Woman in the golden ages

by Amelia Gere Mason

It is quite true that the woman of to-day is putting her intellect to new uses; possibly she has become more vividly conscious of it. We know also that the average intelligence of all classes of women, as well as of men, was never so high as now. But the intrinsic force of the human intellect is not measured by averages. A thousand satellites do not make a sun, though they may shine for ages by the light of one. Then, whatever our achievements may be—and I do not underrate them—it would reflect rather seriously on the feminine mind to suppose that it could lie practically dormant all these centuries, even under the heavy disabilities which were imposed upon it. The fact that women have always been in subjection and on the whole very much oppressed and trampled upon, especially in the early ages, makes it all the more remarkable that they have left so many striking examples, not only of the highest wisdom and intelligence, but of the highest executive power, ever since Deborah sat as a judge in Israel, Miriam sang immortal songs of heroic deeds, and Semiramis conquered Asia.

No doubt our own deserts are great, and we do well to burn a fair amount of incense to them; but possibly the smoke of it is so dense that we fail to see all the fine things that have been done before us. Other women have been as clever as we are, and as strong, if not individually stronger; many have been as good, a few perhaps have been more wicked than most of us; and the majority have had a great deal more to complain of. “There is nothing new under the sun” was written so long ago that it seems as if there could have been nothing old. Even the “new woman” has her prototypes in the past, who have thought, written, lectured, ruled, asserted themselves, and been honored as well as talked about in their day. Men have prophesied strange revolutions in human affairs because of them, and sometimes have sent them back to the chimney-corner and silence, as one of our own chivalrous writers says they will do again if this irrepressible being who presumes to have opinions makes things too uncomfortable for them. But the world has gone on marrying and giving in marriage, and growing in the main, let us hope, happier and better, while the social condition of women has steadily improved, with an occasional reaction, in spite of the fears of the timid and the sneers of the cynical.

It may be safely said that there was not much in the lives of the women of two or three thousand years ago which we should care to repeat. Their field was, as a rule, narrow and restricted, their privileges were few, their burdens and sorrows were many. To go outside the sphere prescribed for them called for great talent and great courage, since respectability was usually regarded as synonymous with insignificance. But even in this aspiring, much-knowing, self-gratulatory, woman-honoring twentieth century, whenever we are told that the feminine intellect is inherently weak and has never created anything worthy of immortality, we point with pride to Sappho, the one woman poet of the world whose claim to the first rank has never been disputed. If we wish to illustrate the social and political influence of woman, we cite Aspasia, the trusted confidante and adviser of the greatest statesmen and philosophers, as well as the presiding genius of the first salon of which we have any knowledge. Yet these women lived in the dawn of the present order of things. We may recall the scholarly mind and masterly executive qualities of Zenobia, which perhaps have never been exceeded; the profound learning and brilliant oratory of Hypatia, who was torn in pieces because of them by the fanatical Alexandrian mob; Cornelia, gifted and austere, adding the courage of a Stoic to the tenderness of a mother; Livia, wise, tactful, and far-seeing; Marcella, saint and grande dame, a savante, a leader, and a heroine. Other figures of the classic ages, grave and thoughtful, clever and brilliant, or mystical and sweet, pass in stately array before us, each supreme in her own field. It may have been an intellectual gift that she had; it may have been a masterful character, or a heroic virtue, or a spirit of sublime self-sacrifice, or a faith so exalted that it has illuminated all the centuries. Each of these traits has its illustrious examples among the women of long ago.

Passing ages of darkness, in which here and there the talent of a Countess Matilda or an Héloïse shone brightly through the mists of ignorance and superstition, we find the women of a new era delving side by side with men in the mines of classic lore, and bringing to their work the same enthusiasm, the same untiring patience. We find them, too, versed in all the learning of their time. If we are disposed to plume ourselves overmuch on our intellectual glories, it may serve as a lesson in humility to recall the wonderful women of the Renaissance, who filled chairs of philosophy and law in the universities, sustained public theses, spoke in Latin before learned societies, wrote pure Greek and studied Hebrew, preached in cathedrals were sent on special embassies and consulted on grave affairs of State by popes and kings. With all our latter-day prestige and the chivalry of modern men, it would be difficult to imagine Leo XIII or the German Emperor consulting a woman on serious questions of policy, or even listening to one unless she were a queen with power that must be reckoned with. If they did, it would be behind closed doors where no one could know it. Yet we have wise women and able ones.

