less than two hours
work a day and took from
seven to nine office hours to do it in.
And they were no good for
any mortal purpose except to go on
doing it. They were respectable
only by the standard they themselves had
set. Considered seriously
as electors governing an empire through
their votes, and choosing
and maintaining its religious and moral
institutions by their
powers of social persecution, they were
a black-coated army of
calamity. They were incapable of
comprehending the industries they
were engaged in, the laws under which
they lived, or the relation
of their country to other countries. They
lived the lives of old
men contentedly. They were timidly
conservative at the age at
which every healthy human being ought
to be obstreperously
revolutionary. And their wives went
through the routine of the
kitchen, nursery, and drawing-room just
as they went through the
routine of the office. They had all, as
they called it, settled
148
down, like balloons that had lost their
lifting margin of gas; and
it was evident that the process of settling
down would go on until
they settled into their graves. They read
old-fashioned newspapers
with effort, and were just taking with
avidity to a new sort of
paper, costing a halfpenny, which they
believed to be
extraordinarily bright and attractive, and
which never really
succeeded until it became extremely
dull, discarding all serious
news and replacing it by vapid tittletattle, and substituting for
political articles informed by at least
some pretence of knowledge
of economics, history, and constitutional
law, such paltry follies
and sentimentalities, snobberies and
partisaneries, as ignorance
can understand and irresponsibility
relish.
What they called patriotism was a
conviction that because they
were born in Tooting or Camberwell,
they were the natural
superiors of Beethoven, of Rodin, of
Ibsen, of Tolstoy and all
other benighted foreigners. Those of
them who did not think it
wrong to go to the theatre liked above
everything a play in which
the hero was called Dick; was
continually fingering a briar pipe;
and, after being overwhelmed with
admiration and affection
through three acts, was finally rewarded
with the legal possession
of a pretty heroine's person on the
strength of a staggering lack
of virtue. Indeed their only conception of
the meaning of the word
virtue was abstention from stealing other
men's wives or from
refusing to marry their daughters.
As to law, religion, ethics, and
constitutional government, any
counterfeit could impose on them. Any
atheist could pass himself
off on them as a bishop, any anarchist as
a judge, any despot as a
Whig, any sentimental socialist as a
Tory, any philtre-monger or
witch-finder as a man of science, any
phrase-maker as a statesman.
Those who did not believe the story of
Jonah and the great fish
were all the readier to believe that metals
can be transmuted and
all diseases cured by radium, and that
men can live for two
hundred years by drinking sour milk.
Even these credulities
involved too severe an intellectual effort
for many of them: it
was easier to grin and believe nothing.
They maintained their
respect for themselves by "playing the
game" (that is, doing what
everybody else did), and by being good
judges of hats, ties, dogs,
pipes, cricket, gardens, flowers, and the
like. They were capable
of discussing each other's solvency and
respectability with some
shrewdness, and could carry out quite
complicated systems of
paying visits and "knowing" one
another. They felt a little vulgar
when they spent a day at Margate, and
quite distinguished and
travelled when they spent it at Boulogne.
They were, except as to
their clothes, "not particular": that is,
they could put up with
ugly sights and sounds, unhealthy
smells, and inconvenient houses,
149
with inhuman apathy and callousness.
They had, as to adults, a
theory that human nature is so poor that
it is useless to try to
make the world any better, whilst as to
children they believed
that if they were only sufficiently
lectured and whipped, they
could be brought to a state of moral
perfection such as no fanatic
has ever ascribed to his deity. Though
they were not intentionally
malicious, they practised the most
appalling cruelties from mere
thoughtlessness, thinking nothing of
imprisoning men and women for
periods up to twenty years for breaking
into their houses; of
treating their children as wild beasts to
be tamed by a system of
blows and imprisonment which they
called education; and of keeping
pianos in their houses, not for musical
purposes, but to torment
their daughters with a senseless stupidity
that would have
revolted an inquisitor.
In short, dear reader, they were very like
you and me. I could
fill a hundred pages with the tale of our
imbecilities and still
leave much untold; but what I have set
down here haphazard is
enough to condemn the system that
produced us. The corner stone of
that system was the family and the
institution of marriage as we
have it to-day in England.
TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING
We must be reasonable in our domestic
ideals. I do not think that
life at a public school is altogether good
for a boy any more than
barrack life is altogether good for a
soldier. But neither is home
life altogether good. Such good as it
does, I should say, is due
to its freedom from the very atmosphere
it professes to supply.
That atmosphere is usually described as
an atmosphere of love; and
this definition should be sufficient to put
any sane person on
guard against it. The people who talk
and write as if the highest
attainable state is that of a family
stewing in love continuously
from the cradle to the grave, can hardly
have given five minutes
serious consideration to so outrageous a
proposition. They cannot
have even made up their minds as to
what they mean by love; for
when they expatiate on their thesis they
are sometimes talking
about kindness, and sometimes about
mere appetite. In either sense
they are equally far from the realities of
life. No healthy man or
animal is occupied with love in any
sense for more than a very
small fraction indeed of the time he
devotes to business and to
recreations wholly unconnected with
love. A wife entirely
preoccupied with her affection for her
husband, a mother entirely
preoccupied with her affection for her
children, may be all very
well in a book (for people who like that
kind of book); but in
actual life she is a nuisance. Husbands
may escape from her when
their business compels them to be away
from home all day; but
young children may be, and quite often
are, killed by her cuddling
and coddling and doctoring and
preaching: above all, by her
150
continuous attempts to excite precocious
sentimentality, a
practice as objectionable, and possibly as
mischievous, as the
worst tricks of the worst nursemaids.
FOR BETTER FOR WORSE
It would be hard to find any document in
practical daily use in
which these obvious truths seem so
stupidly overlooked as they are
in the marriage service. As we have
seen, the stupidity is only
apparent: the service was really only an
honest attempt to make
the best of a commercial contract of
property and slavery by
subjecting it to some religious restraint
and elevating it by some
touch of poetry. But the actual result is
that when two people are
under the influence of the most violent,
most insane, most
delusive, and most transient of passions,
they are required to
swear that they will remain in that
excited, abnormal, and
exhausting condition continuously until
death do them part. And
though of course nobody expects them to
do anything so impossible
and so unwholesome, yet the law that
regulates their relations,
and the public opinion that regulates that
law, is actually
founded on the assumption that the
marriage vow is not only
feasible but beautiful and holy, and that
if they are false to it,
they deserve no sympathy and no relief.
If all married people
really lived together, no doubt the mere
force of facts would make
an end to this inhuman nonsense in a
month, if not sooner; but it
is very seldom brought to that test. The
typical British husband
sees much less of his wife than he does
of his business partner,
his fellow clerk, or whoever works
beside him day by day. Man and
wife do not as a rule, live together: they
only breakfast
together, dine together, and sleep in the
same room. In most cases
the woman knows nothing of the man's
working life and he knows
nothing of her working life (he calls it
her home life). It is
remarkable that the very people who
romance most absurdly about
the closeness and sacredness of the
marriage tie are also those
who are most convinced that the man's
sphere and the woman's
sphere are so entirely separate that only
in their leisure moments
can they ever be together. A man as
intimate with his own wife as
a magistrate is with his clerk, or a Prime
Minister with the
leader of the Opposition, is a man in ten
thousand. The majority
of married couples never get to know
one another at all: they only
get accustomed to having the same
house, the same children, and
the same income, which is quite a
different matter. The
comparatively few men who work at
home--writers, artists, and to
some extent clergymen--have to effect
some sort of segregation
within the house or else run a heavy risk
of overstraining their
domestic relations. When the pair is so
poor that it can afford
only a single room, the strain is
intolerable: violent quarrelling
is the result. Very few couples can live
in a single-roomed
151
tenement without exchanging blows
quite frequently. In the
leisured classes there is often no real
family life at all. The
boys are at a public school; the girls are
in the schoolroom in
charge of a governess; the husband is at
his club or in a set
which is not his wife's; and the
institution of marriage enjoys
the credit of a domestic peace which is
hardly more intimate than
the relations of prisoners in the same
gaol or guests at the same
garden party. Taking these two cases of
the single room and the
unearned income as the extremes, we
might perhaps locate at a
guess whereabout on the scale between
them any particular family
stands. But it is clear enough that the
one-roomed end, though its
conditions enable the marriage vow to be
carried out with the
utmost attainable exactitude, is far less
endurable in practice,
and far more mischievous in its effect on
the parties concerned,
and through them on the community,
than the other end. Thus we see
that the revolt against marriage is by no
means only a revolt
against its sordidness as a survival of sex
slavery. It may even
plausibly be maintained that this is
precisely the part of it that
works most smoothly in practice. The
revolt is also against its
sentimentality, its romance, its
Amorism, even against its
enervating happiness.
WANTED: AN IMMORAL
STATESMAN
We now see that the statesman who
undertakes to deal with marriage
will have to face an amazingly
complicated public opinion. In
fact, he will have to leave opinion as far
as possible out of the
question, and deal with human nature
instead. For even if there
could be any real public opinion in a
society like ours, which is
a mere mob of classes, each with its own
habits and prejudices, it
would be at best a jumble of
superstitions and interests, taboos
and hypocrisies, which could not be
reconciled in any coherent
enactment. It would probably proclaim
passionately that it does
not matter in the least what sort of
children we have, or how few
or how many, provided the children are
legitimate. Also that it
does not matter in the least what sort of
adults we have, provided
they are married. No statesman worth
the name can possibly act on
these views. He is bound to prefer one
healthy illegitimate child
to ten rickety legitimate ones, and one
energetic and capable
unmarried couple to a dozen inferior
apathetic husbands and wives.
If it could be proved that illicit unions
produce three children
each and marriages only one and a half,
he would be bound to
encourage illicit unions and discourage
and even penalize
marriage. The common notion that the
existing forms of marriage
are not political contrivances, but sacred
ethical obligations to
which everything, even the very
existence of the human race, must
be sacrificed if necessary (and this is
what the vulgar morality
152
we mostly profess on the subject comes
to) is one on which no sane
Government could act for a moment; and
yet it influences, or is
believed to influence, so many votes,
that no Government will
touch the marriage question if it can
possibly help it, even when
there is a demand for the extension of
marriage, as in the case of
the recent long-delayed Act legalizing
marriage with a deceased
wife's sister. When a reform in the other
direction is needed (for
example, an extension of divorce), not
even the existence of the
most unbearable hardships will induce
our statesmen to move so
long as the victims submit sheepishly,
though when they take the
remedy into their own hands an inquiry
is soon begun. But what is
now making some action in the matter
imperative is neither the
sufferings of those who are tied for life
to criminals, drunkards,
physically unsound and dangerous
mates, and worthless and
unamiable people generally, nor the
immorality of the couples
condemned to celibacy by separation
orders which do not annul
their marriages, but the fall in the birth
rate. Public opinion
will not help us out of this difficulty: on
the contrary, it will,
if it be allowed, punish anybody who
mentions it. When Zola tried
to repopulate France by writing a novel
in praise of parentage,
the only comment made here was that
the book could not possibly be
translated into English, as its subject was
too improper.
WHY STATESMEN SHIRK THE
MARRIAGE QUESTION
The reform of marriage, then, will be a
very splendid and very
hazardous adventure for the Prime
Minister who takes it in hand.
He will be posted on every hoarding and
denounced in every
Opposition paper, especially in the
sporting papers, as the
destroyer of the home, the family, of
decency, of morality, of
chastity and what not. All the
commonplaces of the modern
anti-Socialist Noodle's Oration will be
hurled at him. And he will
have to proceed without the slightest
concession to it, giving the
noodles nothing but their due in the
assurance "I know how to
attain our ends better than you," and
staking his political life
on the conviction carried by that
assurance, which conviction will
depend a good deal on the certainty with
which it is made, which
again can be attained only by studying
the facts of marriage and
understanding the needs of the nation.
And, after all, he will
find that the pious commonplaces on
which he and the electorate
are agreed conceal an utter difference in
the real ends in view:
his being public, far-sighted, and
impersonal, and those of
multitudes of the electorate narrow,
personal, jealous, and
corrupt. Under such circumstances, it is
not to be wondered at
that the mere mention of the marriage
question makes a British
Cabinet shiver with apprehension and
hastily pass on to safer
153
business. Nevertheless the reform of
marriage cannot be put off
for ever. When its hour comes, what are
the points the Cabinet
will have to take up?
THE QUESTION OF POPULATION
First, it will have to make up its mind as
to how many people we
want in the country. If we want less than
at present, we must
ascertain how many less; and if we allow
the reduction to be made
by the continued operation of the present
sterilization of
marriage, we must settle how the process
is to be stopped when it
has gone far enough. But if we desire to
maintain the population
at its present figure, or to increase it, we
must take immediate
steps to induce people of moderate
means to marry earlier and to
have more children. There is less
urgency in the case of the very
poor and the very rich. They breed
recklessly: the rich because
they can afford it, and the poor because
they cannot afford the
precautions by which the artisans and the
middle classes avoid
big families. Nevertheless the population
declines, because the
high birth rate of the very poor is
counterbalanced by a huge
infantile-mortality in the slums, whilst
the very rich are also
the very few, and are becoming
sterilized by the spreading revolt
of their women against excessive
childbearing--sometimes against
any childbearing.
This last cause is important. It cannot be
removed by any economic
readjustment. If every family were
provided with 10,000 pounds a
year tomorrow, women would still
refuse more and more to continue
bearing children until they are exhausted
whilst numbers of others
are bearing no children at all. Even if
every woman bearing and
rearing a valuable child received a
handsome series of payments,
thereby making motherhood a real
profession as it ought to be, the
number of women able or willing to give
more of their lives to
gestation and nursing than three or four
children would cost them
might not be very large if the advance in
social organization and
conscience indicated by such payments
involved also the opening up
of other means of livelihood to women.
And it must be remembered
that urban civilization itself, insofar as it
is a method of
evolution (and when it is not this, it is
simply a nuisance), is a
sterilizing process as far as numbers go.
It is harder to keep up
the supply of elephants than of sparrows
and rabbits; and for the
same reason it will be harder to keep up
the supply of highly
cultivated men and women than it now is
of agricultural laborers.
Bees get out of this difficulty by a
special system of feeding
which enables a queen bee to produce
4,000 eggs a day whilst the
other females lose their sex altogether
and become workers
supporting the males in luxury and
idleness until the queen has
found her mate, when the queen kills
him and the quondam females
kill all the rest (such at least are the
accounts given by
154
romantic naturalists of the matter).
THE RIGHT TO MOTHERHOOD
This system certainly shews a much
higher development of social
intelligence than our marriage system;
but if it were physically
possible to introduce it into human
society it would be wrecked by
an opposite and not less important revolt
of women: that is, the
revolt against compulsory barrenness. In
this two classes of women
are concerned: those who, though they
have no desire for the
presence or care of children,
nevertheless feel that motherhood is
an experience necessary to their
complete psychical development
and understanding of themselves and
others, and those who, though
unable to find or unwilling to entertain a
husband, would like to
occupy themselves with the rearing of
children. My own experience
of discussing this question leads me to
believe that the one point
on which all women are in furious secret
rebellion against the
existing law is the saddling of the right
to a child with the
obligation to become the servant of a
man. Adoption, or the
begging or buying or stealing of another
woman's child, is no
remedy: it does not provide the supreme
experience of bearing the
child. No political constitution will ever
succeed or deserve to
succeed unless it includes the
recognition of an absolute right to
sexual experience, and is untainted by
the Pauline or romantic
view of such experience as sinful in
itself. And since this
experience in its fullest sense must be
carried in the case of
women to the point of childbearing, it
can only be reconciled with
the acceptance of marriage with the
child's father by legalizing
polygyny, because there are more adult
women in the country than
men. Now though polygyny prevails
throughout the greater part of
the British Empire, and is as practicable
here as in India, there
is a good deal to be said against it, and
still more to be felt.
However, let us put our feelings aside
for a moment, and consider
the question politically.
MONOGAMY, POLYGYNY AND
POLYANDRY
The number of wives permitted to a
single husband or of husbands
to a single wife under a marriage system,
is not an ethical
problem: it depends solely on the
proportion of the sexes in the
population. If in consequence of a great
war three-quarters of the
men in this country were killed, it would
be absolutely necessary
to adopt the Mohammedan allowance of
four wives to each man in
order to recruit the population. The
fundamental reason for not
allowing women to risk their lives in
battle and for giving them
the first chance of escape in all
dangerous emergencies: in short,
for treating their lives as more valuable
than male lives, is not
in the least a chivalrous reason, though
men may consent to it
under the illusion of chivalry. It is a
simple matter of
155
necessity; for if a large proportion of
women were killed or
disabled, no possible readjustment of our
marriage law could avert
the depopulation and consequent
political ruin of the country,
because a woman with several husbands
bears fewer children than a
woman with one, whereas a man can
produce as many families as he
has wives. The natural foundation of the
institution of monogamy
is not any inherent viciousness in
polygyny or polyandry, but the
hard fact that men and women are born
in about equal numbers.
Unfortunately, we kill so many of our
male children in infancy
that we are left with a surplus of adult
women which is
sufficiently large to claim attention, and
yet not large enough to
enable every man to have two wives.
Even if it were, we should be
met by an economic difficulty. A Kaffir
is rich in proportion to
the number of his wives, because the
women are the breadwinners.
But in our civilization women are not
paid for their social work
in the bearing and rearing of children
and the ordering of
households; they are quartered on the
wages of their husbands. At
least four out of five of our men could
not afford two wives
unless their wages were nearly doubled.
Would it not then be well
to try unlimited polygyny; so that the
remaining fifth could have
as many wives apiece as they could
afford? Let us see how this
would work.
THE MALE REVOLT AGAINST
POLYGYNY
Experience shews that women do not
object to polygyny when it is
customary: on the contrary, they are its
most ardent supporters.
The reason is obvious. The question, as
it presents itself in
practice to a woman, is whether it is
better to have, say, a whole
share in a tenth-rate man or a tenth share
in a first-rate man.
Substitute the word Income for the word
Man, and you will have the
question as it presents itself
economically to the dependent
woman. The woman whose instincts are
maternal, who desires
superior children more than anything
else, never hesitates. She
would take a thousandth share, if
necessary, in a husband who was
a man in a thousand, rather than have
some comparatively weedy
weakling all to herself. It is the
comparatively weedy weakling,
left mateless by polygyny, who objects.
Thus, it was not the women
of Salt Lake City nor even of America
who attacked Mormon
polygyny. It was the men. And very
naturally. On the other hand,
women object to polyandry, because
polyandry enables the best
women to monopolize all the men, just
as polygyny enables the best
men to monopolize all the women. That
is why all our ordinary men
and women are unanimous in defence of
monogamy, the men because it
excludes polygyny, and the women
because it excludes polyandry.
The women, left to themselves, would
tolerate polygyny. The men,
left to themselves, would tolerate
polyandry. But polygyny would
156
condemn a great many men, and
polyandry a great many women, to the
celibacy of neglect. Hence the resistance
any attempt to establish
unlimited polygyny always provokes,
not from the best people, but
from the mediocrities and the inferiors.
If we could get rid of
our inferiors and screw up our average
quality until mediocrity
ceased to be a reproach, thus making
every man reasonably eligible
as a father and every woman reasonably
desirable as a mother,
polygyny and polyandry would
immediately fall into sincere
disrepute, because monogamy is so
much more convenient and
economical that nobody would want to
share a husband or a wife if
he (or she) could have a sufficiently
good one all to himself (or
herself). Thus it appears that it is the
scarcity of husbands or
wives of high quality that leads woman
to polygyny and men to
polyandry, and that if this scarcity were
cured, monogamy, in the
sense of having only one husband or
wife at a time (facilities for
changing are another matter), would be
found satisfactory.
THE OLD MAID'S RIGHT TO
MOTHERHOOD
Now the right to bear children without
taking a husband could not
be confined to women who are
superfluous in the monogamic
reckoning. There is the practical
difficulty that although in our
population there are about a million
monogamically superfluous
women, yet it is quite impossible to say
of any given unmarried
woman that she is one of the
superfluous. And there is the
difficulty of principle. The right to bear a
child, perhaps the
most sacred of all women's rights, is not
one that should have any
conditions attached to it except in the
interests of race welfare.
There are many women of admirable
character, strong, capable,
independent, who dislike the domestic
habits of men; have no
natural turn for mothering and coddling
them; and find the
concession of conjugal rights to any
person under any conditions
intolerable by their self-respect. Yet the
general sense of the
community recognizes in these very
women the fittest people to
have charge of children, and trusts them,
as school mistresses and
matrons of institutions, more than
women of any other type when it
is possible to procure them for such
work. Why should the taking
of a husband be imposed on these
women as the price of their right
to maternity? I am quite unable to
answer that question. I see a
good deal of first-rate maternal ability
and sagacity spending
itself on bees and poultry and village
schools and cottage
hospitals; and I find myself repeatedly
asking myself why this
valuable strain in the national breed
should be sterilized.
Unfortunately, the very women whom
we should tempt to become
mothers for the good of the race are the
very last people to press
their services on their country in that
way. Plato long ago
pointed out the importance of being
governed by men with
157
sufficient sense of responsibility and
comprehension of public
duties to be very reluctant to undertake
the work of governing;
and yet we have taken his instruction so
little to heart that we
are at present suffering acutely from
government by gentlemen who
will stoop to all the mean shifts of
electioneering and incur all
its heavy expenses for the sake of a seat
in Parliament. But what
our sentimentalists have not yet been
told is that exactly the
same thing applies to maternity as to
government. The best mothers
are not those who are so enslaved by
their primitive instincts
that they will bear children no matter
how hard the conditions
are, but precisely those who place a very
high price on their
services, and are quite prepared to
become old maids if the price
is refused, and even to feel relieved at
their escape. Our
democratic and matrimonial institutions
may have their merits: at
all events they are mostly reforms of
something worse; but they
put a premium on want of self-respect in
certain very important
matters; and the consequence is that we
are very badly governed
and are, on the whole, an ugly, mean, illbred race.
MARRIAGE AS A MAGIC SPELL
The truth which people seem to overlook
in this matter is that the
marriage ceremony is quite useless as a
magic spell for changing
in an instant the nature of the relations of
two human beings to
one another. If a man marries a woman
after three weeks
acquaintance, and the day after meets a
woman he has known for
twenty years, he finds, sometimes to his
own irrational surprise
and his wife's equally irrational
indignation, that his wife
is a stranger to him, and the other
woman an old friend. Also,
there is no hocus pocus that can possibly
be devized with rings
and veils and vows and benedictions that
can fix either a man's or
woman's affection for twenty minutes,
much less twenty years. Even
the most affectionate couples must have
moments during which
they are far more conscious of one
another's faults than of one
another's attractions. There are couples
who dislike one another
furiously for several hours at a time;
there are couples who
dislike one another permanently; and
there are couples who never
dislike one another; but these last are
people who are incapable
of disliking anybody. If they do not
quarrel, it is not because
they are married, but because they are
not quarrelsome. The
people who are quarrelsome quarrel with
their husbands and wives
just as easily as with their servants and
relatives and
acquaintances: marriage makes no
difference. Those who talk and
write and legislate as if all this could be
prevented by making
solemn vows that it shall not happen, are
either insincere,
insane, or hopelessly stupid. There is
some sense in a contract to
perform or abstain from actions that are
reasonably within
158
voluntary control; but such contracts are
only needed to provide
against the possibility of either party
being no longer desirous
of the specified performance or
abstention. A person proposing or
accepting a contract not only to do
something but to like doing it
would be certified as mad. Yet popular
superstition credits the
wedding rite with the power of fixing
our fancies or affections
for life even under the most unnatural
conditions.
THE IMPERSONALITY OF SEX
It is necessary to lay some stress on
these points, because few
realize the extent to which we proceed
on the assumption that
marriage is a short cut to perfect and
permanent intimacy and
affection. But there is a still more
unworkable assumption which
must be discarded before discussions of
marriage can get into any
sort of touch with the facts of life. That
assumption is that the
specific relation which marriage
authorizes between the parties is
the most intimate and personal of human
relations, and embraces
all the other high human relations. Now
this is violently untrue.
Every adult knows that the relation in
question can and does exist
between entire strangers, different in
language, color, tastes,
class, civilization, morals, religion,
character: in everything,
in short, except their bodily homology
and the reproductive
appetite common to all living organisms.
Even hatred, cruelty, and
contempt are not incompatible with it;
and jealousy and murder are
as near to it as affectionate friendship. It
is true that it is a
relation beset with wildly extravagant
illusions for inexperienced
people, and that even the most
experienced people have not always
sufficient analytic faculty to disentangle
it from the sentiments,
sympathetic or abhorrent, which may
spring up through the other
relations which are compulsorily
attached to it by our laws, or
sentimentally associated with it in
romance. But the fact remains
that the most disastrous marriages are
those founded exclusively
on it, and the most successful those in
which it has been least
considered, and in which the decisive
considerations have had
nothing to do with sex, such as liking,
money, congeniality of
tastes, similarity of habits, suitability of
class, &c., &c.
It is no doubt necessary under existing
circumstances for a woman
without property to be sexually
attractive, because she must get
married to secure a livelihood; and the
illusions of sexual
attraction will cause the imagination of
young men to endow her
with every accomplishment and virtue
that can make a wife a
treasure. The attraction being thus
constantly and ruthlessly used
as a bait, both by individuals and by
society, any discussion
tending to strip it of its illusions and get
at its real natural
history is nervously discouraged. But
nothing can well be more
159
unwholesome for everybody than the
exaggeration and glorification
of an instinctive function which clouds
the reason and upsets the
judgment more than all the other
instincts put together. The
process may be pleasant and romantic;
but the consequences are
not. It would be far better for everyone,
as well as far honester,
if young people were taught that what
they call love is an
appetite which, like all other appetites, is
destroyed for the
moment by its gratification; that no
profession, promise, or
proposal made under its influence should
bind anybody; and that
its great natural purpose so completely
transcends the personal
interests of any individual or even of any
ten generations of
individuals that it should be held to be an
act of prostitution
and even a sort of blasphemy to attempt
to turn it to account by
exacting a personal return for its
gratification, whether by
process of law or not. By all means let it
be the subject of
contracts with society as to its
consequences; but to make
marriage an open trade in it as at present,
with money, board and
lodging, personal slavery, vows of
eternal exclusive personal
sentimentalities and the rest of it as the
price, is neither
virtuous, dignified, nor decent. No
husband ever secured his
domestic happiness and honor, nor has
any wife ever secured hers,
by relying on it. No private claims of
any sort should be founded
on it: the real point of honor is to take no
corrupt advantage of
it. When we hear of young women being
led astray and the like, we
find that what has led them astray is a
sedulously inculcated
false notion that the relation they are
tempted to contract is
so intensely personal, and the vows
made under the influence of
its transient infatuation so sacred and
enduring, that only an
atrociously wicked man could make
light of or forget them. What is
more, as the same fantastic errors are
inculcated in men, and the
conscientious ones therefore feel bound
in honor to stand by what
they have promised, one of the surest
methods to obtain a
husband is to practise on his
susceptibilities until he is either
carried away into a promise of marriage
to which he can be legally
held, or else into an indiscretion which
he must repair by
marriage on pain of having to regard
himself as a scoundrel and a
seducer, besides facing the utmost
damage the lady's relatives can
do him.
Such a transaction is not an entrance into
a "holy state of
matrimony": it is as often as not the
inauguration of a lifelong
squabble, a corroding grudge, that
causes more misery and
degradation of character than a dozen
entirely natural
"desertions" and "betrayals." Yet the
number of marriages effected
more or less in this way must be
enormous. When people say that
love should be free, their words, taken
literally, may be foolish;
but they are only expressing inaccurately
a very real need for the
160
disentanglement of sexual relations from
a mass of exorbitant and
irrelevant conditions imposed on them
on false pretences to enable
needy parents to get their daughters "off
their hands" and to keep
those who are already married
effectually enslaved by one another.
THE ECONOMIC SLAVERY OF
WOMEN
One of the consequences of basing
marriage on the considerations
stated with cold abhorrence by Saint
Paul in the seventh chapter
of his epistle to the Corinthians, as being
made necessary by the
unlikeness of most men to himself, is
that the sex slavery
involved has become complicated by
economic slavery; so that
whilst the man defends marriage because
he is really defending his
pleasures, the woman is even more
vehement on the same side
because she is defending her only means
of livelihood. To a woman
without property or marketable talent a
husband is more necessary
than a master to a dog. There is nothing
more wounding to our
sense of human dignity than the husband
hunting that begins in
every family when the daughters become
marriageable; but it is
inevitable under existing circumstances;
and the parents who
refuse to engage in it are bad parents,
though they may be
superior individuals. The cubs of a
humane tigress would starve;
and the daughters of women who cannot
bring themselves to devote
several years of their lives to the pursuit
of sons-in-law often
have to expatiate their mother's
squeamishness by life-long
celibacy and indigence. To ask a young
man his intentions when you
know he has no intentions, but is unable
to deny that he has paid
attentions; to threaten an action for
breach of promise of
marriage; to pretend that your daughter
is a musician when she has
with the greatest difficulty been coached
into playing three
piano-forte pieces which she loathes; to
use your own mature
charms to attract men to the house when
your daughters have no
aptitude for that department of sport; to
coach them, when they
have, in the arts by which men can be
led to compromize
themselves; and to keep all the skeletons
carefully locked up in
the family cupboard until the prey is
duly hunted down and bagged:
all this is a mother's duty today; and a
very revolting duty it
is: one that disposes of the conventional
assumption that it is in
the faithful discharge of her home duties
that a woman finds her
self-respect. The truth is that family life
will never be decent,
much less ennobling, until this central
horror of the dependence
of women on men is done away with. At
present it reduces the
difference between marriage and
prostitution to the difference
between Trade Unionism and
unorganized casual labor: a huge
difference, no doubt, as to order and
comfort, but not a
difference in kind.
However, it is not by any reform of the
marriage laws that this
161
can be dealt with. It is in the general
movement for the
prevention of destitution that the means
for making women
independent of the compulsory sale of
their persons, in marriage
or otherwise, will be found; but
meanwhile those who deal
specifically with the marriage laws
should never allow themselves
for a moment to forget this abomination
that "plucks the rose from
the fair forehead of an innocent love, and
sets a blister there,"
and then calmly calls itself purity, home,
motherhood,
respectability, honor, decency, and any
other fine name that
happens to be convenient, not to mention
the foul epithets it
hurls freely at those who are ashamed of
it.
IMPERSONALITY IS NOT
PROMISCUITY
There is, too, a really appalling
prevalence of the superstition
that the sexual instinct in men is utterly
promiscuous, and that
the least relaxation of law and custom
must produce a wild
outbreak of licentiousness. As far as our
moralists can grasp the
proposition that we should deal with the
sexual relation as
impersonal, it seems to them to mean
that we should encourage it
to be promiscuous: hence their recoil
from it. But promiscuity
and impersonality are not the same
thing. No man ever fell in love
with the entire female sex, nor any
woman with the entire male
sex. We often do not fall in love at all;
and when we do we fall
in love with one person and remain
indifferent to thousands of
others who pass before our eyes every
day. Selection, carried even
to such fastidiousness as to induce
people to say quite commonly
that there is only one man or woman in
the world for them, is the
rule in nature. If anyone doubts this, let
him open a shop for the
sale of picture postcards, and, when an
enamoured lady customer
demands a portrait of her favorite actor
or a gentleman of his
favorite actress, try to substitute some
other portrait on the
ground that since the sexual instinct is
promiscuous, one portrait
is as pleasing as another. I suppose no
shopkeeper has ever been
foolish enough to do such a thing; and
yet all our shopkeepers,
the moment a discussion arises on
marriage, will passionately
argue against all reform on the ground
that nothing but the most
severe coercion can save their wives and
daughters from
quite indiscriminate rapine.
A PROBABLE EFFECT OF GIVING
WOMEN THE VOTE
The political emancipation of women is
likely to lead to a
comparatively stringent enforcement by
law of sexual morality
(that is why so many of us dread it); and
this will soon compel us
to consider what our sexual morality
shall be. At present a
ridiculous distinction is made between
vice and crime, in order
that men may be vicious with impunity.
Adultery, for instance,
162
though it is sometimes fiercely punished
by giving an injured
husband crushing damages in a divorce
suit (injured wives are not
considered in this way), is not now
directly prosecuted; and this
impunity extends to illicit relations
between unmarried persons
who have reached what is called the age
of consent. There are
other matters, such as notification of
contagious disease and
solicitation, in which the hand of the law
has been brought
down on one sex only. Outrages which
were capital offences within
the memory of persons still living when
committed on women outside
marriage, can still be inflicted by men on
their wives without
legal remedy. At all such points the code
will be screwed up by
the operation of Votes for Women, if
there be any virtue in the
franchise at all. The result will be that
men will find the more
ascetic side of our sexual morality taken
seriously by the law. It
is easy to foresee the consequences. No
man will take much trouble
to alter laws which he can evade, or
which are either not enforced
or enforced on women only. But when
these laws take him by the
collar and thrust him into prison, he
suddenly becomes keenly
critical of them, and of the arguments by
which they are
supported. Now we have seen that our
marriage laws will not stand
criticism, and that they have held out so
far only because they
are so worked as to fit roughly our state
of society, in which
women are neither politically nor
personally free, in which indeed
women are called womanly only when
they regard themselves as
existing solely for the use of men. When
Liberalism enfranchises
them politically, and Socialism
emancipates them economically,
they will no longer allow the law to take
immorality so easily.
Both men and women will be forced to
behave morally in sex
matters; and when they find that this is
inevitable they will
raise the question of what behavior
really should be established
as moral. If they decide in favor of our
present professed
morality they will have to make a
revolutionary change in their
habits by becoming in fact what they
only pretend to be at
present. If, on the other hand, they find
that this would be an
unbearable tyranny, without even the
excuse of justice or sound
eugenics, they will reconsider their
morality and remodel the law.
THE PERSONAL SENTIMENTAL
BASIS OF MONOGAMY
Monogamy has a sentimental basis
which is quite distinct from the
political one of equal numbers of the
sexes. Equal numbers in the
sexes are quite compatible with a change
of partners every day or
every hour Physically there is nothing to
distinguish human
society from the farm-yard except that
children are more
troublesome and costly than chickens
and calves, and that men and
women are not so completely enslaved
as farm stock. Accordingly,
the people whose conception of marriage
is a farm-yard or slave-
163
quarter conception are always more or
less in a panic lest the
slightest relaxation of the marriage laws
should utterly
demoralize society; whilst those to
whom marriage is a matter of
more highly evolved sentiments and
needs (sometimes said to be
distinctively human, though birds and
animals in a state of
freedom evince them quite as touchingly
as we) are much more
liberal, knowing as they do that
monogamy will take care of itself
provided the parties are free enough, and
that promiscuity is a
product of slavery and not of liberty.
The solid foundation of their confidence
is the fact that the
relationship set up by a comfortable
marriage is so intimate and
so persuasive of the whole life of the
parties to it, that nobody
has room in his or her life for more than
one such relationship at
a time. What is called a household of
three is never really of
three except in the sense that every
household becomes a household
of three when a child is born, and may in
the same way become a
household of four or fourteen if the
union be fertile enough. Now
no doubt the marriage tie means so little
to some people that the
addition to the household of half a dozen
more wives or husbands
would be as possible as the addition of
half a dozen governesses
or tutors or visitors or servants. A Sultan
may have fifty wives
as easily as he may have fifty dishes on
his table, because in the
English sense he has no wives at all; nor
have his wives any
husband: in short, he is not what we call
a married man. And there
are sultans and sultanas and seraglios
existing in England under
English forms. But when you come to
the real modern marriage of
sentiment, a relation is created which has
never to my knowledge
been shared by three persons except
when all three have been
extraordinarily fond of one another.
Take for example the famous
case of Nelson and Sir William and
Lady Hamilton. The secret of
this household of three was not only that
both the husband and
Nelson were devoted to Lady Hamilton,
but that they were also
apparently devoted to one another. When
Hamilton died both Nelson
and Emma seem to have been equally
heartbroken. When there is a
successful household of one man and
two women the same unusual
condition is fulfilled: the two women not
only cannot live happily
without the man but cannot live happily
without each other. In
every other case known to me, either
from observation or record,
the experiment is a hopeless failure: one
of the two rivals for
the really intimate affection of the third
inevitably drives out
the other. The driven-out party may
accept the situation and
remain in the house as a friend to save
appearances, or for the
sake of the children, or for economic
reasons; but such an
arrangement can subsist only when the
forfeited relation is no
longer really valued; and this
indifference, like the triple bond
of affection which carried Sir William
Hamilton through, is so
164
rare as to be practicably negligible in the
establishment of a
conventional morality of marriage.
Therefore sensible and
experienced people always assume that
when a declaration of love
is made to an already married person, the
declaration binds the
parties in honor never to see one another
again unless they
contemplate divorce and remarriage.
And this is a sound
convention, even for unconventional
people. Let me illustrate by
reference to a fictitious case: the one
imagined in my own play
Candida will do as well as another. Here
a young man who has been
received as a friend into the house of a
clergyman falls in love
with the clergyman's wife, and, being
young and inexperienced,
declares his feelings, and claims that he,
and not the clergyman,
is the more suitable mate for the lady.
The clergyman, who has a
temper, is first tempted to hurl the youth
into the street by
bodily violence: an impulse natural,
perhaps, but vulgar and
improper, and, not open, on
consideration, to decent men. Even
coarse and inconsiderate men are
restrained from it by the fact
that the sympathy of the woman turns
naturally to the victim of
physical brutality and against the bully,
the Thackerayan notion
to the contrary being one of the illusions
of literary
masculinity. Besides, the husband is not
necessarily the stronger
man: an appeal to force has resulted in
the ignominious defeat of
the husband quite as often as in poetic
justice as conceived in
the conventional novelet. What an
honorable and sensible man does
when his household is invaded is what
the Reverend James Mavor
Morell does in my play. He recognizes
that just as there is not
room for two women in that sacredly
intimate relation of
sentimental domesticity which is what
marriage means to him, so
there is no room for two men in that
relation with his wife; and
he accordingly tells her firmly that she
must choose which man
will occupy the place that is large
enough for one only. He is so
far shrewdly unconventional as to
recognize that if she chooses
the other man, he must give way, legal
tie or no legal tie; but he
knows that either one or the other must
go. And a sensible wife
would act in the same way. If a romantic
young lady came into
her house and proposed to adore her
husband on a tolerated
footing, she would say "My husband has
not room in his life for
two wives: either you go out of the
house or I go out of it." The
situation is not at all unlikely: I had
almost said not at all
unusual. Young ladies and gentlemen in
the greensickly condition
which is called calf-love, associating
with married couples at
dangerous periods of mature life, quite
often find themselves
in it; and the extreme reluctance of
proud and sensitive people to
avoid any assertion of matrimonial
rights, or to condescend to
jealousy, sometimes makes the
threatened husband or wife hesitate
to take prompt steps and do the
apparently conventional thing. But
165
whether they hesitate or act the result is
always the same. In a
real marriage of sentiment the wife or
husband cannot be
supplanted by halves; and such a
marriage will break very soon
under the strain of polygyny or
polyandry. What we want at present
is a sufficiently clear teaching of this
fact to ensure that
prompt and decisive action shall always
be taken in such cases
without any false shame of seeming
conventional (a shame to
which people capable of such real
marriage are specially
susceptible), and a rational divorce law
to enable the
marriage to be dissolved and the parties
honorably resorted
and recoupled without disgrace and
scandal if that should prove
the proper solution.
It must be repeated here that no law,
however stringent, can
prevent polygamy among groups of
people who choose to live loosely
and be monogamous only in appearance.
But such cases are not now
under consideration. Also, affectionate
husbands like Samuel
Pepys, and affectionate wives of the
corresponding temperaments
may, it appears, engage in transient
casual adventures out of
doors without breaking up their home
life. But within doors that
home life may be regarded as naturally
monogamous. It does not
need to be protected against polygamy: it
protects itself.
DIVORCE
All this has an important bearing on the
question of divorce.
Divorce reformers are so much
preoccupied with the injustice of
forbidding a woman to divorce her
husband for unfaithfulness to
his marriage vow, whilst allowing him
that power over her, that
they are apt to overlook the pressing
need for admitting other and
far more important grounds for divorce.
If we take a document like
Pepys' Diary, we learn that a woman
may have an incorrigibly
unfaithful husband, and yet be much
better off than if she had an
ill-tempered, peevish, maliciously
sarcastic one, or was chained
for life to a criminal, a drunkard, a
lunatic, an idle vagrant, or
a person whose religious faith was
contrary to her own. Imagine
being married to a liar, a borrower, a
mischief maker, a teaser or
tormentor of children and animals, or
even simply to a bore!
Conceive yourself tied for life to one of
the perfectly "faithful"
husbands who are sentenced to a month's
imprisonment occasionally
for idly leaving their wives in childbirth
without food, fire, or
attendance! What woman would not
rather marry ten Pepyses? what
man a dozen Nell Gwynnes? Adultery,
far from being the first and
only ground for divorce, might more
reasonably be made the last,
or wholly excluded. The present law is
perfectly logical only if
you once admit (as no decent person
ever does) its fundamental
assumption that there can be no
companionship between men and
women because the woman has a
"sphere" of her own, that of
166
housekeeping, in which the man must
not meddle, whilst he has all
the rest of human activity for his sphere:
the only point at which
the two spheres touch being that of
replenishing the population.
On this assumption the man naturally
asks for a guarantee that the
children shall be his because he has to
find the money to support
them. The power of divorcing a woman
for adultery is this
guarantee, a guarantee that she does not
need to protect her
against a similar imposture on his part,
because he cannot bear
children. No doubt he can spend the
money that ought to be spent
on her children on another woman and
her children; but this is
desertion, which is a separate matter.
The fact for us to seize is
that in the eye of the law, adultery
without consequences is
merely a sentimental grievance, whereas
the planting on one man of
another man's offspring is a substantial
one. And so, no doubt, it
is; but the day has gone by for basing
laws on the assumption that
a woman is less to a man than his dog,
and thereby encouraging and
accepting the standards of the husbands
who buy meat for their
bull-pups and leave their wives and
children hungry. That basis is
the penalty we pay for having borrowed
our religion from the East,
instead of building up a religion of our
own out of our western
inspiration and western sentiment. The
result is that we all
believe that our religion is on its last
legs, whereas the truth
is that it is not yet born, though the age
walks visibly pregnant
with it. Meanwhile, as women are
dragged down by their oriental
servitude to our men, and as, further,
women drag down those who
degrade them quite as effectually as men
do, there are moments
when it is difficult to see anything in our
sex institutions
except a police des moeurs keeping the
field for a competition as
to which sex shall corrupt the other
most.
DIVORCE WITHOUT ASKING
WHY
The one question that should never be
put to a petitioner for
divorce is "Why?" When a man appeals
to a magistrate for
protection from someone who threatens
to kill him, on the simple
ground that he desires to live, the
magistrate might quite
reasonably ask him why he desires to
live, and why the person who
wishes to kill him should not be
gratified. Also whether he can
prove that his life is a pleasure to himself
or a benefit to
anyone else, and whether it is good for
him to be encouraged to
exaggerate the importance of his short
span in this vale of tears
rather than to keep himself constantly
ready to meet his God.
The only reason for not raising these
very weighty points is that
we find society unworkable except on
the assumption that every man
has a natural right to live. Nothing short
of his own refusal to
respect that right in others can reconcile
the community to
167
killing him. From this fundamental right
many others are derived.
The American Constitution, one of the
few modern political
documents drawn up by men who were
forced by the sternest
circumstances to think out what they
really had to face instead of
chopping logic in a university classroom,
specifies "liberty and
the pursuit of happiness" as natural
rights. The terms are too
vague to be of much practical use; for
the supreme right to life,
extended as it now must be to the life of
the race, and to the
quality of life as well as to the mere fact
of breathing, is
making short work of many ancient
liberties, and exposing the
pursuit of happiness as perhaps the most
miserable of human
occupations. Nevertheless, the American
Constitution roughly
expresses the conditions to which
modern democracy commits us. To
impose marriage on two unmarried
people who do not desire to marry
one another would be admittedly an act
of enslavement. But it is
no worse than to impose a continuation
of marriage on people who
have ceased to desire to be married. It
will be said that the
parties may not agree on that; that one
may desire to maintain the
marriage the other wishes to dissolve.
But the same hardship
arises whenever a man in love proposes
marriage to a woman and is
refused. The refusal is so painful to him
that he often threatens
to kill himself and sometimes even does
it. Yet we expect him to
face his ill luck, and never dream of
forcing the woman to accept
him. His case is the same as that of the
husband whose wife tells
him she no longer cares for him, and
desires the marriage to be
dissolved. You will say, perhaps, if you
are superstitious, that
it is not the same--that marriage makes a
difference. You are
wrong: there is no magic in marriage. If
there were, married
couples would never desire to separate.
But they do. And when they
do, it is simple slavery to compel them
to remain together.
CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE
First among these is the habit of
allowing ourselves to be bound
not only by the truths of the Christian
religion but by the
excesses and extravagances which the
Christian movement acquired
in its earlier days as a violent reaction
against what it still
calls paganism. By far the most
dangerous of these, because it is
a blasphemy against life, and, to put it in
Christian terms, an
accusation of indecency against God, is
the notion that sex, with
all its operations, is in itself absolutely
an obscene thing, and
that an immaculate conception is a
miracle. So unwholesome an
absurdity could only have gained ground
under two conditions: one,
a reaction against a society in which
sensual luxury had been
carried to revolting extremes, and, two, a
belief that the world
was coming to an end, and that therefore
sex was no longer a
necessity. Christianity, because it began
under these conditions,
168
made sexlessness and Communism the
two main practical articles of
its propaganda; and it has never quite
lost its original bias in
these directions. In spite of the putting
off of the Second Coming
from the lifetime of the apostles to the
millennium, and of the
great disappointment of the year 1000
A.D., in which multitudes of
Christians seriously prepared for the end
of the world, the
prophet who announces that the end is at
hand is still popular.
Many of the people who ridicule his
demonstrations that the
fantastic monsters of the book of
Revelation are among us in the
persons of our own political
contemporaries, and who proceed
sanely in all their affairs on the
assumption that the world is
going to last, really do believe that there
will be a Judgment
Day, and that it MIGHT even be in their
own time. A thunderstorm,
an eclipse, or any very unusual weather
will make them
apprehensive and uncomfortable.
This explains why, for a long time, the
Christian Church refused
to have anything to do with marriage.
The result was, not the
abolition of sex, but its
excommunication. And, of course, the
consequences of persuading people that
matrimony was an unholy
state were so grossly carnal, that the
Church had to execute a
complete right-about-face, and try to
make people understand that
it was a holy state: so holy indeed that it
could not be validly
inaugurated without the blessing of the
Church. And by this
teaching it did something to atone for its
earlier blasphemy. But
the mischief of chopping and changing
your doctrine to meet this
or that practical emergency instead of
keeping it adjusted to the
whole scheme of life, is that you end by
having half-a-dozen
contradictory doctrines to suit half-adozen different
emergencies. The Church solemnized
and sanctified marriage without
ever giving up its original Pauline
doctrine on the subject. And
it soon fell into another confusion. At the
point at which it took
up marriage and endeavored to make it
holy, marriage was, as it
still is, largely a survival of the custom
of selling women to
men. Now in all trades a marked
difference is made in price
between a new article and a second-hand
one. The moment we meet
with this difference in value between
human beings, we may know
that we are in the slave-market, where
the conception of our
relations to the persons sold is neither
religious nor natural nor
human nor superhuman, but simply
commercial. The Church, when
it finally gave its blessing to marriage,
did not, in its
innocence, fathom these commercial
traditions. Consequently it
tried to sanctify them too, with grotesque
results. The slavedealer having always asked more money
for virginity, the Church,
instead of detecting the money-changer
and driving him out of the
temple, took him for a sentimental and
chivalrous lover, and,
helped by its only half-discarded
doctrine of celibacy, gave
169
virginity a heavenly value to ennoble its
commercial pretensions.
In short, Mammon, always mighty, put
the Church in his pocket,
where he keeps it to this day, in spite of
the occasional saints
and martyrs who contrive from time to
time to get their heads and
souls free to testify against him.
WHAT IS TO BECOME OF THE
CHILDREN?
I must not reply flippantly, Make them
all Wards in Chancery; yet
that would be enough to put any sensible
person on the track of
the reply. One would think, to hear the
way in which people
sometimes ask the question, that not
only does marriage prevent
the difficulty from ever arising, but that
nothing except divorce
can ever raise it. It is true that if you
divorce the parents, the
children have to be disposed of. But if
you hang the parents, or
imprison the parents, or take the children
out of the custody of
the parents because they hold Shelley's
opinions, or if the
parents die, the same difficulty arises.
And as these things have
happened again and again, and as we
have had plenty of experience
of divorce decrees and separation orders,
the attempt to use
children as an obstacle to divorce is
hardly worth arguing with.
We shall deal with the children just as
we should deal with them
if their homes were broken up by any
other cause. There is a sense
in which children are a real obstacle to
divorce: they give
parents a common interest which keeps
together many a couple who,
if childless, would separate. The
marriage law is superfluous in
such cases. This is shewn by the fact that
the proportion of
childless divorces is much larger than
the proportion of divorces
from all causes. But it must not be
forgotten that the interest of
the children forms one of the most
powerful arguments for divorce.
An unhappy household is a bad nursery.
There is something to be
said for the polygynous or polyandrous
household as a school for
children: children really do suffer from
having too few parents:
this is why uncles and aunts and tutors
and governesses are often
so good for children. But it is just the
polygamous household
which our marriage law allows to be
broken up, and which, as we
have seen, is not possible as a typical
institution in a
democratic country where the numbers
of the sexes are about equal.
Therefore polygyny and polyandry as a
means of educating children
fall to the ground, and with them, I
think, must go the opinion
which has been expressed by Gladstone
and others, that an
extension of divorce, whilst admitting
many new grounds for it,
might exclude the ground of adultery.
There are, however, clearly
many things that make some of our
domestic interiors little
private hells for children (especially
when the children are quite
content in them) which would justify any
intelligent State in
breaking up the home and giving the
custody of the children either
170
to the parent whose conscience had
revolted against the
corruption of the children, or to neither.
Which brings me to the point that
divorce should no longer be
confined to cases in which one of the
parties petitions for it.
If, for instance, you have a thoroughly
rascally couple making a
living by infamous means and bringing
up their children to their
trade, the king's proctor, instead of
pursuing his present purely
mischievous function of preventing
couples from being divorced
by proving that they both desire it, might
very well intervene and
divorce these children from their parents.
At present, if the
Queen herself were to rescue some
unfortunate child from
degradation and misery and place her in
a respectable home, and
some unmentionable pair of blackguards
claimed the child and
proved that they were its father and
mother, the child would be
given to them in the name of the sanctity
of the home and the
holiness of parentage, after perpetrating
which crime the law
would calmly send an education officer
to take the child out of
the parents' hands several hours a day in
the still more sacred
name of compulsory education. (Of
course what would really happen
would be that the couple would
blackmail the Queen for their
consent to the salvation of the child,
unless, indeed, a hint from
a police inspector convinced them that
bad characters cannot
always rely on pedantically
constitutional treatment when they
come into conflict with persons in high
station).
The truth is, not only must the bond
between man and wife be made
subject to a reasonable consideration of
the welfare of the
parties concerned and of the community,
but the whole family bond
as well. The theory that the wife is the
property of the husband
or the husband of the wife is not a whit
less abhorrent and
mischievous than the theory that the
child is the property of the
parent. Parental bondage will go the way
of conjugal bondage:
indeed the order of reform should rather
be put the other way
about; for the helplessness of children
has already compelled the
State to intervene between parent and
child more than between
husband and wife. If you pay less than
40 pounds a year rent, you will
sometimes feel tempted to say to the
vaccination officer, the
school attendance officer, and the
sanitary inspector: "Is this
child mine or yours?" The answer is that
as the child is a vital
part of the nation, the nation cannot
afford to leave it at the
irresponsible disposal of any individual
or couple of individuals
as a mere small parcel of private
property. The only solid ground
that the parent can take is that as the
State, in spite of its
imposing name, can, when all is said, do
nothing with the child
except place it in the charge of some
human being or another,
the parent is no worse a custodian than a
stranger. And though
171
this proposition may seem highly
questionable at first sight to
those who imagine that only parents
spoil children, yet those who
realize that children are as often spoilt
by severity and coldness
as by indulgence, and that the notion that
natural parents are any
worse than adopted parents is probably
as complete an illusion as
the notion that they are any better, see no
serious likelihood
that State action will detach children
from their parents more
than it does at present: nay, it is even
likely that the present
system of taking the children out of the
parents' hands and having
the parental duty performed by officials,
will, as poverty and
ignorance become the exception instead
of the rule, give way to
the system of simply requiring certain
results, beginning with the
baby's weight and ending perhaps with
some sort of practical arts
degree, but leaving parents and children
to achieve the results as
they best may. Such freedom is, of
course, impossible in our
present poverty-stricken circumstances.
As long as the masses of
our people are too poor to be good
parents or good anything else
except beasts of burden, it is no use
requiring much more from
them but hewing of wood and drawing
of water: whatever is to be
done must be done FOR them mostly,
alas! by people whose
superiority is merely technical. Until we
abolish poverty it is
impossible to push rational measures of
any kind very far: the
wolf at the door will compel us to live in
a state of siege and to
do everything by a bureaucratic martial
law that would be quite
unnecessary and indeed intolerable in a
prosperous community. But
however we settle the question, we must
make the parent justify
his custody of the child exactly as we
should make a stranger
justify it. If a family is not achieving the
purposes of a family
it should be dissolved just as a marriage
should when it, too, is
not achieving the purposes of marriage.
The notion that there is
or ever can be anything magical and
inviolable in the legal
relations of domesticity, and the curious
confusion of ideas which
makes some of our bishops imagine that
in the phrase "Whom God
hath joined," the word God means the
district registrar or the
Reverend John Smith or William Jones,
must be got rid of. Means
of breaking up undesirable families are
as necessary to the
preservation of the family as means of
dissolving undesirable
marriages are to the preservation of
marriage. If our domestic
laws are kept so inhuman that they at last
provoke a furious
general insurrection against them as they
already provoke many
private ones, we shall in a very literal
sense empty the baby out
with the bath by abolishing an institution
which needs nothing
more than a little obvious and easy
rationalizing to make it not
only harmless but comfortable,
honorable, and useful.
THE COST OF DIVORCE
172
But please do not imagine that the evils
of indissoluble marriage
can be cured by divorce laws
administered on our present plan. The
very cheapest undefended divorce, even
when conducted by a
solicitor for its own sake and that of
humanity, costs at least 30
pounds out-of-pocket expenses. To a
client on business terms it
costs about three times as much. Until
divorce is as cheap as
marriage, marriage will remain
indissoluble for all except the
handful of people to whom 100 pounds
is a procurable sum. For the
enormous majority of us there is no
difference in this respect
between a hundred and a quadrillion.
Divorce is the one thing you
may not sue for in forma pauperis.
Let me, then, recommend as follows:
1. Make divorce as easy, as cheap, and
as private as marriage.
2. Grant divorce at the request of either
party, whether the other
consents or not; and admit no other
ground than the request, which
should be made without stating any
reasons.
3. Confine the power of dissolving
marriage for misconduct to the
State acting on the petition of the king's
proctor or other
suitable functionary, who may, however,
be moved by either party
to intervene in ordinary request cases,
not to prevent the divorce
taking place, but to enforce alimony if it
be refused and the case
is one which needs it.
4. Make it impossible for marriage to be
used as a punishment as
it is at present. Send the husband and
wife to penal servitude if
you disapprove of their conduct and
want to punish them; but do
not send them back to perpetual
wedlock.
5. If, on the other hand, you think a
couple perfectly innocent
and well conducted, do not condemn
them also to perpetual wedlock
against their wills, thereby making the
treatment of what you
consider innocence on both sides the
same as the treatment of what
you consider guilt on both sides.
6. Place the work of a wife and mother
on the same footing as
other work: that is, on the footing of
labor worthy of its hire;
and provide for unemployment in it
exactly as for unemployment in
shipbuilding or an other recognized
bread-winning trade.
7. And take and deal with all the
consequences of these acts of
justice instead of letting yourself be
frightened out of reason
and good sense by fear of consequences.
We must finally adapt our
institutions to human nature. In the long
run our present plan of
trying to force human nature into a
mould of existing abuses,
superstitions, and corrupt interests,
produces the explosive
forces that wreck civilization.
8. Never forget that if you leave your
law to judges and your
religion to bishops, you will presently
find yourself without
173
either law or religion. If you doubt this,
ask any decent judge or
bishop. Do NOT ask somebody who
does not know what a judge is, or
what a bishop is, or what the law is, or
what religion is. In
other words, do not ask your newspaper.
Journalists are too poorly
paid in this country to know anything
that is fit for publication.
http://pintday.org/ebooks/shaw/marriedpreface
The Education of Women
Daniel Defoe (1660 - 1731)
I have often thought of it as one of the
most barbarous customs in the world,
considering us as a civilized and a
Christian country, that we deny the
advantages of learning to women. We
reproach the sex every day with folly
and impertinence; while I am confident,
had they the advantages of education
equal to us, they would be guilty of less
than ourselves.
One would wonder, indeed, how it
should happen that women are
conversible at all; since they are only
beholden to natural parts, for all their
knowledge. Their youth is spent to teach
them to stitch and sew or make baubles.
They are taught to read, indeed, and
perhaps to write their names, or so; and
that is the height of a woman’s
education. And I would but ask any who
slight the sex for their understanding,
what is a man (a gentleman, I mean)
good for, that is taught no more? I need
not give instances, or examine the
character of a gentleman, with a good
estate, or a good family, and with
tolerable parts; and examine what figure
he makes for want of education.
The soul is placed in the body like a
rough diamond; and must be polished, or
the luster of it will never appear. And
’tis manifest, that as the rational soul
distinguishes us from brutes; so
education carries on the distinction, and
makes some less brutish than others.
This is too evident to need any
demonstration. But why then should
women be denied the benefit of
instruction? If knowledge and
understanding had been useless additions
to the sex, GOD Almighty would never
have given them capacities; for he made
nothing needless. Besides, I would ask
such, What they can see in ignorance,
that they should think it a necessary
ornament to a woman? or how much
worse is a wise woman than a fool? or
what has the woman done to forfeit the
privilege of being taught? Does she
plague us with her pride and
impertinence? Why did we not let her
learn, that she might have had more wit?
Shall we upbraid women with folly,
when ’tis only the error of this inhuman
custom, that hindered them from being
made wiser?
The capacities of women are supposed to
be greater, and their senses quicker than
those of the men; and what they might
be capable of being bred to, is plain from
some instances of female wit, which this
age is not without. Which upbraids us
with Injustice, and looks as if we denied
women the advantages of education, for
fear they should vie with the men in their
improvements.
[They] should be taught all sorts of
breeding suitable both to their genius
174
and quality. And in particular, Music and
Dancing; which it would be cruelty to
bar the sex of, because they are their
darlings. But besides this, they should be
taught languages, as particularly French
and Italian: and I would venture the
injury of giving a woman more tongues
than one. They should, as a particular
study, be taught all the graces of speech,
and all the necessary air of conversation;
which our common education is so
defective in, that I need not expose it.
They should be brought to read books,
and especially history; and so to read as
to make them understand the world, and
be able to know and judge of things
when they hear of them.
To such whose genius would lead them
to it, I would deny no sort of learning;
but the chief thing, in general, is to
cultivate the understandings of the sex,
that they may be capable of all sorts of
conversation; that their parts and
judgments being improved, they may be
as profitable in their conversation as they
are pleasant.
Women, in my observation, have little or
no difference in them, but as they are or
are not distinguished by education.
Tempers, indeed, may in some degree
influence them, but the main
distinguishing part is their Breeding.
The whole sex are generally quick and
sharp. I believe, I may be allowed to say,
generally so: for you rarely see them
lumpish and heavy, when they are
children; as boys will often be. If a
woman be well bred, and taught the
proper management of her natural wit,
she proves generally very sensible and
retentive.
And, without partiality, a woman of
sense and manners is the finest and most
delicate part of God's Creation, the glory
of Her Maker, and the great instance of
His singular regard to man, His darling
creature: to whom He gave the best gift
either God could bestow or man receive.
