Part 5 (1/2)
THE IDEA OF FEMALE INFERIORITY.
It is an opinion pretty well established, that in strength of mind, as well as of body, men are greatly superior to women.
Men are endowed with boldness and courage, women are not. The reason is plain, these are beauties in our character; in theirs they would be blemishes. Our genius often leads to the great and the arduous; theirs to the soft and the pleasing; we bend our thoughts to make life convenient; they turn theirs to make it easy and agreeable. If the endowments allotted to us by nature could not be easily acquired by women, it would be as difficult for us to acquire those peculiarly allotted to them. Are we superior to them in what belongs to the male character? They are no less so to us, in what belongs to the female character.
Would it not appear rather ludicrous to say, that a man was endowed only with inferior abilities, because he was not expert in the nursing of children, and practising the various effeminacies which we reckon lovely in a woman? Would it be reasonable to condemn him on these accounts?
Just as reasonable, as it is to reckon women inferior to men, because their talents are in general not adapted to tread the horrid path of war, nor trace the mazes and intricacies of science.
The idea of the inferiority of female nature has drawn after it several others the most absurd, unreasonable, and humiliating to the s.e.x. Such is the pride of man, that in some countries he has considered immortality as a distinction too glorious for women. Thus degrading the fair partners of his nature, he places them on a level with the beasts that perish.
As the Asiatics have, time immemorial, considered women as little better than slaves, this opinion probably originated among them. The Mahometans, both in Asia and Europe, are said, by a great variety of writers, to entertain this opinion.
Lady Montague, in her letters, has opposed this general a.s.sertion of the writers concerning the Mahometans; and says that they do not absolutely deny the existence of female souls, but only hold them to be of a nature inferior to those of men; and that they enter not into the same, but into an inferior paradise, prepared for them on purpose. Lady Montague, and the writers whom she has contradicted, may perhaps be both right. The former might be the opinion which the Turks brought with them from Asia; and the latter, as a refinement upon it they may have adopted by their intercourse with the Europeans.
This opinion, however, has had but few votaries in Europe: though some have even here maintained it, and a.s.signed various reasons for so doing.
Among these, the following laughable reason is not the least particular--”In the Revelations of St. John the divine,” said one, whose wife was a descendant of the famous Xantippe,[1] ”you will find this pa.s.sage: _And there was silence in heaven for about the s.p.a.ce of half an hour_. Now, I appeal to any one, whether that could possibly have happened, had there been any women there? And, since there are none there, charity forbids us to imagine that they are all in a worse place; therefore it follows that they have no immortal part: and happy is it for them, as they are thereby exempted from being accountable for all the noise and disturbance they have raised in this world.”
In a very ancient treatise, called the Wisdom of all Times, ascribed to Hushang, one of the earliest kings of Persia, are the following remarkable words: ”The pa.s.sions of men may, by long acquaintance, be thoroughly known; but the pa.s.sions of women are inscrutable; therefore they ought to be separated from men, lest the mutability of their tempers should infect others.”
Ideas of a similar nature seem to have been at this time, generally diffused over the East. For we find Solomon, almost every where in his writings, exclaiming against women; and, in the Apocrypha, the author of Ecclesiasticus is still more illiberal in his reflections.
Both these authors, it is true, join in the most enraptured manner to praise a virtuous woman; but take care at the same time to let us know, that she is so great a rarity as to be very seldom met with.
Nor have the Asiatics alone been addicted to this illiberality of thinking concerning the s.e.x. Satirists of all ages and countries, while they flattered them to their faces, have from their closets scattered their spleen and ill-nature against them. Of this the Greek and Roman poets afford a variety of instances; but they must nevertheless yield the palm to some of our moderns. In the following lines, Pope has outdone every one of them:
”Men some to pleasure, some to business take; But every woman is at heart--a rake.”
Swift and Dr Young have hardly been behind this celebrated splenetic in illiberality. They perhaps were not favorites of the fair, and in revenge vented all their envy and spleen against them. But a more modern and accomplished writer who by his rank in life, by his natural and acquired _graces_, was undoubtedly a favorite, has repaid their kindness by taking every opportunity of exhibiting them in the most contemptible light. ”Almost every man,” says he, ”may be gained some way, almost every woman any way, can any thing exhibit a stronger caution to the s.e.x?” It is fraught with information; and it is to be hoped they will use it accordingly.
