Man draws near to woman with the fly-net of his analysis, thinking
to steal up and capture the secrets of her disposition. He finds a
distance drawn across his way which he never entirely passes. It
is the distance of sex. The greatest intimacy of marriage itself,
which blends two beings into one fate, and compels them to set up
housekeeping on the principle of mutualism, is still evaded by motives
and moods which the woman holds in reserve, not by calculation, but
through the instinct of a difference which the husband cannot entirely
penetrate. It is not that man reaches results chiefly by the processes
of judgment, and woman chiefly by a method which is not thinking so
much as it is a taste or touch of the objects she observes. But she
is removed from his scrutiny because the complexity of sex constructs
her soul, becomes the essence of her motives, decides her virtues
and her vices, and modifies the intellect itself. She contains all
qualities, but not in the masculine proportion. Sex also irrevocably
decides for the average man, as for the average woman, the plus and
minus of each attribute. Woman's mode of life must so defer to the
tendency of her sex, that a variety of objects are prevented from
pressing into her experience. She is less actively in motion from
place to place than man, who mingles with many crowds and learns to
reflect upon their actions. Her brain is not so multifariously stored
with facts and relations, because there are some scenes from which she
must always be remote. If, apart from sex, a considerable portion of
a person's training has been by hearsay, that person's judgments will
be sentiments rather than reflections; but sex decides that hearsay
shall enter largely into woman's training. The rude, fierce, cunning
competition of naked men in the palæstra, without blush or apology,
gave girth to the breasts which were bucklers before the glory and the
arts of Greece. Many a situation that is as coarse as a pugilist puts
us in prudent trim. Women derive from our education a benefit which
their muscle is too delicately draughted to procure. Events that do not
mince their speech give us a thorough knowledge of our mother-tongue.
We overhear the other people, weigh their words, enrich ourselves with
facts, or protect ourselves against omens. She is more likely to be
well-behaved than man, but less likely to be tolerant of ill-behavior.
When she feels particularly virtuous, she is apt to condemn swiftly and
fatally where man would suspend his judgment till all the qualifying
facts were put into the case. Human development has in this respect
conferred upon man a great advantage that dates from the barbaric rule
of the stronger, and has been re-enforced by the varied experience of
every generation. Just as woman is entering upon a more independent
career, she betrays a deficiency in the quality of humor. Man was
turned loose in the pasture to feed at random upon all the plants
that drew nutritious and poisonous saps: stramonium and clover were
indiscriminately cropped; but Heaven gave to its wild creatures tough
stomachs to begin with. They effect a compromise with such complacency
that literature is charmed to celebrate it; and the dew of humor
condenses beneath a long-suffering sky. A powerful and happy digestion
does not prefer the noxious weeds; but it has learned how to account
for them, and to measure their effects.
Women are not good readers of any kind of plays. The movement and lapse
of events in a novel are more congenial to their secluded life. And I
venture to impute to the average woman a thinly running vein of humor
as the reason why she finds such difficulty in admiring Shakspeare.
Many of the finest women can never conquer their repugnance. There
seems to be in it something of impatience at the dramatic intervals
and the movement by incessant colloquy, something of an equanimity of
passion, something of fright at the broad and powerful statement, which
flinches at nothing; blabs dreadfully of Juliet's clandestine feeling;
keeps Helena in contented ear-shot of Parolles, and lets her devise
an indelicate solution of the plot; shows the sweet Marianna of the
moated grange ready to help on another play with the same alacrity,
and leaves Nature everywhere, in the most passionate or vulgar phases,
to her absolute sincerity, and concedes to her the freedom of the
dictionary. Women do not like to be charmed along through scenes of
tender and lofty feeling to stumble over the sentences of porters,
carriers, camp-followers, fellows on a frolic; phrases that hiccough
a decided waft of sack; clauses that throw a leer in passing. Even
the high passionateness of kings and lovers, when it is the purest,
seems to the average woman to blaze with extravagance. To her it is
the overstatement that kidnaps true sentiment and brings it up for
the stage. She does not recall a moment of her life that could have
recognized such feeling, or have framed for her secretest thought a
corresponding whisper. Do her brothers and acquaintances smoulder with
these wraths and fervors inside of their demure suits of gray-mixed
and black? Are all the men who circulate in society, and enframe her
waist at balls, liable to attacks of this erysipelatous condition?
Does she sit at divine service with such neat packages of rend-rock in
the pew? So the Shakspearean ideal of the great passions of mankind
has to be watered for her through the modern novel, trickle by trickle
of protracted rhetoric, drop by drop of overflavored style. She turns
with resentful cheeks from Juliet's expectant mood, and manages to read
pages that are too sickly to kindle a blush. And yet perhaps they are
equivocal enough to have puzzled Dame Quickly and frightened Falstaff.
