The present day is an ill chosen time to contest women's right to authorship, when the three works most generally read are Le Récit d'une Soeur, the writings of Eugénie de Guérin, and Madame Swetchine's Letters.
In becoming writers women do not infringe on the rights of men. "They do not seek to emulate man;" and when all is said, what is it, that M. de Maistre calls "emulating man"? Is it desiring to do all that he does? Of course not. Certain pursuits exclusively belong to him, and are not to be cultivated by women. But if there are points of separation, there is also a common domain where all souls may work together. The most natural is that of art and literature. Even here it may be that woman's field is more restricted than that of man; but she will find her place, and perhaps a place that men could not so well fill.
There are differences between the masculine and the feminine intellect; and it is on this fact that M. de Maistre founds his assertion that because one sex can write the other cannot. We may found upon it a different conclusion, that, bringing another kind of genius into intellectual regions, women will cultivate them after a fashion of their own, adapting their talents in preference to more delicate subjects. In a concert all dissimilar voices must be moulded together: why should not women bear their part in the great harmony of human thought expressed through art? There are notes they only can reach. Silvio Pellico says something similar when, after vainly trying to give women a pendent to the Treatise on the Duties of Men, he exclaims! "Only a woman could write such a book." In a woman's writing there is always a certain touch that reveals her sex. A female author must ever remain a woman. Thus may we reassure the susceptibilities of M. de Maistre and quiet our own fears as to the result of wishing to emulate man.
"Woman is a weak creature, ignorant, timid, and indolent," says Mme. de ——; "possessed of violent passions and petty ideas, a being full of inconsistency and caprice. … Capable of displaying charming defects every day of her life; a treasure of cruelty and of hope." Then mourning over the almost complete disappearance of this type, she seeks an explanation of the fact: "Women have lost in attractions what they have gained in virtues. … Woman was not made to share men's toils, but to afford them recreation." And, finally, summing up in one word the errors that have ruined her sex, she exclaims indignantly, "Woman has aspired to be the companion of man."
Thus, to be a companion instead of a plaything, a Christian rather than a pagan, a being to be respected, trusted, relied upon, rather than one who holds you by a passing attraction, amusing you by her frivolity, and distracting you from graver thoughts—this is a culpable mistake of judgment, and moreover, it is a woman who dares to bring forward such a doctrine.
4th. In my first letters I gave it as my opinion that, in a measure, a woman could occupy herself with sciences, and even with agriculture. The latter assertion provoked some surprise. Let me answer them by a few fragments of a letter written to me upon the subject, by a very sensible and distinguished woman:
"How wisely, monseigneur, you have advised women to interest themselves in business matters and other serious subjects, even studying agriculture. My own observation confirms your opinion. At present, while my son is in the service, and I am separated from all my family, living in the country, and almost always in tête-à-tête, what would become of me if my mother had not given me the habit, from childhood, of interesting myself in every thing about me? Agriculture, with its obstacles and its progress, affords an inexhaustible source of conversation with one's husband, with cures, village notaries, farmers, country neighbors, and petits bourgeois. It is a less inflammatory subject than politics, and one that adapts itself to every understanding. My husband does not disdain to discuss crops and manuring with me—I have my own theories upon drainage, beets, [Footnote 32] and cabbages, [Footnote 33] and he finds me very progressive in my ideas, perhaps too much so; he, however, never builds a stable without consulting me, and before a lease is signed, I must hear it read several times. I believe it to be very important to themselves and to their children that women should understand business, the investment of funds, the management of property. They should not decide, but listen and advise. Husbands, generally, ask nothing better than to talk openly of these things, because such subjects interest them more than any others; but usually no one listens. When a man meets with yawning inattention, all is over; he has recourse to silence, adopts the habit of managing everything for himself, of following his own bent. In the beginning, a young husband is full of confiding openness; later, he becomes more suspicious of control which wounds him in proportion as it is needed. Capacity and earnestness are indispensable to a woman."
[Footnote 32: La bette rave, the kind of beet from which sugar is made, and therefore an important subject to theorize upon. Berthollet is said to have lost his place by failing to answer satisfactorily a question suddenly put to him by Napoleon, concerning la bette rave.]
[Footnote 33: Colza, a cabbage used for making oil, and a topic almost as engrossing as beets.]