Woman and Her Era/Eliza Woodson; Or, the Early Days of One of the World's Workers
1. By . In Two Volumes. New York : A. J. Davis & Co.
2. A Story of American Life. New York : A. J. Davis & Co.
IN the three and a half centuries since Cornelius Agrippa, no one has attempted with so much ability as Mrs. Farnham to transfer the theory of woman’s superiority from the domain of poetry to that of science. Second to no American woman save Miss Dix in her experience as a practical philanthropist, she has studied human nature in the sternest practical schools, from Sing-Sing to California. She justly claims for her views that they have been maturing for twenty-two years of “experience so varied as to give it almost every form of trial which could fall to the intellectual life of any save the most favored women.” Her books show, moreover, an ardent love of literature and some accurate scientific training, —though her style has the condensation and vigor which active life creates; rather than the graces of culture.
The essence of her book lies in this opening syllogism : —
“ Life is exalted in proportion to its organic and functional complexity;
“ Woman’s organism is more complex and her totality of function larger than those of any other being inhabiting our earth;
“ Therefore her position in the scale of life is the most exalted, — the sovereign one.”
This is compactly stated and quite unequivocal, although the three last words of the conclusion are a step beyond the premises, and the main fight of her opponents would no doubt be made on her definition of the word being. The assumption that either sex of a given species is a distinct “being” cannot probably be slid into the minor premise of the argument without some objection from the opposing counsel. However, this brings us at once to the main point, and the chapter called “ The Organic Argument,” which opens with this syllogism, is really the pith of the book, and would, perhaps, stand stronger without the other six hundred pages. In this chapter she shows the strength of a system-maker, in the rest the weaknesses of one ; she feels obliged to apply her creed to everything, to illustrate everything by its light, to find unexpected confirmations everywhere, and to manipulate all the history of art, literature, and society, till site conforms them all to her standard. Site recites, with no new power, historical facts that are already familiar; and gives many pages to extracts from very well known poets and very ill known prose-writers, to the exclusion of her own terse and vigorous thought. All this is without a trace of book-making, but is done in single-hearted zeal for views which are only damaged by the process.
These are merely literary defects; but Mrs. Farnham really suffers in thought by the same unflinching fidelity to her creedIt makes her clear and resolute in her statement; but it often makes her as onesided as the advocates of male supremacy whom she impugns. To be sure, her theory enables her to extenuate some points of admitted injustice to woman, — finding, for instance, in her educational and professional exclusions a crude effort, on the part of society, to treat her as a sort of bird-of-paradise, horn only to fly, and therefore not needing feet. Yet this authoress is obliged to assume a tone of habitual antagonism towards men, from which the advocates of mere equality are excused. Indeed, the technical Woman’s-Rights movement has always witnessed a very hearty cooperation among its advocates of both sexes, and it is generally admitted that men are at least as ready to concede additional rights as women to ask for them. But when one comes to Mrs. Farnham’s stand-point, and sees what her opinion of men really is, the stanchest masculine ally must shrink from assigning himself to such a category of scoundrels. The best criticism made on Michelet’s theory of woman as a predestined invalid was that of the sensible physician who responded, “As if the Almighty did not know how to create a woman ! ”—and Mrs. Farnham certainly proves too much in undertaking to expose the blunders of Deity in the construction of a man. Assuming, as she invariably does, the highest woman to be the typical woman, and the lowest man to be the ty pical man, she can prove anything she pleases. But even this does not content her ; every gleam of tenderness and refinement exhibited by man she transfers by some inexplicable legerdemain of logic to the feminine side, and makes somehow into a new proof of his hopeless inferiority ; and she is landed at last in the amazing paradox, that “the most powerful feminine souls have appeared in masculine forms, thus far in human career.” (Vol. II. p. 360.)
In short, her theory involves a necessity of perpetual overstatement. The conception of a pure and noble young man, such as Richter delineates in his Walt or Albano, seems utterly foreign to her system ; and of that fine subtilty of nature by which the highest types of manhood and womanhood approach each other, as if mutually lending refinement and strength, she seems to have no conception. The truth is, that, however much we may concede to the average spiritual superiority of woman, a great deal also depends on the inheritance and the training of the individual. Mrs. Farnham, like every refined woman, is often shocked by the coarseness of even virtuous men; but she does not tell us the other side of the story, — how often every man of refinement has occasion to be shocked by the coarseness of even virtuous women. Sexual disparities may be much; but individual disparities are even more.
Mrs. Farnham is noble enough, and her book is brave and wise enough, to bear criticisms which grow only from her attempting too much. The difference between her hook and most of those written on the other side is, that in the previous cases the lions have been the painters, and here it is the lioness. As against the exaggerations on the other side, she has a right to exaggerate on her part. As against the theory that man is superior to woman because he is larger, she has a right to plead that in that case the gorilla were the better man, and to assert on the other hand that woman is superior because smaller, — Emerson’s mountain and squirrel. As against the theory that glory and dominion go with the beard, she has a right to maintain (and that she does with no small pungency) that Nature gave man this appendage because he was not to be trusted with his own face, and needed this additional covering for his shame. As against the historical traditions of man’s mastery, she does well to urge that creation is progressive, and that the megalosaurus was master even before man. It is, indeed, this Last point which constitutes the crowning merit of the book, and which will be permanently associated with Mrs. Farnham’s name. No one before her has so firmly grasped this key to woman’s historic position, that the past was an age of coarse, preliminary labor, in which her time had not yet come. This theory, as elucidated by Mrs. Farnham, taken with the fine statement of Buckle as to the importance of the intuitive element in the feminine intellect, (which statement Mrs. Farnham also quotes,) constitutes the most valuable ground logically conquered for woman within this century. These contributions are eclipsed in importance only by those actual achievements of women of genius, — as of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Rosa Bonheur, and Harriet Hosmer, — which, so far as they go, render all argument superfluous.
In this domain of practical achievement Mrs. Farnham has also labored well, and the autobiography of her childish years, when she only aspired after such toils, has an interest wholly apart from that of her larger work, and scarcely its inferior. Except the immortal “Pet Marjorie,” one can hardly recall in literature a delineation so marvellous of a childish mind so extraordinary as “ Eliza Woodson.” The few characters appear with an individuality worthy of a great novelist; every lover of children must find it altogether fascinating, and to the most experienced student of human nature it opens a new chapter of startling interest.