Certainly the equivoque has not lost its voice "with hollaing and
singing of anthems."
Some offences, chiefly those which concern propriety and chasteness,
are so repugnant to a woman's disposition that they excite a fanaticism
which sometimes is slow, and sometimes eager, to condemn the reputed
offender. That is to say, the same disposition is competent to
give credence to an accusation slowly, or to give it impetuously
and with loathing. If there be a case involving testimony, it is
not deliberately weighed, its intricacies patiently pursued, its
implications as well as its statements justly rated, and all the parts
of it fitted to an opinion of innocence or guilt; but there results
instead a state of feeling from previous opinions and assumptions,
which no testimony, however strong, can do much to reverse. Women,
indeed, naturally shrink from familiarity with the testimony, and do
not wish to reach an opinion by probing it. The defendant may enjoy
the immunity of a woman's assumption that the charge is in his case
incredible, and refuted by all her previous associations with his life;
or he may suffer from her want of any feeling derived from previous
knowledge of his life, or from considerations dependent upon personal
sentiment.
Woman's instinct of purity is specially intolerant towards the
unfortunate members of her own sex. She will not hear a word: she
is deprived of the power to weigh circumstance, environment, the
complicity of others, the wile and treachery of life. The outcast does
not even have the benefit of a trial. No court is held in which mercy
seasons justice, like one that was long ago extemporized over the
woman who knelt on the pavement of the Temple. The men in that crowd
were chiefly interested to convict the Master, and not the sinner. If
women were present, as is quite probable, they composed a jury that was
adverse to the ruling of the court, unless they fell into sympathy from
pique at the mock chastity of the men.
In the first scene of the "Midsummer Night's Dream," Hermia and
Lysander are in love with each other. Demetrius, who was once deep
in love for Helena, has transferred his midsummer inclination to
this Hermia, leaving Helena as deep in love with him as ever, but
finding Hermia full of disdain. Now Hermia's father would have her
marry Demetrius; so she and Lysander, to escape from this paternal
preference, agree to meet at night, and fly together from Athens to
a darling old aunt who lived at some Hellenic Gretna Green. At this
point, Helena enters, who loves Demetrius as much as he now dislikes
her. The lovers confide to her their purpose of flight; and Hermia, for
comfort, says that she will soon be beyond the reach of Demetrius. Then
Helena is left alone to her reflections, during which she says,--
"For ere Demetrius look'd on Hermia's eyne,
He hail'd down oaths that he was only mine;
And when this hail some heat from Hermia felt,
So he dissolv'd, and showers of oaths did melt.
I will go tell him of fair Hermia's flight:
Then to the wood will he to-morrow night
Pursue her: and for this intelligence
If I have thanks, it is a dear expense:
But herein mean I to enrich my pain,
To have his sight thither and back again."
Coleridge frames, in a criticism upon this passage, a sweeping
indictment of the feminine disposition. Starting with a misconception
of the text, he appends to it a statement that does not seem to me
accordant with the facts.
He attributes to Helena a "broad determination of ungrateful
treachery," and then adds: "The act itself is natural, and the resolve
so to act is, I fear, likewise too true a picture of the lax hold
which principles have on a woman's heart when opposed to, or even
separated from, passion and inclination. For women are less hypocrites
to their own minds than men are, because, in general, they feel less
proportionate abhorrence of moral evil in and for itself, and more of
its outward consequences, as detection and loss of character, than
men,--their natures being almost wholly extroitive."[10]
Now there is no treachery in the act of Helena, because there is no
damage in it to the runaways. If she supposed that Demetrius could
prevent the flight or prevail over Hermia's repugnance, she would never
have given the information to him. Her motive is entirely distinct
from treachery, and is rooted in a truly feminine hope of disgusting
Demetrius by showing the woman he loves running away with another man.
This may cure his passion, and possibly revive it for herself. But
she modestly says that even thanking her would be too great a strain
upon him. Still, so far from fancying that Demetrius can detach Hermia
from Lysander, she means to "enrich her pain,"--that is, deepen it,
by following to witness his despair at her rival's flight, then have
him back again. For then, perhaps, his feeling may return to her from
the point of appreciating her act which disenchants him. All this we
have to put down tediously to rescue Shakspeare's compactness from
Coleridge's misrepresentation.
