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Page 65
At this epoch, the influence of women was decidedly beneficial; happy
for them and for society if it had continued to be so! If we attempt to
trace the source of this influence, we shall find it in the intellectual
equality of the two sexes; equally ignorant of what we call knowledge,
the respect due by men to virtue and beauty was not checked by any
disdain of real or fancied superiority on their part.
The intellectual exercises (chiefly imaginative) of the time, so far
from forming a barrier between the two sexes, were a bond of union. The
song of the minstrel was devoted to the praise of beauty, and paid by
her smile. The spirit of the age, as imbodied in these effusions, is
the best proof of the beneficial influence exercised over that age by
our sex. In them, the name of woman is not associated in the degrading
catalogue of man's pleasures, with his bottle and his horse, but is
coupled with all that is fair and pure in nature,--the fields, the
birds, the flowers; or high in virtue or sentiment,--with honour, glory,
self-sacrifice.
To the age of chivalry succeeded the revival of letters; and (strange to
say!) this revival was any thing but advantageous to the cause of women.
Men found other paths to glory than the exercise of valour afforded, and
paths into which women were forbidden to follow them. Into these
newly-discovered regions, women were not allowed to penetrate, and men
returned thence with real or affected contempt for their unintellectual
companions, without having attained true wisdom enough to know how much
they would gain by their enlightenment.
The advance of intelligence in men not being met by a corresponding
advance in women, the latter lost their equilibrium in the social
balance. Honour, glory, were no longer attached to the smile of beauty.
The dethroned sovereigns, from being imperious, became abject, and
sought, by paltry arts, to perpetuate the empire which was no longer
conceded as a right. Influence they still possessed, but an influence
debased in its character, and changed in its mode of operation. Instead
of being the objects of devotion of heart,--fantastic, indeed, but
high-minded,--they became the mere playthings of the imagination, or
worse, the mere objects of sensual passion. Respect is the only sure
foundation of influence. Women had ceased to be respected: they
therefore ceased to be beneficially influential. That they retained
another and a worse kind of influence, may be inferred from the spirit,
as imbodied in the literature, of the period. Fiction no longer sought
its heroes among the lofty in mind and pure in morals--its heroines in
spotless virgins and faithful wives. The reckless voluptuary, the
faithless and successful adulteress,--these were the noble beings whose
deeds filled the pages which formed the delight of the wise and the
fair. The ultimate issues of these grievous errors were most strikingly
developed in the respective courts of Louis XIV. and Charles II., where
they reached their climax. The vicious influence of which we have spoken
was then at its height, and the degradation of women had brought on its
inevitable consequence, the degradation of men. With some few
exceptions, (such exceptions, indeed, prove rules!) we trace this evil
influence in the contempt of virtue, public and private; in the base
passions, the narrow and selfish views peculiar to degraded women, and
reflected on the equally degraded men whom such women could have power
to charm.[107]
A change of opinions and of social arrangements has long been operating,
which ought entirely to have abrogated these evils. That they have not
done so is owing to a grand mistake. Women having recovered their
rights, moral and intellectual, have resumed their importance in the eye
of reason: they have long been the ornaments of society, which from them
derives its tone, and it has become too much the main object of their
education to cultivate the accomplishments which may make them such. A
twofold injury has arisen from this mistaken aim; it has blinded women
as to the true nature and end of their existence, and has excited a
spirit of worldly ambition opposed to the devoted unselfishness
necessary for its accomplishment. This is the error of the
unthinking--the reflecting have fallen into another, but not less
serious one. The coarse, but expressive satire of Luther, "That the
human mind is like an intoxicated man on horseback,--if he is set up on
one side, he falls off on the other," was never more fully justified
than on this subject. Because it is perceived that women have a dignity
and value greater than society or themselves have discovered,--because
their talents and virtues place them on a footing of equality with men,
it is maintained that their present sphere of action is too contracted a
one, and that they ought to share in the public functions of the other
sex. Equality, mental and _physical_, is proclaimed! This is matter too
ludicrous to be treated anywhere but in a professed satire; in sober
earnest, it may be asked, upon what grounds so extraordinary a doctrine
is built up! Were women allowed to act out these principles, it would
soon appear that one great range of duty had been left unprovided for in
the schemes of Providence; such an omission would be without parallel.
Two principal points only can here be brought forward, which oppose this
plan at the very outset; they are--
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