CHAPTER CCV.
EQUALITY OF THE SEXES,—A POINT ON WHICH IT WAS NOT EASY TO COLLECT THE DOCTOR'S OPINION.—THE SALIC LAW.—DANIEL ROGERS'S TREATISE OF MATRIMONIAL HONOUR.—MISS HATFIELD'S LETTERS ON THE IMPORTANCE OF THE FEMALE SEX, AND LODOVICO DOMENICHI'S DIALOGUE UPON THE NOBLENESS OF WOMEN.
Mirths and toys To cozen time withal: for o' my troth, Sir I can love,—I think well too,—well enough; And think as well of women as they are,— Pretty fantastic things, some more regardful, And some few worth a service. I'm so honest I wish 'em all in Heaven and you know how hard, Sir, 'Twill be to get in there with their great farthingals.
BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.
And not much easier now with their great sleeves.
AUTHOR, A.D. 1830.
The question concerning the equality of the sexes which was discussed so warmly some thirty years ago in Magazines and Debating Societies, was one upon which it was not easy to collect the Doctor's real opinion. His manner indeed was frequently sportive when his meaning was most serious, and as frequently the thoughts and speculations with which he merely played, and which were sports or exercitations of intellect and humour, were advanced with apparent gravity. The propensity however was always restrained within due bounds, for he had treasured up his father's lessons in his heart, and would have regarded it as a crime ever to have trifled with his principles or feelings. But this question concerning the sexes was a subject which he was fond of introducing before his female acquaintance; it was like hitting the right note for a dog when you play the flute, he said. The sort of half anger, and the indignation, and the astonishment and the merriment withal which he excited when he enlarged upon this fertile theme, amused him greatly, and moreover he had a secret pleasure in observing the invincible good humour of his wife, even when she thought it necessary for the honour of her sex to put on a semblance of wrath at the notions which he repeated, and the comments with which he accompanied them.
He used to rest his opinion of male superiority upon divinity, law, grammar, natural history, and the universal consent of nations. Noting also by the way, that in the noble science of heraldry, it is laid down as a rule “that amongst things sensitive the males are of more worthy bearing than the females.”[1]
[Footnote 1: GWILLIM.]
The Salic law he looked upon as in this respect the Law of Nature. And therefore he thought it was wisely appointed in France, that the royal Midwife should receive a fee of five hundred crowns upon the birth of a boy and only three hundred if it were a female child. This the famous Louise Bourgeois has stated to be the custom, who for the edification of posterity, the advancement of her own science, and the use of French historians published a _Recit veritable de la naissance de Messieurs et Dames les enfans de France_, containing minute details of every royal parturition at which she had officiated.
But he dwelt with more force on the theological grounds of his position. “The wife is the weaker vessel. Wives submit yourselves to your husbands: be in subjection to them. The Husband is the head. Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord.” And here he had recourse to the authority of Daniel Rogers (whom he liked the better for his name's sake) who in his Treatise of Matrimonial Honour teaches that the duty of subjection, is woman's chief commandment; and that she is properly made subject by the Law of Creation and by the Law of Penalty. As thus. All other creatures were created male and female at the same time; man and woman were not so, for the Man was first created—as a perfect creature, and afterwards the woman was thought of. Moreover she was not made of the same matter, equally, with man,—but of him, of a rib taken from him, and thirdly, she was made for his use and benefit as a meet help-mate, “three weighty reasons and grounds of the woman's subjection to the man, and that from the purpose of the Creator; who might have done otherwise, that is, have yielded to the Woman co-equal beginning, sameness of generation, or relation of usefulness; for he might have made her without any such precedency of matter, without any dependency upon him, and equally for her good as for his. All shew at ennobling the Man as the Head and more excellent, not that the Man might upbraid her, but that she might in all these read her lesson of subjection. And doubtless, as Malachi speaks, herein is wisdom, for God hath left nothing to be bettered by our invention.
“The woman, being so created by God in the integrity of Nature had a most divine honour and partnership of his image, put upon her in her creation; yea, such as (without prejudice of those three respects) might have held full and sweet correspondence with her husband. But her sin still augmented her inequality, and brought her lower and lower in her prerogative. For since she would take upon her, as a woman, without respect to the order, dependence and use of her creation, to enterprize so sad a business, as to jangle and demur with the Devil about so weighty a point as her husband's freehold, and of her own brain to lay him and it under foot, without the least parley and consent of his, obeying Satan before him,—so that till she had put all beyond question and past amendment, and eaten, she brought not the fruit to him, therefore the Lord stript her of this robe of her honour, and smote into the heart of Eve an instinct of inferiority, a confessed yielding up of her insufficient self to depend wholly upon her husband.”
