“Ruin ensues, reproach, and endless shame,
“And one false step, entirely damns her fame.”
Such partial discriminations seem to violate all laws, divine and human! If WOMAN be the weaker creature, her frailty should be the more readily forgiven. She is exposed by her personal attractions, to more perils, and yet she is not permitted to bear that shield, which man assumes; she is not allowed the exercise of courage to repulse the enemies of her fame and happiness; though, if she is wounded, — she is lost for ever!
Supposing that a WOMAN has experienced every insult, every injury, that her vain-boasting, high-bearing associate, man, can inflict: imagine her, driven from society; deserted by her kindred; scoffed at by the world; exposed to poverty; assailed by malice; and consigned to scorn: with no companion but sorrow, no prospect but disgrace; she has no remedy. She appeals to the feeling and reflecting part of mankind; they pity, but they do not seek to redress her: she flies to her own sex, they not only condemn, but they avoid her. She talks of punishing the villain who has destroyed her: he smiles at the menace, and tells her, she is, a WOMAN.
Let me ask this plain and rational question, — is not woman a human being, gifted with all the feelings that inhabit the bosom of man? Has not woman affections, susceptibility, fortitude, and an acute sense of injuries received? Does she not shrink at the touch of persecution? Does not her bosom melt with sympathy, throb with pity, glow with resentment, ache with sensibility, and burn with indignation? Why then is she denied the exercise of the nobler feelings, an high consciousness of honour, a lively sense of what is due to dignity of character? Why may not woman resent and punish? Because the long established laws of custom, have decreed her passive! Because she is by nature organized to feel every wrong more acutely, and yet, by a barbarous policy, denied the power to assert the first of Nature’s rights, self-preservation.
How many vices are there that men perpetually indulge in, to which women are rarely addicted. Drinking, in man, is reckoned a proof of good fellowship; and the bon vivant is considered as the best and most desirable of companions. Wine, as far as it is pleasant to the sense of tasting, is as agreeable to woman as to man; but its use to excess will render either brutal. Yet man yields to its influence, because he is the stronger-minded creature; and woman resists its power over the senses, because she is the weaker. How will the superiorly organized sex defend this contradiction? Man will say his passions are stronger than those of women; yet we see women rush not only to ruin, but to death, for objects they love; while men exult in an unmeaning display of caprice, intrigue, and seduction, frequently, without even a zest for the vices they exhibit. The fact is simply this: the passions of men originate in sensuality; those of women, in sentiment: man loves corporeally, woman mentally: which is the nobler creature?
Gaming is termed, in the modern vocabulary, a masculine vice. Has vice then a sex? Till the passions of the mind in man and woman are separate and distinct, till the sex of vital animation, denominated soul, be ascertained, on what pretext is woman deprived of those amusements which man is permitted to enjoy? If gaming be a vice (though every species of commerce is nearly allied to it), why not condemn it wholly? why suffer man to persevere in the practice of it; and yet in woman execrate its propensity? Man may enjoy the convivial board, indulge the caprices of his nature; he may desert his home, violate his marriage vows, scoff at the moral laws that unite society, and set even religion at defiance, by oppressing the defenceless; while woman is condemned to bear the drudgery of domestic life, to vegetate in obscurity, to love where she abhors, to honour where she dispises, and to obey, while she shudders at subordination. Why? Let the most cunning sophist, answer me, WHY?
If women sometimes, indeed too frequently, exhibit a frivolous species of character, we should examine the evil in which it originates, and endeavour to find a cure. If the younger branches of some of our nobility are superficially polished, and wholly excluded from essential knowledge, while they are regularly initiated in the mysteries of a gaming table, and the mazes of intrigue, can we feel surprized at their soon discovering an aptitude to evince their hereditary follies? We know that women, like princes, are strangers to the admonitions of truth; and yet we are astonished when we behold them emulous of displaying every thing puerile and unessential; and aiming perpetually at arbitrary power, without one mental qualification to authorize dominion. From such women, the majority of mankind draw their opinions of sexual imbecility; and, in order that their convenient plea may be sanctioned by example, they continue to debilitate the female mind, for the sole purpose of enforcing subordination.
