Without sympathy or consideration for others,
man were a poor, stunted, sordid, selfish being; and without
cultivated intelligence, the most beautiful woman were little
better than a well-dressed doll.
It used to be a favourite notion about woman, that her weakness
and dependency upon others constituted her principal claim to
admiration. "If we were to form an image of dignity in a man,"
said Sir Richard Steele, "we should give him wisdom and valour, as
being essential to the character of manhood. In like manner, if
you describe a right woman in a laudable sense, she should have
gentle softness, tender fear, and all those parts of life which
distinguish her from the other sex, with some subordination to it,
but an inferiority which makes her lovely." Thus, her weakness
was to be cultivated, rather than her strength; her folly, rather
than her wisdom. She was to be a weak, fearful, tearful,
characterless, inferior creature, with just sense enough to
understand the soft nothings addressed to her by the "superior"
sex. She was to be educated as an ornamental appanage of man,
rather as an independent intelligence--or as a wife, mother,
companion, or friend.
Pope, in one of his 'Moral Essays,' asserts that "most women have
no characters at all;" and again he says:-
"Ladies, like variegated tulips, show:
'Tis to their changes half their charms we owe,
Fine by defect and delicately weak.
Pages:
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394
395