AFFRONTED WOMANHOOD.

New Zealand Herald, Volume V, Issue 1517, 5 October 1868, Page 4

AFFRONTED WOMANHOOD.

A series of articles on woman; remarkable j for Lheiv piquancy, which have appesived iu the j Saturday -Review, having called forth in other j quarters defences of womankind against what j are considered iil-naturrd attacks, on the sex,; 1 the Saturday Review retaliates upon its rumoa- ! a trail ts in the following fashion : — | The woman who will boar to hear of her faults without offering a word in self-defence, and . who will even say peccnvi quite humbly j if hard pressed, fires up into illimitable indignation when told that her foibles are characteristic of her sex, and that she is no worse than nature meant her to be. Personally she is willing to confess that she is only a poor worm grovelling in the dust—perhaps an exceptionally poor worm, if of the kind given to spiritual asceticism —but by her class she claims to be considered just next door to an angel, and arrogates to her sex virtues which she would blush to claim in her own behalf. Men, as men, are all sorts of bad things, as every one knows. They are selfish, _ cruel, tyrannical, sensual, unjust, bloodthirsty— where- does tho list end ? and _ human nature in the abstract is a bad thing too, given over to lies and various deadly lusts ; but women, us women, are exempt from any special share in the general iniquity, and only come under the ban with the rest of univorsal nature, with lamlis and doves and other pretty creatures, not quite perfection because of the Fall, which spoilt everything, and yet very near it. As children of the raslipai'cnts who corrupted tho race, they certainly suffer from the general infection of sin that followed, but, as daughters contrasted with the sons, they are so far superior to those evil-minded brethren of theirs that their compai'atire virtues by sex ovorride their positive vices by race. As individuals, they are worms ; as human beings, they are poor sinful souls; but by their womanhood they are above rebuke.

Women have been so long wrapped in this | pleasant little delusion about the sacredness of their sex, aud tho perfections be- | longing thereto by nature, that any attempt to 1 show tlicm the truth, .iiid convince them that they too are guilty the mean faults and petty ways common to a fallen humaaity, and in certain things special to themselves, is met with the profound scorn or shrill cries of affronted "Womanhood. A mail who speaks of their faults as they appeal" to liim, and as he suffers by them, is illiberal and ua manly, and the rage of the most hysterically indignant would not be very far below that of the the Thracian Mamads, could they lay hands on the offending Orpheus of the moment; but a woman who speaks from knowledge, and touches the weak places and the sore spots known best to the initiated, is a traitress even baser than the rude man who perhaps knew no better. The whole life and being of womanhood must be held sacred from censure, exalted as it is by a kind of sentimental apotheosis that will not bear reasoning about, to something very near divinity. Even the follies of fashion must be exempt from both, ridicule and rebuke, on the ground of man's utter ignorance of the merits of tho question; for how should a poor male body know anything about trains or crinolines, s|or the pleasifre that a woman feels in making herself ridiculous or indecent in appearance and a nuisance to lier neighbors P while, for anything graver tlian the follies of fashion, it is in a manner high treason against the supremacy of tho sex to assume that they deserro either ridicule or rebuke. Besides, it is indelicate. Women aro made to be worshipped, not criticised ; to be reverenced as something mystically holy and incomprehensible by the grosser masculine faculties; and it is indiscreet, to sny the least of it, when vilo man takes it on himself to test the idol by the hard mechanical tests of truth and common sense, aud to show the world how much alloy is mingled with the gold. This is in ethics what the Oriental's reservo about his harem is in domestic life. Tho sacredness of a Maliomedari's womankind must be so complete that they are even nameless to the coarser sex ; and not, " How is your wife?" " How are your daughters?" but " How is your house is the only accepted form of words by which Ali must ask Hassan about the health of his Fatimas and Zuleikas. In much the same way our women .must be kept behind the close gilded gratings of affected perfectness, and above all things, never publicly discussed — much less publicly condemned. .

The moral loveliness of collective womanhood is a dogma which, men are taught from their boyhood as an article of faith if not a matter of experience, and women, naturally keep them up to the mark —theoretically, at all events. Yet for all this lip homage, of which so much account is made, women are surely sufficiently reficctive as to have sense enough to turn back, and see for themselves what mistakes they have made and might have avoided, had they had the wisdom of selfknowledge in only a small degree. Certainly so long as womanhood is held to confer, per so, a special and assailable diviuity, so long will women be rendered comparatively incapable of the best work through, vanity, through impatience of the teaching that comes by rebuke. Nothing is so damaging in the long run as .exaggerated pretensions ; for by-and-by, after r certain period of uncritical homage, tho world is sure,to believe that the silver which it has so long'respected hides deformity, not divinity, and that what is too sacred for public use is too poor for public honor. If the faults of women are not to bo discussed, nor their follies condemned, because womanhood is a sacred thing, and a man naturally respects his mother and sisters, then women must be content to live in a moral hurem, rrhere they will be safe from both the gaze and the censure of the outside world ; they must not come down into the battle-fields and the workshops, where they forfeit all claim to protection and have to accept the man's law of "no favor." It must be one thing or the other. Either their merits must be weighed and their capacity assayed in reference to the place tkey want to take—and in doing this their faults must be boldly and distinctly discussed— or they must be content with their present condition ; and with the mystic sanctity of womanhood accept also tho moral seclusion belonging, by their very nature, to things too sacred for criticism and too perfect for censure. It rests with themselves to decide which it is to be".