When men lost themselves in metaphysical abstractions it was the “new woman” of the Renaissance who lent wings to their minds and stimulated creation. A touch from her uncaged intellect thrilled the learning of the age and put into it a soul. A Vittoria Colonna inspires a Michelangelo, writes an immortal in memoriam, and brings poetry to the service of religion. An Olympia Morata pauses in her high intellectual flight to give an object-lesson in moral courage and the virtues of a gentle womanhood. A Catherine of Siena thinks as well as loves, writes as well as prays; the head of Christendom is moved by her wise counsels, and the currents of the world are changed.

It was woman, too, who married thought to life, presided at the birth of society, and diffused the seeds of the new knowledge. She took philosophy out of the obscurity of ponderous tomes, and made men reduce it to clear terms with the logical processes left out, so that the unlettered might read. If men held the palm of supremacy in reason and abstract thought, women illuminated them by sentiment and imagination, so touching the world to living issues. The swift, facile, intuitive intellects of women complemented the slower and more logical minds of men, and it is this union that creates life in all its larger, more enduring forms. It was the social gifts of women added to a flexible intelligence that raised conversation to a fine art. A Duchess Leonora, an Isabella d’Este, a Duchess Elisabetta, call about them the wit, learning, talent, and genius of an age, and in this atmosphere poets, artists, and men of letters find an audience and an inspiration. Each gives of his best, which is fostered and turned into new channels. Standards are raised by the association of various forms of excellence, and society reaches a higher altitude of living and thinking. To be sure, the day comes when it matters more to talk and be talked about than it does to know. The rank weeds of mediocrity spring up in profusion and overshadow the flowers. The ideals droop and the brilliant age ends. But it has fulfilled its mission, and all ages end, great and small, luminous and dark alike.

Did men degenerate in the intellectual companionship of women? To what glorious heights did they attain in the dark ages, when no woman’s voice was heard, except in prayer? What heights have they reached in any period that did not find its ideals in brute force, when, at least, a few women of light and leading did not stand at their side, though only by courtesy, instead of sitting at their feet?

Did women lose in morals when they gained in intelligence, as men so often delight to tell us? Quite the reverse, if I have read history aright. In seasons of moral decadence it is the women of serious education who have been among the first to lift their voices against the sins of the period in which they lived. If they were often swept along by the current which they had no power to stem, it was because of their helplessness, not of their knowledge. They were not faultless but human, and subject at all periods to the same conditions that were fatal to men, who claimed supremacy in strength. If they have sometimes broken on the rocks of superstition, it was because they had too little intelligence, not too much.

Have they lost the tender instincts of wifehood and motherhood? The records of the world are full of the unselfish devotion of great wives and great mothers, and the men who shine most conspicuously on the pages of history, from Cæsar and the Gracchi to George Washington and Daniel Webster, have been the sons of able and intelligent women. A cultivated intellect is not a guaranty of virtue, but it has never yet made a woman forget her love and allegiance to a strong and noble man, or turn a cold ear to the artless prattle of a child, though vanity and weakness and folly have done so very often. But it has many a time given her the power and the impulse to rear a world-famed monument to the one, and to give the best work and thought of a self-sacrificing life for the glory of the other. It is not simply heredity, but the atmosphere and companionship of the first years, that make or mar a destiny. But let us not confound intelligent women with pedants and pretenders, or great women with small ones on a pedestal of any sort, self-erected or other.

All this I trust will be made clear by illustration in these pages, together with the fact that the intellects of at least a few women have been very much awake in all the golden ages of the world, and exercised on many of the same problems that confront them to-day. The question of equality has been discussed in every period. It is needless to pursue these discussions here any further than to recall them. It does not signify whether women have or have not done this, that, or the other thing as well as men—whether they have or have not been conspicuous for creative genius, or scientific genius, or any other special form of genius. It is as idle to ask whether they are, on the whole, equal or inferior to men, as to ask whether an artist is equal to a general, an inventor to a philosopher, or a poet to a man of science. There are certain things that will always be done better by men; there are other things of equal value to the happiness and well-being of the race, and worthy of equal honor, that will always be done better by women; there are still other and many things that may be done equally well by either. The final proof of ability lies in its tangible result, and it is a waste of words to speculate on unknown quantities, or to say that under certain conditions women might have attained specific heights which they have not attained. No doubt it is true, but one cannot deal with shadows. We have to consider things as they are, with the possibilities toward which they point.