desperate. She quitted her hold on the disputed garment, and fell
upon her husband with such a shower of blows that he hardly knew
which way to turn. She was thus, however, unconsciously exhausting
herself, and Sire Hains soon recovered. The battle now became fiercer
than ever, and the lady seemed to be gaining the upper hand, when
Sire Hains gave her a skilful blow in the ribs, which nearly broke
one of them, and considerably checked her ardour. Friend Symon here
interposed, with the praiseworthy aim of restoring peace before further
harm might be done, but in vain, for the lady was only rendered more
obstinate by her mishap; and he agreed that it was useless to interfere
before one had got a more decided advantage over the other. The fight
therefore went on, the two combatants having now seized each other by
the hair of the head, a mode of combat in which the advantages were
rather on the side of the male. At this moment one of the judges,
Dame Aupais, sympathising too much with Dame Anieuse, ventured some
words of encouragement, which drew upon her a severe rebuke from her
colleague, Symon, who intimated that if she interfered again there
might be two pairs of combatants instead of one. Meanwhile, Dame
Anieuse was becoming exhausted, and was evidently getting the worst
of the contest, until at length, staggering from a vigorous push, she
fell back into a large basket which lay behind her. Sire Hains stood
over her exultingly, and Symon, as umpire, pronounced him victorious.
He thereupon took possession of the disputed article of raiment, and
again invested himself with it, while the lady accepted faithfully the
conditions imposed upon her, and we are assured by the poet that she
was a good and obedient wife during the rest of her life.
[Illustration: MAN MASTERED.
[_From a rare print after Van Mecken._]]
In this story, which affords a curious picture of mediæval life, we
learn the origin of the proverb relating to the possession and the
wearing of the breeches. Hugues Piancelles concludes his _faiblau_ by
recommending every man who has a disobedient wife to treat her in the
same manner; and mediæval husbands appear, to have followed his device
without fear of laws against the ill-treatment of women.
Van Mecken, a Flemish artist who flourished in the fifteenth century,
has left a record of domestic strife in an engraving which shows the
wife as victor in the struggle for the breeches; and an ungenerous
victor she would seem to have been, judging from the picture, where
she is seen engaged at once in putting on the hard-won garments and
striking her husband on the head with a distaff. He, poor fellow, is
following, under compulsion, some merely feminine occupation, and seems
to find it uncongenial.
[Illustration: A JUDICIAL DUEL.
[_From an old German MS._]]
In Germany, during mediæval times, domestic differences were settled
by judicial duels between man and wife, and a regular code for their
proper conduct was observed. ‘The woman must be so prepared,’ so
the instructions run, ‘that a sleeve of her chemise extend a small
ell beyond her hand like a little sack: there indeed is put a stone
weighing iii pounds; and she has nothing else but her chemise, and that
is bound together between the legs with a lace. Then the man makes
himself ready in the pit over against his wife. He is buried therein up
to the girdle, and one hand is bound at the elbow to the side.’
The seventeenth century seems to have been prolific of domestic broils,
for an unusual number of pamphlets exist which have as their subject
the attempts of women to obtain the upper hand over their husbands.
One there is, called _Women’s Fegaries_, which is especially bitter. A
spirited woodcut on the cover shows a man and woman struggling for a
pair of breeches, which certainly would be no gain to either of them,
except as a trophy of victory, so immensely large are they. The woman
wields a ladle; the man brandishes something that may be either a sword
or a cudgel, and both seem in deadly earnest. The contents of this
counterblast to women’s efforts are extravagant and amusing; but you
shall judge for yourself:--
‘The proverb says, “There is no wit like the woman’s wit,” especially
in matters of mischief, their natures being more prone to evil than
good; for, being made of a knobby crooked rib, they contain something
in their manners and dispositions of the matter and form of which they
were created, as may be instanced in several examples, of which we
shall in this sheet of paper give you some of them.
