The Girl of the Period, and Other Social Essays, Vol. 2 (of 2) by E. Lynn (Elizabeth Lynn) Linton

Author:E. Lynn (Elizabeth Lynn) Linton [Linton, E. Lynn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781511443081
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: CreateSpace Publishing
Published: 1900-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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MODERN MAN-HATERS.

Among the many odd social phenomena of the present day may be reckoned the class of women who are professed despisers and contemners of men; pretty misanthropes, doubtful alike of the wisdom of the past and the distinctions of nature, but vigorously believing in a good time coming when women are to take the lead and men to be as docile dogs in their wake. To be sure, as if by way of keeping the balance even and maintaining the sum of forces in the world in due equilibrium, a purely useless and absurd kind of womanhood is more in fashion than it used to be; but this does not affect either the accuracy or the strangeness of our first statement; and the number of women now in revolt against the natural, the supremacy of men is something unparalleled in our history. Both before and during the first French Revolution the esprits forts in petticoats were agents of no small account in the work of social reorganization going on; but hitherto women, here in England, have been content to believe as they have been taught, and to trust the men to whom they belong with a simple kind of faith in their friendliness and good intentions, which reads now like a tradition of the past.

With the advanced class of women, the modern man-haters, one of the articles of their creed is to regard men as their natural enemies from whom they must both protect themselves and be protected; and one of their favourite exercises is to rail at them as both weak and wicked, both moral cowards and personal bullies, with whom the best wisdom is to have least intercourse, and on whom no woman who has either common-sense or self-respect would rely. To those who get the confidence of women many startling revelations are made; but one of the most startling is the fierce kind of contempt for men, and the unnatural revolt against anything like control or guidance, which animates the class of modern man-haters. That husbands, fathers, brothers should be thought by women to be tyrannical, severe, selfish, or anything else expressive of the misuse of strength, is perhaps natural and no doubt too often deserved; but we confess it seems an odd inversion of relations when a pretty, frail, delicate woman, with a narrow forehead, accuses her broad-shouldered, square-browed male companions of the meaner and more cowardly class of faults hitherto considered distinctively feminine. And when she says with a disdainful toss of her small head, 'Men are so weak and unjust, I have no respect for them!' we wonder where the strength and justice of the world can have taken shelter, for, if we are to trust our senses, we can scarcely credit her with having them in her keeping.

On the other hand, the man-hater ascribes to her own sex every good quality under heaven; and, not content with taking the more patient and negative virtues which have always been allowed to

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