And ’tis the sordidest piece of folly and
ingratitude in the world, to withhold
from the sex the due luster which the
advantages of education gives to the
natural beauty of their minds.
A woman well bred and well taught,
furnished with the additional
accomplishments of knowledge and
behavior, is a creature without
comparison. Her society is the emblem
of sublimer enjoyments, her person is
angelic, and her conversation heavenly.
She is all softness and sweetness, peace,
love, wit, and delight. She is every way
suitable to the sublimest wish, and the
man that has such a one to his portion,
has nothing to do but to rejoice in her,
and be thankful.
On the other hand, Suppose her to be the
very same woman, and rob her of the
benefit of education, and it follows—




If her temper be good, want of
education makes her soft and easy.
Her wit, for want of teaching, makes
her impertinent and talkative.
Her knowledge, for want of
judgment and experience, makes her
fanciful and whimsical.
If her temper be bad, want of
breeding makes her worse; and she
grows haughty, insolent, and loud.
If she be passionate, want of
manners makes her a termagant and
a scold, which is much at one with
Lunatic.
175


If she be proud, want of discretion
(which still is breeding) makes her
conceited, fantastic, and ridiculous.
And from these she degenerates to be
turbulent, clamorous, noisy, nasty,
the devil!--
The great distinguishing difference,
which is seen in the world between men
and women, is in their education; and
this is manifested by comparing it with
the difference between one man or
woman, and another.
And herein it is that I take upon me to
make such a bold assertion, That all the
world are mistaken in their practice
about women. For I cannot think that
God Almighty ever made them so
delicate, so glorious creatures; and
furnished them with such charms, so
agreeable and so delightful to mankind;
with souls capable of the same
accomplishments with men: and all, to
be only Stewards of our Houses, Cooks,
and Slaves.
Not that I am for exalting the female
government in the least: but, in short, I
would have men take women for
companions, and educate them to be fit
for it. A woman of sense and breeding
will scorn as much to encroach upon the
prerogative of man, as a man of sense
will scorn to oppress the weakness of the
woman. But if the women’s souls were
refined and improved by teaching, that
word would be lost. To say, the
weakness of the sex, as to judgment,
would be nonsense; for ignorance and
folly would be no more to be found
among women than men.
I remember a passage, which I heard
from a very fine woman. She had wit
and capacity enough, an extraordinary
shape and face, and a great fortune: but
had been cloistered up all her time; and
for fear of being stolen, had not had the
liberty of being taught the common
necessary knowledge of women’s
affairs. And when she came to converse
in the world, her natural wit made her so
sensible of the want of education, that
she gave this short reflection on herself:
"I am ashamed to talk with my very
maids," says she, "for I don’t know
when they do right or wrong. I had more
need go to school, than be married."
I need not enlarge on the loss the defect
of education is to the sex; nor argue the
benefit of the contrary practice. ’Tis a
thing will be more easily granted than
remedied. This chapter is but an Essay at
the thing: and I refer the Practice to
those Happy Days (if ever they shall be)
when men shall be wise enough to mend
it.
(1719)
http://grammar.about.com/od/classicessa
ys/a/educwomendefoe_2.htm
A VINDICATION OF THE RIGHTS
OF WOMAN,
WITH STRICTURES ON
POLITICAL AND MORAL
SUBJECTS,
BY MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT.
WITH A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
OF THE AUTHOR.
CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION.
176
CHAPTER 1. THE RIGHTS AND
INVOLVED DUTIES OF MANKIND
CONSIDERED.
CHAPTER 2. THE PREVAILING
OPINION OF A SEXUAL
CHARACTER DISCUSSED.
CHAPTER 3. THE SAME SUBJECT
CONTINUED.
CHAPTER 4. OBSERVATIONS ON
THE STATE OF DEGRADATION
TO WHICH WOMAN
IS REDUCED BY VARIOUS
CAUSES.
CHAPTER 5. ANIMADVERSIONS
ON SOME OF THE WRITERS WHO
HAVE RENDERED
WOMEN OBJECTS OF PITY,
BORDERING ON CONTEMPT.
CHAPTER 6. THE EFFECT
WHICH AN EARLY ASSOCIATION
OF IDEAS HAS UPON
THE CHARACTER.
CHAPTER 7. MODESTY.
COMPREHENSIVELY
CONSIDERED, AND NOT AS A
SEXUAL VIRTUE.
CHAPTER 8. MORALITY
UNDERMINED BY SEXUAL
NOTIONS OF THE IMPORTANCE
OF A GOOD REPUTATION
CHAPTER 9. OF THE PERNICIOUS
EFFECTS WHICH ARISE FROM
THE UNNATURAL
DISTINCTIONS ESTABLISHED IN
SOCIETY.
CHAPTER 10. PARENTAL
AFFECTION.
CHAPTER 11. DUTY TO PARENTS
CHAPTER 12. ON NATIONAL
EDUCATION
CHAPTER 13. SOME INSTANCES
OF THE FOLLY WHICH THE
IGNORANCE OF
WOMEN GENERATES; WITH
CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS ON
THE MORAL
IMPROVEMENT THAT A
REVOLUTION IN FEMALE
MANNERS MAY NATURALLY BE
EXPECTED TO PRODUCE.
8 April, 2001
A BRIEF SKETCH OF THE LIFE
OF MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT.
M. Wollstonecraft was born in 1759.
Her father was so great a
wanderer, that the place of her birth is
uncertain; she supposed,
however, it was London, or Epping
Forest: at the latter place she
spent the first five years of her life. In
early youth she
exhibited traces of exquisite sensibility,
soundness of
understanding, and decision of character;
but her father being a
despot in his family, and her mother one
of his subjects, Mary,
derived little benefit from their parental
training. She received
no literary instructions but such as were
to be had in ordinary day
schools. Before her sixteenth year she
became acquainted with Mr.
Clare a clergyman, and Miss Frances
Blood; the latter, two years
177
older than herself; who possessing good
taste and some knowledge of
the fine arts, seems to have given the
first impulse to the
formation of her character. At the age of
nineteen, she left her
parents, and resided with a Mrs. Dawson
for two years; when she
returned to the parental roof to give
attention to her mother,
whose ill health made her presence
necessary. On the death of her
mother, Mary bade a final adieu to her
father's house, and became
the inmate of F. Blood; thus situated,
their intimacy increased,
and a strong attachment was
reciprocated. In 1783 she commenced a
day school at Newington green, in
conjunction with her friend, F.
Blood. At this place she became
acquainted with Dr. Price, to whom
she became strongly attached; the regard
was mutual.
It is said that she became a teacher from
motives of benevolence,
or rather philanthropy, and during the
time she continued in the
profession, she gave proof of superior
qualification for the
performance of its arduous and
important duties. Her friend and
coadjutor married and removed to
Lisbon, in Portugal, where she
died of a pulmonary disease; the
symptoms of which were visible
before her marriage. So true was Mary's
attachment to her, that
she entrusted her school to the care of
others, for the purpose of
attending Frances in her closing scene.
She aided, as did Dr.
Young, in "Stealing Narcissa a grave."
Her mind was expanded by
this residence in a foreign country, and
though clear of religious
bigotry before, she took some instructive
lessons on the evils of
superstition, and intolerance.
On her return she found the school had
suffered by her absence, and
having previously decided to apply
herself to literature, she now
resolved to commence. In 1787 she
made, or received, proposals
from Johnson, a publisher in London,
who was already acquainted
with her talents as an author. During the
three subsequent years,
she was actively engaged, more in
translating, condensing, and
compiling, than in the production of
original works. At this time
she laboured under much depression of
spirits, for the loss of her
friend; this rather increased, perhaps, by
the publication of
"Mary, a novel," which was mostly
composed of incidents and
reflections connected with their
intimacy.
The pecuniary concerns of her father
becoming embarrassed, Mary
practised a rigid economy in her
expenditures, and with her savings
was enabled to procure her sisters and
brothers situations, to
which without her aid, they could not
have had access; her father
was sustained at length from her funds;
she even found means to
take under her protection an orphan
child.
She had acquired a facility in the
arrangement and expression of
thoughts, in her avocation of translator,
and compiler, which was
178
no doubt of great use to her afterward. It
was not long until she
had occasion for them. The eminent
Burke produced his celebrated
"Reflections on the Revolution in
France." Mary full of sentiments
of liberty, and indignant at what she
thought subversive of it,
seized her pen and produced the first
attack upon that famous work.
It succeeded well, for though
intemperate and contemptuous, it was
vehemently and impetuously eloquent;
and though Burke was beloved
by the enlightened friends of freedom,
they were dissatisfied and
disgusted with what they deemed an
outrage upon it.
It is said that Mary, had not wanted
confidence in her own powers
before, but the reception this work met
from the public, gave her
an opportunity of judging what those
powers were, in the estimation
of others. It was shortly after this, that
she commenced the work
to which these remarks are prefixed.
What are its merits will be
decided in the judgment of each reader;
suffice it to say she
appears to have stept forth boldly, and
singly, in defence of that
half of the human race, which by the
usages of all society, whether
savage or civilized, have been kept from
attaining their proper
dignity--their equal rank as rational
beings. It would appear that
the disguise used in placing on woman
the silken fetters which
bribed her into endurance, and even love
of slavery, but increased
the opposition of our authoress: she
would have had more patience
with rude, brute coercion, than with that
imposing gallantry,
which, while it affects to consider
woman as the pride, and
ornament of creation, degrades her to a
toy--an appendage--a
cypher. The work was much
reprehended, and as might well be
expected, found its greatest enemies in
the pretty soft
creatures--the spoiled children of her
own sex. She accomplished
it in six weeks.
In 1792 she removed to Paris, where she
became acquainted with
Gilbert Imlay, of the United States. And
from this acquaintance
grew an attachment, which brought the
parties together, without
legal formalities, to which she objected
on account of some family
embarrassments, in which he would
thereby become involved. The
engagement was however considered by
her of the most sacred nature,
and they formed the plan of emigrating
to America, where they
should be enabled to accomplish it.
These were the days of
Robespierrean cruelty, and Imlay left
Paris for Havre, whither
after a time Mary followed him. They
continued to reside there,
until he left Havre for London, under
pretence of business, and
with a promise of rejoining her soon at
Paris, which however he did
not, but in 1795 sent for her to London.
In the mean time she had
become the mother of a female child,
whom she called Frances in
commemoration of her early friendship.
Before she went to England, she had
some gloomy forebodings that
179
the affections of Imlay, had waned, if
they were not estranged from
her; on her arrival, those forebodings
were sorrowfully confirmed.
His attentions were too formal and
constrained to pass unobserved
by her penetration, and though he
ascribed his manner, and his
absence, to business duties, she saw his
affection for her was only
something to be remembered. To use
her own expression, "Love, dear
delusion! Rigorous reason has forced
me to resign; and now my
rational prospects are blasted, just as I
have learned to be
contented with rational enjoyments." To
pretend to depict her
misery at this time would be futile; the
best idea can be formed of
it from the fact that she had planned her
own destruction, from
which Imlay prevented her. She
conceived the idea of suicide a
second time, and threw herself into the
Thames; she remained in the
water, until consciousness forsook her,
but she was taken up and
resuscitated. After divers attempts to
revive the affections of
Imlay, with sundry explanations and
professions on his part,
through the lapse of two years, she
resolved finally to forgo all
hope of reclaiming him, and endeavour
to think of him no more in
connexion with her future prospects. In
this she succeeded so
well, that she afterwards had a private
interview with him, which
did not produce any painful emotions.
In 1796 she revived or improved an
acquaintance which commenced
years before with Wm. Godwin, author
of "Political Justice," and
other works of great notoriety. Though
they had not been
favourably impressed with each other on
their former acquaintance,
they now met under circumstances
which permitted a mutual and just
appreciation of character. Their
intimacy increased by regular and
almost imperceptible degrees. The
partiality they conceived for
each other was, according to her
biographer, "In the most refined
style of love. It grew with equal
advances in the mind of each.
It would have been impossible for the
most minute observer to have
said who was before, or who after. One
sex did not take the
priority which long established custom
has awarded it, nor the
other overstep that delicacy which is so
severely imposed. Neither
party could assume to have been the
agent or the patient, the
toil-spreader or the prey in the affair.
When in the course of
things the disclosure came, there was
nothing in a manner for
either to disclose to the other."
Mary lived but a few months after her
marriage, and died in
child-bed; having given birth to a
daughter who is now known to the
literary world as Mrs. Shelly, the widow
of Percy Bysche Shelly.
We can scarcely avoid regret that one of
such splendid talents, and
high toned feelings, should, after the
former seemed to have been
fully developed, and the latter had found
an object in whom they
might repose, after their eccentric and
painful efforts to find a
180
resting place--that such an one should at
such a time, be cut off
from life is something which we cannot
contemplate without feeling
regret; we can scarcely repress the
murmur that she had not been
removed ere clouds darkened her
horizon, or that she had remained
to witness the brightness and serenity
which might have succeeded.
But thus it is; we may trace the cause to
anti-social arrangements;
it is not individuals but society which
must change it, and that
not by enactments, but by a change in
public opinion.
The authoress of the "Rights of
Woman," was born April 1759, died
September 1797.
That there may be no doubt regarding
the facts in this sketch, they
are taken from a memoir written by her
afflicted husband. In
addition to many kind things he has said
of her, (he was not
blinded to imperfections in her
character) is, that she was "Lovely
in her person, and in the best and most
engaging sense feminine in
her manners."
TO
M. TALLEYRAND PERIGORD,
LATE BISHOP OF AUTUN.
Sir:-Having read with great pleasure a
pamphlet, which you have lately
published, on National Education, I
dedicate this volume to you,
the first dedication that I have ever
written, to induce you to
read it with attention; and, because I
think that you will
understand me, which I do not suppose
many pert witlings will, who
may ridicule the arguments they are
unable to answer. But, sir, I
carry my respect for your understanding
still farther: so far,
that I am confident you will not throw
my work aside, and hastily
conclude that I am in the wrong because
you did not view the
subject in the same light yourself. And
pardon my frankness, but I
must observe, that you treated it in too
cursory a manner,
contented to consider it as it had been
considered formerly, when
the rights of man, not to advert to
woman, were trampled on as
chimerical. I call upon you, therefore,
now to weigh what I have
advanced respecting the rights of
woman, and national education;
and I call with the firm tone of
humanity. For my arguments, sir,
are dictated by a disinterested spirit: I
plead for my sex, not
for myself. Independence I have long
considered as the grand
blessing of life, the basis of every virtue;
and independence I
will ever secure by contracting my
wants, though I were to live on
a barren heath.
It is, then, an affection for the whole
human race that makes my
pen dart rapidly along to support what I
believe to be the cause of
virtue: and the same motive leads me
earnestly to wish to see
woman placed in a station in which she
would advance, instead of
181
retarding, the progress of those glorious
principles that give a
substance to morality. My opinion,
indeed, respecting the rights
and duties of woman, seems to flow so
naturally from these simple
principles, that I think it scarcely
possible, but that some of the
enlarged minds who formed your
admirable constitution, will
coincide with me.
In France, there is undoubtedly a more
general diffusion of
knowledge than in any part of the
European world, and I attribute
it, in a great measure, to the social
intercourse which has long
subsisted between the sexes. It is true, I
utter my sentiments
with freedom, that in France the very
essence of sensuality has
been extracted to regale the voluptuary,
and a kind of sentimental
lust has prevailed, which, together with
the system of duplicity
that the whole tenor of their political and
civil government
taught, have given a sinister sort of
sagacity to the French
character, properly termed finesse; and a
polish of manners that
injures the substance, by hunting
sincerity out of society. And,
modesty, the fairest garb of virtue has
been more grossly insulted
in France than even in England, till their
women have treated as
PRUDISH that attention to decency
which brutes instinctively
observe.
Manners and morals are so nearly allied,
that they have often been
confounded; but, though the former
should only be the natural
reflection of the latter, yet, when various
causes have produced
factitious and corrupt manners, which
are very early caught,
morality becomes an empty name. The
personal reserve, and sacred
respect for cleanliness and delicacy in
domestic life, which French
women almost despise, are the graceful
pillars of modesty; but, far
from despising them, if the pure flame of
patriotism have reached
their bosoms, they should labour to
improve the morals of their
fellow-citizens, by teaching men, not
only to respect modesty in
women, but to acquire it themselves, as
the only way to merit their
esteem.
Contending for the rights of women, my
main argument is built on
this simple principle, that if she be not
prepared by education to
become the companion of man, she will
stop the progress of
knowledge, for truth must be common to
all, or it will be
inefficacious with respect to its influence
on general practice.
And how can woman be expected to cooperate, unless she know why
she ought to be virtuous? Unless
freedom strengthen her reason
till she comprehend her duty, and see in
what manner it is
connected with her real good? If
children are to be educated to
understand the true principle of
patriotism, their mother must be a
patriot; and the love of mankind, from
which an orderly train of
virtues spring, can only be produced by
considering the moral and
civil interest of mankind; but the
education and situation of
182
woman, at present, shuts her out from
such investigations.
In this work I have produced many
arguments, which to me were
conclusive, to prove, that the prevailing
notion respecting a
sexual character was subversive of
morality, and I have contended,
that to render the human body and mind
more perfect, chastity must
more universally prevail, and that
chastity will never be respected
in the male world till the person of a
woman is not, as it were,
idolized when little virtue or sense
embellish it with the grand
traces of mental beauty, or the
interesting simplicity of
affection.
for their freedom, and to be allowed to
judge for themselves,
respecting their own happiness, it be not
inconsistent and unjust
to subjugate women, even though you
firmly believe that you are
acting in the manner best calculated to
promote their happiness?
Who made man the exclusive judge, if
woman partake with him the
gift of reason?
Consider, Sir, dispassionately, these
observations, for a glimpse
of this truth seemed to open before you
when you observed, "that to
see one half of the human race excluded
by the other from all
participation of government, was a
political phenomenon that,
according to abstract principles, it was
impossible to explain."
If so, on what does your constitution
rest? If the abstract rights
of man will bear discussion and
explanation, those of woman, by a
parity of reasoning, will not shrink from
the same test: though a
different opinion prevails in this country,
built on the very
arguments which you use to justify the
oppression of woman,
prescription.
In this style, argue tyrants of every
denomination from the weak
king to the weak father of a family; they
are all eager to crush
reason; yet always assert that they usurp
its throne only to be
useful. Do you not act a similar part,
when you FORCE all women,
by denying them civil and political
rights, to remain immured in
their families groping in the dark? For
surely, sir, you will not
assert, that a duty can be binding which
is not founded on reason?
If, indeed, this be their destination,
arguments may be drawn from
reason; and thus augustly supported, the
more understanding women
acquire, the more they will be attached
to their duty,
comprehending it, for unless they
comprehend it, unless their
morals be fixed on the same immutable
principles as those of man,
no authority can make them discharge it
in a virtuous manner. They
may be convenient slaves, but slavery
will have its constant
effect, degrading the master and the
abject dependent.
Consider, I address you as a legislator,
whether, when men contend
But, if women are to be excluded,
without having a voice, from a
183
participation of the natural rights of
mankind, prove first, to
ward off the charge of injustice and
inconsistency, that they want
reason, else this flaw in your NEW
CONSTITUTION, the first
constitution founded on reason, will ever
show that man must, in
some shape, act like a tyrant, and
tyranny, in whatever part of
society it rears its brazen front, will ever
undermine morality.
I have repeatedly asserted, and produced
what appeared to me
irrefragable arguments drawn from
matters of fact, to prove my
assertion, that women cannot, by force,
be confined to domestic
concerns; for they will however
ignorant, intermeddle with more
weighty affairs, neglecting private duties
only to disturb, by
cunning tricks, the orderly plans of
reason which rise above their
comprehension.
Besides, whilst they are only made to
acquire personal
accomplishments, men will seek for
pleasure in variety, and
faithless husbands will make faithless
wives; such ignorant beings,
indeed, will be very excusable when, not
taught to respect public
good, nor allowed any civil right, they
attempt to do themselves
justice by retaliation.
The box of mischief thus opened in
society, what is to preserve
private virtue, the only security of public
freedom and universal
happiness?
Let there be then no coercion
ESTABLISHED in society, and the
common law of gravity prevailing, the
sexes will fall into their
proper places. And, now that more
equitable laws are forming your
citizens, marriage may become more
sacred; your young men may
choose wives from motives of affection,
and your maidens allow love
to root out vanity.
The father of a family will not then
weaken his constitution and
debase his sentiments, by visiting the
harlot, nor forget, in
obeying the call of appetite, the purpose
for which it was
implanted; and the mother will not
neglect her children to practise
the arts of coquetry, when sense and
modesty secure her the
friendship of her husband.
But, till men become attentive to the
duty of a father, it is vain
to expect women to spend that time in
their nursery which they,
"wise in their generation," choose to
spend at their glass; for
this exertion of cunning is only an
instinct of nature to enable
them to obtain indirectly a little of that
power of which they are
unjustly denied a share; for, if women
are not permitted to enjoy
legitimate rights, they will render both
men and themselves
vicious, to obtain illicit privileges.
I wish, sir, to set some investigations of
this kind afloat in
France; and should they lead to a
confirmation of my principles,
when your constitution is revised, the
rights of woman may be
184
respected, if it be fully proved that
reason calls for this
respect, and loudly demands JUSTICE
for one half of the human race.
I am, sir,
Yours respectfully,
M. W.
INTRODUCTION.
After considering the historic page, and
viewing the living world
with anxious solicitude, the most
melancholy emotions of sorrowful
indignation have depressed my spirits,
and I have sighed when
obliged to confess, that either nature has
made a great difference
between man and man, or that the
civilization, which has hitherto
taken place in the world, has been very
partial. I have turned
over various books written on the subject
of education, and
patiently observed the conduct of parents
and the management of
schools; but what has been the result? a
profound conviction, that
the neglected education of my fellow
creatures is the grand source
of the misery I deplore; and that women
in particular, are rendered
weak and wretched by a variety of
concurring causes, originating
from one hasty conclusion. The conduct
and manners of women, in
fact, evidently prove, that their minds are
not in a healthy state;
for, like the flowers that are planted in
too rich a soil,
strength and usefulness are sacrificed to
beauty; and the flaunting
leaves, after having pleased a fastidious
eye, fade, disregarded on
the stalk, long before the season when
they ought to have arrived
at maturity. One cause of this barren
blooming I attribute to a
false system of education, gathered from
the books written on this
subject by men, who, considering
females rather as women than human
creatures, have been more anxious to
make them alluring mistresses
than rational wives; and the
understanding of the sex has been so
bubbled by this specious homage, that
the civilized women of the
present century, with a few exceptions,
are only anxious to inspire
love, when they ought to cherish a
nobler ambition, and by their
abilities and virtues exact respect.
In a treatise, therefore, on female rights
and manners, the works
which have been particularly written for
their improvement must not
be overlooked; especially when it is
asserted, in direct terms,
that the minds of women are enfeebled
by false refinement; that the
books of instruction, written by men of
genius, have had the same
tendency as more frivolous productions;
and that, in the true style
of Mahometanism, they are only
considered as females, and not as a
part of the human species, when
improvable reason is allowed to be
the dignified distinction, which raises
men above the brute
creation, and puts a natural sceptre in a
feeble hand.
Yet, because I am a woman, I would not
lead my readers to suppose,
185
that I mean violently to agitate the
contested question respecting
the equality and inferiority of the sex;
but as the subject lies in
my way, and I cannot pass it over
without subjecting the main
tendency of my reasoning to
misconstruction, I shall stop a moment
to deliver, in a few words, my opinion.
In the government of the
physical world, it is observable that the
female, in general, is
inferior to the male. The male pursues,
the female yields--this is
the law of nature; and it does not appear
to be suspended or
abrogated in favour of woman. This
physical superiority cannot be
denied--and it is a noble prerogative!
But not content with this
natural pre-eminence, men endeavour to
sink us still lower, merely
to render us alluring objects for a
moment; and women, intoxicated
by the adoration which men, under the
influence of their senses,
pay them, do not seek to obtain a durable
interest in their hearts,
or to become the friends of the fellow
creatures who find amusement
in their society.
I am aware of an obvious inference:
from every quarter have I heard
exclamations against masculine women;
but where are they to be
found? If, by this appellation, men mean
to inveigh against their
ardour in hunting, shooting, and gaming,
I shall most cordially
join in the cry; but if it be, against the
imitation of manly
virtues, or, more properly speaking, the
attainment of those
talents and virtues, the exercise of which
ennobles the human
character, and which raise females in the
scale of animal being,
when they are comprehensively termed
mankind--all those who view
them with a philosophical eye must, I
should think, wish with me,
that they may every day grow more and
more masculine.
This discussion naturally divides the
subject. I shall first
consider women in the grand light of
human creatures, who, in
common with men, are placed on this
earth to unfold their
faculties; and afterwards I shall more
particularly point out their
peculiar designation.
I wish also to steer clear of an error,
which many respectable
writers have fallen into; for the
instruction which has hitherto
been addressed to women, has rather
been applicable to LADIES, if
the little indirect advice, that is scattered
through Sandford and
Merton, be excepted; but, addressing my
sex in a firmer tone, I pay
particular attention to those in the middle
class, because they
appear to be in the most natural state.
Perhaps the seeds of false
refinement, immorality, and vanity have
ever been shed by the
great. Weak, artificial beings raised
above the common wants and
affections of their race, in a premature
unnatural manner,
undermine the very foundation of virtue,
and spread corruption
through the whole mass of society! As a
class of mankind they have
the strongest claim to pity! the education
of the rich tends to
186
render them vain and helpless, and the
unfolding mind is not
strengthened by the practice of those
duties which dignify the
human character. They only live to
amuse themselves, and by the
same law which in nature invariably
produces certain effects, they
soon only afford barren amusement.
But as I purpose taking a separate view
of the different ranks of
society, and of the moral character of
women, in each, this hint
is, for the present, sufficient; and I have
only alluded to the
subject, because it appears to me to be
the very essence of an
introduction to give a cursory account of
the contents of the work
it introduces.
My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I
treat them like rational
creatures, instead of flattering their
FASCINATING graces, and
viewing them as if they were in a state of
perpetual childhood,
unable to stand alone. I earnestly wish
to point out in what true
dignity and human happiness consists--I
wish to persuade women to
endeavour to acquire strength, both of
mind and body, and to
convince them, that the soft phrases,
susceptibility of heart,
delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of
taste, are almost
synonymous with epithets of weakness,
and that those beings who are
only the objects of pity and that kind of
love, which has been
termed its sister, will soon become
objects of contempt.
Dismissing then those pretty feminine
phrases, which the men
condescendingly use to soften our
slavish dependence, and despising
that weak elegancy of mind, exquisite
sensibility, and sweet
docility of manners, supposed to be the
sexual characteristics of
the weaker vessel, I wish to show that
elegance is inferior to
virtue, that the first object of laudable
ambition is to obtain a
character as a human being, regardless
of the distinction of sex;
and that secondary views should be
brought to this simple
touchstone.
This is a rough sketch of my plan; and
should I express my
conviction with the energetic emotions
that I feel whenever I think
of the subject, the dictates of experience
and reflection will be
felt by some of my readers. Animated
by this important object, I
shall disdain to cull my phrases or polish
my style--I aim at being
useful, and sincerity will render me
unaffected; for wishing rather
to persuade by the force of my
arguments, than dazzle by the
elegance of my language, I shall not
waste my time in rounding
periods, nor in fabricating the turgid
bombast of artificial
feelings, which, coming from the head,
never reach the heart. I
shall be employed about things, not
words! and, anxious to render
my sex more respectable members of
society, I shall try to avoid
that flowery diction which has slided
from essays into novels, and
from novels into familiar letters and
conversation.
187
These pretty nothings, these caricatures
of the real beauty of
sensibility, dropping glibly from the
tongue, vitiate the taste,
and create a kind of sickly delicacy that
turns away from simple
unadorned truth; and a deluge of false
sentiments and
over-stretched feelings, stifling the
natural emotions of the
heart, render the domestic pleasures
insipid, that ought to sweeten
the exercise of those severe duties,
which educate a rational and
immortal being for a nobler field of
action.
The education of women has, of late,
been more attended to than
formerly; yet they are still reckoned a
frivolous sex, and
ridiculed or pitied by the writers who
endeavour by satire or
instruction to improve them. It is
acknowledged that they spend
many of the first years of their lives in
acquiring a smattering of
accomplishments: meanwhile, strength
of body and mind are
sacrificed to libertine notions of beauty,
to the desire of
establishing themselves, the only way
women can rise in the
world--by marriage. And this desire
making mere animals of them,
when they marry, they act as such
children may be expected to act:
they dress; they paint, and nickname
God's creatures. Surely these
weak beings are only fit for the seraglio!
Can they govern a
family, or take care of the poor babes
whom they bring into the
world?
If then it can be fairly deduced from the
present conduct of the
sex, from the prevalent fondness for
pleasure, which takes place of
ambition and those nobler passions that
open and enlarge the soul;
that the instruction which women have
received has only tended,
with the constitution of civil society, to
render them
insignificant objects of desire; mere
propagators of fools! if it
can be proved, that in aiming to
accomplish them, without
cultivating their understandings, they are
taken out of their
sphere of duties, and made ridiculous
and useless when the short
lived bloom of beauty is over*, I
presume that RATIONAL men will
excuse me for endeavouring to persuade
them to become more
masculine and respectable.
(*Footnote. A lively writer, I cannot
recollect his name, asks
what business women turned of forty
have to do in the world.)
Indeed the word masculine is only a
bugbear: there is little
reason to fear that women will acquire
too much courage or
fortitude; for their apparent inferiority
with respect to bodily
strength, must render them, in some
degree, dependent on men in the
various relations of life; but why should
it be increased by
prejudices that give a sex to virtue, and
confound simple truths
with sensual reveries?
Women are, in fact, so much degraded
by mistaken notions of female
188
excellence, that I do not mean to add a
paradox when I assert, that
this artificial weakness produces a
propensity to tyrannize, and
gives birth to cunning, the natural
opponent of strength, which
leads them to play off those
contemptible infantile airs that
undermine esteem even whilst they
excite desire. Do not foster
these prejudices, and they will naturally
fall into their
subordinate, yet respectable station in
life.
It seems scarcely necessary to say, that I
now speak of the sex in
general. Many individuals have more
sense than their male
relatives; and, as nothing preponderates
where there is a constant
struggle for an equilibrium, without it
has naturally more gravity,
some women govern their husbands
without degrading themselves,
because intellect will always govern.
VINDICATION OF THE RIGHTS
OF WOMAN.
CHAPTER 1.
THE RIGHTS AND INVOLVED
DUTIES OF MANKIND
CONSIDERED.
In the present state of society, it appears
necessary to go back to
first principles in search of the most
simple truths, and to
dispute with some prevailing prejudice
every inch of ground. To
clear my way, I must be allowed to ask
some plain questions, and
the answers will probably appear as
unequivocal as the axioms on
which reasoning is built; though, when
entangled with various
motives of action, they are formally
contradicted, either by the
words or conduct of men.
In what does man's pre-eminence over
the brute creation consist?
The answer is as clear as that a half is
less than the whole; in
Reason.
What acquirement exalts one being
above another? Virtue; we
spontaneously reply.
For what purpose were the passions
implanted? That man by
struggling with them might attain a
degree of knowledge denied to
the brutes: whispers Experience.
Consequently the perfection of our
nature and capability of
happiness, must be estimated by the
degree of reason, virtue, and
knowledge, that distinguish the
individual, and direct the laws
which bind society: and that from the
exercise of reason,
knowledge and virtue naturally flow, is
equally undeniable, if
mankind be viewed collectively.
The rights and duties of man thus
simplified, it seems almost
impertinent to attempt to illustrate truths
that appear so
incontrovertible: yet such deeply rooted
prejudices have clouded
reason, and such spurious qualities have
assumed the name of
virtues, that it is necessary to pursue the
course of reason as it
189
has been perplexed and involved in
error, by various adventitious
circumstances, comparing the simple
axiom with casual deviations.
Men, in general, seem to employ their
reason to justify prejudices,
which they have imbibed, they cannot
trace how, rather than to root
them out. The mind must be strong that
resolutely forms its own
principles; for a kind of intellectual
cowardice prevails which
makes many men shrink from the task,
or only do it by halves. Yet
the imperfect conclusions thus drawn,
are frequently very
plausible, because they are built on
partial experience, on just,
though narrow, views.
Going back to first principles, vice
skulks, with all its native
deformity, from close investigation; but
a set of shallow reasoners
are always exclaiming that these
arguments prove too much, and that
a measure rotten at the core may be
expedient. Thus expediency is
continually contrasted with simple
principles, till truth is lost
in a mist of words, virtue in forms, and
knowledge rendered a
sounding nothing, by the specious
prejudices that assume its name.
That the society is formed in the wisest
manner, whose constitution
is founded on the nature of man, strikes,
in the abstract, every
thinking being so forcibly, that it looks
like presumption to
endeavour to bring forward proofs;
though proof must be brought, or
the strong hold of prescription will never
be forced by reason; yet
to urge prescription as an argument to
justify the depriving men
(or women) of their natural rights, is one
of the absurd sophisms
which daily insult common sense.
The civilization of the bulk of the people
of Europe, is very
partial; nay, it may be made a question,
whether they have acquired
any virtues in exchange for innocence,
equivalent to the misery
produced by the vices that have been
plastered over unsightly
ignorance, and the freedom which has
been bartered for splendid
slavery. The desire of dazzling by
riches, the most certain
pre-eminence that man can obtain, the
pleasure of commanding
flattering sycophants, and many other
complicated low calculations
of doting self-love, have all contributed
to overwhelm the mass of
mankind, and make liberty a convenient
handle for mock patriotism.
For whilst rank and titles are held of the
utmost importance,
before which Genius "must hide its
diminished head," it is, with a
few exceptions, very unfortunate for a
nation when a man of
abilities, without rank or property,
pushes himself forward to
notice. Alas! what unheard of misery
have thousands suffered to
purchase a cardinal's hat for an
intriguing obscure adventurer, who
longed to be ranked with princes, or lord
it over them by seizing
the triple crown!
Such, indeed, has been the wretchedness
that has flowed from
hereditary honours, riches, and
monarchy, that men of lively
190
sensibility have almost uttered
blasphemy in order to justify the
dispensations of providence. Man has
been held out as independent
of his power who made him, or as a
lawless planet darting from its
orbit to steal the celestial fire of reason;
and the vengeance of
heaven, lurking in the subtile flame,
sufficiently punished his
temerity, by introducing evil into the
world.
Impressed by this view of the misery and
disorder which pervaded
society, and fatigued with jostling
against artificial fools,
Rousseau became enamoured of
solitude, and, being at the same time
an optimist, he labours with uncommon
eloquence to prove that man
was naturally a solitary animal. Misled
by his respect for the
goodness of God, who certainly for what
man of sense and feeling
can doubt it! gave life only to
communicate happiness, he considers
evil as positive, and the work of man;
not aware that he was
exalting one attribute at the expense of
another, equally necessary
to divine perfection.
Reared on a false hypothesis, his
arguments in favour of a state of
nature are plausible, but unsound. I say
unsound; for to assert
that a state of nature is preferable to
civilization in all its
possible perfection, is, in other words, to
arraign supreme wisdom;
and the paradoxical exclamation, that
God has made all things
right, and that evil has been introduced
by the creature whom he
formed, knowing what he formed, is as
unphilosophical as impious.
When that wise Being, who created us
and placed us here, saw the
fair idea, he willed, by allowing it to be
so, that the passions
should unfold our reason, because he
could see that present evil
would produce future good. Could the
helpless creature whom he
called from nothing, break loose from
his providence, and boldly
learn to know good by practising evil
without his permission? No.
How could that energetic advocate for
immortality argue so
inconsistently? Had mankind remained
for ever in the brutal state
of nature, which even his magic pen
cannot paint as a state in
which a single virtue took root, it would
have been clear, though
not to the sensitive unreflecting
wanderer, that man was born to
run the circle of life and death, and
adorn God's garden for some
purpose which could not easily be
reconciled with his attributes.
But if, to crown the whole, there were to
be rational creatures
produced, allowed to rise in excellency
by the exercise of powers
implanted for that purpose; if benignity
itself thought fit to call
into existence a creature above the
brutes, who could think and
improve himself, why should that
inestimable gift, for a gift it
was, if a man was so created as to have a
capacity to rise above
the state in which sensation produced
brutal ease, be called, in
direct terms, a curse? A curse it might
be reckoned, if all our
191
existence was bounded by our
continuance in this world; for why
should the gracious fountain of life give
us passions, and the
power of reflecting, only to embitter our
days, and inspire us with
mistaken notions of dignity? Why
should he lead us from love of
ourselves to the sublime emotions which
the discovery of his wisdom
and goodness excites, if these feelings
were not set in motion to
improve our nature, of which they make
a part, and render us
capable of enjoying a more godlike
portion of happiness? Firmly
persuaded that no evil exists in the world
that God did not design
to take place, I build my belief on the
perfection of God.
Rousseau exerts himself to prove, that
all WAS right originally: a
crowd of authors that all IS now right:
and I, that all WILL BE
right.
But, true to his first position, next to a
state of nature,
Rousseau celebrates barbarism, and,
apostrophizing the shade of
Fabricius, he forgets that, in conquering
the world, the Romans
never dreamed of establishing their own
liberty on a firm basis, or
of extending the reign of virtue. Eager
to support his system, he
stigmatizes, as vicious, every effort of
genius; and uttering the
apotheosis of savage virtues, he exalts
those to demigods, who were
scarcely human--the brutal Spartans,
who in defiance of justice and
gratitude, sacrificed, in cold blood, the
slaves that had shown
themselves men to rescue their
oppressors.
Disgusted with artificial manners and
virtues, the citizen of
Geneva, instead of properly sifting the
subject, threw away the
wheat with the chaff, without waiting to
inquire whether the evils,
which his ardent soul turned from
indignantly, were the consequence
of civilization, or the vestiges of
barbarism. He saw vice
trampling on virtue, and the semblance
of goodness taking place of
the reality; he saw talents bent by power
to sinister purposes, and
never thought of tracing the gigantic
mischief up to arbitrary
power, up to the hereditary distinctions
that clash with the mental
superiority that naturally raises a man
above his fellows. He did
not perceive, that the regal power, in a
few generations,
introduces idiotism into the noble stem,
and holds out baits to
render thousands idle and vicious.
Nothing can set the regal character in a
more contemptible point of
view, than the various crimes that have
elevated men to the supreme
dignity. Vile intrigues, unnatural crimes,
and every vice that
degrades our nature, have been the steps
to this distinguished
eminence; yet millions of men have
supinely allowed the nerveless
limbs of the posterity of such rapacious
prowlers, to rest quietly
on their ensanguined thrones.
What but a pestilential vapour can hover
over society, when its
192
chief director is only instructed in the
invention of crimes, or
the stupid routine of childish
ceremonies? Will men never be wise?
will they never cease to expect corn
from tares, and figs from
thistles?
It is impossible for any man, when the
most favourable
circumstances concur, to acquire
sufficient knowledge and strength
of mind to discharge the duties of a king,
entrusted with
uncontrolled power; how then must they
be violated when his very
elevation is an insuperable bar to the
attainment of either wisdom
or virtue; when all the feelings of a man
are stifled by flattery,
and reflection shut out by pleasure!
Surely it is madness to make
the fate of thousands depend on the
caprice of a weak fellow
creature, whose very station sinks him
NECESSARILY below the
meanest of his subjects! But one power
should not be thrown down
to exalt another--for all power
intoxicates weak man; and its abuse
proves, that the more equality there is
established among men, the
more virtue and happiness will reign in
society. But this, and any
similar maxim deduced from simple
reason, raises an outcry--the
church or the state is in danger, if faith in
the wisdom of
antiquity is not implicit; and they who,
roused by the sight of
human calamity, dare to attack human
authority, are reviled as
despisers of God, and enemies of man.
These are bitter calumnies,
yet they reached one of the best of men,
(Dr. Price.) whose ashes
still preach peace, and whose memory
demands a respectful pause,
when subjects are discussed that lay so
near his heart.
After attacking the sacred majesty of
kings, I shall scarcely
excite surprise, by adding my firm
persuasion, that every
profession, in which great subordination
of rank constitutes its
power, is highly injurious to morality.
A standing army, for instance, is
incompatible with freedom;
because subordination and rigour are the
very sinews of military
discipline; and despotism is necessary to
give vigour to
enterprises that one will directs. A spirit
inspired by romantic
notions of honour, a kind of morality
founded on the fashion of the
age, can only be felt by a few officers,
whilst the main body must
be moved by command, like the waves
of the sea; for the strong wind
of authority pushes the crowd of
subalterns forward, they scarcely
know or care why, with headlong fury.
Besides, nothing can be so prejudicial to
the morals of the
inhabitants of country towns, as the
occasional residence of a set
of idle superficial young men, whose
only occupation is gallantry,
and whose polished manners render vice
more dangerous, by
concealing its deformity under gay
ornamental drapery. An air of
fashion, which is but a badge of slavery,
and proves that the soul
has not a strong individual character,
awes simple country people
193
into an imitation of the vices, when they
cannot catch the slippery
graces of politeness. Every corps is a
chain of despots, who,
submitting and tyrannizing without
exercising their reason, become
dead weights of vice and folly on the
community. A man of rank or
fortune, sure of rising by interest, has
nothing to do but to
pursue some extravagant freak; whilst
the needy GENTLEMAN, who is
to rise, as the phrase turns, by his merit,
becomes a servile
parasite or vile pander.
Sailors, the naval gentlemen, come
under the same description, only
their vices assume a different and a
grosser cast. They are more
positively indolent, when not
discharging the ceremonials of their
station; whilst the insignificant fluttering
of soldiers may be
termed active idleness. More confined
to the society of men, the
former acquire a fondness for humour
and mischievous tricks; whilst
the latter, mixing frequently with wellbred women, catch a
sentimental cant. But mind is equally
out of the question, whether
they indulge the horse-laugh or polite
simper.
May I be allowed to extend the
comparison to a profession where
more mind is certainly to be found; for
the clergy have superior
opportunities of improvement, though
subordination almost equally
cramps their faculties? The blind
submission imposed at college to
forms of belief, serves as a noviciate to
the curate who most
obsequiously respects the opinion of his
rector or patron, if he
means to rise in his profession. Perhaps
there cannot be a more
forcible contrast than between the
servile, dependent gait of a
poor curate, and the courtly mien of a
bishop. And the respect and
contempt they inspire render the
discharge of their separate
functions equally useless.
It is of great importance to observe, that
the character of every
man is, in some degree, formed by his
profession. A man of sense
may only have a cast of countenance that
wears off as you trace his
individuality, whilst the weak, common
man, has scarcely ever any
character, but what belongs to the body;
at least, all his opinions
have been so steeped in the vat
consecrated by authority, that the
faint spirit which the grape of his own
vine yields cannot be
distinguished.
Society, therefore, as it becomes more
enlightened, should be very
careful not to establish bodies of men
who must necessarily be made
foolish or vicious by the very
constitution of their profession.
In the infancy of society, when men
were just emerging out of
barbarism, chiefs and priests, touching
the most powerful springs
of savage conduct--hope and fear--must
have had unbounded sway. An
aristocracy, of course, is naturally the
first form of government.
But clashing interests soon losing their
equipoise, a monarchy and
194
hierarchy break out of the confusion of
ambitious struggles, and
the foundation of both is secured by
feudal tenures. This appears
to be the origin of monarchial and
priestly power, and the dawn of
civilization. But such combustible
materials cannot long be pent
up; and getting vent in foreign wars and
intestine insurrections,
the people acquire some power in the
tumult, which obliges their
rulers to gloss over their oppression with
a show of right. Thus,
as wars, agriculture, commerce, and
literature, expands the mind,
despots are compelled, to make covert
corruption hold fast the
power which was formerly snatched by
open force.* And this baneful
lurking gangrene is most quickly spread
by luxury and superstition,
the sure dregs of ambition. The indolent
puppet of a court first
becomes a luxurious monster, or
fastidious sensualist, and then
makes the contagion which his unnatural
state spreads, the
instrument of tyranny.
greater portion of happiness or misery.
But the nature of the
poison points out the antidote; and had
Rousseau mounted one step
higher in his investigation; or could his
eye have pierced through
the foggy atmosphere, which he almost
disdained to breathe, his
active mind would have darted forward
to contemplate the perfection
of man in the establishment of true
civilization, instead of taking
his ferocious flight back to the night of
sensual ignorance.
CHAPTER 2.
THE PREVAILING OPINION OF A
SEXUAL CHARACTER
DISCUSSED.
(*Footnote. Men of abilities scatter
seeds that grow up, and have
a great influence on the forming opinion;
and when once the public
opinion preponderates, through the
exertion of reason, the
overthrow of arbitrary power is not very
distant.)
To account for, and excuse the tyranny
of man, many ingenious
arguments have been brought forward to
prove, that the two sexes,
in the acquirement of virtue, ought to
aim at attaining a very
different character: or, to speak
explicitly, women are not
allowed to have sufficient strength of
mind to acquire what really
deserves the name of virtue. Yet it
should seem, allowing them to
have souls, that there is but one way
appointed by providence to
lead MANKIND to either virtue or
happiness.
It is the pestiferous purple which renders
the progress of
civilization a curse, and warps the
understanding, till men of
sensibility doubt whether the expansion
of intellect produces a
If then women are not a swarm of
ephemeron triflers, why should
they be kept in ignorance under the
specious name of innocence?
Men complain, and with reason, of the
follies and caprices of our
195
sex, when they do not keenly satirize our
headstrong passions and
groveling vices. Behold, I should
answer, the natural effect of
ignorance! The mind will ever be
unstable that has only prejudices
to rest on, and the current will run with
destructive fury when
there are no barriers to break its force.
Women are told from
their infancy, and taught by the example
of their mothers, that a
little knowledge of human weakness,
justly termed cunning, softness
of temper, OUTWARD obedience, and a
scrupulous attention to a
puerile kind of propriety, will obtain for
them the protection of
man; and should they be beautiful, every
thing else is needless,
for at least twenty years of their lives.
Thus Milton describes our first frail
mother; though when he tells
us that women are formed for softness
and sweet attractive grace, I
cannot comprehend his meaning, unless,
in the true Mahometan
strain, he meant to deprive us of souls,
and insinuate that we were
beings only designed by sweet attractive
grace, and docile blind
obedience, to gratify the senses of man
when he can no longer soar
on the wing of contemplation.
How grossly do they insult us, who thus
advise us only to render
ourselves gentle, domestic brutes! For
instance, the winning
softness, so warmly, and frequently
recommended, that governs by
obeying. What childish expressions, and
how insignificant is the
being--can it be an immortal one? who
will condescend to govern by
such sinister methods! "Certainly," says
Lord Bacon, "man is of
kin to the beasts by his body: and if he
be not of kin to God by
his spirit, he is a base and ignoble
creature!" Men, indeed,
appear to me to act in a very
unphilosophical manner, when they try
to secure the good conduct of women by
attempting to keep them
always in a state of childhood. Rousseau
was more consistent when
he wished to stop the progress of reason
in both sexes; for if men
eat of the tree of knowledge, women will
come in for a taste: but,
from the imperfect cultivation which
their understandings now
receive, they only attain a knowledge of
evil.
Children, I grant, should be innocent; but
when the epithet is
applied to men, or women, it is but a
civil term for weakness. For
if it be allowed that women were
destined by Providence to acquire
human virtues, and by the exercise of
their understandings, that
stability of character which is the firmest
ground to rest our
future hopes upon, they must be
permitted to turn to the fountain
of light, and not forced to shape their
course by the twinkling of
a mere satellite. Milton, I grant, was of a
very different
opinion; for he only bends to the
indefeasible right of beauty,
though it would be difficult to render
two passages, which I now
mean to contrast, consistent: but into
similar inconsistencies are
great men often led by their senses:--
196
"To whom thus Eve with perfect beauty
adorned:
My author and disposer, what thou bidst
Unargued I obey; so God ordains;
God is thy law, thou mine; to know no
more
Is woman's happiest knowledge and her
praise."
These are exactly the arguments that I
have used to children; but I
have added, "Your reason is now gaining
strength, and, till it
arrives at some degree of maturity, you
must look up to me for
advice: then you ought to THINK, and
only rely on God."
Yet, in the following lines, Milton seems
to coincide with me, when
he makes Adam thus expostulate with
his Maker:-"Hast thou not made me here thy
substitute,
And these inferior far beneath me set?
Among unequals what society
Can sort, what harmony or delight?
Which must be mutual, in proportion
due
Given and received; but in disparity
The one intense, the other still remiss
Cannot well suit with either, but soon
prove
Tedious alike: of fellowship I speak
Such as I seek fit to participate
All rational delight."
In treating, therefore, of the manners of
women, let us,
disregarding sensual arguments, trace
what we should endeavour to
make them in order to co-operate, if the
expression be not too
bold, with the Supreme Being.
By individual education, I mean--for the
sense of the word is not
precisely defined--such an attention to a
child as will slowly
sharpen the senses, form the temper,
regulate the passions, as they
begin to ferment, and set the
understanding to work before the body
arrives at maturity; so that the man may
only have to proceed, not
to begin, the important task of learning
to think and reason.
To prevent any misconstruction, I must
add, that I do not believe
that a private education can work the
wonders which some sanguine
writers have attributed to it. Men and
women must be educated, in
a great degree, by the opinions and
manners of the society they
live in. In every age there has been a
stream of popular opinion
that has carried all before it, and given a
family character, as it
were, to the century. It may then fairly
be inferred, that, till
society be differently constituted, much
cannot be expected from
education. It is, however, sufficient for
my present purpose to
assert, that, whatever effect
circumstances have on the abilities,
every being may become virtuous by the
exercise of its own reason;
for if but one being was created with
vicious inclinations--that
is, positively bad-- what can save us
from atheism? or if we
worship a God, is not that God a devil?
Consequently, the most perfect
education, in my opinion, is such an
exercise of the understanding as is best
calculated to strengthen
197
the body and form the heart; or, in other
words, to enable the
individual to attain such habits of virtue
as will render it
independent. In fact, it is a farce to call
any being virtuous
whose virtues do not result from the
exercise of its own reason.
This was Rousseau's opinion respecting
men: I extend it to women,
and confidently assert that they have
been drawn out of their
sphere by false refinement, and not by an
endeavour to acquire
masculine qualities. Still the regal
homage which they receive is
so intoxicating, that, till the manners of
the times are changed,
and formed on more reasonable
principles, it may be impossible to
convince them that the illegitimate
power, which they obtain by
degrading themselves, is a curse, and
that they must return to
nature and equality, if they wish to
secure the placid satisfaction
that unsophisticated affections impart.
But for this epoch we must
wait--wait, perhaps, till kings and
nobles, enlightened by reason,
and, preferring the real dignity of man to
childish state, throw
off their gaudy hereditary trappings; and
if then women do not
resign the arbitrary power of beauty,
they will prove that they
have LESS mind than man. I may be
accused of arrogance; still I
must declare, what I firmly believe, that
all the writers who have
written on the subject of female
education and manners, from
Rousseau to Dr. Gregory, have
contributed to render women more
artificial, weaker characters, than they
would otherwise have been;
and, consequently, more useless
members of society. I might have
expressed this conviction in a lower key;
but I am afraid it would
have been the whine of affectation, and
not the faithful expression
of my feelings, of the clear result, which
experience and
reflection have led me to draw. When I
come to that division of
the subject, I shall advert to the passages
that I more
particularly disapprove of, in the works
of the authors I have just
alluded to; but it is first necessary to
observe, that my objection
extends to the whole purport of those
books, which tend, in my
opinion, to degrade one half of the
human species, and render women
pleasing at the expense of every solid
virtue.
Though to reason on Rousseau's ground,
if man did attain a degree
of perfection of mind when his body
arrived at maturity, it might
be proper in order to make a man and his
wife ONE, that she should
rely entirely on his understanding; and
the graceful ivy, clasping
the oak that supported it, would form a
whole in which strength and
beauty would be equally conspicuous.
But, alas! husbands, as well
as their helpmates, are often only
overgrown children; nay, thanks
to early debauchery, scarcely men in
their outward form, and if the
blind lead the blind, one need not come
from heaven to tell us the
consequence.
Many are the causes that, in the present
corrupt state of society,
198
contribute to enslave women by
cramping their understandings and
sharpening their senses. One, perhaps,
that silently does more
mischief than all the rest, is their
disregard of order.
To do every thing in an orderly manner,
is a most important
precept, which women, who, generally
speaking, receive only a
disorderly kind of education, seldom
attend to with that degree of
exactness that men, who from their
infancy are broken into method,
observe. This negligent kind of
guesswork, for what other epithet
can be used to point out the random
exertions of a sort of
instinctive common sense, never brought
to the test of reason?
prevents their generalizing matters of
fact, so they do to-day,
what they did yesterday, merely because
they did it yesterday.
This contempt of the understanding in
early life has more baneful
consequences than is commonly
supposed; for the little knowledge
which women of strong minds attain, is,
from various circumstances,
of a more desultory kind than the
knowledge of men, and it is
acquired more by sheer observations on
real life, than from
comparing what has been individually
observed with the results of
experience generalized by speculation.
Led by their dependent
situation and domestic employments
more into society, what they
learn is rather by snatches; and as
learning is with them, in
general, only a secondary thing, they do
not pursue any one branch
with that persevering ardour necessary to
give vigour to the
faculties, and clearness to the judgment.
In the present state of
society, a little learning is required to
support the character of
a gentleman; and boys are obliged to
submit to a few years of
discipline. But in the education of
women the cultivation of the
understanding is always subordinate to
the acquirement of some
corporeal accomplishment; even while
enervated by confinement and
false notions of modesty, the body is
prevented from attaining that
grace and beauty which relaxed halfformed limbs never exhibit.
Besides, in youth their faculties are not
brought forward by
emulation; and having no serious
scientific study, if they have
natural sagacity it is turned too soon on
life and manners. They
dwell on effects, and modifications,
without tracing them back to
causes; and complicated rules to adjust
behaviour are a weak
substitute for simple principles.
As a proof that education gives this
appearance of weakness to
females, we may instance the example of
military men, who are, like
them, sent into the world before their
minds have been stored with
knowledge or fortified by principles.
The consequences are
similar; soldiers acquire a little
superficial knowledge, snatched
from the muddy current of conversation,
and, from continually
mixing with society, they gain, what is
termed a knowledge of the
world; and this acquaintance with
manners and customs has
199
frequently been confounded with a
knowledge of the human heart.
But can the crude fruit of casual
observation, never brought to the
test of judgment, formed by comparing
speculation and experience,
deserve such a distinction? Soldiers, as
well as women, practice
the minor virtues with punctilious
politeness. Where is then the
sexual difference, when the education
has been the same; all the
difference that I can discern, arises from
the superior advantage
of liberty which enables the former to
see more of life.
reckoned superior to women, though in
what their superiority
consists, beyond what I have just
mentioned, it is difficult to
discover.
It is wandering from my present subject,
perhaps, to make a
political remark; but as it was produced
naturally by the train of
my reflections, I shall not pass it silently
over.
The great misfortune is this, that they
both acquire manners before
morals, and a knowledge of life before
they have from reflection,
any acquaintance with the grand ideal
outline of human nature. The
consequence is natural; satisfied with
common nature, they become a
prey to prejudices, and taking all their
opinions on credit, they
blindly submit to authority. So that if
they have any sense, it is
a kind of instinctive glance, that catches
proportions, and decides
with respect to manners; but fails when
arguments are to be pursued
below the surface, or opinions analyzed.
Standing armies can never consist of
resolute, robust men; they may
be well disciplined machines, but they
will seldom contain men
under the influence of strong passions or
with very vigorous
faculties. And as for any depth of
understanding, I will venture
to affirm, that it is as rarely to be found
in the army as amongst
women; and the cause, I maintain, is the
same. It may be further
observed, that officers are also
particularly attentive to their
persons, fond of dancing, crowded
rooms, adventures, and ridicule.
Like the FAIR sex, the business of their
lives is gallantry. They
were taught to please, and they only live
to please. Yet they do
not lose their rank in the distinction of
sexes, for they are still
May not the same remark be applied to
women? Nay, the argument may
be carried still further, for they are both
thrown out of a useful
station by the unnatural distinctions
established in civilized
life. Riches and hereditary honours have
made cyphers of women to
give consequence to the numerical
figure; and idleness has produced
a mixture of gallantry and despotism in
society, which leads the
very men who are the slaves of their
mistresses, to tyrannize over
their sisters, wives, and daughters. This
is only keeping them in
rank and file, it is true. Strengthen the
female mind by enlarging
it, and there will be an end to blind
obedience; but, as blind
obedience is ever sought for by power,
tyrants and sensualists are
200
in the right when they endeavour to keep
women in the dark, because
the former only want slaves, and the
latter a play-thing. The
sensualist, indeed, has been the most
dangerous of tyrants, and
women have been duped by their lovers,
as princes by their
ministers, whilst dreaming that they
reigned over them.
I now principally allude to Rousseau, for
his character of Sophia
is, undoubtedly, a captivating one,
though it appears to me grossly
unnatural; however, it is not the
superstructure, but the
foundation of her character, the
principles on which her education
was built, that I mean to attack; nay,
warmly as I admire the
genius of that able writer, whose
opinions I shall often have
occasion to cite, indignation always
takes place of admiration, and
the rigid frown of insulted virtue effaces
the smile of
complacency, which his eloquent
periods are wont to raise, when I
read his voluptuous reveries. Is this the
man, who, in his ardour
for virtue, would banish all the soft arts
of peace, and almost
carry us back to Spartan discipline? Is
this the man who delights
to paint the useful struggles of passion,
the triumphs of good
dispositions, and the heroic flights which
carry the glowing soul
out of itself? How are these mighty
sentiments lowered when he
describes the prettyfoot and enticing airs
of his little favourite!
But, for the present, I waive the subject,
and, instead of severely
reprehending the transient effusions of
overweening sensibility, I
shall only observe, that whoever has cast
a benevolent eye on
society, must often have been gratified
by the sight of humble
mutual love, not dignified by sentiment,
nor strengthened by a
union in intellectual pursuits. The
domestic trifles of the day
have afforded matter for cheerful
converse, and innocent caresses
have softened toils which did not require
great exercise of mind,
or stretch of thought: yet, has not the
sight of this moderate
felicity excited more tenderness than
respect? An emotion similar
to what we feel when children are
playing, or animals sporting,
whilst the contemplation of the noble
struggles of suffering merit
has raised admiration, and carried our
thoughts to that world where
sensation will give place to reason.
Women are, therefore, to be considered
either as moral beings, or
so weak that they must be entirely
subjected to the superior
faculties of men.
Let us examine this question. Rousseau
declares, that a woman
should never, for a moment feel herself
independent, that she
should be governed by fear to exercise
her NATURAL cunning, and
made a coquetish slave in order to render
her a more alluring
object of desire, a SWEETER
companion to man, whenever he chooses
to relax himself. He carries the
arguments, which he pretends to
draw from the indications of nature, still
further, and insinuates
201
that truth and fortitude the corner stones
of all human virtue,
shall be cultivated with certain
restrictions, because with respect
to the female character, obedience is the
grand lesson which ought
to be impressed with unrelenting rigour.
What nonsense! When will a great man
arise with sufficient
strength of mind to puff away the fumes
which pride and sensuality
have thus spread over the subject! If
women are by nature inferior
to men, their virtues must be the same in
quality, if not in
degree, or virtue is a relative idea;
consequently, their conduct
should be founded on the same
principles, and have the same aim.
Connected with man as daughters,
wives, and mothers, their moral
character may be estimated by their
manner of fulfilling those
simple duties; but the end, the grand end
of their exertions should
be to unfold their own faculties, and
acquire the dignity of
conscious virtue. They may try to render
their road pleasant; but
ought never to forget, in common with
man, that life yields not the
felicity which can satisfy an immortal
soul. I do not mean to
insinuate, that either sex should be so
lost, in abstract
reflections or distant views, as to forget
the affections and
duties that lie before them, and are, in
truth, the means appointed
to produce the fruit of life; on the
contrary, I would warmly
recommend them, even while I assert,
that they afford most
satisfaction when they are considered in
their true subordinate
light.
