by
MITCHELL CARROLL, Ph.D.
Professor of Classical Philology in the George Washington University
_Copyrighted 1907-1908_
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
The history of woman is the history of the world. Strait orthodoxy may
remind us that man preceded woman in the scheme of creation and that
therefore history does not begin with woman; but this is a specious
plea. The first historical information that we gain regarding Adam is
concerned with the creation of woman, and there is nothing to show us
that prior to that time Adam was more active in mind or even in body
than a mollusc. It was not until the coming of woman that history began
to exist; and if the first recorded act of the woman was disastrous in
its consequences, at least it possesses the distinction of making
history. So that it may well be said that all that we are we owe to
woman. Whether or not the story of the Garden of Eden is to be
implicitly accepted, there can be no doubt that from the moment of the
first appearance of mankind on the scene woman has been the ruling cause
of all effect.
The record of woman is one of extremes. There is an average woman, but
she has not been found except in theory. The typical woman, as she is
seen in the pages of history, is either very good or very bad. We find
women saints and we find women demons; but we rarely find a mean. Herein
is a cardinal distinction between the sexes. The man of history is
rarely altogether good or evil; he has a distinct middle ground, in
which we are most apt to find him in his truest aspect.
There are
exceptions, and many; but this may be taken as a rule.
Even in the
instances of the best and noblest men of whom we have record this rule
will hold. Saint Peter was bold and cautious, brave and cowardly, loving
and a traitor; Saint Paul was boastful and meek, tender and severe;
Saint John cognized beyond all others the power of love, and wished to
call down fire from heaven upon a village which refused to hear the
Gospel; and it is most probable that the true Peter and Paul and John
lived between these extremes. Not so with the women of the same story.
They were throughout consistent with themselves; they were utterly pure
and holy, as Mary Magdalene,--to whose character great wrong has been
done in the past by careless commentary,--or utterly vile, as Herodias.
Extremism is a chief feminine characteristic. Extremist though she be,
woman is always consistent in her extremes; hence her power for good and
for evil.
It is a mistaken idea which places the "emancipation" of woman at a late
date in the world's history. From time immemorial, woman has been
actively engaged in guiding the destinies of mankind. It is true that
the advent of Christianity undoubtedly broadened the sphere of woman and
that she was then given her true place as the companion and helper
rather than the toy of man; but long before this period woman had
asserted her right to be heard in the councils of the wise, and the
right seems to have been conceded in the cases where the demand was
made. Those who look upon the present as the emancipation period in the
history of woman have surely forgotten Deborah, whose chant of triumph
was sung in the congregation of the people and was considered worthy of
preservation for all future ages to read; Semiramis, who led her armies
to battle when the Great King, Ninus, had let fall the sceptre from his
weary hand, and who ruled her people with wisdom and justice; and others
whose fame, even if legendary in its details, has come down to us.
Through all the ages there was opportunity for woman, when she chose to
seize it; and in many cases it was thus seized. Rarely indeed do we find
the history of any age unconcerned with its women.
Though their part may
at times seem but minor, yet do they stand out to the observant eye as
the prime causes of many of the great events which make or mark epochs.
When we think of the Trojan War, it is Agamemnon and Priam, Achilles and
Hector, who rise up before our mental vision as the protagonists in that
great struggle; but if there had been no Helen, there would have been no
war, and therefore no Iliad or Odyssey. We read Macaulay's stirring
ballad of_ Horatius at the Bridge, _and we thrill at the recital of
strength and daring; but if it had not been for the virtue of Lucretia,
there would have been no combat for the bridge, and the Tarquins might
have ended their days in peace in the Eternal City. And, in later times,
though Mirabeau and Robespierre and Danton and Marat fill the eye of the
student of the cataclysmic events of the French Revolution, it was the
folly of Marie Antoinette that gave these men their opportunity and even
paved the way for the rise and meteoric career of a greater than them
all.
These are instances of mediate influence upon great events; but there
have been many women who ham exerted immediate influence upon the story
of mankind. That which is usually mistermed weakness is generally held
to be a feminine attribute; and if we replace the term by the truer
word,--gentleness,--the statement may be conceded. But there have been
many women who have been strong in the general sense; and these have
usually been terribly strong. Look at Catherine of Russia, vicious to
the core, but powerful in intellect and will above the standard of
masculine rulers. Look at Elizabeth of England, crafty and false, full
of a ridiculous vanity, yet strong with a strength before which even
such men as Burleigh and Essex and Leicester were compelled to bow.
