This reminds me of one of Swift’s “Thoughts on Various Subjects”: “The common fluency of speech in many men, and most women, is owing to the scarcity of matter, and scarcity of words; for whoever is a master of language, and hath a mind full of ideas, will be apt in speaking to hesitate upon the choice of both: whereas common speakers have only one set of ideas, and one set of words to clothe them in; and these are always ready at the mouth. So people come faster out of a church when it is almost empty, than when a crowd is at the door” (Works, Dublin, 1735, i. 305).
The volubility of women has been the subject of innumerable jests: it has given rise to popular proverbs in many countries,[55] as well as to Aurora Leigh’s resigned “A woman’s function plainly is—to talk” and Oscar Wilde’s sneer, “Women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly.” A woman’s thought is no sooner formed than uttered. Says Rosalind, “Do you not know I am a woman? when I think, I must speak” (As You Like It, III. 2. 264). And in a modern novel a young girl says: “I talk so as to find out what I think. Don’t you? Some things one can’t judge of till one hears them spoken” (Housman, John of Jingalo, 346).
The superior readiness of speech of women is a concomitant of the fact that their vocabulary is smaller and more central than that of men. But this again is connected with another indubitable fact, that women do not reach the same extreme points as men, but are nearer the average in most respects. Havelock Ellis, who establishes this in various fields, rightly remarks that the statement that genius is undeniably of more frequent occurrence among men than among women has sometimes been regarded by women as a slur upon their sex, but that it does not appear that women have been equally anxious to find fallacies in the statement that idiocy is more common among men. Yet the two statements must be taken together. Genius is more common among men by virtue of the same general tendency by which idiocy is more common among men. The two facts are but two aspects of a larger zoological fact—the greater variability of the male (Man and W. 420).
In language we see this very clearly: the highest linguistic genius and the lowest degree of linguistic imbecility are very rarely found among women. The greatest orators, the most famous literary artists, have been men; but it may serve as a sort of consolation to the other sex that there are a much greater number of men than of women who cannot put two words together intelligibly, who stutter and stammer and hesitate, and are unable to find suitable expressions for the simplest thought. Between these two extremes the woman moves with a sure and supple tongue which is ever ready to find words and to pronounce them in a clear and intelligible manner.
Nor are the reasons far to seek why such differences should have developed. They are mainly dependent on the division of labour enjoined in primitive tribes and to a great extent also among more civilized peoples. For thousands of years the work that especially fell to men was such as demanded an intense display of energy for a comparatively short period, mainly in war and in hunting. Here, however, there was not much occasion to talk, nay, in many circumstances talk might even be fraught with danger. And when that rough work was over, the man would either sleep or idle his time away, inert and torpid, more or less in silence. Woman, on the other hand, had a number of domestic occupations which did not claim such an enormous output of spasmodic energy. To her was at first left not only agriculture, and a great deal of other work which in more peaceful times was taken over by men; but also much that has been till quite recently her almost exclusive concern—the care of the children, cooking, brewing, baking, sewing, washing, etc.,—things which for the most part demanded no deep thought, which were performed in company and could well be accompanied with a lively chatter. Lingering effects of this state of things are seen still, though great social changes are going on in our times which may eventually modify even the linguistic relations of the two sexes.
[CHAPTER XIV]
CAUSES OF CHANGE
§ 1. Anatomy. § 2. Geography. § 3. National Psychology. § 4. Speed of Utterance. § 5. Periods of Rapid Change. § 6. The Ease Theory. § 7. Sounds in Connected Speech. § 8. Extreme Weakenings. § 9. The Principle of Value. § 10. Application to Case System, etc. § 11. Stress Phenomena. § 12. Non-phonetic Changes.