[1] Xantippe, was the wife of Socrates, and the most famous scold of antiquity.
FEMALE SIMPLICITY.
Would we conceive properly of that simplicity which is the sweetest expression of a well-informed and well-meaning mind, which every where diffuses tenderness and delicacy, sweetens the relations of life, and gives a zest to the minutest duties of humanity, let us contemplate every perceptible operation of nature, the twilight of the evening, the pearly dew-drops of the early morning, and all that various growth which indicates the genial return of spring. The same principle from which all that is soft and pleasing, amiable or exquisite, to the eye or to the ear, in the exterior frame of nature, produces that taste for true simplicity, which is one of the most useful, as well as the most elegant lessons, that _ladies_ can learn.
Infancy, is perhaps, the finest and most perfect ill.u.s.tration of simplicity. It is a state of genuine nature throughout. The feelings of children are under no kind of restraint, but pure as the fire, free as the winds, honest and open as the face of heaven. Their joys incessantly flow in the thickest succession, and their griefs only seem fleeting and evanescent. To the calls of nature they are only attentive. They know no voice but hers. Their obedience to all her commands is prompt and implicit. They never antic.i.p.ate her bounties, nor relinquish her pleasures. This situation renders them independent of artifice.
Influenced only by nature, their manners, like the principle that produces them, are always the same.
Genuine simplicity is that peculiar quality of the mind, by which some happy characters are enabled to avoid the most distant approaches to any thing like affectation, inconstancy, or design, in their intercourse with the world. It is much more easily understood, however than defined; and consists not in a specific tone of the voice, movement of the body, or mode imposed by custom, but is the natural and permanent effect of real modesty and good sense on the whole behavior.
This has been considered in all ages, as one of the first and most captivating ornaments of the s.e.x. The savage, the plebeian, the man of the world, and the courtier, are agreed in stamping it with a preference to every other female excellence.
Nature only is lovely, and nothing unnatural can ever be amiable. The genuine expressions of truth and nature are happily calculated to impress the heart with pleasure. No woman, whatever her other qualities may be, was ever eminently agreeable, but in proportion as distinguished by these. The world is good-natured enough to give a lady credit for all the merit she can possess or acquire, without affectation. But the least shade or coloring of this odious foible brings certain and indelible obloquy on the most elegant accomplishments. The blackest suspicion inevitably rests on every thing a.s.sumed. She who is only an ape of others, or prefers formality in all its gigantic and preposterous shapes, to that plain, unembara.s.sed conduct which nature unavoidably produces, will a.s.suredly provoke an abundance of ridicule, but never can be an object either of love or esteem.
The various artifices of the s.e.x discover themselves at a very early period. A pa.s.sion for expense and show is one of the first they exhibit.
This gives them a taste for refinement, which divests their young hearts of almost every other feeling, renders their tempers desultory and capricious, regulates their dress only by the most fantastic models of finery and fas.h.i.+on, and makes their company rather tiresome and awkward, than pleasing or elegant.
No one perhaps can form a more ludicrous contrast to every thing just and graceful in nature, than the woman whose sole object in life is to pa.s.s for a _fine lady_. The attentions she every where and uniformly pays, expects, and even exacts, are tedious and fatiguing. Her various movements and att.i.tudes are all adjusted and exhibited by rule. By a happy fluency of the most eloquent language, she has the art of imparting a momentary dignity and grace to the merest trifles. Studious only to mimic such peculiarities as are most admired in others, she affects a loquacity peculiarly flippant and teazing because scandal, routs, finery, fans, china, lovers, lap-dogs, or squirrels, are her constant themes. Her amus.e.m.e.nts, like those of a magpie, are only hopping over the same spots, prying into the same corners, and devouring the same species of prey. The simple and beautiful delineations of nature, in her countenance, gestures and whole deportment, are habitually arranged, distorted, or concealed, by the affected adoption of whatever grimace or deformity is latest or most in vogue.