Look at Margaret of Lancaster, fighting in her husband's stead for the
crown of England and by her undaunted spirit plucking victory again and
again from the jaws of defeat, and yielding at last only when deserted
by every adherent. Look at Clytemmstra and Lady Macbeth, creatures of
the poet's fancy if you will, yet true types of a class of femininity.
They have had prototypes and antitypes, and many.
Women have achieved their most decisive and remarkable effects upon the
history of mankind by reaching and clinging to extremes.
Extremism is
always a mark of enthusiasm, and enthusiasm accomplishes effects which
must have been left forever unattained by mere regulated and
conscientious effort. The stories of the Christian martyrs show in
golden letters the devotion of women to a cause; and I have no doubt
whatever that it was in the deaths of young maidens, in their hideous
sufferings borne with resignation and even joy, that there came the
conviction of truth which is known as the seed which was sown in the
blood of the martyrs. The high enthusiasm which supported a Catherine
and a Cecilia in their hours of trial was strong to persuade where the
death of a man for his convictions would have been looked upon as a
matter of course. It is from this enthusiasm and extremism that there
sounds one of the key-notes of woman's nature--her loyalty. Loyalty is
one of the blending traits of the sexes; yet, if I were compelled to
attribute it distinctively to one sex, I should class it as feminine in
its nature.
Loyalty to one idea, to one ideal, has been a predominant characteristic
of woman from time immemorial. Sometimes this loyalty takes the form of
patriotism, sometimes of altruism, sometimes of piety in true sense; but
always it has its origin and life in love. The love may be diffused or
concentrated, general or particular, but it is always the soul of the
true woman, and without it she cannot live. Love for her God, love for
her race, love for her country, love for the man whom she delights to
honor--these may exist separately or as one, but exist for her they
must, or her life is barren and her soul but a dead thing. Love, in the
true sense of the word, is the essence of the woman-soul; it is the soul
itself. She must love, or she is dead, however she may seem to live.
That she does not always ask whether the object of her love, be it
abstract or concrete, be worthy of her devotion is not to be attributed
to her as a fault, but rather as a virtue, since the love itself expands
and vivifies her soul if itself be worthy. It is at once the expression
and the expenditure of the unsounded depths of her soul; it is through
its power over her that she recognises her own nature, that she knows
herself for what she is. The woman who has not loved, even in the
ordinary human and limited meaning of the word, has no conception of her
own soul.
Thus far I have spoken of love in its broad sense, as the highest
impulse of the human soul. But there is another and a lower aspect of
love, and this is the one most usually meant when we use the word,--the
attraction of sex. Even thus, though in this aspect love becomes a far
lesser thing, it possesses no less power. The passion of man for woman
has been the underlying cause of all history in its phenomenal aspects.
The favorite example of this power has always been that of Cleopatra and
Mark Antony; but history is full of equally convincing instances.
To love and to be loved; such is the ultimate lot of woman. It matters
not what accessories of existence fate may have to offer; this is the
supreme meaning of life to woman, and it is here that she finds her true
value in the world. She may read that meaning in divers manners; she may
make of her place in life a curse or a blessing to mankind. It matters
not; all returns to the same cause, the same source of power_. _The
strongest woman is weak if she be not loved, for she lacks her chief
weapon with which to conquer; the weakest is strong if she truly have
won love, for through this she can work miracles. Her strength is more
than doubled; heart and brain and hand are in equal measure, for that
with which the heart inspires the brain will be transmitted by the heart
to the hand, and the message will be too imperative to fear failure.
It is a strange thing--though not inexplicable--that your ambitious
woman is far more ruthless, far more unscrupulous, far more determined
to win at any cost, than is the most ambitious of men.
Again comes the
law of extreme to show cause that this should be; but the fact is so
sure that cause is of less interest. Not Machiavelli was so false, not
Caligula was so cruel, not Caesar was so careless of right, as the woman
whose political ambition has taken form and strength.
That which bars
her path must be swept aside, be it man or notion or principle. She sees
but the one object, her goal, looming large before her; and she moves on
with her eyes fixed, crushing beneath her feet all that would turn her
steps.
I have spoken of the cruelty of an ambitious woman; and it is worth
while to pause a moment to consider this trait as displayed in
women--not as a means, but as an end. There have been men who loved
cruelty for its own sake; but they are few, and their methods crude,
compared with the woman who have felt this strange passion. In the days
of human sacrifices, it was the women who most thronged to the
spectacles, who most eagerly fastened their eyes upon the expiring
victims. In the gladiatorial combats, it was the women who greeted each
mortal thrust with applause, and whose reversed thumbs won the majority
for the signal of death to the vanquished. In the days of terror in
France, it was the woman who led the mob that threatened the king and
queen, and hanged Foulard to a lamp post after almost tearing him to
pieces; it was the women who sat in rows around the guillotine, day
after day, and placidly knit their terrible records of death; it was the
women who cried for more victims, even after the legal murderers of the
tribunals grew weary of their hideous task of condemnation.