Probably the prevailing opinion, that
woman was created for man,
may have taken its rise from Moses's
poetical story; yet, as very
few it is presumed, who have bestowed
any serious thought on the
subject, ever supposed that Eve was,
literally speaking, one of
Adam's ribs, the deduction must be
allowed to fall to the ground;
or, only be so far admitted as it proves
that man, from the
remotest antiquity, found it convenient
to exert his strength to
subjugate his companion, and his
invention to show that she ought
to have her neck bent under the yoke;
because she as well as the
brute creation, was created to do his
pleasure.
Let it not be concluded, that I wish to
invert the order of things;
I have already granted, that, from the
constitution of their
bodies, men seem to be designed by
Providence to attain a greater
degree of virtue. I speak collectively of
the whole sex; but I see
not the shadow of a reason to conclude
that their virtues should
differ in respect to their nature. In fact,
how can they, if
virtue has only one eternal standard? I
must, therefore, if I
reason consequentially, as strenuously
maintain, that they have the
same simple direction, as that there is a
God.
It follows then, that cunning should not
be opposed to wisdom,
202
little cares to great exertions, nor insipid
softness, varnished
over with the name of gentleness, to that
fortitude which grand
views alone can inspire.
I shall be told, that woman would then
lose many of her peculiar
graces, and the opinion of a well known
poet might be quoted to
refute my unqualified assertions. For
Pope has said, in the name
of the whole male sex,
"Yet ne'er so sure our passions to create,
As when she touch'd the brink of all we
hate."
In what light this sally places men and
women, I shall leave to the
judicious to determine; meanwhile I
shall content myself with
observing, that I cannot discover why,
unless they are mortal,
females should always be degraded by
being made subservient to love
or lust.
To speak disrespectfully of love is, I
know, high treason against
sentiment and fine feelings; but I wish to
speak the simple
language of truth, and rather to address
the head than the heart.
To endeavour to reason love out of the
world, would be to out
Quixote Cervantes, and equally offend
against common sense; but an
endeavour to restrain this tumultuous
passion, and to prove that it
should not be allowed to dethrone
superior powers, or to usurp the
sceptre which the understanding should
ever coolly wield, appears
less wild.
Youth is the season for love in both
sexes; but in those days of
thoughtless enjoyment, provision should
be made for the more
important years of life, when reflection
takes place of sensation.
But Rousseau, and most of the male
writers who have followed his
steps, have warmly inculcated that the
whole tendency of female
education ought to be directed to one
point to render them
pleasing.
Let me reason with the supporters of this
opinion, who have any
knowledge of human nature, do they
imagine that marriage can
eradicate the habitude of life? The
woman who has only been taught
to please, will soon find that her charms
are oblique sun-beams,
and that they cannot have much effect on
her husband's heart when
they are seen every day, when the
summer is past and gone. Will
she then have sufficient native energy to
look into herself for
comfort, and cultivate her dormant
faculties? or, is it not more
rational to expect, that she will try to
please other men; and, in
the emotions raised by the expectation of
new conquests, endeavour
to forget the mortification her love or
pride has received? When
the husband ceases to be a lover--and the
time will inevitably
come, her desire of pleasing will then
grow languid, or become a
spring of bitterness; and love, perhaps,
the most evanescent of all
passions, gives place to jealousy or
vanity.
203
I now speak of women who are
restrained by principle or prejudice;
such women though they would shrink
from an intrigue with real
abhorrence, yet, nevertheless, wish to be
convinced by the homage
of gallantry, that they are cruelly
neglected by their husbands;
or, days and weeks are spent in dreaming
of the happiness enjoyed
by congenial souls, till the health is
undermined and the spirits
broken by discontent. How then can the
great art of pleasing be
such a necessary study? it is only useful
to a mistress; the chaste
wife, and serious mother, should only
consider her power to please
as the polish of her virtues, and the
affection of her husband as
one of the comforts that render her task
less difficult, and her
life happier. But, whether she be loved
or neglected, her first
wish should be to make herself
respectable, and not rely for all
her happiness on a being subject to like
infirmities with herself.
The amiable Dr. Gregory fell into a
similar error. I respect his
heart; but entirely disapprove of his
celebrated Legacy to his
Daughters.
He advises them to cultivate a fondness
for dress, because a
fondness for dress, he asserts, is natural
to them. I am unable to
comprehend what either he or Rousseau
mean, when they frequently
use this indefinite term. If they told us,
that in a pre-existent
state the soul was fond of dress, and
brought this inclination with
it into a new body, I should listen to
them with a half smile, as I
often do when I hear a rant about innate
elegance. But if he only
meant to say that the exercise of the
faculties will produce this
fondness, I deny it. It is not natural; but
arises, like false
ambition in men, from a love of power.
Dr. Gregory goes much further; he
actually recommends
dissimulation, and advises an innocent
girl to give the lie to her
feelings, and not dance with spirit, when
gaiety of heart would
make her feet eloquent, without making
her gestures immodest. In
the name of truth and common sense,
why should not one woman
acknowledge that she can take more
exercise than another? or, in
other words, that she has a sound
constitution; and why to damp
innocent vivacity, is she darkly to be
told, that men will draw
conclusions which she little thinks of?
Let the libertine draw
what inference he pleases; but, I hope,
that no sensible mother
will restrain the natural frankness of
youth, by instilling such
indecent cautions. Out of the abundance
of the heart the mouth
speaketh; and a wiser than Solomon hath
said, that the heart should
be made clean, and not trivial
ceremonies observed, which it is not
very difficult to fulfill with scrupulous
exactness when vice
reigns in the heart.
Women ought to endeavour to purify
their hearts; but can they do so
when their uncultivated understandings
make them entirely dependent
204
on their senses for employment and
amusement, when no noble pursuit
sets them above the little vanities of the
day, or enables them to
curb the wild emotions that agitate a
reed over which every passing
breeze has power? To gain the
affections of a virtuous man, is
affectation necessary?
Surely she has not an immortal soul who
can loiter life away,
merely employed to adorn her person,
that she may amuse the languid
hours, and soften the cares of a fellowcreature who is willing to
be enlivened by her smiles and tricks,
when the serious business of
life is over.
Nature has given woman a weaker frame
than man; but, to ensure her
husband's affections, must a wife, who,
by the exercise of her mind
and body, whilst she was discharging the
duties of a daughter,
wife, and mother, has allowed her
constitution to retain its
natural strength, and her nerves a healthy
tone, is she, I say, to
condescend, to use art, and feign a sickly
delicacy, in order to
secure her husband's affection?
Weakness may excite tenderness, and
gratify the arrogant pride of man; but the
lordly caresses of a
protector will not gratify a noble mind
that pants for and deserves
to be respected. Fondness is a poor
substitute for friendship!
Besides, the woman who strengthens her
body and exercises her mind
will, by managing her family and
practising various virtues, become
the friend, and not the humble dependent
of her husband; and if she
deserves his regard by possessing such
substantial qualities, she
will not find it necessary to conceal her
affection, nor to pretend
to an unnatural coldness of constitution
to excite her husband's
passions. In fact, if we revert to history,
we shall find that the
women who have distinguished
themselves have neither been the most
beautiful nor the most gentle of their sex.
In a seraglio, I grant, that all these arts
are necessary; the
epicure must have his palate tickled, or
he will sink into apathy;
but have women so little ambition as to
be satisfied with such a
condition? Can they supinely dream life
away in the lap of
pleasure, or in the languor of weariness,
rather than assert their
claim to pursue reasonable pleasures,
and render themselves
conspicuous, by practising the virtues
which dignify mankind?
Nature, or to speak with strict propriety
God, has made all things
right; but man has sought him out many
inventions to mar the work.
I now allude to that part of Dr. Gregory's
treatise, where he
advises a wife never to let her husband
know the extent of her
sensibility or affection. Voluptuous
precaution; and as
ineffectual as absurd. Love, from its
very nature, must be
transitory. To seek for a secret that
would render it constant,
would be as wild a search as for the
philosopher's stone, or the
grand panacea; and the discovery would
be equally useless, or
205
rather pernicious to mankind. The most
holy band of society is
friendship. It has been well said, by a
shrewd satirist, "that
rare as true love is, true friendship is still
rarer."
This is an obvious truth, and the cause
not lying deep, will not
elude a slight glance of inquiry.
Love, the common passion, in which
chance and sensation take place
of choice and reason, is in some degree,
felt by the mass of
mankind; for it is not necessary to speak,
at present, of the
emotions that rise above or sink below
love. This passion,
naturally increased by suspense and
difficulties, draws the mind
out of its accustomed state, and exalts
the affections; but the
security of marriage, allowing the fever
of love to subside, a
healthy temperature is thought insipid,
only by those who have not
sufficient intellect to substitute the calm
tenderness of
friendship, the confidence of respect,
instead of blind admiration,
and the sensual emotions of fondness.
This is, must be, the course of nature-friendship or indifference
inevitably succeeds love. And this
constitution seems perfectly to
harmonize with the system of
government which prevails in the moral
world. Passions are spurs to action, and
open the mind; but they
sink into mere appetites, become a
personal momentary
gratification, when the object is gained,
and the satisfied mind
rests in enjoyment. The man who had
some virtue whilst he was
struggling for a crown, often becomes a
voluptuous tyrant when it
graces his brow; and, when the lover is
not lost in the husband,
the dotard a prey to childish caprices,
and fond jealousies,
neglects the serious duties of life, and
the caresses which should
excite confidence in his children are
lavished on the overgrown
child, his wife.
In order to fulfil the duties of life, and to
be able to pursue
with vigour the various employments
which form the moral character,
a master and mistress of a family ought
not to continue to love
each other with passion. I mean to say,
that they ought not to
indulge those emotions which disturb the
order of society, and
engross the thoughts that should be
otherwise employed. The mind
that has never been engrossed by one
object wants vigour--if it can
long be so, it is weak.
A mistaken education, a narrow,
uncultivated mind, and many sexual
prejudices, tend to make women more
constant than men; but, for the
present, I shall not touch on this branch
of the subject. I will
go still further, and advance, without
dreaming of a paradox, that
an unhappy marriage is often very
advantageous to a family, and
that the neglected wife is, in general, the
best mother. And this
would almost always be the
consequence, if the female mind was
more
206
enlarged; for, it seems to be the common
dispensation of
Providence, that what we gain in present
enjoyment should be
deducted from the treasure of life,
experience; and that when we
are gathering the flowers of the day and
revelling in pleasure, the
solid fruit of toil and wisdom should not
be caught at the same
time. The way lies before us, we must
turn to the right or left;
and he who will pass life away in
bounding from one pleasure to
another, must not complain if he neither
acquires wisdom nor
respectability of character.
Supposing for a moment, that the soul is
not immortal, and that man
was only created for the present scene; I
think we should have
reason to complain that love, infantine
fondness, ever grew insipid
and palled upon the sense. Let us eat,
drink, and love, for
to-morrow we die, would be in fact the
language of reason, the
morality of life; and who but a fool
would part with a reality for
a fleeting shadow? But, if awed by
observing the improvable powers
of the mind, we disdain to confine our
wishes or thoughts to such a
comparatively mean field of action; that
only appears grand and
important as it is connected with a
boundless prospect and sublime
hopes; what necessity is there for
falsehood in conduct, and why
must the sacred majesty of truth be
violated to detain a deceitful
good that saps the very foundation of
virtue? Why must the female
mind be tainted by coquetish arts to
gratify the sensualist, and
prevent love from subsiding into
friendship or compassionate
tenderness, when there are not qualities
on which friendship can be
built? Let the honest heart show itself,
and REASON teach passion
to submit to necessity; or, let the
dignified pursuit of virtue and
knowledge raise the mind above those
emotions which rather imbitter
than sweeten the cup of life, when they
are not restrained within
due bounds.
I do not mean to allude to the romantic
passion, which is the
concomitant of genius. Who can clip its
wings? But that grand
passion not proportioned to the puny
enjoyments of life, is only
true to the sentiment, and feeds on itself.
The passions which
have been celebrated for their durability
have always been
unfortunate. They have acquired
strength by absence and
constitutional melancholy. The fancy
has hovered round a form of
beauty dimly seen--but familiarity might
have turned admiration
into disgust; or, at least, into
indifference, and allowed the
imagination leisure to start fresh game.
With perfect propriety,
according to this view of things, does
Rousseau make the mistress
of his soul, Eloisa, love St. Preux, when
life was fading before
her; but this is no proof of the
immortality of the passion.
Of the same complexion is Dr. Gregory's
advice respecting delicacy
of sentiment, which he advises a woman
not to acquire, if she has
207
determined to marry. This
determination, however, perfectly
consistent with his former advice, he
calls INDELICATE, and
earnestly persuades his daughters to
conceal it, though it may
govern their conduct: as if it were
indelicate to have the common
appetites of human nature.
Noble morality! and consistent with the
cautious prudence of a
little soul that cannot extend its views
beyond the present minute
division of existence. If all the faculties
of woman's mind are
only to be cultivated as they respect her
dependence on man; if,
when she obtains a husband she has
arrived at her goal, and meanly
proud, is satisfied with such a paltry
crown, let her grovel
contentedly, scarcely raised by her
employments above the animal
kingdom; but, if she is struggling for the
prize of her high
calling, let her cultivate her
understanding without stopping to
consider what character the husband
may have whom she is destined
to marry. Let her only determine,
without being too anxious about
present happiness, to acquire the
qualities that ennoble a rational
being, and a rough, inelegant husband
may shock her taste without
destroying her peace of mind. She will
not model her soul to suit
the frailties of her companion, but to
bear with them: his
character may be a trial, but not an
impediment to virtue.
If Dr. Gregory confined his remark to
romantic expectations of
constant love and congenial feelings, he
should have recollected,
that experience will banish what advice
can never make us cease to
wish for, when the imagination is kept
alive at the expence of
reason.
I own it frequently happens, that women
who have fostered a
romantic unnatural delicacy of feeling,
waste their lives in
IMAGINING how happy they should
have been with a husband who could
love them with a fervid increasing
affection every day, and all
day. But they might as well pine
married as single, and would not
be a jot more unhappy with a bad
husband than longing for a good
one. That a proper education; or, to
speak with more precision, a
well stored mind, would enable a woman
to support a single life
with dignity, I grant; but that she should
avoid cultivating her
taste, lest her husband should
occasionally shock it, is quitting a
substance for a shadow. To say the
truth, I do not know of what
use is an improved taste, if the individual
be not rendered more
independent of the casualties of life; if
new sources of enjoyment,
only dependent on the solitary
operations of the mind, are not
opened. People of taste, married or
single, without distinction,
will ever be disgusted by various things
that touch not less
observing minds. On this conclusion the
argument must not be
allowed to hinge; but in the whole sum
of enjoyment is taste to be
denominated a blessing?
208
The question is, whether it procures
most pain or pleasure? The
answer will decide the propriety of Dr.
Gregory's advice, and show
how absurd and tyrannic it is thus to lay
down a system of slavery;
or to attempt to educate moral beings by
any other rules than those
deduced from pure reason, which apply
to the whole species.
Gentleness of manners, forbearance, and
long suffering, are such
amiable godlike qualities, that in sublime
poetic strains the Deity
has been invested with them; and,
perhaps, no representation of his
goodness so strongly fastens on the
human affections as those that
represent him abundant in mercy and
willing to pardon. Gentleness,
considered in this point of view, bears on
its front all the
characteristics of grandeur, combined
with the winning graces of
condescension; but what a different
aspect it assumes when it is
the submissive demeanour of
dependence, the support of weakness
that loves, because it wants protection;
and is forbearing, because
it must silently endure injuries; smiling
under the lash at which
it dare not snarl. Abject as this picture
appears, it is the
portrait of an accomplished woman,
according to the received
opinion of female excellence, separated
by specious reasoners from
human excellence. Or, they (Vide
Rousseau, and Swedenborg) kindly
restore the rib, and make one moral
being of a man and woman; not
forgetting to give her all the "submissive
charms."
How women are to exist in that state
where there is to be neither
marrying nor giving in marriage, we are
not told. For though
moralists have agreed, that the tenor of
life seems to prove that
MAN is prepared by various
circumstances for a future state, they
constantly concur in advising WOMAN
only to provide for the
present. Gentleness, docility, and a
spaniel-like affection are,
on this ground, consistently
recommended as the cardinal virtues of
the sex; and, disregarding the arbitrary
economy of nature, one
writer has declared that it is masculine
for a woman to be
melancholy. She was created to be the
toy of man, his rattle, and
it must jingle in his ears, whenever,
dismissing reason, he chooses
to be amused.
To recommend gentleness, indeed, on a
broad basis is strictly
philosophical. A frail being should
labour to be gentle. But when
forbearance confounds right and wrong,
it ceases to be a virtue;
and, however convenient it may be
found in a companion, that
companion will ever be considered as an
inferior, and only inspire
a vapid tenderness, which easily
degenerates into contempt. Still,
if advice could really make a being
gentle, whose natural
disposition admitted not of such a fine
polish, something toward
the advancement of order would be
attained; but if, as might
quickly be demonstrated, only
affectation be produced by this
indiscriminate counsel, which throws a
stumbling block in the way
209
of gradual improvement, and true
melioration of temper, the sex is
not much benefited by sacrificing solid
virtues to the attainment
of superficial graces, though for a few
years they may procure the
individual's regal sway.
As a philosopher, I read with indignation
the plausible epithets
which men use to soften their insults;
and, as a moralist, I ask
what is meant by such heterogeneous
associations, as fair defects,
amiable weaknesses, etc.? If there is but
one criterion of morals,
but one archetype for man, women
appear to be suspended by destiny,
according to the vulgar tale of
Mahomet's coffin; they have neither
the unerring instinct of brutes, nor are
allowed to fix the eye of
reason on a perfect model. They were
made to be loved, and must
not aim at respect, lest they should be
hunted out of society as
masculine.
But to view the subject in another point
of view. Do passive
indolent women make the best wives?
Confining our discussion to
the present moment of existence, let us
see how such weak creatures
perform their part? Do the women who,
by the attainment of a few
superficial accomplishments, have
strengthened the prevailing
prejudice, merely contribute to the
happiness of their husbands?
Do they display their charms merely to
amuse them? And have women,
who have early imbibed notions of
passive obedience, sufficient
character to manage a family or educate
children? So far from it,
that, after surveying the history of
woman, I cannot help agreeing
with the severest satirist, considering the
sex as the weakest as
well as the most oppressed half of the
species. What does history
disclose but marks of inferiority, and
how few women have
emancipated themselves from the galling
yoke of sovereign man? So
few, that the exceptions remind me of an
ingenious conjecture
respecting Newton: that he was
probably a being of a superior
order, accidentally caged in a human
body. In the same style I
have been led to imagine that the few
extraordinary women who have
rushed in eccentrical directions out of
the orbit prescribed to
their sex, were MALE spirits, confined
by mistake in a female
frame. But if it be not philosophical to
think of sex when the
soul is mentioned, the inferiority must
depend on the organs; or
the heavenly fire, which is to ferment the
clay, is not given in
equal portions.
But avoiding, as I have hitherto done,
any direct comparison of the
two sexes collectively, or frankly
acknowledging the inferiority of
woman, according to the present
appearance of things, I shall only
insist, that men have increased that
inferiority till women are
almost sunk below the standard of
rational creatures. Let their
faculties have room to unfold, and their
virtues to gain strength,
and then determine where the whole sex
must stand in the
intellectual scale. Yet, let it be
remembered, that for a small
210
number of distinguished women I do not
ask a place.
It is difficult for us purblind mortals to
say to what height human
discoveries and improvements may
arrive, when the gloom of
despotism subsides, which makes us
stumble at every step; but, when
morality shall be settled on a more solid
basis, then, without
being gifted with a prophetic spirit, I will
venture to predict,
that woman will be either the friend or
slave of man. We shall
not, as at present, doubt whether she is a
moral agent, or the link
which unites man with brutes. But,
should it then appear, that
like the brutes they were principally
created for the use of man,
he will let them patiently bite the bridle,
and not mock them with
empty praise; or, should their rationality
be proved, he will not
impede their improvement merely to
gratify his sensual appetites.
He will not with all the graces of
rhetoric, advise them to submit
implicitly their understandings to the
guidance of man. He will
not, when he treats of the education of
women, assert, that they
ought never to have the free use of
reason, nor would he recommend
cunning and dissimulation to beings who
are acquiring, in like
manner as himself, the virtues of
humanity.
Surely there can be but one rule of right,
if morality has an
eternal foundation, and whoever
sacrifices virtue, strictly so
called, to present convenience, or whose
DUTY it is to act in such
a manner, lives only for the passing day,
and cannot be an
accountable creature.
The poet then should have dropped his
sneer when he says,
"If weak women go astray,
The stars are more in fault than they."
For that they are bound by the
adamantine chain of destiny is most
certain, if it be proved that they are
never to exercise their own
reason, never to be independent, never to
rise above opinion, or to
feel the dignity of a rational will that
only bows to God, and
often forgets that the universe contains
any being but itself, and
the model of perfection to which its
ardent gaze is turned, to
adore attributes that, softened into
virtues, may be imitated in
kind, though the degree overwhelms the
enraptured mind.
If, I say, for I would not impress by
declamation when reason
offers her sober light, if they are really
capable of acting like
rational creatures, let them not be treated
like slaves; or, like
the brutes who are dependent on the
reason of man, when they
associate with him; but cultivate their
minds, give them the
salutary, sublime curb of principle, and
let them attain conscious
dignity by feeling themselves only
dependent on God. Teach them,
in common with man, to submit to
necessity, instead of giving, to
render them more pleasing, a sex to
morals.
211
Further, should experience prove that
they cannot attain the same
degree of strength of mind, perseverance
and fortitude, let their
virtues be the same in kind, though they
may vainly struggle for
the same degree; and the superiority of
man will be equally clear,
if not clearer; and truth, as it is a simple
principle, which
admits of no modification, would be
common to both. Nay, the order
of society, as it is at present regulated,
would not be inverted,
for woman would then only have the
rank that reason assigned her,
and arts could not be practised to bring
the balance even, much
less to turn it.
These may be termed Utopian dreams.
Thanks to that Being who
impressed them on my soul, and gave
me sufficient strength of mind
to dare to exert my own reason, till
becoming dependent only on him
for the support of my virtue, I view with
indignation, the mistaken
notions that enslave my sex.
I love man as my fellow; but his sceptre
real or usurped, extends
not to me, unless the reason of an
individual demands my homage;
and even then the submission is to
reason, and not to man. In
fact, the conduct of an accountable being
must be regulated by the
operations of its own reason; or on what
foundation rests the
throne of God?
It appears to me necessary to dwell on
these obvious truths,
because females have been insulted, as it
were; and while they have
been stripped of the virtues that should
clothe humanity, they have
been decked with artificial graces, that
enable them to exercise a
short lived tyranny. Love, in their
bosoms, taking place of every
nobler passion, their sole ambition is to
be fair, to raise emotion
instead of inspiring respect; and this
ignoble desire, like the
servility in absolute monarchies,
destroys all strength of
character. Liberty is the mother of
virtue, and if women are, by
their very constitution, slaves, and not
allowed to breathe the
sharp invigorating air of freedom, they
must ever languish like
exotics, and be reckoned beautiful flaws
in nature; let it also be
remembered, that they are the only flaw.
As to the argument respecting the
subjection in which the sex has
ever been held, it retorts on man. The
many have always been
enthralled by the few; and, monsters
who have scarcely shown any
discernment of human excellence, have
tyrannized over thousands of
their fellow creatures. Why have men of
superior endowments
submitted to such degradation? For, is it
not universally
acknowledged that kings, viewed
collectively, have ever been
inferior, in abilities and virtue, to the
same number of men taken
from the common mass of mankind--yet,
have they not, and are they
not still treated with a degree of
reverence, that is an insult to
reason? China is not the only country
where a living man has been
made a God. MEN have submitted to
superior strength, to enjoy with
212
impunity the pleasure of the moment-WOMEN have only done the same,
and therefore till it is proved that the
courtier, who servilely
resigns the birthright of a man, is not a
moral agent, it cannot be
demonstrated that woman is essentially
inferior to man, because she
has always been subjugated.
Brutal force has hitherto governed the
world, and that the science
of politics is in its infancy, is evident
from philosophers
scrupling to give the knowledge most
useful to man that determinate
distinction.
I shall not pursue this argument any
further than to establish an
obvious inference, that as sound politics
diffuse liberty, mankind,
including woman, will become more
wise and virtuous.
CHAPTER 3.
THE SAME SUBJECT
CONTINUED.
Bodily strength from being the
distinction of heroes is now sunk
into such unmerited contempt, that men
as well as women, seem to
think it unnecessary: the latter, as it
takes from their feminine
graces, and from that lovely weakness,
the source of their undue
power; and the former, because it
appears inimical with the
character of a gentleman.
That they have both by departing from
one extreme run into another,
may easily be proved; but it first may be
proper to observe, that a
vulgar error has obtained a degree of
credit, which has given force
to a false conclusion, in which an effect
has been mistaken for a
cause.
People of genius have, very frequently,
impaired their
constitutions by study, or careless
inattention to their health,
and the violence of their passions
bearing a proportion to the
vigour of their intellects, the sword's
destroying the scabbard has
become almost proverbial, and
superficial observers have inferred
from thence, that men of genius have
commonly weak, or to use a
more fashionable phrase, delicate
constitutions. Yet the contrary,
I believe, will appear to be the fact; for,
on diligent inquiry, I
find that strength of mind has, in most
cases, been accompanied by
superior strength of body, natural
soundness of constitution, not
that robust tone of nerves and vigour of
muscles, which arise from
bodily labour, when the mind is
quiescent, or only directs the
hands.
Dr. Priestley has remarked, in the
preface to his biographical
chart, that the majority of great men
have lived beyond forty-five.
And, considering the thoughtless manner
in which they lavished
their strength, when investigating a
favourite science, they have
wasted the lamp of life, forgetful of the
midnight hour; or, when,
lost in poetic dreams, fancy has peopled
the scene, and the soul
213
has been disturbed, till it shook the
constitution, by the passions
that meditation had raised; whose
objects, the baseless fabric of a
vision, faded before the exhausted eye,
they must have had iron
frames. Shakespeare never grasped the
airy dagger with a nerveless
hand, nor did Milton tremble when he
led Satan far from the
confines of his dreary prison. These
were not the ravings of
imbecility, the sickly effusions of
distempered brains; but the
exuberance of fancy, that "in a fine
phrenzy" wandering, was not
continually reminded of its material
shackles.
I am aware, that this argument would
carry me further than it may
be supposed I wish to go; but I follow
truth, and still adhering to
my first position, I will allow that bodily
strength seems to give
man a natural superiority over woman;
and this is the only solid
basis on which the superiority of the sex
can be built. But I
still insist, that not only the virtue, but
the KNOWLEDGE of the
two sexes should be the same in nature,
if not in degree, and that
women, considered not only as moral,
but rational creatures, ought
to endeavour to acquire human virtues
(or perfections) by the SAME
means as men, instead of being educated
like a fanciful kind of
HALF being, one of Rousseau's wild
chimeras.
But, if strength of body be, with some
show of reason, the boast of
men, why are women so infatuated as to
be proud of a defect?
Rousseau has furnished them with a
plausible excuse, which could
only have occurred to a man, whose
imagination had been allowed to
run wild, and refine on the impressions
made by exquisite senses,
that they might, forsooth have a pretext
for yielding to a natural
appetite without violating a romantic
species of modesty, which
gratifies the pride and libertinism of
man.
Women deluded by these sentiments,
sometimes boast of their
weakness, cunningly obtaining power by
playing on the WEAKNESS of
men; and they may well glory in their
illicit sway, for, like
Turkish bashaws, they have more real
power than their masters: but
virtue is sacrificed to temporary
gratifications, and the
respectability of life to the triumph of an
hour.
Women, as well as despots, have now,
perhaps, more power than they
would have, if the world, divided and
subdivided into kingdoms and
families, was governed by laws deduced
from the exercise of reason;
but in obtaining it, to carry on the
comparison, their character is
degraded, and licentiousness spread
through the whole aggregate of
society. The many become pedestal to
the few. I, therefore will
venture to assert, that till women are
more rationally educated,
the progress of human virtue and
improvement in knowledge must
receive continual checks. And if it be
granted, that woman was not
created merely to gratify the appetite of
man, nor to be the upper
214
servant, who provides his meals and
takes care of his linen, it
must follow, that the first care of those
mothers or fathers, who
really attend to the education of females,
should be, if not to
strengthen the body, at least, not to
destroy the constitution by
mistaken notions of beauty and female
excellence; nor should girls
ever be allowed to imbibe the pernicious
notion that a defect can,
by any chemical process of reasoning
become an excellence. In this
respect, I am happy to find, that the
author of one of the most
instructive books, that our country has
produced for children,
coincides with me in opinion; I shall
quote his pertinent remarks
to give the force of his respectable
authority to reason.*
(*Footnote. A respectable old man gives
the following sensible
account of the method he pursued when
educating his daughter. "I
endeavoured to give both to her mind
and body a degree of vigour,
which is seldom found in the female sex.
As soon as she was
sufficiently advanced in strength to be
capable of the lighter
labours of husbandry and gardening, I
employed her as my constant
companion. Selene, for that was her
name, soon acquired a
dexterity in all these rustic employments
which I considered with
equal pleasure and admiration. If
women are in general feeble both
in body and mind, it arises less from
nature than from education.
We encourage a vicious indolence and
inactivity, which we falsely
call delicacy; instead of hardening their
minds by the severer
principles of reason and philosophy, we
breed them to useless arts,
which terminate in vanity and sensuality.
In most of the countries
which I had visited, they are taught
nothing of an higher nature
than a few modulations of the voice, or
useless postures of the
body; their time is consumed in sloth or
trifles, and trifles
become the only pursuits capable of
interesting them. We seem to
forget, that it is upon the qualities of the
female sex, that our
own domestic comforts and the
education of our children must
depend. And what are the comforts or
the education which a race of
beings corrupted from their infancy, and
unacquainted with all the
duties of life, are fitted to bestow? To
touch a musical
instrument with useless skill, to exhibit
their natural or affected
graces, to the eyes of indolent and
debauched young men, who
dissipate their husbands' patrimony in
riotous and unnecessary
expenses: these are the only arts
cultivated by women in most of
the polished nations I had seen. And the
consequences are
uniformly such as may be expected to
proceed from such polluted
sources, private misery, and public
servitude.
"But, Selene's education was regulated
by different views, and
conducted upon severer principles; if
that can be called severity
which opens the mind to a sense of
moral and religious duties, and
215
most effectually arms it against the
inevitable evils of
life."--Mr. Day's "Sandford and Merton,"
Volume 3.)
But should it be proved that woman is
naturally weaker than man,
from whence does it follow that it is
natural for her to labour to
become still weaker than nature intended
her to be? Arguments of
this cast are an insult to common sense,
and savour of passion.
The DIVINE RIGHT of husbands, like
the divine right of kings, may,
it is to be hoped, in this enlightened age,
be contested without
danger, and though conviction may not
silence many boisterous
disputants, yet, when any prevailing
prejudice is attacked, the
wise will consider, and leave the narrowminded to rail with
thoughtless vehemence at innovation.
The mother, who wishes to give true
dignity of character to her
daughter, must, regardless of the sneers
of ignorance, proceed on a
plan diametrically opposite to that which
Rousseau has recommended
with all the deluding charms of
eloquence and philosophical
sophistry: for his eloquence renders
absurdities plausible, and
his dogmatic conclusions puzzle,
without convincing those who have
not ability to refute them.
Throughout the whole animal kingdom
every young creature requires
almost continual exercise, and the
infancy of children, conformable
to this intimation, should be passed in
harmless gambols, that
exercise the feet and hands, without
requiring very minute
direction from the head, or the constant
attention of a nurse. In
fact, the care necessary for selfpreservation is the first natural
exercise of the understanding, as little
inventions to amuse the
present moment unfold the imagination.
But these wise designs of
nature are counteracted by mistaken
fondness or blind zeal. The
child is not left a moment to its own
direction, particularly a
girl, and thus rendered dependent-dependence is called natural.
To preserve personal beauty, woman's
glory! the limbs and faculties
are cramped with worse than Chinese
bands, and the sedentary life
which they are condemned to live, whilst
boys frolic in the open
air, weakens the muscles and relaxes the
nerves. As for Rousseau's
remarks, which have since been echoed
by several writers, that they
have naturally, that is from their birth,
independent of education,
a fondness for dolls, dressing, and
talking, they are so puerile as
not to merit a serious refutation. That a
girl, condemned to sit
for hours together listening to the idle
chat of weak nurses or to
attend at her mother's toilet, will
endeavour to join the
conversation, is, indeed very natural; and
that she will imitate
her mother or aunts, and amuse herself
by adorning her lifeless
doll, as they do in dressing her, poor
innocent babe! is
undoubtedly a most natural
consequence. For men of the greatest
216
abilities have seldom had sufficient
strength to rise above the
surrounding atmosphere; and, if the page
of genius has always been
blurred by the prejudices of the age,
some allowance should be made
for a sex, who, like kings, always see
things through a false
medium.
In this manner may the fondness for
dress, conspicuous in women, be
easily accounted for, without supposing
it the result of a desire
to please the sex on which they are
dependent. The absurdity, in
short, of supposing that a girl is naturally
a coquette, and that a
desire connected with the impulse of
nature to propagate the
species, should appear even before an
improper education has, by
heating the imagination, called it forth
prematurely, is so
unphilosophical, that such a sagacious
observer as Rousseau would
not have adopted it, if he had not been
accustomed to make reason
give way to his desire of singularity, and
truth to a favourite
paradox.
Yet thus to give a sex to mind was not
very consistent with the
principles of a man who argued so
warmly, and so well, for the
immortality of the soul. But what a
weak barrier is truth when it
stands in the way of an hypothesis!
Rousseau respected--almost
adored virtue--and yet allowed himself
to love with sensual
fondness. His imagination constantly
prepared inflammable fuel for
his inflammable senses; but, in order to
reconcile his respect for
self-denial, fortitude and those heroic
virtues, which a mind like
his could not coolly admire, he labours
to invert the law of
nature, and broaches a doctrine pregnant
with mischief, and
derogatory to the character of supreme
wisdom.
His ridiculous stories, which tend to
prove that girls are
NATURALLY attentive to their persons,
without laying any stress on
daily example, are below contempt. And
that a little miss should
have such a correct taste as to neglect the
pleasing amusement of
making O's, merely because she
perceived that it was an ungraceful
attitude, should be selected with the
anecdotes of the learned
pig.*
(*Footnote. "I once knew a young
person who learned to write
before she learned to read, and began to
write with her needle
before she could use a pen. At first
indeed, she took it into her
head to make no other letter than the O:
this letter she was
constantly making of all sizes, and
always the wrong way.
Unluckily one day, as she was intent on
this employment, she
happened to see herself in the looking
glass; when, taking a
dislike to the constrained attitude in
which she sat while writing,
she threw away her pen, like another
Pallas, and determined against
making the O any more. Her brother
was also equally averse to
writing: it was the confinement,
however, and not the constrained
attitude, that most disgusted him."
217
Rousseau's "Emilius.")
I have, probably, had an opportunity of
observing more girls in
their infancy than J. J. Rousseau. I can
recollect my own
feelings, and I have looked steadily
around me; yet, so far from
coinciding with him in opinion
respecting the first dawn of the
female character, I will venture to
affirm, that a girl, whose
spirits have not been damped by
inactivity, or innocence tainted by
false shame, will always be a romp, and
the doll will never excite
attention unless confinement allows her
no alternative. Girls and
boys, in short, would play harmless
together, if the distinction of
sex was not inculcated long before
nature makes any difference. I
will, go further, and affirm, as an
indisputable fact, that most of
the women, in the circle of my
observation, who have acted like
rational creatures, or shown any vigour
of intellect, have
accidentally been allowed to run wild, as
some of the elegant
formers of the fair sex would insinuate.
The baneful consequences which flow
from inattention to health
during infancy, and youth, extend further
than is supposed,
dependence of body naturally produces
dependence of mind; and how
can she be a good wife or mother, the
greater part of whose time is
employed to guard against or endure
sickness; nor can it be
expected, that a woman will resolutely
endeavour to strengthen her
constitution and abstain from enervating
indulgences, if artificial
notions of beauty, and false descriptions
of sensibility, have been
early entangled with her motives of
action. Most men are sometimes
obliged to bear with bodily
inconveniences, and to endure,
occasionally, the inclemency of the
elements; but genteel women
are, literally speaking, slaves to their
bodies, and glory in their
subjection.
I once knew a weak woman of fashion,
who was more than commonly
proud of her delicacy and sensibility.
She thought a
distinguishing taste and puny appetite
the height of all human
perfection, and acted accordingly. I
have seen this weak
sophisticated being neglect all the duties
of life, yet recline
with self-complacency on a sofa, and
boast of her want of appetite
as a proof of delicacy that extended to,
or, perhaps, arose from,
her exquisite sensibility: for it is
difficult to render
intelligible such ridiculous jargon. Yet,
at the moment, I have
seen her insult a worthy old
gentlewoman, whom unexpected
misfortunes had made dependent on her
ostentatious bounty, and who,
in better days, had claims on her
gratitude. Is it possible that a
human creature should have become
such a weak and depraved being,
if, like the Sybarites, dissolved in luxury,
every thing like
virtue had not been worn away, or never
impressed by precept, a
poor substitute it is true, for cultivation
of mind, though it
serves as a fence against vice?
218
Such a woman is not a more irrational
monster than some of the
Roman emperors, who were depraved by
lawless power. Yet, since
kings have been more under the restraint
of law, and the curb,
however weak, of honour, the records of
history are not filled with
such unnatural instances of folly and
cruelty, nor does the
despotism that kills virtue and genius in
the bud, hover over
Europe with that destructive blast which
desolates Turkey, and
renders the men, as well as the soil
unfruitful.
Women are every where in this
deplorable state; for, in order to
preserve their innocence, as ignorance is
courteously termed, truth
is hidden from them, and they are made
to assume an artificial
character before their faculties have
acquired any strength.
Taught from their infancy, that beauty is
woman's sceptre, the mind
shapes itself to the body, and, roaming
round its gilt cage, only
seeks to adorn its prison. Men have
various employments and
pursuits which engage their attention,
and give a character to the
opening mind; but women, confined to
one, and having their thoughts
constantly directed to the most
insignificant part of themselves,
seldom extend their views beyond the
triumph of the hour. But was
their understanding once emancipated
from the slavery to which the
pride and sensuality of man and their
short sighted desire, like
that of dominion in tyrants, of present
sway, has subjected them,
we should probably read of their
weaknesses with surprise. I must
be allowed to pursue the argument a
little farther.
Perhaps, if the existence of an evil being
was allowed, who, in the
allegorical language of scripture, went
about seeking whom he
should devour, he could not more
effectually degrade the human
character than by giving a man absolute
power.
This argument branches into various
ramifications. Birth, riches,
and every intrinsic advantage that exalt a
man above his fellows,
without any mental exertion, sink him in
reality below them. In
proportion to his weakness, he is played
upon by designing men,
till the bloated monster has lost all traces
of humanity. And that
tribes of men, like flocks of sheep,
should quietly follow such a
leader, is a solecism that only a desire of
present enjoyment and
narrowness of understanding can solve.
Educated in slavish
dependence, and enervated by luxury
and sloth, where shall we find
men who will stand forth to assert the
rights of man; or claim the
privilege of moral beings, who should
have but one road to
excellence? Slavery to monarchs and
ministers, which the world will
be long in freeing itself from, and whose
deadly grasp stops the
progress of the human mind, is not yet
abolished.
Let not men then in the pride of power,
use the same arguments that
219
tyrannic kings and venal ministers have
used, and fallaciously
assert, that woman ought to be subjected
because she has always
been so. But, when man, governed by
reasonable laws, enjoys his
natural freedom, let him despise woman,
if she do not share it with
him; and, till that glorious period arrives,
in descanting on the
folly of the sex, let him not overlook his
own.
Women, it is true, obtaining power by
unjust means, by practising
or fostering vice, evidently lose the rank
which reason would
assign them, and they become either
abject slaves or capricious
tyrants. They lose all simplicity, all
dignity of mind, in
acquiring power, and act as men are
observed to act when they have
been exalted by the same means.
It is time to effect a revolution in female
manners, time to
restore to them their lost dignity, and
make them, as a part of the
human species, labour by reforming
themselves to reform the world.
It is time to separate unchangeable
morals from local manners. If
men be demi-gods, why let us serve
them! And if the dignity of the
female soul be as disputable as that of
animals, if their reason
does not afford sufficient light to direct
their conduct whilst
unerring instinct is denied, they are
surely of all creatures the
most miserable and, bent beneath the
iron hand of destiny, must
submit to be a FAIR DEFECT in
creation. But to justify the ways of
providence respecting them, by pointing
out some irrefragable
reason for thus making such a large
portion of mankind accountable
and not accountable, would puzzle the
subtlest casuist.
The only solid foundation for morality
appears to be the character
of the Supreme Being; the harmony of
which arises from a balance of
attributes; and, to speak with reverence,
one attribute seems to
imply the NECESSITY of another. He
must be just, because he is
wise, he must be good, because he is
omnipotent. For, to exalt one
attribute at the expense of another
equally noble and necessary,
bears the stamp of the warped reason of
man, the homage of passion.
Man, accustomed to bow down to power
in his savage state, can
seldom divest himself of this barbarous
prejudice even when
civilization determines how much
superior mental is to bodily
strength; and his reason is clouded by
these crude opinions, even
when he thinks of the Deity. His
omnipotence is made to swallow
up, or preside over his other attributes,
and those mortals are
supposed to limit his power irreverently,
who think that it must be
regulated by his wisdom.
I disclaim that species of humility
which, after investigating
nature, stops at the author. The high and
lofty One, who
inhabiteth eternity, doubtless possesses
many attributes of which
we can form no conception; but reason
tells me that they cannot
220
clash with those I adore, and I am
compelled to listen to her
voice.
in a light opposite to that recommended
by Dr. Gregory, who treats
it as a matter of sentiment or taste.
It seems natural for man to search for
excellence, and either to
trace it in the object that he worships, or
blindly to invest it
with perfection as a garment. But what
good effect can the latter
mode of worship have on the moral
conduct of a rational being? He
bends to power; he adores a dark cloud,
which may open a bright
prospect to him, or burst in angry,
lawless fury on his devoted
head, he knows not why. And,
supposing that the Deity acts from
the vague impulse of an undirected will,
man must also follow his
own, or act according to rules, deduced
from principles which he
disclaims as irreverent. Into this
dilemma have both enthusiasts
and cooler thinkers fallen, when they
laboured to free men from the
wholesome restraints which a just
conception of the character of
God imposes.
To return from this apparent digression.
It were to be wished,
that women would cherish an affection
for their husbands, founded
on the same principle that devotion
ought to rest upon. No other
firm base is there under heaven, for let
them beware of the
fallacious light of sentiment; too often
used as a softer phrase
for sensuality. It follows then, I think,
that from their infancy
women should either be shut up like
eastern princes, or educated in
such a manner as to be able to think and
act for themselves.
It is not impious thus to scan the
attributes of the Almighty: in
fact, who can avoid it that exercises his
faculties? for to love
God as the fountain of wisdom,
goodness, and power, appears to be
the only worship useful to a being who
wishes to acquire either
virtue or knowledge. A blind unsettled
affection may, like human
passions, occupy the mind and warm the
heart, whilst, to do
justice, love mercy, and walk humbly
with our God, is forgotten. I
shall pursue this subject still further,
when I consider religion
Why do men halt between two opinions,
and expect impossibilities?
Why do they expect virtue from a slave,
or from a being whom the
constitution of civil society has rendered
weak, if not vicious?
Still I know that it will require a
considerable length of time to
eradicate the firmly rooted prejudices
which sensualists have
planted; it will also require some time to
convince women that they
act contrary to their real interest on an
enlarged scale, when they
cherish or affect weakness under the
name of delicacy, and to
convince the world that the poisoned
source of female vices and
follies, if it be necessary, in compliance
with custom, to use
synonymous terms in a lax sense, has
been the sensual homage paid
to beauty: to beauty of features; for it
has been shrewdly
221
observed by a German writer, that a
pretty woman, as an object of
desire, is generally allowed to be so by
men of all descriptions;
whilst a fine woman, who inspires more
sublime emotions by
displaying intellectual beauty, may be
overlooked or observed with
indifference, by those men who find
their happiness in the
gratification of their appetites. I foresee
an obvious retort;
whilst man remains such an imperfect
being as he appears hitherto
to have been, he will, more or less, be
the slave of his appetites;
and those women obtaining most power
who gratify a predominant one,
the sex is degraded by a physical, if not
by a moral necessity.
This objection has, I grant, some force;
but while such a sublime
precept exists, as, "be pure as your
heavenly father is pure;" it
would seem that the virtues of man are
not limited by the Being who
alone could limit them; and that he may
press forward without
considering whether he steps out of his
sphere by indulging such a
noble ambition. To the wild billows it
has been said, "thus far
shalt thou go, and no further; and here
shall thy proud waves be
stayed." Vainly then do they beat and
foam, restrained by the
power that confines the struggling
planets within their orbits,
matter yields to the great governing
Spirit. But an immortal soul,
not restrained by mechanical laws, and
struggling to free itself
from the shackles of matter, contributes
to, instead of disturbing,
the order of creation, when, co-operating
with the Father of
spirits, it tries to govern itself by the
invariable rule that, in
a degree, before which our imagination
faints, the universe is
regulated.
Besides, if women are educated for
dependence, that is, to act
according to the will of another fallible
being, and submit, right
or wrong, to power, where are we to
stop? Are they to be
considered as viceregents, allowed to
reign over a small domain,
and answerable for their conduct to a
higher tribunal, liable to
error?
It will not be difficult to prove, that such
delegates will act
like men subjected by fear, and make
their children and servants
endure their tyrannical oppression. As
they submit without reason,
they will, having no fixed rules to square
their conduct by, be
kind or cruel, just as the whim of the
moment directs; and we ought
not to wonder if sometimes, galled by
their heavy yoke, they take a
malignant pleasure in resting it on
weaker shoulders.
But, supposing a woman, trained up to
obedience, be married to a
sensible man, who directs her judgment,
without making her feel the
servility of her subjection, to act with as
much propriety by this
reflected light as can be expected when
reason is taken at second
hand, yet she cannot ensure the life of
her protector; he may die
and leave her with a large family.
222
A double duty devolves on her; to
educate them in the character of
both father and mother; to form their
principles and secure their
property. But, alas! she has never
thought, much less acted for
herself. She has only learned to please
men, to depend gracefully
on them; yet, encumbered with children,
how is she to obtain
another protector; a husband to supply
the place of reason? A
rational man, for we are not treading on
romantic ground, though he
may think her a pleasing docile creature,
will not choose to marry
a FAMILY for love, when the world
contains many more pretty
creatures. What is then to become of
her? She either falls an
easy prey to some mean fortune hunter,
who defrauds her children of
their paternal inheritance, and renders
her miserable; or becomes
the victim of discontent and blind
indulgence. Unable to educate
her sons, or impress them with respect;
for it is not a play on
words to assert, that people are never
respected, though filling an
important station, who are not
respectable; she pines under the
anguish of unavailing impotent regret.
The serpent's tooth enters
into her very soul, and the vices of
licentious youth bring her
with sorrow, if not with poverty also, to
the grave.
This is not an overcharged picture; on
the contrary, it is a very
possible case, and something similar
must have fallen under every
attentive eye.
I have, however, taken it for granted,
that she was well disposed,
though experience shows, that the blind
may as easily be led into a
ditch as along the beaten road. But
supposing, no very improbable
conjecture, that a being only taught to
please must still find her
happiness in pleasing; what an example
of folly, not to say vice,
will she be to her innocent daughters!
The mother will be lost in
the coquette, and, instead of making
friends of her daughters, view
them with eyes askance, for they are
rivals--rivals more cruel than
any other, because they invite a
comparison, and drive her from the
throne of beauty, who has never thought
of a seat on the bench of
reason.
It does not require a lively pencil, or the
discriminating outline
of a caricature, to sketch the domestic
miseries and petty vices
which such a mistress of a family
diffuses. Still she only acts as
a woman ought to act, brought up
according to Rousseau's system.
She can never be reproached for being
masculine, or turning out of
her sphere; nay, she may observe
another of his grand rules, and,
cautiously preserving her reputation free
from spot, be reckoned a
good kind of woman. Yet in what
respect can she be termed good?
She abstains, it is true, without any great
struggle, from
committing gross crimes; but how does
she fulfil her duties?
Duties!--in truth she has enough to think
of to adorn her body and
nurse a weak constitution.
223
With respect to religion, she never
presumed to judge for herself;
but conformed, as a dependent creature
should, to the ceremonies of
the church which she was brought up in,
piously believing, that
wiser heads than her own have settled
that business: and not to
doubt is her point of perfection. She
therefore pays her tythe of
mint and cummin, and thanks her God
that she is not as other women
are. These are the blessed effects of a
good education! these the
virtues of man's helpmate. I must
relieve myself by drawing a
different picture.
Let fancy now present a woman with a
tolerable understanding, for I
do not wish to leave the line of
mediocrity, whose constitution,
strengthened by exercise, has allowed
her body to acquire its full
vigour; her mind, at the same time,
gradually expanding itself to
comprehend the moral duties of life, and
in what human virtue and
dignity consist. Formed thus by the
relative duties of her
station, she marries from affection,
without losing sight of
prudence, and looking beyond
matrimonial felicity, she secures her
husband's respect before it is necessary
to exert mean arts to
please him, and feed a dying flame,
which nature doomed to expire
when the object became familiar, when
friendship and forbearance
take place of a more ardent affection.
This is the natural death
of love, and domestic peace is not
destroyed by struggles to
prevent its extinction. I also suppose the
husband to be virtuous;
or she is still more in want of
independent principles.
Fate, however, breaks this tie. She is left
a widow, perhaps,
without a sufficient provision: but she is
not desolate! The pang
of nature is felt; but after time has
softened sorrow into
melancholy resignation, her heart turns
to her children with
redoubled fondness, and anxious to
provide for them, affection
gives a sacred heroic cast to her maternal
duties. She thinks that
not only the eye sees her virtuous efforts,
from whom all her
comfort now must flow, and whose
approbation is life; but her
imagination, a little abstracted and
exalted by grief, dwells on
the fond hope, that the eyes which her
trembling hand closed, may
still see how she subdues every wayward
passion to fulfil the
double duty of being the father as well as
the mother of her
children. Raised to heroism by
misfortunes, she represses the
first faint dawning of a natural
inclination, before it ripens into
love, and in the bloom of life forgets her
sex--forgets the
pleasure of an awakening passion, which
might again have been
inspired and returned. She no longer
thinks of pleasing, and
conscious dignity prevents her from
priding herself on account of
the praise which her conduct demands.
Her children have her love,
and her brightest hopes are beyond the
grave, where her imagination
often strays.
224
I think I see her surrounded by her
children, reaping the reward of
her care. The intelligent eye meets her's,
whilst health and
innocence smile on their chubby cheeks,
and as they grow up the
cares of life are lessened by their
grateful attention. She lives
to see the virtues which she endeavoured
to plant on principles,
fixed into habits, to see her children
attain a strength of
character sufficient to enable them to
endure adversity without
forgetting their mother's example.
The task of life thus fulfilled, she calmly
waits for the sleep of
death, and rising from the grave may
say, behold, thou gavest me a
talent, and here are five talents.
I wish to sum up what I have said in a
few words, for I here throw
down my gauntlet, and deny the
existence of sexual virtues, not
excepting modesty. For man and
woman, truth, if I understand the
meaning of the word, must be the same;
yet the fanciful female
character, so prettily drawn by poets and
novelists, demanding the
sacrifice of truth and sincerity, virtue
becomes a relative idea,
having no other foundation than utility,
and of that utility men
pretend arbitrarily to judge, shaping it to
their own convenience.
Women, I allow, may have different
duties to fulfil; but they are
HUMAN duties, and the principles that
should regulate the discharge
of them, I sturdily maintain, must be the
same.
To become respectable, the exercise of
their understanding is
necessary, there is no other foundation
for independence of
character; I mean explicitly to say, that
they must only bow to the
authority of reason, instead of being the
MODEST slaves of opinion.
In the superior ranks of life how seldom
do we meet with a man of
superior abilities, or even common
acquirements? The reason
appears to me clear; the state they are
born in was an unnatural
one. The human character has ever been
formed by the employments
the individual, or class pursues; and if
the faculties are not
sharpened by necessity, they must
remain obtuse. The argument may
fairly be extended to women; for seldom
occupied by serious
business, the pursuit of pleasure gives
that insignificancy to
their character which renders the society
of the GREAT so insipid.
The same want of firmness, produced by
a similar cause, forces them
both to fly from themselves to noisy
pleasures, and artificial
passions, till vanity takes place of every
social affection, and
the characteristics of humanity can
scarcely be discerned. Such
are the blessings of civil governments, as
they are at present
organized, that wealth and female
softness equally tend to debase
mankind, and are produced by the same
cause; but allowing women to
be rational creatures they should be
incited to acquire virtues
which they may call their own, for how
can a rational being be
225
ennobled by any thing that is not
obtained by its OWN exertions?
CHAPTER 4.
OBSERVATIONS ON THE STATE
OF DEGRADATION TO WHICH
WOMAN IS REDUCED
BY VARIOUS CAUSES.
That woman is naturally weak, or
degraded by a concurrence of
circumstances is, I think, clear. But this
position I shall simply
contrast with a conclusion, which I have
frequently heard fall from
sensible men in favour of an aristocracy:
that the mass of mankind
cannot be any thing, or the obsequious
slaves, who patiently allow
themselves to be penned up, would feel
their own consequence, and
spurn their chains. Men, they further
observe, submit every where
to oppression, when they have only to
lift up their heads to throw
off the yoke; yet, instead of asserting
their birthright, they
quietly lick the dust, and say, let us eat
and drink, for to-morrow
we die. Women, I argue from analogy,
are degraded by the same
propensity to enjoy the present moment;
and, at last, despise the
freedom which they have not sufficient
virtue to struggle to
attain. But I must be more explicit.
With respect to the culture of the heart, it
is unanimously allowed
that sex is out of the question; but the
line of subordination in
the mental powers is never to be passed
over. Only "absolute in
loveliness," the portion of rationality
granted to woman is,
indeed, very scanty; for, denying her
genius and judgment, it is
scarcely possible to divine what remains
to characterize intellect.
The stamina of immortality, if I may be
allowed the phrase, is the
perfectibility of human reason; for, was
man created perfect, or
did a flood of knowledge break in upon
him, when he arrived at
maturity, that precluded error, I should
doubt whether his
existence would be continued after the
dissolution of the body.
But in the present state of things, every
difficulty in morals,
that escapes from human discussion, and
equally baffles the
investigation of profound thinking, and
the lightning glance of
genius, is an argument on which I build
my belief of the
immortality of the soul. Reason is,
consequentially, the simple
power of improvement; or, more
properly speaking, of discerning
truth. Every individual is in this respect
a world in itself.
More or less may be conspicuous in one
being than other; but the
nature of reason must be the same in all,
if it be an emanation of
divinity, the tie that connects the
creature with the Creator; for,
can that soul be stamped with the
heavenly image, that is not
perfected by the exercise of its own
reason? Yet outwardly
ornamented with elaborate care, and so
adorned to delight man,
"that with honour he may love," (Vide
Milton) the soul of woman is
226
not allowed to have this distinction, and
man, ever placed between
her and reason, she is always represented
as only created to see
through a gross medium, and to take
things on trust. But,
dismissing these fanciful theories, and
considering woman as a
whole, let it be what it will, instead of a
part of man, the
inquiry is, whether she has reason or not.
If she has, which, for
a moment, I will take for granted, she
was not created merely to be
the solace of man, and the sexual should
not destroy the human
character.
Into this error men have, probably, been
led by viewing education
in a false light; not considering it as the
first step to form a
being advancing gradually toward
perfection; (This word is not
strictly just, but I cannot find a better.)
but only as a
preparation for life. On this sensual
error, for I must call it
so, has the false system of female
manners been reared, which robs
the whole sex of its dignity, and classes
the brown and fair with
the smiling flowers that only adorn the
land. This has ever been
the language of men, and the fear of
departing from a supposed
sexual character, has made even women
of superior sense adopt the
same sentiments. Thus understanding,
strictly speaking, has been
denied to woman; and instinct,
sublimated into wit and cunning, for
the purposes of life, has been substituted
in its stead.
The power of generalizing ideas, of
drawing comprehensive
conclusions from individual
observations, is the only acquirement
for an immortal being, that really
deserves the name of knowledge.
Merely to observe, without
endeavouring to account for any thing,
may, (in a very incomplete manner)
serve as the common sense of
life; but where is the store laid up that is
to clothe the soul
when it leaves the body?
This power has not only been denied to
women; but writers have
insisted that it is inconsistent, with a few
exceptions, with their
sexual character. Let men prove this,
and I shall grant that woman
only exists for man. I must, however,
previously remark, that the
power of generalizing ideas, to any great
extent, is not very
common amongst men or women. But
this exercise is the true
cultivation of the understanding; and
every thing conspires to
render the cultivation of the
understanding more difficult in the
female than the male world.
I am naturally led by this assertion to the
main subject of the
present chapter, and shall now attempt to
point out some of the
causes that degrade the sex, and prevent
women from generalizing
their observations.
I shall not go back to the remote annals
of antiquity to trace the
history of woman; it is sufficient to
allow, that she has always
been either a slave or a despot, and to
remark, that each of these
227
situations equally retards the progress of
reason. The grand
source of female folly and vice has ever
appeared to me to arise
from narrowness of mind; and the very
constitution of civil
governments has put almost insuperable
obstacles in the way to
prevent the cultivation of the female
understanding: yet virtue
can be built on no other foundation! The
same obstacles are thrown
in the way of the rich, and the same
consequences ensue.
Necessity has been proverbially termed
the mother of invention; the
aphorism may be extended to virtue. It
is an acquirement, and an
acquirement to which pleasure must be
sacrificed, and who
sacrifices pleasure when it is within the
grasp, whose mind has not
been opened and strengthened by
adversity, or the pursuit of
knowledge goaded on by necessity?
Happy is it when people have the
cares of life to struggle with; for these
struggles prevent their
becoming a prey to enervating vices,
merely from idleness! But, if
from their birth men and women are
placed in a torrid zone, with
the meridian sun of pleasure darting
directly upon them, how can
they sufficiently brace their minds to
discharge the duties of
life, or even to relish the affections that
carry them out of
themselves?
Pleasure is the business of a woman's
life, according to the
present modification of society, and
while it continues to be so,
little can be expected from such weak
beings. Inheriting, in a
lineal descent from the first fair defect in
nature, the
sovereignty of beauty, they have, to
maintain their power, resigned
their natural rights, which the exercise of
reason, might have
procured them, and chosen rather to be
short-lived queens than
labour to attain the sober pleasures that
arise from equality.
Exalted by their inferiority (this sounds
like a contradiction)
they constantly demand homage as
women, though experience should
teach them that the men who pride
themselves upon paying this
arbitrary insolent respect to the sex, with
the most scrupulous
exactness, are most inclined to tyrannize
over, and despise the
very weakness they cherish. Often do
they repeat Mr. Hume's
sentiments; when comparing the French
and Athenian character, he
alludes to women. "But what is more
singular in this whimsical
nation, say I to the Athenians, is, that a
frolic of yours during
the Saturnalia, when the slaves are
served by their masters, is
seriously continued by them through the
whole year, and through the
whole course of their lives; accompanied
too with some
circumstances, which still further
augment the absurdity and
ridicule. Your sport only elevates for a
few days, those whom
fortune has thrown down, and whom she
too, in sport, may really
elevate forever above you. But this
nation gravely exalts those,
whom nature has subjected to them, and
whose inferiority and
228
infirmities are absolutely incurable. The
women, though without
virtue, are their masters and sovereigns."
exertion, and which is the most
indisputable. They will smile,
yes, they will smile, though told that--
Ah! why do women, I write with
affectionate solicitude, condescend
to receive a degree of attention and
respect from strangers,
different from that reciprocation of
civility which the dictates of
humanity, and the politeness of
civilization authorise between man
and man? And why do they not
discover, when "in the noon of
beauty's power," that they are treated
like queens only to be
deluded by hollow respect, till they are
led to resign, or not
assume, their natural prerogatives?