But it gives me an opportunity to suggest that women are less
hypocritical to their own minds than men are, not because they feel
less proportionate abhorrence of moral evil in and for itself, and more
of its outward consequences, but because they have an organic instinct,
that is due to difference of sex, to be swayed first by passions and
inclinations that are entirely frank and unconventional, and afterwards
by motives arising out of abstract principles. Therefore they are
natively unconscious of something which men smile at or deplore, as
they call it insincerity. In the description of one of his characters,
Bulwer says, "That strange faculty in women which we men call
dissimulation, and which in them is truthfulness to their own nature,
enabled her to carry off the sharpest anguish she had ever experienced
by a sudden burst of levity of spirit."
Thackeray shows how this native trait can run to viciousness: "When I
say I know women, I mean I know that I don't know them. Every woman I
ever knew is a puzzle to me, as, I have no doubt, she is to herself.
Say they are not clever? Benighted idiot! She has long ago taken your
measure and your friends'. She knows your weaknesses, and ministers
to them in a thousand artful ways. She knows your obstinate points,
and marches round them with the most curious art and patience, as you
will see an ant on a journey turn round an obstacle. Every woman
manages her husband: every person who manages another is a hypocrite.
Her smiles, her submission, her good humor, for all which we value
her,--what are they but admirable duplicity? We expect falseness from
her, and order and educate her to be dishonest. Should he upbraid, I'll
own that he prevail; say that he frown, I'll answer with a smile: what
are these but lies, that we exact from our slaves?--lies, the dexterous
performance of which we announce to be the female virtues."
But, if a noble woman would defend her art of complaisance, she might
justly borrow the words of Queen Katherine, in that fourth scene of the
second act of "Henry VIII.," which is manifestly a portion contributed
by Shakspeare:--
"Heaven witness,
I have been to you a true and humble wife,
At all times to your will conformable:
Ever in fear to kindle your dislike,
Yea, subject to your countenance,--glad or sorry,
As I saw it inclined. When was the hour
I ever contradicted your desire,
Or made it not mine too? Or which of your friends
Have I not strove to love, although I knew
He were mine enemy?"
In cases that are not involved with passion, inclination, or some
personal and social coil, the moral judgment of woman is natively
far better than fear of detection. And, if a man prides himself upon
some superiority in this respect, he has something to conceal. What
social circle in the world is not made eminent by cases of a sense of
duty that sustains itself against inclination and personal respects!
Suffering heroism holds up ill-fated alliances and conceals them
nobly from the common eye; there is protracted sacrifice which puts
the finger of silence to quivering lips. There are not a few women
whom youthful sentiment, like a paid emissary, has decoyed into cruel
disenchantments, and there betrayed them to the stake: the fagots are
piled, the years contribute fresh fuel, but the flames extort no cry.
For the highest considerations of conscience, the tenderest maternity,
lights a counter-fire that shrivels the complaint. The world never
discovers that this _auto-da-fé_ is going on of a woman who is too
delicate and noble to dash the sparks of it among her neighbors for the
brewing of tea-table gossip, and the kindling of little bonfires of
sympathy.
But, in social and public transactions, the average woman can be
the bitterest partisan and the most reckless defyer of justice: it
is when her sentiment is involved, her pride is hurt, a specific
interest of house or person threatened, her egotism irritated. With
men, partisanship is the result of complex motives; with woman, it is
an unmixed, aboriginal passion. Bosom friends never know two sides to
a quarrel: the woman who is implicated is sure, when she makes her
statement to female intimates, of an absolute and abject belief in her
truthfulness. They will not take the trouble to learn, or even care
to inquire after, the position of the other party. If it be a man, he
will be perfectly conscious of this manɶuvre of nature without taking
much pains to set up a counter-movement, or to create a party of his
own. Manifold occupations supply a salutary rebuke of pettiness, and
help to drive the matter from his mind. If it be a woman, much time and
feminine resource will be lavished in self-exoneration. She will go to
and fro in a vigorous canvass of society, to create a clan and clothe
it in the plaid of her sprightly confidences. Its bucklers coldly gleam
in every assembly.
There are some vices which circulate through the world without invading
the seclusion of woman. She cannot imagine what they are; consequently
they remain so vague that she has no more blame for them than for the
nebulæ in Orion. Financial operations, for instance, are so intricate
that she shrinks from following, and so foreign to the course of her
life that they secure a languid attention. Her lover or husband can
easily make it appear to her that his violations of trust are either
the knavery and carelessness of others, or admissible procedures; and,
if she is as deeply in love as he is in offence, she will resort to
connivance rather than divorce. Jessica plunders her father, and then
calls out to her lover,--
"Here, catch this casket; it is worth the pains."
