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Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Women and Men 19 1 Browse Search
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Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Women and Men, I. Introductory. (search)
I. Introductory. In beginning a series of modest papers under this rather ambitious title, I am reminded that, comprehensive as it seems, the phrase is in one respect very recent. It is only within a century or so that the two sexes have been habitually addressed together. The phrase women and men, or its more common form, ladies and gentlemen, or that other form, gentlemen and ladies, which the late Mr. Emerson habitually used, is a comparatively modern thing. Before the advent of Christianity we should not expect to find it used, and accordingly the great orations of ancient times were addressed to men only. Even after Christianity had brought a theoretic equality between the sexes the Jewish tradition still held strongly, and most of the fathers of the Church are, it must be owned, rather oppressively masculine. But among them there is one great exception, one who for non-theological purposes is more readable than all the rest put together; and he it is, Clement of Alex
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Women and Men, chapter 19 (search)
; if any one devoted himself to it, or went about to banquets, he was called a vagabond (grassator vocabatur). Hence we were slower to assert ourselves in these finer arts, and when we did, it was with becoming modesty. It was thought daring in Emerson to sing of the bumblebee, or Lowell of the bobolink; as for Whittier, who had never even crossed the Atlantic, how could he sing at all? Especially in the realm of manners this humility has prevailed. During the last French Empire it used to we as the younger nation have more to learn, in many ways, than to teach. The nations of Europe are the elder sons of Time; but the youngest-born are also sons. It was not mere imitation that gave us Morse's telegraph, or Bell's telephone, or Emerson's books, or Lowell's speeches, or the American trotting horse, or those illustrated magazines that are printed for two continents. I heard the most eminent of English electricians say, a few years ago, that he had learned more of the possible a
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Women and Men, chapter 28 (search)
on agree in the statement that the women on board behaved well. An elderly gentleman, after describing the passengers as rushing on deck half clothed and half awaked, says that the ladies behaved splendidly, considering the circumstances. Mr. M. J. Emerson says that most of the men were very much excited; the ladies, however, were very cool and self-possessed. Mrs. Emerson spoke of the coolness of the ladies, saying that it was very noticeable. Whatever you say about it, said Mr. S. Newton Mrs. Emerson spoke of the coolness of the ladies, saying that it was very noticeable. Whatever you say about it, said Mr. S. Newton Beach, a London merchant, say this: that the coolest persons on board were the ladies, as they always are when the case is not one of a mouse, but one of real danger. What is the secret of this curious variableness of emotion, this undisguised terror of the little, this courage before that which is great? It may be said that women are cool in shipwreck because they are merely passive, or because they expect to be taken care of. But all military experience shows that the passive condition is
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Women and Men, chapter 31 (search)
orary fashion. What confirms this is the fact that still earlier women novelists wrote the novel of adventure, as their successors are again doing. There lies before me one of the vast folio romances of Mlle. Scuderi, published, like most of hers, under her brother's name, and translated into English by Henry Cogan in 1674. It is in four parts, each divided into five books, and each book as long as half the novels of these degenerate days. The most lonely and athletic student, to adopt Emerson's phrase as to the readers of Swedenborg, could now hardly get through two successive books of it; yet such colossal romances were read with delight by our ancestors and ancestresses, even on this side of the water, though doubtless somewhat surreptitiously in the Puritan households. The plot flows as languidly as a Dutch river, and is as much distributed and subdivided by artificial dams and placid inundations; yet it is a woman's book; and the plots of Mlle. Scuderi's stories were suffi
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Women and Men, chapter 46 (search)
or two after leaving college, when the door of success or employment seems as if it were locked on the wrong side. A few years will, however, teach them that a well-trained brain is a good preparation for any conceivable pursuit, and that a well-stored mind is one of the very greatest blessings, whether a man is suffering under the chagrin of failure or the ennui of success. So, many a woman, it may be, has for a moment distrusted the value of her own training, when she found herself, in Emerson's words, Servant to a wooden cradle, Living in a baby's life; or in days when all her mathematics must be brought down to the arithmetic of teething, and all her music must be laid aside to attend to the musical instrument of sweeter tone that says, Mother. No doubt the function of motherhood takes a dozen absorbing years out of many a young woman's life. All the better for her, then, if she has gained the material for intellectual activity before that day comes. If an army is about
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Women and Men, chapter 60 (search)
are not dependent on a repressed or subordinate position, since they are very often associated in our minds with the noblest and most eminent persons we have known. With most of the very distinguished men, of Anglo-Saxon race at least, whom I have chanced to meet, there was associated in some combination the element of personal modesty. It was exceedingly conspicuous in the two thinkers who have between them influenced more American minds than any others in our own age — I mean Darwin and Emerson. It has been noticeable in contemporary poets — Whittier and Longfellow among ourselves, Tennyson and Browning in England. It may be said that these are instances drawn from persons of studious tastes and retired habits, by whom the shy graces of character are more easily retained than by those who mingle with the world. Yet it would be as easy to cite illustrations from those whose dealing with men was largest. Grant found it easier to command a vast army, and Lincoln to rule a whol
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Women and Men, Index. (search)
s, Ellen, 55. Dudevant, A. L. A. (George Sand), 88, 249, 252, 260, 263. E. Edgeworth, Maria, quoted, 78. Also 157, 180. Edison, T. A., 209. Edmunds, George F., 137. Edward II., 213. Egypt, preservation of royalty in, 109. Emerson, M. J., quoted, 143. Emerson, Mrs., quoted, 143. Emerson, R. W., quoted, 159,233. Also 1,97, 99,285, 308. Empire of manners, the, 75. English tourists in America, 36, 96. Epictetus, 297. Eumenides of Aeschylus, the plot of, 44. Emerson, Mrs., quoted, 143. Emerson, R. W., quoted, 159,233. Also 1,97, 99,285, 308. Empire of manners, the, 75. English tourists in America, 36, 96. Epictetus, 297. Eumenides of Aeschylus, the plot of, 44. Eve, 7. exalted stations, 126. F. Family, the, among Australians, 45; in ancient Rome, 45. Farm, children on A, 197. fear of its being wasted, the, 232. Felix Holt, 78. Fielding, Henry, 11. Fields, J. T., 40. finer forces, 131. Fletcher, Alice C., 287. flood-tide of youth, the, 48. Florac, Madame de, 180. Fontenelle, B. le B. de, quoted, 85. Francomania, 26. Franklin, Benjamin, 296. Freeman, Alice, 21. French standards vs. English, 23, 98. Frenchmen, d