Confined then in cages, like
the feathered race, they have nothing to
do but to plume
themselves, and stalk with mock-majesty
from perch to perch. It is
true, they are provided with food and
raiment, for which they
neither toil nor spin; but health, liberty,
and virtue are given in
exchange. But, where, amongst
mankind has been found sufficient
strength of mind to enable a being to
resign these adventitious
prerogatives; one who rising with the
calm dignity of reason above
opinion, dared to be proud of the
privileges inherent in man? and
it is vain to expect it whilst hereditary
power chokes the
affections, and nips reason in the bud.
"In beauty's empire is no mean,
And woman either slave or queen,
Is quickly scorn'd when not ador'd."
The passions of men have thus placed
women on thrones; and, till
mankind become more reasonable, it is
to be feared that women will
avail themselves of the power which
they attain with the least
But the adoration comes first, and the
scorn is not anticipated.
Lewis the XIVth, in particular, spread
factitious manners, and
caught in a specious way, the whole
nation in his toils; for
establishing an artful chain of despotism,
he made it the interest
of the people at large, individually to
respect his station, and
support his power. And women, whom
he flattered by a puerile
attention to the whole sex, obtained in
his reign that prince-like
distinction so fatal to reason and virtue.
A king is always a king, and a woman
always a woman: (And a wit,
always a wit, might be added; for the
vain fooleries of wits and
beauties to obtain attention, and make
conquests, are much upon a
par.) his authority and her sex, ever
stand between them and
rational converse. With a lover, I grant
she should be so, and her
sensibility will naturally lead her to
endeavour to excite emotion,
not to gratify her vanity but her heart.
This I do not allow to be
coquetry, it is the artless impulse of
nature, I only exclaim
against the sexual desire of conquest,
when the heart is out of the
question.
229
This desire is not confined to women; "I
have endeavoured," says
Lord Chesterfield, "to gain the hearts of
twenty women, whose
persons I would not have given a fig
for." The libertine who in a
gust of passion, takes advantage of
unsuspecting tenderness, is a
saint when compared with this coldhearted rascal; for I like to
use significant words. Yet only taught to
please, women are always
on the watch to please, and with true
heroic ardour endeavour to
gain hearts merely to resign, or spurn
them, when the victory is
decided, and conspicuous.
I must descend to the minutiae of the
subject.
I lament that women are systematically
degraded by receiving the
trivial attentions, which men think it
manly to pay to the sex,
when, in fact, they are insultingly
supporting their own
superiority. It is not condescension to
bow to an inferior. So
ludicrous, in fact, do these ceremonies
appear to me, that I
scarcely am able to govern my muscles,
when I see a man start with
eager, and serious solicitude to lift a
handkerchief, or shut a
door, when the LADY could have done
it herself, had she only moved
a pace or two.
A wild wish has just flown from my
heart to my head, and I will not
stifle it though it may excite a horse
laugh. I do earnestly wish
to see the distinction of sex confounded
in society, unless where
love animates the behaviour. For this
distinction is, I am firmly
persuaded, the foundation of the
weakness of character ascribed to
woman; is the cause why the
understanding is neglected, whilst
accomplishments are acquired with
sedulous care: and the same
cause accounts for their preferring the
graceful before the heroic
virtues.
Mankind, including every description,
wish to be loved and
respected for SOMETHING; and the
common herd will always take the
nearest road to the completion of their
wishes. The respect paid
to wealth and beauty is the most certain
and unequivocal; and of
course, will always attract the vulgar eye
of common minds.
Abilities and virtues are absolutely
necessary to raise men from
the middle rank of life into notice; and
the natural consequence is
notorious, the middle rank contains most
virtue and abilities. Men
have thus, in one station, at least, an
opportunity of exerting
themselves with dignity, and of rising by
the exertions which
really improve a rational creature; but
the whole female sex are,
till their character is formed, in the same
condition as the rich:
for they are born, I now speak of a state
of civilization, with
certain sexual privileges, and whilst they
are gratuitously granted
them, few will ever think of works of
supererogation, to obtain the
esteem of a small number of superior
people.
230
When do we hear of women, who
starting out of obscurity, boldly
claim respect on account of their great
abilities or daring
virtues? Where are they to be found?
"To be observed, to be
attended to, to be taken notice of with
sympathy, complacency, and
approbation, are all the advantages
which they seek." True! my
male readers will probably exclaim; but
let them, before they draw
any conclusion, recollect, that this was
not written originally as
descriptive of women, but of the rich. In
Dr. Smith's Theory of
Moral Sentiments, I have found a
general character of people of
rank and fortune, that in my opinion,
might with the greatest
propriety be applied to the female sex. I
refer the sagacious
reader to the whole comparison; but
must be allowed to quote a
passage to enforce an argument that I
mean to insist on, as the one
most conclusive against a sexual
character. For if, excepting
warriors, no great men of any
denomination, have ever appeared
amongst the nobility, may it not be fairly
inferred, that their
local situation swallowed up the man,
and produced a character
similar to that of women, who are
LOCALIZED, if I may be allowed
the word, by the rank they are placed in,
by COURTESY? Women,
commonly called Ladies, are not to be
contradicted in company, are
not allowed to exert any manual
strength; and from them the
negative virtues only are expected, when
any virtues are expected,
patience, docility, good-humour, and
flexibility; virtues
incompatible with any vigorous exertion
of intellect. Besides by
living more with each other, and to being
seldom absolutely alone,
they are more under the influence of
sentiments than passions.
Solitude and reflection are necessary to
give to wishes the force
of passions, and enable the imagination
to enlarge the object and
make it the most desirable. The same
may be said of the rich; they
do not sufficiently deal in general ideas,
collected by
impassionate thinking, or calm
investigation, to acquire that
strength of character, on which great
resolves are built. But hear
what an acute observer says of the great.
"Do the great seem insensible of the easy
price at which they may
acquire the public admiration? or do they
seem to imagine, that to
them, as to other men, it must be the
purchase either of sweat or
of blood? By what important
accomplishments is the young nobleman
instructed to support the dignity of his
rank, and to render
himself worthy of that superiority over
his fellow citizens, to
which the virtue of his ancestors had
raised them? Is it by
knowledge, by industry, by patience, by
self-denial, or by virtue
of any kind? As all his words, as all his
motions are attended to,
he learns an habitual regard for every
circumstance of ordinary
behaviour, and studies to perform all
those small duties with the
most exact propriety. As he is conscious
how much he is observed,
and how much mankind are disposed to
favour all his inclinations,
231
he acts, upon the most indifferent
occasions, with that freedom and
elevation which the thought of this
naturally inspires. His air,
his manner, his deportment all mark that
elegant and graceful sense
of his own superiority, which those who
are born to an inferior
station can hardly ever arrive at. These
are the arts by which he
proposes to make mankind more easily
submit to his authority, and
to govern their inclinations according to
his own pleasure: and in
this he is seldom disappointed. These
arts, supported by rank and
pre-eminence, are, upon ordinary
occasions, sufficient to govern
the world. Lewis XIV. during the
greater part of his reign, was
regarded, not only in France, but over all
Europe, as the most
perfect model of a great prince. But
what were the talents and
virtues, by which he acquired this great
reputation? Was it by the
scrupulous and inflexible justice of all
his undertakings, by the
immense dangers and difficulties with
which they were attended, or
by the unwearied and unrelenting
application with which he pursued
them? Was it by his extensive
knowledge, by his exquisite
judgment, or by his heroic valour? It
was by none of these
qualities. But he was, first of all, the
most powerful prince in
Europe, and consequently held the
highest rank among kings; and
then, says his historian, 'he surpassed all
his courtiers in the
gracefulness of his shape, and the
majestic beauty of his features.
The sound of his voice noble and
affecting, gained those hearts
which his presence intimidated. He had
a step and a deportment,
which could suit only him and his rank,
and which would have been
ridiculous in any other person. The
embarrassment which he
occasioned to those who spoke to him,
flattered that secret
satisfaction with which he felt his own
superiority.' These
frivolous accomplishments, supported by
his rank, and, no doubt,
too, by a degree of other talents and
virtues, which seems,
however, not to have been much above
mediocrity, established this
prince in the esteem of his own age, and
have drawn even from
posterity, a good deal of respect for his
memory. Compared with
these, in his own times, and in his own
presence, no other virtue,
it seems, appeared to have any merit.
Knowledge, industry, valour,
and beneficence, trembling, were
abashed, and lost all dignity
before them."
Woman, also, thus "in herself complete,"
by possessing all these
FRIVOLOUS accomplishments, so
changes the nature of things,
--"That what she wills to do or say
Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest,
best;
All higher knowledge in HER
PRESENCE falls
Degraded. Wisdom in discourse with
her
Loses discountenanc'd, and like folly
shows;
Authority and reason on her wait."-And all this is built on her loveliness!
232
In the middle rank of life, to continue the
comparison, men, in
their youth, are prepared for professions,
and marriage is not
considered as the grand feature in their
lives; whilst women, on
the contrary, have no other scheme to
sharpen their faculties. It
is not business, extensive plans, or any
of the excursive flights
of ambition, that engross their attention;
no, their thoughts are
not employed in rearing such noble
structures. To rise in the
world, and have the liberty of running
from pleasure to pleasure,
they must marry advantageously, and to
this object their time is
sacrificed, and their persons often legally
prostituted. A man,
when he enters any profession, has his
eye steadily fixed on some
future advantage (and the mind gains
great strength by having all
its efforts directed to one point) and, full
of his business,
pleasure is considered as mere
relaxation; whilst women seek for
pleasure as the main purpose of
existence. In fact, from the
education which they receive from
society, the love of pleasure may
be said to govern them all; but does this
prove that there is a sex
in souls? It would be just as rational to
declare, that the
courtiers in France, when a destructive
system of despotism had
formed their character, were not men,
because liberty, virtue, and
humanity, were sacrificed to pleasure
and vanity. Fatal passions,
which have ever domineered over the
WHOLE race!
The same love of pleasure, fostered by
the whole tendency of their
education, gives a trifling turn to the
conduct of women in most
circumstances: for instance, they are
ever anxious about secondary
things; and on the watch for adventures,
instead of being occupied
by duties.
A man, when he undertakes a journey,
has, in general the end in
view; a woman thinks more of the
incidental occurrences, the
strange things that may possibly occur
on the road; the impression
that she may make on her fellow
travellers; and, above all, she is
anxiously intent on the care of the finery
that she carries with
her, which is more than ever a part of
herself, when going to
figure on a new scene; when, to use an
apt French turn of
expression, she is going to produce a
sensation. Can dignity of
mind exist with such trivial cares?
In short, women, in general, as well as
the rich of both sexes,
have acquired all the follies and vices of
civilization, and missed
the useful fruit. It is not necessary for
me always to premise,
that I speak of the condition of the whole
sex, leaving exceptions
out of the question. Their senses are
inflamed, and their
understandings neglected; consequently
they become the prey of
their senses, delicately termed
sensibility, and are blown about by
every momentary gust of feeling. They
are, therefore, in a much
worse condition than they would be in,
were they in a state nearer
233
to nature. Ever restless and anxious,
their over exercised
sensibility not only renders them
uncomfortable themselves, but
troublesome, to use a soft phrase, to
others. All their thoughts
turn on things calculated to excite
emotion; and, feeling, when
they should reason, their conduct is
unstable, and their opinions
are wavering, not the wavering produced
by deliberation or
progressive views, but by contradictory
emotions. By fits and
starts they are warm in many pursuits;
yet this warmth, never
concentrated into perseverance, soon
exhausts itself; exhaled by
its own heat, or meeting with some other
fleeting passion, to which
reason has never given any specific
gravity, neutrality ensues.
Miserable, indeed, must be that being
whose cultivation of mind has
only tended to inflame its passions! A
distinction should be made
between inflaming and strengthening
them. The passions thus
pampered, whilst the judgment is left
unformed, what can be
expected to ensue? Undoubtedly, a
mixture of madness and folly!
This observation should not be confined
to the FAIR sex; however,
at present, I only mean to apply it to
them.
Novels, music, poetry and gallantry, all
tend to make women the
creatures of sensation, and their
character is thus formed during
the time they are acquiring
accomplishments, the only improvement
they are excited, by their station in
society, to acquire. This
overstretched sensibility naturally
relaxes the other powers of the
mind, and prevents intellect from
attaining that sovereignty which
it ought to attain, to render a rational
creature useful to others,
and content with its own station; for the
exercise of the
understanding, as life advances, is the
only method pointed out by
nature to calm the passions.
Satiety has a very different effect, and I
have often been forcibly
struck by an emphatical description of
damnation, when the spirit
is represented as continually hovering
with abortive eagerness
round the defiled body, unable to enjoy
any thing without the
organs of sense. Yet, to their senses, are
women made slaves,
because it is by their sensibility that they
obtain present power.
And will moralists pretend to assert, that
this is the condition in
which one half of the human race should
be encouraged to remain
with listless inactivity and stupid
acquiescence? Kind
instructors! what were we created for?
To remain, it may be said,
innocent; they mean in a state of
childhood. We might as well
never have been born, unless it were
necessary that we should be
created to enable man to acquire the
noble privilege of reason, the
power of discerning good from evil,
whilst we lie down in the dust
from whence we were taken, never to
rise again.
It would be an endless task to trace the
variety of meannesses,
234
cares, and sorrows, into which women
are plunged by the prevailing
opinion, that they were created rather to
feel than reason, and
that all the power they obtain, must be
obtained by their charms
and weakness;
"Fine by defect, and amiably weak!"
And, made by this amiable weakness
entirely dependent, excepting
what they gain by illicit sway, on man,
not only for protection,
but advice, is it surprising that,
neglecting the duties that
reason alone points out, and shrinking
from trials calculated to
strengthen their minds, they only exert
themselves to give their
defects a graceful covering, which may
serve to heighten their
charms in the eye of the voluptuary,
though it sink them below the
scale of moral excellence?
Fragile in every sense of the word, they
are obliged to look up to
man for every comfort. In the most
trifling dangers they cling to
their support, with parasitical tenacity,
piteously demanding
succour; and their NATURAL protector
extends his arm, or lifts up
his voice, to guard the lovely trembler-from what? Perhaps the
frown of an old cow, or the jump of a
mouse; a rat, would be a
serious danger. In the name of reason,
and even common sense, what
can save such beings from contempt;
even though they be soft and
fair?
These fears, when not affected, may be
very pretty; but they shew a
degree of imbecility, that degrades a
rational creature in a way
women are not aware of--for love and
esteem are very distinct
things.
I am fully persuaded, that we should
hear of none of these
infantine airs, if girls were allowed to
take sufficient exercise
and not confined in close rooms till their
muscles are relaxed and
their powers of digestion destroyed. To
carry the remark still
further, if fear in girls, instead of being
cherished, perhaps,
created, were treated in the same manner
as cowardice in boys, we
should quickly see women with more
dignified aspects. It is true,
they could not then with equal propriety
be termed the sweet
flowers that smile in the walk of man;
but they would be more
respectable members of society, and
discharge the important duties
of life by the light of their own reason.
"Educate women like
men," says Rousseau, "and the more
they resemble our sex the less
power will they have over us." This is
the very point I aim at. I
do not wish them to have power over
men; but over themselves.
In the same strain have I heard men
argue against instructing the
poor; for many are the forms that
aristocracy assumes. "Teach them
to read and write," say they, "and you
take them out of the station
assigned them by nature." An eloquent
Frenchman, has answered
them; I will borrow his sentiments. But
they know not, when they
235
make man a brute, that they may expect
every instant to see him
transformed into a ferocious beast.
Without knowledge there can be
no morality!
Ignorance is a frail base for virtue! Yet,
that it is the
condition for which woman was
organized, has been insisted upon by
the writers who have most vehemently
argued in favour of the
superiority of man; a superiority not in
degree, but essence;
though, to soften the argument, they
have laboured to prove, with
chivalrous generosity, that the sexes
ought not to be compared; man
was made to reason, woman to feel: and
that together, flesh and
spirit, they make the most perfect whole,
by blending happily
reason and sensibility into one character.
And what is sensibility? "Quickness of
sensation; quickness of
perception; delicacy." Thus is it defined
by Dr. Johnson; and the
definition gives me no other idea than of
the most exquisitely
polished instinct. I discern not a trace of
the image of God in
either sensation or matter. Refined
seventy times seven, they are
still material; intellect dwells not there;
nor will fire ever make
lead gold!
I come round to my old argument; if
woman be allowed to have an
immortal soul, she must have as the
employment of life, an
understanding to improve. And when, to
render the present state
more complete, though every thing
proves it to be but a fraction of
a mighty sum, she is incited by present
gratification to forget her
grand destination. Nature is
counteracted, or she was born only to
procreate and rot. Or, granting brutes, of
every description, a
soul, though not a reasonable one, the
exercise of instinct and
sensibility may be the step, which they
are to take, in this life,
towards the attainment of reason in the
next; so that through all
eternity they will lag behind man, who,
why we cannot tell, had the
power given him of attaining reason in
his first mode of existence.
When I treat of the peculiar duties of
women, as I should treat of
the peculiar duties of a citizen or father,
it will be found that I
do not mean to insinuate, that they
should be taken out of their
families, speaking of the majority. "He
that hath wife and
children," says Lord Bacon, "hath given
hostages to fortune; for
they are impediments to great
enterprises, either of virtue or
mischief. Certainly the best works, and
of greatest merit for the
public, have proceeded from the
unmarried or childless men." I say
the same of women. But, the welfare of
society is not built on
extraordinary exertions; and were it
more reasonably organized,
there would be still less need of great
abilities, or heroic
virtues. In the regulation of a family, in
the education of
children, understanding, in an
unsophisticated sense, is
particularly required: strength both of
body and mind; yet the men
236
who, by their writings, have most
earnestly laboured to domesticate
women, have endeavoured by arguments
dictated by a gross appetite,
that satiety had rendered fastidious, to
weaken their bodies and
cramp their minds. But, if even by these
sinister methods they
really PERSUADED women, by
working on their feelings, to stay at
home, and fulfil the duties of a mother
and mistress of a family, I
should cautiously oppose opinions that
led women to right conduct,
by prevailing on them to make the
discharge of a duty the business
of life, though reason were insulted.
Yet, and I appeal to
experience, if by neglecting the
understanding they are as much,
nay, more attached from these domestic
duties, than they could be
by the most serious intellectual pursuit,
though it may be
observed, that the mass of mankind will
never vigorously pursue an
intellectual object, I may be allowed to
infer, that reason is
absolutely necessary to enable a woman
to perform any duty
properly, and I must again repeat, that
sensibility is not reason.
The comparison with the rich still occurs
to me; for, when men
neglect the duties of humanity, women
will do the same; a common
stream hurries them both along with
thoughtless celerity. Riches
and honours prevent a man from
enlarging his understanding, and
enervate all his powers, by reversing the
order of nature, which
has ever made true pleasure the reward
of labour.
Pleasure--enervating pleasure is,
likewise, within woman's reach
without earning it. But, till hereditary
possessions are spread
abroad, how can we expect men to be
proud of virtue? And, till
they are, women will govern them by the
most direct means,
neglecting their dull domestic duties, to
catch the pleasure that
is on the wing of time.
"The power of women," says some
author, "is her sensibility;" and
men not aware of the consequence, do
all they can to make this
power swallow up every other. Those
who constantly employ their
sensibility will have most: for example;
poets, painters, and
composers. Yet, when the sensibility is
thus increased at the
expense of reason, and even the
imagination, why do philosophical
men complain of their fickleness? The
sexual attention of man
particularly acts on female sensibility,
and this sympathy has been
exercised from their youth up. A
husband cannot long pay those
attentions with the passion necessary to
excite lively emotions,
and the heart, accustomed to lively
emotions, turns to a new lover,
or pines in secret, the prey of virtue or
prudence. I mean when
the heart has really been rendered
susceptible, and the taste
formed; for I am apt to conclude, from
what I have seen in
fashionable life, that vanity is oftener
fostered than sensibility
by the mode of education, and the
intercourse between the sexes,
which I have reprobated; and that
coquetry more frequently proceeds
237
from vanity than from that inconstancy,
which overstrained
sensibility naturally produces.
Another argument that has had a great
weight with me, must, I
think, have some force with every
considerate benevolent heart.
Girls, who have been thus weakly
educated, are often cruelly left
by their parents without any provision;
and, of course, are
dependent on, not only the reason, but
the bounty of their
brothers. These brothers are, to view the
fairest side of the
question, good sort of men, and give as a
favour, what children of
the same parents had an equal right to.
In this equivocal
humiliating situation, a docile female
may remain some time, with a
tolerable degree of comfort. But, when
the brother marries, a
probable circumstance, from being
considered as the mistress of the
family, she is viewed with averted looks
as an intruder, an
unnecessary burden on the benevolence
of the master of the house,
and his new partner.
Who can recount the misery, which
many unfortunate beings, whose
minds and bodies are equally weak,
suffer in such
situations--unable to work and ashamed
to beg? The wife, a
cold-hearted, narrow-minded woman,
and this is not an unfair
supposition; for the present mode of
education does not tend to
enlarge the heart any more than the
understanding, is jealous of
the little kindness which her husband
shows to his relations; and
her sensibility not rising to humanity,
she is displeased at seeing
the property of HER children lavished
on an helpless sister.
These are matters of fact, which have
come under my eye again and
again. The consequence is obvious, the
wife has recourse to
cunning to undermine the habitual
affection, which she is afraid
openly to oppose; and neither tears nor
caresses are spared till
the spy is worked out of her home, and
thrown on the world,
unprepared for its difficulties; or sent, as
a great effort of
generosity, or from some regard to
propriety, with a small stipend,
and an uncultivated mind into joyless
solitude.
These two women may be much upon a
par, with respect to reason and
humanity; and changing situations,
might have acted just the same
selfish part; but had they been differently
educated, the case
would also have been very different.
The wife would not have had
that sensibility, of which self is the
centre, and reason might
have taught her not to expect, and not
even to be flattered by the
affection of her husband, if it led him to
violate prior duties.
She would wish not to love him, merely
because he loved her, but on
account of his virtues; and the sister
might have been able to
struggle for herself, instead of eating the
bitter bread of
dependence.
I am, indeed, persuaded that the heart, as
well as the
238
understanding, is opened by cultivation;
and by, which may not
appear so clear, strengthening the
organs; I am not now talking of
momentary flashes of sensibility, but of
affections. And, perhaps,
in the education of both sexes, the most
difficult task is so to
adjust instruction as not to narrow the
understanding, whilst the
heart is warmed by the generous juices
of spring, just raised by
the electric fermentation of the season;
nor to dry up the feelings
by employing the mind in investigations
remote from life.
With respect to women, when they
receive a careful education, they
are either made fine ladies, brimful of
sensibility, and teeming
with capricious fancies; or mere notable
women. The latter are
often friendly, honest creatures, and
have a shrewd kind of good
sense joined with worldly prudence, that
often render them more
useful members of society than the fine
sentimental lady, though
they possess neither greatness of mind
nor taste. The intellectual
world is shut against them; take them out
of their family or
neighbourhood, and they stand still; the
mind finding no
employment, for literature affords a fund
of amusement, which they
have never sought to relish, but
frequently to despise. The
sentiments and taste of more cultivated
minds appear ridiculous,
even in those whom chance and family
connexions have led them to
love; but in mere acquaintance they
think it all affectation.
A man of sense can only love such a
woman on account of her sex,
and respect her, because she is a trusty
servant. He lets her, to
preserve his own peace, scold the
servants, and go to church in
clothes made of the very best materials.
A man of her own size of
understanding would, probably, not
agree so well with her; for he
might wish to encroach on her
prerogative, and manage some domestic
concerns himself. Yet women, whose
minds are not enlarged by
cultivation, or the natural selfishness of
sensibility expanded by
reflection, are very unfit to manage a
family; for by an undue
stretch of power, they are always
tyrannizing to support a
superiority that only rests on the
arbitrary distinction of
fortune. The evil is sometimes more
serious, and domestics are
deprived of innocent indulgences, and
made to work beyond their
strength, in order to enable the notable
woman to keep a better
table, and outshine her neighbours in
finery and parade. If she
attend to her children, it is, in general, to
dress them in a
costly manner--and, whether, this
attention arises from vanity or
fondness, it is equally pernicious.
Besides, how many women of this
description pass their days, or, at
least their evenings, discontentedly.
Their husbands acknowledge
that they are good managers, and chaste
wives; but leave home to
seek for more agreeable, may I be
allowed to use a significant
French word, piquant society; and the
patient drudge, who fulfils
239
her task, like a blind horse in a mill, is
defrauded of her just
reward; for the wages due to her are the
caresses of her husband;
and women who have so few resources
in themselves, do not very
patiently bear this privation of a natural
right.
A fine lady, on the contrary, has been
taught to look down with
contempt on the vulgar employments of
life; though she has only
been incited to acquire accomplishments
that rise a degree above
sense; for even corporeal
accomplishments cannot be acquired
with
any degree of precision, unless the
understanding has been
strengthened by exercise. Without a
foundation of principles taste
is superficial; and grace must arise from
something deeper than
imitation. The imagination, however, is
heated, and the feelings
rendered fastidious, if not sophisticated;
or, a counterpoise of
judgment is not acquired, when the heart
still remains artless,
though it becomes too tender.
These women are often amiable; and
their hearts are really more
sensible to general benevolence, more
alive to the sentiments that
civilize life, than the square elbowed
family drudge; but, wanting
a due proportion of reflection and selfgovernment, they only
inspire love; and are the mistresses of
their husbands, whilst they
have any hold on their affections; and
the platonic friends of his
male acquaintance. These are the fair
defects in nature; the women
who appear to be created not to enjoy the
fellowship of man, but to
save him from sinking into absolute
brutality, by rubbing off the
rough angles of his character; and by
playful dalliance to give
some dignity to the appetite that draws
him to them. Gracious
Creator of the whole human race! hast
thou created such a being as
woman, who can trace thy wisdom in thy
works, and feel that thou
alone art by thy nature, exalted above
her--for no better purpose?
Can she believe that she was only made
to submit to man her equal;
a being, who, like her, was sent into the
world to acquire virtue?
Can she consent to be occupied merely
to please him; merely to
adorn the earth, when her soul is capable
of rising to thee? And
can she rest supinely dependent on man
for reason, when she ought
to mount with him the arduous steeps of
knowledge?
Yet, if love be the supreme good, let
women be only educated to
inspire it, and let every charm be
polished to intoxicate the
senses; but, if they are moral beings, let
them have a chance to
become intelligent; and let love to man
be only a part of that
glowing flame of universal love, which,
after encircling humanity,
mounts in grateful incense to God.
To fulfil domestic duties much
resolution is necessary, and a
serious kind of perseverance that
requires a more firm support than
emotions, however lively and true to
nature. To give an example of
240
order, the soul of virtue, some austerity
of behaviour must be
adopted, scarcely to be expected from a
being who, from its
infancy, has been made the weathercock
of its own sensations.
Whoever rationally means to be useful,
must have a plan of conduct;
and, in the discharge of the simplest
duty, we are often obliged to
act contrary to the present impulse of
tenderness or compassion.
Severity is frequently the most certain,
as well as the most
sublime proof of affection; and the want
of this power over the
feelings, and of that lofty, dignified
affection, which makes a
person prefer the future good of the
beloved object to a present
gratification, is the reason why so many
fond mothers spoil their
children, and has made it questionable,
whether negligence or
indulgence is most hurtful: but I am
inclined to think, that the
latter has done most harm.
Mankind seem to agree, that children
should be left under the
management of women during their
childhood. Now, from all the
observation that I have been able to
make, women of sensibility are
the most unfit for this task, because they
will infallibly, carried
away by their feelings, spoil a child's
temper. The management of
the temper, the first and most important
branch of education,
requires the sober steady eye of reason; a
plan of conduct equally
distant from tyranny and indulgence; yet
these are the extremes
that people of sensibility alternately fall
into; always shooting
beyond the mark. I have followed this
train of reasoning much
further, till I have concluded, that a
person of genius is the most
improper person to be employed in
education, public or private.
Minds of this rare species see things too
much in masses, and
seldom, if ever, have a good temper.
That habitual cheerfulness,
termed good humour, is, perhaps, as
seldom united with great mental
powers, as with strong feelings. And
those people who follow, with
interest and admiration, the flights of
genius; or, with cooler
approbation suck in the instruction,
which has been elaborately
prepared for them by the profound
thinker, ought not to be
disgusted, if they find the former
choleric, and the latter morose;
because liveliness of fancy, and a
tenacious comprehension of mind,
are scarcely compatible with that pliant
urbanity which leads a
man, at least to bend to the opinions and
prejudices of others,
instead of roughly confronting them.
But, treating of education or manners,
minds of a superior class
are not to be considered, they may be
left to chance; it is the
multitude, with moderate abilities, who
call for instruction, and
catch the colour of the atmosphere they
breathe. This respectable
concourse, I contend, men and women,
should not have their
sensations heightened in the hot-bed of
luxurious indolence, at the
expence of their understanding; for,
unless there be a ballast of
understanding, they will never become
either virtuous or free: an
241
aristocracy, founded on property, or
sterling talents, will ever
sweep before it, the alternately timid and
ferocious slaves of
feeling.
Numberless are the arguments, to take
another view of the subject,
brought forward with a show of reason;
because supposed to be
deduced from nature, that men have used
morally and physically to
degrade the sex. I must notice a few.
The female understanding has often been
spoken of with contempt, as
arriving sooner at maturity than the
male. I shall not answer this
argument by alluding to the early proofs
of reason, as well as
genius, in Cowley, Milton, and Pope,
(Many other names might be
added.) but only appeal to experience to
decide whether young men,
who are early introduced into company
(and examples now abound) do
not acquire the same precocity. So
notorious is this fact, that
the bare mentioning of it must bring
before people, who at all mix
in the world, the idea of a number of
swaggering apes of men whose
understandings are narrowed by being
brought into the society of
men when they ought to have been
spinning a top or twirling a hoop.
It has also been asserted, by some
naturalists, that men do not
attain their full growth and strength till
thirty; but that women
arrive at maturity by twenty. I
apprehend that they reason on
false ground, led astray by the male
prejudice, which deems beauty
the perfection of woman--mere beauty of
features and complexion,
the vulgar acceptation of the world,
whilst male beauty is allowed
to have some connexion with the mind.
Strength of body, and that
character of countenance, which the
French term a physionomie,
women do not acquire before thirty, any
more than men. The little
artless tricks of children, it is true, are
particularly pleasing
and attractive; yet, when the pretty
freshness of youth is worn
off, these artless graces become studied
airs, and disgust every
person of taste. In the countenance of
girls we only look for
vivacity and bashful modesty; but, the
springtide of life over, we
look for soberer sense in the face, and
for traces of passion,
instead of the dimples of animal spirits;
expecting to see
individuality of character, the only
fastener of the affections.
We then wish to converse, not to fondle;
to give scope to our
imaginations, as well as to the sensations
of our hearts.
At twenty the beauty of both sexes is
equal; but the libertinism of
man leads him to make the distinction,
and superannuated coquettes
are commonly of the same opinion; for
when they can no longer
inspire love, they pay for the vigour and
vivacity of youth. The
French who admit more of mind into
their notions of beauty, give
the preference to women of thirty. I
mean to say, that they allow
women to be in their most perfect state,
when vivacity gives place
242
to reason, and to that majestic
seriousness of character, which
marks maturity; or, the resting point. In
youth, till twenty the
body shoots out; till thirty the solids are
attaining a degree of
density; and the flexible muscles,
growing daily more rigid, give
character to the countenance; that is,
they trace the operations of
the mind with the iron pen of fate, and
tell us not only what
powers are within, but how they have
been employed.
It is proper to observe, that animals who
arrive slowly at
maturity, are the longest lived, and of the
noblest species. Men
cannot, however, claim any natural
superiority from the grandeur of
longevity; for in this respect nature has
not distinguished the
male.
Polygamy is another physical
degradation; and a plausible argument
for a custom, that blasts every domestic
virtue, is drawn from the
well-attested fact, that in the countries
where it is established,
more females are born than males. This
appears to be an indication
of nature, and to nature apparently
reasonable speculations must
yield. A further conclusion obviously
presents itself; if polygamy
be necessary, woman must be inferior to
man, and made for him.
With respect to the formation of the
foetus in the womb, we are
very ignorant; but it appears to me
probable, that an accidental
physical cause may account for this
phenomenon, and prove it not to
be a law of nature. I have met with
some pertinent observations on
the subject in Forster's Account of the
Isles of the South Sea,
that will explain my meaning. After
observing that of the two
sexes amongst animals, the most
vigorous and hottest constitution
always prevails, and produces its kind;
he adds,--"If this be
applied to the inhabitants of Africa, it is
evident that the men
there, accustomed to polygamy, are
enervated by the use of so many
women, and therefore less vigorous; the
women on the contrary, are
of a hotter constitution, not only on
account of their more
irritable nerves, more sensitive
organization, and more lively
fancy; but likewise because they are
deprived in their matrimony of
that share of physical love which in a
monogamous condition, would
all be theirs; and thus for the above
reasons, the generality of
children are born females."
"In the greater part of Europe it has been
proved by the most
accurate lists of mortality, that the
proportion of men to women is
nearly equal, or, if any difference takes
place, the males born are
more numerous, in the proportion of 105
to 100."
The necessity of polygamy, therefore,
does not appear; yet when a
man seduces a woman, it should I think,
be termed a LEFT-HANDED
marriage, and the man should be
LEGALLY obliged to maintain the
woman and her children, unless adultery,
a natural divorcement,
243
abrogated the law. And this law should
remain in force as long as
the weakness of women caused the word
seduction to be used as an
excuse for their frailty and want of
principle; nay, while they
depend on man for a subsistence, instead
of earning it by the
exercise of their own hands or heads.
But these women should not
in the full meaning of the relationship,
be termed wives, or the
very purpose of marriage would be
subverted, and all those
endearing charities that flow from
personal fidelity, and give a
sanctity to the tie, when neither love nor
friendship unites the
hearts, would melt into selfishness. The
woman who is faithful to
the father of her children demands
respect, and should not be
treated like a prostitute; though I readily
grant, that if it be
necessary for a man and woman to live
together in order to bring up
their offspring, nature never intended
that a man should have more
than one wife.
Still, highly as I respect marriage, as the
foundation of almost
every social virtue, I cannot avoid
feeling the most lively
compassion for those unfortunate
females who are broken off from
society, and by one error torn from all
those affections and
relationships that improve the heart and
mind. It does not
frequently even deserve the name of
error; for many innocent girls
become the dupes of a sincere
affectionate heart, and still more
are, as it may emphatically be termed,
RUINED before they know the
difference between virtue and vice: and
thus prepared by their
education for infamy, they become
infamous. Asylums and Magdalens
are not the proper remedies for these
abuses. It is justice, not
charity, that is wanting in the world!
A woman who has lost her honour,
imagines that she cannot fall
lower, and as for recovering her former
station, it is impossible;
no exertion can wash this stain away.
Losing thus every spur, and
having no other means of support,
prostitution becomes her only
refuge, and the character is quickly
depraved by circumstances over
which the poor wretch has little power,
unless she possesses an
uncommon portion of sense and loftiness
of spirit. Necessity never
makes prostitution the business of men's
lives; though numberless
are the women who are thus rendered
systematically vicious. This,
however, arises, in a great degree, from
the state of idleness in
which women are educated, who are
always taught to look up to man
for a maintenance, and to consider their
persons as the proper
return for his exertions to support them.
Meretricious airs, and
the whole science of wantonness, has
then a more powerful stimulus
than either appetite or vanity; and this
remark gives force to the
prevailing opinion, that with chastity all
is lost that is
respectable in woman. Her character
depends on the observance of
one virtue, though the only passion
fostered in her heart--is love.
Nay the honour of a woman is not made
even to depend on her will.
244
When Richardson makes Clarissa tell
Lovelace that he had robbed her
of her honour, he must have had strange
notions of honour and
virtue. For, miserable beyond all names
of misery is the condition
of a being, who could be degraded
without its own consent! This
excess of strictness I have heard
vindicated as a salutary error.
I shall answer in the words of Leibnitz-"Errors are often useful;
but it is commonly to remedy other
errors."
Most of the evils of life arise from a
desire of present enjoyment
that outruns itself. The obedience
required of women in the
marriage state, comes under this
description; the mind, naturally
weakened by depending on authority,
never exerts its own powers,
and the obedient wife is thus rendered a
weak indolent mother. Or,
supposing that this is not always the
consequence, a future state
of existence is scarcely taken into the
reckoning when only
negative virtues are cultivated. For in
treating of morals,
particularly when women are alluded to,
writers have too often
considered virtue in a very limited sense,
and made the foundation
of it SOLELY worldly utility; nay, a still
more fragile base has
been given to this stupendous fabric, and
the wayward fluctuating
feelings of men have been made the
standard of virtue. Yes, virtue
as well as religion, has been subjected to
the decisions of taste.
It would almost provoke a smile of
contempt, if the vain
absurdities of man did not strike us on
all sides, to observe, how
eager men are to degrade the sex from
whom they pretend to receive
the chief pleasure of life; and I have
frequently, with full
conviction, retorted Pope's sarcasm on
them; or, to speak
explicitly, it has appeared to me
applicable to the whole human
race. A love of pleasure or sway seems
to divide mankind, and the
husband who lords it in his little harem,
thinks only of his
pleasure or his convenience. To such
lengths, indeed, does an
intemperate love of pleasure carry some
prudent men, or worn out
libertines, who marry to have a safe
companion, that they seduce
their own wives. Hymen banishes
modesty, and chaste love takes its
flight.
Love, considered as an animal appetite,
cannot long feed on itself
without expiring. And this extinction, in
its own flame, may be
termed the violent death of love. But the
wife who has thus been
rendered licentious, will probably
endeavour to fill the void left
by the loss of her husband's attentions;
for she cannot contentedly
become merely an upper servant after
having been treated like a
goddess. She is still handsome, and,
instead of transferring her
fondness to her children, she only
dreams of enjoying the sunshine
of life. Besides, there are many
husbands so devoid of sense and
parental affection, that during the first
effervescence of
245
voluptuous fondness, they refuse to let
their wives suckle their
children. They are only to dress and live
to please them: and
love, even innocent love, soon sinks into
lasciviousness when the
exercise of a duty is sacrificed to its
indulgence.
Personal attachment is a very happy
foundation for friendship; yet,
when even two virtuous young people
marry, it would, perhaps, be
happy if some circumstance checked
their passion; if the
recollection of some prior attachment, or
disappointed affection,
made it on one side, at least, rather a
match founded on esteem.
In that case they would look beyond the
present moment, and try to
render the whole of life respectable, by
forming a plan to regulate
a friendship which only death ought to
dissolve.
Friendship is a serious affection; the
most sublime of all
affections, because it is founded on
principle, and cemented by
time. The very reverse may be said of
love. In a great degree,
love and friendship cannot subsist in the
same bosom; even when
inspired by different objects they
weaken or destroy each other,
and for the same object can only be felt
in succession. The vain
fears and fond jealousies, the winds
which fan the flame of love,
when judiciously or artfully tempered,
are both incompatible with
the tender confidence and sincere respect
of friendship.
Love, such as the glowing pen of genius
has traced, exists not on
earth, or only resides in those exalted,
fervid imaginations that
have sketched such dangerous pictures.
Dangerous, because they not
only afford a plausible excuse to the
voluptuary, who disguises
sheer sensuality under a sentimental veil;
but as they spread
affectation, and take from the dignity of
virtue. Virtue, as the
very word imports, should have an
appearance of seriousness, if not
austerity; and to endeavour to trick her
out in the garb of
pleasure, because the epithet has been
used as another name for
beauty, is to exalt her on a quicksand; a
most insidious attempt to
hasten her fall by apparent respect.
Virtue, and pleasure are not,
in fact, so nearly allied in this life as
some eloquent writers
have laboured to prove. Pleasure
prepares the fading wreath, and
mixes the intoxicating cup; but the fruit
which virtue gives, is
the recompence of toil: and, gradually
seen as it ripens, only
affords calm satisfaction; nay, appearing
to be the result of the
natural tendency of things, it is scarcely
observed. Bread, the
common food of life, seldom thought of
as a blessing, supports the
constitution, and preserves health; still
feasts delight the heart
of man, though disease and even death
lurk in the cup or dainty
that elevates the spirits or tickles the
palate. The lively heated
imagination in the same style, draws the
picture of love, as it
draws every other picture, with those
glowing colours, which the
246
daring hand will steal from the rainbow
that is directed by a mind,
condemned, in a world like this, to prove
its noble origin, by
panting after unattainable perfection;
ever pursuing what it
acknowledges to be a fleeting dream.
An imagination of this
vigorous cast can give existence to
insubstantial forms, and
stability to the shadowy reveries which
the mind naturally falls
into when realities are found vapid. It
can then depict love with
celestial charms, and dote on the grand
ideal object; it can
imagine a degree of mutual affection that
shall refine the soul,
and not expire when it has served as a
"scale to heavenly;" and,
like devotion, make it absorb every
meaner affection and desire.
In each other's arms, as in a temple, with
its summit lost in the
clouds, the world is to be shut out, and
every thought and wish,
that do not nurture pure affection and
permanent virtue. Permanent
virtue! alas! Rousseau, respectable
visionary! thy paradise would
soon be violated by the entrance of some
unexpected guest. Like
Milton's, it would only contain angels, or
men sunk below the
dignity of rational creatures. Happiness
is not material, it
cannot be seen or felt! Yet the eager
pursuit of the good which
every one shapes to his own fancy,
proclaims man the lord of this
lower world, and to be an intelligential
creature, who is not to
receive, but acquire happiness. They,
therefore, who complain of
the delusions of passion, do not recollect
that they are exclaiming
against a strong proof of the immortality
of the soul.
But, leaving superior minds to correct
themselves, and pay dearly
for their experience, it is necessary to
observe, that it is not
against strong, persevering passions; but
romantic, wavering
feelings, that I wish to guard the female
heart by exercising the
understanding; for these paradisiacal
reveries are oftener the
effect of idleness than of a lively fancy.
Women have seldom sufficient serious
employment to silence their
feelings; a round of little cares, or vain
pursuits, frittering
away all strength of mind and organs,
they become naturally only
objects of sense. In short, the whole
tenor of female education
(the education of society) tends to render
the best disposed,
romantic and inconstant; and the
remainder vain and mean. In the
present state of society, this evil can
scarcely be remedied, I am
afraid, in the slightest degree; should a
more laudable ambition
ever gain ground, they may be brought
nearer to nature and reason,
and become more virtuous and useful as
they grow more respectable.
But I will venture to assert, that their
reason will never acquire
sufficient strength to enable it to regulate
their conduct, whilst
the making an appearance in the world is
the first wish of the
majority of mankind. To this weak wish
the natural affections and
the most useful virtues are sacrificed.
Girls marry merely to
247
BETTER THEMSELVES, to borrow a
significant vulgar phrase, and have
such perfect power over their hearts as
not to permit themselves to
FALL IN LOVE till a man with a
superior fortune offers. On this
subject I mean to enlarge in a future
chapter; it is only necessary
to drop a hint at present, because women
are so often degraded by
suffering the selfish prudence of age to
chill the ardour of youth.
>From the same source flows an opinion
that young girls ought to
dedicate great part of their time to needle
work; yet, this
employment contracts their faculties
more than any other that could
have been chosen for them, by confining
their thoughts to their
persons. Men order their clothes to be
made, and have done with
the subject; women make their own
clothes, necessary or ornamental,
and are continually talking about them;
and their thoughts follow
their hands. It is not indeed the making
of necessaries that
weakens the mind; but the frippery of
dress. For when a woman in
the lower rank of life makes her
husband's and children's clothes,
she does her duty, this is part of her
business; but when women
work only to dress better than they could
otherwise afford, it is
worse than sheer loss of time. To render
the poor virtuous, they
must be employed, and women in the
middle rank of life did they not
ape the fashions of the nobility, without
catching their ease,
might employ them, whilst they
themselves managed their families,
instructed their children, and exercised
their own minds.
Gardening, experimental philosophy,
and literature, would afford
them subjects to think of, and matter for
conversation, that in
some degree would exercise their
understandings. The conversation
of French women, who are not so rigidly
nailed to their chairs, to
twist lappets, and knot ribbands, is
frequently superficial; but, I
contend, that it is not half so insipid as
that of those English
women, whose time is spent in making
caps, bonnets, and the whole
mischief of trimmings, not to mention
shopping, bargain-hunting,
etc. etc.: and it is the decent, prudent
women, who are most
degraded by these practices; for their
motive is simply vanity.
The wanton, who exercises her taste to
render her person alluring,
has something more in view.
These observations all branch out of a
general one, which I have
before made, and which cannot be too
often insisted upon, for,
speaking of men, women, or professions,
it will be found, that the
employment of the thoughts shapes the
character both generally and
individually. The thoughts of women
ever hover around their
persons, and is it surprising that their
persons are reckoned most
valuable? Yet some degree of liberty of
mind is necessary even to
form the person; and this may be one
reason why some gentle wives
have so few attractions beside that of
sex. Add to this, sedentary
employments render the majority of
women sickly, and false notions
248
of female excellence make them proud
of this delicacy, though it be
another fetter, that by calling the
attention continually to the
body, cramps the activity of the mind.
Women of quality seldom do any of the
manual part of their dress,
consequently only their taste is
exercised, and they acquire, by
thinking less of the finery, when the
business of their toilet is
over, that ease, which seldom appears in
the deportment of women,
who dress merely for the sake of
dressing. In fact, the
observation with respect to the middle
rank, the one in which
talents thrive best, extends not to
women; for those of the
superior class, by catching, at least a
smattering of literature,
and conversing more with men, on
general topics, acquire more
knowledge than the women who ape
their fashions and faults without
sharing their advantages. With respect
to virtue, to use the word
in a comprehensive sense, I have seen
most in low life. Many poor
women maintain their children by the
sweat of their brow, and keep
together families that the vices of the
fathers would have
scattered abroad; but gentlewomen are
too indolent to be actively
virtuous, and are softened rather than
refined by civilization.
Indeed the good sense which I have met
with among the poor women
who have had few advantages of
education, and yet have acted
heroically, strongly confirmed me in the
opinion, that trifling
employments have rendered women a
trifler. Men, taking her ('I
take her body,' says Ranger.) body, the
mind is left to rust; so
that while physical love enervates man,
as being his favourite
recreation, he will endeavour to enslave
woman: and who can tell
how many generations may be necessary
to give vigour to the virtue
and talents of the freed posterity of
abject slaves? ('Supposing
that women are voluntary slaves--slavery
of any kind is
unfavourable to human happiness and
improvement.'--'Knox's
Essays'.)
In tracing the causes that in my opinion,
have degraded woman, I
have confined my observations to such
as universally act upon the
morals and manners of the whole sex,
and to me it appears clear,
that they all spring from want of
understanding. Whether this
arises from a physical or accidental
weakness of faculties, time
alone can determine; for I shall not lay
any great stress upon the
example of a few women (Sappho,
Eloisa, Mrs. Macaulay, the Empress
of Russia, Madame d'Eon, etc. These,
and many more, may be
reckoned exceptions; and, are not all
heroes, as well as heroines,
exceptions to general rules? I wish to
see women neither heroines
nor brutes; but reasonable creatures.)
who, from having received a
masculine education, have acquired
courage and resolution; I only
contend that the men who have been
placed in similar situations
have acquired a similar character, I
speak of bodies of men, and
that men of genius and talents have
started out of a class, in
249
which women have never yet been
placed.
CHAPTER 5.
ANIMADVERSIONS ON SOME OF
THE WRITERS WHO HAVE
RENDERED WOMEN
OBJECTS OF PITY, BORDERING
ON CONTEMPT.
The opinions speciously supported, in
some modern publications on
the female character, and education,
which have given the tone to
most of the observations made, in a more
cursory manner, on the
sex, remain now to be examined.
SECTION 5.1.
I shall begin with Rousseau, and give a
sketch of the character of
women in his own words, interspersing
comments and reflections. My
comments, it is true, will all spring from
a few simple principles,
and might have been deduced from what
I have already said; but the
artificial structure has been raised with
so much ingenuity, that
it seems necessary to attack it in a more
circumstantial manner,
and make the application myself.
Sophia, says Rousseau, should be as
perfect a woman as Emilius is a
man, and to render her so, it is necessary
to examine the character
which nature has given to the sex.
He then proceeds to prove, that women
ought to be weak and passive,
because she has less bodily strength than
man; and from hence
infers, that she was formed to please and
to be subject to him; and
that it is her duty to render herself
AGREEABLE to her master--this
being the grand end of her existence.
Supposing women to have been formed
only to please, and be subject
to man, the conclusion is just, she ought
to sacrifice every other
consideration to render herself agreeable
to him: and let this
brutal desire of self-preservation be the
grand spring of all her
actions, when it is proved to be the iron
bed of fate, to fit
which, her character should be stretched
or contracted, regardless
of all moral or physical distinctions. But
if, as I think may be
demonstrated, the purposes of even this
life, viewing the whole,
are subverted by practical rules built
upon this ignoble base, I
may be allowed to doubt whether
woman was created for man: and
though the cry of irreligion, or even
atheism be raised against me,
I will simply declare, that were an angel
from heaven to tell me
that Moses's beautiful, poetical
cosmogony, and the account of the
fall of man, were literally true, I could
not believe what my
reason told me was derogatory to the
character of the Supreme
Being: and, having no fear of the devil
before mine eyes, I
venture to call this a suggestion of
reason, instead of resting my
weakness on the broad shoulders of the
first seducer of my frail
sex.
"It being once demonstrated," continues
Rousseau, "that man and
250
woman are not, nor ought to be,
constituted alike in temperament
and character, it follows of course, that
they should not be
educated in the same manner. In
pursuing the directions of nature,
they ought indeed to act in concert, but
they should not be engaged
in the same employments: the end of
their pursuits should be the
same, but the means they should take to
accomplish them, and, of
consequence, their tastes and
inclinations should be different."
(Rousseau's 'Emilius', Volume 3 page
176.)
sex it is the developement of corporeal
powers; in the other, that
of personal charms: not that either the
quality of strength or
beauty ought to be confined exclusively
to one sex; but only that
the order of the cultivation of both is in
that respect reversed.
Women certainly require as much
strength as to enable them to move
and act gracefully, and men as much
address as to qualify them to
act with ease."
"Girls are from their earliest infancy
fond of dress. Not content
with being pretty, they are desirous of
being thought so; we see,
by all their little airs, that this thought
engages their
attention; and they are hardly capable of
understanding what is
said to them, before they are to be
governed by talking to them of
what people will think of their
behaviour. The same motive,
however, indiscreetly made use of with
boys, has not the same
effect: provided they are let to pursue
their amusements at
pleasure, they care very little what
people think of them. Time
and pains are necessary to subject boys
to this motive.
"Children of both sexes have a great
many amusements in common; and
so they ought; have they not also many
such when they are grown up?
Each sex has also its peculiar taste to
distinguish in this
particular. Boys love sports of noise and
activity; to beat the
drum, to whip the top, and to drag about
their little carts:
girls, on the other hand, are fonder of
things of show and
ornament; such as mirrors, trinkets, and
dolls; the doll is the
peculiar amusement of the females; from
whence we see their taste
plainly adapted to their destination. The
physical part of the art
of pleasing lies in dress; and this is all
which children are
capacitated to cultivate of that art."
"Whencesoever girls derive this first
lesson it is a very good one.
As the body is born, in a manner before
the soul, our first concern
should be to cultivate the former; this
order is common to both
sexes, but the object of that cultivation is
different. In the one
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
"Here then we see a primary propensity
firmly established, which
you need only to pursue and regulate.
The little creature will
251
doubtless be very desirous to know how
to dress up her doll, to
make its sleeve knots, its flounces, its
head dress, etc., she is
obliged to have so much recourse to the
people about her, for their
assistance in these articles, that it would
be much more agreeable
to her to owe them all to her own
industry. Hence we have a good
reason for the first lessons which are
usually taught these young
females: in which we do not appear to
be setting them a task, but
obliging them, by instructing them in
what is immediately useful to
themselves. And, in fact, almost all of
them learn with reluctance
to read and write; but very readily apply
themselves to the use of
their needles. They imagine themselves
already grown up, and think
with pleasure that such qualifications
will enable them to decorate
themselves."
This is certainly only an education of the
body; but Rousseau is
not the only man who has indirectly said
that merely the person of
a young woman, without any mind,
unless animal spirits come under
that description, is very pleasing. To
render it weak, and what
some may call beautiful, the
understanding is neglected, and girls
forced to sit still, play with dolls, and
listen to foolish
conversations; the effect of habit is
insisted upon as an undoubted
indication of nature. I know it was
Rousseau's opinion that the
first years of youth should be employed
to form the body, though in
educating Emilius he deviates from this
plan; yet the difference
between strengthening the body, on
which strength of mind in a
great measure depends, and only giving
it an easy motion, is very
wide.
Rousseau's observations, it is proper to
remark, were made in a
country where the art of pleasing was
refined only to extract the
grossness of vice. He did not go back to
nature, or his ruling
appetite disturbed the operations of
reason, else he would not have
drawn these crude inferences.
In France, boys and girls, particularly the
latter, are only
educated to please, to manage their
persons, and regulate their
exterior behaviour; and their minds are
corrupted at a very early
age, by the worldly and pious cautions
they receive, to guard them
against immodesty. I speak of past
times. The very confessions
which mere children are obliged to
make, and the questions asked by
the holy men I assert these facts on good
authority, were
sufficient to impress a sexual character;
and the education of
society was a school of coquetry and art.
At the age of ten or
eleven; nay, often much sooner, girls
began to coquet, and talked,
unreproved, of establishing themselves
in the world by marriage.
In short, they were made women, almost
from their very birth, and
compliments were listened to instead of
instruction. These,
weakening the mind, Nature was
supposed to have acted like a
252
step-mother, when she formed this afterthought of creation.
Not allowing them understanding,
however, it was but consistent to
subject them to authority, independent of
reason; and to prepare
them for this subjection, he gives the
following advice:
"Girls ought to be active and diligent;
nor is that all; they
should also be early subjected to
restraint. This misfortune, if
it really be one, is inseparable from their
sex; nor do they ever
throw it off but to suffer more cruel
evils. They must be subject,
all their lives, to the most constant and
severe restraint, which
is that of decorum: it is, therefore,
necessary to accustom them
early to such confinement, that it may
not afterward cost them too
dear; and to the suppression of their
caprices, that they may the
more readily submit to the will of others.
If, indeed, they are
fond of being always at work, they
should be sometimes compelled to
lay it aside. Dissipation, levity, and
inconstancy, are faults
that readily spring up from their first
propensities, when
corrupted or perverted by too much
indulgence. To prevent this
abuse, we should learn them, above all
things, to lay a due
restraint on themselves. The life of a
modest woman is reduced, by
our absurd institutions, to a perpetual
conflict with herself: not
but it is just that this sex should partake
of the sufferings which
arise from those evils it hath caused us."
And why is the life of a modest woman a
perpetual conflict? I
should answer, that this very system of
education makes it so.
Modesty, temperance, and self-denial,
are the sober offspring of
reason; but when sensibility is nurtured
at the expense of the
understanding, such weak beings must
be restrained by arbitrary
means, and be subjected to continual
conflicts; but give their
activity of mind a wider range, and
nobler passions and motives
will govern their appetites and
sentiments.
"The common attachment and regard of
a mother, nay, mere habit,
will make her beloved by her children, if
she does nothing to incur
their hate. Even the restraint she lays
them under, if well
directed, will increase their affection,
instead of lessening it;
because a state of dependence being
natural to the sex, they
perceive themselves formed for
obedience."
This is begging the question; for
servitude not only debases the
individual, but its effects seem to be
transmitted to posterity.
Considering the length of time that
women have been dependent, is
it surprising that some of them hug their
chains, and fawn like the
spaniel? "These dogs," observes a
naturalist, "at first kept their
ears erect; but custom has superseded
nature, and a token of fear
is become a beauty."
"For the same reason," adds Rousseau,
"women have or ought to have,
253
but little liberty; they are apt to indulge
themselves excessively
in what is allowed them. Addicted in
every thing to extremes, they
are even more transported at their
diversions than boys."
The answer to this is very simple.
Slaves and mobs have always
indulged themselves in the same
excesses, when once they broke
loose from authority. The bent bow
recoils with violence, when the
hand is suddenly relaxed that forcibly
held it: and sensibility,
the plaything of outward circumstances,
must be subjected to
authority, or moderated by reason.
"There results," he continues, "from this
habitual restraint, a
tractableness which the women have
occasion for during their whole
lives, as they constantly remain either
under subjection to the
men, or to the opinions of mankind; and
are never permitted to set
themselves above those opinions. The
first and most important
qualification in a woman is good-nature
or sweetness of temper;
formed to obey a being so imperfect as
man, often full of vices,
and always full of faults, she ought to
learn betimes even to
suffer injustice, and to bear the insults of
a husband without
complaint; it is not for his sake, but her
own, that she should be
of a mild disposition. The perverseness
and ill-nature of the
women only serve to aggravate their
own misfortunes, and the
misconduct of their husbands; they
might plainly perceive that such
are not the arms by which they gain the
superiority."
Formed to live with such an imperfect
being as man, they ought to
learn from the exercise of their faculties
the necessity of
forbearance; but all the sacred rights of
humanity are violated by
insisting on blind obedience; or, the
most sacred rights belong
ONLY to man.
The being who patiently endures
injustice, and silently bears
insults, will soon become unjust, or
unable to discern right from
wrong. Besides, I deny the fact, this is
not the true way to form
or meliorate the temper; for, as a sex,
men have better tempers
than women, because they are occupied
by pursuits that interest the
head as well as the heart; and the
steadiness of the head gives a
healthy temperature to the heart. People
of sensibility have
seldom good tempers. The formation of
the temper is the cool work
of reason, when, as life advances, she
mixes with happy art,
jarring elements. I never knew a weak
or ignorant person who had a
good temper, though that constitutional
good humour, and that
docility, which fear stamps on the
behaviour, often obtains the
name. I say behaviour, for genuine
meekness never reached the
heart or mind, unless as the effect of
reflection; and, that simple
restraint produces a number of peccant
humours in domestic life,
many sensible men will allow, who find
some of these gentle
254
irritable creatures, very troublesome
companions.
"Each sex," he further argues, "should
preserve its peculiar tone
and manner: a meek husband may make
a wife impertinent; but
mildness of disposition on the woman's
side will always bring a man
back to reason, at least if he be not
absolutely a brute, and will
sooner or later triumph over him." True,
the mildness of reason;
but abject fear always inspires contempt;
and tears are only
eloquent when they flow down fair
cheeks.
Of what materials can that heart be
composed, which can melt when
insulted, and instead of revolting at
injustice, kiss the rod? Is
it unfair to infer, that her virtue is built
on narrow views and
selfishness, who can caress a man, with
true feminine softness, the
very moment when he treats her
tyrannically? Nature never dictated
such insincerity; and though prudence of
this sort be termed a
virtue, morality becomes vague when
any part is supposed to rest on
falsehood. These are mere expedients,
and expedients are only
useful for the moment.
Let the husband beware of trusting too
implicitly to this servile
obedience; for if his wife can with
winning sweetness caress him
when angry, and when she ought to be
angry, unless contempt had
stifled a natural effervescence, she may
do the same after parting
with a lover. These are all preparations
for adultery; or, should
the fear of the world, or of hell, restrain
her desire of pleasing
other men, when she can no longer
please her husband, what
substitute can be found by a being who
was only formed by nature
and art to please man? what can make
her amends for this
privation, or where is she to seek for a
fresh employment? where
find sufficient strength of mind to
determine to begin the search,
when her habits are fixed, and vanity has
long ruled her chaotic
mind?
But this partial moralist recommends
cunning systematically and
plausibly.
"Daughters should be always
submissive; their mothers, however,
should not be inexorable. To make a
young person tractable, she
ought not to be made unhappy; to make
her modest she ought not to
be rendered stupid. On the contrary, I
should not be displeased at
her being permitted to use some art, not
to elude punishment in
case of disobedience, but to exempt
herself from the necessity of
obeying. It is not necessary to make her
dependence burdensome,
but only to let her feel it. Subtilty is a
talent natural to the
sex; and as I am persuaded, all our
natural inclinations are right
and good in themselves, I am of opinion
this should be cultivated
as well as the others: it is requisite for
us only to prevent its
abuse."
"Whatever is, is right," he then proceeds
triumphantly to infer.
255
Granted; yet, perhaps, no aphorism ever
contained a more
paradoxical assertion. It is a solemn
truth with respect to God.
