The expression here betrays Madame de Rémusat, and it would be more accurate to say that woman is not inferior to man, that she is his equal, but that in existing civil and social conditions she necessarily remains subordinate to him.
But with what perfect justness the amiable writer characterizes the peculiar qualities of woman!
“We lack continuity and depth when we would apply ourselves to general questions. Endowed with a quick intelligence, we hear promptly, we even divine and see just as well as men; but too easily moved to remain impartial, too mobile to be profound, perceiving is easier for us than observing. Prolonged attention wearies us; we are, in short, more mild than patient. More sensitive and more devoted than men, women are ignorant of that sort of selfishness which an independent being exhibits outwardly as a consciousness of his own power. To obtain from them any activity whatever, it is almost always necessary to interest them in the happiness of another. Their very faults are the outgrowths of their condition. The same cause will excite in man emotions of pride, and in woman only those of vanity.”
575. The Serious in Education.—Madame de Rémusat, still more than Madame Campan, belongs to the modern school. She desires for woman an education serious and grave.
“I see no reason for treating women less seriously than men, for misrepresenting truth to them under the form of a prejudice, duty under the appearance of a superstition, in order that they may accept both the duty and the truth.”
She does not in the least incline to the opinion of the over-courteous moralist Joubert, who, with more gallantry than real respect for women, said: “Nothing too earthly or too material ought to employ young ladies; only delicate material should busy their hands.... They resemble the imagination, and like it they should touch only the surface of things.”[244]
Madame de Rémusat enters into the spirit of her time, and her admiration for the age of Louis XIV. does not make her forget what she owes to the new society, transformed by great political reforms.
“We are drawing near the time when every Frenchman shall be a citizen. In her turn, the destiny of woman is comprised in these two terms: wife and mother of a citizen. There is much morality, and a very severe and touching morality, in the idea which ought to be attached to that word citizen. After religion, I do not know a more powerful motive than the patriotic spirit for directing the young towards the good.”
It is no longer a question, then, of training the woman and the man for themselves, for their individual destiny. They must be educated for the public good, for their duties in society. Madame de Rémusat is not one of those timid and frightened women who feel a homesickness for the past, whom the present terrifies. Liberal and courageous, she manfully accepts the new régime; she proclaims its advantages, and, if she writes like a woman of the seventeenth century, almost with the perfection of Madame de Sévigné, her chosen model, she at least thinks like a daughter of the Revolution.