contrast between Frith’s painting of the “Derby Day” and Rosa Bonheur’s
“Horse Fair,”—“the former pleasing the eye by its cleverness and
prettiness, the latter impressing the spectator by its power and its
truthful rendering of animal life. The difference between the two
painters is probably more one of education than of natural gifts. But,
whilst the style of the former is grafted on a fashion, the latter is
founded on a rock,—the result of a close study of nature, chastened by
classic feeling and a remembrance, it may be, of the friezes of the
Parthenon.”
Now, it is to be observed that this description runs precisely counter
to the popular impression as to the work of the two sexes. Novelists
like Charles Reade, for instance, who have apparently seen precisely one
woman in their lives, and hardly more than one man, and who keep on
sketching these two figures most felicitously and brilliantly
thenceforward, would be apt to assign these qualities of the artist very
differently. Their typical man would do the truthful and powerful work,
and everybody would say, “How manly!” Their woman would please by
cleverness and prettiness, and everybody would say, “How womanly!” Yet
Blackburn shows us that these qualities are individual, not sexual; that
they result from temperament, or, he thinks, still more from training.
If Rosa Bonheur does better work than Frith, it is not because she is a
woman, nor is it in spite of that; but because, setting sex aside, she
is a better artist.
This is not denying the distinctions of sex, but only asserting that
they are not so exclusive and all-absorbing as is supposed. It is easy
to name other grounds of difference which entirely ignore those of sex,
striking directly across them, and rendering a different classification
necessary. It is thus with distinctions of race or color, for instance.
An Indian man and woman are at many points more like to one another than
is either to a white person of the same sex. A black-haired man and
woman, or a fair-haired man and woman, are to be classified together in
these physiological aspects. So of differences of genius: a man and
woman of musical temperament and training have more in common than has
either with a person who is of the same sex, but who cannot tell one
note from another. So two persons of ardent or imaginative temperament
are thus far alike, though the gulf of sex divides them; and so are two
persons of cold or prosaic temperament. In a mixed school the teacher
cannot class together intellectually the boys as such, and the girls as
such: bright boys take hold of a lesson very much as bright girls do,
and slow girls like slow boys. Nature is too rich, too full, too varied,
to be content with a single basis of classification: she has a hundred
systems of grouping, according to sex, age, race, temperament, training,
and so on; and we get but a narrow view of life when we limit our
theories to one set of distinctions.
As a matter of social philosophy, this train of thought logically leads
to co-education, impartial suffrage, and free co-operation in all the
affairs of life. As a matter of individual duty, it teaches the old
moral to “act well your part.” No wise person will ever trouble himself
or herself much about the limitations of sex in intellectual labor. Rosa
Bonheur was not trying to work like a woman, or like a man, or unlike
either, but to do her work thoroughly and well. He or she who works in
this spirit works nobly, and gives an example which will pass beyond the
bounds of sex, and help all. The Abbé Liszt, the most gifted of living
pianists, told a friend of mine, his pupil, that he had learned more of
music from hearing Madame Malibran sing, than from any thing else
whatever.
XVI.
ANGELIC SUPERIORITY.
It is better not to base any plea for woman on the ground of her angelic
superiority. The argument proves too much. If she is already so perfect,
there is every inducement to let well alone. It suggests the expediency
of conforming man’s condition to hers, instead of conforming hers to
man’s. If she is a winged creature, and man can only crawl, it is his
condition that needs mending.
Besides, one may well be a little incredulous of these vast claims.
Granting some average advantage to woman, it is not of such completeness
as to base much argument upon it. The minister looking on his
congregation, rarely sees an unmixed angel, either at the head or at the
foot of any pew. The domestic servant rarely has the felicity of waiting
on an absolute saint at either end of the dinner-table. The lady’s-maid
has to compare her little observations of human infirmity with those of
the valet-de-chambre. The lover worships the beloved, whether man or
woman; but marriage bears rather hard on the ideal in either case. And
those who pray out of the same book, “Have mercy upon us, miserable
sinners,” are not supposed to be offering up petitions for each other
only.