Not only thus--not only under the influence of excitement and
passion--but in cold blood, there are instances among women of such
ghastly cruelty that men recoil from the contemplation of such deeds.
There is record of a Slavonic countess whose favorite amusement was to
sit in the garden of her country palace, in the rigors of a Russian
winter, while young girls were stripped by her attendants and water
poured slowly over their bodies, thus giving them a death of enduring
agony and providing the countess with new, though unsubstantial, statues
for her grounds. This not more than two centuries ago, and in the
atmosphere of so-termed Christianity. The annals of the Spanish
Inquisition would be ransacked in vain for such ingenuity of torture;
and though the Inquisitors may have grown to love cruelty for its own
sake, they at least alleged reason for their deeds; the Russian countess
frankly sought amusement alone.
Yet in these things there is to be found no general accusation of women.
That cruelty should be carried by them to its extreme, that they should
love it for its own sake, is but the development of extremism, and is
isolated in examples, at least by periods. The Russian countess was not
cruel because she was a woman, but, being cruel of nature, she was the
more so because of her sex. The ladies of imperial Rome did not love the
sight of flowing blood because they were women, but, being women, they
carried their acquired taste to bounds unknown to the less impulsive and
less ardent nature of men.
Yet there comes a question. Is this lust for blood, this love of
cruelty; latent in every woman and but restrained, by the gentler
teachings and promptings of her more developed nature in its highest
presentation? So some psychists would have us believe; but they have
only slight ground for their sweeping assertion. That civilisation is
but restrained savagery may perhaps be conceded; but if the restraint
has grown to be the ever-dominant impulse, then has the savage been
slain. It is not, as some teach, that such isolated idiosyncrasies as we
have considered are glimpses of the tiger that sleeps in every human
heart and sometimes breaks its chain and runs riot. As a rule, these
things are matters of atmosphere. Setting aside such pure isolations as
that of the Russian countess, it will almost invariably be found that
the display of feminine cruelty, or of any vice, is of a time and place.
There has never been a universal rule of feminine depravity in any age.
Babylon, Carthage, Greece, Rome, and all the olden civilisations have
had their periods when female virtue was a matter of laughter, when
women outvied men in their moral degradation, when evil seemed
triumphant everywhere; but there always remained a few to "redeem the
time," and salvation always came from those few.
Moreover, the sphere of
immorality and crime was always limited. The Roman world, when it was
the world indeed, might be given up to vice and sin, displayed in their
most atrocious forms by the women of the Empire; but there still stood
the North, calm, virtuous, patient, awaiting its opportunity to "root
out the evil thing" and to give the world once more a standard of purity
and righteousness. The leaven of Christianity was effective in its work
upon the moral degradation of the Roman Empire; but it was not until the
scourge of the Northmen was sent to the aid of the principle that
success was fully won. So the North was not of the same day with Rome in
civilised vice, and the reign of evil in the Latin Empire was but the
effect of conditions, not the instincts of humanity.
Rome was taught
evil by long and steadfast evolution; it did not spring up in a day
with its deadly blight, but was the result of progressive causation.
It may be doubted if the feminine intellect has increased since the dawn
of civilisation. To-day woman stands on a different plane of
recognition, but by reason of assertiveness, not because of increased
mental ability. As with that of man, the possibilities of woman's
intellect were long latent; but they existed, and the result is
development, not creation of fibre. I repeat that I do not believe that
the feminine intellect has grown in power. I doubt if the present age
can show a mind superior in natural strength to that of Sappho; I do not
believe that the present Empress of China, strong woman as she is, is
greater than Semiramis, or that even Elizabeth of England was the equal
of the warrior-queen of Babylon. But there can be no doubt that there
exists a broader culture to-day than ever before and that thus the
intellectual sum of women is always growing, though there comes no
increase in the mental powers of the individual. It has been so with
man. We boast of the mighty achievements of our age; but we have not yet
built such a structure as that of the Temple of the Sun at Baalbec, or
the Pyramid of Cheops at Ghizeh. We pride ourselves upon our letters;
but the grandest poem ever written by man was also the first of which we
have record--the Book of Job, and we do not even know the name of the
poet who thus set a standard which has never since been reached. We may
claim Shakespeare as the equal of Homer in expression; but it requires
true hero worship among his admirers to place the Elizabethan singer
upon an equality with the old Greek in any other respect. There has been
no growth of individual intellect in either sex since the days of which
we first find record; but there has been an increase of average and a
definition of tendency which are productive of higher general result.
