Swift (Gulliver’s Travels).
A child of our grandmother Eve, a female, or, for thy more sweet understanding, a woman.
(Love’s Labour Lost, I, 1.)
The whole World was made for man, but the twelfth part of man for woman: Man is the whole World, and the Breath of God; Woman the rib and crooked piece of man.
Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) (Religio Medici).
Give me but what this ribband bound,
Take all the rest the sun goes round!