Yet, the present era has given indisputable proofs, that WOMAN is a thinking and an enlightened being! We have seen a Wollstonecraft, a Macaulay, a Sévigné; and many others, now living, who embelish the sphere of literary splendour, with genius of the first order. The aristocracy of kingdoms will say, that it is absolutely necessary to extort obedience: if all were masters, who then would stoop to serve? By the same rule, man exclaims, if we allow the softer sex to participate in the intellectual rights and privileges we enjoy, who will arrange our domestic drudgery? who will reign (as Stephano says, while we are vice-roys over them) in our household establishments? who will rear our progeny; obey our commands; be our affianced vassals; the creatures of our pleasures? I answer, women, but they will not be your slaves; they will be your associates, your equals in the extensive scale of civilized society; and in the indisputable rights of nature.
In the common occurrences and occupations of life, what in man is denominated high-spirit, is in WOMAN termed vindictive. If a man be insulted and inflicts a blow upon his assailant, he is called a brave and noble-minded creature! If WOMAN acts upon the same principle of resistance, she is branded as a Zantippe, though in such a situation she would scarcely meet with a Socrates, even if, in the scale of comparison, she possessed stronger corporeal, as well as mental, powers, than the object of her resentment.
How comes it, that in this age of reason we do not see statesmen and orators selecting women of superior mental acquirements as their associates? Men allow that women are absolutely necessary to their happiness, and that they “had been brutes” without them. But the poet did not insinuate that none but silly or ignorant women were to be allowed the supreme honour of unbrutifying man, of rendering his life desirable, and of “smoothing the rugged path of care” with their endearments. The ancients were emulous of patronizing, and even of cultivating the friendship of enlightened women. But a British Demosthenes, a Pythagoras, a Leontius, a Eustathius, or a Brutus, would rather pass his hours in dalliance with an unlettered courtezan, than in the conversation of a Theano, a Themiste, a Cornelia, a Sofipatra, or a Portia. What is this display of mental aristocracy? what but the most inveterate jealousy; the most pernicious and refined species of envy and malevolence?
Let me ask the rational and thinking mortal, why the graces of feminine beauty are to be constituted emblems of a debilitated mind? Does the finest symmetry of form, or the most delicate tint of circulation, exemplify a tame submission to insult or oppression? Is strength of intellect, in woman, bestowed in vain? Has the SUPREME DISPOSER OF EVENTS given to the female soul a distinguished portion of energy and feeling, that the one may remain inactive, and the other be the source of her destruction? Let the moralist think otherwise. Let the contemplative philosopher examine the proportions of human intellect; and let us hope that the immortality of the soul springs from causes that are not merely sexual.
Cicero says, “There was, from the beginning such a thing as Reason; a direct emanation from nature itself, which prompted to good, and averted from evil.” Reason may be considered as a part of soul; for, by its powers, we are taught intuitively to hope for a future state. Cicero did not confine the attribute of Reason to sex; such doctrine would have been completely Mahometan!
The most celebrated painters have uniformly represented angels as of no sex. Whether this idea originates in theology, or imaginati
on, I will not pretend to determine; but I will boldly assert that there is something peculiarly unjust in condemning woman to suffer every earthly insult, while she is allowed a sex; and only permitting her to be happy, when she is divested of it. There is also something profane in the opinion, because it implies that an all-wise Creator sends a creature into the world, with a sexual distinction, which shall authorise the very extent of mortal persecution. If men would be completely happy by obtaining the confidence of women, let them unite in confessing that mental equality, which evinces itself by indubitable proofs that the soul has no sex. If, then, the cause of action be the same, the effects cannot be dissimilar.
In what is woman inferior to man? In some instances, but not always, in corporeal strength: in activity of mind, she is his equal. Then, by this rule, if she is to endure oppression in proportion as she is deficient in muscular power, only, through all the stages of animation the weaker should give precedence to the stronger. Yet we should find a Lord of the Creation with a puny frame, reluctant to confess the superiority of a lusty peasant girl, whom nature had endowed with that bodily strength of which luxury had bereaved him.
