My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if
I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating
graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood,
unable to stand alone, I earnestly wish to point out in what tree dignity and
human happiness consists -- I wish to persuade women to endeavor to acquire
strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them that the soft phrases,
susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are
almost synonymous with epithets of weakness, and that those beings who are only
the objects of pity and that kind of love, which has been termed its sister,
will soon become objects of contempt.
Animated by this important
object, I shall disdain to cull my phrases or polish my style: I aim at being
useful, and sincerity will render me unaffected: for, wishing rather to persuade
by the force of my arguments than dazzle by the elegance of my language, I shall
not waste my time in rounding periods, nor in fabricating the turgid bombast of
artificial feelings, which, coming from the head, never reach the heart. I shall
be employed about things, not word! And, anxious to render my sex more
respectable members of society, I shall try to avoid that flowery diction which
has slid from essays into novels, and from novels into familiar letters and
conversation.
The education of women has, of late, been more
attended to than formerly, yet they are still reckoned a frivolous sex, and
ridiculed or pitied by the writers who endeavor by satire or instruction to
improve them. It is acknowledged that they spend many of the first years of
their lives in acquiring a smattering of accomplishments: meanwhile strength of
body and mind are sacrificed to libertine notions of beauty, to the desire of
establishing themselves -- the only way women can rise in the world -- by
marriage. And this desire making mere animals of them, when they marry they act
as such children may be expected to act -- they dress, they paint, and nickname
God’s creatures. Surely these weak beings are only fit for a seraglio ! Can they
be expected to govern a family with judgment, or take care of the poor babes
whom they bring into the world
If then it can be fairly deduced
from the present conduct of the sex, from the prevalent fondness for pleasure
which takes place of ambition and those nobler passions that open and enlarge
the soul: that the instruction which women have received has only tended, with
the constitution of civil society, to render them insignificant objects of
desire -- mere propagators of fools! If it can be proved that in aiming to
accomplish them, without cultivating their understandings, they are taken out of
their sphere of duties, and made ridiculous and useless when their short-lived
bloom of beauty is over. I presume that rational men will excuse me for
endeavoring to persuade them to become more masculine and respectable.
Indeed the word masculine is only a bugbear: there is little reason to
fear that women will acquire too much courage or fortitude, for their apparent
inferiority with respect to bodily strength, must render them, in some degree,
dependent on men in the various relations of life. But why should it be
increased by prejudices that give a sex to virtue, and confound simple truths
with sensual reveries
Women are, in fact, so much degraded by
mistaken notions of female excellence, that I do not mean to add a paradox when
I assert, that this artificial weakness produces a propensity to tyrannize, and
gives birth to cunning, the natural opponent of strength, which leads them to
play off those contemptible infantile airs that undermine esteem ever whilst
they excite desire. Let men become more chaste and modest, and if women do not
grow wiser in the same ratio, it will be clear that they have weaker
understandings. It seems scarcely necessary to say, that I now speak of the sex
in general. Many individuals have more sense than their male relatives: and, as
nothing preponderates where there is a constant struggle for an equilibrium,
without it has naturally more gravity, some women govern their husbands without
degrading themselves, because intellect will always
govern. |