This being a favourite commentary with the Doctor upon the first transgression, what would he have said if he had lived to read an Apology for Eve by one of her daughters, yes, an Apology for her and a Defence, showing that she acted meritoriously in eating the Apple. It is a choice passage and the reader shall have it from Miss Hatfield's Letters on the Importance of the Female Sex.
“By the creation of woman, the great design was accomplished,—the universal system was harmonized. Happiness and innocence reigned together. But unacquainted with the nature or existence of evil,—conscious only of good and imagining that all were of that essence around her; without the advantages of the tradition of forefathers to relate, or of ancient records to hand down, Eve was fatally and necessarily ignorant of the rebellious disobedience of the fallen Angels, and of their invisible vigilance and combination to accomplish the destruction of the new favourites of Heaven.
“In so momentous an event as that which has ever been exclusively imputed to her, neither her virtue nor her prudence ought to be suspected; and there is little reason to doubt, that if the same temptations had been offered to her husband under the same appearances, but he also would have acquiesced in the commission of this act of disobedience.
“Eve's attention was attracted by the manner in which the Serpent first made his attack: he had the gift of speech, which she must have observed to be a faculty peculiar to themselves. This appeared an evidence of something supernatural. The wily tempter chose also the form of the serpent to assist his design, as not only in wisdom and sagacity that creature surpassed all others, but his figure was also erect and beautiful, for it was not until the offended justice of God denounced the curse, that the Serpent's crest was humbled to the dust.
“During this extraordinary interview, it is evident that Eve felt a full impression of the divine command, which she repeated to the tempter at the time of his solicitations. She told him they were not to eat of _that_ Tree.—But the Serpent opposed her arguments with sophistry and promises. He said unto the Woman, ye shall not surely die—but shall be as Gods. What an idea to a mortal!—Such an image astonished her!—It was not the gross impulses of greedy appetite that urged her, but a nobler motive that induced her to examine the consequences of the act.—She was to be better and happier;—to exchange a mortal for an angelic nature. Her motive was great,—virtuous,—irresistible. Might she not have felt herself awed and inspired with a belief of a divine order?—Upon examination she found it was to produce a greater good than as mortals they could enjoy; this impression excited a desire to possess that good; and that desire determined her will and the future destiny of a World!”
It must be allowed that this Lady Authoress has succeeded in what might have been supposed the most difficult of all attempts, that of starting a new heresy,—her followers in which may aptly be denominated Eveites.
The novelty consists not in excusing the mother of mankind, but in representing her transgression as a great and meritorious act. An excuse has been advanced for her in Lodovico Domenichi's Dialogue upon the nobleness of Women. It is there pleaded that the fruit of the fatal tree had not been forbidden to Eve, because she was not created when the prohibition was laid on. Adam it was who sinned in eating it, not Eve, and it is in Adam that we have all sinned, and all die. Her offence was in tempting him to eat, _et questo anchora senza intention cattiva, essendo stata tentata dal Diavolo. L'huomo adunque peccò per certa scientia, et la Donna ignorantemente, et ingannata._
I know not whether this special pleading be Domenichi's own; but he must have been conscious that there is a flaw in it, and could not have been in earnest, as Miss Hatfield is. The Veronese lady Isotta Nogarola thought differently; _essendo studiosa molto di Theologia et di Philosophia_, she composed a Dialogue wherein the question whether Adam or Eve in the primal transgression had committed the greater sin. How she determined it I cannot say, never having seen her works.
Domenichi makes another assertion in honour of womankind which Miss Hatfield would undoubtedly consider it an honour for herself to have disproved in her own person,—that no heresy, or error in the faith ever originated with a woman.
Had this Lady, most ambitious of Eve's daughters, been contemporary with Doctor Dove, how pleasant it would have been to have witnessed a debate between them upon the subject! He would have wound her up to the highest pitch of indignation, and she would have opened the flood-gates of female oratory upon his head.