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"Oh, my lovely foe, Tell me where thy strength doth lie— Where the power that charms me so: In thy soul, or in thine eye." |
As woman then cannot conquer by physical strength, she must depend upon other attributes of a more passive quality. The following little anecdote well illustrates the characteristic differences between the sexes in this respect. I was once giving a handsome and accomplished lady a description of the Menagerie Royal at Paris, and was describing the apartment of a large ferocious lion that had been brought from Africa. The apartment was double, with a partition wall between the chambers. Whilst the lion would be in one chamber eating, it was the custom of the keeper to go into the other for the purpose of cleaning it out, taking care to shut the door between them. One day he neglected this; and the lion leaving the meat which he had been devouring, suddenly entered the room, advanced to the man, who backed against the wall, then leaped upon his breast, and looked him steadily in the face. Just at this point, I paused and asked the lady, for she seemed agitated, what she would have done in a similar crisis. Her answer was characteristic indeed: I would have kissed him! Now I assert that there is not a man in the wide world who would have ever thought of appeasing the wrath of the monarch of the forest by a kiss. His power does not depend on a kiss. From him it is not sufficiently appreciated to make it coveted by others, and therefore a source of his power. But with woman it is far otherwise; it is one of her most potent means—a sort of reserve, not to be resorted to but under the pressure of necessity. Had you addressed the same question to man, he would have told you, that he would have stood quiet and firm, (as did the individual just mentioned,) till assistance could be brought; or he would have summoned up all his courage and all his strength for one desperate effort, and attempted to hurl the lion from him; but never would he have thought of purchasing his life by giving him a kiss. This is one of woman's resources in the hour of peril, and woman alone would ever have thought of it.
In that darkest and most dismal hour of Josephine's life, when the dread secret of the divorce was first hinted to her by that great but wily and unprincipled statesman Fouche, how does she act? In all the agony and concentrated grief which preys upon her heart, she seeks in his chamber the solitary chieftain, whose martial prowess had shaken all the thrones of Europe, and filled the world with a fame which eclipsed that of the Cæsars and Alexanders—she seats herself in his lap—she strokes back the hair from his forehead: in the mild and faltering tone of injured honor, she asks him if it be so? He answers no! And with beauty, grace and tears supplicating, who could have answered otherwise! Then imprinting a kiss upon his brow, she asks the dismission of Fouche as an earnest of his attachment. This was denied her; and at that moment despair seized upon her heart. She knew her power was gone—the charm was broken—the spell was dissolved. Ambition triumphed over love. But the Colossus of Europe could have told you, that the melancholy triumph of that moment, had cost him more than the conquest of kingdoms and the dethronement of monarchs; or he could have told you afterwards, that when he for the first time beheld the barren rock of St. Helena, with that countenance unmoved and unchanged, which so astonished those who observed it,—the internal struggle by which he chained down the conflicting emotions of his soul, was not to be compared with that which could firmly resist the request of a beloved but injured wife in tears.
Points of Honor in the Sexes.
So far, I have been considering the effects of mere inferiority of strength in the female. But independently of this, there is another portion of her organization, attended with consequences no less marked on the whole character. I allude of course to the great law of nature, which imposes upon her the burden of gestation—of nursing and of training the rising population of the world. That woman is destined to the office of nursing and rearing her children, the arrangement of nature evidently demonstrates. It is she alone whom nature provides with the food adapted to the support of the fragile constitution of the newly born babe. She has known and felt all the solicitude, anxiety and pain pertaining to its existence. It is a law of our nature, to love that with most ardor, which has cost us most pain and most anxiety in the attainment. For this reason perhaps, it may be that even at birth, a mother's love for her babe is more intense than that of the father; and hence an additional reason of a moral character, why the office of tutoring and nursing should devolve more particularly on her. Let us now proceed, for a moment, to trace the consequences of this position of woman. It is evident that its tendency must be, to narrow the circle in which she moves; a considerable portion of her life must be spent in the nursery and the sick room. Here, at once, would be presented an insurmountable barrier against that ambition which would lead her into the field, into politics, or any of the regular professions. She never could compete with man. In fact, to succeed at all, she would be obliged to desert the station and defeat the ends for which nature intended her. A physician, a lawyer, or statesman, who should be obliged to attend to the suckling, clothing, and the thousand little wants of a helpless babe, would be distanced in the race by him, who with any thing like equal power of intellect, was unimpeded in his career by any of those embarrassing obstacles.
This organization of woman now under consideration, renders circumspection and virtue more absolutely indispensable to her than to man. Guilt and infidelity are much more certainly detected in her case than in his, and are attended with much more lamentable consequences. Her whole moral character is formed in some measure in view of this state of things: chastity and virtue become her points of honor; modesty becomes her most pleasing and necessary attribute.
| "That chastity of look which seems to hang A veil of purest light o'er all her beauties, And by forbidding, most inflames desire," |
may truly be said to constitute one of her greatest and most indispensable ornaments. The great point of honor in man, is undoubtedly courage; and in woman, chastity and virtue. "In books of chivalry, (says Addison, in one of the Nos. of the Spectator,) where the point of honor is strained to madness, the whole story runs on chastity and courage. The damsel is mounted on a white palfrey, as an emblem of her innocence; and to avoid scandal, must have a dwarf for her page. She is not to think of a man until some misfortune has brought a knight errant to her relief. The knight falls in love, and did not gratitude restrain her from murdering her deliverer, would die at her feet by her disdain. However, he must waste many years in the desert, before her virginity can think of a surrender. The knight goes off—attacks every thing he meets that is bigger and stronger than himself—seeks all opportunities of being knocked on the head—and after seven years' rambling, returns to his mistress, whose chastity in the mean time has been attacked by giants and tyrants, and undergone as many trials as her lover's valor." The following inscription on a monument erected in Westminster Abbey, to the Duke and Duchess of New Castle, particularly pleased Mr. Addison, as illustrative of the difference in the points of honor between the sexes. "Her name was Margaret Lucas, youngest sister to the Lord Lucas of Colchester; a noble family—for all the brothers were valiant, and all the sisters virtuous." Voltaire in his Philosophical Dictionary remarks, that all animals, if they could talk, would tell you they considered the female, each one of its own species, as the most beautiful creature in the world. The remark is a philosophical one; and will no doubt apply with great force to man, especially in a civilized condition. All our writers on taste, rank woman in point of beauty at the head of creation; and make her the most beautiful of her sex, whose beauty is combined with virtue and loveliness, and fortified by modesty. How beautifully has Barrett described the superior excellence of the female character in the following lines:
We are now prepared to see at once, the foundation of that difference observable among the sexes all over the world, in all ages, in relation to the conduct which they observe towards each other. Man makes all the advances towards the weaker sex. He is the wooer, and woman the wooed, in every age and country: whilst she is coy and retiring, and blushes deeply at the very idea of her preferences and attachments for the opposite sex being even suspected, man acknowledges with candor his devotion to woman; seeks her society every where; confesses his enthusiastic delight at the charms of her conversation, and glories in the performance of those civilities and gallantries, which the laws of social intercourse have always demanded at his hands. The desires and inclinations of man, are open and confessed; those of woman, kept doubtful and secret. "Man (says Rousseau,) depends on woman on account of his desires; woman on man both on account of desires and necessities." The difference, however, is that the former are avowed, the latter concealed.3 The charms and fascination of woman, are so contrived as to hide all art itself, and to appear entirely aimless. Yet in this very circumstance frequently rests the great power of her attractions.