The question is simply this: Is woman persecuted and oppressed because she is the weaker creature? Supposing that to be the order of Nature; let me ask these human despots, whether a woman, of strong mental and corporeal powers, is born to yield obedience, merely because she is a woman, to those shadows of mankind who exhibit the effeminacy of women, united with the mischievous foolery of monkies? I remember once, to have heard one of those modern Hannibals confess, that he had changed his regiments three times, because the regimentals were unbecoming!”
If woman be the weaker creature, why is she employed in laborious avocations? why compelled to endure the fatigue of household drudgery; to scrub, to scower, to labour, both late and early, while the powdered lacquey only waits at the chair, or behind the carriage of his employer? Why are women, in many parts of the kingdom, permitted to follow the plough; to perform the laborious business of the dairy; to work in our manufactories; to wash, to brew, and to bake, while men are employed in measuring lace and ribands; folding gauzes; composing artificial bouquets; fancying feathers, and mixing cosmetics for the preservation of beauty? I have seen, and every inhabitant of the metropolis may, during the summer season, behold strong Welsh girls carrying on their heads strawberries, and other fruits from the vicinity of London to Covent-Garden market, in heavy loads which they repeat three, four, and five times, daily, for a very small pittance; while the male domesticks of our nobility are revelling in luxury, to which even their lords are strangers. Are women thus compelled to labour, because they are of the WEAKER SEX?
In my travels some years since through France and Germany, I often remember having seen stout girls, from the age of seventeen to twenty-five, employed in the most fatiguing and laborious avocations; such as husbandry, watering horses, and sweeping the public streets. Were they so devoted to toil, because they were the weaker creatures? and would not a modern petit maître have fainted beneath the powerful grasp of one of these rustic or domestic amazons?
Man is said to possess more personal courage than woman. How comes it, then, that he boldly dares insult the helpless sex, whenever he finds an object unprotected? I here beg leave to present a true story, which is related by a polished and impartial traveller.
“A foreign lady of great distinction, of a family to whom I had the honour to be well known, was appointed to be married to a young gentleman of equal rank: the settlements were all made, the families agreed, and the day was come for the union. The morning of the same day, the ceremony of the marriage being fixed for the same evening, the lover being young, thoughtless, and lost with passion, when alone with the bride, insinuated, in the softest and most endearing terms, that he was her husband in every sense but a few trifling words, which were to pass that night from the mouth of the priest; and, that if she loved him, as he presumed she did, she certainly would not keep him one moment in anxiety; much less ten or twelve hours, which must be the case, if she waited for the ceremony of the church. The lady, astonished at what she had heard, discovered in her looks not only the warmest resentment, but resolved in her heart to be amply revenged; and having had an excellent education, was well acquainted with the world, and no stranger to the artifices of designing men in affairs of love; after recovering a little her surprise, determined to keep her temper, and promised with a smile, obedience to her lover’s will, and begged him to name the place proper for such a design; which, being mutually agreed on for four in the afternoon, the indiscreet lover, ravished at his expectation, met, agreeable to appointment, the lady, in a garden leading to the house, where they proposed the interview. When walking together, with all seeming tenderness on both sides, the lady, on a sudden, started from her lover, and threw him a pistol, holding another in her right hand, and spoke to him to this effect: ‘Remember for what infamous purpose you invited me here: you shall never be a husband of mine; and such vengeance do I seek for the offence, that, on my very soul, I vow, you or I shall die this hour. Take instantly up the pistol, I’ll give you leave to defend yourself; though you have no right to deserve it. In this, you see, I have honour; though you have none.’
