CHAPTER XXX
ARE MEN FAIR TO WOMEN?
'You are often writing about women,' fair correspondents keep writing to me, 'sometimes praising them, often criticising them. Couldn't you now and then tell us something of what you think of men, especially in their relations with women? We know you to be fair, sometimes generous, always good-humoured. Now, do have a try.'
The invitation is tempting and intended to be pleasant, and I yield to it, not only without any reluctance, but with a good deal of pleasure.
To plunge in medias res, Are men fair to women? The laws, which are made by men, the usages—everything is calculated to cause men to reduce to a minimum the qualities, the intelligence, and the influence of women.
For instance, let a woman make a reputation in art or literature, and men begin to smile and shrug their shoulders: they dispute her talent.
I maintain, without much fear of contradiction, that a woman, in order to succeed in a profession, must have ten times more talent than a man, inasmuch as a man will have friends and comrades to help him, and a woman only difficulties put in her way by man to surmount.
Man receives encouragements from all sides. If he is successful, he even knows that his talent will receive official recognition. In France he may become a member of the French Academy; in England, of the Royal Academy. Orders will be given him by rich patrons, and 'orders' conferred on him by sovereigns and statesmen.
Why should not women get all this? Why, simply because man, being both 'verdict' and 'execution,' has kept everything for himself. Personally, I have no great liking for female genius—to my prejudiced mind a female genius is a freak; but what I like or do not like is quite out of the question. Here I state facts, and why women should not have as much chance to prove their genius as men I should like to know.
Everybody knows that the famous School of Alexandria, in the fifth century, had as orators and teachers the greatest philosophers and theologians of the time, such men as St. Jerome, St. Cyril, etc.