‘At a town called _Stocking Pelham_, in the county [_sic_] of England,
not long ago there happened a terrible fray betwixt the man of the
house on one side, and his wife and his maid on the other side, and
though two to one be great odds at football, yet, by the strength
of his arm, and a good crab-tree cudgel, they felt by their bruised
sides that he had gotten the victory. Now, though the man’s name was
_William_, yet the wife for a great while did want her _Will_--I mean,
how to be revenged upon him--until at last she effected, by policy,
what she could not compass by strength; for he, putting his head out
of a window that had neither Glass nor Lettice belonging to it, but
only a riding shutter, he having no eyes behind him, she nimbly stept
to the shutter, and ran it up close to his neck, so that he was locked
fast, as in a Pillory; where, whilst the one kept him in, the other
with a great washing-beetle, belaboured his body, as your Seamen do
stock-fish. The maid-servant, a strong-docht wench, with both her hands
laying on, and at every blow saying:--
‘“_Remember how you beat my dame:_
_Now look for to be served the same._”
‘The poor man, to be rid of his tormentors, was glad to pray, crave,
and entreat, and promise whatsoever they would have him, vowing never
after to use Crab-tree Cudgel again, nor so much as to eat of Mustard,
if it were made of Verjuice, out of detestation to Crabs and Crab-trees.
‘_Thus, women, you may learn a ready way_
_To make resisting husbands to obey:_
_Although to baste your sides their fingers itches,_
_You may, by policy, obtain the breeches._
‘It is in the memory of man, since in _Black-Fryers_ a Taylor and his
Wife fell out about superiority. The Taylor fretted, and his Wife
scolded, whereupon this ninth part of a man challenged her out into
the street to try the conquest, having provided broom-staves there
for that purpose. Being both entered the lists, the woman thought it
best policy to begin first, and, catching up a Ram’s Horn, which lay
at her foot, she threw it at her husband, which by chance lighted on
his forehead at the great end, and stuck there as fast as ever it grew
upon the Ram’s head; which, having done, she ran in at the door again.
The Taylor, being mad to be served so, went to run after her, but,
making more haste than good speed, he ran his horn into the staple
of the door, where he was so entangled by his brow antlers, that he
could stir no further, which the woman perceiving, she got up one of
the broom-staves, and so belaboured poor _Pilgarlick_, that, in great
humility, he asked her forgiveness, and resigned the right of the
breeches up to her.
‘’Twas in the sound of _Clerkenwell_ bells, and therefore of long
standing, that a Plaisterer had gotten a most damnable Scold to his
wife, who used to fetch him from the Ale-house. One night, coming
home three-quarters drunk, she acted the part of _Zantippe_, and made
the house to Ring with her scolding. This music was so untunable in
her Husband’s Ears, that, getting a cudgel in his hands, he fell to
belabouring her until he made her to ask him for forgiveness, and
promise never to scold so again. Having thus, as he thought, got an
absolute conquest over her tongue, he went quietly to bed, where he
slept soundly, whilst she lay awake studying of mischief. In the
morning, before he awaked, she examined his pockets for money (the
common tricks of a good many women), but found nothing in them, save
only some lath nails; these did she take and set upright all about the
room, which done, she gets a Pail of Water in her hands, and, calling
aloud, commanded him to rise, which he refused to do; whereupon she
throws the pail of water upon the bed. This so vexed him that, starting
suddenly up, he went to run after her; when his naked feet lighting
upon the lath nails, he was forced to slacken his pursuit, being so
mortified with them that he could neither stand nor walk. Whereupon
his wife, taking the same cudgel he had beaten her withall the night
before, told him that _what was sauce for a Goose was sauce for a
Gander_, and so be-rib-roasted him, that with great penitency he now
asked her forgiveness, resigning the whole right and title of the
Breeches unto her, and that though he was superior to her in strength,
yet he was inferior to her in policy.’