We all know many women whose lives are made wretched by the sins and
follies of their husbands. There are also many men whose lives are
turned to long wretchedness by the selfishness, the worldliness, or the
bad temper of their wives. Domestic tyranny belongs to neither sex by
monopoly. If man tortures or depresses woman, she also has a fearful
power to corrupt and deprave man. On the other hand, to quote old
Antisthenes once more, “the virtues of the man and woman are the same.”
A refined man is more refined than a coarse woman. A child-loving man is
infinitely tenderer and sweeter toward children than a hard and
unsympathetic woman. The very qualities that are claimed as
distinctively feminine are possessed more abundantly by many men than by
many of what is called the softer sex.
Why is it necessary to say all this? Because there is always danger that
we who believe in the equality of the sexes should be led into
over-statements, which will re-act against ourselves. It is not safe to
say that the ballot-box would be reformed if intrusted to feminine votes
alone. Had the voters of the South been all women, it would have plunged
earlier into the gulf of secession, dived deeper, and come up even more
reluctantly. Were the women of Spain to rule its destinies unchecked,
the Pope would be its master, and the Inquisition might be
re-established. For all that we can see, the rule of women alone would
be as bad as the rule of men alone. It would be as unsafe to give woman
the absolute control of man as to make man the master of woman.
Let us be a shade more cautious in our reasonings. Woman needs equal
rights, not because she is man’s better half, but because she is his
other half. She needs them, not as an angel, but as a fraction of
humanity. Her political education will not merely help man, but it will
help herself. She will sometimes be right in her opinions, and sometimes
be altogether wrong; but she will learn, as man learns, by her own
blunders. The demand in her behalf is, that she shall have the
opportunity to make mistakes, since it is by that means she must become
wise.
In all our towns, there is a tendency toward “mixed schools.” We rarely
hear of the sexes being separated in a school after being once united;
but we constantly hear of their being brought together after separation.
This is commonly, but mistakenly, recommended as an advantage to the
boys alone. I once heard an accomplished teacher remonstrate against
this change, when thus urged. “Why should my girls be sacrificed,” she
said, “to improve your boys?” Six months after, she had learned by
experience. “Why,” she asked, “did you rest the argument on so narrow a
ground? Since my school consisted half of boys, I find with surprise
that the change has improved both sexes. My girls are more ambitious,
more obedient, and more ladylike. I shall never distrust the policy of
mixed schools again.”
What is true of the school is true of the family and of the state. It is
not good for man, or for woman, to be alone. Granting the woman to be,
on the whole, the more spiritually minded, it is still true that each
sex needs the other. When the rivet falls from a pair of scissors, we do
not have them mended because either half can claim angelic superiority
over the other half, but because it takes two halves to make a whole.
XVII.
VICARIOUS HONORS.
There is a story in circulation—possibly without authority—to the effect
that a certain young lady has ascended so many Alps that she would have
been chosen a member of the English Alpine Club, but for her misfortune
in respect to sex. As a matter of personal recognition, however, and, as
it were, of approximate courtesy, her dog, who has accompanied her in
all her trips, and is not debased by sex, has been elected into the
club. She has therefore an opportunity for exercising in behalf of her
dog that beautiful self-abnegation which is said to be a part of woman’s
nature, impelling her always to prefer that her laurels should be worn
by somebody else.
The dog probably made no objection to these vicarious honors; nor is any
objection made by the young gentlemen who reply eloquently to the toast,
“The Ladies” at public dinners, or who kindly consent to be educated at
masculine colleges on “scholarships” founded by women. At Harvard
University alone there are ten such scholarships,—their income amounting
annually to $2,340 in all. Those who receive the emoluments of these
funds must reflect within themselves, occasionally, how grand a thing is
this power of substitution given to women, and how pleasant are its
occasional results to the substitute. It is doubtless more blessed to
give than to receive, but to receive without giving has also its
pleasures. Very likely the holder of the scholarship, and the orator who
rises with his hand on his heart to “reply in behalf of the ladies,” may
do their appointed work well; and so did the Alpine dog. Yet, after all,
but for the work done by his mistress, he would have won no more honor
from the Alpine Club than if he had been a chamois.