And the natural consequence of this state of things is found in the fact
that even a Sappho in the world of letters would not stand out so
prominently, would not be considered such a prodigy, were she to come in
these days. We should admire her genius and her powers without feeling
the sensation of wonder that these should be possessed by a woman. It is
in the recognition of this fact that we are better enabled to understand
the changing aspect in the relations of women to men during these latter
years. There has been no alteration in the possibilities within the
grasp of the individual, but great change within those which can be
claimed by the sex at large. Women can do no more now than in the olden
days when they were considered as almost inferior to animals; but woman
has profited by the opportunities of her time, and is every day
developing powers until now unsuspected.
[Illustration 12 _ASPASIA After the painting by Henry Holiday. Aspasia
was born in Miletus. At an early age, accompanied by another young girl,
Thargelia, she went to Athens. Their beauty and talents soon won them
distinction--Thargelia married a king of Thessaly, and Aspasia married
Pericles, "more than a king," says Plutarch. The home of Aspasia in
Athens was frequent by the_ elite _of the city and state, attracted by
her beauty, her art of speaking, and her influence.
Socrates valued her
great mind, and even called himself one of her disciples. Plato speaks
of her great reputation. She was born in the fifth century before
Christ. The date of her death is not known._]
The whole value of history is in teaching us to understand our own time
and to prognosticate the future with some degree of correctness. More
especially is this true of all class history, and the story of sex
development may be so rated. It is to find the reason of what is and the
nature of what is to come that we turn to the records of the past and
ask them concerning their message to us of these things.
In our
retrospective view of woman, we shall, if we are alive to suggestion,
find steadfast tendencies of development. It is true that these
tendencies do not always remain in the light; like rivers, they
sometimes plunge underground and for a time find their paths in
subterranean channels where they are lost to sight; but they always
reemerge, and at last they find their way to the central sea of the
present. Future ages will doubtless mark the course of those tendencies
not only up to but through our own age; for though I have spoken of a
central sea, the simile is hardly correct, inasmuch as the true ocean
which is the goal of these rivers is not yet in the sight of humanity.
But we at least find promise of that ocean in the steadfast and
determined course of the streams which flow toward it; progress has
always a goal, though it may be one long undiscerned by the abettors of
that progress. So it is with the story of woman. We know what she has
been; we see what she is; and it is possible dimly to forecast what she
will be. Yet I dare to assert that there will be no radical change;
there may be new direction for effort, new lines of development, but the
essential nature will remain unaltered. It is not, however, with this
informing spirit that we have to do in such a work as this. There have
been many misconceptions regarding woman; I would not venture to claim
that none now exist. Yet there is a general consensus of agreement
concerning her dominating and effective characteristics, and the
probability is that in these general laws so laid down the common
opinion is of truth.
Of course, I would not dare to make such an absurd claim that there
exists, or has ever existed, a man who could truthfully say that he knew
woman in the abstract; but that does not necessarily mean that knowledge
of the tendencies and characteristics of the sex is impossible. The
reason of the dense ignorance which prevails among men concerning women
is that the men attempt to apply general laws to particular cases; and
that is fatal. It is absolutely necessary, if we are to gather wisdom
and not merely knowledge from our researches in history, that we should
take into account the result of combination of traits.
Otherwise we
should not only find nothing but inconsistency as a consequence of our
study, but we should utterly fail to understand the tendencies of that
which we learn. We must be broad in our judgments if we are to judge
truly. When we read of the Spartan women sending forth their sons to die
for their country, we must not believe that they were lacking in the
depth of maternal affection which is one of the most beautiful
characteristics of the feminine nature. Doubtless they suffered as
keenly as does the modern mother at the death of her son; but they were
trained to subordinate their feelings in this wise, and their training
stood them in stead of stoicism. Nay, even when we read of the
profligacy of the women of imperial Rome, we must not look upon these
women as by nature imbruted and degraded, but we must understand that
they but yielded to the spirit of their environment and their schooling.
They were not different at heart, those reckless Maenads and votaries of
Venus, from the chaste Lucretias or holy Catherines of another day; they
simply lacked direction of impulse in right method, and so missed the
culmination of their highest possibilities.
There is an old saying which tells us that women are what men make them.
Thus generally stated, the saying may be summed up as a slander; but it
has an application in history. There can be no doubt that for
millenniums of the world's adolescence women were controlled and their
bearing and place in society modified by the thought of their times,
which thought was of masculine origin and formation.
This state of
affairs has long since passed away, and it may be said that for at least