He, reverentially I speak, sees the whole
at once, and saw its just
proportions in the womb of time; but
man, who can only inspect
disjointed parts, finds many things
wrong; and it is a part of the
system, and therefore right, that he
should endeavour to alter what
appears to him to be so, even while he
bows to the wisdom of his
Creator, and respects the darkness he
labours to disperse.
The inference that follows is just,
supposing the principle to be
sound: "The superiority of address,
peculiar to the female sex, is
a very equitable indemnification for their
inferiority in point of
strength: without this, woman would not
be the companion of man;
but his slave: it is by her superiour art
and ingenuity that she
preserves her equality, and governs him
while she affects to obey.
Woman has every thing against her, as
well our faults as her own
timidity and weakness: she has nothing
in her favour, but her
subtilty and her beauty. Is it not very
reasonable, therefore, she
should cultivate both?" Greatness of
mind can never dwell with
cunning or address; for I shall not boggle
about words, when their
direct signification is insincerity and
falsehood; but content
myself with observing, that if any class
of mankind be so created
that it must necessarily be educated by
rules, not strictly
deducible from truth, virtue is an affair
of convention. How could
Rousseau dare to assert, after giving this
advice, that in the
grand end of existence, the object of
both sexes should be the
same, when he well knew, that the mind
formed by its pursuits, is
expanded by great views swallowing up
little ones, or that it
becomes itself little?
Men have superiour strength of body;
but were it not for mistaken
notions of beauty, women would acquire
sufficient to enable them to
earn their own subsistence, the true
definition of independence;
and to bear those bodily inconveniences
and exertions that are
requisite to strengthen the mind.
Let us then, by being allowed to take the
same exercise as boys,
not only during infancy, but youth,
arrive at perfection of body,
that we may know how far the natural
superiority of man extends.
For what reason or virtue can be
expected from a creature when the
seed-time of life is neglected? None--did
not the winds of heaven
casually scatter many useful seeds in the
fallow ground.
"Beauty cannot be acquired by dress,
and coquetry is an art not so
early and speedily attained. While girls
are yet young, however,
they are in a capacity to study agreeable
gesture, a pleasing
modulation of voice, an easy carriage
and behaviour; as well as to
take the advantage of gracefully
adapting their looks and attitudes
256
to time, place, and occasion. Their
application, therefore, should
not be solely confined to the arts of
industry and the needle, when
they come to display other talents,
whose utility is already
apparent." "For my part I would have a
young Englishwoman cultivate
her agreeable talents, in order to please
her future husband, with
as much care and assiduity as a young
Circassian cultivates her's,
to fit her for the Haram of an Eastern
bashaw."
To render women completely
insignificant, he adds,--"The tongues of
women are very voluble; they speak
earlier, more readily, and more
agreeably than the men; they are accused
also of speaking much
more: but so it ought to be, and I should
be very ready to convert
this reproach into a compliment; their
lips and eyes have the same
activity, and for the same reason. A man
speaks of what he knows,
a woman of what pleases her; the one
requires knowledge, the other
taste; the principal object of a man's
discourse should be what is
useful, that of a woman's what is
agreeable. There ought to be
nothing in common between their
different conversation but truth."
"We ought not, therefore, to restrain the
prattle of girls, in the
same manner as we should that of boys,
with that severe question,
'To what purpose are you talking?' but
by another, which is no less
difficult to answer, 'How will your
discourse be received?' In
infancy, while they are as yet incapable
to discern good from evil,
they ought to observe it as a law, never
to say any thing
disagreeable to those whom they are
speaking to: what will render
the practice of this rule also the more
difficult, is, that it must
ever be subordinate to the former, of
never speaking falsely or
telling an untruth." To govern the
tongue in this manner must
require great address indeed; and it is too
much practised both by
men and women. Out of the abundance
of the heart how few speak!
So few, that I, who love simplicity,
would gladly give up
politeness for a quarter of the virtue that
has been sacrificed to
an equivocal quality, which, at best,
should only be the polish of
virtue.
But to complete the sketch. "It is easy to
be conceived, that if
male children be not in a capacity to
form any true notions of
religion, those ideas must be greatly
above the conception of the
females: it is for this very reason, I
would begin to speak to
them the earlier on this subject; for if we
were to wait till they
were in a capacity to discuss
methodically such profound questions,
we should run a risk of never speaking to
them on this subject as
long as they lived. Reason in women is
a practical reason,
capacitating them artfully to discover the
means of attaining a
known end, but which would never
enable them to discover that end
itself. The social relations of the sexes
are indeed truly
admirable: from their union there results
a moral person, of which
257
woman may be termed the eyes, and
man the hand, with this
dependence on each other, that it is from
the man that the woman is
to learn what she is to see, and it is of the
woman that man is to
learn what he ought to do. If woman
could recur to the first
principles of things as well as man, and
man was capacitated to
enter into their minutae as well as
woman, always independent of
each other, they would live in perpetual
discord, and their union
could not subsist. But in the present
harmony which naturally
subsists between them, their different
faculties tend to one common
end; it is difficult to say which of them
conduces the most to it:
each follows the impulse of the other;
each is obedient, and both
are masters."
"As the conduct of a woman is
subservient to the public opinion,
her faith in matters of religion, should
for that very reason, be
subject to authority. 'Every daughter
ought to be of the same
religion as her mother, and every wife to
be of the same religion
as her husband: for, though such
religion should be false, that
docility which induces the mother and
daughter to submit to the
order of nature, takes away, in the sight
of God, the criminality
of their error'.* As they are not in a
capacity to judge for
themselves, they ought to abide by the
decision of their fathers
and husbands as confidently as by that of
the church."
(*Footnote. What is to be the
consequence, if the mother's and
husband's opinion should chance not to
agree? An ignorant person
cannot be reasoned out of an error, and
when persuaded to give up
one prejudice for another the mind is
unsettled. Indeed, the
husband may not have any religion to
teach her though in such a
situation she will be in great want of a
support to her virtue,
independent of worldly considerations.)
"As authority ought to regulate the
religion of the women, it is
not so needful to explain to them the
reasons for their belief, as
to lay down precisely the tenets they are
to believe: for the
creed, which presents only obscure ideas
to the mind, is the source
of fanaticism; and that which presents
absurdities, leads to
infidelity."
Absolute, uncontroverted authority, it
seems, must subsist
somewhere: but is not this a direct and
exclusive appropriation of
reason? The RIGHTS of humanity have
been thus confined to the male
line from Adam downwards. Rousseau
would carry his male
aristocracy still further, for he insinuates,
that he should not
blame those, who contend for leaving
woman in a state of the most
profound ignorance, if it were not
necessary, in order to preserve
her chastity, and justify the man's choice
in the eyes of the
world, to give her a little knowledge of
men, and the customs
produced by human passions; else she
might propagate at home
258
without being rendered less voluptuous
and innocent by the exercise
of her understanding: excepting, indeed,
during the first year of
marriage, when she might employ it to
dress, like Sophia. "Her
dress is extremely modest in appearance,
and yet very coquettish in
fact: she does not make a display of her
charms, she conceals
them; but, in concealing them, she
knows how to affect your
imagination. Every one who sees her,
will say, There is a modest
and discreet girl; but while you are near
her, your eyes and
affections wander all over her person, so
that you cannot withdraw
them; and you would conclude that
every part of her dress, simple
as it seems, was only put in its proper
order to be taken to pieces
by the imagination." Is this modesty? Is
this a preparation for
immortality? Again. What opinion are
we to form of a system of
education, when the author says of his
heroine, "that with her,
doing things well is but a SECONDARY
concern; her principal concern
is to do them NEATLY."
Secondary, in fact, are all her virtues and
qualities, for,
respecting religion, he makes her parents
thus address her,
accustomed to submission--"Your
husband will instruct you in good
time."
After thus cramping a woman's mind, if,
in order to keep it fair,
he has not made it quite a blank, he
advises her to reflect, that a
reflecting man may not yawn in her
company, when he is tired of
caressing her. What has she to reflect
about, who must obey? and
would it not be a refinement on cruelty
only to open her mind to
make the darkness and misery of her fate
VISIBLE? Yet these are
his sensible remarks; how consistent
with what I have already been
obliged to quote, to give a fair view of
the subject, the reader
may determine.
"They who pass their whole lives in
working for their daily bread,
have no ideas beyond their business or
their interest, and all
their understanding seems to lie in their
fingers' ends. This
ignorance is neither prejudicial to their
integrity nor their
morals; it is often of service to them.
Sometimes, by means of
reflection, we are led to compound with
our duty, and we conclude,
by substituting a jargon of words, in the
room of things. Our own
conscience is the most enlightened
philosopher. There is no need
of being acquainted with Tully's offices,
to make a man of probity:
and perhaps the most virtuous woman in
the world is the least
acquainted with the definition of virtue.
But it is no less true,
than an improved understanding only
can render society agreeable;
and it is a melancholy thing for a father
of a family, who is fond
of home, to be obliged to be always
wrapped up in himself, and to
have nobody about him to whom he can
impart his sentiments.
"Besides, how should a woman void of
reflection be capable of
259
educating her children? How should she
discern what is proper for
them? How should she incline them to
those virtues she is
unacquainted with, or to that merit of
which she has no idea? She
can only sooth or chide them; render
them insolent or timid; she
will make them formal coxcombs, or
ignorant blockheads; but will
never make them sensible or amiable."
How indeed should she, when
her husband is not always at hand to lend
her his reason --when
they both together make but one moral
being? A blind will, "eyes
without hands," would go a very little
way; and perchance his
abstract reason, that should concentrate
the scattered beams of her
practical reason, may be employed in
judging of the flavour of
wine, discanting on the sauces most
proper for turtle; or, more
profoundly intent at a card-table, he may
be generalizing his ideas
as he bets away his fortune, leaving all
the minutiae of education
to his helpmate or chance.
But, granting that woman ought to be
beautiful, innocent, and
silly, to render her a more alluring and
indulgent companion--what
is her understanding sacrificed for? And
why is all this
preparation necessary only, according to
Rousseau's own account, to
make her the mistress of her husband, a
very short time? For no
man ever insisted more on the transient
nature of love. Thus
speaks the philosopher. "Sensual
pleasures are transient. The
habitual state of the affections always
loses by their
gratification. The imagination, which
decks the object of our
desires, is lost in fruition. Excepting the
Supreme Being, who is
self-existent, there is nothing beautiful
but what is ideal."
But he returns to his unintelligible
paradoxes again, when he thus
addresses Sophia. "Emilius, in
becoming your husband, is become
your master, and claims your obedience.
Such is the order of
nature. When a man is married,
however, to such a wife as Sophia,
it is proper he should be directed by her:
this is also agreeable
to the order of nature: it is, therefore, to
give you as much
authority over his heart as his sex gives
him over your person,
that I have made you the arbiter of his
pleasures. It may cost
you, perhaps, some disagreeable selfdenial; but you will be
certain of maintaining your empire over
him, if you can preserve it
over yourself; what I have already
observed, also shows me, that
this difficult attempt does not surpass
your courage.
"Would you have your husband
constantly at your feet? keep him at
some distance from your person. You
will long maintain the
authority of love, if you know but how
to render your favours rare
and valuable. It is thus you may employ
even the arts of coquetry
in the service of virtue, and those of love
in that of reason."
I shall close my extracts with a just
description of a comfortable
260
couple. "And yet you must not imagine,
that even such management
will always suffice. Whatever
precaution be taken, enjoyment will,
by degrees, take off the edge of passion.
But when love hath
lasted as long as possible, a pleasing
habitude supplies its place,
and the attachment of a mutual
confidence succeeds to the
transports of passion. Children often
form a more agreeable and
permanent connexion between married
people than even love itself.
When you cease to be the mistress of
Emilius, you will continue to
be his wife and friend; you will be the
mother of his children."
(Rousseau's Emilius.)
Children, he truly observes, form a much
more permanent connexion
between married people than love.
Beauty he declares will not be
valued, or even seen, after a couple have
lived six months
together; artificial graces and coquetry
will likewise pall on the
senses: why then does he say, that a girl
should be educated for
her husband with the same care as for an
eastern haram?
I now appeal from the reveries of fancy
and refined licentiousness
to the good sense of mankind, whether,
if the object of education
be to prepare women to become chaste
wives and sensible mothers,
the method so plausibly recommended in
the foregoing sketch, be the
one best calculated to produce those
ends? Will it be allowed that
the surest way to make a wife chaste, is
to teach her to practise
the wanton arts of a mistress, termed
virtuous coquetry by the
sensualist who can no longer relish the
artless charms of
sincerity, or taste the pleasure arising
from a tender intimacy,
when confidence is unchecked by
suspicion, and rendered interesting
by sense?
The man who can be contented to live
with a pretty useful companion
without a mind, has lost in voluptuous
gratifications a taste for
more refined enjoyments; he has never
felt the calm satisfaction
that refreshes the parched heart, like the
silent dew of heaven--of
being beloved by one who could
understand him. In the society of
his wife he is still alone, unless when the
man is sunk in the
brute. "The charm of life," says a grave
philosophical reasoner,
is "sympathy; nothing pleases us more
than to observe in other men
a fellow-feeling with all the emotions of
our own breast."
But, according to the tenor of reasoning
by which women are kept
from the tree of knowledge, the
important years of youth, the
usefulness of age, and the rational hopes
of futurity, are all to
be sacrificed, to render woman an object
of desire for a short
time. Besides, how could Rousseau
expect them to be virtuous and
constant when reason is neither allowed
to be the foundation of
their virtue, nor truth the object of their
inquiries?
But all Rousseau's errors in reasoning
arose from sensibility, and
261
sensibility to their charms women are
very ready to forgive! When
he should have reasoned he became
impassioned, and reflection
inflamed his imagination, instead of
enlightening his
understanding. Even his virtues also led
him farther astray; for,
born with a warm constitution and lively
fancy, nature carried him
toward the other sex with such eager
fondness, that he soon became
lascivious. Had he given way to these
desires, the fire would have
extinguished itself in a natural manner,
but virtue, and a romantic
kind of delicacy, made him practise selfdenial; yet, when fear,
delicacy, or virtue restrained him, he
debauched his imagination;
and reflecting on the sensations to which
fancy gave force, he
traced them in the most glowing colours,
and sunk them deep into
his soul.
He then sought for solitude, not to sleep
with the man of nature;
or calmly investigate the causes of things
under the shade where
Sir Isaac Newton indulged
contemplation, but merely to indulge his
feelings. And so warmly has he painted
what he forcibly felt,
that, interesting the heart and inflaming
the imagination of his
readers; in proportion to the strength of
their fancy, they imagine
that their understanding is convinced,
when they only sympathize
with a poetic writer, who skilfully
exhibits the objects of sense,
most voluptuously shadowed, or
gracefully veiled; and thus making
us feel, whilst dreaming that we reason,
erroneous conclusions are
left in the mind.
Why was Rousseau's life divided
between ecstasy and misery? Can
any other answer be given than this, that
the effervescence of his
imagination produced both; but, had his
fancy been allowed to cool,
it is possible that he might have acquired
more strength of mind.
Still, if the purpose of life be to educate
the intellectual part
of man, all with respect to him was right;
yet, had not death led
to a nobler scene of action, it is probable
that he would have
enjoyed more equal happiness on earth,
and have felt the calm
sensations of the man of nature, instead
of being prepared for
another stage of existence by nourishing
the passions which agitate
the civilized man.
But peace to his manes! I war not with
his ashes, but his
opinions. I war only with the sensibility
that led him to degrade
woman by making her the slave of love.
...."Curs'd vassalage,
First idoliz'd till love's hot fire be o'er,
Then slaves to those who courted us
before."
Dryden.
The pernicious tendency of those books,
in which the writers
insidiously degrade the sex, whilst they
are prostrate before their
personal charms, cannot be too often or
too severely exposed.
Let us, my dear contemporaries, arise
above such narrow prejudices!
262
If wisdom is desirable on its own
account, if virtue, to deserve
the name, must be founded on
knowledge; let us endeavour to
strengthen our minds by reflection, till
our heads become a balance
for our hearts; let us not confine all our
thoughts to the petty
occurrences of the day, nor our
knowledge to an acquaintance with
our lovers' or husbands' hearts; but let
the practice of every duty
be subordinate to the grand one of
improving our minds, and
preparing our affections for a more
exalted state!
Beware then, my friends, of suffering the
heart to be moved by
every trivial incident: the reed is shaken
by a breeze, and
annually dies, but the oak stands firm,
and for ages braves the
storm.
Were we, indeed, only created to flutter
our hour out and die--why
let us then indulge sensibility, and laugh
at the severity of
reason. Yet, alas! even then we should
want strength of body and
mind, and life would be lost in feverish
pleasures or wearisome
languor.
But the system of education, which I
earnestly wish to see
exploded, seems to presuppose, what
ought never to be taken for
granted, that virtue shields us from the
casualties of life; and
that fortune, slipping off her bandage,
will smile on a
well-educated female, and bring in her
hand an Emilius or a
Telemachus. Whilst, on the contrary,
the reward which virtue
promises to her votaries is confined, it is
clear, to their own
bosoms; and often must they contend
with the most vexatious worldly
cares, and bear with the vices and
humours of relations for whom
they can never feel a friendship.
There have been many women in the
world who, instead of being
supported by the reason and virtue of
their fathers and brothers,
have strengthened their own minds by
struggling with their vices
and follies; yet have never met with a
hero, in the shape of a
husband; who, paying the debt that
mankind owed them, might chance
to bring back their reason to its natural
dependent state, and
restore the usurped prerogative, of rising
above opinion, to man.
SECTION 5.2.
Dr. Fordyce's sermons have long made a
part of a young woman's
library; nay, girls at school are allowed
to read them; but I
should instantly dismiss them from my
pupil's, if I wished to
strengthen her understanding, by leading
her to form sound
principles on a broad basis; or, were I
only anxious to cultivate
her taste; though they must be allowed to
contain many sensible
observations.
Dr. Fordyce may have had a very
laudable end in view; but these
discourses are written in such an affected
style, that were it only
263
on that account, and had I nothing to
object against his
MELLIFLUOUS precepts, I should not
allow girls to peruse them,
unless I designed to hunt every spark of
nature out of their
composition, melting every human
quality into female weakness and
artificial grace. I say artificial, for true
grace arises from
some kind of independence of mind.
Children, careless of pleasing, and only
anxious to amuse
themselves, are often very graceful; and
the nobility who have
mostly lived with inferiors, and always
had the command of money,
acquire a graceful ease of deportment,
which should rather be
termed habitual grace of body, than that
superiour gracefulness
which is truly the expression of the
mind. This mental grace, not
noticed by vulgar eyes, often flashes
across a rough countenance,
and irradiating every feature, shows
simplicity and independence of
mind. It is then we read characters of
immortality in the eye, and
see the soul in every gesture, though
when at rest, neither the
face nor limbs may have much beauty to
recommend them; or the
behaviour, any thing peculiar to attract
universal attention. The
mass of mankind, however, look for
more TANGIBLE beauty; yet
simplicity is, in general, admired, when
people do not consider
what they admire; and can there be
simplicity without sincerity?
but, to have done with remarks that are
in some measure desultory,
though naturally excited by the subject.
In declamatory periods Dr. Fordyce
spins out Rousseau's eloquence;
and in most sentimental rant, details his
opinions respecting the
female character, and the behaviour
which woman ought to assume to
render her lovely.
He shall speak for himself, for thus he
makes nature address man.
"Behold these smiling innocents, whom
I have graced with my fairest
gifts, and committed to your protection;
behold them with love and
respect; treat them with tenderness and
honour. They are timid and
want to be defended. They are frail; O
do not take advantage of
their weakness! Let their fears and
blushes endear them. Let
their confidence in you never be abused.
But is it possible, that
any of you can be such barbarians, so
supremely wicked, as to abuse
it? Can you find in your hearts* to
despoil the gentle, trusting
creatures of their treasure, or do any
thing to strip them of their
native robe of virtue? Curst be the
impious hand that would dare
to violate the unblemished form of
Chastity! Thou wretch! thou
ruffian! forbear; nor venture to provoke
heaven's fiercest
vengeance." I know not any comment
that can be made seriously on
this curious passage, and I could produce
many similar ones; and
some, so very sentimental, that I have
heard rational men use the
word indecent, when they mentioned
them with disgust.
(*Footnote. Can you?--Can you? would
be the most emphatical
264
comment, were it drawled out in a
whining voice.)
Throughout there is a display of cold,
artificial feelings, and
that parade of sensibility which boys and
girls should be taught to
despise as the sure mark of a little vain
mind. Florid appeals are
made to heaven, and to the
BEAUTEOUS INNOCENTS, the fairest
images
of heaven here below, whilst sober sense
is left far behind. This
is not the language of the heart, nor will
it ever reach it, though
the ear may be tickled.
I shall be told, perhaps, that the public
have been pleased with
these volumes. True--and Hervey's
Meditations are still read,
though he equally sinned against sense
and taste.
I particularly object to the lover-like
phrases of pumped up
passion, which are every where
interspersed. If women be ever
allowed to walk without leading-strings,
why must they be cajoled
into virtue by artful flattery and sexual
compliments? Speak to
them the language of truth and
soberness, and away with the lullaby
strains of condescending endearment!
Let them be taught to respect
themselves as rational creatures, and not
led to have a passion for
their own insipid persons. It moves my
gall to hear a preacher
descanting on dress and needle-work;
and still more, to hear him
address the 'British fair, the fairest of the
fair', as if they had
only feelings.
Even recommending piety he uses the
following argument. "Never,
perhaps, does a fine woman strike more
deeply, than when, composed
into pious recollection, and possessed
with the noblest
considerations, she assumes, without
knowing it, superiour dignity
and new graces; so that the beauties of
holiness seem to radiate
about her, and the by-standers are almost
induced to fancy her
already worshipping amongst her
kindred angels!" Why are women to
be thus bred up with a desire of
conquest? the very epithet, used
in this sense, gives me a sickly qualm!
Does religion and virtue
offer no stronger motives, no brighter
reward? Must they always be
debased by being made to consider the
sex of their companions?
Must they be taught always to be
pleasing? And when levelling
their small artillery at the heart of man,
is it necessary to tell
them that a little sense is sufficient to
render their attention
INCREDIBLY SOOTHING? "As a
small degree of knowledge entertains in
a woman, so from a woman, though for a
different reason, a small
expression of kindness delights,
particularly if she have beauty!"
I should have supposed for the same
reason.
Why are girls to be told that they
resemble angels; but to sink
them below women? Or, that a gentle,
innocent female is an object
that comes nearer to the idea which we
have formed of angels than
any other. Yet they are told, at the same
time, that they are only
265
like angels when they are young and
beautiful; consequently, it is
their persons, not their virtues, that
procure them this homage.
Idle empty words! what can such
delusive flattery lead to, but
vanity and folly? The lover, it is true,
has a poetic licence to
exalt his mistress; his reason is the
bubble of his passion, and he
does not utter a falsehood when he
borrows the language of
adoration. His imagination may raise
the idol of his heart,
unblamed, above humanity; and happy
would it be for women, if they
were only flattered by the men who
loved them; I mean, who love the
individual, not the sex; but should a
grave preacher interlard his
discourses with such fooleries?
In sermons or novels, however,
voluptuousness is always true to its
text. Men are allowed by moralists to
cultivate, as nature
directs, different qualities, and assume
the different characters,
that the same passions, modified almost
to infinity, give to each
individual. A virtuous man may have a
choleric or a sanguine
constitution, be gay or grave,
unreproved; be firm till be is
almost over-bearing, or, weakly
submissive, have no will or opinion
of his own; but all women are to be
levelled, by meekness and
docility, into one character of yielding
softness and gentle
compliance.
I will use the preacher's own words.
"Let it be observed, that in
your sex manly exercises are never
graceful; that in them a tone
and figure, as well as an air and
deportment, of the masculine
kind, are always forbidding; and that
men of sensibility desire in
every woman soft features, and a
flowing voice, a form not robust,
and demeanour delicate and gentle."
Is not the following portrait--the portrait
of a house slave? "I
am astonished at the folly of many
women, who are still reproaching
their husbands for leaving them alone,
for preferring this or that
company to theirs, for treating them with
this and the other mark
of disregard or indifference; when, to
speak the truth, they have
themselves in a great measure to blame.
Not that I would justify
the men in any thing wrong on their part.
But had you behaved to
them with more RESPECTFUL
OBSERVANCE, and a more EQUAL
TENDERNESS;
STUDYING THEIR HUMOURS,
OVERLOOKING THEIR MISTAKES,
SUBMITTING TO
THEIR OPINIONS in matters
indifferent, passing by little instances
of unevenness, caprice, or passion,
giving SOFT answers to hasty
words, complaining as seldom as
possible, and making it your daily
care to relieve their anxieties and prevent
their wishes, to
enliven the hour of dulness, and call up
the ideas of felicity:
had you pursued this conduct, I doubt
not but you would have
maintained and even increased their
esteem, so far as to have
secured every degree of influence that
could conduce to their
266
virtue, or your mutual satisfaction; and
your house might at this
day have been the abode of domestic
bliss." Such a woman ought to
be an angel--or she is an ass--for I
discern not a trace of the
human character, neither reason nor
passion in this domestic
drudge, whose being is absorbed in that
of a tyrant's.
Still Dr. Fordyce must have very little
acquaintance with the human
heart, if he really supposed that such
conduct would bring back
wandering love, instead of exciting
contempt. No, beauty,
gentleness, etc. etc. may gain a heart; but
esteem, the only
lasting affection, can alone be obtained
by virtue supported by
reason. It is respect for the
understanding that keeps alive
tenderness for the person.
As these volumes are so frequently put
into the hands of young
people, I have taken more notice of them
than strictly speaking,
they deserve; but as they have
contributed to vitiate the taste,
and enervate the understanding of many
of my fellow-creatures, I
could not pass them silently over.
SECTION 5.3.
Such paternal solicitude pervades Dr.
Gregory's Legacy to his
daughters, that I enter on the task of
criticism with affectionate
respect; but as this little volume has
many attractions to
recommend it to the notice of the most
respectable part of my sex,
I cannot silently pass over arguments
that so speciously support
opinions which, I think, have had the
most baneful effect on the
morals and manners of the female world.
His easy familiar style is particularly
suited to the tenor of his
advice, and the melancholy tenderness
which his respect for the
memory of a beloved wife diffuses
through the whole work, renders
it very interesting; yet there is a degree
of concise elegance
conspicuous in many passages, that
disturbs this sympathy; and we
pop on the author, when we only
expected to meet the--father.
Besides, having two objects in view, he
seldom adhered steadily to
either; for, wishing to make his
daughters amiable, and fearing
lest unhappiness should only be the
consequence, of instilling
sentiments, that might draw them out of
the track of common life,
without enabling them to act with
consonant independence and
dignity, he checks the natural flow of his
thoughts, and neither
advises one thing nor the other.
In the preface he tells them a mournful
truth, "that they will
hear, at least once in their lives, the
genuine sentiments of a
man, who has no interest in deceiving
them."
Hapless woman! what can be expected
from thee, when the beings on
whom thou art said naturally to depend
for reason and support, have
all an interest in deceiving thee! This is
the root of the evil
267
that has shed a corroding mildew on all
thy virtues; and blighting
in the bud thy opening faculties, has
rendered thee the weak thing
thou art! It is this separate interest-- this
insidious state of
warfare, that undermines morality, and
divides mankind!
If love has made some women wretched-how many more has the cold
unmeaning intercourse of gallantry
rendered vain and useless! yet
this heartless attention to the sex is
reckoned so manly, so
polite, that till society is very differently
organized, I fear,
this vestige of gothic manners will not
be done away by a more
reasonable and affectionate mode of
conduct. Besides, to strip it
of its imaginary dignity, I must observe,
that in the most
civilized European states, this lip-service
prevails in a very
great degree, accompanied with extreme
dissoluteness of morals. In
Portugal, the country that I particularly
allude to, it takes place
of the most serious moral obligations;
for a man is seldom
assassinated when in the company of a
woman. The savage hand of
rapine is unnerved by this chivalrous
spirit; and, if the stroke of
vengeance cannot be stayed--the lady is
entreated to pardon the
rudeness and depart in peace, though
sprinkled, perhaps, with her
husband's or brother's blood.
I shall pass over his strictures on
religion, because I mean to
discuss that subject in a separate chapter.
The remarks relative to behaviour,
though many of them very
sensible, I entirely disapprove of,
because it appears to me to be
beginning, as it were at the wrong end.
A cultivated
understanding, and an affectionate heart,
will never want starched
rules of decorum, something more
substantial than seemliness will
be the result; and, without
understanding, the behaviour here
recommended, would be rank
affectation. Decorum, indeed, is the
one thing needful! decorum is to
supplant nature, and banish all
simplicity and variety of character out of
the female world. Yet
what good end can all this superficial
counsel produce? It is,
however, much easier to point out this or
that mode of behaviour,
than to set the reason to work; but, when
the mind has been stored
with useful knowledge, and strengthened
by being employed, the
regulation of the behaviour may safely
be left to its guidance.
Why, for instance, should the following
caution be given, when art
of every kind must contaminate the
mind; and why entangle the grand
motives of action, which reason and
religion equally combine to
enforce, with pitiful worldly shifts and
slight of hand tricks to
gain the applause of gaping tasteless
fools? "Be even cautious in
displaying your good sense.* It will be
thought you assume a
superiority over the rest of the company- But if you happen to
have any learning keep it a profound
secret, especially from the
268
men, who generally look with a jealous
and malignant eye on a woman
of great parts, and a cultivated
understanding." If men of real
merit, as he afterwards observes, are
superior to this meanness,
where is the necessity that the behaviour
of the whole sex should
be modulated to please fools, or men,
who having little claim to
respect as individuals, choose to keep
close in their phalanx.
Men, indeed, who insist on their
common superiority, having only
this sexual superiority, are certainly very
excusable.
(*Footnote. Let women once acquire
good sense--and if it deserve
the name, it will teach them; or, of what
use will it be how to
employ it.)
There would be no end to rules for
behaviour, if it be proper
always to adopt the tone of the company;
for thus, for ever varying
the key, a FLAT would often pass for a
NATURAL note.
Surely it would have been wiser to have
advised women to improve
themselves till they rose above the fumes
of vanity; and then to
let the public opinion come round--for
where are rules of
accommodation to stop? The narrow
path of truth and virtue
inclines neither to the right nor left, it is
a straight-forward
business, and they who are earnestly
pursuing their road, may bound
over many decorous prejudices, without
leaving modesty behind.
Make the heart clean, and give the head
employment, and I will
venture to predict that there will be
nothing offensive in the
behaviour.
The air of fashion, which many young
people are so eager to attain,
always strikes me like the studied
attitudes of some modern prints,
copied with tasteless servility after the
antiques; the soul is
left out, and none of the parts are tied
together by what may
properly be termed character. This
varnish of fashion, which
seldom sticks very close to sense, may
dazzle the weak; but leave
nature to itself, and it will seldom
disgust the wise. Besides,
when a woman has sufficient sense not
to pretend to any thing which
she does not understand in some degree,
there is no need of
determining to hide her talents under a
bushel. Let things take
their natural course, and all will be well.
It is this system of dissimulation,
throughout the volume, that I
despise. Women are always to SEEM to
be this and that--yet virtue
might apostrophize them, in the words of
Hamlet--Seems! I know not
seems!--Have that within that passeth
show!-Still the same tone occurs; for in another
place, after
recommending, (without sufficiently
discriminating) delicacy, he
adds, "The men will complain of your
reserve. They will assure you
that a franker behaviour would make you
more amiable. But, trust
me, they are not sincere when they tell
you so. I acknowledge that
269
on some occasions it might render you
more agreeable as companions,
but it would make you less amiable as
women: an important
distinction, which many of your sex are
not aware of."
This desire of being always women, is
the very consciousness that
degrades the sex. Excepting with a
lover, I must repeat with
emphasis, a former observation--it
would be well if they were only
agreeable or rational companions. But
in this respect his advice
is even inconsistent with a passage
which I mean to quote with the
most marked approbation.
"The sentiment, that a woman may allow
all innocent freedoms,
provided her virtue is secure, is both
grossly indelicate and
dangerous, and has proved fatal to many
of your sex." With this
opinion I perfectly coincide. A man, or
a woman, of any feeling
must always wish to convince a beloved
object that it is the
caresses of the individual, not the sex,
that is received and
returned with pleasure; and, that the
heart, rather than the
senses, is moved. Without this natural
delicacy, love becomes a
selfish personal gratification that soon
degrades the character.
I carry this sentiment still further.
Affection, when love is out
of the question, authorises many
personal endearments, that
naturally flowing from an innocent heart
give life to the
behaviour; but the personal intercourse
of appetite, gallantry, or
vanity, is despicable. When a man
squeezes the hand of a pretty
woman, handing her to a carriage, whom
he has never seen before,
she will consider such an impertinent
freedom in the light of an
insult, if she have any true delicacy,
instead of being flattered
by this unmeaning homage to beauty.
These are the privileges of
friendship, or the momentary homage
which the heart pays to virtue,
when it flashes suddenly on the notice-mere animal spirits have no
claim to the kindnesses of affection.
Wishing to feed the affections with what
is now the food of vanity,
I would fain persuade my sex to act from
simpler principles. Let
them merit love, and they will obtain it,
though they may never be
told that: "The power of a fine woman
over the hearts of men, of
men of the finest parts, is even beyond
what she conceives."
I have already noticed the narrow
cautions with respect to
duplicity, female softness, delicacy of
constitution; for these are
the changes which he rings round
without ceasing, in a more
decorous manner, it is true, than
Rousseau; but it all comes home
to the same point, and whoever is at the
trouble to analyze these
sentiments, will find the first principles
not quite so delicate as
the superstructure.
The subject of amusements is treated in
too cursory a manner; but
with the same spirit.
270
When I treat of friendship, love, and
marriage, it will be found
that we materially differ in opinion; I
shall not then forestall
what I have to observe on these
important subjects; but confine my
remarks to the general tenor of them, to
that cautious family
prudence, to those confined views of
partial unenlightened
affection, which exclude pleasure and
improvement, by vainly
wishing to ward off sorrow and error-and by thus guarding the
heart and mind, destroy also all their
energy. It is far better to
be often deceived than never to trust; to
be disappointed in love,
than never to love; to lose a husband's
fondness, than forfeit his
esteem.
Happy would it be for the world, and for
individuals, of course, if
all this unavailing solicitude to attain
worldly happiness, on a
confined plan, were turned into an
anxious desire to improve the
understanding. "Wisdom is the principal
thing: THEREFORE get
wisdom; and with all thy gettings get
understanding." "How long ye
simple ones, will ye love simplicity, and
hate knowledge?" Saith
Wisdom to the daughters of men!
SECTION 5.4.
I do not mean to allude to all the writers
who have written on the
subject of female manners--it would in
fact be only beating over
the old ground, for they have, in general,
written in the same
strain; but attacking the boasted
prerogative of man--the
prerogative that may emphatically be
called the iron sceptre of
tyranny, the original sin of tyrants, I
declare against all power
built on prejudices, however hoary.
If the submission demanded be founded
on justice--there is no
appealing to a higher power--for God is
justice itself. Let us
then, as children of the same parent, if
not bastardized by being
the younger born, reason together, and
learn to submit to the
authority of reason when her voice is
distinctly heard. But, if it
be proved that this throne of prerogative
only rests on a chaotic
mass of prejudices, that have no inherent
principle of order to
keep them together, or on an elephant,
tortoise, or even the mighty
shoulders of a son of the earth, they may
escape, who dare to brave
the consequence without any breach of
duty, without sinning against
the order of things.
Whilst reason raises man above the
brutal herd, and death is big
with promises, they alone are subject to
blind authority who have
no reliance on their own strength. "They
are free who will be
free!"*
(*Footnote. "He is the free man, whom
TRUTH makes free!" Cowper.)
The being who can govern itself, has
nothing to fear in life; but
if any thing is dearer than its own
respect, the price must be paid
to the last farthing. Virtue, like every
thing valuable, must be
271
loved for herself alone; or she will not
take up her abode with us.
She will not impart that peace, "which
passeth understanding," when
she is merely made the stilts of
reputation and respected with
pharisaical exactness, because "honesty
is the best policy."
That the plan of life which enables us to
carry some knowledge and
virtue into another world, is the one best
calculated to ensure
content in this, cannot be denied; yet few
people act according to
this principle, though it be universally
allowed that it admits not
of dispute. Present pleasure, or present
power, carry before it
these sober convictions; and it is for the
day, not for life, that
man bargains with happiness. How few!
how very few! have
sufficient foresight or resolution, to
endure a small evil at the
moment, to avoid a greater hereafter.
Woman in particular, whose virtue* is
built on mutual prejudices,
seldom attains to this greatness of mind;
so that, becoming the
slave of her own feelings, she is easily
subjugated by those of
others. Thus degraded, her reason, her
misty reason! is employed
rather to burnish than to snap her chains.
(*Footnote. I mean to use a word that
comprehends more than
chastity, the sexual virtue.)
Indignantly have I heard women argue in
the same track as men, and
adopt the sentiments that brutalize them
with all the pertinacity
of ignorance.
I must illustrate my assertion by a few
examples. Mrs. Piozzi, who
often repeated by rote, what she did not
understand, comes forward
with Johnsonian periods.
"Seek not for happiness in singularity;
and dread a refinement of
wisdom as a deviation into folly." Thus
she dogmatically addresses
a new married man; and to elucidate this
pompous exordium, she
adds, "I said that the person of your lady
would not grow more
pleasing to you, but pray let her never
suspect that it grows less
so: that a woman will pardon an affront
to her understanding much
sooner than one to her person, is well
known; nor will any of us
contradict the assertion. All our
attainments, all our arts, are
employed to gain and keep the heart of
man; and what mortification
can exceed the disappointment, if the
end be not obtained: There is
no reproof however pointed, no
punishment however severe, that a
woman of spirit will not prefer to
neglect; and if she can endure
it without complaint, it only proves that
she means to make herself
amends by the attention of others for the
slights of her husband!"
These are true masculine sentiments.
"All our ARTS are employed to
gain and keep the heart of man:"--and
what is the inference?--if
her person, and was there ever a person,
though formed with
Medicisan symmetry, that was not
slighted? be neglected, she will
make herself amends by endeavouring to
please other men. Noble
272
morality! But thus is the understanding
of the whole sex
affronted, and their virtue deprived of
the common basis of virtue.
A woman must know, that her person
cannot be as pleasing to her
husband as it was to her lover, and if she
be offended with him for
being a human creature, she may as well
whine about the loss of his
heart as about any other foolish thing.
And this very want of
discernment or unreasonable anger,
proves that he could not change
his fondness for her person into affection
for her virtues or
respect for her understanding.
Whilst women avow, and act up to such
opinions, their
understandings, at least, deserve the
contempt and obloquy that
men, WHO NEVER insult their persons,
have pointedly levelled at the
female mind. And it is the sentiments of
these polite men, who do
not wish to be encumbered with mind,
that vain women thoughtlessly
adopt. Yet they should know, that
insulted reason alone can spread
that SACRED reserve about the persons
which renders human
affections, for human affections have
always some base alloy, as
permanent as is consistent with the grand
end of existence--the
attainment of virtue.
The Baroness de Stael speaks the same
language as the lady just
cited, with more enthusiasm. Her
eulogium on Rousseau was
accidentally put into my hands, and her
sentiments, the sentiments
of too many of my sex, may serve as the
text for a few comments.
"Though Rousseau," she observes, "has
endeavoured to prevent women
from interfering in public affairs, and
acting a brilliant part in
the theatre of politics; yet, in speaking of
them, how much has he
done it to their satisfaction! If he wished
to deprive them of
some rights, foreign to their sex, how
has he for ever restored to
them all those to which it has a claim!
And in attempting to
diminish their influence over the
deliberations of men, how
sacredly has he established the empire
they have over their
happiness! In aiding them to descend
from an usurped throne, he
has firmly seated them upon that to
which they were destined by
nature; and though he be full of
indignation against them when they
endeavour to resemble men, yet when
they come before him with all
THE CHARMS WEAKNESSES,
VIRTUES, and ERRORS, OF their sex,
his
respect for their PERSONS amounts
almost to adoration." True!--For
never was there a sensualist who paid
more fervent adoration at the
shrine of beauty. So devout, indeed, was
his respect for the
person, that excepting the virtue of
chastity, for obvious reasons,
he only wished to see it embellished by
charms, weaknesses, and
errors. He was afraid lest the austerity
of reason should disturb
the soft playfulness of love. The master
wished to have a
meretricious slave to fondle, entirely
dependent on his reason and
bounty; he did not want a companion,
whom he should be compelled to
273
esteem, or a friend to whom he could
confide the care of his
children's education, should death
deprive them of their father,
before he had fulfilled the sacred task.
He denies woman reason,
shuts her out from knowledge, and turns
her aside from truth; yet
his pardon is granted, because, "he
admits the passion of love."
It would require some ingenuity to show
why women were to be under
such an obligation to him for thus
admitting love; when it is clear
that he admits it only for the relaxation
of men, and to perpetuate
the species; but he talked with passion,
and that powerful spell
worked on the sensibility of a young
encomiast. "What signifies
it," pursues this rhapsodist, "to women,
that his reason disputes
with them the empire, when his heart is
devotedly theirs." It is
not empire--but equality, that they
should contend for. Yet, if
they only wished to lengthen out their
sway, they should not
entirely trust to their persons, for though
beauty may gain a
heart, it cannot keep it, even while the
beauty is in full bloom,
unless the mind lend, at least, some
graces.
When women are once sufficiently
enlightened to discover their real
interest, on a grand scale, they will, I am
persuaded, be very
ready to resign all the prerogatives of
love, that are not mutual,
(speaking of them as lasting
prerogatives,) for the calm
satisfaction of friendship, and the tender
confidence of habitual
esteem. Before marriage they will not
assume any insolent airs,
nor afterward abjectly submit; but,
endeavouring to act like
reasonable creatures, in both situations,
they will not be tumbled
from a throne to a stool.
Madame Genlis has written several
entertaining books for children;
and her letters on Education afford many
useful hints, that
sensible parents will certainly avail
themselves of; but her views
are narrow, and her prejudices as
unreasonable as strong.
I shall pass over her vehement argument
in favour of the eternity
of future punishments, because I blush to
think that a human being
should ever argue vehemently in such a
cause, and only make a few
remarks on her absurd manner of making
the parental authority
supplant reason. For every where does
she inculcate not only BLIND
submission to parents; but to the opinion
of the world.*
(*Footnote. A person is not to act in this
or that way, though
convinced they are right in so doing,
because some equivocal
circumstances may lead the world to
SUSPECT that they acted from
different motives. This is sacrificing the
substance for a shadow.
Let people but watch their own hearts,
and act rightly as far as
they can judge, and they may patiently
wait till the opinion of the
world comes round. It is best to be
directed by a simple
motive--for justice has too often been
sacrificed to
274
propriety;--another word for
convenience.)
She tells a story of a young man engaged
by his father's express
desire to a girl of fortune. Before the
marriage could take place
she is deprived of her fortune, and
thrown friendless on the world.
The father practises the most infamous
arts to separate his son
from her, and when the son detects his
villany, and, following the
dictates of honour, marries the girl,
nothing but misery ensues,
because forsooth he married WITHOUT
his father's consent. On what
ground can religion or morality rest,
when justice is thus set at
defiance? In the same style she
represents an accomplished young
woman, as ready to marry any body that
her MAMMA pleased to
recommend; and, as actually marrying
the young man of her own
choice, without feeling any emotions of
passion, because that a
well educated girl had not time to be in
love. Is it possible to
have much respect for a system of
education that thus insults
reason and nature?
Many similar opinions occur in her
writings, mixed with sentiments
that do honour to her head and heart.
Yet so much superstition is
mixed with her religion, and so much
worldly wisdom with her
morality, that I should not let a young
person read her works,
unless I could afterwards converse on
the subjects, and point out
the contradictions.
Mrs. Chapone's Letters are written with
such good sense, and
unaffected humility, and contain so
many useful observations, that
I only mention them to pay the worthy
writer this tribute of
respect. I cannot, it is true, always
coincide in opinion with
her; but I always respect her.
The very word respect brings Mrs.
Macaulay to my remembrance. The
woman of the greatest abilities,
undoubtedly, that this country has
ever produced. And yet this woman has
been suffered to die without
sufficient respect being paid to her
memory.
Posterity, however, will be more just;
and remember that Catharine
Macaulay was an example of intellectual
acquirements supposed to be
incompatible with the weakness of her
sex. In her style of
writing, indeed, no sex appears, for it is
like the sense it
conveys, strong and clear.
I will not call her's a masculine
understanding, because I admit
not of such an arrogant assumption of
reason; but I contend that it
was a sound one, and that her judgment,
the matured fruit of
profound thinking, was a proof that a
woman can acquire judgment,
in the full extent of the word.
Possessing more penetration than
sagacity, more understanding than fancy,
she writes with sober
energy, and argumentative closeness; yet
sympathy and benevolence
give an interest to her sentiments, and
that vital heat to
275
arguments, which forces the reader to
weigh them.*
(*Footnote. Coinciding in opinion with
Mrs. Macaulay relative to
many branches of education, I refer to
her valuable work, instead
of quoting her sentiments to support my
own.)
When I first thought of writing these
strictures I anticipated Mrs.
Macaulay's approbation with a little of
that sanguine ardour which
it has been the business of my life to
depress; but soon heard with
the sickly qualm of disappointed hope,
and the still seriousness of
regret--that she was no more!
SECTION 5.5.
Taking a view of the different works
which have been written on
education, Lord Chesterfield's Letters
must not be silently passed
over. Not that I mean to analyze his
unmanly, immoral system, or
even to cull any of the useful shrewd
remarks which occur in his
frivolous correspondence--No, I only
mean to make a few reflections
on the avowed tendency of them--the art
of acquiring an early
knowledge of the world. An art, I will
venture to assert, that
preys secretly, like the worm in the bud,
on the expanding powers,
and turns to poison the generous juices
which should mount with
vigour in the youthful frame, inspiring
warm affections and great
resolves.
For every thing, saith the wise man,
there is reason; and who would
look for the fruits of autumn during the
genial months of spring?
But this is mere declamation, and I mean
to reason with those
worldly-wise instructors, who, instead of
cultivating the judgment,
instil prejudices, and render hard the
heart that gradual
experience would only have cooled. An
early acquaintance with
human infirmities; or, what is termed
knowledge of the world, is
the surest way, in my opinion, to
contract the heart and damp the
natural youthful ardour which produces
not only great talents, but
great virtues. For the vain attempt to
bring forth the fruit of
experience, before the sapling has
thrown out its leaves, only
exhausts its strength, and prevents its
assuming a natural form;
just as the form and strength of
subsiding metals are injured when
the attraction of cohesion is disturbed.
Tell me, ye who have
studied the human mind, is it not a
strange way to fix principles
by showing young people that they are
seldom stable? And how can
they be fortified by habits when they are
proved to be fallacious
by example? Why is the ardour of youth
thus to be damped, and the
luxuriancy of fancy cut to the quick?
This dry caution may, it is
true, guard a character from worldly
mischances; but will
infallibly preclude excellence in either
virtue or knowledge. The
stumbling-block thrown across every
path by suspicion, will prevent
any vigorous exertions of genius or
benevolence, and life will be
stripped of its most alluring charm long
before its calm evening,
276
when man should retire to contemplation
for comfort and support.
A young man who has been bred up with
domestic friends, and led to
store his mind with as much speculative
knowledge as can be
acquired by reading and the natural
reflections which youthful
ebullitions of animal spirits and
instinctive feelings inspire,
will enter the world with warm and
erroneous expectations. But
this appears to be the course of nature;
and in morals, as well as
in works of taste, we should be
observant of her sacred
indications, and not presume to lead
when we ought obsequiously to
follow.
In the world few people act from
principle; present feelings, and
early habits, are the grand springs: but
how would the former be
deadened, and the latter rendered iron
corroding fetters, if the
world were shown to young people just
as it is; when no knowledge
of mankind or their own hearts, slowly
obtained by experience
rendered them forbearing? Their fellow
creatures would not then be
viewed as frail beings; like themselves,
condemned to struggle with
human infirmities, and sometimes
displaying the light and sometimes
the dark side of their character; extorting
alternate feelings of
love and disgust; but guarded against as
beasts of prey, till every
enlarged social feeling, in a word-humanity, was eradicated.
In life, on the contrary, as we gradually
discover the
imperfections of our nature, we discover
virtues, and various
circumstances attach us to our fellow
creatures, when we mix with
them, and view the same objects, that are
never thought of in
acquiring a hasty unnatural knowledge
of the world. We see a folly
swell into a vice, by almost
imperceptible degrees, and pity while
we blame; but, if the hideous monster
burst suddenly on our sight,
fear and disgust rendering us more
severe than man ought to be,
might lead us with blind zeal to usurp
the character of
omnipotence, and denounce damnation
on our fellow mortals,
forgetting that we cannot read the heart,
and that we have seeds of
the same vices lurking in our own.
I have already remarked, that we expect
more from instruction, than
mere instruction can produce: for,
instead of preparing young
people to encounter the evils of life with
dignity, and to acquire
wisdom and virtue by the exercise of
their own faculties, precepts
are heaped upon precepts, and blind
obedience required, when
conviction should be brought home to
reason.
Suppose, for instance, that a young
person in the first ardour of
friendship deifies the beloved object-what harm can arise from
this mistaken enthusiastic attachment?
Perhaps it is necessary for
virtue first to appear in a human form to
impress youthful hearts;
the ideal model, which a more matured
and exalted mind looks up to,
277
and shapes for itself, would elude their
sight. He who loves not
his brother whom he hath seen, how can
he love God? asked the
wisest of men.
It is natural for youth to adorn the first
object of its affection
with every good quality, and the
emulation produced by ignorance,
or, to speak with more propriety, by
inexperience, brings forward
the mind capable of forming such an
affection, and when, in the
lapse of time, perfection is found not to
be within the reach of
mortals, virtue, abstractly, is thought
beautiful, and wisdom
sublime. Admiration then gives place to
friendship, properly so
called, because it is cemented by esteem;
and the being walks alone
only dependent on heaven for that
emulous panting after perfection
which ever glows in a noble mind. But
this knowledge a man must
gain by the exertion of his own faculties;
and this is surely the
blessed fruit of disappointed hope! for
He who delighteth to
diffuse happiness and show mercy to the
weak creatures, who are
learning to know him, never implanted a
good propensity to be a
tormenting ignis fatuus.
Our trees are now allowed to spread with
wild luxuriance, nor do we
expect by force to combine the majestic
marks of time with youthful
graces; but wait patiently till they have
struck deep their root,
and braved many a storm. Is the mind
then, which, in proportion to
its dignity advances more slowly
towards perfection, to be treated
with less respect? To argue from
analogy, every thing around us is
in a progressive state; and when an
unwelcome knowledge of life
produces almost a satiety of life, and we
discover by the natural
course of things that all that is done
under the sun is vanity, we
are drawing near the awful close of the
drama. The days of
activity and hope are over, and the
opportunities which the first
stage of existence has afforded of
advancing in the scale of
intelligence, must soon be summed up.
A knowledge at this period
of the futility of life, or earlier, if
obtained by experience, is
very useful, because it is natural; but
when a frail being is shown
the follies and vices of man, that he may
be taught prudently to
guard against the common casualties of
life by sacrificing his
heart--surely it is not speaking harshly to
call it the wisdom of
this world, contrasted with the nobler
fruit of piety and
experience.
I will venture a paradox, and deliver my
opinion without reserve;
if men were only born to form a circle of
life and death, it would
be wise to take every step that foresight
could suggest to render
life happy. Moderation in every pursuit
would then be supreme
wisdom; and the prudent voluptuary
might enjoy a degree of content,
though he neither cultivated his
understanding nor kept his heart
pure. Prudence, supposing we were
mortal, would be true wisdom,
or, to be more explicit, would procure
the greatest portion of
278
happiness, considering the whole of life;
but knowledge beyond the
conveniences of life would be a curse.
Why should we injure our health by
close study? The exalted
pleasure which intellectual pursuits
afford would scarcely be
equivalent to the hours of languor that
follow; especially, if it
be necessary to take into the reckoning
the doubts and
disappointments that cloud our
researches. Vanity and vexation
close every inquiry: for the cause which
we particularly wished to
discover flies like the horizon before us
as we advance. The
ignorant, on the contrary, resemble
children, and suppose, that if
they could walk straight forward they
should at last arrive where
the earth and clouds meet. Yet,
disappointed as we are in our
researches, the mind gains strength by
the exercise, sufficient,
perhaps, to comprehend the answers
which, in another step of
existence, it may receive to the anxious
questions it asked, when
the understanding with feeble wing was
fluttering round the visible
effects to dive into the hidden cause.
The passions also, the winds of life,
would be useless, if not
injurious, did the substance which
composes our thinking being,
after we have thought in vain, only
become the support of vegetable
life, and invigorate a cabbage, or blush
in a rose. The appetites
would answer every earthly purpose, and
produce more moderate and
permanent happiness. But the powers of
the soul that are of little
use here, and, probably, disturb our
animal enjoyments, even while
conscious dignity makes us glory in
possessing them, prove that
life is merely an education, a state of
infancy, of which the only
hopes worth cherishing should not be
sacrificed. I mean, therefore
to infer, that we ought to have a precise
idea of what we wish to
attain by education, for the immortality
of the soul is
contradicted by the actions of many
people, who firmly profess the
belief.
If you mean to secure ease and
prosperity on earth as the first
consideration, and leave futurity to
provide for itself, you act
prudently in giving your child an early
insight into the weaknesses
of his nature. You may not, it is true,
make an Inkle of him; but
do not imagine that he will stick to more
than the letter of the
law, who has very early imbibed a mean
opinion of human nature; nor
will he think it necessary to rise much
above the common standard.
He may avoid gross vices, because
honesty is the best policy; but
he will never aim at attaining great
virtues. The example of
writers and artists will illustrate this
remark.
I must therefore venture to doubt,
whether what has been thought an
axiom in morals, may not have been a
dogmatical assertion made by
men who have coolly seen mankind
through the medium of books, and
say, in direct contradiction to them, that
the regulation of the
279
passions is not always wisdom. On the
contrary, it should seem,
that one reason why men have superiour
judgment and more fortitude
than women, is undoubtedly this, that
they give a freer scope to
the grand passions, and by more
frequently going astray, enlarge
their minds. If then by the exercise of
their own reason, they fix
on some stable principle, they have
probably to thank the force of
their passions, nourished by FALSE
views of life, and permitted to
overleap the boundary that secures
content. But if, in the dawn of
life, we could soberly survey the scenes
before us as in
perspective, and see every thing in its
true colours, how could the
passions gain sufficient strength to
unfold the faculties?
Let me now, as from an eminence,
survey the world stripped of all
its false delusive charms. The clear
atmosphere enables me to see
each object in its true point of view,
while my heart is still. I
am calm as the prospect in a morning
when the mists, slowly
dispersing, silently unveil the beauties of
nature, refreshed by
rest.
In what light will the world now appear?
I rub my eyes and think,
perchance, that I am just awaking from a
lively dream.
I see the sons and daughters of men
pursuing shadows, and anxiously
wasting their powers to feed passions
which have no adequate
object--if the very excess of these blind
impulses pampered by that
lying, yet constantly-trusted guide, the
imagination, did not, by
preparing them for some other state,
render short sighted mortals
wiser without their own concurrence; or,
what comes to the same
thing, when they were pursuing some
imaginary present good.
After viewing objects in this light, it
would not be very fanciful
to imagine, that this world was a stage
on which a pantomime is
daily performed for the amusement of
superiour beings. How would
they be diverted to see the ambitious
man consuming himself by
running after a phantom, and, pursuing
the bubble fame in "the
cannon's mouth" that was to blow him to
nothing: for when
consciousness is lost, it matters not
whether we mount in a
whirlwind or descend in rain. And
should they compassionately
invigorate his sight, and show him the
thorny path which led to
eminence, that like a quicksand sinks as
he ascends, disappointing
his hopes when almost within his grasp,
would he not leave to
others the honour of amusing them, and
labour to secure the present
moment, though from the constitution of
his nature he would not
find it very easy to catch the flying
stream? Such slaves are we
to hope and fear!
But, vain as the ambitious man's pursuit
would be, he is often
striving for something more substantial
than fame--that indeed
would be the veriest meteor, the wildest
fire that could lure a man
280
to ruin. What! renounce the most trifling
gratification to be
applauded when he should be no more!
Wherefore this struggle,
whether man is mortal or immortal, if
that noble passion did not
really raise the being above his fellows?
And love! What diverting scenes would
it produce--Pantaloon's
tricks must yield to more egregious
folly. To see a mortal adorn
an object with imaginary charms, and
then fall down and worship the
idol which he had himself set up--how
ridiculous! But what serious
consequences ensue to rob man of that
portion of happiness, which
the Deity by calling him into existence
has (or, on what can his
attributes rest?) indubitably promised;
would not all the purposes
of life have been much better fulfilled if
he had only felt what
has been termed physical love? And,
would not the sight of the
object, not seen through the medium of
the imagination, soon reduce
the passion to an appetite, if reflection,
the noble distinction of
man, did not give it force, and make it an
instrument to raise him
above this earthy dross, by teaching him
to love the centre of all
perfection! whose wisdom appears
clearer and clearer in the works
of nature, in proportion as reason is
illuminated and exalted by
contemplation, and by acquiring that
love of order which the
struggles of passion produce?
The habit of reflection, and the
knowledge attained by fostering
any passion, might be shown to be
equally useful though the object
be proved equally fallacious; for they
would all appear in the same
light, if they were not magnified by the
governing passion
implanted in us by the Author of all
good, to call forth and
strengthen the faculties of each
individual, and enable it to
attain all the experience that an infant
can obtain, who does
certain things, it cannot tell why.
I descend from my height, and mixing
with my fellow creatures, feel
myself hurried along the common
stream; ambition, love, hope, and
fear, exert their wonted power, though
we be convinced by reason
that their present and most attractive
promises are only lying
dreams; but had the cold hand of
circumspection damped each
generous feeling before it had left any
permanent character, or
fixed some habit, what could be
expected, but selfish prudence and
reason just rising above instinct? Who
that has read Dean Swift's
disgusting description of the Yahoos,
and insipid one of Houyhnhnm
with a philosophical eye, can avoid
seeing the futility of
degrading the passions, or making man
rest in contentment?
The youth should ACT; for had he the
experience of a grey head, he
would be fitter for death than life,
though his virtues, rather
residing in his head than his heart could
produce nothing great,
and his understanding prepared for this
world, would not, by its
noble flights, prove that it had a title to a
better.
281
Besides, it is not possible to give a
young person a just view of
life; he must have struggled with his
own passions before he can
estimate the force of the temptation
which betrayed his brother
into vice. Those who are entering life,
and those who are
departing, see the world from such very
different points of view,
that they can seldom think alike, unless
the unfledged reason of
the former never attempted a solitary
flight.
When we hear of some daring crime--it
comes full upon us in the
deepest shade of turpitude, and raises
indignation; but the eye
that gradually saw the darkness thicken,
must observe it with more
compassionate forbearance. The world
cannot be seen by an unmoved
spectator, we must mix in the throng,
and feel as men feel before
we can judge of their feelings. If we
mean, in short, to live in
the world to grow wiser and better, and
not merely to enjoy the
good things of life, we must attain a
knowledge of others at the
same time that we become acquainted
with ourselves-- knowledge
acquired any other way only hardens the
heart and perplexes the
understanding.
I may be told, that the knowledge thus
acquired, is sometimes
purchased at too dear a rate. I can only
answer, that I very much
doubt whether any knowledge can be
attained without labour and
sorrow; and those who wish to spare
their children both, should not
complain if they are neither wise nor
virtuous. They only aimed at
making them prudent; and prudence,
early in life, is but the
cautious craft of ignorant self-love. I
have observed, that young
people, to whose education particular
attention has been paid,
have, in general, been very superficial
and conceited, and far from
pleasing in any respect, because they had
neither the unsuspecting
warmth of youth, nor the cool depth of
age. I cannot help imputing
this unnatural appearance principally to
that hasty premature
instruction, which leads them
presumptuously to repeat all the
crude notions they have taken upon trust,
so that the careful
education which they received, makes
them all their lives the
slaves of prejudices.
