But, exactly and scientifically speaking, neurotic and hysteric are contradictory terms. Neurotic men and women are described by physicians as self-forgetting sensitives—zealous, executive; while the hysterics of both sexes are supreme egotists, selfish, vain, and vague, uncomfortable both in personal and literary contact—just like wit at their expense. “If we knew all,” said George Eliot, who was never hysterical, “we would not judge.” And Paul of Tarsus wrote wisely to those of Rome, “Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art, that judgest.”
Science nowadays declares that the man who wears a shirt-collar cannot be well, and equally the same analytic spirit may some day make evident that neurosis and hysteria are legacies of a foredone generation, who found the world out of joint and preyed upon its strength and calmness of nerve to set things right. Humaneness and fair estimate are remedies to-day’s dwellers upon the earth can offer, whether the neurosis and hysteria be Latin or Saxon, men’s or indeed women’s.
The second of the phrases to which we adverted tells of “the unauthoritative young women who make dictionaries at so much a mile.” It has the smack of the wit of the eighteenth century—of Pope’s studied and never-ceasing gibes at Lady Mary Wortley Montagu after she had given him the mitten; of Dr. Johnson’s “female day” and his rumbling thunder over “the freaks and humors and spleen and vanity of women”—he of all men who indulge in freaks and humors and spleen and vanity!—whose devotion to his bepainted and bedizened old wife was the talk of their literary London.
We are apt to believe the slurs that Pope, Johnson, and their self-applauding colaborers cast upon what they commonly termed “females” as deterrent to their fairness, favor, and fame. The high-noted laugh which sounded from Euphelia’s morning toilet and helped the self-gratulation of those old beaux not infrequently grates upon our twentieth century altruistic, neurotic sensibilities.
But to return to our lamb. An unauthoritative young woman, we suppose, is one who is not authoritative, who has not authority. But what confers authority? Assumption of it? Very rarely anything else—even in the case of a college professor. We have in our blessed democracy no Academy, no Sanhedrim, no keeper of the seal of authority—and while we have not we keep life, strength, freedom in our veins. The young woman “who makes dictionaries at so much a mile” may be—sometimes is—as fitted for authority and the exercise of it as her brother. Academic as well as popular prejudices, both springing mainly from the masculine mind, make him a college professor, and her a nameless drudge exercising the qualities women have gained from centuries of women’s life—sympathetic service with belittling recognition of their work, self-sacrifice, and infinite care and patience for detail.
Too many of our day, both of men and women, still believe with old John Knox—to glance back even beyond Johnson and Pope—and his sixteenth century “First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women”—a fine example of hysterical shrieking in men, by the way. With the loving estimate of Knox’s contemporary, Mr. John Davidson, we heartily agree when he sings—
“For weill I wait that Scotland never bure,
In Scottis leid ane man mair Eloquent,
Into perswading also I am sure,
Was nane in Europe that was mair potent.
In Greik and Hebrew he was excellent,
And als in Latine toung his propernes,
Was tryit trym quhen scollers wer present.
Bot thir wer nathing till his uprichtnes.”
We admire Knox’s magnificent moral courage and the fruits of that courage which the Scots have long enjoyed, and yet anent the “cursed Jesabel of England,” the “cruell monstre Marie,” Knox cries: “To promote a Woman to beare rule, superiorite, dominion, or empire ... is repugnant to Nature, contumelie to God, a thing most contrarious to his revealed will and approved ordinance”—just as if he, John Knox, knew all about God’s will and Nature’s designs. What pretence, John! But John took it upon himself to say he did. He assumed; and time and events have proved that it was sheer assumption on John’s part. I doubt, were he now here, if he would let a modest, bread-earning woman even make dictionaries at so much a mile—nothing beyond type-writing, surely. He would probably assume authority and shriek hysterically that anything beyond the finger-play of type-writing is repugnant to Nature and contrarious to God.
There was a Mrs. John Knox; there were two in fact—ribs.
“That servent faithfull servand of the Lord” took the first slip of a girl when near his fiftieth year, long after he had left the celibate priesthood; and the second, a lass of sixteen, when he was fifty-nine. They took care of John, a mother-in-law helping, and with service and money gave him leisure to write. The opinions of the dames do not appear in their husband’s hysteria. “I use the help of my left hand,” dictated Knox when one of these girl-wives was writing for him a letter.