‘_When as that women do themselves apply_
_To mischief, they perform it readily._
_Nothing will serve them when their fingers itches_
_Until such time they have attained the breeches._
_Be it to scold, to brangle, scratch, or fight,_
_Their hands are heavy though their tails are light._
‘In that part of _Albion_ which is called _Veal Country_, there
formerly lived a merry saddler who had gotten a scolding carrion to
wife that would frequent the ale-house almost every day, from which
he was forced to fetch her home at night, where he would bestow some
rib-roast upon her to give her a breathing that she might not grow
foggy with drinking so much ale. However, the woman did not take it
so kindly but that she vowed to be revenged upon him for it; and to
put her determination into practice, one day she asked two of her boon
companions to get her husband to the ale-house and make him drunk,
which they performed according to her desire, leading him home about
ten o’clock at night, and placing him in a chair with a good fire
before him, where he presently fell fast asleep: now had the woman
a fit opportunity to put her design into practice, when pulling out
his feet towards the fire, and the fire so near towards them as it
almost touched them, she went to bed, when quickly his shoes began
to fry, and his feet were mortified with the burning, so that he made
a most sad, dolorous noise. She, knowing the fish was caught that she
had laid wait for, went down with a good ashen wand in her hand. “You
ill-conditioned slave,” quoth she, “must you come home drunk and make
such a noise that one cannot rest in quiet for you? I will make you to
roar for something,” and thereupon fell on him with as much Fury as a
Pyrat doth on a Merchant’s bark. The poor Sadler was forced to endure
all, for he could not help himself; but, desiring her to be merciful,
he resigned up the breeches to her, she tryumphing in her double
conquest, first paying him who used to pay her, and, secondly, bringing
him into that condition that for three-quarters of a year afterwards he
did not stir out of doors to fetch her from the ale-house:--
‘_Women, like pismires, have their sting,_
_And several ways to pass their ends do bring._
_Their tongues are nimble, nor their hands crazy,_
_Although to work, each limb they have is lazy._
‘Many other examples might we instance of the imperiousness of women,
and what stratagems they have invented for gaining the Breeches from
their Husbands, but these I think may suffice for one single sheet of
paper, and, indeed, as many as can well be afforded for four Farthings;
but least any one should complain of a hard pennyworth, to make him
amends, I will afford him a song into the bargain:--
‘THE SONG.
‘_When women that they do meet together,_
_Their tongues do run all sorts of weather,_
_Their noses are short, and their tongues they are long,_
_And tittle, tittle, tattle is all their song._
‘Now that women (like the world) do grow worse and worse, I have read
in a very learned authour, viz., _Poor Robin’s Almanack_, how that
about two hundred and fifty years ago (as near as he could remember)
there was a great sickness almost throughout the whole world, wherein
there dyed Forty-five millions, eight hundred, seventy-three thousand,
six hundred and ninety-two good women, and of bad women only three
hundred, forty and four; by reason whereof there hath been such a
scarcity of good women ever since: the whole breed of them being almost
utterly extinct.’
* * * * *
And so an end. But the author of this pamphlet is not alone in his
satires of domestic infelicity. Here you shall see, in _The Woman to
the Plow_, how these things struck our forbears. He has good ideas,
this seventeenth-century versifier, but his gifts in the matter of
rhyme and rhythm are all too slight:--
THE WOMAN TO THE PLOW AND THE MAN TO THE HEN-ROOST;
OR, A FINE WAY TO CURE A COT QUEAN.
Both men and women, listen well,
A merry jest I will you tell,
Betwixt a good man and his wife
Who fell the other day at strife.
He chid her for her huswivery,
And she found fault as well as he.
He says:--
‘Sith you and I cannot agree,
Let’s change our work’--‘Content,’ quoth she.
‘My wheel and distaff, here, take thou,
And I will drive the cart and plow.’
This was concluded ’twixt them both:
To cart and plow the good wife goeth.
The good man he at home doth tarry,
To see that nothing doth miscarry.
An apron he before him put:
Judge:--Was not this a handsome slut?
He fleets the milk, he makes the cheese;
He gropes the hens, the ducks, and geese;
He brews and bakes as well’s he can;
But not as it should be done, poor man.
As he did make his cheese one day
Two pigs their bellies broke with whey:
Nothing that he in hand did take
Did come to good. Once he did bake,
And burnt the bread as black as a stock.
Another time he went to rock
The cradle, and threw the child o’ the floor,
And broke his nose, and hurt it sore.
He went to milk, one evening-tide,
A skittish cow, on the wrong side--
His pail was full of milk, God wot,
She kick’d and spilt it ev’ry jot:
Besides, she hit him a blow on th’ face
Which was scant well in six weeks’ space.
Thus was he served, and yet to dwell
On more misfortunes that befell
Before his apron he’d leave off,
Though all his neighbours did him scoff.
Now list and mark one pretty jest,
’Twill make you laugh above the rest.
As he to churn his butter went
One morning, with a good intent,
The cot-quean fool did surely dream,
For he had quite forgot the cream.
He churned all day with all his might,
And yet he could get no butter at night.
’Twere strange indeed, for me to utter
That without cream he could make butter.