Mental as well as bodily exertion is, at
first, irksome; so much
so, that the many would fain let others
both work and think for
them. An observation which I have
often made will illustrate my
meaning. When in a circle of strangers,
or acquaintances, a person
of moderate abilities, asserts an opinion
with heat, I will venture
to affirm, for I have traced this fact
home, very often, that it is
a prejudice. These echoes have a high
respect for the
understanding of some relation or friend,
and without fully
comprehending the opinions, which they
are so eager to retail, they
maintain them with a degree of
obstinacy, that would surprise even
the person who concocted them.
282
I know that a kind of fashion now
prevails of respecting
prejudices; and when any one dares to
face them, though actuated by
humanity and armed by reason, he is
superciliously asked, whether
his ancestors were fools. No, I should
reply; opinions, at first,
of every description, were all, probably,
considered, and therefore
were founded on some reason; yet not
unfrequently, of course, it
was rather a local expedient than a
fundamental principle, that
would be reasonable at all times. But,
moss-covered opinions
assume the disproportioned form of
prejudices, when they are
indolently adopted only because age has
given them a venerable
aspect, though the reason on which they
were built ceases to be a
reason, or cannot be traced. Why are we
to love prejudices, merely
because they are prejudices? A
prejudice is a fond obstinate
persuasion, for which we can give no
reason; for the moment a
reason can be given for an opinion, it
ceases to be a prejudice,
though it may be an error in judgment:
and are we then advised to
cherish opinions only to set reason at
defiance? This mode of
arguing, if arguing it may be called,
reminds me of what is
vulgarly termed a woman's reason. For
women sometimes declare that
they love, or believe certain things,
BECAUSE they love, or believe
them.
It is impossible to converse with people
to any purpose, who, in
this style, only use affirmatives and
negatives. Before you can
bring them to a point, to start fairly from,
you must go back to
the simple principles that were
antecedent to the prejudices
broached by power; and it is ten to one
but you are stopped by the
philosophical assertion, that certain
principles are as practically
false as they are abstractly true. Nay, it
may be inferred, that
reason has whispered some doubts, for it
generally happens that
people assert their opinions with the
greatest heat when they begin
to waver; striving to drive out their own
doubts by convincing
their opponent, they grow angry when
those gnawing doubts are
thrown back to prey on themselves.
The fact is, that men expect from
education, what education cannot
give. A sagacious parent or tutor may
strengthen the body and
sharpen the instruments by which the
child is to gather knowledge;
but the honey must be the reward of the
individual's own industry.
It is almost as absurd to attempt to make
a youth wise by the
experience of another, as to expect the
body to grow strong by the
exercise which is only talked of, or seen.
Many of those children whose conduct
has been most narrowly
watched, become the weakest men,
because their instructors only
instill certain notions into their minds,
that have no other
foundation than their authority; and if
they are loved or
respected, the mind is cramped in its
exertions and wavering in its
advances. The business of education in
this case, is only to
283
conduct the shooting tendrils to a proper
pole; yet after laying
precept upon precept, without allowing a
child to acquire judgment
itself, parents expect them to act in the
same manner by this
borrowed fallacious light, as if they had
illuminated it
themselves; and be, when they enter life,
what their parents are at
the close. They do not consider that the
tree, and even the human
body, does not strengthen its fibres till it
has reached its full
growth.
more moral being. It may be a substitute
for worldly pursuits; yet
narrow instead of enlarging the heart:
but virtue must be loved as
in itself sublime and excellent, and not
for the advantages it
procures or the evils it averts, if any
great degree of excellence
be expected. Men will not become
moral when they only build airy
castles in a future world to compensate
for the disappointments
which they meet with in this; if they turn
their thoughts from
relative duties to religious reveries.
There appears to be something
analogous in the mind. The senses
and the imagination give a form to the
character, during childhood
and youth; and the understanding as life
advances, gives firmness
to the first fair purposes of sensibility-till virtue, arising
rather from the clear conviction of
reason than the impulse of the
heart, morality is made to rest on a rock
against which the storms
of passion vainly beat.
Most prospects in life are marred by the
shuffling worldly wisdom
of men, who, forgetting that they cannot
serve God and mammon,
endeavour to blend contradictory things.
If you wish to make your
son rich, pursue one course --if you are
only anxious to make him
virtuous, you must take another; but do
not imagine that you can
bound from one road to the other
without losing your way.*
I hope I shall not be misunderstood
when I say, that religion will
not have this condensing energy, unless
it be founded on reason.
If it be merely the refuge of weakness or
wild fanaticism, and not
a governing principle of conduct, drawn
from self-knowledge, and a
rational opinion respecting the attributes
of God, what can it be
expected to produce? The religion
which consists in warming the
affections, and exalting the imagination,
is only the poetical
part, and may afford the individual
pleasure without rendering it a
(*Footnote. See an excellent essay on
this subject by Mrs.
Barbauld, in Miscellaneous pieces in
Prose.)
CHAPTER 6.
THE EFFECT WHICH AN EARLY
ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS HAS
UPON THE
CHARACTER.
Educated in the enervating style
recommended by the writers on whom
I have been animadverting; and not
having a chance, from their
284
subordinate state in society, to recover
their lost ground, is it
surprising that women every where
appear a defect in nature? Is it
surprising, when we consider what a
determinate effect an early
association of ideas has on the character,
that they neglect their
understandings, and turn all their
attention to their persons?
The great advantages which naturally
result from storing the mind
with knowledge, are obvious from the
following considerations. The
association of our ideas is either habitual
or instantaneous; and
the latter mode seems rather to depend
on the original temperature
of the mind than on the will. When the
ideas, and matters of fact,
are once taken in, they lie by for use, till
some fortuitous
circumstance makes the information dart
into the mind with
illustrative force, that has been received
at very different
periods of our lives. Like the lightning's
flash are many
recollections; one idea assimilating and
explaining another, with
astonishing rapidity. I do not now allude
to that quick perception
of truth, which is so intuitive that it
baffles research, and makes
us at a loss to determine whether it is
reminiscence or
ratiocination, lost sight of in its celerity,
that opens the dark
cloud. Over those instantaneous
associations we have little power;
for when the mind is once enlarged by
excursive flights, or
profound reflection, the raw materials,
will, in some degree,
arrange themselves. The understanding,
it is true, may keep us
from going out of drawing when we
group our thoughts, or transcribe
from the imagination the warm sketches
of fancy; but the animal
spirits, the individual character give the
colouring. Over this
subtile electric fluid,* how little power
do we possess, and over
it how little power can reason obtain!
These fine intractable
spirits appear to be the essence of
genius, and beaming in its
eagle eye, produce in the most eminent
degree the happy energy of
associating thoughts that surprise,
delight, and instruct. These
are the glowing minds that concentrate
pictures for their
fellow-creatures; forcing them to view
with interest the objects
reflected from the impassioned
imagination, which they passed over
in nature.
(*Footnote. I have sometimes, when
inclined to laugh at
materialists, asked whether, as the most
powerful effects in nature
are apparently produced by fluids, the
magnetic, etc. the passions
might not be fine volatile fluids that
embraced humanity, keeping
the more refractory elementary parts
together--or whether they were
simply a liquid fire that pervaded the
more sluggish materials
giving them life and heat?)
I must be allowed to explain myself.
The generality of people
cannot see or feel poetically, they want
fancy, and therefore fly
from solitude in search of sensible
objects; but when an author
285
lends them his eyes, they can see as he
saw, and be amused by
images they could not select, though
lying before them.
Education thus only supplies the man of
genius with knowledge to
give variety and contrast to his
associations; but there is an
habitual association of ideas, that grows
"with our growth," which
has a great effect on the moral character
of mankind; and by which
a turn is given to the mind, that
commonly remains throughout life.
So ductile is the understanding, and yet
so stubborn, that the
associations which depend on
adventitious circumstances, during the
period that the body takes to arrive at
maturity, can seldom be
disentangled by reason. One idea calls
up another, its old
associate, and memory, faithful to the
first impressions,
particularly when the intellectual powers
are not employed to cool
our sensations, retraces them with
mechanical exactness.
This habitual slavery, to first
impressions, has a more baneful
effect on the female than the male
character, because business and
other dry employments of the
understanding, tend to deaden the
feelings and break associations that do
violence to reason. But
females, who are made women of when
they are mere children, and
brought back to childhood when they
ought to leave the go-cart
forever, have not sufficient strength of
mind to efface the
superinductions of art that have
smothered nature.
Every thing that they see or hear serves
to fix impressions, call
forth emotions, and associate ideas, that
give a sexual character
to the mind. False notions of beauty and
delicacy stop the growth
of their limbs and produce a sickly
soreness, rather than delicacy
of organs; and thus weakened by being
employed in unfolding instead
of examining the first associations,
forced on them by every
surrounding object, how can they attain
the vigour necessary to
enable them to throw off their factitious
character?--where find
strength to recur to reason and rise
superior to a system of
oppression, that blasts the fair promises
of spring? This cruel
association of ideas, which every thing
conspires to twist into all
their habits of thinking, or, to speak with
more precision, of
feeling, receives new force when they
begin to act a little for
themselves; for they then perceive, that
it is only through their
address to excite emotions in men, that
pleasure and power are to
be obtained. Besides, all the books
professedly written for their
instruction, which make the first
impression on their minds, all
inculcate the same opinions. Educated
in worse than Egyptian
bondage, it is unreasonable, as well as
cruel, to upbraid them with
faults that can scarcely be avoided,
unless a degree of native
vigour be supposed, that falls to the lot
of very few amongst
mankind.
286
For instance, the severest sarcasms have
been levelled against the
sex, and they have been ridiculed for
repeating "a set of phrases
learnt by rote," when nothing could be
more natural, considering
the education they receive, and that their
"highest praise is to
obey, unargued"--the will of man. If
they are not allowed to have
reason sufficient to govern their own
conduct--why, all they
learn--must be learned by rote! And
when all their ingenuity is
called forth to adjust their dress, "a
passion for a scarlet coat,"
is so natural, that it never surprised me;
and, allowing Pope's
summary of their character to be just,
"that every woman is at
heart a rake," why should they be
bitterly censured for seeking a
congenial mind, and preferring a rake to
a man of sense?
Rakes know how to work on their
sensibility, whilst the modest
merit of reasonable men has, of course,
less effect on their
feelings, and they cannot reach the heart
by the way of the
understanding, because they have few
sentiments in common.
It seems a little absurd to expect women
to be more reasonable than
men in their LIKINGS, and still to deny
them the uncontroled use of
reason. When do men FALL IN LOVE
with sense? When do they, with
their superior powers and advantages,
turn from the person to the
mind? And how can they then expect
women, who are only taught to
observe behaviour, and acquire manners
rather than morals, to
despise what they have been all their
lives labouring to attain?
Where are they suddenly to find
judgment enough to weigh patiently
the sense of an awkward virtuous man,
when his manners, of which
they are made critical judges, are
rebuffing, and his conversation
cold and dull, because it does not consist
of pretty repartees, or
well-turned compliments? In order to
admire or esteem any thing
for a continuance, we must, at least, have
our curiosity excited by
knowing, in some degree, what we
admire; for we are unable to
estimate the value of qualities and
virtues above our
comprehension. Such a respect, when it
is felt, may be very
sublime; and the confused consciousness
of humility may render the
dependent creature an interesting object,
in some points of view;
but human love must have grosser
ingredients; and the person very
naturally will come in for its share--and,
an ample share it mostly
has!
Love is, in a great degree, an arbitrary
passion, and will reign
like some other stalking mischiefs, by its
own authority, without
deigning to reason; and it may also be
easily distinguished from
esteem, the foundation of friendship,
because it is often excited
by evanescent beauties and graces,
though to give an energy to the
sentiment something more solid must
deepen their impression and set
the imagination to work, to make the
most fair-- the first good.
287
Common passions are excited by
common qualities. Men look for
beauty and the simper of good humoured
docility: women are
captivated by easy manners: a
gentleman-like man seldom fails to
please them, and their thirsty ears
eagerly drink the insinuating
nothings of politeness, whilst they turn
from the unintelligible
sounds of the charmer--reason, charm he
never so wisely. With
respect to superficial accomplishments,
the rake certainly has the
advantage; and of these, females can
form an opinion, for it is
their own ground. Rendered gay and
giddy by the whole tenor of
their lives, the very aspect of wisdom, or
the severe graces of
virtue must have a lugubrious
appearance to them; and produce a
kind of restraint from which they and
love, sportive child,
naturally revolt. Without taste,
excepting of the lighter kind,
for taste is the offspring of judgment,
how can they discover, that
true beauty and grace must arise from
the play of the mind? and how
can they be expected to relish in a lover
what they do not, or very
imperfectly, possess themselves? The
sympathy that unites hearts,
and invites to confidence, in them is so
very faint, that it cannot
take fire, and thus mount to passion. No,
I repeat it, the love
cherished by such minds, must have
grosser fuel!
The inference is obvious; till women are
led to exercise their
understandings, they should not be
satirized for their attachment
to rakes; nor even for being rakes at
heart, when it appears to be
the inevitable consequence of their
education. They who live to
please must find their enjoyments, their
happiness, in pleasure!
It is a trite, yet true remark, that we
never do any thing well,
unless we love it for its own sake.
Supposing, however, for a moment, that
women were, in some future
revolution of time, to become, what I
sincerely wish them to be,
even love would acquire more serious
dignity, and be purified in
its own fires; and virtue giving true
delicacy to their affections,
they would turn with disgust from a
rake. Reasoning then, as well
as feeling, the only province of woman,
at present, they might
easily guard against exterior graces, and
quickly learn to despise
the sensibility that had been excited and
hackneyed in the ways of
women, whose trade was vice; and
allurement's wanton airs. They
would recollect that the flame, (one must
use appropriate
expressions,) which they wished to light
up, had been exhausted by
lust, and that the sated appetite, losing
all relish for pure and
simple pleasures, could only be roused
by licentious arts of
variety. What satisfaction could a
woman of delicacy promise
herself in a union with such a man, when
the very artlessness of
her affection might appear insipid? Thus
does Dryden describe the
situation:
"Where love is duty on the female side,
288
On theirs mere sensual gust, and sought
with surly pride."
But one grand truth women have yet to
learn, though much it imports
them to act accordingly. In the choice of
a husband they should
not be led astray by the qualities of a
lover--for a lover the
husband, even supposing him to be wise
and virtuous, cannot long
remain.
Were women more rationally educated,
could they take a more
comprehensive view of things, they
would be contented to love but
once in their lives; and after marriage
calmly let passion subside
into friendship--into that tender
intimacy, which is the best
refuge from care; yet is built on such
pure, still affections, that
idle jealousies would not be allowed to
disturb the discharge of
the sober duties of life, nor to engross
the thoughts that ought to
be otherwise employed. This is a state
in which many men live; but
few, very few women. And the
difference may easily be accounted
for, without recurring to a sexual
character. Men, for whom we are
told women are made, have too much
occupied the thoughts of women;
and this association has so entangled
love, with all their motives
of action; and, to harp a little on an old
string, having been
solely employed either to prepare
themselves to excite love, or
actually putting their lessons in practice,
they cannot live
without love. But, when a sense of duty,
or fear of shame, obliges
them to restrain this pampered desire of
pleasing beyond certain
lengths, too far for delicacy, it is true,
though far from
criminality, they obstinately determine
to love, I speak of their
passion, their husbands to the end of the
chapter--and then acting
the part which they foolishly exacted
from their lovers, they
become abject wooers, and fond slaves.
Men of wit and fancy are often rakes;
and fancy is the food of
love. Such men will inspire passion.
Half the sex, in its present
infantine state, would pine for a
Lovelace; a man so witty, so
graceful, and so valiant; and can they
DESERVE blame for acting
according to principles so constantly
inculcated? They want a
lover and protector: and behold him
kneeling before them--bravery
prostrate to beauty! The virtues of a
husband are thus thrown by
love into the background, and gay hopes,
or lively emotions, banish
reflection till the day of reckoning
comes; and come it surely
will, to turn the sprightly lover into a
surly suspicious tyrant,
who contemptuously insults the very
weakness he fostered. Or,
supposing the rake reformed, he cannot
quickly get rid of old
habits. When a man of abilities is first
carried away by his
passions, it is necessary that sentiment
and taste varnish the
enormities of vice, and give a zest to
brutal indulgences: but when
the gloss of novelty is worn off, and
pleasure palls upon the
sense, lasciviousness becomes
barefaced, and enjoyment only the
289
desperate effort of weakness flying from
reflection as from a
legion of devils. Oh! virtue, thou art not
an empty name! All
that life can give-- thou givest!
CHAPTER 7.
If much comfort cannot be expected
from the friendship of a
reformed rake of superior abilities, what
is the consequence when
he lacketh sense, as well as principles?
Verily misery in its most
hideous shape. When the habits of weak
people are consolidated by
time, a reformation is barely possible;
and actually makes the
beings miserable who have not sufficient
mind to be amused by
innocent pleasure; like the tradesman
who retires from the hurry of
business, nature presents to them only a
universal blank; and the
restless thoughts prey on the damped
spirits. Their reformation as
well as his retirement actually makes
them wretched, because it
deprives them of all employment, by
quenching the hopes and fears
that set in motion their sluggish minds.
Modesty! Sacred offspring of sensibility
and reason! true delicacy
of mind! may I unblamed presume to
investigate thy nature, and
trace to its covert the mild charm, that
mellowing each harsh
feature of a character, renders what
would otherwise only inspire
cold admiration--lovely! Thou that
smoothest the wrinkles of
wisdom, and softenest the tone of the
more sublime virtues till
they all melt into humanity! thou that
spreadest the ethereal cloud
that surrounding love heightens every
beauty, it half shades,
breathing those coy sweets that steal into
the heart, and charm the
senses--modulate for me the language of
persuasive reason, till I
rouse my sex from the flowery bed, on
which they supinely sleep
life away!
If such be the force of habit; if such be
the bondage of folly, how
carefully ought we to guard the mind
from storing up vicious
associations; and equally careful should
we be to cultivate the
understanding, to save the poor wight
from the weak dependent state
of even harmless ignorance. For it is the
right use of reason
alone which makes us independent of
every thing--excepting the
unclouded Reason--"Whose service is
perfect freedom."
In speaking of the association of our
ideas, I have noticed two
distinct modes; and in defining modesty,
it appears to me equally
proper to discriminate that purity of
mind, which is the effect of
chastity, from a simplicity of character
that leads us to form a
just opinion of ourselves, equally distant
from vanity or
presumption, though by no means
incompatible with a lofty
consciousness of our own dignity.
Modesty in the latter
signification of the term, is that
soberness of mind which teaches
MODESTY COMPREHENSIVELY
CONSIDERED AND NOT AS A
SEXUAL VIRTUE.
290
a man not to think more highly of
himself than he ought to think,
and should be distinguished from
humility, because humility is a
kind of self-abasement. A modest man
often conceives a great plan,
and tenaciously adheres to it, conscious
of his own strength, till
success gives it a sanction that
determines its character. Milton
was not arrogant when he suffered a
suggestion of judgment to
escape him that proved a prophesy; nor
was General Washington when
he accepted of the command of the
American forces. The latter has
always been characterized as a modest
man; but had he been merely
humble, he would probably have shrunk
back irresolute, afraid of
trusting to himself the direction of an
enterprise on which so much
depended.
A modest man is steady, an humble man
timid, and a vain one
presumptuous; this is the judgment,
which the observation of many
characters, has led me to form. Jesus
Christ was modest, Moses was
humble, and Peter vain.
Thus discriminating modesty from
humility in one case, I do not
mean to confound it with bashfulness in
the other. Bashfulness, in
fact, is so distinct from modesty, that the
most bashful lass, or
raw country lout, often becomes the
most impudent; for their
bashfulness being merely the instinctive
timidity of ignorance,
custom soon changes it into assurance.*
(*Footnote. "Such is the countrymaiden's fright,
When first a red-coat is in sight;
Behind the door she hides her face,
Next time at distance eyes the lace:
She now can all his terrors stand,
Nor from his squeeze withdraws her
hand,
She plays familiar in his arms,
And every soldier hath his charms;
>From tent to tent she spreads her flame;
For custom conquers fear and shame.")
The shameless behaviour of the
prostitutes who infest the streets
of London, raising alternate emotions of
pity and disgust, may
serve to illustrate this remark. They
trample on virgin
bashfulness with a sort of bravado, and
glorying in their shame,
become more audaciously lewd than
men, however depraved, to whom
the sexual quality has not been
gratuitously granted, ever appear
to be. But these poor ignorant wretches
never had any modesty to
lose, when they consigned themselves to
infamy; for modesty is a
virtue not a quality. No, they were only
bashful, shame-faced
innocents; and losing their innocence,
their shame-facedness was
rudely brushed off; a virtue would have
left some vestiges in the
mind, had it been sacrificed to passion,
to make us respect the
grand ruin.
Purity of mind, or that genuine delicacy,
which is the only
virtuous support of chastity, is near a-kin
to that refinement of
humanity, which never resides in any but
cultivated minds. It is
something nobler than innocence; it is
the delicacy of reflection,
291
and not the coyness of ignorance. The
reserve of reason, which
like habitual cleanliness, is seldom seen
in any great degree,
unless the soul is active, may easily be
distinguished from rustic
shyness or wanton skittishness; and so
far from being incompatible
with knowledge, it is its fairest fruit.
What a gross idea of
modesty had the writer of the following
remark! "The lady who
asked the question whether women may
be instructed in the modern
system of botany, consistently with
female delicacy?" was accused
of ridiculous prudery: nevertheless, if
she had proposed the
question to me, I should certainly have
answered--They cannot."
Thus is the fair book of knowledge to be
shut with an everlasting
seal! On reading similar passages I have
reverentially lifted up
my eyes and heart to Him who liveth for
ever and ever, and said, O
my Father, hast Thou by the very
constitution of her nature forbid
Thy child to seek Thee in the fair forms
of truth? And, can her
soul be sullied by the knowledge that
awfully calls her to Thee?
I have then philosophically pursued
these reflections till I
inferred, that those women who have
most improved their reason must
have the most modesty --though a
dignified sedateness of deportment
may have succeeded the playful,
bewitching bashfulness of youth.*
(*Footnote. Modesty, is the graceful
calm virtue of maturity;
bashfulness, the charm of vivacious
youth.)
And thus have I argued. To render
chastity the virtue from which
unsophisticated modesty will naturally
flow, the attention should
be called away from employments,
which only exercise the
sensibility; and the heart made to beat
time to humanity, rather
than to throb with love. The woman
who has dedicated a
considerable portion of her time to
pursuits purely intellectual,
and whose affections have been
exercised by humane plans of
usefulness, must have more purity of
mind, as a natural
consequence, than the ignorant beings
whose time and thoughts have
been occupied by gay pleasures or
schemes to conquer hearts. The
regulation of the behaviour is not
modesty, though those who study
rules of decorum, are, in general termed
modest women. Make the
heart clean, let it expand and feel for all
that is human, instead
of being narrowed by selfish passions;
and let the mind frequently
contemplate subjects that exercise the
understanding, without
heating the imagination, and artless
modesty will give the
finishing touches to the picture.
She who can discern the dawn of
immortality, in the streaks that
shoot athwart the misty night of
ignorance, promising a clearer
day, will respect, as a sacred temple, the
body that enshrines such
an improvable soul. True love, likewise,
spreads this kind of
mysterious sanctity round the beloved
object, making the lover most
292
modest when in her presence. So
reserved is affection, that,
receiving or returning personal
endearments, it wishes, not only to
shun the human eye, as a kind of
profanation; but to diffuse an
encircling cloudy obscurity to shut out
even the saucy sparkling
sunbeams. Yet, that affection does not
deserve the epithet of
chaste which does not receive a sublime
gloom of tender melancholy,
that allows the mind for a moment to
stand still and enjoy the
present satisfaction, when a
consciousness of the Divine presence
is felt--for this must ever be the food of
joy!
As I have always been fond of tracing to
its source in nature any
prevailing custom, I have frequently
thought that it was a
sentiment of affection for whatever had
touched the person of an
absent or lost friend, which gave birth to
that respect for relics,
so much abused by selfish priests.
Devotion, or love, may be
allowed to hallow the garments as well
as the person; for the lover
must want fancy, who has not a sort of
sacred respect for the glove
or slipper of his mistress. He could not
confound them with vulgar
things of the same kind.
This fine sentiment, perhaps, would not
bear to be analyzed by the
experimental philosopher--but of such
stuff is human rapture made
up!-- A shadowy phantom glides before
us, obscuring every other
object; yet when the soft cloud is
grasped, the form melts into
common air, leaving a solitary void, or
sweet perfume, stolen from
the violet, that memory long holds dear.
But, I have tripped
unawares on fairy ground, feeling the
balmy gale of spring stealing
on me, though November frowns.
As a sex, women are more chaste than
men, and as modesty is the
effect of chastity, they may deserve to
have this virtue ascribed
to them in rather an appropriated sense;
yet, I must be allowed to
add an hesitating if:-- for I doubt,
whether chastity will produce
modesty, though it may propriety of
conduct, when it is merely a
respect for the opinion of the world, and
when coquetry and the
lovelorn tales of novelists employ the
thoughts. Nay, from
experience, and reason, I should be lead
to expect to meet with
more modesty amongst men than
women, simply because men exercise
their understandings more than women.
But, with respect to propriety of
behaviour, excepting one class of
females, women have evidently the
advantage. What can be more
disgusting than that impudent dross of
gallantry, thought so manly,
which makes many men stare insultingly
at every female they meet?
Is this respect for the sex? This loose
behaviour shows such
habitual depravity, such weakness of
mind, that it is vain to
expect much public or private virtue, till
both men and women grow
more modest--till men, curbing a sensual
fondness for the sex, or
an affectation of manly assurance, more
properly speaking,
293
impudence, treat each other with respect-unless appetite or
passion gives the tone, peculiar to it, to
their behaviour. I mean
even personal respect--the modest
respect of humanity, and
fellow-feeling; not the libidinous
mockery of gallantry, nor the
insolent condescension of protectorship.
To carry the observation still further,
modesty must heartily
disclaim, and refuse to dwell with that
debauchery of mind, which
leads a man coolly to bring forward,
without a blush, indecent
allusions, or obscene witticisms, in the
presence of a fellow
creature; women are now out of the
question, for then it is
brutality. Respect for man, as man is the
foundation of every
noble sentiment. How much more
modest is the libertine who obeys
the call of appetite or fancy, than the
lewd joker who sets the
table in a roar.
This is one of the many instances in
which the sexual distinction
respecting modesty has proved fatal to
virtue and happiness. It
is, however, carried still further, and
woman, weak woman! made by
her education the slave of sensibility, is
required, on the most
trying occasions, to resist that
sensibility. "Can any thing,"
says Knox, be more absurd than keeping
women in a state of
ignorance, and yet so vehemently to
insist on their resisting
temptation? Thus when virtue or honour
make it proper to check a
passion, the burden is thrown on the
weaker shoulders, contrary to
reason and true modesty, which, at least,
should render the
self-denial mutual, to say nothing of the
generosity of bravery,
supposed to be a manly virtue.
In the same strain runs Rousseau's and
Dr. Gregory's advice
respecting modesty, strangely miscalled!
for they both desire a
wife to leave it in doubt, whether
sensibility or weakness led her
to her husband's arms. The woman is
immodest who can let the
shadow of such a doubt remain on her
husband's mind a moment.
But to state the subject in a different
light. The want of
modesty, which I principally deplore as
subversive of morality,
arises from the state of warfare so
strenuously supported by
voluptuous men as the very essence of
modesty, though, in fact, its
bane; because it is a refinement on
sensual desire, that men fall
into who have not sufficient virtue to
relish the innocent
pleasures of love. A man of delicacy
carries his notions of
modesty still further, for neither
weakness nor sensibility will
gratify him--he looks for affection.
Again; men boast of their triumphs over
women, what do they boast
of? Truly the creature of sensibility was
surprised by her
sensibility into folly--into vice;* and the
dreadful reckoning
falls heavily on her own weak head,
when reason wakes. For where
art thou to find comfort, forlorn and
disconsolate one? He who
294
ought to have directed thy reason, and
supported thy weakness, has
betrayed thee! In a dream of passion
thou consentedst to wander
through flowery lawns, and heedlessly
stepping over the precipice
to which thy guide, instead of guarding,
lured thee, thou startest
from thy dream only to face a sneering,
frowning world, and to find
thyself alone in a waste, for he that
triumphed in thy weakness is
now pursuing new conquests; but for
thee--there is no redemption on
this side the grave! And what resource
hast thou in an enervated
mind to raise a sinking heart?
(*Footnote. The poor moth fluttering
round a candle, burns its
wings.)
But, if the sexes be really to live in a
state of warfare, if
nature has pointed it out, let men act
nobly, or let pride whisper
to them, that the victory is mean when
they merely vanquish
sensibility. The real conquest is that
over affection not taken by
surprise--when, like Heloisa, a woman
gives up all the world,
deliberately, for love. I do not now
consider the wisdom or virtue
of such a sacrifice, I only contend that it
was a sacrifice to
affection, and not merely to sensibility,
though she had her share.
And I must be allowed to call her a
modest woman, before I dismiss
this part of the subject, by saying, that
till men are more chaste,
women will be immodest. Where,
indeed, could modest women find
husbands from whom they would not
continually turn with disgust?
Modesty must be equally cultivated by
both sexes, or it will ever
remain a sickly hot-house plant, whilst
the affectation of it, the
fig leaf borrowed by wantonness, may
give a zest to voluptuous
enjoyments.)
Men will probably still insist that woman
ought to have more
modesty than man; but it is not
dispassionate reasoners who will
most earnestly oppose my opinion. No,
they are the men of fancy,
the favourites of the sex, who outwardly
respect, and inwardly
despise the weak creatures whom they
thus sport with. They cannot
submit to resign the highest sensual
gratification, nor even to
relish the epicurism of virtue--selfdenial.
To take another view of the subject,
confining my remarks to women.
The ridiculous falsities which are told to
children, from mistaken
notions of modesty, tend very early to
inflame their imaginations
and set their little minds to work,
respecting subjects, which
nature never intended they should think
of, till the body arrived
at some degree of maturity; then the
passions naturally begin to
take place of the senses, as instruments
to unfold the
understanding, and form the moral
character.
In nurseries, and boarding schools, I
fear, girls are first
spoiled; particularly in the latter. A
number of girls sleep in
295
the same room, and wash together. And,
though I should be sorry to
contaminate an innocent creature's mind
by instilling false
delicacy, or those indecent prudish
notions, which early cautions
respecting the other sex naturally
engender, I should be very
anxious to prevent their acquiring
indelicate, or immodest habits;
and as many girls have learned very
indelicate tricks, from
ignorant servants, the mixing them thus
indiscriminately together,
is very improper.
To say the truth, women are, in general,
too familiar with each
other, which leads to that gross degree of
familiarity that so
frequently renders the marriage state
unhappy. Why in the name of
decency are sisters, female intimates, or
ladies and their waiting
women, to be so grossly familiar as to
forget the respect which one
human creature owes to another? That
squeamish delicacy which
shrinks from the most disgusting offices
when affection or humanity
lead us to watch at a sick pillow, is
despicable. But, why women
in health should be more familiar with
each other than men are,
when they boast of their superiour
delicacy, is a solecism in
manners which I could never solve.
In order to preserve health and beauty, I
should earnestly
recommend frequent ablutions, to
dignify my advice that it may not
offend the fastidious ear; and, by
example, girls ought to be
taught to wash and dress alone, without
any distinction of rank;
and if custom should make them require
some little assistance, let
them not require it till that part of the
business is over which
ought never to be done before a fellowcreature; because it is an
insult to the majesty of human nature.
Not on the score of
modesty, but decency; for the care which
some modest women take,
making at the same time a display of that
care, not to let their
legs be seen, is as childish as
immodest.*
(*Footnote. I remember to have met
with a sentence, in a book of
education that made me smile. "It would
be needless to caution you
against putting your hand, by chance,
under your neck-handkerchief;
for a modest woman never did so!")
I could proceed still further, till I
animadverted on some still
more indelicate customs, which men
never fall into. Secrets are
told--where silence ought to reign; and
that regard to cleanliness,
which some religious sects have,
perhaps, carried too far,
especially the Essenes, amongst the
Jews, by making that an insult
to God which is only an insult to
humanity, is violated in a brutal
manner. How can DELICATE women
obtrude on notice that part of the
animal economy, which is so very
disgusting? And is it not very
rational to conclude, that the women
who have not been taught to
respect the human nature of their own
sex, in these particulars,
will not long respect the mere difference
of sex, in their
296
husbands? After their maidenish
bashfulness is once lost, I, in
fact, have generally observed, that
women fall into old habits; and
treat their husbands as they did their
sisters or female
acquaintance.
Besides, women from necessity, because
their minds are not
cultivated, have recourse very often, to
what I familiarly term
bodily wit; and their intimacies are of
the same kind. In short,
with respect to both mind and body, they
are too intimate. That
decent personal reserve, which is the
foundation of dignity of
character, must be kept up between
women, or their minds will never
gain strength or modesty.
On this account also, I object to many
females being shut up
together in nurseries, schools, or
convents. I cannot recollect
without indignation, the jokes and
hoiden tricks, which knots of
young women indulged themselves in,
when in my youth accident threw
me, an awkward rustic, in their way.
They were almost on a par
with the double meanings, which shake
the convivial table when the
glass has circulated freely. But it is vain
to attempt to keep the
heart pure, unless the head is furnished
with ideas, and set to
work to compare them, in order, to
acquire judgment, by
generalizing simple ones; and modesty
by making the understanding
damp the sensibility.
It may be thought that I lay too great a
stress on personal
reserve; but it is ever the hand-maid of
modesty. So that were I
to name the graces that ought to adorn
beauty, I should instantly
exclaim, cleanliness, neatness, and
personal reserve. It is
obvious, I suppose, that the reserve I
mean, has nothing sexual in
it, and that I think it EQUALLY
necessary in both sexes. So
necessary indeed, is that reserve and
cleanliness which indolent
women too often neglect, that I will
venture to affirm, that when
two or three women live in the same
house, the one will be most
respected by the male part of the family,
who reside with them,
leaving love entirely out of the question,
who pays this kind of
habitual respect to her person.
When domestic friends meet in a
morning, there will naturally
prevail an affectionate seriousness,
especially, if each look
forward to the discharge of daily duties;
and it may be reckoned
fanciful, but this sentiment has
frequently risen spontaneously in
my mind. I have been pleased after
breathing the sweet bracing
morning air, to see the same kind of
freshness in the countenances
I particularly loved; I was glad to see
them braced, as it were,
for the day, and ready to run their course
with the sun. The
greetings of affection in the morning are
by these means more
respectful, than the familiar tenderness
which frequently prolongs
the evening talk. Nay, I have often felt
hurt, not to say
disgusted, when a friend has appeared,
whom I parted with full
297
dressed the evening before, with her
clothes huddled on, because
she chose to indulge herself in bed till
the last moment.
Domestic affection can only be kept
alive by these neglected
attentions; yet if men and women took
half as much pains to dress
habitually neat, as they do to ornament,
or rather to disfigure
their persons, much would be done
towards the attainment of purity
of mind. But women only dress to
gratify men of gallantry; for the
lover is always best pleased with the
simple garb that sits close
to the shape. There is an impertinence in
ornaments that rebuffs
affection; because love always clings
round the idea of home.
As a sex, women are habitually indolent;
and every thing tends to
make them so. I do not forget the starts
of activity which
sensibility produces; but as these flights
of feeling only increase
the evil, they are not to be confounded
with the slow, orderly walk
of reason. So great, in reality, is their
mental and bodily
indolence, that till their body be
strengthened and their
understanding enlarged by active
exertions, there is little reason
to expect that modesty will take place of
bashfulness. They may
find it prudent to assume its semblance;
but the fair veil will
only be worn on gala days.
Perhaps there is not a virtue that mixes
so kindly with every other
as modesty. It is the pale moon-beam
that renders more interesting
every virtue it softens, giving mild
grandeur to the contracted
horizon. Nothing can be more beautiful
than the poetical fiction,
which makes Diana with her silver
crescent, the goddess of
chastity. I have sometimes thought, that
wandering with sedate
step in some lonely recess, a modest
dame of antiquity must have
felt a glow of conscious dignity, when,
after contemplating the
soft shadowy landscape, she has invited
with placid fervour the
mild reflection of her sister's beams to
turn to her chaste bosom.
A Christian has still nobler motives to
incite her to preserve her
chastity and acquire modesty, for her
body has been called the
Temple of the living God; of that God
who requires more than
modesty of mien. His eye searcheth the
heart; and let her
remember, that if she hopeth to find
favour in the sight of purity
itself, her chastity must be founded on
modesty, and not on worldly
prudence; or verily a good reputation
will be her only reward; for
that awful intercourse, that sacred
communion, which virtue
establishes between man and his Maker,
must give rise to the wish
of being pure as he is pure!
After the foregoing remarks, it is almost
superfluous to add, that
I consider all those feminine airs of
maturity, which succeed
bashfulness, to which truth is sacrificed,
to secure the heart of a
husband, or rather to force him to be still
a lover when nature
298
would, had she not been interrupted in
her operations, have made
love give place to friendship, as
immodest. The tenderness which a
man will feel for the mother of his
children is an excellent
substitute for the ardour of unsatisfied
passion; but to prolong
that ardour it is indelicate, not to say
immodest, for women to
feign an unnatural coldness of
constitution. Women as well as men
ought to have the common appetites and
passions of their nature,
they are only brutal when unchecked by
reason: but the obligation
to check them is the duty of mankind,
not a sexual duty. Nature,
in these respects, may safely be left to
herself; let women only
acquire knowledge and humanity, and
love will teach them modesty.
There is no need of falsehoods,
disgusting as futile, for studied
rules of behaviour only impose on
shallow observers; a man of sense
soon sees through, and despises the
affectation.
The behaviour of young people, to each
other, as men and women, is
the last thing that should be thought of in
education. In fact,
behaviour in most circumstances is now
so much thought of, that
simplicity of character is rarely to be
seen; yet, if men were
only anxious to cultivate each virtue, and
let it take root firmly
in the mind, the grace resulting from it,
its natural exteriour
mark, would soon strip affectation of its
flaunting plumes;
because, fallacious as unstable, is the
conduct that is not founded
upon truth!
(Footnote. The behaviour of many
newly married women has often
disgusted me. They seem anxious never
to let their husbands forget
the privilege of marriage, and to find no
pleasure in his society
unless he is acting the lover. Short,
indeed, must be the reign of
love, when the flame is thus constantly
blown up, without its
receiving any solid fuel.)
Would ye, O my sisters, really possess
modesty, ye must remember
that the possession of virtue, of any
denomination, is incompatible
with ignorance and vanity! ye must
acquire that soberness of mind,
which the exercise of duties, and the
pursuit of knowledge, alone
inspire, or ye will still remain in a
doubtful dependent situation,
and only be loved whilst ye are fair! the
downcast eye, the rosy
blush, the retiring grace, are all proper in
their season; but
modesty, being the child of reason,
cannot long exist with the
sensibility that is not tempered by
reflection. Besides, when
love, even innocent love, is the whole
employ of your lives, your
hearts will be too soft to afford modesty
that tranquil retreat,
where she delights to dwell, in close
union with humanity.
CHAPTER 8.
MORALITY UNDERMINED BY
SEXUAL NOTIONS OF THE
IMPORTANCE OF A GOOD
REPUTATION.
299
It has long since occurred to me, that
advice respecting behaviour,
and all the various modes of preserving a
good reputation, which
have been so strenuously inculcated on
the female world, were
specious poisons, that incrusting
morality eat away the substance.
And, that this measuring of shadows
produced a false calculation,
because their length depends so much on
the height of the sun, and
other adventitious circumstances.
>From whence arises the easy fallacious
behaviour of a courtier?
>From this situation, undoubtedly: for
standing in need of
dependents, he is obliged to learn the art
of denying without
giving offence, and, of evasively feeding
hope with the chameleon's
food; thus does politeness sport with
truth, and eating away the
sincerity and humanity natural to man,
produce the fine gentleman.
Women in the same way acquire, from a
supposed necessity, an
equally artificial mode of behaviour.
Yet truth is not with
impunity to be sported with, for the
practised dissembler, at last,
becomes the dupe of his own arts, loses
that sagacity which has
been justly termed common sense;
namely, a quick perception of
common truths: which are constantly
received as such by the
unsophisticated mind, though it might
not have had sufficient
energy to discover them itself, when
obscured by local prejudices.
The greater number of people take their
opinions on trust, to avoid
the trouble of exercising their own
minds, and these indolent
beings naturally adhere to the letter,
rather than the spirit of a
law, divine or human. "Women," says
some author, I cannot
recollect who, "mind not what only
heaven sees." Why, indeed
should they? it is the eye of man that
they have been taught to
dread--and if they can lull their Argus to
sleep, they seldom think
of heaven or themselves, because their
reputation is safe; and it
is reputation not chastity and all its fair
train, that they are
employed to keep free from spot, not as
a virtue, but to preserve
their station in the world.
To prove the truth of this remark, I need
only advert to the
intrigues of married women, particularly
in high life, and in
countries where women are suitably
married, according to their
respective ranks by their parents. If an
innocent girl become a
prey to love, she is degraded forever,
though her mind was not
polluted by the arts which married
women, under the convenient
cloak of marriage, practise; nor has she
violated any duty--but the
duty of respecting herself. The married
woman, on the contrary,
breaks a most sacred engagement, and
becomes a cruel mother when
she is a false and faithless wife. If her
husband has still an
affection for her, the arts which she must
practise to deceive him,
will render her the most contemptible of
human beings; and at any
rate, the contrivances necessary to
preserve appearances, will keep
300
her mind in that childish or vicious
tumult which destroys all its
energy. Besides, in time, like those
people who habitually take
cordials to raise their spirits, she will
want an intrigue to give
life to her thoughts, having lost all relish
for pleasures that are
not highly seasoned by hope or fear.
Sometimes married women act still more
audaciously; I will mention
an instance.
A woman of quality, notorious for her
gallantries, though as she
still lived with her husband, nobody
chose to place her in the
class where she ought to have been
placed, made a point of treating
with the most insulting contempt a poor
timid creature, abashed by
a sense of her former weakness, whom a
neighbouring gentleman had
seduced and afterwards married. This
woman had actually confounded
virtue with reputation; and, I do believe,
valued herself on the
propriety of her behaviour before
marriage, though when once
settled, to the satisfaction of her family,
she and her lord were
equally faithless--so that the half alive
heir to an immense estate
came from heaven knows where!
To view this subject in another light.
I have known a number of women who,
if they did not love their
husbands, loved nobody else, giving
themselves entirely up to
vanity and dissipation, neglecting every
domestic duty; nay, even
squandering away all the money which
should have been saved for
their helpless younger children, yet have
plumed themselves on
their unsullied reputation, as if the whole
compass of their duty
as wives and mothers was only to
preserve it. Whilst other
indolent women, neglecting every
personal duty, have thought that
they deserved their husband's affection,
because they acted in this
respect with propriety.
Weak minds are always fond of resting
in the ceremonials of duty,
but morality offers much simpler
motives; and it were to be wished
that superficial moralists had said less
respecting behaviour, and
outward observances, for unless virtue,
of any kind, is built on
knowledge, it will only produce a kind
of insipid decency. Respect
for the opinion of the world, has,
however, been termed the
principal duty of woman in the most
express words, for Rousseau
declares, "that reputation is no less
indispensable than chastity."
"A man," adds he, "secure in his own
good conduct, depends only on
himself, and may brave the public
opinion; but a woman, in behaving
well, performs but half her duty; as what
is thought of her, is as
important to her as what she really is. It
follows hence, that the
system of a woman's education should,
in this respect, be directly
contrary to that of ours. Opinion is the
grave of virtue among the
men; but its throne among women." It is
strictly logical to infer,
that the virtue that rests on opinion is
merely worldly, and that
it is the virtue of a being to whom reason
has been denied. But,
301
even with respect to the opinion of the
world, I am convinced, that
this class of reasoners are mistaken.
This regard for reputation, independent
of its being one of the
natural rewards of virtue, however, took
its rise from a cause that
I have already deplored as the grand
source of female depravity,
the impossibility of regaining
respectability by a return to
virtue, though men preserve theirs
during the indulgence of vice.
It was natural for women then to
endeavour to preserve what once
lost--was lost for ever, till this care
swallowing up every other
care, reputation for chastity, became the
one thing needful to the
sex. But vain is the scrupulosity of
ignorance, for neither
religion nor virtue, when they reside in
the heart, require such a
puerile attention to mere ceremonies,
because the behaviour must,
upon the whole be proper, when the
motive is pure.
To support my opinion I can produce
very respectable authority; and
the authority of a cool reasoner ought to
have weight to enforce
consideration, though not to establish a
sentiment. Speaking of
the general laws of morality, Dr. Smith
observes--"That by some
very extraordinary and unlucky
circumstance, a good man may come to
be suspected of a crime of which he was
altogether incapable, and
upon that account be most unjustly
exposed for the remaining part
of his life to the horror and aversion of
mankind. By an accident
of this kind he may be said to lose his
all, notwithstanding his
integrity and justice, in the same manner
as a cautious man,
notwithstanding his utmost
circumspection, may be ruined by an
earthquake or an inundation. Accidents
of the first kind, however,
are perhaps still more rare, and still more
contrary to the common
course of things than those of the
second; and it still remains
true, that the practice of truth, justice and
humanity, is a
certain and almost infallible method of
acquiring what those
virtues chiefly aim at, the confidence
and love of those we live
with. A person may be easily
misrepresented with regard to a
particular action; but it is scarcely
possible that he should be so
with regard to the general tenor of his
conduct. An innocent man
may be believed to have done wrong:
this, however, will rarely
happen. On the contrary, the established
opinion of the innocence
of his manners will often lead us to
absolve him where he has
really been in the fault, notwithstanding
very strong
presumptions."
I perfectly coincide in opinion with this
writer, for I verily
believe, that few of either sex were ever
despised for certain
vices without deserving to be despised. I
speak not of the calumny
of the moment, which hangs over a
character, like one of the dense
fogs of November over this metropolis,
till it gradually subsides
before the common light of day, I only
contend, that the daily
302
conduct of the majority prevails to stamp
their character with the
impression of truth. Quietly does the
clear light, shining day
after day, refute the ignorant surmise, or
malicious tale, which
has thrown dirt on a pure character. A
false light distorted, for
a short time, its shadow--reputation; but
it seldom fails to become
just when the cloud is dispersed that
produced the mistake in
vision.
Many people, undoubtedly in several
respects, obtain a better
reputation than, strictly speaking, they
deserve, for unremitting
industry will mostly reach its goal in all
races. They who only
strive for this paltry prize, like the
Pharisees, who prayed at the
corners of streets, to be seen of men,
verily obtain the reward
they seek; for the heart of man cannot be
read by man! Still the
fair fame that is naturally reflected by
good actions, when the man
is only employed to direct his steps
aright, regardless of the
lookers-on, is in general, not only more
true but more sure.
There are, it is true, trials when the good
man must appeal to God
from the injustice of man; and amidst the
whining candour or
hissing of envy, erect a pavilion in his
own mind to retire to,
till the rumour be overpast; nay, the darts
of undeserved censure
may pierce an innocent tender bosom
through with many sorrows; but
these are all exceptions to general rules.
And it is according to
these common laws that human
behaviour ought to be regulated. The
eccentric orbit of the comet never
influences astronomical
calculations respecting the invariable
order established in the
motion of the principal bodies of the
solar system.
I will then venture to affirm, that after a
man has arrived at
maturity, the general outline of his
character in the world is
just, allowing for the before mentioned
exceptions to the rule. I
do not say, that a prudent, worldly-wise
man, with only negative
virtues and qualities, may not sometimes
obtain a smoother
reputation than a wiser or a better man.
So far from it, that I am
apt to conclude from experience, that
where the virtue of two
people is nearly equal, the most negative
character will be liked
best by the world at large, whilst the
other may have more friends
in private life. But the hills and dales,
clouds and sunshine,
conspicuous in the virtues of great men,
set off each other; and
though they afford envious weakness a
fairer mark to shoot at, the
real character will still work its way to
light, though bespattered
by weak affection, or ingenious malice.*
(*Footnote. I allude to various
biographical writings, but
particularly to Boswell's Life of
Johnson.)
With respect to that anxiety to preserve a
reputation hardly
earned, which leads sagacious people to
analyze it, I shall not
303
make the obvious comment; but I am
afraid that morality is very
insidiously undermined, in the female
world, by the attention being
turned to the show instead of the
substance. A simple thing is
thus made strangely complicated; nay,
sometimes virtue and its
shadow are set at variance. We should
never, perhaps, have heard
of Lucretia, had she died to preserve her
chastity instead of her
reputation. If we really deserve our own
good opinion, we shall
commonly be respected in the world; but
if we pant after higher
improvement and higher attainments, it
is not sufficient to view
ourselves as we suppose that we are
viewed by others, though this
has been ingeniously argued as the
foundation of our moral
sentiments. (Smith.) Because each
bystander may have his own
prejudices, besides the prejudices of his
age or country. We
should rather endeavour to view
ourselves, as we suppose that Being
views us, who seeth each thought ripen
into action, and whose
judgment never swerves from the eternal
rule of right. Righteous
are all his judgments--just, as merciful!
The humble mind that seeketh to find
favour in His sight, and
calmly examines its conduct when only
His presence is felt, will
seldom form a very erroneous opinion of
its own virtues. During
the still hour of self-collection, the angry
brow of offended
justice will be fearfully deprecated, or
the tie which draws man to
the Deity will be recognized in the pure
sentiment of reverential
adoration, that swells the heart without
exciting any tumultuous
emotions. In these solemn moments
man discovers the germ of those
vices, which like the Java tree shed a
pestiferous vapour
around--death is in the shade! and he
perceives them without
abhorrence, because he feels himself
drawn by some cord of love to
all his fellow creatures, for whose follies
he is anxious to find
every extenuation in their nature--in
himself. If I, he may thus
argue, who exercise my own mind, and
have been refined by
tribulation, find the serpent's egg in
some fold of my heart, and
crush it with difficulty, shall not I pity
those who are stamped
with less vigour, or who have heedlessly
nurtured the insidious
reptile till it poisoned the vital stream it
sucked? Can I,
conscious of my secret sins, throw off
my fellow creatures, and
calmly see them drop into the chasm of
perdition, that yawns to
receive them. No! no! The agonized
heart will cry with
suffocating impatience--I too am a man!
and have vices, hid,
perhaps, from human eye, that bend me
to the dust before God, and
loudly tell me when all is mute, that we
are formed of the same
earth, and breathe the same element.
Humanity thus rises naturally
out of humility, and twists the cords of
love that in various
convolutions entangle the heart.
This sympathy extends still further, till a
man well pleased
observes force in arguments that do not
carry conviction to his own
304
bosom, and he gladly places in the
fairest light to himself, the
shows of reason that have led others
astray, rejoiced to find some
reason in all the errors of man; though
before convinced that he
who rules the day makes his sun to shine
on all. Yet, shaking
hands thus, as it were, with corruption,
one foot on earth, the
other with bold strides mounts to
heaven, and claims kindred with
superiour natures. Virtues, unobserved
by men, drop their balmy
fragrance at this cool hour, and the
thirsty land, refreshed by the
pure streams of comfort that suddenly
gush out, is crowned with
smiling verdure; this is the living green
on which that eye may
look with complacency that is too pure
to behold iniquity! But my
spirits flag; and I must silently indulge
the reverie these
reflections lead to, unable to describe the
sentiments that have
calmed my soul, when watching the
rising sun, a soft shower
drizzling through the leaves of
neighbouring trees, seemed to fall
on my languid, yet tranquil spirits, to
cool the heart that had
been heated by the passions which
reason laboured to tame.
The leading principles which run
through all my disquisitions,
would render it unnecessary to enlarge
on this subject, if a
constant attention to keep the varnish of
the character fresh, and
in good condition, were not often
inculcated as the sum total of
female duty; if rules to regulate the
behaviour, and to preserve
the reputation, did not too frequently
supersede moral obligations.
But, with respect to reputation, the
attention is confined to a
single virtue--chastity. If the honour of a
woman, as it is
absurdly called, is safe, she may neglect
every social duty; nay,
ruin her family by gaming and
extravagance; yet still present a
shameless front --for truly she is an
honourable woman!
Mrs. Macaulay has justly observed, that
"there is but one fault
which a woman of honour may not
commit with impunity." She then
justly and humanely adds--This has
given rise to the trite and
foolish observation, that the first fault
against chastity in woman
has a radical power to deprave the
character. But no such frail
beings come out of the hands of nature.
The human mind is built of
nobler materials than to be so easily
corrupted; and with all their
disadvantages of situation and education,
women seldom become
entirely abandoned till they are thrown
into a state of
desperation, by the venomous rancour of
their own sex."
But, in proportion as this regard for the
reputation of chastity is
prized by women, it is despised by men:
and the two extremes are
equally destructive to morality.
Men are certainly more under the
influence of their appetites than
women; and their appetites are more
depraved by unbridled
indulgence, and the fastidious
contrivances of satiety. Luxury has
305
introduced a refinement in eating that
destroys the constitution;
and, a degree of gluttony which is so
beastly, that a perception of
seemliness of behaviour must be worn
out before one being could eat
immoderately in the presence of another,
and afterwards complain of
the oppression that his intemperance
naturally produced. Some
women, particularly French women,
have also lost a sense of decency
in this respect; for they will talk very
calmly of an indigestion.
It were to be wished, that idleness was
not allowed to generate, on
the rank soil of wealth, those swarms of
summer insects that feed
on putrefaction; we should not then be
disgusted by the sight of
such brutal excesses.
There is one rule relative to behaviour
that, I think, ought to
regulate every other; and it is simply to
cherish such an habitual
respect for mankind, as may prevent us
from disgusting a fellow
creature for the sake of a present
indulgence. The shameful
indolence of many married women, and
others a little advanced in
life, frequently leads them to sin against
delicacy. For, though
convinced that the person is the band of
union between the sexes,
yet, how often do they from sheer
indolence, or to enjoy some
trifling indulgence, disgust?
The depravity of the appetite, which
brings the sexes together, has
had a still more fatal effect. Nature must
ever be the standard of
taste, the guage of appetite--yet how
grossly is nature insulted by
the voluptuary. Leaving the refinements
of love out of the
question; nature, by making the
gratification of an appetite, in
this respect, as well as every other, a
natural and imperious law
to preserve the species, exalts the
appetite, and mixes a little
mind and affection with a sensual gust.
The feelings of a parent
mingling with an instinct merely animal,
give it dignity; and the
man and woman often meeting on
account of the child, a mutual
interest and affection is excited by the
exercise of a common
sympathy. Women then having
necessarily some duty to fulfil, more
noble than to adorn their persons, would
not contentedly be the
slaves of casual appetite, which is now
the situation of a very
considerable number who are, literally
speaking, standing dishes to
which every glutton may have access.
I may be told, that great as this enormity
is, it only affects a
devoted part of the sex--devoted for the
salvation of the rest.
But, false as every assertion might easily
be proved, that
recommends the sanctioning a small evil
to produce a greater good;
the mischief does not stop here, for the
moral character, and peace
of mind, of the chaster part of the sex, is
undermined by the
conduct of the very women to whom
they allow no refuge from guilt:
whom they inexorably consign to the
exercise of arts that lure
their husbands from them, debauch their
sons and force them, let
not modest women start, to assume, in
some degree, the same
306
character themselves. For I will venture
to assert, that all the
causes of female weakness, as well as
depravity, which I have
already enlarged on, branch out of one
grand cause--want of
chastity in men.
This intemperance, so prevalent,
depraves the appetite to such a
degree, that a wanton stimulus is
necessary to rouse it; but the
parental design of nature is forgotten,
and the mere person, and
that, for a moment, alone engrosses the
thoughts. So voluptuous,
indeed, often grows the lustful prowler,
that he refines on female
softness.
To satisfy this genius of men, women are
made systematically
voluptuous, and though they may not all
carry their libertinism to
the same height, yet this heartless
intercourse with the sex, which
they allow themselves, depraves both
sexes, because the taste of
men is vitiated; and women, of all
classes, naturally square their
behaviour to gratify the taste by which
they obtain pleasure and
power. Women becoming, consequently
weaker, in mind and body, than
they ought to be, were one of the grand
ends of their being taken
into the account, that of bearing and
nursing children, have not
sufficient strength to discharge the first
duty of a mother; and
sacrificing to lasciviousness the parental
affection, that ennobles
instinct, either destroy the embryo in the
womb, or cast it off
when born. Nature in every thing
demands respect, and those who
violate her laws seldom violate them
with impunity. The weak
enervated women who particularly catch
the attention of libertines,
are unfit to be mothers, though they may
conceive; so that the rich
sensualist, who has rioted among
women, spreading depravity and
misery, when he wishes to perpetuate his
name, receives from his
wife only an half-formed being that
inherits both its father's and
mother's weakness.
Contrasting the humanity of the present
age with the barbarism of
antiquity, great stress has been laid on
the savage custom of
exposing the children whom their
parents could not maintain; whilst
the man of sensibility, who thus,
perhaps, complains, by his
promiscuous amours produces a most
destructive barrenness and
contagious flagitiousness of manners.
Surely nature never intended
that women, by satisfying an appetite,
should frustrate the very
purpose for which it was implanted?
I have before observed, that men ought
to maintain the women whom
they have seduced; this would be one
means of reforming female
manners, and stopping an abuse that has
an equally fatal effect on
population and morals. Another, no less
obvious, would be to turn
the attention of woman to the real virtue
of chastity; for to
little respect has that woman a claim, on
the score of modesty,
though her reputation may be white as
the driven snow, who smiles
on the libertine whilst she spurns the
victims of his lawless
307
appetites and their own folly.
Besides, she has a taint of the same folly,
pure as she esteems
herself, when she studiously adorns her
person only to be seen by
men, to excite respectful sighs, and all
the idle homage of what is
called innocent gallantry. Did women
really respect virtue for its
own sake, they would not seek for a
compensation in vanity, for the
self-denial which they are obliged to
practise to preserve their
reputation, nor would they associate with
men who set reputation at
defiance.
The two sexes mutually corrupt and
improve each other. This I
believe to be an indisputable truth,
extending it to every virtue.
Chastity, modesty, public spirit, and all
the noble train of
virtues, on which social virtue and
happiness are built, should be
understood and cultivated by all
mankind, or they will be
cultivated to little effect. And, instead of
furnishing the
vicious or idle with a pretext for
violating some sacred duty, by
terming it a sexual one, it would be
wiser to show, that nature has
not made any difference, for that the
unchaste man doubly defeats
the purpose of nature by rendering
women barren, and destroying his
own constitution, though he avoids the
shame that pursues the crime
in the other sex. These are the physical
consequences, the moral
are still more alarming; for virtue is only
a nominal distinction
when the duties of citizens, husbands,
wives, fathers, mothers, and
directors of families, become merely the
selfish ties of
convenience.
Why then do philosophers look for
public spirit? Public spirit
must be nurtured by private virtue, or it
will resemble the
factitious sentiment which makes
women careful to preserve their
reputation, and men their honour. A
sentiment that often exists
unsupported by virtue, unsupported by
that sublime morality which
makes the habitual breach of one duty a
breach of the whole moral
law.
CHAPTER 9.
OF THE PERNICIOUS EFFECTS
WHICH ARISE FROM THE
UNNATURAL
DISTINCTIONS ESTABLISHED IN
SOCIETY.
>From the respect paid to property flow,
as from a poisoned
fountain, most of the evils and vices
which render this world such
a dreary scene to the contemplative
mind. For it is in the most
polished society that noisome reptiles
and venomous serpents lurk
under the rank herbage; and there is
voluptuousness pampered by the
still sultry air, which relaxes every good
disposition before it
ripens into virtue.
One class presses on another; for all are
aiming to procure respect
on account of their property: and
property, once gained, will
308
procure the respect due only to talents
and virtue. Men neglect
the duties incumbent on man, yet are
treated like demi-gods;
religion is also separated from morality
by a ceremonial veil, yet
men wonder that the world is almost,
literally speaking, a den of
sharpers or oppressors.
There is a homely proverb, which speaks
a shrewd truth, that
whoever the devil finds idle he will
employ. And what but habitual
idleness can hereditary wealth and titles
produce? For man is so
constituted that he can only attain a
proper use of his faculties
by exercising them, and will not exercise
them unless necessity, of
some kind, first set the wheels in motion.
