No intelligent man denies to woman such an equality; but as certainly as a good housewife would pin a dish-cloth to the coat-tail of a husband prying into the mysteries of the kitchen and claiming equality with his wife in the household sphere, so surely will men cry out against and turn with disgust from women who invade their province of warriors, statesmen, merchants, &c.
Nevertheless, let us not be misunderstood, or be accused of including in a sweeping clause those cases which are, of right, exceptions. A woman may be placed in such a position that active life is her legitimate sphere, and that if she neglects or devolves its cares upon others she is culpable. We all feel an enthusiastic respect for the noble Boadicea, arousing her pusillanimous countrymen against the cruel ravages of the Romans, and dwell with admiration on Elizabeth haranguing her army at Tilbury and personally engaging in affairs of State, because they were occupied in duties which became a monarch; yet if a woman, who has no call to any higher duties than those of domestic life, were to leave them to engage in the contests of warriors or the turmoil of politics, we should regard her as an unfeminine virago. Notwithstanding, though the woman may in some cases be needfully sunk in the station, those duties which become the former will still engage more of our love and regard than those which belong to the latter; and our own graceful Queen has secured, by her happy union of the duties of both, more of the love and respect of her people than any of her predecessors on the throne of these realms.
The energies and tastes of women are generally less intense than those of men; hence their characters appear less developed and exhibit greater uniformity. That their passions are stronger is undeniable, but these do not constitute character, nor are exhibited in the Nose. Their indexes are the eyes and mouth, and therefore their consideration forms no part of the present subject. This uniformity of character is noticed by Pope in a line which at first sight reads libellous, either because it appears to refer to moral conduct—which it does not—or because it is too sweeping and exaggerated. He asserts roundly,
“Most women have no characters at all.”
No characters at all, is obviously false; but, as compared to men, as near the truth as most general epigrammatic rules are. It is in the latter sense that Pope used it to illustrate the difficulty of discussing “The characteristics of Women” after a dissertation on those of men. The line, however, was truer in his time than it is now, when more general and more liberal education has tended very much to break up the uniformity of character which existed among the inane ladies of Pope’s era.
Nevertheless, whether repressed by Art or curtailed by Nature, women’s characters certainly appear less developed than those of men. If by Nature, it is a blessed provision—as all nature’s providings are. It is the woman’s place to be in rational subjection to the man; and though the sweet saints would sooner tear out the eyes of St. Paul[[43]] (we wonder he is such a favourite with them) than confess his precepts in terms, yet they do not fear to acknowledge that they have no respect for the man who succumbs to his wife, or admiration for the woman who aspires to denude her husband of his appropriate symbols of masterdom.
If this happy inferiority—an inferiority which places them far above men in practical wisdom, inasmuch as it consists in shrewd, practical common sense, against a man’s intellectual blundering—if this happy inferiority is the result of Art, they exhibit in its adoption much sound wisdom. Man is an insolent, domineering, self-sufficient animal—let him say what he will about the elevation of the female mind, we believe no man ever fell in love with the woman whom he felt to be wiser than himself. He could not endure for a partner for life, such a perpetual looking-glass and reminder of his own infirmities; he could not bear the constant attestation of his own weakness. He could regard patiently the vaunted accomplishments of another man, but he could not submit that his wife should be his acknowledged superior, and to be her foil—perhaps fool.
Hence it is that wise men, so frequently that it is become proverbial, marry silly women. However much a learned man may admire female accomplishments, he detests a woman who strives to rival him in his own sphere, who is talking philosophy when he would be whispering “soft nothings,” and who freezes his ardent admiration with a dissertation on mathematics, or a moral discourse on self-control. He can bend, like any other man, with intense joy, over the blushing girl who tremblingly believes that her eyes are brighter and more lovely than the stars over her head; but would fling from him with disgust the woman who would repress his harmless and true—because soul-felt—flattery, with a philosophical disquisition on the nature, distances, and offices of the aforesaid stars. And it is because learned women too often strive by this injudicious ill-timed wisdom, to catch learned men for husbands, (and there are no more determined husband-hunters than blue-stocking women, because they are always within a year or two of being shelved), that the latter are necessarily flung into the arms of women who they know can’t bore them with an eternal round of sense, from which every one is glad occasionally to escape, and never more so than when he is in love.
Hence it is that blue-stocking women are proverbially avoided by men; not because men despise or dislike their learning, but because they make such ill-timed use of it. They may be admired, but they are never loved; they may talk as learnedly as is in their power, but learning never won a lover, much less a husband. Ver. sap. my dear lady reader, and if you don’t understand the abbreviate, ask—ask—anybody, but your husband.
“Yes, Love, indeed, is light from heaven,