Settling the Odd Trick. (London, 1778.[26])
The oldest thing accessible to us in these modern cities is the Saturday-morning service in an unreformed Jewish synagogue, some of the observances of which date back beyond the historic period. But there is nothing in it older than the sentiment expressed by the men when they thank God for his goodness in not making them women. Only men are admitted to the synagogue as equal worshipers, the women being consigned to the gallery, spectators of their husbands' devotion. The old Jewish liturgy does not recognize their presence.
Older than the Jewish liturgy are the sacred books of the Hindoos. The famous passage of the "Padma Parana," translated by the Abbé Dubois,[27] has been part of the domestic code of the Hindoos for thousands of years. According to the Hindoo lawgiver, a woman has no god on earth but her husband, and no religion except to gratify, obey, and serve him. Let her husband be crooked, old, infirm, offensive; let him be irascible, irregular, a drunkard, a gambler, a debauchee; let him be reckless of his domestic affairs, as if possessed by a devil; though he live in the world without honor; though he be deaf or blind, and wholly weighed down by crime and infirmity—still shall his wife regard him as her god. With all her might shall she serve him, in all things obey him, see no defects in his character, and give him no cause of uneasiness. Nay, more: in every stage of her existence woman lives but to obey—at first her parents, next her husband and his parents, and in her old age she must be ruled by her children. Never during her whole life can she be under her own control.
These are the general principles upon which the life of women in India is to be conducted. The Hindoo writer was considerate enough to add a few particulars: "If her husband laughs, she ought to laugh; if he weeps, she ought to weep; if he is disposed to speak, she ought not to join in the conversation. Thus is the goodness of her nature displayed. What woman would eat till her husband has first had his fill? If he abstains, she will surely fast also; if he is sad, will she not be sorrowful? and if he is gay, will she not leap for joy? In the absence of her husband her raiment will be mean." Such has been the conception of woman's duty to man by all the half-developed races from time immemorial, and such to this day are the tacit demand and expectation of the brutalized males of the more advanced races. Gavarni, married, would have been content with no subservience much short of that.
Happily, nature has given to woman the means of a fell revenge, for she usually holds the peace of the household and the happiness of all its members in her hands. The satirical works that come to us from the Oriental lands teem with evidence that women have always known how to get a fair share of domestic authority. If they are slaves, they have ever been adepts in the arts and devices of slaves. The very squaws of our Indians often contrive to rule their brawny lords. Is not the whole history of the war between the sexes included in the little story of the manner in which Pocahontas was entrapped on board a British vessel lying in the James River two hundred and fifty years ago? The captain had promised to the aunt of this dusky princess the gift of a copper kettle if she would bring her niece to the ship; and accordingly one afternoon, when she found herself on the river-bank with her husband and Pocahontas, she was suddenly seized with a longing to go on board, saying that this was the third time the ship had been in their river, and yet she had never visited it. Her grumpy old husband refusing, she began to cry, and then, Pocahontas joining her entreaties, of course the old man had to unfasten his canoe and paddle them off to the vessel. This model couple returned to the shore poorer by a niece of uncertain character, and richer by the inestimable treasure of a copper kettle. What fine lady could have managed this delicate affair better? Is it not thus that tickets, trinkets, and dresses are won every day in the cities of the modern world?
"Who was that gentleman that just went out?"
"Why, didn't he see you, after all? He called on business, and has been waiting for you these two hours. He leaves town this evening. But how warm you are, dear!"—Gavarni, Fourberies de Femmes, Paris, 1846.
An attentive study of the Greek and Roman literatures furnishes many illustrations of the remark just made, that men who degrade women deride them. Among the Greeks, who kept women in subjection and seclusion, and gave them no freedom of choice in matters of dearest concern to them, the foibles of the sex were treated very much as they now are by the dissolute caricaturists of Paris. Aristophanes's mode of representing the women of Athens is eminently Gavarnian; and nothing was more natural than that an Aristophanes should come after an Anacreon. The lyric poet depicts women as objects of desire, superior in alluring charm even to wine, rosy wine; and Aristophanes delights to exhibit the women's apartment of an Athenian house as a riotous and sensualized harem. How many expressions of utter distrust and dislike of women occur in the Greek poets!