Virtue likewise can
only be acquired by the discharge of
relative duties; but the
importance of these sacred duties will
scarcely be felt by the
being who is cajoled out of his humanity
by the flattery of
sycophants. There must be more
equality established in society, or
morality will never gain ground, and this
virtuous equality will
not rest firmly even when founded on a
rock, if one half of mankind
are chained to its bottom by fate, for
they will be continually
undermining it through ignorance or
pride. It is vain to expect
virtue from women till they are, in some
degree, independent of
men; nay, it is vain to expect that
strength of natural affection,
which would make them good wives and
good mothers. Whilst they are
absolutely dependent on their husbands,
they will be cunning, mean,
and selfish, and the men who can be
gratified by the fawning
fondness, of spaniel-like affection, have
not much delicacy, for
love is not to be bought, in any sense of
the word, its silken
wings are instantly shrivelled up when
any thing beside a return in
kind is sought. Yet whilst wealth
enervates men; and women live,
as it were, by their personal charms,
how, can we expect them to
discharge those ennobling duties which
equally require exertion and
self-denial. Hereditary property
sophisticates the mind, and the
unfortunate victims to it, if I may so
express myself, swathed from
their birth, seldom exert the locomotive
faculty of body or mind;
and, thus viewing every thing through
one medium, and that a false
one, they are unable to discern in what
true merit and happiness
consist. False, indeed, must be the light
when the drapery of
situation hides the man, and makes him
stalk in masquerade,
dragging from one scene of dissipation
to another the nerveless
limbs that hang with stupid listlessness,
and rolling round the
vacant eye which plainly tells us that
there is no mind at home.
I mean, therefore, to infer, that the
society is not properly
organized which does not compel men
and women to discharge their
respective duties, by making it the only
way to acquire that
countenance from their fellow creatures,
which every human being
wishes some way to attain. The respect,
consequently, which is
309
paid to wealth and mere personal
charms, is a true north-east
blast, that blights the tender blossoms of
affection and virtue.
Nature has wisely attached affections to
duties, to sweeten toil,
and to give that vigour to the exertions
of reason which only the
heart can give. But, the affection which
is put on merely because
it is the appropriated insignia of a certain
character, when its
duties are not fulfilled is one of the
empty compliments which vice
and folly are obliged to pay to virtue and
the real nature of
things.
To illustrate my opinion, I need only
observe, that when a woman is
admired for her beauty, and suffers
herself to be so far
intoxicated by the admiration she
receives, as to neglect to
discharge the indispensable duty of a
mother, she sins against
herself by neglecting to cultivate an
affection that would equally
tend to make her useful and happy. True
happiness, I mean all the
contentment, and virtuous satisfaction
that can be snatched in this
imperfect state, must arise from well
regulated affections; and an
affection includes a duty. Men are not
aware of the misery they
cause, and the vicious weakness they
cherish, by only inciting
women to render themselves pleasing;
they do not consider, that
they thus make natural and artificial
duties clash, by sacrificing
the comfort and respectability of a
woman's life to voluptuous
notions of beauty, when in nature they
all harmonize.
Cold would be the heart of a husband,
were he not rendered
unnatural by early debauchery, who did
not feel more delight at
seeing his child suckled by its mother,
than the most artful wanton
tricks could ever raise; yet this natural
way of cementing the
matrimonial tie, and twisting esteem
with fonder recollections,
wealth leads women to spurn. To
preserve their beauty, and wear
the flowery crown of the day, that gives
them a kind of right to
reign for a short time over the sex, they
neglect to stamp
impressions on their husbands' hearts,
that would be remembered
with more tenderness when the snow on
the head began to chill the
bosom, than even their virgin charms.
The maternal solicitude of a
reasonable affectionate woman is very
interesting, and the
chastened dignity with which a mother
returns the caresses that she
and her child receive from a father who
has been fulfilling the
serious duties of his station, is not only a
respectable, but a
beautiful sight. So singular, indeed, are
my feelings, and I have
endeavoured not to catch factitious ones,
that after having been
fatigued with the sight of insipid
grandeur and the slavish
ceremonies that with cumberous pomp
supplied the place of domestic
affections, I have turned to some other
scene to relieve my eye, by
resting it on the refreshing green every
where scattered by nature.
I have then viewed with pleasure a
woman nursing her children, and
310
discharging the duties of her station
with, perhaps, merely a
servant made to take off her hands the
servile part of the
household business. I have seen her
prepare herself and children,
with only the luxury of cleanliness, to
receive her husband, who
returning weary home in the evening,
found smiling babes and a
clean hearth. My heart has loitered in
the midst of the group, and
has even throbbed with sympathetic
emotion, when the scraping of
the well known foot has raised a
pleasing tumult.
plans of usefulness, to have a prim
urchin continually twitching
back the elbow to prevent the hand from
drawing out an almost empty
purse, whispering at the same time some
prudential maxim about the
priority of justice.
Whilst my benevolence has been
gratified by contemplating this
artless picture, I have thought that a
couple of this description,
equally necessary and independent of
each other, because each
fulfilled the respective duties of their
station, possessed all
that life could give. Raised sufficiently
above abject poverty not
to be obliged to weigh the consequence
of every farthing they
spend, and having sufficient to prevent
their attending to a frigid
system of economy which narrows both
heart and mind. I declare, so
vulgar are my conceptions, that I know
not what is wanted to render
this the happiest as well as the most
respectable situation in the
world, but a taste for literature, to throw
a little variety and
interest into social converse, and some
superfluous money to give
to the needy, and to buy books. For it is
not pleasant when the
heart is opened by compassion, and the
head active in arranging
As soldiers, I grant, they can now only
gather, for the most part,
vainglorious laurels, whilst they adjust to
a hair the European
balance, taking especial care that no
bleak northern nook or sound
incline the beam. But the days of true
heroism are over, when a
citizen fought for his country like a
Fabricius or a Washington,
and then returned to his farm to let his
virtuous fervour run in a
more placid, but not a less salutary
stream. No, our British
heroes are oftener sent from the gaming
table than from the plough;
and their passions have been rather
inflamed by hanging with dumb
suspense on the turn of a die, than
sublimated by panting after the
adventurous march of virtue in the
historic page.
Destructive, however, as riches and
inherited honours are to the
human character, women are more
debased and cramped, if possible by
them, than men, because men may still,
in some degree, unfold their
faculties by becoming soldiers and
statesmen.
The statesman, it is true, might with
more propriety quit the Faro
Bank, or card-table, to guide the helm,
for he has still but to
shuffle and trick. The whole system of
British politics, if system
311
it may courteously be called, consisting
in multiplying dependents
and contriving taxes which grind the
poor to pamper the rich; thus
a war, or any wild goose chace is, as the
vulgar use the phrase, a
lucky turn-up of patronage for the
minister, whose chief merit is
the art of keeping himself in place.
It is not necessary then that he should
have bowels for the poor,
so he can secure for his family the odd
trick. Or should some show
of respect, for what is termed with
ignorant ostentation an
Englishman's birth-right, be expedient to
bubble the gruff mastiff
that he has to lead by the nose, he can
make an empty show, very
safely, by giving his single voice, and
suffering his light
squadron to file off to the other side.
And when a question of
humanity is agitated, he may dip a sop in
the milk of human
kindness, to silence Cerberus, and talk of
the interest which his
heart takes in an attempt to make the
earth no longer cry for
vengeance as it sucks in its children's
blood, though his cold hand
may at the very moment rivet their
chains, by sanctioning the
abominable traffick. A minister is no
longer a minister than while
he can carry a point, which he is
determined to carry. Yet it is
not necessary that a minister should feel
like a man, when a bold
push might shake his seat.
But, to have done with these episodical
observations, let me return
to the more specious slavery which
chains the very soul of woman,
keeping her for ever under the bondage
of ignorance.
The preposterous distinctions of rank,
which render civilization a
curse, by dividing the world between
voluptuous tyrants, and
cunning envious dependents, corrupt,
almost equally, every class of
people, because respectability is not
attached to the discharge of
the relative duties of life, but to the
station, and when the
duties are not fulfilled, the affections
cannot gain sufficient
strength to fortify the virtue of which
they are the natural
reward. Still there are some loop-holes
out of which a man may
creep, and dare to think and act for
himself; but for a woman it is
an herculean task, because she has
difficulties peculiar to her sex
to overcome, which require almost
super-human powers.
A truly benevolent legislator always
endeavours to make it the
interest of each individual to be virtuous;
and thus private virtue
becoming the cement of public
happiness, an orderly whole is
consolidated by the tendency of all the
parts towards a common
centre. But, the private or public virtue
of women is very
problematical; for Rousseau, and a
numerous list of male writers,
insist that she should all her life, be
subjected to a severe
restraint, that of propriety. Why subject
her to propriety--blind
propriety, if she be capable of acting
from a nobler spring, if she
be an heir of immortality? Is sugar
always to be produced by vital
312
blood? Is one half of the human species,
like the poor African
slaves, to be subject to prejudices that
brutalize them, when
principles would be a surer guard only to
sweeten the cup of man?
Is not this indirectly to deny women
reason? for a gift is a
mockery, if it be unfit for use.
Women are in common with men,
rendered weak and luxurious by the
relaxing pleasures which wealth
procures; but added to this, they
are made slaves to their persons, and
must render them alluring,
that man may lend them his reason to
guide their tottering steps
aright. Or should they be ambitious,
they must govern their
tyrants by sinister tricks, for without
rights there cannot be any
incumbent duties. The laws respecting
woman, which I mean to
discuss in a future part, make an absurd
unit of a man and his
wife; and then, by the easy transition of
only considering him as
responsible, she is reduced to a mere
cypher.
The being who discharges the duties of
its station, is independent;
and, speaking of women at large, their
first duty is to themselves
as rational creatures, and the next, in
point of importance, as
citizens, is that, which includes so many,
of a mother. The rank
in life which dispenses with their
fulfilling this duty,
necessarily degrades them by making
them mere dolls. Or, should
they turn to something more important
than merely fitting drapery
upon a smooth block, their minds are
only occupied by some soft
platonic attachment; or, the actual
management of an intrigue may
keep their thoughts in motion; for when
they neglect domestic
duties, they have it not in their power to
take the field and march
and counter-march like soldiers, or
wrangle in the senate to keep
their faculties from rusting.
I know, that as a proof of the inferiority
of the sex, Rousseau has
exultingly exclaimed, How can they
leave the nursery for the camp!
And the camp has by some moralists
been termed the school of the
most heroic virtues; though, I think, it
would puzzle a keen
casuist to prove the reasonableness of
the greater number of wars,
that have dubbed heroes. I do not mean
to consider this question
critically; because, having frequently
viewed these freaks of
ambition as the first natural mode of
civilization, when the ground
must be torn up, and the woods cleared
by fire and sword, I do not
choose to call them pests; but surely the
present system of war,
has little connection with virtue of any
denomination, being rather
the school of FINESSE and effeminacy,
than of fortitude.
Yet, if defensive war, the only justifiable
war, in the present
advanced state of society, where virtue
can show its face and ripen
amidst the rigours which purify the air
on the mountain's top, were
alone to be adopted as just and glorious,
the true heroism of
313
antiquity might again animate female
bosoms. But fair and softly,
gentle reader, male or female, do not
alarm thyself, for though I
have contrasted the character of a
modern soldier with that of a
civilized woman, I am not going to
advise them to turn their
distaff into a musket, though I sincerely
wish to see the bayonet
converted into a pruning hook. I only
recreated an imagination,
fatigued by contemplating the vices and
follies which all proceed
from a feculent stream of wealth that has
muddied the pure rills of
natural affection, by supposing that
society will some time or
other be so constituted, that man must
necessarily fulfil the
duties of a citizen, or be despised, and
that while he was employed
in any of the departments of civil life,
his wife, also an active
citizen, should be equally intent to
manage her family, educate her
children, and assist her neighbours.
But, to render her really virtuous and
useful, she must not, if she
discharge her civil duties, want,
individually, the protection of
civil laws; she must not be dependent on
her husband's bounty for
her subsistence during his life, or
support after his death--for
how can a being be generous who has
nothing of its own? or,
virtuous, who is not free? The wife, in
the present state of
things, who is faithful to her husband,
and neither suckles nor
educates her children, scarcely deserves
the name of a wife, and
has no right to that of a citizen. But take
away natural rights,
and there is of course an end of duties.
Women thus infallibly become only the
wanton solace of men, when
they are so weak in mind and body, that
they cannot exert
themselves, unless to pursue some frothy
pleasure, or to invent
some frivolous fashion. What can be a
more melancholy sight to a
thinking mind, than to look into the
numerous carriages that drive
helter-skelter about this metropolis in a
morning, full of
pale-faced creatures who are flying from
themselves. I have often
wished, with Dr. Johnson, to place some
of them in a little shop,
with half a dozen children looking up to
their languid countenances
for support. I am much mistaken, if
some latent vigour would not
soon give health and spirit to their eyes,
and some lines drawn by
the exercise of reason on the blank
cheeks, which before were only
undulated by dimples, might restore lost
dignity to the character,
or rather enable it to attain the true
dignity of its nature.
Virtue is not to be acquired even by
speculation, much less by the
negative supineness that wealth naturally
generates.
Besides, when poverty is more
disgraceful than even vice, is not
morality cut to the quick? Still to avoid
misconstruction, though
I consider that women in the common
walks of life are called to
fulfil the duties of wives and mothers, by
religion and reason, I
cannot help lamenting that women of a
superiour cast have not a
314
road open by which they can pursue
more extensive plans of
usefulness and independence. I may
excite laughter, by dropping an
hint, which I mean to pursue, some
future time, for I really think
that women ought to have
representatives, instead of being
arbitrarily governed without having any
direct share allowed them
in the deliberations of government.
same character, in some degree, will
prevail in the aggregate of
society: and the refinements of luxury,
or the vicious repinings
of envious poverty, will equally banish
virtue from society,
considered as the characteristic of that
society, or only allow it
to appear as one of the stripes of the
harlequin coat, worn by the
civilized man.
But, as the whole system of
representation is now, in this country,
only a convenient handle for despotism,
they need not complain, for
they are as well represented as a
numerous class of hard working
mechanics, who pay for the support of
royality when they can
scarcely stop their children's mouths
with bread. How are they
represented, whose very sweat supports
the splendid stud of an heir
apparent, or varnishes the chariot of
some female favourite who
looks down on shame? Taxes on the
very necessaries of life, enable
an endless tribe of idle princes and
princesses to pass with stupid
pomp before a gaping crowd, who
almost worship the very parade
which costs them so dear. This is mere
gothic grandeur, something
like the barbarous, useless parade of
having sentinels on horseback
at Whitehall, which I could never view
without a mixture of
contempt and indignation.
In the superiour ranks of life, every duty
is done by deputies, as
if duties could ever be waved, and the
vain pleasures which
consequent idleness forces the rich to
pursue, appear so enticing
to the next rank, that the numerous
scramblers for wealth sacrifice
every thing to tread on their heels. The
most sacred trusts are
then considered as sinecures, because
they were procured by
interest, and only sought to enable a man
to keep GOOD COMPANY.
Women, in particular, all want to be
ladies. Which is simply to
have nothing to do, but listlessly to go
they scarcely care where,
for they cannot tell what.
How strangely must the mind be
sophisticated when this sort of
state impresses it! But till these
monuments of folly are levelled
by virtue, similar follies will leaven the
whole mass. For the
But what have women to do in society?
I may be asked, but to
loiter with easy grace; surely you would
not condemn them all to
suckle fools, and chronicle small beer!
No. Women might certainly
study the art of healing, and be
physicians as well as nurses. And
midwifery, decency seems to allot to
them, though I am afraid the
word midwife, in our dictionaries, will
soon give place to
accoucheur, and one proof of the former
delicacy of the sex be
315
effaced from the language.
They might, also study politics, and
settle their benevolence on
the broadest basis; for the reading of
history will scarcely be
more useful than the perusal of
romances, if read as mere
biography; if the character of the times,
the political
improvements, arts, etc. be not observed.
In short, if it be not
considered as the history of man; and not
of particular men, who
filled a niche in the temple of fame, and
dropped into the black
rolling stream of time, that silently
sweeps all before it, into
the shapeless void called eternity. For
shape can it be called,
"that shape hath none?"
Business of various kinds, they might
likewise pursue, if they were
educated in a more orderly manner,
which might save many from
common and legal prostitution. Women
would not then marry for a
support, as men accept of places under
government, and neglect the
implied duties; nor would an attempt to
earn their own subsistence,
a most laudable one! sink them almost to
the level of those poor
abandoned creatures who live by
prostitution. For are not
milliners and mantuamakers reckoned
the next class? The few
employments open to women, so far
from being liberal, are menial;
and when a superior education enables
them to take charge of the
education of children as governesses,
they are not treated like the
tutors of sons, though even clerical
tutors are not always treated
in a manner calculated to render them
respectable in the eyes of
their pupils, to say nothing of the private
comfort of the
individual. But as women educated like
gentlewomen, are never
designed for the humiliating situation
which necessity sometimes
forces them to fill; these situations are
considered in the light
of a degradation; and they know little of
the human heart, who need
to be told, that nothing so painfully
sharpens the sensibility as
such a fall in life.
Some of these women might be
restrained from marrying by a proper
spirit or delicacy, and others may not
have had it in their power
to escape in this pitiful way from
servitude; is not that
government then very defective, and
very unmindful of the happiness
of one half of its members, that does not
provide for honest,
independent women, by encouraging
them to fill respectable
stations? But in order to render their
private virtue a public
benefit, they must have a civil existence
in the state, married or
single; else we shall continually see
some worthy woman, whose
sensibility has been rendered painfully
acute by undeserved
contempt, droop like "the lily broken
down by a plough share."
It is a melancholy truth; yet such is the
blessed effects of
civilization! the most respectable women
are the most oppressed;
and, unless they have understandings far
superiour to the common
316
run of understandings, taking in both
sexes, they must, from being
treated like contemptible beings, become
contemptible. How many
women thus waste life away, the prey of
discontent, who might have
practised as physicians, regulated a farm,
managed a shop, and
stood erect, supported by their own
industry, instead of hanging
their heads surcharged with the dew of
sensibility, that consumes
the beauty to which it at first gave lustre;
nay, I doubt whether
pity and love are so near a-kin as poets
feign, for I have seldom
seen much compassion excited by the
helplessness of females, unless
they were fair; then, perhaps, pity was
the soft handmaid of love,
or the harbinger of lust.
How much more respectable is the
woman who earns her own bread by
fulfilling any duty, than the most
accomplished beauty! beauty did
I say? so sensible am I of the beauty of
moral loveliness, or the
harmonious propriety that attunes the
passions of a well-regulated
mind, that I blush at making the
comparison; yet I sigh to think
how few women aim at attaining this
respectability, by withdrawing
from the giddy whirl of pleasure, or the
indolent calm that
stupifies the good sort of women it sucks
in.
Proud of their weakness, however, they
must always be protected,
guarded from care, and all the rough
toils that dignify the mind.
If this be the fiat of fate, if they will
make themselves
insignificant and contemptible, sweetly
to waste "life away," let
them not expect to be valued when their
beauty fades, for it is the
fate of the fairest flowers to be admired
and pulled to pieces by
the careless hand that plucked them. In
how many ways do I wish,
from the purest benevolence, to impress
this truth on my sex; yet I
fear that they will not listen to a truth,
that dear-bought
experience has brought home to many an
agitated bosom, nor
willingly resign the privileges of rank
and sex for the privileges
of humanity, to which those have no
claim who do not discharge its
duties.
Those writers are particularly useful, in
my opinion, who make man
feel for man, independent of the station
he fills, or the drapery
of factitious sentiments. I then would
fain convince reasonable
men of the importance of some of my
remarks and prevail on them to
weigh dispassionately the whole tenor of
my observations. I appeal
to their understandings; and, as a fellowcreature claim, in the
name of my sex, some interest in their
hearts. I entreat them to
assist to emancipate their companion to
make her a help meet for
them!
Would men but generously snap our
chains, and be content with
rational fellowship, instead of slavish
obedience, they would find
us more observant daughters, more
affectionate sisters, more
faithful wives, more reasonable mothers-in a word, better
317
citizens. We should then love them with
true affection, because we
should learn to respect ourselves; and the
peace of mind of a
worthy man would not be interrupted by
the idle vanity of his wife,
nor his babes sent to nestle in a strange
bosom, having never found
a home in their mother's.
CHAPTER 10.
PARENTAL AFFECTION.
Parental affection is, perhaps, the
blindest modification of
perverse self-love; for we have not, like
the French two terms
(L'amour propre, L'amour de soi meme)
to distinguish the pursuit of
a natural and reasonable desire, from the
ignorant calculations of
weakness. Parents often love their
children in the most brutal
manner, and sacrifice every relative duty
to promote their
advancement in the world. To promote,
such is the perversity of
unprincipled prejudices, the future
welfare of the very beings
whose present existence they imbitter by
the most despotic stretch
of power. Power, in fact, is ever true to
its vital principle, for
in every shape it would reign without
controul or inquiry. Its
throne is built across a dark abyss, which
no eye must dare to
explore, lest the baseless fabric should
totter under
investigation. Obedience, unconditional
obedience, is the
catch-word of tyrants of every
description, and to render
"assurance doubly sure," one kind of
despotism supports another.
Tyrants would have cause to tremble if
reason were to become the
rule of duty in any of the relations of
life, for the light might
spread till perfect day appeared. And
when it did appear, how
would men smile at the sight of the
bugbears at which they started
during the night of ignorance, or the
twilight of timid inquiry.
Parental affection, indeed, in many
minds, is but a pretext to
tyrannize where it can be done with
impunity, for only good and
wise men are content with the respect
that will bear discussion.
Convinced that they have a right to what
they insist on, they do
not fear reason, or dread the sifting of
subjects that recur to
natural justice: because they firmly
believe, that the more
enlightened the human mind becomes,
the deeper root will just and
simple principles take. They do not rest
in expedients, or grant
that what is metaphysically true can be
practically false; but
disdaining the shifts of the moment they
calmly wait till time,
sanctioning innovation, silences the hiss
of selfishness or envy.
If the power of reflecting on the past,
and darting the keen eye of
contemplation into futurity, be the grand
privilege of man, it must
be granted that some people enjoy this
prerogative in a very
limited degree. Every thing now appears
to them wrong; and not
able to distinguish the possible from the
monstrous, they fear
318
where no fear should find a place,
running from the light of reason
as if it were a firebrand; yet the limits of
the possible have
never been defined to stop the sturdy
innovator's hand.
Woman, however, a slave in every
situation to prejudice seldom
exerts enlightened maternal affection;
for she either neglects her
children, or spoils them by improper
indulgence. Besides, the
affection of some women for their
children is, as I have before
termed it, frequently very brutish; for it
eradicates every spark
of humanity. Justice, truth, every thing
is sacrificed by these
Rebekahs, and for the sake of their own
children they violate the
most sacred duties, forgetting the
common relationship that binds
the whole family on earth together. Yet,
reason seems to say, that
they who suffer one duty, or affection to
swallow up the rest, have
not sufficient heart or mind to fulfil that
one conscientiously.
It then loses the venerable aspect of a
duty, and assumes the
fantastic form of a whim.
As the care of children in their infancy is
one of the grand duties
annexed to the female character by
nature, this duty would afford
many forcible arguments for
strengthening the female understanding,
if it were properly considered.
The formation of the mind must be
begun very early, and the temper,
in particular, requires the most judicious
attention--an attention
which women cannot pay who only love
their children because they
are their children, and seek no further for
the foundation of their
duty, than in the feelings of the moment.
It is this want of
reason in their affections which makes
women so often run into
extremes, and either be the most fond, or
most careless and
unnatural mothers.
To be a good mother--a woman must
have sense, and that independence
of mind which few women possess who
are taught to depend entirely
on their husbands. Meek wives are, in
general, foolish mothers;
wanting their children to love them best,
and take their part, in
secret, against the father, who is held up
as a scarecrow. If they
are to be punished, though they have
offended the mother, the
father must inflict the punishment; he
must be the judge in all
disputes: but I shall more fully discuss
this subject when I treat
of private education, I now only mean to
insist, that unless the
understanding of woman be enlarged,
and her character rendered more
firm, by being allowed to govern her
own conduct, she will never
have sufficient sense or command of
temper to manage her children
properly. Her parental affection, indeed,
scarcely deserves the
name, when it does not lead her to
suckle her children, because the
discharge of this duty is equally
calculated to inspire maternal
and filial affection; and it is the
indispensable duty of men and
women to fulfil the duties which give
birth to affections that are
319
the surest preservatives against vice.
Natural affection, as it is
termed, I believe to be a very weak tie,
affections must grow out
of the habitual exercise of a mutual
sympathy; and what sympathy
does a mother exercise who sends her
babe to a nurse, and only
takes it from a nurse to send it to a
school?
In the exercise of their natural feelings,
providence has furnished
women with a natural substitute for love,
when the lover becomes
only a friend and mutual confidence
takes place of overstrained
admiration--a child then gently twists the
relaxing cord, and a
mutual care produces a new mutual
sympathy. But a child, though a
pledge of affection, will not enliven it, if
both father and mother
are content to transfer the charge to
hirelings; for they who do
their duty by proxy should not murmur if
they miss the reward of
duty--parental affection produces filial
duty.
CHAPTER 11.
DUTY TO PARENTS.
There seems to be an indolent propensity
in man to make
prescription always take place of reason,
and to place every duty
on an arbitrary foundation. The rights of
kings are deduced in a
direct line from the King of kings; and
that of parents from our
first parent.
Why do we thus go back for principles
that should always rest on
the same base, and have the same weight
to-day that they had a
thousand years ago--and not a jot more?
If parents discharge their
duty they have a strong hold and sacred
claim on the gratitude of
their children; but few parents are
willing to receive the
respectful affection of their offspring on
such terms. They demand
blind obedience, because they do not
merit a reasonable service:
and to render these demands of
weakness and ignorance more binding,
a mysterious sanctity is spread round the
most arbitrary principle;
for what other name can be given to the
blind duty of obeying
vicious or weak beings, merely because
they obeyed a powerful
instinct? The simple definition of the
reciprocal duty, which
naturally subsists between parent and
child, may be given in a few
words: The parent who pays proper
attention to helpless infancy
has a right to require the same attention
when the feebleness of
age comes upon him. But to subjugate a
rational being to the mere
will of another, after he is of age to
answer to society for his
own conduct, is a most cruel and undue
stretch of power; and
perhaps as injurious to morality, as those
religious systems which
do not allow right and wrong to have any
existence, but in the
Divine will.
I never knew a parent who had paid
more than common attention to
his children, disregarded (Dr. Johnson
makes the same
320
observation.); on the contrary, the early
habit of relying almost
implicitly on the opinion of a respected
parent is not easily
shaken, even when matured reason
convinces the child that his
father is not the wisest man in the world.
This weakness, for a
weakness it is, though the epithet
AMIABLE may be tacked to it, a
reasonable man must steel himself
against; for the absurd duty, too
often inculcated, of obeying a parent
only on account of his being
a parent, shackles the mind, and prepares
it for a slavish
submission to any power but reason.
I distinguish between the natural and
accidental duty due to
parents.
The parent who sedulously endeavours
to form the heart and enlarge
the understanding of his child, has given
that dignity to the
discharge of a duty, common to the
whole animal world, that only
reason can give. This is the parental
affection of humanity, and
leaves instinctive natural affection far
behind. Such a parent
acquires all the rights of the most sacred
friendship, and his
advice, even when his child is advanced
in life, demands serious
consideration.
With respect to marriage, though after
one and twenty a parent
seems to have no right to withhold his
consent on any account; yet
twenty years of solicitude call for a
return, and the son ought, at
least, to promise not to marry for two or
three years, should the
object of his choice not entirely meet
with the approbation of his
first friend.
But, respect for parents is, generally
speaking, a much more
debasing principle; it is only a selfish
respect for property. The
father who is blindly obeyed, is obeyed
from sheer weakness, or
from motives that degrade the human
character.
A great proportion of the misery that
wanders, in hideous forms
around the world, is allowed to rise from
the negligence of
parents; and still these are the people
who are most tenacious of
what they term a natural right, though it
be subversive of the
birth right of man, the right of acting
according to the direction
of his own reason.
I have already very frequently had
occasion to observe, that
vicious or indolent people are always
eager to profit by enforcing
arbitrary privileges; and generally in the
same proportion as they
neglect the discharge of the duties which
alone render the
privileges reasonable. This is at the
bottom, a dictate of common
sense, or the instinct of self-defence,
peculiar to ignorant
weakness; resembling that instinct,
which makes a fish muddy the
water it swims in to elude its enemy,
instead of boldly facing it
in the clear stream.
>From the clear stream of argument,
indeed, the supporters of
321
prescription, of every denomination, fly:
and taking refuge in the
darkness, which, in the language of
sublime poetry, has been
supposed to surround the throne of
Omnipotence, they dare to demand
that implicit respect which is only due to
His unsearchable ways.
But, let me not be thought
presumptuous, the darkness which hides
our God from us, only respects
speculative truths-- it never
obscures moral ones, they shine clearly,
for God is light, and
never, by the constitution of our nature,
requires the discharge of
a duty, the reasonableness of which does
not beam on us when we
open our eyes.
The indolent parent of high rank may, it
is true, extort a show of
respect from his child, and females on
the continent are
particularly subject to the views of their
families, who never
think of consulting their inclination, or
providing for the comfort
of the poor victims of their pride. The
consequence is notorious;
these dutiful daughters become
adulteresses, and neglect the
education of their children, from whom
they, in their turn, exact
the same kind of obedience.
Females, it is true, in all countries, are
too much under the
dominion of their parents; and few
parents think of addressing
their children in the following manner,
though it is in this
reasonable way that Heaven seems to
command the whole human race.
It is your interest to obey me till you can
judge for yourself; and
the Almighty Father of all has implanted
an affection in me to
serve as a guard to you whilst your
reason is unfolding; but when
your mind arrives at maturity, you must
only obey me, or rather
respect my opinions, so far as they
coincide with the light that is
breaking in on your own mind.
A slavish bondage to parents cramps
every faculty of the mind; and
Mr. Locke very judiciously observes,
that "if the mind be curbed
and humbled too much in children; if
their spirits be abased and
broken much by too strict an hand over
them; they lose all their
vigour and industry." This strict hand
may, in some degree,
account for the weakness of women; for
girls, from various causes,
are more kept down by their parents, in
every sense of the word,
than boys. The duty expected from them
is, like all the duties
arbitrarily imposed on women, more
from a sense of propriety, more
out of respect for decorum, than reason;
and thus taught slavishly
to submit to their parents, they are
prepared for the slavery of
marriage. I may be told that a number of
women are not slaves in
the marriage state. True, but they then
become tyrants; for it is
not rational freedom, but a lawless kind
of power, resembling the
authority exercised by the favourites of
absolute monarchs, which
they obtain by debasing means. I do not,
likewise, dream of
insinuating that either boys or girls are
always slaves, I only
insist, that when they are obliged to
submit to authority blindly,
322
their faculties are weakened, and their
tempers rendered imperious
or abject. I also lament, that parents,
indolently availing
themselves of a supposed privilege,
damp the first faint glimmering
of reason rendering at the same time the
duty, which they are so
anxious to enforce, an empty name;
because they will not let it
rest on the only basis on which a duty
can rest securely: for,
unless it be founded on knowledge, it
cannot gain sufficient
strength to resist the squalls of passion,
or the silent sapping of
self-love. But it is not the parents who
have given the surest
proof of their affection for their children,
(or, to speak more
properly, who by fulfilling their duty,
have allowed a natural
parental affection to take root in their
hearts, the child of
exercised sympathy and reason, and not
the over-weening offspring
of selfish pride,) who most vehemently
insist on their children
submitting to their will, merely because
it is their will. On the
contrary, the parent who sets a good
example, patiently lets that
example work; and it seldom fails to
produce its natural
effect--filial respect.
Children cannot be taught too early to
submit to reason, the true
definition of that necessity, which
Rousseau insisted on, without
defining it; for to submit to reason, is to
submit to the nature of
things, and to that God who formed them
so, to promote our real
interest.
Why should the minds of children be
warped as they just begin to
expand, only to favour the indolence of
parents, who insist on a
privilege without being willing to pay
the price fixed by nature?
I have before had occasion to observe,
that a right always includes
a duty, and I think it may, likewise fairly
be inferred, that they
forfeit the right, who do not fulfil the
duty.
It is easier, I grant, to command than
reason; but it does not
follow from hence, that children cannot
comprehend the reason why
they are made to do certain things
habitually; for, from a steady
adherence to a few simple principles of
conduct flows that salutary
power, which a judicious parent
gradually gains over a child's
mind. And this power becomes strong
indeed, if tempered by an even
display of affection brought home to the
child's heart. For, I
believe, as a general rule, it must be
allowed, that the affection
which we inspire always resembles that
we cultivate; so that
natural affections, which have been
supposed almost distinct from
reason, may be found more nearly
connected with judgment than is
commonly allowed. Nay, as another
proof of the necessity of
cultivating the female understanding, it
is but just to observe,
that the affections seem to have a kind of
animal capriciousness
when they merely reside in the heart.
It is the irregular exercise of parental
authority that first
323
injures the mind, and to these
irregularities girls are more
subject than boys. The will of those who
never allow their will to
be disputed, unless they happen to be in
a good humour, when they
relax proportionally, is almost always
unreasonable. To elude this
arbitrary authority, girls very early learn
the lessons which they
afterwards practise on their husbands;
for I have frequently seen a
little sharp-faced miss rule a whole
family, excepting that now and
then mamma's anger will burst out of
some accidental cloud-- either
her hair was ill-dressed,* or she had lost
more money at cards, the
night before, than she was willing to
own to her husband; or some
such moral cause of anger.
principle is to teach them to despise their
parents. Children
cannot, ought not to be taught to make
allowance for the faults of
their parents, because every such
allowance weakens the force of
reason in their minds, and makes them
still more indulgent to their
own. It is one of the most sublime
virtues of maturity that leads
us to be severe with respect to ourselves,
and forbearing to
others; but children should only be
taught the simple virtues, for
if they begin too early to make
allowance for human passions and
manners, they wear off the fine edge of
the criterion by which they
should regulate their own, and become
unjust in the same proportion
as they grow indulgent.
(*Footnote. I myself heard a little girl
once say to a servant,
"My mamma has been scolding me
finely this morning, because her
hair was not dressed to please her."
Though this remark was pert,
it was just. And what respect could a
girl acquire for such a
parent, without doing violence to
reason?)
The affections of children, and weak
people, are always selfish;
they love others, because others love
them, and not on account of
their virtues. Yet, till esteem and love
are blended together in
the first affection, and reason made the
foundation of the first
duty, morality will stumble at the
threshold. But, till society is
very differently constituted, parents, I
fear, will still insist on
being obeyed, because they will be
obeyed, and constantly endeavour
to settle that power on a Divine right,
which will not bear the
investigation of reason.
After observing sallies of this kind, I
have been led into a
melancholy train of reflection respecting
females, concluding that
when their first affection must lead them
astray, or make their
duties clash till they rest on mere whims
and customs, little can
be expected from them as they advance
in life. How, indeed, can an
instructor remedy this evil? for to teach
them virtue on any solid
CHAPTER 12.
ON NATIONAL EDUCATION.
324
The good effects resulting from attention
to private education will
ever be very confined, and the parent
who really puts his own hand
to the plow, will always, in some degree
be disappointed, till
education becomes a grand national
concern. A man cannot retire
into a desert with his child, and if he did,
he could not bring
himself back to childhood, and become
the proper friend and
play-fellow of an infant or youth. And
when children are confined
to the society of men and women, they
very soon acquire that kind
of premature manhood which stops the
growth of every vigorous power
of mind or body. In order to open their
faculties they should be
excited to think for themselves; and this
can only be done by
mixing a number of children together,
and making them jointly
pursue the same objects.
A child very soon contracts a benumbing
indolence of mind, which he
has seldom sufficient vigour to shake
off, when he only asks a
question instead of seeking for
information, and then relies
implicitly on the answer he receives.
With his equals in age this
could never be the case, and the subjects
of inquiry, though they
might be influenced, would not be
entirely under the direction of
men, who frequently damp, if not
destroy abilities, by bringing
them forward too hastily: and too
hastily they will infallibly be
brought forward, if the child could be
confined to the society of a
man, however sagacious that man may
be.
Besides, in youth the seeds of every
affection should be sown, and
the respectful regard, which is felt for a
parent, is very
different from the social affections that
are to constitute the
happiness of life as it advances. Of
these, equality is the basis,
and an intercourse of sentiments
unclogged by that observant
seriousness which prevents disputation,
though it may not inforce
submission. Let a child have ever such
an affection for his
parent, he will always languish to play
and chat with children; and
the very respect he entertains, for filial
esteem always has a dash
of fear mixed with it, will, if it do not
teach him cunning, at
least prevent him from pouring out the
little secrets which first
open the heart to friendship and
confidence, gradually leading to
more expansive benevolence. Added to
this, he will never acquire
that frank ingenuousness of behaviour,
which young people can only
attain by being frequently in society,
where they dare to speak
what they think; neither afraid of being
reproved for their
presumption, nor laughed at for their
folly.
Forcibly impressed by the reflections
which the sight of schools,
as they are at present conducted,
naturally suggested, I have
formerly delivered my opinion rather
warmly in favour of a private
education; but further experience has led
me to view the subject in
a different light. I still, however, think
schools, as they are
325
now regulated, the hot-beds of vice and
folly, and the knowledge of
human nature, supposed to be attained
there, merely cunning
selfishness.
At school, boys become gluttons and
slovens, and, instead of
cultivating domestic affections, very
early rush into the
libertinism which destroys the
constitution before it is formed;
hardening the heart as it weakens the
understanding.
I should, in fact, be averse to boardingschools, if it were for no
other reason than the unsettled state of
mind which the expectation
of the vacations produce. On these the
children's thoughts are
fixed with eager anticipating hopes, for,
at least, to speak with
moderation, half of the time, and when
they arrive they are spent
in total dissipation and beastly
indulgence.
But, on the contrary, when they are
brought up at home, though they
may pursue a plan of study in a more
orderly manner than can be
adopted, when near a fourth part of the
year is actually spent in
idleness, and as much more in regret and
anticipation; yet they
there acquire too high an opinion of their
own importance, from
being allowed to tyrannize over servants,
and from the anxiety
expressed by most mothers, on the score
of manners, who, eager to
teach the accomplishments of a
gentleman, stifle, in their birth,
the virtues of a man. Thus brought into
company when they ought to
be seriously employed, and treated like
men when they are still
boys, they become vain and effeminate.
The only way to avoid two extremes
equally injurious to morality,
would be to contrive some way of
combining a public and private
education. Thus to make men citizens,
two natural steps might be
taken, which seem directly to lead to the
desired point; for the
domestic affections, that first open the
heart to the various
modifications of humanity would be
cultivated, whilst the children
were nevertheless allowed to spend great
part of their time, on
terms of equality, with other children.
I still recollect, with pleasure, the
country day school; where a
boy trudged in the morning, wet or dry,
carrying his books, and his
dinner, if it were at a considerable
distance; a servant did not
then lead master by the hand, for, when
he had once put on coat and
breeches, he was allowed to shift for
himself, and return alone in
the evening to recount the feats of the
day close at the parental
knee. His father's house was his home,
and was ever after fondly
remembered; nay, I appeal to some
superior men who were educated in
this manner, whether the recollection of
some shady lane where they
conned their lesson; or, of some stile,
where they sat making a
kite, or mending a bat, has not endeared
their country to them?
But, what boy ever recollected with
pleasure the years he spent in
326
close confinement, at an academy near
London? unless indeed he
should by chance remember the poor
scare-crow of an usher whom he
tormented; or, the tartman, from whom
he caught a cake, to devour
it with the cattish appetite of selfishness.
At boarding schools
of every description, the relaxation of
the junior boys is
mischief; and of the senior, vice.
Besides, in great schools what
can be more prejudicial to the moral
character, than the system of
tyranny and abject slavery which is
established amongst the boys,
to say nothing of the slavery to forms,
which makes religion worse
than a farce? For what good can be
expected from the youth who
receives the sacrament of the Lord's
supper, to avoid forfeiting
half-a-guinea, which he probably
afterwards spends in some sensual
manner? Half the employment of the
youths is to elude the
necessity of attending public worship;
and well they may, for such
a constant repetition of the same thing
must be a very irksome
restraint on their natural vivacity. As
these ceremonies have the
most fatal effect on their morals, and as
a ritual performed by the
lips, when the heart and mind are far
away, is not now stored up by
our church as a bank to draw on for the
fees of the poor souls in
purgatory, why should they not be
abolished?
But the fear of innovation, in this
country, extends to every
thing. This is only a covert fear, the
apprehensive timidity of
indolent slugs, who guard, by sliming it
over, the snug place,
which they consider in the light of an
hereditary estate; and eat,
drink, and enjoy themselves, instead of
fulfilling the duties,
excepting a few empty forms, for which
it was endowed. These are
the people who most strenuously insist
on the will of the founder
being observed, crying out against all
reformation, as if it were a
violation of justice. I am now alluding
particularly to the
relicks of popery retained in our
colleges, where the protestant
members seem to be such sticklers for
the established church; but
their zeal never makes them lose sight of
the spoil of ignorance,
which rapacious priests of superstitious
memory have scraped
together. No, wise in their generation,
they venerate the
prescriptive right of possession, as a
strong hold, and still let
the sluggish bell tingle to prayers, as
during the days, when the
elevation of the host was supposed to
atone for the sins of the
people, lest one reformation should lead
to another, and the spirit
kill the letter. These Romish customs
have the most baneful effect
on the morals of our clergy; for the idle
vermin who two or three
times a day perform, in the most
slovenly manner a service which
they think useless, but call their duty,
soon lose a sense of duty.
At college, forced to attend or evade
public worship, they acquire
an habitual contempt for the very
service, the performance of which
is to enable them to live in idleness. It is
mumbled over as an
327
affair of business, as a stupid boy repeats
his task, and
frequently the college cant escapes from
the preacher the moment
after he has left the pulpit, and even
whilst he is eating the
dinner which he earned in such a
dishonest manner.
Nothing, indeed, can be more irreverent
than the cathedral service
as it is now performed in this country,
neither does it contain a
set of weaker men than those who are
the slaves of this childish
routine. A disgusting skeleton of the
former state is still
exhibited; but all the solemnity, that
interested the imagination,
if it did not purify the heart, is stripped
off. The performance
of high mass on the continent must
impress every mind, where a
spark of fancy glows, with that awful
melancholy, that sublime
tenderness, so near a-kin to devotion. I
do not say, that these
devotional feelings are of more use, in a
moral sense, than any
other emotion of taste; but I contend,
that the theatrical pomp
which gratifies our senses, is to be
preferred to the cold parade
that insults the understanding without
reaching the heart.
Amongst remarks on national education,
such observations cannot be
misplaced, especially as the supporters
of these establishments,
degenerated into puerilities, affect to be
the champions of
religion. Religion, pure source of
comfort in this vale of tears!
how has thy clear stream been muddied
by the dabblers, who have
presumptuously endeavoured to confine
in one narrow channel, the
living waters that ever flow toward God- the sublime ocean of
existence! What would life be without
that peace which the love of
God, when built on humanity, alone can
impart? Every earthly
affection turns back, at intervals, to prey
upon the heart that
feeds it; and the purest effusions of
benevolence, often rudely
damped by men, must mount as a freewill offering to Him who gave
them birth, whose bright image they
faintly reflect.
In public schools, however, religion,
confounded with irksome
ceremonies and unreasonable restraints,
assumes the most ungracious
aspect: not the sober austere one that
commands respect whilst it
inspires fear; but a ludicrous cast, that
serves to point a pun.
For, in fact, most of the good stories and
smart things which
enliven the spirits that have been
concentrated at whist, are
manufactured out of the incidents to
which the very men labour to
give a droll turn who countenance the
abuse to live on the spoil.
There is not, perhaps, in the kingdom, a
more dogmatical or
luxurious set of men, than the pedantic
tyrants who reside in
colleges and preside at public schools.
The vacations are equally
injurious to the morals of the masters
and pupils, and the
intercourse, which the former keep up
with the nobility, introduces
the same vanity and extravagance into
their families, which banish
328
domestic duties and comforts from the
lordly mansion, whose state
is awkwardly aped on a smaller scale.
The boys, who live at a
great expence with the masters and
assistants, are never
domesticated, though placed there for
that purpose; for, after a
silent dinner, they swallow a hasty glass
of wine, and retire to
plan some mischievous trick, or to
ridicule the person or manners
of the very people they have just been
cringing to, and whom they
ought to consider as the representatives
of their parents.
Can it then be a matter of surprise, that
boys become selfish and
vicious who are thus shut out from social
converse? or that a mitre
often graces the brow of one of these
diligent pastors? The desire
of living in the same style, as the rank
just above them, infects
each individual and every class of
people, and meanness is the
concomitant of this ignoble ambition;
but those professions are
most debasing whose ladder is
patronage; yet out of one of these
professions the tutors of youth are in
general chosen. But, can
they be expected to inspire independent
sentiments, whose conduct
must be regulated by the cautious
prudence that is ever on the
watch for preferment?
So far, however, from thinking of the
morals of boys, I have heard
several masters of schools argue, that
they only undertook to teach
Latin and Greek; and that they had
fulfilled their duty, by sending
some good scholars to college.
A few good scholars, I grant, may have
been formed by emulation and
discipline; but, to bring forward these
clever boys, the health and
morals of a number have been sacrificed.
The sons of our gentry and wealthy
commoners are mostly educated at
these seminaries, and will any one
pretend to assert, that the
majority, making every allowance, come
under the description of
tolerable scholars?
It is not for the benefit of society that a
few brilliant men
should be brought forward at the
expence of the multitude. It is
true, that great men seem to start up, as
great revolutions occur,
at proper intervals, to restore order, and
to blow aside the clouds
that thicken over the face of truth; but let
more reason and virtue
prevail in society, and these strong
winds would not be necessary.
Public education, of every denomination,
should be directed to form
citizens; but if you wish to make good
citizens, you must first
exercise the affections of a son and a
brother. This is the only
way to expand the heart; for public
affections, as well as public
virtues, must ever grow out of the
private character, or they are
merely meteors that shoot athwart a dark
sky, and disappear as they
are gazed at and admired.
Few, I believe, have had much affection
for mankind, who did not
first love their parents, their brothers,
sisters, and even the
329
domestic brutes, whom they first played
with. The exercise of
youthful sympathies forms the moral
temperature; and it is the
recollection of these first affections and
pursuits, that gives
life to those that are afterwards more
under the direction of
reason. In youth, the fondest friendships
are formed, the genial
juices mounting at the same time, kindly
mix; or, rather the heart,
tempered for the reception of friendship,
is accustomed to seek for
pleasure in something more noble than
the churlish gratification of
appetite.
In order then to inspire a love of home
and domestic pleasures,
children ought to be educated at home,
for riotous holidays only
make them fond of home for their own
sakes. Yet, the vacations,
which do not foster domestic affections,
continually disturb the
course of study, and render any plan of
improvement abortive which
includes temperance; still, were they
abolished, children would be
entirely separated from their parents, and
I question whether they
would become better citizens by
sacrificing the preparatory
affections, by destroying the force of
relationships that render
the marriage state as necessary as
respectable. But, if a private
education produce self-importance, or
insulates a man in his
family, the evil is only shifted, not
remedied.
This train of reasoning brings me back to
a subject, on which I
mean to dwell, the necessity of
establishing proper day-schools.
But these should be national
establishments, for whilst
school-masters are dependent on the
caprice of parents, little
exertion can be expected from them,
more than is necessary to
please ignorant people. Indeed, the
necessity of a master's giving
the parents some sample of the boy's
abilities, which during the
vacation, is shown to every visiter, is
productive of more mischief
than would at first be supposed. For
they are seldom done
entirely, to speak with moderation, by
the child itself; thus the
master countenances falsehoods, or
winds the poor machine up to
some extraordinary exertion, that injures
the wheels, and stops the
progress of gradual improvement. The
memory is loaded with
unintelligible words, to make a show of,
without the
understanding's acquiring any distinct
ideas: but only that
education deserves emphatically to be
termed cultivation of mind,
which teaches young people how to
begin to think. The imagination
should not be allowed to debauch the
understanding before it gained
strength, or vanity will become the
forerunner of vice: for every
way of exhibiting the acquirements of a
child is injurious to its
moral character.
How much time is lost in teaching them
to recite what they do not
understand! whilst, seated on benches,
all in their best array, the
330
mammas listen with astonishment to the
parrot-like prattle, uttered
in solemn cadences, with all the pomp of
ignorance and folly. Such
exhibitions only serve to strike the
spreading fibres of vanity
through the whole mind; for they neither
teach children to speak
fluently, nor behave gracefully. So far
from it, that these
frivolous pursuits might
comprehensively be termed the study of
affectation: for we now rarely see a
simple, bashful boy, though
few people of taste were ever disgusted
by that awkward
sheepishness so natural to the age, which
schools and an early
introduction into society, have changed
into impudence and apish
grimace.
Yet, how can these things be remedied
whilst schoolmasters depend
entirely on parents for a subsistence; and
when so many rival
schools hang out their lures to catch the
attention of vain fathers
and mothers, whose parental affection
only leads them to wish, that
their children should outshine those of
their neighbours?
Without great good luck, a sensible,
conscientious man, would
starve before he could raise a school, if
he disdained to bubble
weak parents, by practising the secret
tricks of the craft.
In the best regulated schools, however,
where swarms are not
crammed together many bad habits must
be acquired; but, at common
schools, the body, heart, and
understanding, are equally stunted,
for parents are often only in quest of the
cheapest school, and the
master could not live, if he did not take a
much greater number
than he could manage himself; nor will
the scanty pittance, allowed
for each child, permit him to hire ushers
sufficient to assist in
the discharge of the mechanical part of
the business. Besides,
whatever appearance the house and
garden may make, the children do
not enjoy the comforts of either, for they
are continually
reminded, by irksome restrictions, that
they are not at home, and
the state-rooms, garden, etc. must be
kept in order for the
recreation of the parents; who, of a
Sunday, visit the school, and
are impressed by the very parade that
renders the situation of
their children uncomfortable.
With what disgust have I heard sensible
women, for girls are more
restrained and cowed than boys, speak of
the wearisome confinement
which they endured at school. Not
allowed, perhaps, to step out of
one broad walk in a superb garden, and
obliged to pace with steady
deportment stupidly backwards and
forwards, holding up their heads,
and turning out their toes, with shoulders
braced back, instead of
bounding, as nature directs to complete
her own design, in the
various attitudes so conducive to health.
The pure animal spirits,
which make both mind and body shoot
out, and unfold the tender
blossoms of hope are turned sour, and
vented in vain wishes, or
pert repinings, that contract the faculties
and spoil the temper;
331
else they mount to the brain and
sharpening the understanding
before it gains proportionable strength,
produce that pitiful
cunning which disgracefully
characterizes the female mind--and I
fear will ever characterize it whilst
women remain the slaves of
power!
The little respect which the male world
pay to chastity is, I am
persuaded, the grand source of many of
the physical and moral evils
that torment mankind, as well as of the
vices and follies that
degrade and destroy women; yet at
school, boys infallibly lose that
decent bashfulness, which might have
ripened into modesty at home.
I have already animadverted on the bad
habits which females acquire
when they are shut up together; and I
think that the observation
may fairly be extended to the other sex,
till the natural inference
is drawn which I have had in view
throughout--that to improve both
sexes they ought, not only in private
families, but in public
schools, to be educated together. If
marriage be the cement of
society, mankind should all be educated
after the same model, or
the intercourse of the sexes will never
deserve the name of
fellowship, nor will women ever fulfil
the peculiar duties of their
sex, till they become enlightened
citizens, till they become free,
by being enabled to earn their own
subsistence, independent of men;
in the same manner, I mean, to prevent
misconstruction, as one man
is independent of another. Nay,
marriage will never be held sacred
till women by being brought up with
men, are prepared to be their
companions, rather than their mistresses;
for the mean doublings of
cunning will ever render them
contemptible, whilst oppression
renders them timid. So convinced am I
of this truth, that I will
venture to predict, that virtue will never
prevail in society till
the virtues of both sexes are founded on
reason; and, till the
affection common to both are allowed to
gain their due strength by
the discharge of mutual duties.
Were boys and girls permitted to pursue
the same studies together,
those graceful decencies might early be
inculcated which produce
modesty, without those sexual
distinctions that taint the mind.
Lessons of politeness, and that formulary
of decorum, which treads
on the heels of falsehood, would be
rendered useless by habitual
propriety of behaviour. Not, indeed put
on for visiters like the
courtly robe of politeness, but the sober
effect of cleanliness of
mind. Would not this simple elegance of
sincerity be a chaste
homage paid to domestic affections, far
surpassing the meretricious
compliments that shine with false lustre
in the heartless
intercourse of fashionable life? But, till
more understanding
preponderate in society, there will ever
be a want of heart and
taste, and the harlot's rouge will supply
the place of that
celestial suffusion which only virtuous
affections can give to the
332
face. Gallantry, and what is called love,
may subsist without
simplicity of character; but the main
pillars of friendship, are
respect and confidence--esteem is never
founded on it cannot tell
what.
A taste for the fine arts requires great
cultivation; but not more
than a taste for the virtuous affections:
and both suppose that
enlargement of mind which opens so
many sources of mental pleasure.
Why do people hurry to noisy scenes
and crowded circles? I should
answer, because they want activity of
mind, because they have not
cherished the virtues of the heart. They
only, therefore, see and
feel in the gross, and continually pine
after variety, finding
every thing that is simple, insipid.
This argument may be carried further
than philosophers are aware
of, for if nature destined woman, in
particular, for the discharge
of domestic duties, she made her
susceptible of the attached
affections in a great degree. Now
women are notoriously fond of
pleasure; and naturally must be so,
according to my definition,
because they cannot enter into the
minutiae of domestic taste;
lacking judgment the foundation of all
taste. For the
understanding, in spite of sensual
cavillers, reserves to itself
the privilege of conveying pure joy to
the heart.
With what a languid yawn have I seen an
admirable poem thrown down,
that a man of true taste returns to, again
and again with rapture;
and, whilst melody has almost
suspended respiration, a lady has
asked me where I bought my gown. I
have seen also an eye glanced
coldly over a most exquisite picture, rest,
sparkling with
pleasure, on a caricature rudely
sketched; and whilst some terrific
feature in nature has spread a sublime
stillness through my soul, I
have been desired to observe the pretty
tricks of a lap-dog, that
my perverse fate forced me to travel
with. Is it surprising, that
such a tasteless being should rather
caress this dog than her
children? Or, that she should prefer the
rant of flattery to the
simple accents of sincerity?
To illustrate this remark I must be
allowed to observe, that men of
the first genius, and most cultivated
minds, have appeared to have
the highest relish for the simple beauties
of nature; and they must
have forcibly felt, what they have so
well described, the charm,
which natural affections, and
unsophisticated feelings spread round
the human character. It is this power of
looking into the heart,
and responsively vibrating with each
emotion, that enables the poet
to personify each passion, and the
painter to sketch with a pencil
of fire.
True taste is ever the work of the
understanding employed in
observing natural effects; and till women
have more understanding,
it is vain to expect them to possess
domestic taste. Their lively
333
senses will ever be at work to harden
their hearts, and the
emotions struck out of them will
continue to be vivid and
transitory, unless a proper education
stores their minds with
knowledge.
It is the want of domestic taste, and not
the acquirement of
knowledge, that takes women out of
their families, and tears the
smiling babe from the breast that ought
to afford it nourishment.
Women have been allowed to remain in
ignorance, and slavish
dependence, many, very many years, and
still we hear of nothing but
their fondness of pleasure and sway,
their preference of rakes and
soldiers, their childish attachment to
toys, and the vanity that
makes them value accomplishments
more than virtues.
History brings forward a fearful
catalogue of the crimes which
their cunning has produced, when the
weak slaves have had
sufficient address to over-reach their
masters. In France, and in
how many other countries have men
been the luxurious despots, and
women the crafty ministers? Does this
prove that ignorance and
dependence domesticate them? Is not
their folly the by-word of the
libertines, who relax in their society; and
do not men of sense
continually lament, that an immoderate
fondness for dress and
dissipation carries the mother of a family
for ever from home?
Their hearts have not been debauched by
knowledge, nor their minds
led astray by scientific pursuits; yet, they
do not fulfil the
peculiar duties, which as women they
are called upon by nature to
fulfil. On the contrary, the state of
warfare which subsists
between the sexes, makes them employ
those wiles, that frustrate
the more open designs of force.
When, therefore, I call women slaves, I
mean in a political and
civil sense; for, indirectly they obtain too
much power, and are
debased by their exertions to obtain
illicit sway.
Let an enlightened nation then try what
effect reason would have to
bring them back to nature, and their
duty; and allowing them to
share the advantages of education and
government with man, see
whether they will become better, as they
grow wiser and become
free. They cannot be injured by the
experiment; for it is not in
the power of man to render them more
insignificant than they are at
present.
To render this practicable, day schools
for particular ages should
be established by government, in which
boys and girls might be
educated together. The school for the
younger children, from five
to nine years of age, ought to be
absolutely free and open to all
classes.* A sufficient number of masters
should also be chosen by
a select committee, in each parish, to
whom any complaint of
negligence, etc. might be made, if signed
by six of the children's
parents.
334
(*Footnote. Treating this part of the
subject, I have borrowed
some hints from a very sensible
pamphlet written by the late bishop
of Autun on public Education.)
Ushers would then be unnecessary; for, I
believe, experience will
ever prove, that this kind of subordinate
authority is particularly
injurious to the morals of youth. What,
indeed, can tend to
deprave the character more than outward
submission and inward
contempt? Yet, how can boys be
expected to treat an usher with
respect when the master seems to
consider him in the light of a
servant, and almost to countenance the
ridicule which becomes the
chief amusement of the boys during the
play hours?
But nothing of this kind could occur in
an elementary day-school,
where boys and girls, the rich and poor,
should meet together. And
to prevent any of the distinctions of
vanity, they should be
dressed alike, and all obliged to submit
to the same discipline, or
leave the school. The school-room
ought to be surrounded by a
large piece of ground, in which the
children might be usefully
exercised, for at this age they should not
be confined to any
sedentary employment for more than an
hour at a time. But these
relaxations might all be rendered a part
of elementary education,
for many things improve and amuse the
senses, when introduced as a
kind of show, to the principles of which
dryly laid down, children
would turn a deaf ear. For instance,
botany, mechanics, and
astronomy. Reading, writing, arithmetic,
natural history, and some
simple experiments in natural
philosophy, might fill up the day;
but these pursuits should never encroach
on gymnastic plays in the
open air. The elements of religion,
history, the history of man,
and politics, might also be taught by
conversations, in the
socratic form.
After the age of nine, girls and boys,
intended for domestic
employments, or mechanical trades,
ought to be removed to other
schools, and receive instruction, in some
measure appropriated to
the destination of each individual, the
two sexes being still
together in the morning; but in the
afternoon, the girls should
attend a school, where plain work,
mantua-making, millinery, etc.
would be their employment.
The young people of superior abilities,
or fortune, might now be
taught, in another school, the dead and
living languages, the
elements of science, and continue the
study of history and
politics, on a more extensive scale,
which would not exclude polite
literature. Girls and boys still together? I
hear some readers
ask: yes. And I should not fear any
other consequence, than that
some early attachment might take place;
which, whilst it had the
best effect on the moral character of the
young people, might not
perfectly agree with the views of the
parents, for it will be a
335
long time, I fear, before the world is so
enlightened, that
parents, only anxious to render their
children virtuous, will let
them choose companions for life
themselves.
Besides, this would be a sure way to
promote early marriages, and
from early marriages the most salutary
physical and moral effects
naturally flow. What a different
character does a married citizen
assume from the selfish coxcomb, who
lives but for himself, and who
is often afraid to marry lest he should not
be able to live in a
certain style. Great emergencies
excepted, which would rarely
occur in a society of which equality was
the basis, a man could
only be prepared to discharge the duties
of public life, by the
habitual practice of those inferior ones
which form the man.
