A Woman's Philosophy of Woman; or, Woman affranchised. / An answer to Michelet, Proudhon, Girardin, Legouvé, Comte, and other modern innovators

by Madame d' Héricourt

"Without man, who is to her prophet and word, she would not emerge from the bestial condition."

AUTHOR. Calm yourself, Master, and tell me whether it is true that you have dealt harshly with literary women.

PROUDHON. Literary women! As if there were any! "The woman author does not exist; she is a contradiction. The part of woman in literature is the same as in manufactures; she is useful where genius is no longer of service, like a needle or a bobbin.

"By cutting out of a woman's book all that is borrowed, imitated, gleaned, and common-place, we reduce it to a few pretty sayings; philosophy on nothing. To the community of ideas, woman brings nothing of her own, any more than to generation."

PROUDHON. Ah! I understand: you mean that, in the character of author, the woman of genius does not exist. But in this respect, among the number of men that write how many are there who have genius, and who never borrow from any one?

PROUDHON. I grant that there are many effeminate men; which does not alter the fact that woman would do better to go and iron her collars than to meddle with writing; for, "it may be affirmed without fear of calumny, that the woman who dabbles with philosophy and writing destroys her progeny by the labor of her brain and her kisses which savor of man; the safest and most honorable way for her is to renounce home life and maternity; destiny has branded her on the forehead; made only for love, the title of concubine if not of courtesan suffices her."—Id.

Let us now consider the thetic woman in the moral point of view. We will admit in the first place the principle that virtue exists in the ratio of strength and intellect, whence we have a right to conclude that man is more virtuous than woman. Do not laugh; it disturbs my ideas. I go further; man alone is virtuous; man alone has the sense of justice; man alone has the comprehension of right. Tell me, I pray you, "what produces in man this energy of will, this confidence in himself, this frankness, this daring, all these powerful qualities that we have agreed to designate by the single word, morality. What inspires him with the sentiment of his dignity, the scorn of falsehood, the hatred of injustice, the abhorence of all tyranny? Nothing else than the consciousness of his strength and reason."

AUTHOR. But then, Master, if man is all this, why do you reproach the men of our times with lack of courage, of dignity, of justice, of reason, of good faith? When I take up in minute detail the terrible charges which you have fulminated against the masculine race, I can make nothing of the meaning of the tirade you have just uttered.

PROUDHON. Consider what you irreverently name a tirade, as the necessary check to feminine immorality.

It is only to set forth the truth that of all the differences that separate her mind from ours, the conscience of woman is the most trifling, her morality is of a different nature; what she regards as right and wrong is not identically the same as what man himself regards as right and wrong, so that, relatively to us, woman may be styled an immoral being.