If man had the power of creation his present wisdom would cause him not only to omit competition between the sexes, but he would avoid the possibility of even rivalry. The Creator in His wisdom did not put the sexes in competition and man can neither improve nor amend.
Occasionally a woman develops a beard, but it is so rare that she usually enters a museum. Many years ago I saw a woman with a well-defined “Adam’s apple.” But none of us admire either “mannish” women or “sissy” men.
Woman does not get her happiness from her creatorships or sovereignties. The normal woman prefers that her husband be the sovereign, and she his queen. Woman gets her happiness from her sacrifices. She gives herself to husband, to children, to home, to church, to hospital, to good deeds, and out of these sacrifices she gets the maximum of her happiness. A boy asked the butcher for tough meat and gave this reason: “If I get tender meat, dad’ll eat it all.” That would be a libel upon woman. We have each seen a thousand times where mother was getting more happiness in picking the neck and the back than the children in eating the white meat, while dad grabbed both upper joints.
But there is another side to this. When dad is refreshed, when his blood is red, when he is a full-grown normal man, what does dad do? He bears all the hardships and all the dangers this world holds in store; he freezes in the arctics, he melts in the tropics, that he may bring to those he loves the choicest of earth, and adorn his queen with the brightest jewels that glitter.
I have never supposed that when our early ancestors were confronted with danger that there was any controversy as to who should defend the other. I have assumed that she as instinctively sprang to his left, as he to her right, that his sword arm might be free. His name was John. Her name was Mary. His brother’s name was Peter; he married Margaret. Each pair named their son Ole. There being two Oles in the tribe, a distinguishing name was necessary. Do you suppose there was a family controversy to determine whether one should be called “Ole Johnson” or “Ole Maryson”?
No, woman does not wish to be the head of a clan, or to create or to possess, but she does desire that her husband shall be a chieftain, a builder and a landlord, and is willing to make any sacrifice to that end. Woman wants to be loved and, incidentally, let me say, needs to be told that she is, in the tenderest way, and more than once. If told sufficiently often, she is even proud to be a slave to the man who loves her and sometimes is without ever receiving a single post-nuptial word of endearment.
I doubt if anyone would favor woman’s suffrage if he thought it would result in changing woman’s nature, or in making her masculine in manner. “Man’s chiefest inspiration to well-doing is hope of companionship with that sacred, true and well-embodied soul—a woman”—only because an All-wise Creator made the sexes as unlike as possible and still keep them both human.
“For woman is not undeveloped man,
But diverse. Could we but make her as the man,
Sweet love were slain.”