Now having shew’d his huswivery,
Who did all things thus untowardly,
Unto the good wife I’ll turn my rhyme,
And tell you how she spent her time.
She used to drive the cart and plow,
But do’t well she knew not how.
She made so many banks i’ th’ ground,
He’d been better have given five pound
That she had never ta’en in hand,
So sorely she did spoil the land.
As she did go to sow likewise,
She made a feast for crows and pies,
She threw away a handful at a place,
And left all bare another space.
At the harrow she could not rule the mare,
But bid one land, and left two bare:
And shortly after, well-a-day,
As she came home with a load of hay,
She overthrew it, nay, and worse,
She broke the cart and kill’d a horse.
The goodman that time had ill-luck;
He let in the sow and killed a duck,
And, being grieved at his heart,
For loss on’s duck, his horse and cart,
The many hurts on both sides done,
His eyes did with salt water run.
‘Then now,’ quoth he, ‘full well I see,
The wheel’s for her, the plow’s for me.
I thee entreat,’ quoth he, ‘good wife,
To take my charge, and all my life
I’ll never meddle with huswivery more.’
The goodwife she was well content,
And about her huswivery she went;
He to hedging and to ditching,
Reaping, mowing, lading, pitching.
And let us hope that, like the Prince and Princess in the fairy tale,
they lived happily ever afterwards. But I have my doubts.
VI.--WOMEN IN MEN’S EMPLOYMENTS.
That Woman’s true profession is marriage is a fact commonly blinked
in these times when, owing to their greater numbers, it is become
inevitable that many women must go through life as spinsters. Not
every woman may become the mistress of a home in these days when the
proportion of females to males is growing larger and more evident
year by year: not all the women and girls can attain to that ideal
of marriage which they so ardently desire, now that women outnumber
the men in Great Britain and Ireland alone by nearly a million; and
so, to cover their failure in life, the unmarried have started the
heresy that woman’s mission is domination rather than submission; that
woman’s sphere of action and influence is not properly confined to the
home, but is rightly universal, and that marriage is an evil which
destroys their individuality. These failures, rightly to call those who
cannot achieve legalised coverture, are, of course, of all classes,
but chiefly and equally of course, they belong to the wage-earning
class, and must seek employment wherewith to support their existence
in an undesired spinsterhood. The growing competition of women with
one another in feminine employments, the higher education of modern
girls, the increasing tendency of men to defer marriage, or to remain
bachelors altogether--all these causes have led to woman’s turning
from the long-since overstocked markets for woman’s work to the more
highly-paid functions fulfilled by men. Then, also, the new employments
and professions evolved from the increasingly complex civilisation of
this dying nineteenth century, have been almost exclusively feminised
by the _femmes soles_ who are occupied nowadays as clerks, shorthand
writers, journalists, type-writers--_vulgo_ ‘typists’--doctors,
dentists, telephonists, telegraphists, decorators, photographers,
florists, and librarians. A lower social stratum takes to such
employments as match-box making, printers’ folding and bookbinding,
and a hundred other crafts. Where deftness of manipulation comes into
request these wage-earning women have proved their right to their new
places; but in the occupations of clerks, cashiers, telephonists,
telegraphists, and shorthand writers they have sufficiently
demonstrated their unfitness, and only retain their situations by
reason of the lower wages they are prepared to accept, in competition
with men, and through the sexual sentimentality which would rather
have a pretty woman to flirt with in the intervals of typewriting
than a merely useful and unornamental man. It may be inevitable,
and in accordance with the inexorable law of self-preservation,
that women will continue to elbow men from their stools; but woman
cannot reasonably expect, if she competes with man in the open market,
to receive the old-time deference and chivalric treatment--real or
assumed--that was hers when woman remained at home, and when the title
of spinster was not an empty form. She must be content to forego much
of the kindly usage that was hers before she became man’s competitor;
and if she fails in market overt, where chivalry has no place, why, she
has no just cause of complaint. If the time is past when women were
regarded as a cross between an angel and an idiot it is quite by her
own doing, and if she no longer receives the deference that is the due
of an angel, nor the compassionate consideration usually accorded an
idiot, no one is to blame but herself.