“The lover, amazed at this unforeseen change, took up the pistol, in obedience to her commands; directing it towards the earth, threw himself at her feet, and was going to say a thousand things in favour of his passion; the lady gave attention a few minutes, pointing the pistol to his breast; while the lover, with a voice confused, and every other appearance of despair, begged her pity and her pardon; declared his love for her was such, that he was deprived of all power of reflection; that he had no views of offending; that all he said was for want of thought, that his reason was absent, and that her beauty was the cause of all.— ‘Beauty!’ says the lady, interrupting him, ‘Thou art a villain! I’ll hear no more, for one of us must die this moment. ‘ — The lover perceiving her violent anger, and finding that all his soft phrases had no effect on her, in his distraction raised the pistol then in his hand a little higher; thinking, by its appearance in that situation, to affect his admired lady with some terror, while he continued to pursue his defence; but alas! no sooner did the angry fair perceive the pistol of her lover raised breast high, but, that instant being the crisis of her resentment, she fired upon him, and shot him through the heart. He fell; and in falling, being deprived of both speech and reason, his pistol went off, and the consequence was, her collar bone was broke, and much blood followed. She clapped her handkerchief to the wound, ran to her coach, which was waiting at the garden door, ordered her servant to take care of the dead body, and directed some others to conduct her with the utmost expedition to her father’s house; to whom she related the whole affair. Proper assistance was instantly sent for; and I being that day at table with the physician of the Court, who was also of this family, went with him; saw the wound, and was well instructed in the particulars of this adventure. The lady was never so much as called to a trial for the death of her lover; because all the circumstances proved the truth of what she had related: her promising to marry him that night, was so powerful an argument of her love for the deceased, that no other motive could have produced so dreadful an event. The lady was cured of her wound, threw herself into a convent; and, from despair for the loss of her lover, languished a few weeks, and then followed him, as she hoped, to the other world. The brother of the lover, according to the custom of the country, fought the brother of the lady, and killed his antagonist. He flew to Spain for refuge, where I afterwards saw him a colonel in a regiment of that nation.”
This short story will prove that the mind of WOMAN, when she feels a correct sense of honour, even though it is blended with the very excess of sensibility, can rise to the most intrepid defence of it. Yet had such a circumstance taken place in Britain, the perpetrator of this heroic act of indignant and insulted virtue, would probably have suffered an ignominious death, or been shut up during th
e remainder of her days as a confirmed maniac; for HERE woman is placed in the very front of peril, without being allowed the means of self-preservation, and that very resistance which would secure her from dishonour, would stigmatize her in the world’s opinion.
What then is WOMAN to do? Where is she to hope for justice? Man who professes himself her champion, her protector, is the most subtle and unrelenting enemy she has to encounter: yet, if she determines on a life of celibacy and secludes herself wholly from his society, she becomes an object of universal ridicule.
It has lately been the fashion of the time, to laugh at the encreasing consequence of women, in the great scale of human intellect. Why? Because, by their superior lustre, the overweening and ostentatious splendour of some men, is placed in a more obscure point of view. The women of France have been by some popular, though evidently prejudiced writers, denominated little better than she-devils! And yet we have scarcely heard of one instance, excepting in the person of the vain and trifling Madame Du Barry, in which the females of that country have not displayed almost a Spartan fortitude even at the moment when they ascended the scaffold. If there are political sceptics, who affect to place the genuine strength of soul to a bold but desperate temerity, rather than to a sublime effort of heroism, let them contemplate the last moments of Marie Antoinette; this extraordinary WOMAN, whose days had passed in luxurious splendour; whose will had been little less than law! Behold her hurled from the most towering altitude of power and vanity; insulted, mocked, derided, stigmatized, yet unappalled even at the instant when she was compelled to endure an ignominious death! Let the strength of her mind, the intrepidity of her soul, put to shame the vaunted superiority of man; and at the same time place the female character in a point of view, at once favourable to nature, and worthy of example. France has, amidst its recent tumultuous scenes, exhibited WOMEN whose names will be the glory of posterity. Women who have not only faced the very front of war, but thereby sustained the heroic energies of their countrymen, by the force of example and the effect of emulation. Even the rash enthusiast, CORDAY, whose poniard annihilated the most sanguinary and atrocious monster that ever disgraced humanity, claimed our pity, (even while religion and nature shuddered), as she ascended the fatal scaffold, to expiate the deed she had accomplished.
Collected Poetical Works of Mary Robinson Page 49