In this plan of education, the constitution
of boys would not be
ruined by the early debaucheries, which
now make men so selfish,
nor girls rendered weak and vain, by
indolence and frivolous
pursuits. But, I presuppose, that such a
degree of equality should
be established between the sexes as
would shut out gallantry and
coquetry, yet allow friendship and love
to temper the heart for the
discharge of higher duties.
These would be schools of morality--and
the happiness of man,
allowed to flow from the pure springs of
duty and affection, what
advances might not the human mind
make? Society can only be happy
and free in proportion as it is virtuous;
but the present
distinctions, established in society,
corrode all private, and
blast all public virtue.
I have already inveighed against the
custom of confining girls to
their needle, and shutting them out from
all political and civil
employments; for by thus narrowing
their minds they are rendered
unfit to fulfil the peculiar duties which
nature has assigned them.
Only employed about the little incidents
of the day, they
necessarily grow up cunning. My very
soul has often sickened at
observing the sly tricks practised by
women to gain some foolish
thing on which their silly hearts were set.
Not allowed to dispose
of money, or call any thing their own,
they learn to turn the
market penny; or, should a husband
offend, by staying from home, or
give rise to some emotions of jealousy--a
new gown, or any pretty
bauble, smooths Juno's angry brow.
But these LITTLENESSES would not
degrade their character, if women
were led to respect themselves, if
political and moral subjects
were opened to them; and I will venture
to affirm, that this is the
only way to make them properly
attentive to their domestic duties.
An active mind embraces the whole
circle of its duties, and finds
time enough for all. It is not, I assert, a
bold attempt to
emulate masculine virtues; it is not the
enchantment of literary
336
pursuits, or the steady investigation of
scientific subjects, that
lead women astray from duty. No, it is
indolence and vanity --the
love of pleasure and the love of sway,
that will reign paramount in
an empty mind. I say empty,
emphatically, because the education
which women now receive scarcely
deserves the name. For the little
knowledge they are led to acquire during
the important years of
youth, is merely relative to
accomplishments; and accomplishments
without a bottom, for unless the
understanding be cultivated,
superficial and monotonous is every
grace. Like the charms of a
made-up face, they only strike the senses
in a crowd; but at home,
wanting mind, they want variety. The
consequence is obvious; in
gay scenes of dissipation we meet the
artificial mind and face, for
those who fly from solitude dread next
to solitude, the domestic
circle; not having it in their power to
amuse or interest, they
feel their own insignificance, or find
nothing to amuse or interest
themselves.
Besides, what can be more indelicate
than a girl's coming out in
the fashionable world? Which, in other
words, is to bring to
market a marriageable miss, whose
person is taken from one public
place to another, richly caparisoned.
Yet, mixing in the giddy
circle under restraint, these butterflies
long to flutter at large,
for the first affection of their souls is
their own persons, to
which their attention has been called
with the most sedulous care,
whilst they were preparing for the period
that decides their fate
for life. Instead of pursuing this idle
routine, sighing for
tasteless show, and heartless state, with
what dignity would the
youths of both sexes form attachments in
the schools that I have
cursorily pointed out; in which, as life
advanced, dancing, music,
and drawing, might be admitted as
relaxations, for at these schools
young people of fortune ought to remain,
more or less, till they
were of age. Those, who were designed
for particular professions,
might attend, three or four mornings in
the week, the schools
appropriated for their immediate
instruction.
I only drop these observations at present,
as hints; rather, indeed
as an outline of the plan I mean, than a
digested one; but I must
add, that I highly approve of one
regulation mentioned in the
pamphlet already alluded to (The Bishop
of Autun), that of making
the children and youths independent of
the masters respecting
punishments. They should be tried by
their peers, which would be
an admirable method of fixing sound
principles of justice in the
mind, and might have the happiest effect
on the temper, which is
very early soured or irritated by tyranny,
till it becomes
peevishly cunning, or ferociously
overbearing.
My imagination darts forward with
benevolent fervour to greet these
amiable and respectable groups, in spite
of the sneering of cold
337
hearts, who are at liberty to utter, with
frigid self-importance,
the damning epithet-- romantic; the force
of which I shall
endeavour to blunt by repeating the
words of an eloquent moralist.
"I know not whether the allusions of a
truly humane heart, whose
zeal renders every thing easy, is not
preferable to that rough and
repulsing reason, which always finds in
indifference for the public
good, the first obstacle to whatever
would promote it."
picture of an exalted imagination might
be superior to the
materials which the painter found in
nature, and thus it might with
propriety be termed rather the model of
mankind than of a man. It
was not, however, the mechanical
selection of limbs and features,
but the ebullition of an heated fancy that
burst forth; and the
fine senses and enlarged understanding
of the artist selected the
solid matter, which he drew into this
glowing focus.
I know that libertines will also exclaim,
that woman would be
unsexed by acquiring strength of body
and mind, and that beauty,
soft bewitching beauty! would no longer
adorn the daughters of men.
I am of a very different opinion, for I
think, that, on the
contrary, we should then see dignified
beauty, and true grace; to
produce which, many powerful physical
and moral causes would
concur. Not relaxed beauty, it is true,
nor the graces of
helplessness; but such as appears to
make us respect the human body
as a majestic pile, fit to receive a noble
inhabitant, in the
relics of antiquity.
I observed that it was not mechanical,
because a whole was
produced--a model of that grand
simplicity, of those concurring
energies, which arrest our attention and
command our reverence.
For only insipid lifeless beauty is
produced by a servile copy of
even beautiful nature. Yet, independent
of these observations, I
believe, that the human form must have
been far more beautiful than
it is at present, because extreme
indolence, barbarous ligatures,
and many causes, which forcibly act on
it, in our luxurious state
of society, did not retard its expansion,
or render it deformed.
Exercise and cleanliness appear to be not
only the surest means of
preserving health, but of promoting
beauty, the physical causes
only considered; yet, this is not
sufficient, moral ones must
concur, or beauty will be merely of that
rustic kind which blooms
on the innocent, wholesome
countenances of some country people,
whose minds have not been exercised.
To render the person perfect,
I do not forget the popular opinion, that
the Grecian statues were
not modelled after nature. I mean, not
according to the
proportions of a particular man; but that
beautiful limbs and
features were selected from various
bodies to form an harmonious
whole. This might, in some degree, be
true. The fine ideal
338
physical and moral beauty ought to be
attained at the same time;
each lending and receiving force by the
combination. Judgment must
reside on the brow, affection and fancy
beam in the eye, and
humanity curve the cheek, or vain is the
sparkling of the finest
eye or the elegantly turned finish of the
fairest features; whilst
in every motion that displays the active
limbs and well-knit
joints, grace and modesty should appear.
But this fair assemblage
is not to be brought together by chance;
it is the reward of
exertions met to support each other; for
judgment can only be
acquired by reflection, affection, by the
discharge of duties, and
humanity by the exercise of compassion
to every living creature.
Humanity to animals should be
particularly inculcated as a part of
national education, for it is not at present
one of our national
virtues. Tenderness for their humble
dumb domestics, amongst the
lower class, is oftener to be found in a
savage than a civilized
state. For civilization prevents that
intercourse which creates
affection in the rude hut, or mud cabin,
and leads uncultivated
minds who are only depraved by the
refinements which prevail in the
society, where they are trodden under
foot by the rich, to domineer
over them to revenge the insults that
they are obliged to bear from
their superiours.
This habitual cruelty is first caught at
school, where it is one of
the rare sports of the boys to torment the
miserable brutes that
fall in their way. The transition, as they
grow up, from barbarity
to brutes to domestic tyranny over
wives, children, and servants,
is very easy. Justice, or even
benevolence, will not be a powerful
spring of action, unless it extend to the
whole creation; nay, I
believe that it may be delivered as an
axiom, that those who can
see pain, unmoved, will soon learn to
inflict it.
The vulgar are swayed by present
feelings, and the habits which
they have accidentally acquired; but on
partial feelings much
dependence cannot be placed, though
they be just; for, when they
are not invigorated by reflection, custom
weakens them, till they
are scarcely felt. The sympathies of our
nature are strengthened
by pondering cogitations, and deadened
by thoughtless use.
Macbeth's heart smote him more for one
murder, the first, than for
a hundred subsequent ones, which were
necessary to back it. But,
when I used the epithet vulgar, I did not
mean to confine my remark
to the poor, for partial humanity,
founded on present sensations or
whim, is quite as conspicuous, if not
more so, amongst the rich.
The lady who sheds tears for the bird
starved in a snare, and
execrates the devils in the shape of men,
who goad to madness the
poor ox, or whip the patient ass, tottering
under a burden above
its strength, will, nevertheless, keep her
coachman and horses
339
whole hours waiting for her, when the
sharp frost bites, or the
rain beats against the well-closed
windows which do not admit a
breath of air to tell her how roughly the
wind blows without. And
she who takes her dogs to bed, and
nurses them with a parade of
sensibility, when sick, will suffer her
babes to grow up crooked in
a nursery. This illustration of my
argument is drawn from a matter
of fact. The woman whom I allude to
was handsome, reckoned very
handsome, by those who do not miss the
mind when the face is plump
and fair; but her understanding had not
been led from female duties
by literature, nor her innocence
debauched by knowledge. No, she
was quite feminine, according to the
masculine acceptation of the
word; and, so far from loving these
spoiled brutes that filled the
place which her children ought to have
occupied, she only lisped
out a pretty mixture of French and
English nonsense, to please the
men who flocked round her. The wife,
mother, and human creature,
were all swallowed up by the factitious
character, which an
improper education, and the selfish
vanity of beauty, had produced.
I do not like to make a distinction
without a difference, and I own
that I have been as much disgusted by
the fine lady who took her
lap-dog to her bosom, instead of her
child; as by the ferocity of a
man, who, beating his horse, declared,
that he knew as well when he
did wrong as a Christian.
This brood of folly shows how mistaken
they are who, if they allow
women to leave their harams, do not
cultivate their understanding,
in order to plant virtues in their hearts.
For had they sense,
they might acquire that domestic taste
which would lead them to
love with reasonable subordination their
whole family, from the
husband to the house-dog; nor would
they ever insult humanity in
the person of the most menial servant, by
paying more attention to
the comfort of a brute, than to that of a
fellow-creature.
My observations on national education
are obviously hints; but I
principally wish to enforce the necessity
of educating the sexes
together to perfect both, and of making
children sleep at home,
that they may learn to love home; yet to
make private support
instead of smothering public affections,
they should be sent to
school to mix with a number of equals,
for only by the jostlings of
equality can we form a just opinion of
ourselves.
To render mankind more virtuous, and
happier of course, both sexes
must act from the same principle; but
how can that be expected when
only one is allowed to see the
reasonableness of it? To render
also the social compact truly equitable,
and in order to spread
those enlightening principles, which
alone can meliorate the fate
of man, women must be allowed to
found their virtue on knowledge,
which is scarcely possible unless they be
educated by the same
340
pursuits as men. For they are now made
so inferiour by ignorance
and low desires, as not to deserve to be
ranked with them; or, by
the serpentine wrigglings of cunning
they mount the tree of
knowledge and only acquire sufficient to
lead men astray.
It is plain from the history of all nations,
that women cannot be
confined to merely domestic pursuits, for
they will not fulfil
family duties, unless their minds take a
wider range, and whilst
they are kept in ignorance, they become
in the same proportion, the
slaves of pleasure as they are the slaves
of man. Nor can they be
shut out of great enterprises, though the
narrowness of their minds
often make them mar what they are
unable to comprehend.
The libertinism, and even the virtues of
superior men, will always
give women, of some description, great
power over them; and these
weak women, under the influence of
childish passions and selfish
vanity, will throw a false light over the
objects which the very
men view with their eyes, who ought to
enlighten their judgment.
Men of fancy, and those sanguine
characters who mostly hold the
helm of human affairs, in general, relax
in the society of women;
and surely I need not cite to the most
superficial reader of
history, the numerous examples of vice
and oppression which the
private intrigues of female favourites
have produced; not to dwell
on the mischief that naturally arises from
the blundering
interposition of well-meaning folly. For
in the transactions of
business it is much better to have to deal
with a knave than a
fool, because a knave adheres to some
plan; and any plan of reason
may be seen through much sooner than a
sudden flight of folly. The
power which vile and foolish women
have had over wise men, who
possessed sensibility, is notorious; I shall
only mention one
instance.
Whoever drew a more exalted female
character than Rousseau? though
in the lump he constantly endeavoured to
degrade the sex. And why
was he thus anxious? Truly to justify to
himself the affection
which weakness and virtue had made
him cherish for that fool
Theresa. He could not raise her to the
common level of her sex;
and therefore he laboured to bring
woman down to her's. He found
her a convenient humble companion, and
pride made him determine to
find some superior virtues in the being
whom he chose to live with;
but did not her conduct during his life,
and after his death,
clearly show how grossly he was
mistaken who called her a celestial
innocent. Nay, in the bitterness of his
heart, he himself laments,
that when his bodily infirmities made
him no longer treat her like
a woman, she ceased to have an
affection for him. And it was very
natural that she should, for having so
few sentiments in common,
when the sexual tie was broken, what
was to hold her? To hold her
affection whose sensibility was confined
to one sex, nay, to one
341
man, it requires sense to turn sensibility
into the broad channel
of humanity: many women have not
mind enough to have an affection
for a woman, or a friendship for a man.
But the sexual weakness
that makes woman depend on man for a
subsistence, produces a kind
of cattish affection, which leads a wife to
purr about her husband,
as she would about any man who fed and
caressed her.
Men, are however, often gratified by this
kind of fondness which is
confined in a beastly manner to
themselves, but should they ever
become more virtuous, they will wish to
converse at their fire-side
with a friend, after they cease to play
with a mistress. Besides,
understanding is necessary to give
variety and interest to sensual
enjoyments, for low, indeed, in the
intellectual scale, is the mind
that can continue to love when neither
virtue nor sense give a
human appearance to an animal appetite.
But sense will always
preponderate; and if women are not, in
general, brought more on a
level with men, some superior women,
like the Greek courtezans will
assemble the men of abilities around
them, and draw from their
families many citizens, who would have
stayed at home, had their
wives had more sense, or the graces
which result from the exercise
of the understanding and fancy, the
legitimate parents of taste. A
woman of talents, if she be not
absolutely ugly, will always obtain
great power, raised by the weakness of
her sex; and in proportion
as men acquire virtue and delicacy: by
the exertion of reason, they
will look for both in women, but they
can only acquire them in the
same way that men do.
In France or Italy have the women
confined themselves to domestic
life? though they have not hitherto had a
political existence, yet,
have they not illicitly had great sway?
corrupting themselves and
the men with whose passions they
played? In short, in whatever
light I view the subject, reason and
experience convince me, that
the only method of leading women to
fulfil their peculiar duties,
is to free them from all restraint by
allowing them to participate
the inherent rights of mankind.
Make them free, and they will quickly
become wise and virtuous, as
men become more so; for the
improvement must be mutual, or the
justice which one half of the human race
are obliged to submit to,
retorting on their oppressors, the virtue
of man will be worm-eaten
by the insect whom he keeps under his
feet.
Let men take their choice, man and
woman were made for each other,
though not to become one being; and if
they will not improve women,
they will deprave them!
I speak of the improvement and
emancipation of the whole sex, for I
know that the behaviour of a few
women, who by accident, or
following a strong bent of nature, have
acquired a portion of
342
knowledge superior to that of the rest of
their sex, has often been
over-bearing; but there have been
instances of women who, attaining
knowledge, have not discarded modesty,
nor have they always
pedantically appeared to despise the
ignorance which they laboured
to disperse in their own minds. The
exclamations then which any
advice respecting female learning,
commonly produces, especially
from pretty women, often arise from
envy. When they chance to see
that even the lustre of their eyes, and the
flippant sportiveness
of refined coquetry will not always
secure them attention, during a
whole evening, should a woman of a
more cultivated understanding
endeavour to give a rational turn to the
conversation, the common
source of consolation is, that such
women seldom get husbands.
What arts have I not seen silly women
use to interrupt by
FLIRTATION, (a very significant word
to describe such a manoeuvre)
a rational conversation, which made the
men forget that they were
pretty women.
But, allowing what is very natural to
man--that the possession of
rare abilities is really calculated to excite
over-weening pride,
disgusting in both men and women--in
what a state of inferiority
must the female faculties have rusted
when such a small portion of
knowledge as those women attained,
who have sneeringly been termed
learned women, could be singular?
Sufficiently so to puff up the
possessor, and excite envy in her
contemporaries, and some of the
other sex. Nay, has not a little
rationality exposed many women to
the severest censure? I advert to well
known-facts, for I have
frequently heard women ridiculed, and
every little weakness
exposed, only because they adopted the
advice of some medical men,
and deviated from the beaten track in
their mode of treating their
infants. I have actually heard this
barbarous aversion to
innovation carried still further, and a
sensible woman stigmatized
as an unnatural mother, who has thus
been wisely solicitous to
preserve the health of her children, when
in the midst of her care
she has lost one by some of the
casualties of infancy which no
prudence can ward off. Her
acquaintance have observed, that this
was the consequence of new-fangled
notions--the new-fangled notions
of ease and cleanliness. And those who,
pretending to experience,
though they have long adhered to
prejudices that have, according to
the opinion of the most sagacious
physicians, thinned the human
race, almost rejoiced at the disaster that
gave a kind of sanction
to prescription.
Indeed, if it were only on this account,
the national education of
women is of the utmost consequence; for
what a number of human
sacrifices are made to that moloch,
prejudice! And in how many
ways are children destroyed by the
lasciviousness of man? The want
of natural affection in many women,
who are drawn from their duty
by the admiration of men, and the
ignorance of others, render the
343
infancy of man a much more perilous
state than that of brutes; yet
men are unwilling to place women in
situations proper to enable
them to acquire sufficient understanding
to know how even to nurse
their babes.
soon extend its intellectual empire; and
she who has sufficient
judgment to manage her children, will
not submit right or wrong, to
her husband, or patiently to the social
laws which makes a
nonentity of a wife.
So forcibly does this truth strike me, that
I would rest the whole
tendency of my reasoning upon it; for
whatever tends to
incapacitate the maternal character, takes
woman out of her sphere.
In public schools women, to guard
against the errors of ignorance,
should be taught the elements of
anatomy and medicine, not only to
enable them to take proper care of their
own health, but to make
them rational nurses of their infants,
parents, and husbands; for
the bills of mortality are swelled by the
blunders of self-willed
old women, who give nostrums of their
own, without knowing any
thing of the human frame. It is likewise
proper, only in a
domestic view, to make women,
acquainted with the anatomy of the
mind, by allowing the sexes to associate
together in every pursuit;
and by leading them to observe the
progress of the human
understanding in the improvement of the
sciences and arts; never
forgetting the science of morality, nor
the study of the political
history of mankind.
But it is vain to expect the present race
of weak mothers either to
take that reasonable care of a child's
body, which is necessary to
lay the foundation of a good
constitution, supposing that it do not
suffer for the sins of its fathers; or to
manage its temper so
judiciously that the child will not have,
as it grows up, to throw
off all that its mother, its first instructor,
directly or
indirectly taught, and unless the mind
have uncommon vigour,
womanish follies will stick to the
character throughout life. The
weakness of the mother will be visited
on the children! And whilst
women are educated to rely on their
husbands for judgment, this
must ever be the consequence, for there
is no improving an
understanding by halves, nor can any
being act wisely from
imitation, because in every circumstance
of life there is a kind of
individuality, which requires an exertion
of judgment to modify
general rules. The being who can think
justly in one track, will
A man has been termed a microcosm;
and every family might also be
called a state. States, it is true, have
mostly been governed by
arts that disgrace the character of man;
and the want of a just
constitution, and equal laws, have so
perplexed the notions of the
worldly wise, that they more than
question the reasonableness of
contending for the rights of humanity.
Thus morality, polluted in
344
the national reservoir, sends off streams
of vice to corrupt the
constituent parts of the body politic; but
should more noble, or
rather more just principles regulate the
laws, which ought to be
the government of society, and not those
who execute them, duty
might become the rule of private
conduct.
Besides, by the exercise of their bodies
and minds, women would
acquire that mental activity so necessary
in the maternal
character, united with the fortitude that
distinguishes steadiness
of conduct from the obstinate
perverseness of weakness. For it is
dangerous to advise the indolent to be
steady, because they
instantly become rigorous, and to save
themselves trouble, punish
with severity faults that the patient
fortitude of reason might
have prevented.
But fortitude presupposes strength of
mind, and is strength of mind
to be acquired by indolent acquiescence?
By asking advice instead
of exerting the judgment? By obeying
through fear, instead of
practising the forbearance, which we all
stand in need of
ourselves? The conclusion which I wish
to draw is obvious; make
women rational creatures and free
citizens, and they will quickly
become good wives, and mothers; that
is--if men do not neglect the
duties of husbands and fathers.
Discussing the advantages which a
public and private education
combined, as I have sketched, might
rationally be expected to
produce, I have dwelt most on such as
are particularly relative to
the female world, because I think the
female world oppressed; yet
the gangrene which the vices,
engendered by oppression have
produced, is not confined to the morbid
part, but pervades society
at large; so that when I wish to see my
sex become more like moral
agents, my heart bounds with the
anticipation of the general
diffusion of that sublime contentment
which only morality can
diffuse.
CHAPTER 13.
SOME INSTANCES OF THE
FOLLY WHICH THE IGNORANCE
OF WOMEN GENERATES;
WITH CONCLUDING
REFLECTIONS ON THE MORAL
IMPROVEMENT THAT A
REVOLUTION IN FEMALE
MANNERS MIGHT NATURALLY
BE EXPECTED TO
PRODUCE.
There are many follies, in some degree,
peculiar to women: sins
against reason, of commission, as well as
of omission; but all
flowing from ignorance or prejudice, I
shall only point out such as
appear to be injurious to their moral
character. And in
animadverting on them, I wish especially
to prove, that the
weakness of mind and body, which men
have endeavoured by various
motives to perpetuate, prevents their
discharging the peculiar duty
345
of their sex: for when weakness of body
will not permit them to
suckle their children, and weakness of
mind makes them spoil their
tempers--is woman in a natural state?
SECTION 13.1.
One glaring instance of the weakness
which proceeds from ignorance,
first claims attention, and calls for severe
reproof.
In this metropolis a number of lurking
leeches infamously gain a
subsistence by practising on the
credulity of women, pretending to
cast nativities, to use the technical
phrase; and many females who,
proud of their rank and fortune, look
down on the vulgar with
sovereign contempt, show by this
credulity, that the distinction is
arbitrary, and that they have not
sufficiently cultivated their
minds to rise above vulgar prejudices.
Women, because they have
not been led to consider the knowledge
of their duty as the one
thing necessary to know, or, to live in
the present moment by the
discharge of it, are very anxious to peep
into futurity, to learn
what they have to expect to render life
interesting, and to break
the vacuum of ignorance. I must be
allowed to expostulate
seriously with the ladies, who follow
these idle inventions; for
ladies, mistresses of families, are not
ashamed to drive in their
own carriages to the door of the cunning
man. And if any of them
should peruse this work, I entreat them
to answer to their own
hearts the following questions, not
forgetting that they are in the
presence of God.
Do you believe that there is but one God,
and that he is powerful,
wise, and good?
Do you believe that all things were
created by him, and that all
beings are dependent on him?
Do you rely on his wisdom, so
conspicuous in his works, and in your
own frame, and are you convinced, that
he has ordered all things
which do not come under the cognizance
of your senses, in the same
perfect harmony, to fulfil his designs?
Do you acknowledge that the power of
looking into futurity and
seeing things that are not, as if they
were, is an attribute of the
Creator? And should he, by an
impression on the minds of his
creatures, think fit to impart to them
some event hid in the shades
of time, yet unborn, to whom would the
secret be revealed by
immediate inspiration? The opinion of
ages will answer this
question--to reverend old men, to people
distinguished for eminent
piety.
The oracles of old were thus delivered
by priests dedicated to the
service of the God, who was supposed to
inspire them. The glare of
worldly pomp which surrounded these
impostors, and the respect paid
to them by artful politicians, who knew
how to avail themselves of
this useful engine to bend the necks of
the strong under the
346
dominion of the cunning, spread a sacred
mysterious veil of
sanctity over their lies and abominations.
Impressed by such
solemn devotional parade, a Greek or
Roman lady might be excused,
if she inquired of the oracle, when she
was anxious to pry into
futurity, or inquire about some dubious
event: and her inquiries,
however contrary to reason, could not be
reckoned impious. But,
can the professors of Christianity ward
off that imputation? Can a
Christian suppose, that the favourites of
the most High, the highly
favoured would be obliged to lurk in
disguise, and practise the
most dishonest tricks to cheat silly
women out of the money, which
the poor cry for in vain?
Say not that such questions are an insult
to common sense for it is
your own conduct, O ye foolish women!
which throws an odium on your
sex! And these reflections should make
you shudder at your
thoughtlessness, and irrational devotion,
for I do not suppose that
all of you laid aside your religion, such
as it is, when you
entered those mysterious dwellings.
Yet, as I have throughout
supposed myself talking to ignorant
women, for ignorant ye are in
the most emphatical sense of the word, it
would be absurd to reason
with you on the egregious folly of
desiring to know what the
Supreme Wisdom has concealed.
Probably you would not understand me,
were I to attempt to show you
that it would be absolutely inconsistent
with the grand purpose of
life, that of rendering human creatures
wise and virtuous: and
that, were it sanctioned by God, it would
disturb the order
established in creation; and if it be not
sanctioned by God, do you
expect to hear truth? Can events be
foretold, events which have
not yet assumed a body to become
subject to mortal inspection, can
they be foreseen by a vicious worldling,
who pampers his appetites
by preying on the foolish ones?
Perhaps, however, you devoutly believe
in the devil, and imagine,
to shift the question, that he may assist
his votaries? but if
really respecting the power of such a
being, an enemy to goodness
and to God, can you go to church after
having been under such an
obligation to him. From these delusions
to those still more
fashionable deceptions, practised by the
whole tribe of
magnetisers, the transition is very
natural. With respect to them,
it is equally proper to ask women a few
questions.
Do you know any thing of the
construction of the human frame? If
not, it is proper that you should be told,
what every child ought
to know, that when its admirable
economy has been disturbed by
intemperance or indolence, I speak not
of violent disorders, but of
chronical diseases, it must be brought
into a healthy state again
by slow degrees, and if the functions of
life have not been
materially injured, regimen, another
word for temperance, air,
347
exercise, and a few medicines prescribed
by persons who have
studied the human body, are the only
human means, yet discovered,
of recovering that inestimable blessing
health, that will bear
investigation.
Do you then believe, that these
magnetisers, who, by hocus pocus
tricks, pretend, to work a miracle, are
delegated by God, or
assisted by the solver of all these kind of
difficulties--the
devil.
Do they, when they put to flight, as it is
said, disorders that
have baffled the powers of medicine,
work in conformity to the
light of reason? Or do they effect these
wonderful cures by
supernatural aid?
By a communication, an adept may
answer, with the world of spirits.
A noble privilege, it must be allowed.
Some of the ancients
mention familiar demons, who guarded
them from danger, by kindly
intimating (we cannot guess in what
manner,) when any danger was
nigh; or pointed out what they ought to
undertake. Yet the men who
laid claim to this privilege, out of the
order of nature, insisted,
that it was the reward or consequence of
superior temperance and
piety. But the present workers of
wonders are not raised above
their fellows by superior temperance or
sanctity. They do not cure
for the love of God, but money. These
are the priests of quackery,
though it be true they have not the
convenient expedient of selling
masses for souls in purgatory, nor
churches, where they can display
crutches, and models of limbs made
sound by a touch or a word.
I am not conversant with the technical
terms, nor initiated into
the arcana, therefore I may speak
improperly; but it is clear, that
men who will not conform to the law of
reason, and earn a
subsistence in an honest way, by
degrees, are very fortunate in
becoming acquainted with such obliging
spirits. We cannot, indeed,
give them credit for either great sagacity
or goodness, else they
would have chosen more noble
instruments, when they wished to show
themselves the benevolent friends of
man.
It is, however, little short of blasphemy
to pretend to such power.
>From the whole tenor of the
dispensations of Providence, it appears
evident to sober reason, that certain
vices produce certain
effects: and can any one so grossly insult
the wisdom of God, as to
suppose, that a miracle will be allowed
to disturb his general
laws, to restore to health the intemperate
and vicious, merely to
enable them to pursue the same course
with impunity? Be whole, and
sin no more, said Jesus. And are greater
miracles to be performed
by those who do not follow his footsteps,
who healed the body to
reach the mind?
The mentioning of the name of Christ,
after such vile impostors may
348
displease some of my readers--I respect
their warmth; but let them
not forget, that the followers of these
delusions bear his name,
and profess to be the disciples of him,
who said, by their works we
should know who were the children of
God or the servants of sin. I
allow that it is easier to touch the body
of a saint, or to be
magnetised, than to restrain our appetites
or govern our passions;
but health of body or mind can only be
recovered by these means, or
we make the Supreme Judge partial and
revengeful.
Is he a man, that he should change, or
punish out of resentment?
He--the common father, wounds but to
heal, says reason, and our
irregularities producing certain
consequences, we are forcibly
shown the nature of vice; that thus
learning to know good from
evil, by experience, we may hate one
and love the other, in
proportion to the wisdom which we
attain. The poison contains the
antidote; and we either reform our evil
habits, and cease to sin
against our own bodies, to use the
forcible language of scripture,
or a premature death, the punishment of
sin, snaps the thread of
life.
Here an awful stop is put to our
inquiries. But, why should I
conceal my sentiments? Considering the
attributes of God, I
believe, that whatever punishment may
follow, will tend, like the
anguish of disease, to show the
malignity of vice, for the purpose
of reformation. Positive punishment
appears so contrary to the
nature of God, discoverable in all his
works, and in our own
reason, that I could sooner believe that
the Deity paid no
attention to the conduct of men, than that
he punished without the
benevolent design of reforming.
To suppose only, that an all-wise and
powerful Being, as good as he
is great, should create a being,
foreseeing, that after fifty or
sixty years of feverish existence, it
would be plunged into never
ending woe--is blasphemy. On what
will the worm feed that is never
to die? On folly, on ignorance, say ye--I
should blush indignantly
at drawing the natural conclusion, could
I insert it, and wish to
withdraw myself from the wing of my
God! On such a supposition, I
speak with reverence, he would be a
consuming fire. We should
wish, though vainly, to fly from his
presence when fear absorbed
love, and darkness involved all his
counsels.
I know that many devout people boast of
submitting to the Will of
God blindly, as to an arbitrary sceptre or
rod, on the same
principle as the Indians worship the
devil. In other words, like
people in the common concerns of life,
they do homage to power, and
cringe under the foot that can crush
them. Rational religion, on
the contrary, is a submission to the will
of a being so perfectly
wise, that all he wills must be directed
by the proper motive--must
be reasonable.
349
And, if thus we respect God, can we give
credit to the mysterious
insinuations which insult his laws? Can
we believe, though it
should stare us in the face, that he would
work a miracle to
authorize confusion by sanctioning an
error? Yet we must either
allow these impious conclusions, or treat
with contempt every
promise to restore health to a diseased
body by supernatural means,
or to foretell, the incidents that can only
be foreseen by God.
SECTION 13.2.
Another instance of that feminine
weakness of character, often
produced by a confined education, is a
romantic twist of the mind,
which has been very properly termed
SENTIMENTAL.
Women, subjected by ignorance to their
sensations, and only taught
to look for happiness in love, refine on
sensual feelings, and
adopt metaphysical notions respecting
that passion, which lead them
shamefully to neglect the duties of life,
and frequently in the
midst of these sublime refinements they
plunge into actual vice.
These are the women who are amused
by the reveries of the stupid
novelists, who, knowing little of human
nature, work up stale
tales, and describe meretricious scenes,
all retailed in a
sentimental jargon, which equally tend
to corrupt the taste, and
draw the heart aside from its daily
duties. I do not mention the
understanding, because never having
been exercised, its slumbering
energies rest inactive, like the lurking
particles of fire which
are supposed universally to pervade
matter.
Females, in fact, denied all political
privileges, and not allowed,
as married women, excepting in criminal
cases, a civil existence,
have their attention naturally drawn from
the interest of the whole
community to that of the minute parts,
though the private duty of
any member of society must be very
imperfectly performed, when not
connected with the general good. The
mighty business of female
life is to please, and, restrained from
entering into more
important concerns by political and civil
oppression, sentiments
become events, and reflection deepens
what it should, and would
have effaced, if the understanding had
been allowed to take a wider
range.
But, confined to trifling employments,
they naturally imbibe
opinions which the only kind of reading
calculated to interest an
innocent frivolous mind, inspires.
Unable to grasp any thing
great, is it surprising that they find the
reading of history a
very dry task, and disquisitions
addressed to the understanding,
intolerably tedious, and almost
unintelligible? Thus are they
necessarily dependent on the novelist for
amusement. Yet, when I
exclaim against novels, I mean when
contrasted with those works
350
which exercise the understanding and
regulate the imagination. For
any kind of reading I think better than
leaving a blank still a
blank, because the mind must receive a
degree of enlargement, and
obtain a little strength by a slight
exertion of its thinking
powers; besides, even the productions
that are only addressed to
the imagination, raise the reader a little
above the gross
gratification of appetites, to which the
mind has not given a shade
of delicacy.
This observation is the result of
experience; for I have known
several notable women, and one in
particular, who was a very good
woman--as good as such a narrow mind
would allow her to be, who
took care that her daughters (three in
number) should never see a
novel. As she was a woman of fortune
and fashion, they had various
masters to attend them, and a sort of
menial governess to watch
their footsteps. From their masters they
learned how tables,
chairs, etc. were called in French and
Italian; but as the few
books thrown in their way were far
above their capacities, or
devotional, they neither acquired ideas
nor sentiments, and passed
their time, when not compelled to repeat
WORDS, in dressing,
quarrelling with each other, or
conversing with their maids by
stealth, till they were brought into
company as marriageable.
Their mother, a widow, was busy in the
mean time in keeping up her
connexions, as she termed a numerous
acquaintance lest her girls
should want a proper introduction into
the great world. And these
young ladies, with minds vulgar in every
sense of the word, and
spoiled tempers, entered life puffed up
with notions of their own
consequence, and looking down with
contempt on those who could not
vie with them in dress and parade.
With respect to love, nature, or their
nurses, had taken care to
teach them the physical meaning of the
word; and, as they had few
topics of conversation, and fewer
refinements of sentiment, they
expressed their gross wishes not in very
delicate phrases, when
they spoke freely, talking of matrimony.
Could these girls have been injured by
the perusal of novels? I
almost forgot a shade in the character of
one of them; she affected
a simplicity bordering on folly, and with
a simper would utter the
most immodest remarks and questions,
the full meaning of which she
had learned whilst secluded from the
world, and afraid to speak in
her mother's presence, who governed
with a high hand; they were
all educated, as she prided herself, in a
most exemplary manner;
and read their chapters and psalms
before breakfast, never touching
a silly novel.
This is only one instance; but I recollect
many other women who,
not led by degrees to proper studies, and
not permitted to choose
for themselves, have indeed been
overgrown children; or have
351
obtained, by mixing in the world, a little
of what is termed common
sense; that is, a distinct manner of
seeing common occurrences, as
they stand detached: but what deserves
the name of intellect, the
power of gaining general or abstract
ideas, or even intermediate
ones, was out of the question. Their
minds were quiescent, and
when they were not roused by sensible
objects and employments of
that kind, they were low-spirited, would
cry, or go to sleep.
When, therefore, I advise my sex not to
read such flimsy works, it
is to induce them to read something
superior; for I coincide in
opinion with a sagacious man, who,
having a daughter and niece
under his care, pursued a very different
plan with each.
The niece, who had considerable
abilities, had, before she was left
to his guardianship, been indulged in
desultory reading. Her he
endeavoured to lead, and did lead, to
history and moral essays; but
his daughter whom a fond weak mother
had indulged, and who
consequently was averse to every thing
like application, he allowed
to read novels; and used to justify his
conduct by saying, that if
she ever attained a relish for reading
them, he should have some
foundation to work upon; and that
erroneous opinions were better
than none at all.
In fact, the female mind has been so
totally neglected, that
knowledge was only to be acquired from
this muddy source, till from
reading novels some women of superior
talents learned to despise
them.
The best method, I believe, that can be
adopted to correct a
fondness for novels is to ridicule them;
not indiscriminately, for
then it would have little effect; but, if a
judicious person, with
some turn for humour, would read
several to a young girl, and point
out, both by tones and apt comparisons
with pathetic incidents and
heroic characters in history, how
foolishly and ridiculously they
caricatured human nature, just opinions
might be substituted
instead of romantic sentiments.
In one respect, however, the majority of
both sexes resemble, and
equally show a want of taste and
modesty. Ignorant women, forced
to be chaste to preserve their reputation,
allow their imagination
to revel in the unnatural and meretricious
scenes sketched by the
novel writers of the day, slighting as
insipid the sober dignity
and matronly grace of history,* whilst
men carry the same vitiated
taste into life, and fly for amusement to
the wanton, from the
unsophisticated charms of virtue, and the
grave respectability of
sense.
(*Footnote. I am not now alluding to
that superiority of mind
which leads to the creation of ideal
beauty, when life surveyed
with a penetrating eye, appears a tragicomedy, in which little can
be seen to satisfy the heart without the
help of fancy.)
352
Besides, the reading of novels makes
women, and particularly ladies
of fashion, very fond of using strong
expressions and superlatives
in conversation; and, though the
dissipated artificial life which
they lead prevents their cherishing any
strong legitimate passion,
the language of passion in affected tones
slips for ever from their
glib tongues, and every trifle produces
those phosphoric bursts
which only mimick in the dark the flame
of passion.
SECTION 13.3.
Ignorance and the mistaken cunning that
nature sharpens in weak
heads, as a principle of self-preservation,
render women very fond
of dress, and produce all the vanity
which such a fondness may
naturally be expected to generate, to the
exclusion of emulation
and magnanimity.
I agree with Rousseau, that the physical
part of the art of
pleasing consists in ornaments, and for
that very reason I should
guard girls against the contagious
fondness for dress so common to
weak women, that they may not rest in
the physical part. Yet, weak
are the women who imagine that they
can long please without the aid
of the mind; or, in other words, without
the moral art of pleasing.
But the moral art, if it be not a
profanation to use the word art,
when alluding to the grace which is an
effect of virtue, and not
the motive of action, is never to be found
with ignorance; the
sportiveness of innocence, so pleasing to
refined libertines of
both sexes, is widely different in its
essence from this superior
gracefulness.
A strong inclination for external
ornaments ever appears in
barbarous states, only the men not the
women adorn themselves; for
where women are allowed to be so far on
a level with men, society
has advanced at least one step in
civilization.
The attention to dress, therefore, which
has been thought a sexual
propensity, I think natural to mankind.
But I ought to express
myself with more precision. When the
mind is not sufficiently
opened to take pleasure in reflection, the
body will be adorned
with sedulous care; and ambition will
appear in tattooing or
painting it.
So far is the first inclination carried, that
even the hellish yoke
of slavery cannot stifle the savage desire
of admiration which the
black heroes inherit from both their
parents, for all the
hardly-earned savings of a slave are
commonly expended in a little
tawdry finery. And I have seldom
known a good male or female
servant that was not particularly fond of
dress. Their clothes
were their riches; and I argue from
analogy, that the fondness for
dress, so extravagant in females, arises
from the same cause--want
of cultivation of mind. When men meet
they converse about
353
business, politics, or literature; but, says
Swift, "how naturally
do women apply their hands to each
others lappets and ruffles."
And very natural it is--for they have not
any business to interest
them, have not a taste for literature, and
they find politics dry,
because they have not acquired a love
for mankind by turning their
thoughts to the grand pursuits that exalt
the human race and
promote general happiness.
Besides, various are the paths to power
and fame, which by accident
or choice men pursue, and though they
jostle against each other,
for men of the same profession are
seldom friends, yet there is a
much greater number of their fellowcreatures with whom they never
clash. But women are very differently
situated with respect to
each other--for they are all rivals.
Before marriage it is their business to
please men; and after, with
a few exceptions, they follow the same
scent, with all the
persevering pertinacity of instinct. Even
virtuous women never
forget their sex in company, for they are
for ever trying to make
themselves AGREEABLE. A female
beauty and a male wit, appear to be
equally anxious to draw the attention of
the company to themselves;
and the animosity of contemporary wits
is proverbial.
Is it then surprising, that when the sole
ambition of woman centres
in beauty, and interest gives vanity
additional force, perpetual
rivalships should ensue? They are all
running the same race, and
would rise above the virtue of mortals if
they did not view each
other with a suspicious and even envious
eye.
An immoderate fondness for dress, for
pleasure and for sway, are
the passions of savages; the passions that
occupy those uncivilized
beings who have not yet extended the
dominion of the mind, or even
learned to think with the energy
necessary to concatenate that
abstract train of thought which produces
principles. And that
women, from their education and the
present state of civilized
life, are in the same condition, cannot, I
think, be controverted.
To laugh at them then, or satirize the
follies of a being who is
never to be allowed to act freely from
the light of her own reason,
is as absurd as cruel; for that they who
are taught blindly to obey
authority, will endeavour cunningly to
elude it, is most natural
and certain.
Yet let it be proved, that they ought to
obey man implicitly, and I
shall immediately agree that it is
woman's duty to cultivate a
fondness for dress, in order to please,
and a propensity to cunning
for her own preservation.
The virtues, however, which are
supported by ignorance, must ever
be wavering--the house built on sand
could not endure a storm. It
is almost unnecessary to draw the
inference. If women are to be
354
made virtuous by authority, which is a
contradiction in terms, let
them be immured in seraglios and
watched with a jealous eye. Fear
not that the iron will enter into their
souls--for the souls that
can bear such treatment are made of
yielding materials, just
animated enough to give life to the body.
"Matter too soft a lasting mark to bear,
And best distinguish'd by black, brown,
or fair."
The most cruel wounds will of course
soon heal, and they may still
people the world, and dress to please
man--all the purposes which
certain celebrated writers have allowed
that they were created to
fill.
SECTION 13.4.
Women are supposed to possess more
sensibility, and even humanity,
than men, and their strong attachments
and instantaneous emotions
of compassion are given as proofs; but
the clinging affection of
ignorance has seldom any thing noble in
it, and may mostly be
resolved into selfishness, as well as the
affection of children and
brutes. I have known many weak
women whose sensibility was
entirely engrossed by their husbands;
and as for their humanity, it
was very faint indeed, or rather it was
only a transient emotion of
compassion, "Humanity does not
consist in a squeamish ear," says
an eminent orator. "It belongs to the
mind as well as the nerves."
But this kind of exclusive affection,
though it degrade the
individual, should not be brought
forward as a proof of the
inferiority of the sex, because it is the
natural consequence of
confined views: for even women of
superior sense, having their
attention turned to little employments,
and private plans, rarely
rise to heroism, unless when spurred on
by love; and love as an
heroic passion, like genius, appears but
once in an age. I
therefore agree with the moralist who
asserts, "that women have
seldom so much generosity as men;" and
that their narrow
affections, to which justice and humanity
are often sacrificed,
render the sex apparently inferior,
especially as they are commonly
inspired by men; but I contend, that the
heart would expand as the
understanding gained strength, if women
were not depressed from
their cradles.
I know that a little sensibility and great
weakness will produce a
strong sexual attachment, and that reason
must cement friendship;
consequently I allow, that more
friendship is to be found in the
male than the female world, and that
men have a higher sense of
justice. The exclusive affections of
women seem indeed to resemble
Cato's most unjust love for his country.
He wished to crush
Carthage, not to save Rome, but to
promote its vain glory; and in
general, it is to similar principles that
humanity is sacrificed,
for genuine duties support each other.
355
Besides, how can women be just or
generous, when they are the
slaves of injustice.
SECTION 13.5.
As the rearing of children, that is, the
laying a foundation of
sound health both of body and mind in
the rising generation, has
justly been insisted on as the peculiar
destination of woman, the
ignorance that incapacitates them must
be contrary to the order of
things. And I contend, that their minds
can take in much more, and
ought to do so, or they will never
become sensible mothers. Many
men attend to the breeding of horses, and
overlook the management
of the stable, who would, strange want
of sense and feeling! think
themselves degraded by paying any
attention to the nursery; yet,
how many children are absolutely
murdered by the ignorance of
women! But when they escape, and are
neither destroyed by
unnatural negligence nor blind fondness,
how few are managed
properly with respect to the infant mind!
So that to break the
spirit, allowed to become vicious at
home, a child is sent to
school; and the methods taken there,
which must be taken to keep a
number of children in order, scatter the
seeds of almost every vice
in the soil thus forcibly torn up.
I have sometimes compared the
struggles of these poor children who
ought never to have felt restraint, nor
would, had they been always
held in with an even hand, to the
despairing plunges of a spirited
filly, which I have seen breaking on a
strand; its feet sinking
deeper and deeper in the sand every time
it endeavoured to throw
its rider, till at last it sullenly submitted.
I have always found horses, an animal I
am attached to, very
tractable when treated with humanity
and steadiness, so that I
doubt whether the violent methods taken
to break them, do not
essentially injure them; I am, however,
certain that a child should
never be thus forcibly tamed after it has
injudiciously been
allowed to run wild; for every violation
of justice and reason, in
the treatment of children, weakens their
reason. And, so early do
they catch a character, that the base of
the moral character,
experience leads me to infer, is fixed
before their seventh year,
the period during which women are
allowed the sole management of
children. Afterwards it too often
happens that half the business
of education is to correct, and very
imperfectly is it done, if
done hastily, the faults, which they
would never have acquired if
their mothers had had more
understanding.
One striking instance of the folly of
women must not be omitted.
The manner in which they treat servants
in the presence of
children, permitting them to suppose,
that they ought to wait on
them, and bear their humours. A child
should always be made to
receive assistance from a man or woman
as a favour; and, as the
356
first lesson of independence, they should
practically be taught, by
the example of their mother, not to
require that personal
attendance which it is an insult to
humanity to require, when in
health; and instead of being led to
assume airs of consequence, a
sense of their own weakness should first
make them feel the natural
equality of man. Yet, how frequently
have I indignantly heard
servants imperiously called to put
children to bed, and sent away
again and again, because master or miss
hung about mamma, to stay a
little longer. Thus made slavishly to
attend the little idol, all
those most disgusting humours were
exhibited which characterize a
spoiled child.
In short, speaking of the majority of
mothers, they leave their
children entirely to the care of servants:
or, because they are
their children, treat them as if they were
little demi-gods, though
I have always observed, that the women
who thus idolize their
children, seldom show common
humanity to servants, or feel the
least tenderness for any children but
their own.
It is, however, these exclusive affections,
and an individual
manner of seeing things, produced by
ignorance, which keep women
for ever at a stand, with respect to
improvement, and make many of
them dedicate their lives to their children
only to weaken their
bodies and spoil their tempers,
frustrating also any plan of
education that a more rational father may
adopt; for unless a
mother concurs, the father who restrains
will ever be considered as
a tyrant.
But, fulfilling the duties of a mother, a
woman with a sound
constitution, may still keep her person
scrupulously neat, and
assist to maintain her family, if
necessary, or by reading and
conversations with both sexes,
indiscriminately, improve her mind.
For nature has so wisely ordered things,
that did women suckle
their children, they would preserve their
own health, and there
would be such an interval between the
birth of each child, that we
should seldom see a house full of babes.
And did they pursue a
plan of conduct, and not waste their time
in following the
fashionable vagaries of dress, the
management of their household
and children need not shut them out
from literature, nor prevent
their attaching themselves to a science,
with that steady eye which
strengthens the mind, or practising one
of the fine arts that
cultivate the taste.
But, visiting to display finery, card
playing, and balls, not to
mention the idle bustle of morning
trifling, draw women from their
duty, to render them insignificant, to
render them pleasing,
according to the present acceptation of
the word, to every man, but
their husband. For a round of pleasures
in which the affections
are not exercised, cannot be said to
improve the understanding,
357
though it be erroneously called seeing
the world; yet the heart is
rendered cold and averse to duty, by
such a senseless intercourse,
which becomes necessary from habit,
even when it has ceased to
amuse.
man I extend to mankind, insisting, that
in all cases morals must
be fixed on immutable principles; and
that the being cannot be
termed rational or virtuous, who obeys
any authority but that of
reason.
But, till more equality be established in
society, till ranks are
confounded and women freed, we shall
not see that dignified
domestic happiness, the simple grandeur
of which cannot be relished
by ignorant or vitiated minds; nor will
the important task of
education ever be properly begun till the
person of a woman is no
longer preferred to her mind. For it
would be as wise to expect
corn from tares, or figs from thistles, as
that a foolish ignorant
woman should be a good mother.
To render women truly useful members
of society, I argue, that they
should be led, by having their
understandings cultivated on a large
scale, to acquire a rational affection for
their country, founded
on knowledge, because it is obvious, that
we are little interested
about what we do not understand. And
to render this general
knowledge of due importance, I have
endeavoured to show that
private duties are never properly
fulfilled, unless the
understanding enlarges the heart; and
that public virtue is only an
aggregate of private. But, the
distinctions established in society
undermine both, by beating out the solid
gold of virtue, till it
becomes only the tinsel-covering of
vice; for, whilst wealth
renders a man more respectable than
virtue, wealth will be sought
before virtue; and, whilst women's
persons are caressed, when a
childish simper shows an absence of
mind--the mind will lie fallow.
Yet, true voluptuousness must proceed
from the mind--for what can
equal the sensations produced by mutual
affection, supported by
mutual respect? What are the cold or
feverish caresses of
appetite, but sin embracing death,
compared with the modest
overflowings of a pure heart and exalted
imagination? Yes, let me
SECTION 13.6.
It is not necessary to inform the
sagacious reader, now I enter on
my concluding reflections, that the
discussion of this subject
merely consists in opening a few simple
principles, and clearing
away the rubbish which obscured them.
But, as all readers are not
sagacious, I must be allowed to add
some explanatory remarks to
bring the subject home to reason--to that
sluggish reason, which
supinely takes opinions on trust, and
obstinately supports them to
spare itself the labour of thinking.
Moralists have unanimously agreed, that
unless virtue be nursed by
liberty, it will never attain due strength-and what they say of
358
tell the libertine of fancy when he
despises understanding in
woman--that the mind, which he
disregards, gives life to the
enthusiastic affection from which
rapture, short-lived as it is,
alone can flow! And, that, without
virtue, a sexual attachment
must expire, like a tallow candle in the
socket, creating
intolerable disgust. To prove this, I need
only observe, that men
who have wasted great part of their lives
with women, and with whom
they have sought for pleasure with eager
thirst, entertain the
meanest opinion of the sex. Virtue, true
refiner of joy! if
foolish men were to fright thee from
earth, in order to give loose
to all their appetites without a check-some sensual wight of taste
would scale the heavens to invite thee
back, to give a zest to
pleasure!
That women at present are by ignorance
rendered foolish or vicious,
is, I think, not to be disputed; and, that
the most salutary
effects tending to improve mankind,
might be expected from a
REVOLUTION in female manners,
appears at least, with a face of
probability, to rise out of the
observation. For as marriage has
been termed the parent of those
endearing charities, which draw man
from the brutal herd, the corrupting
intercourse that wealth,
idleness, and folly produce between the
sexes, is more universally
injurious to morality, than all the other
vices of mankind
collectively considered. To adulterous
lust the most sacred duties
are sacrificed, because, before marriage,
men, by a promiscuous
intimacy with women, learned to
consider love as a selfish
gratification--learned to separate it not
only from esteem, but
from the affection merely built on habit,
which mixes a little
humanity with it. Justice and friendship
are also set at defiance,
and that purity of taste is vitiated, which
would naturally lead a
man to relish an artless display of
affection, rather than affected
airs. But that noble simplicity of
affection, which dares to
appear unadorned, has few attractions
for the libertine, though it
be the charm, which, by cementing the
matrimonial tie, secures to
the pledges of a warmer passion the
necessary parental attention;
for children will never be properly
educated till friendship
subsists between parents. Virtue flies
from a house divided
against itself--and a whole legion of
devils take up their
residence there.
The affection of husbands and wives
cannot be pure when they have
so few sentiments in common, and when
so little confidence is
established at home, as must be the case
when their pursuits are so
different. That intimacy from which
tenderness should flow, will
not, cannot subsist between the vicious.
Contending, therefore, that the sexual
distinction, which men have
so warmly insisted upon, is arbitrary, I
have dwelt on an
observation, that several sensible men,
with whom I have conversed
359
on the subject, allowed to be well
founded; and it is simply this,
that the little chastity to be found
amongst men, and consequent
disregard of modesty, tend to degrade
both sexes; and further, that
the modesty of women, characterized as
such, will often be only the
artful veil of wantonness, instead of
being the natural reflection
of purity, till modesty be universally
respected.
>From the tyranny of man, I firmly
believe, the greater number of
female follies proceed; and the cunning,
which I allow, makes at
present a part of their character, I
likewise have repeatedly
endeavoured to prove, is produced by
oppression. Were not
dissenters, for instance, a class of
people, with strict truth
characterized as cunning? And may I
not lay some stress on this
fact to prove, that when any power but
reason curbs the free spirit
of man, dissimulation is practised, and
the various shifts of art
are naturally called forth? Great
attention to decorum, which was
carried to a degree of scrupulosity, and
all that puerile bustle
about trifles and consequential
solemnity, which Butler's
caricature of a dissenter brings before
the imagination, shaped
their persons as well as their minds in
the mould of prim
littleness. I speak collectively, for I
know how many ornaments to
human nature have been enrolled
amongst sectaries; yet, I assert,
that the same narrow prejudice for their
sect, which women have for
their families, prevailed in the dissenting
part of the community,
however worthy in other respects; and
also that the same timid
prudence, or headstrong efforts, often
disgraced the exertions of
both. Oppression thus formed many of
the features of their
character perfectly to coincide with that
of the oppressed half of
mankind; for is it not notorious, that
dissenters were like women,
fond of deliberating together, and asking
advice of each other,
till by a complication of little
contrivances, some little end was
brought about? A similar attention to
preserve their reputation
was conspicuous in the dissenting and
female world, and was
produced by a similar cause.
Asserting the rights which women in
common with men ought to
contend for, I have not attempted to
extenuate their faults; but to
prove them to be the natural
consequence of their education and
station in society. If so, it is reasonable
to suppose, that they
will change their character, and correct
their vices and follies,
when they are allowed to be free in a
physical, moral, and civil
sense.
Let woman share the rights, and she will
emulate the virtues of
man; for she must grow more perfect
when emancipated, or justify
the authority that chains such a weak
being to her duty. If the
latter, it will be expedient to open a fresh
trade with Russia for
whips; a present which a father should
always make to his
360
son-in-law on his wedding day, that a
husband may keep his whole
family in order by the same means; and
without any violation of
justice reign, wielding this sceptre, sole
master of his house,
because he is the only being in it who
has reason; the divine,
indefeasible, earthly sovereignty
breathed into man by the Master
of the universe. Allowing this position,
women have not any
inherent rights to claim; and, by the
same rule their duties
vanish, for rights and duties are
inseparable.
Be just then, O ye men of understanding!
and mark not more severely
what women do amiss, than the vicious
tricks of the horse or the
ass for whom ye provide provender, and
allow her the privileges of
ignorance, to whom ye deny the rights of
reason, or ye will be
worse than Egyptian task-masters,
expecting virtue where nature has
not given understanding!
http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext02/v
orow10.txt
_________________________________
Why Go to College?
Alice Freeman Palmer
An address by Alice Freeman Parker,
a president of Wellesley College, on
the purpose and advantages of higher
education for women.
To a largely increasing number of young
girls college doors are opening every
year. Every year adds to the number of
men who feel as a friend of mine, a
successful lawyer in a great city, felt
when in talking of the future of his four
little children he said, "For the two boys
it is not so serious, but I lie down at
night afraid to die and leave my
daughters only a bank account." Year by
year, too, the experiences of life are
teaching mothers that happiness does not
necessarily come to their daughters
when accounts are large and banks are
sound, but that on the contrary they take
grave risks when they trust everything to
accumulated wealth and the chance of a
happy marriage. Our American girls
themselves are becoming aware that they
need the stimulus, the discipline, the
knowledge, the interests of the college in
addition to the school, if they are to
prepare themselves for the most
serviceable lives.
But there are still parents who say,
"There is no need that my daughter
should teach; then why should she go to
college?" I will not reply that college
training is a life insurance for a girl, a
pledge that she possesses the disciplined
ability to earn a living for herself and
others in case of need, for I prefer to
insist on the importance of giving every
girl, no matter what her present
circumstances, a special training in some
one thing by which she can render
society service, not amateur but of an
expert sort, and service too for which it
will be willing to pay a price. The
number of families will surely increase
who will follow the example of an
eminent banker whose daughters have
been given each her specialty. One has
chosen music, and has gone far with the
best masters in this country and in
Europe, so far that she now holds a high
rank among musicians at home and
abroad. Another has taken art, and has
not been content to paint pretty gifts for
361
her friends, but in the studios of New
York, Munich, and Paris, she has won
the right to be called an artist, and in her
studio at home to paint portraits which
have a market value. A third has proved
that she can earn her living, if need be,
by her exquisite jellies, preserves, and
sweetmeats. Yet the house in the
mountains, the house by the sea, and the
friends in the city are not neglected, nor
are these young women found less
attractive because of their special
accomplishments.
While it is not true that all girls should
go to college any more than that all boys
should go, it is nevertheless true that
they should go in greater numbers than
at present. They fail to go because they,
their parents and their teachers, do not
see clearly the personal benefits distinct
from the commercial value of a college
training. I wish here to discuss these
benefits, these larger gifts of the college
life,--what they may be, and for whom
they are waiting.
It is undoubtedly true that many girls are
totally unfitted by home and school life
for a valuable college course. These joys
and successes, these high interests and
friendships, are not for the selfconscious and nervous invalid, nor for
her who in the exuberance of youth
recklessly ignores the laws of a healthy
life. The good society of scholars and of
libraries and laboratories has no place
and no attraction for her who finds no
message in Plato, no beauty in
mathematical order, and who never
longs to know the meaning of the stars
over her head or the flowers under her
feet. Neither will the finer opportunities
of college life appeal to one who, until
she is eighteen (is there such a girl in
this country?), has felt no passion for the
service of others, no desire to know if
through history or philosophy, or any
study of the laws of society, she can
learn why the world is so sad, so hard, so
selfish as she finds it, even when she
looks upon it from the most sheltered
life. No, the college cannot be, should
not try to be, a substitute for the hospital,
reformatory or kindergarten. To do its
best work it should be organized for the
strong, not for the weak; for the highminded, self-controlled, generous, and
courageous spirits, not for the
indifferent, the dull, the idle, or those
who are already forming their characters
on the amusement theory of life. All
these perverted young people may, and
often do, get large benefit and
invigoration, new ideals, and unselfish
purposes from their four years'
companionship with teachers and
comrades of a higher physical, mental,
and moral stature than their own. I have
seen girls change so much in college that
I have wondered if their friends at home
would know them,--the voice, the
carriage, the unconscious manner, all
telling a story of new tastes and habits
and loves and interests, that had wrought
out in very truth a new creature. Yet in
spite of this I have sometimes thought
that in college more than elsewhere the
old law holds, "To him that hath shall be
given and he shall have abundance, but
from him who hath not shall be taken
away even that which he seemeth to
have." For it is the young life which is
open and prepared to receive which
obtains the gracious and uplifting
influences of college days. What, then,
for such persons are the rich and abiding
rewards of study in college or
university?
Pre-eminently the college is a place of
education. That is the ground of its
being. We go to college to know,
assured that knowledge is sweet and
powerful, that a good education
362
emancipates the mind and makes us
citizens of the world. No college which
does not thoroughly educate can be
called good, no matter what else it does.
No student who fails to get a little
knowledge on many subjects, and much
knowledge on some, can be said to have
succeeded, whatever other advantages
she may have found by the way. It is a
beautiful and significant fact that in all
times the years of learning have been
also the years of romance. Those who
love girls and boys pray that our colleges
may be homes of sound learning, for
knowledge is the condition of every
college blessing. "Let no man incapable
of mathematics enter here," Plato is
reported to have inscribed over his
Academy door. "Let no one to whom
hard study is repulsive hope for anything
from us," American colleges might
paraphrase. Accordingly in my talk
today I shall say little of the direct
benefits of knowledge which the college
affords. These may be assumed. It is on
their account that one knocks at the
college door. But seeking this first, a
good many other things are added. I
want to point