Nothing since Artemus Ward and his wife’s relations has been finer than
the generous way in which fathers and brothers disclaim all desire for
profits or honors on the part of their feminine relatives. In a certain
system of schools once known to me, the boys had prizes of money on
certain occasions, but the successful girls at those times received
simply a testimonial of honor for each; “the committee being convinced,”
it was said, “that this was more consonant with the true delicacy and
generosity of woman’s nature.” So in the new arrangements for opening
the University of Copenhagen to young women, Karl Blind writes to the
New York Evening Post, that it is expressly provided that they shall not
“share in the academic benefices and stipends which have been set apart
for male students.” Half of these charities may, for aught that appears,
have been established originally by women, like the ten Harvard
scholarships already named. Women, however, can avail themselves of them
only by deputy, as the Alp-climbing young lady is represented by her
dog.
It is all a beautiful tribute to the disinterestedness of woman. The
only pity is that this virtue, so much admired, should not be
reciprocated by showing the like disinterestedness toward her. It does
not appear that the butchers and bakers of Copenhagen propose to reduce
in the case of women students “the benefices and stipends” which are to
be paid for daily food. Young ladies at the university are only
prohibited from receiving money, not from needing it. Nor will any of
the necessary fatigues of Alpine climbing be relaxed for any young lady
because she is a woman. The fatigues will remain in full force, though
the laurels be denied. The mountain-passes will make small account of
the “tenderness and delicacy of her sex.” When the toil is over she will
be regarded as too delicate to be thanked for it; but, by way of
compensation, the Alpine Club will allow her to be represented by her
dog.
XVIII.
THE GOSPEL OF HUMILIATION.
“The silliest man who ever lived,” wrote Fanny Fern once, “has always
known enough, when he says his prayers, to thank God he was not born a
woman.” President —— of —— College is not a silly man at all, and he is
devoting his life to the education of women; yet he seems to feel as
vividly conscious of his superior position as even Fanny Fern could
wish. If he had been born a Jew, he would have thanked God, in the
appointed ritual, for not having made him a woman. If he had been a
Mohammedan, he would have accepted the rule which forbids “a fool, a
madman, or a woman” to summon the faithful to prayer. Being a Christian
clergyman, with several hundred immortal souls, clothed in female
bodies, under his charge, he thinks it his duty, at proper intervals, to
notify his young ladies, that, though they may share with men the glory
of being sophomores, they still are in a position, as regards the other
sex, of hopeless subordination. This is the climax of his discourse,
which in its earlier portions contains many good and truthful things:—
“And, as the woman is different from the man, so is she relative to
him. This is true on the other side also. They are bound together by
mutual relationship so intimate and vital that the existence of
neither is absolutely complete except with reference to the other.
But there is this difference, that the relation of woman is,
characteristically, that of subordination and dependence. This does
not imply inferiority of character, of capacity, of value, in the
sight of God or man; and it has been the glory of woman to have
accepted the position of formal inferiority assigned her by the
Creator, with all its responsibilities, its trials, its possible
outward humiliations and sufferings, in the proud consciousness that
it is not incompatible with an essential superiority; that it does
not prevent her from occupying, if she will, an inward elevation of
character, from which she may look down with pitying and helpful
love on him she calls her lord. Jesus said, ‘Ye know that the
princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that
are great exercise authority upon them. But it shall not be so among
you; but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your
minister; and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your
servant, even as the Son of man came, not to be ministered unto, but
to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.’ Surely woman
need not hesitate to estimate her status by a criterion of dignity
sustained by such authority. She need not shrink from a position
which was sought by the Son of God, and in whose trials and griefs
she will have his sympathy and companionship.”
