The Intelligence of Woman

The Intelligence of Woman

BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 1916 Copyright, 1916, By W. L. George. All rights reserved Published, November, 1916 Norwood Press Set up and electrotyped by J. S. Cushing Co., Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. Presswork by S. J. Parkhill & Co., Boston, Mass., U.S.A. Men have been found to deny woman an intellect; they have credited her with instinct, with intuition, with a capacity to correlate cause and effect much as a dog connects its collar with a walk. But intellect in its broadest sense, the capacity consecutively to plan and steadfastly to execute, they have often denied her. The days are not now so dark. Woman has a place in the state, a place under, but still a place. Man has recognized her value without coming to understand her much better, and so we are faced with a paradox: while man accords woman an improved social position, he continues to describe her as illogical, petty, jealous, vain, untruthful, disloyal to her own sex; quite as frequently he charges her with being over-loyal to her own [Pg 2]sex: there is no pleasing him. Also he discerns in this unsatisfactory creature extreme unselfishness, purity, capacity for self-sacrifice. It seems that the intelligence of man cannot solve the problem of woman, which is a bad sign in a superior intelligence. The trouble lies in this: man assumes too readily that woman essentially differs from man. Hardly a man has lived who did not so exaggerate. Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, agreed to despise women; Napoleon seemed to view them as engines of pleasure; for Shakespeare they may well have embodied a romantic ideal, qualified by sportive wantonness. In Walter Scott, women appear as romance in a cheap edition; Byron in their regard is a beast of prey, Doctor Johnson a pompous brute and a puritanical sensualist. Cervantes mixed in his romantic outlook a sort of suspicious hatred, while Alexandre Dumas thought them born only to lay laurel wreaths and orange blossoms (together with coronets) on the heads of musketeers. All, allfrom Thackeray, who never laid his hand upon a woman save in the way of patronage, to Goethe, to Dante, to Montaigne, to Wellingtonall harbored this curious idea: in one way or another woman differs from man. And to-day, whether we read Mr. Bernard Shaw, Mr. [Pg 3]George Moore, M. Paul Bourget, or Mr. Hall Caine, we find that there still persists a belief in Byron's lines: ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 32479
Author: George, Walter Lionel
Release Date: May 22, 2010
Format: eBook
Language: English