Woman
In his relation to women man is always more or less of a fool, whether he be their husband, lover, counsellor, or friend. He explains the same thing to them over and over again; he declares, he demonstrates with a will; he would have it thus and so, because only in this wise, and at such a time, will it fulfil his purpose; he points the argument and he grounds it with such explicitness that a very sign-post would strike root at listening to him; he accents the casus quæstionis with all possible pantomime, and with all logical emphasis. For a moment the lady fears the threatening storm; but as for the mental effect, the effect which the argument should make as such, which truth should make as truth,—for that her ladyship has no respect; indeed she does not even respect law and justice with all her heart, but only under compulsion, and driven thereto by despair.
Man may talk as much as he pleases; the spoken word exerts no potent influence over a genuine woman. So long as her emotions are strongly affected, the whole line of argumentation to which the word gives expression seems to her but a piece of academical man-invented pedantry—the learned twaddle of the schools. She inclineth not her ear to reasons; she considers them an intolerable imposition, an encroachment upon the realm of her sentiment and the supremacy of her feminine intuition. Her logic is passion; she feels but her mood, her interest; she sees things and relations but as they regard her personally. Whether there is an injustice to others implied, and what is the true import of things per se, all that is rarely comprehended and retained by a woman where her interest or her antipathy comes into play. In the entire course of the clearest and concisest exposition the fair listener is occupied only with her excitement and opposition, and never with the subject in question and its importance. The spoken word, as soon as she is required to acknowledge its office as bearer and representative of spirit, to value its absolute potency, is to her but empty sound. At the last she yields to pathos—to emphasis, to oratory, as she might do in a play. The dialectics affect her possibly by their eloquence, diction, and plastic qualities, rarely by the force of conviction. When all his arguments are exhausted, and the speaker looks forward to the effect for the sake of which he has marshalled all his rhetorical art and logic, and taken his eloquence into both hands as it were, Madam comes back to the same fatal point, to the same nonsense from whence she started; and all the forces of rhetoric, all the concentrated reasoning goes for nothing.
Now the man’s temper rises, and he waxes indignant; a piece of copper is finally persuaded by the hammer to become a tea-kettle; words can be engraved on stone and steel, why not upon the tabula rasa, the blank daguerreotype-plate of a woman’s mind?
The quietest, most serene of men must despair when there is no appealing to human reason. But Madam shall be convinced. He counts again the serried syllogisms on trembling fingers, with flashing eyes and tremulous lips, with a voice half suppressed by rage; every word is accentuated as if it were to conjure up spirits and wake the dead. Arguments are applied like thumb-screws, the entire demonstration is held up menacingly like a pistol with trigger drawn; she is accused of reason, and in the next moment it is demanded of her, as one demands the evidence of his five senses from a person suspicious of insanity. Madam is asked to declare, brief and plain, whether she had understood; she is not to say what she will do or not do; the matter under discussion and its fulfilment is to remain secondary; the man wants naught but the satisfaction of an acknowledgment that he is right, that his better-half possesses and respects human reason. All material interest is to be set aside; her ladyship shall have quite her own way; it is only demanded that there be a declaration in the interest of truth, of logic, of human dignity; but of this the fair sufferer in the cause of Reason is not capable, it is asking too much of her feminine nature, it breaks her heart. She feels herself ill-treated; in her excitement she has heard nothing but words, and like a tragedy-queen, she has been occupied only with her grief. She comprehends naught but her boundless misery, and the axiomatic barbarity of the genus man. And the tears she has long repressed burst forth, washing away demonstrations, syllogisms, and all; that is a woman’s logic. Nature will not be forced, and least of all woman-nature. Dosed with argumentation and logic, it loses appetite, fulness, wit, complexion, grace, amiability, and vivacity. A platonic friend of the ladies is, as a rule, an unmanly creature; that is, quite as unreasonable and weakly constructed as the female to whom he feels sympathetically drawn. Manly differences and manly reconciliations are quite out of the question in so unnatural a relation. Especially is there one case which calls for commiseration—viz., when a genuine man is called upon to be the dependant, the counsellor, and the gallant friend of a vain old hag abandoned of all graces; when, for instance, a son-in-law is condemned to manage the affairs of madam his mother-in-law. Either the lady is ungently set to rights, or else his unbounded respect for old age brings the son-in-law to an untimely grave. With the most uncongenial male one can discuss a question, and there is a possibility of arriving at an understanding or compromise; with every man some manœuvre will catch, but never with a woman who thinks her interest and the authority of her wilfulness endangered. In this desperate case she is destitute of reason and character, without method and consistency, without understanding and common justice, an enemy of all business principles and all promptness, ay, even without conscience and pity.
She would like to make a bargain but not risk anything; yes, she will risk but not lose anything; yes, she will lose but it must not cost her anything. All old ladies are parsimonious; they have a passion for playing cards, but there is always the one condition that their cavalier, with dutiful politeness, lets them win his money. Dull are all old ladies, and hard to entertain if they cannot indulge in weather-worn flirtations, or if they do not perceive themselves to be the objects of devotion and attention. Ignorant of affairs are all ladies, the old and the young; but the old never to their disadvantage where money plays a part. Suspicious are they all by unalterable right, and curious because they are suspicious, if for no other reason. In some cases they are compassionate—i.e., in cases of illness, of which they have more innate knowledge and power of subtle diagnosis than an experienced physician gets to his dying day; but toward their creditors they are worse than barbaric, they persecute them without sense or reason.
Women are always mixing up the most insignificant things with the most important; the details with the principal points, the person, and the cause.
Neither an old barrister nor a young lawyer can bring them to see the punctum juris, for they have as little sense of right and justice as a Hottentot, or an Englishman making a bargain.
Of two evils women cannot choose the lesser until the greater is hard upon them.
They want to build a large house, for instance, but are unwilling to lay a deep foundation; it is to have three storeys, but without the inconvenience of stairs, and there must be a cellar in each storey; else what is the use of having an architect for your lover, or indulgent husband, or friend? They want to go a-travelling, but at the same time things must be more comfortable and cheaper than at home; there is to be no luggage-waggon, but of course they must have twelve trunks and a half, and by dint of much coaxing they will spare you the half. Their goal is toward the north, but they wish to drive in a south-westerly direction, because it blows into the carriage from the other side.
A woman has leased her farm, and is afterwards indignant at the good harvest which she might have had instead of her tenant. At last she has sold the estate, and has the money safe in her pocket, but she is quite taken by surprise at the thought of moving and giving up the old homestead. A woman is always greatly disconcerted to hear that she cannot sell things and keep them at the same time.
Bogumil Golz (1801-1870).