There is a comforting aspect to this discourse, after all. It holds out
the hope, that a particularly noble woman may not be personally inferior
to a remarkably bad husband, but “may look down with pitying and helpful
love on him she calls her lord.” The drawback is not merely that it
insults woman by a reassertion of a merely historical inferiority, which
is steadily diminishing, but that it fortifies this by precisely the
same talk about the dignity of subordination which has been used to
buttress every oppression since the world began. Never yet was there a
pious slaveholder who did not quote to his slaves, on Sunday, precisely
the same texts with which President —— favors his meek young pupils.
Never yet was there a slaveholder who would not shoot through the head,
if he had courage enough, anybody who should attempt to place him in
that beautiful position of subjection whose spiritual merits he had been
proclaiming. When it came to that, he was like Thoreau, who believed
resignation to be a virtue, but preferred “not to practise it unless it
was quite necessary.”
Thus, when the Rev. Charles C. Jones of Savannah used to address the
slaves on their condition, he proclaimed the beauty of obedience in a
way to bring tears to their eyes. And this, he frankly assures the
masters, is the way to check insurrection and advance their own
“pecuniary interests.” He says of the slave, that under proper religious
instruction “his conscience is enlightened and his soul is awed; ... to
God he commits the ordering of his lot, and in his station renders to
all their dues, obedience to whom obedience, and honor to whom honor.
_He dares not wrest from God his own care and protection._ While he sees
a preference in the various conditions of men, he remembers the words of
the apostle: ‘Art thou called being a servant? Care not for it; but, if
thou mayst be free, use it rather. For he that is called in the Lord,
being a servant, is the Lord’s freeman; likewise, also, he that is
called being free, is Christ’s servant.’”[4]
Footnote 4:
Religious Instruction of the Negroes. Savannah, 1842, pp. 208–211.
I must say that the Rev. Mr. Jones’s preaching seems to me precisely as
good as Dr. ——’s, and that a sensible woman ought to be as much
influenced by the one as was Frederick Douglass by the other—that is,
not at all. Let the preacher try “subordination” himself, and see how he
likes it. The beauty of service, such as Jesus praised, lay in the
willingness of the service: a service that is serfdom loses all beauty,
whether rendered by man or by woman. My objection to separate schools
and colleges for women is, that they are too apt to end in such
instructions as this.
XIX.
“CELERY AND CHERUBS.”
There was once a real or imaginary old lady who had got the metaphor of
Scylla and Charybdis a little confused. Wishing to describe a perplexing
situation, this lady said,—
“You see, my dear, she was between Celery on one side and Cherubs on the
other! You know about Celery and Cherubs, don’t you? They was two rocks
somewhere; and if you didn’t hit one, you was pretty sure to run smack
on the other.”
This describes, as a clever writer in the New York Tribune declares, the
present condition of women who “agitate.” Their Celery and Cherubs are
tears and temper.
It is a good hit, and we may well make a note of it. It is the danger of
all reformers, that they will vibrate between discouragement and anger.
When things go wrong, what is it one’s impulse to do? To be cast down,
or to be stirred up; to wring one’s hands, or clench one’s fists,—in
short, tears or temper.
“Mother,” said a resolute little girl of my acquaintance, “if the dinner
was all spoiled, I wouldn’t sit down, and cry! I’d say, ‘Hang it!’” This
cherub preferred the alternative of temper, on days when the celery
turned out badly. Probably her mother was addicted to the other
practice, and exhibited the tears.
But as this alternative is found to exist for both sexes, and on all
occasions, why charge it especially on the woman-suffrage movement? Men
are certainly as much given to ill temper as women; and, if they are
less inclined to tears, they make it up in sulks, which are just as bad.
