Whether Women are equal to Men in their intellectual Capacity, or not.
If the business of the mind were nothing more than to contrive a dress; to invent
a new fashion; to set off a bad face; to heighten the charms of a good one; to
understand the economy of a tea-table; to manage an intrigue; to conduct a
game at quadrille, and to lay out new plans of pleasure, pride and luxury; then
women must be owned to have a capacity not only equal but even superior to
us.
But as the understanding of man has infinitely higher objects to employ its
speculations on, objects beyond the very aim of the ablest women; their
intellectual faculties are so evidently inferior to his, that I should think it an
impertinence in me to take up any time to prove it.
Need we look any farther than their soft, simpering, silly faces to fathom
the perceptible depth of their understandings?
View the whole sex round:
Eternal Smiles their Emptiness betray
As shallow Streams run dimpling all the way.
Pope.
A thoughtless stare, a wild vivacity, a sleepy pertness, giddy gravity, or some
such other sense-defying look betrays, in all, the narrow space between the
surface and centre of their mimic wit.
How well the masterly Limner knew them, who snatched from them the graces
he so skilfully bestowed on Sporus, that copy of themselves, inspired too by them
as they by Satan!
As nothing can show the finished mastery of that excellent piece in the fairer
light than giving back to its pretty originals whatever is borrowed from them,
it cannot be amiss to do it, considering it requires but little alteration:
a presumption, I dare say, that ingenious author will excuse.
Whether in florid impotence they speak, And, as the prompter breathes, the
puppets squeak, Or, Eves true spawn, and tools of the ancient toad,
Half froth, half venom, spit themselves abroad, In puns, or politics, or tales,
or lies, Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies.
Their wit all see-saw, between that and this, Now high, now low, now forward,
now remiss, And each herself one dull antithesis.
Amphibious things! That acting either part, The trifling head, or the corrupted
heart, Bullies at cards, and flirts when at the board, Now jilt like Dames, now swear
like any Lord.
Their tempter thus the Rabbins have expressed, A cherubs face, a reptile all the
rest.
Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust, Wit that must creep,
and pride that licks the dust.
In Fact, what is all their discourse but froth? What inspires it but venom? And
in what does their Sprightliness appear, but in empty puns, conundrums,
rebukes, trifling politics or mischievous lies?
They who shine most among them, are such as have nothing to entertain you with
but scandal, indecency, hypocrisy, or impiety. What is their wit but a mere see-
saw from one inconsistency to another? Their conversation is ever screwed
up to bombast, when it should be familiar; or sunk into meanness, when the
subject they presume to meddle with is sublime. Where they should be silent,
they are as forward to prate, as they are remiss in speaking on proper
occasions.
In short their talk, like their persons, is one continued, insipid antithesis.
Amphibious things indeed! Whose impotent eagerness to be like man serves
only to show that they are but mere mechanic rote-repeaters of his words, and
unsuccessful mimics of his sense. How unlike are they at their tea-tables to
the sensible things they would be thought; and at the card-table how short of
the spirit of the noble creatures they would be! There is nothing of a piece in
them but the corruption of their hearts and the low cunning of their heads.
If ever they succeed in aping us, it is in what is a disgrace to understanding.
Whenever they attempt it, they can swear as well as the greatest libertine
among us, though still without excelling the parrot in anything but the guilt.
Thus ever actuated by perversity, they are never truly like us; and are
never themselves, but when they jilt us: though in that, thanks to their native
talents, they seldom fail to be true women. How ill-bestowed then on these
fantastic things is the beauty we admire in them! And if it was bestowed on
them by nature to decoy us into a commerce with them, for the benefit of
propogation; must it not still shock our reason when we consider it
accompanied only with parts which we can reap no benefit from, nor place
any confidence in? And what assistance can we hope from their false wit,
as groveling as the pride it inspires them with?
But Sophia it seems would fain make a handle of the beauty of her sex to
impose upon us an opinion of their sense; and because "the organs of the body
are more delicate in them, therefore they must be fitter to answer the ends they
were made for."
True in one sense, the organs of women were designed for finical amusements,
and therefore were made more delicate than ours, in that sense of the word.
But if by delicate she means more perfectly or exactly formed; I must insist that
experience in the use proves ours to be more solidly and exactly formed than
those of the women.
And fit they should be so, considering the more noble uses they were designed
for, and are employed in.
But granting for a minute that the organs of sense are as perfect in women as in
men, and yet more delicate; what can Sophia infer but that they are more liable
to be thrown into disorder, and therefore the less to be depended upon? As the
mechanism of a watch, the more minute, gim, and delicate it is, the more is it
subject to inconstancy. A consideration which I willingly mention to apologize,
as much as the nature of the thing will bear, for that otherwise unaccountable
inconstancy in which alone the fair sex are ever constant.
Not that I entirely come into my soft antagonist's opinion, that the organs in
women are any more adapted to the natural functions of the mind than in men:
perhaps they are less so. For the external sleekness of their pretty forms is no
proof of the internal perfection of their organization. And to imagine a woman
must have sense because she is handsome, would be as absurd as to think that a
house must needs be finely furnished within, because the outside is beautiful: an
error to be excused in none but a woman.
What angel can imagination paint more beautiful than Pavonia! What reptile
more insensate! To reason by Sophia's rule, our eyes would cheat us into the
belief that she surpasses all the sages time has yet produced. And yet hear her
but speak, you'll almost doubt if Heaven had any hand making a thing at once
so fair and foolish, though so like a man. Never guilty of design, she never
looks it. Her smiles and frowns, alike effects of accident, want power to please
or displease. Her words mere liquid sounds of half-articulated nonsense, gush
from her pretty coral-spouted mouth with such unmeaning energy, or drip with
such deliberate drawl that even ridicule is robbed of all its zest.
Frequent in blunders, she excites no laugh in others; but often laughs herself,
when she should be most serious. Her misbehaviour moves no anger, and her
favours lay no obligations but upon such as are little wiser than herself. Every
motion, every air betrays the fool, whom they who have sense can scarce stoop to
pity, and they who have none scarce condescend to envy. In a word, gazed at by
all, she is admired and conversed with by none but idiots and women.
Amidst whom while she alternately reigns the idol of flattery, and slavishly sinks the
dupe of deceit, she is still looked down upon by all men of sense, with the same
contempt as the comely peacock:
though she be worthy of greater scorn in this, that the more beauteous bird bears
all his blemish in his feet, while her disgrace is feated in her head; his deformity
abates his pride, while hers but serves to make her more incorrigibly vain.
Must it not be owned then, that beauty is a convincing proof of sense in its fair
possessors? But Sophia perhaps will answer that one black feather makes no
crow.
Let us then see, how much wiser the rest of her sex are than pretty, simple
Pavonia?
|
|