If she would be content to earn her wages in those manly employments
she has poached, and to refrain from the cry of triumph she cannot
forbear, she would be a much more gracious figure, and, indeed,
entitled to some sympathy; but foolish women are clamorously greedy
of self-glorification, and still instant, in and out of season, in
reviling the strength and mental agility of men which surpass their
own and forbid for ever the possibility of female domination. And yet
women, one might reasonably suppose, have no just cause of complaint
in the matter of their mental and physical inferiority. The feminine
quality of cunning has ever stood them in good stead, and by its aid
they have grasped advantages that could not have been theirs by right
of their muscles or their reason. Cunning has taught them to use their
shortcomings as claims for consideration, and to urge courtesy as
their due in order to handicap men in the race. In the same manner Mr.
Gladstone was wont, when all reasonable arguments had failed him, to
urge his age as a claim to attention and a compliance with his policy;
and, whenever a cricket match is played between an eleven of gentlemen
and a corresponding number of ladies, the men must fain tie one hand
behind their backs and fend as best they may with the other, and use a
stump in place of a bat. Again, when gloves are wagered on a race, who
ever heard of pretty Fanny paying when her wager was lost? You shall
see an instance of feminine unreasonableness in competition with man in
this tale of a race:--Mrs. Thornton, the wife of a Colonel Thornton,
rode on horseback, in 1804, a match with a Mr. Frost, on the York
racecourse. The course was four miles, and the stakes were 500 guineas,
even. The race was run before an immense concourse, and eventually
the lady lost! She could not, of course, considering her sex, contain
herself for indignation, and her letter to the _York Herald_ which
followed made complaint against Mr. Frost for having been lacking
in courtesy in ‘distancing her as much as he could.’ She challenged
that discourteous sportsman to another match, but he very rightly
considered that sport is masculine, and did not accept.
Many thousands of girls and unmarried women live nowadays upon their
earnings in a solitary existence. They are of all grades and classes;
they have entered the professions, and even invention is numbered among
their occupations, although the inability of women to originate is
notorious. According to a statement in the _Times_ of December, 1888,
‘out of 2500 patents issued to women by the Government of the United
States, none reveal a new principle.’
We have not many women inventors in these islands. Women have not had
sufficient courage or rashness for dabbling in applied science, or
meddling with mechanics. They owe even the sewing-machine, and all the
improvements upon its crude beginnings, to man, and would have been
content to wield the needle in slow and painful stitches for all time
but for his intervention.
It was left for the Government to bring the employment of women
forward, and successive Postmasters-General have sanctioned their
introduction to post-offices; but as post-office clerks they have
failed to give satisfaction. They readily assume official insolence,
and carry it to an extent unknown even to Foreign Office male clerks,
who were, before the introduction of women into the Civil Service,
supposed to have attained the utmost heights of ‘side’ and official
offensiveness. Many have been the bitter letters addressed to the
_Times_--that first resort of the aggrieved--upon the neglect and
contumely heaped upon the public by the Postmaster-General’s young
ladies. But this neglect and studied insolence has, it must be owned,
been chiefly shown by these Jacquettas in office to their own sex; and
ladies have been observed to wait, with rage and vexation, for the
tardy pleasure of female post-office clerks in condescending to notice
their presence.
At one time the business of post-offices became served almost entirely
by women. This was due not to any Governmental delusions upon the score
of their merits, but was owing entirely to a cheeseparing economy which
employed inferior wits at a lower wage than would have been acceptable
to men. Even such extremely busy offices as those of Ludgate Circus
and Lombard Street were filled with women, who elbowed men from their
stools, and became so ‘flurried’ in the press of business that they
frequently gave either too much change or too little over the counter,
or committed such vagaries as giving ten shillings’ worth of stamps
for half-a-crown; or were incapable of weighing letters and parcels
properly, so that the Post-office revenues were increased by packages
being more than sufficiently stamped, or else were augmented by the
fines levied upon addressees in cases where their inherent inability
to juggle with figures had caused inadequate prepayment. Indeed,
the woman who can reason from cause to effect, or can employ the
multiplication-table accurately (except under circumstances in which
time is no object) is as much a ‘sport’--as Professor Huxley might
say--as a white raven or a cat born with six legs.
The storm of indignation was so great over these unbusinesslike doings,
that even that elephantine creature--the Postmaster-General--was
moved,[4] and the chiefest of the City post-offices are served now by
men.