Nicholas Nickleby, when the pump was frozen, was advised by Mr. Squeers
to “content himself with a dry polish;” and so there is a kind of dry
despair into which men fall, which is quite as forlorn as any tears of
women. How many a man has doubtless wished at such times that the pump
of his lachrymal glands could only thaw out, and he could give his
emotions something more than a “dry polish”! The unspeakable comfort
some women feel in sitting for ten minutes with a handkerchief over
their eyes! The freshness, the heartiness, the new life visible in them,
when the crying is done, and the handkerchief comes down again!
And, indeed, this simple statement brings us to the real truth, which
should have been more clearly seen by the writer who tells this story.
She is wrong in saying, “It is urged that men and women stand on an
equality, are exactly alike.” Many of us urge the “equality:” very few
of us urge the “exactly alike.” An apple and an orange, a potato and a
tomato, a rose and a lily, the Episcopal and the Presbyterian churches,
Oxford and Cambridge, Yale and Harvard,—we may surely grant equality in
each case, without being so exceedingly foolish as to go on and say that
they are exactly alike.
And precisely here is the weak point of the whole case, as presented by
this writer. Women give way to tears more readily than men? Granted. Is
their sex any the weaker for it? Not a bit. It is simply a difference of
temperament: that is all. It involves no inferiority. If you think that
this habit necessarily means weakness, wait and see! Who has not seen
women break down in tears during some domestic calamity, while the
“stronger sex” were calm; and who has not seen those same women, that
temporary excitement being over, rise up and dry their eyes, and be
thenceforth the support and stay of their households, and perhaps bear
up the “stronger sex” as a stream bears up a ship? I said once to an
experienced physician, watching such a woman, “That woman is really
great.”—“Of course she is,” he answered: “did you ever see a woman who
was not great, when the emergency required?”
Now, will women carry this same quality of temperament into their public
career? Doubtless: otherwise they would cease to be women. Will it be
betraying confidence if I own that I have seen two of the very bravest
women of my acquaintance—women who have swayed great audiences—burst
into tears, during a committee-meeting, at a moment of unexpected
adversity for “the cause”? How pitiable! our critical observers would
have thought. In five minutes that April shower had passed, and those
women were as resolute and unconquerable as Queen Elizabeth: they were
again the natural leaders of those around them; and the cool and
tearless men who sat beside them were nothing—men were “a lost art,” as
some one says—compared with the inexhaustible moral vitality of those
two women.
No: the dangers of “Celery and Cherubs” are exaggerated. For temper,
women are as good as men, and no better. As for tears, long may they
flow! They are symbols of that mighty distinction of sex which is as
ineffaceable and as essential as the difference between land and sea.
XX.
THE NEED OF CAVALRY.
In the interesting Buddhist book, “The Wheel of the Law,” translated by
Henry Alabaster, there is an account of a certain priest who used to
bless a great king, saying, “May your majesty have the firmness of a
crow, the audacity of a woman, the endurance of a vulture, and the
strength of an ant.” The priest then told anecdotes illustrating all of
these qualities. Who has not known occasions wherein some daring woman
has been the Joan of Arc of a perfectly hopeless cause, taken it up
where men shrank, carried it through where they had failed, and
conquered by weapons which men would never have thought of using, and
would have lacked faith to employ even if put into their hands? The wit,
the resources, the audacity of women, have been the key to history and
the staple of novels, ever since that larger novel called history began
to be written.
How is it done? Who knows the secret of their success? All that any man
can say is, that the heart enters largely into the magic. Rogers asserts
in his “Table-Talk,” that often, when doubting how to act in matters of
importance, he had received more useful advice from women than from men.
“Women have the understanding of the heart,” he said, “which is better
than that of the head.” Then this instinct, that begins from the heart,
reaches the heart also, and through that controls the will. “Win
hearts,” said Lord Burleigh to Queen Elizabeth, “and you have hands and
purses;” and the greatest of English sovereigns, in spite of ugliness
and rouge, in spite of coarseness and cruelty and bad passions, was
adored by the nation that she first made great.