But, not being quite sure if she has taken enough, she returns to
gild herself "with some more ducats." It was a highly profitable
"irregularity:"--
"Two sealed bags of ducats,
Of double ducats, stol'n from me by my daughter!
And jewels,--two stones, two rich and precious stones,
Stol'n by my daughter!"
One of the stones was a diamond worth two thousand ducats, and another
was a turquoise which her mother gave to Shylock before marriage.
That she exchanged in Genoa for a monkey. A critic says of these
transactions, "We recognize a certain equity in their furtively taking
what we think he ought to have voluntarily bestowed." This anxiety
to protect Shakspeare from moral blame disregards some feminine
possibilities. Jessica's offence was the very one, the only one, of
which she was capable; and, like all such lapses, her act was due to
circumstances conspiring with latent tendency. We are not reconciled
to her behavior by recalling the pound of flesh; for the theft of the
jewels is as contrary to mercy as the stipulation in Antonio's bond.
But love and sex prevail: she behaves like any full-blooded nature who
has been defrauded of her rights, immured in a house with the "vapor
of a dungeon," cut off from amusements and sympathies, from gondolas
and serenades. She spends money foolishly after she gets it, thanks to
the father who scrimped her. It depends upon how deeply we mean to hate
Shylock whether his howls over the transaction of the monkey delight
our ears.
There are many things which we have not allowed woman to understand:
she has been stinted in her education and secluded in her pursuits
beyond the organic requisition of her sex. Public affairs of the
highest importance pass through her mind like the blurred impression
made upon her by the multifariousness of a daily newspaper; and we know
what candid awkwardness balks the attempt to seize and unsnarl the
vital points of the morning sheet. The marriages and deaths, being in
large type and a conventional place, compete with the advertisements
of low-priced cottons and flannels, and are only forgotten when the
column that flatters with the latest fashions storms the well-dressed
heart. Perhaps the same sheet announces the last pathetic moment
of the Crimean campaign, which men follow with the eager interest
of participants, as they are pledged to the cause of either party
because they estimate the weal or woe of human races. Perhaps the
Franco-Prussian war is creating an historic epoch in the politics
and religion of Europe, involving new adjustments of the social and
democratic life, making Luther's half battles whole ones, and leading
all the bitter experiences of France into the solution of a republic.
It is safe to say that the majority of women are indifferent to the
closely printed columns which men follow with almost the literal
precision of the compositors who set them up. Perhaps the statement may
be hazarded that the emancipation of woman depends considerably upon
her rivalry with man at the newsstands, and her patient sifting of the
contents of her purchase. The proposition is not so fantastic as it
may appear. I have been astonished at the repugnance of sprightly and
intelligent women for the labor that the genuine news of the day from
every nation requires, as it deserves, to be extracted from papers of
value and dignity; for each throb of honest news carries forward the
second-hand that marks the hours of mankind. Woman prefers to know
the interests of the planet by hearsay, to sit over her fine task and
listen to some man who has sopped up each crisis: he distils the day
into a few drops of her luxury. It evaporates like the scent upon her
handkerchief. She will hardly derive the benefit of discussing it. Her
native sense ought to be furnished with a just appreciation of public
affairs, enlightened observation of them, well-balanced abhorrence of
all the iniquities, sustained and practical reflection upon the great
proceedings of the world. If the claims of the household can never
afford her time for this, she must decline the peril of increasing
masculine ignorance by the weight of a single ballot.
But, in private and domestic life, what Aladdin's lamp she rubs in
secret to enrich her day! When a woman has a good deal of common-sense,
she never uses it to ponder with. It is a daylight that pervades
all at once without arriving by degrees. It is wonderful to see her
swiftness in unknotting man's perplexed forehead with her talent that
is used to snarls. It was not the result of a process of inferring and
considering: she is the most considerate when she taxes herself the
least to be so. And, if you ask her how she reasons upon any subject,
she might reply as Julia did when pressed to give her reason for
thinking Proteus the best man:--
"I have no other but a woman's reason:
I think him so because I think him so."
A woman will tell you that probably she drops out stages, and does not
have to pass through all the terms which detain a man; so that the
process is like evaporation,--a broad and insensible deduction. This
is a constant surprise to man, who supposes that his logical ability
must be superior in all exigencies, because it is so essential in
science and the classification of the world, and wherever he trains
facts to observe their proper sequence. But woman's brain vaporizes
syllogism, and a subtle æther vibrates. Her limitation is a great
superiority on its appropriate field.
Hermia tells Theseus that Lysander is a worthy gentleman. The Prince
replies:--
"In himself he is;
But, in this kind, wanting your father's voice,
The other must be held the worthier.
HER. I would my father look'd but with my eyes!