Essays, or discourses, vol. 2 (of 4)

by Benito Jerónimo Feijoo

Instead of replying to such insolent malevolence, the best method is, to treat it with contempt and detestation. Not a few of those, who are most addicted to paint the sex in the blackest colouring, have been observed to be the most solicitous about obtaining their favour and good graces. Euripides, who was exceedingly satirical upon them in his tragedies, as Athenæus and Stobæus inform us, was excessively fond of them in private. He execrated them on the theatre, and idolized them in the chamber. Boccace, who was excessively addicted to women, wrote a satyr against them, entitled, The Labyrinth of Love. What was the mystery of this? Why it most probably was, that, under the disguise of having an aversion to them, he endeavoured to conceal his passion for them; or it might be, that the brutal satiety of the turpid appetite had brought on a loathing, which caused every thing appertaining to the other sex to appear hateful and disgusting. This sort of abuse, may also sometimes proceed from a refusal to lend a kind ear to entreaties and solicitations; for there are men so malevolent, as to be capable of saying a woman is not good, because she has refused to be bad. This unjust motive for complaint and resentment, has sometimes vented itself in the most cruel acts of revenge; an example of which, may be instanced in the unhappy fate of that most beautiful Irish lady madam Douglass, against whom, William Leout was blindly irritated, for having refused to comply with his lewd solicitations. To be revenged, he accused her of high treason; and procured the calumniating and false charge to be proved by suborned witnesses. She suffered capital punishment; and la Mothe de la Vayer, who (in his Opusc. Scept.) gives the relation, says, that Leout himself afterwards confessed the falsity of the accusation, and the wicked means used to prove her guilty.

To this instance, may be added that of a most virtuous and beautiful French lady, the marchioness of Gange. Her two brothers-in-law made dishonourable propositions to her, and successively tried many arts, to prevail on her to gratify their base inclinations; but, notwithstanding one of them, who was an extreme cunning man, and governed the marquis her consort entirely, threatened to instil into the mind of her husband suspicions of her fidelity, she vigorously rejected their entreaties. Finding themselves in spite of the menace, repeatedly repulsed with scorn and indignation, they resolved to carry the threat into execution; and, having prevailed on the credulous husband to entertain doubts of his wife’s honour and constancy, he consented that the two brothers should take away the life of the innocent marchioness; which they did in a barbarous and cruel manner, by first forcing her to swallow a poisonous draught, but afterwards, doubting of the efficacy of the potion, they gave her several desperate wounds. Although she survived both the wounds and the operation of the poison for the space of nineteen days, and, by means of her relation of the matter, which was corroborated by other circumstances, the officers of justice and the public were informed of the whole transaction, and measures were taken for apprehending the delinquents; yet they, finding themselves discovered, fled the kingdom, and escaped the punishment due to their crime. This tragical event happened in the year 1667, and is related by Gayot Piteval, in his fifth volume of Remarkable Cases.

IV. I don’t deny that many of them are vicious; but, alas! if we were to trace their slips and irregularities to their source, I fear we should find them originate in the obstinate and persevering impulse or solicitations of our sex. He, who would wish or endeavour to make all the women good, should begin with converting all the men. Nature implanted modesty in the sex, as a fence-wall to resist the attacks of appetite; and it very rarely happens, that a breach is made in this wall by force applied on the inside.

V. The declamations against the women, which we read in some parts of holy writ, should be understood, as pointed and levelled at the perverse ones, as there is no doubt but there are such; and, although they should be supposed to have an eye to the sex in general, nothing could be inferred from thence; because the physicians of the soul declaim against women, as the physicians of the body declaim against fruit, which, although it is good, beautiful, and useful in itself, the abuse or excess of it is pernicious: besides this, allowance should be made for the latitude permitted to oratory of magnifying the risque, when it is used to divert or turn people from dangerous courses.

VI. Let them, who suppose the female sex to be more vicious than ours, tell me, how they can reconcile this, with the church having in an especial manner, bestowed on them the epithet of devout? How with the words of many of the most grave and eminent doctors, who have declared it as their opinion, that there are more women saved than men, even having regard to the proportion, in which it is generally thought the number of females exceeds that of the males? Which opinion, they do not, nor cannot found on any other thing, than their having observed in them a greater inclination to piety.

VII. Methinks I already hear, in opposition to our undertaking, that proposition of much noise, and little or no truth, that the women are the cause of all evil; and, by way of proving it, the vulgar, down to the meanest and most contemptible of them, endeavour to inculcate at every turn, that La Caba occasioned the ruin of all Spain, and Eve that of all mankind.

VIII. But the first instance is absolutely a false one. The count Don Julian was the person who brought the Moors into Spain, but was not persuaded to it by his daughter, who did no more than make known to her father the affront and injury she had received. How unhappy is the lot of women, if, in the case of being trampled on by an insolent ravisher, they are to be deprived of the relief of unbosoming themselves to their fathers, or their husbands! The aggressors, in these cases, would gladly deprive them of this relief and benefit; though if at any time an unjust vengeance should be the consequence of the complaint, the fault would not lie at the door of the innocent offended person, but would rest with him who did the execution with the sword, and the man who committed the insult; and thus the whole blame and crime would be imputable to the men only.

IX. If the second example proves, that the women in general are worse than the men; by the same mode of reasoning it may be proved, that the angels in general are worse than the women; because, as Adam was induced to sin by a woman, the woman was seduced by an angel. It is not yet decided whose sin was the greatest, that of Adam, or that of Eve, because the fathers are divided in their opinions; and, in truth, the excuse which Cayetane makes in favour of Eve, that she was deceived by a creature of much superior intelligence and capacity to herself, is a circumstance that cannot be urged on behalf of Adam, and greatly abates her crime in comparison with his.

SECT. II.

X. But passing from the moral to the physical, which is more applicable to our present purpose, we shall find the preference of the robust over the delicate sex is a point settled, and any claim or pretensions to equality on the part of the women is set aside, and treated with contempt; and to such a length has depreciating the women been carried by some, that they have not scrupled to call them imperfect, and even monstrous animals, asserting, that Nature, in the work of generation, never intended to produce any thing but males, and that it was only by mistake, or in consequence of some defect in the matter or faculty, that females were produced.