4. Finally, in love, and during a period which, in southern countries, often comprises twelve or fifteen years, and those the fairest of our life, our happiness is entirely in the hands of the woman we love. One moment of untimely pride can make us for ever miserable, and how should a slave raised up to a throne not be tempted to abuse her power? This is the origin of women's false refinement and pride. Of course, there is nothing more useless than these pleas: men are despots and we see what respect other despots show to the wisest counsels. A man who is all-powerful relishes only one sort of advice, the advice of those that tell him to increase his power. Where are poor young girls to find a Quiroga or a Riego[(45)] to give the despots, who oppress them, and degrade them the better to oppress them, that salutary advice, whose just recompense are favours and orders instead of Porlier's[(45)] gallows?
If a revolution of this kind needs several centuries, it is because, by a most unlucky chance, all our first experiences must necessarily contradict the truth. Illuminate a girl's mind, form her character, give her, in short, a good education in the true sense of the word—remarking sooner or later her own superiority over other women, she becomes a pedant, that is to say, the most unpleasant and the most degraded creature that there is in the world. There isn't one of us who wouldn't prefer a servant to a savante, if we had to pass our life with her.
Plant a young tree in the midst of a dense forest, deprived of air and sun by the closeness of the neighbouring trees: its leaves will be blighted, and it will get an overgrown and ridiculous shape—not its natural shape. We ought to plant the whole forest at once. What woman is there who is proud of knowing how to read?
Pedants have repeated to us for two thousand years that women were more quick and men more judicious, women more remarkable for delicacy of expression and men for stronger powers of concentration. A Parisian simpleton, who used once upon a time to take his walk in the gardens of Versailles, similarly concluded from all he saw that trees grow ready clipped.
I will allow that little girls have less physical strength than little boys: this must be conclusive as regards intellect; for everyone knows that Voltaire and d'Alembert were the first boxers of their age! Everyone agrees, that a little girl of ten is twenty times as refined as a little boy of the same age. Why, at twenty, is she a great idiot, awkward, timid, and afraid of a spider, while the little boy is a man of intellect?
Women only learn the things we do not wish to teach them, and only read the lessons taught them by experience of life. Hence the extreme disadvantage it is for them to be born in a very rich family; instead of coming into contact with beings who behave naturally to them, they find themselves surrounded by maidservants and governesses, who are already corrupted and blighted by wealth.[2] There is nothing so foolish as a prince.
Young girls soon see that they are slaves and begin to look about them very early; they see everything, but they are too ignorant to see properly. A woman of thirty in France has not the acquired knowledge of a small boy of fifteen, a woman of fifty has not the reason of a man of twenty-five. Look at Madame de Sévigné admiring Louis XIV's most ridiculous actions. Look at the puerility of Madame d'Épinay's reasonings.[3]
"Women ought to nurse and look after their children." I deny the first proposition, I allow the second. "They ought, moreover, to keep their kitchen accounts."—And so have not time to equal a small boy of fifteen in acquired knowledge! Men must be judges, bankers, barristers, merchants, doctors, clergymen, etc., and yet they find time to read Fox's speeches and the Lusiad of Camoëns.
The Pekin magistrate, who hastens at an early hour to the law courts in order to find the means of imprisoning and ruining, in perfect good faith, a poor journalist who has incurred the displeasure of an Under-Secretary of State, with whom he had the honour of dining the day before, is surely as busy as his wife, who keeps her kitchen accounts, gets stockings made for her little daughter, sees her through her dancing and piano lessons, receives a visit from the vicar of the parish who brings her the Quotidienne, and then goes to choose a hat in the Rue de Richelieu and take a turn in the Tuileries.
In the midst of his noble occupations this magistrate still finds time to think of this walk his wife is taking in the Tuileries, and, if he were in as good odour with the Power that rules the universe as with that which rules the State, he would pray Heaven to grant women, for their own good, eight or ten hours more sleep. In the present condition of society, leisure, which for man is the source of all his happiness and all his riches, is for women so far from being an advantage as to rank among those baneful liberties, from which the worthy magistrate would wish to help deliver us.