Women's Honor

SUPPOSE men had formerly been the property of their wives, and suppose they were still widely regarded as ornamental and delightful, but not to be taken seriously. Suppose we arrayed ourselves as did the courtiers at the time of Charles the Second and were engaged in occupations similar to theirs. Or suppose we men wore corsets and tight skirts and high French heels and long hair. The mere thought of a dozen men sitting about a table, arrayed and shirred up as women are, leads inevitably to the conclusion that within an hour they would be involved in a riot. Just why they would punch one another’s heads we may not be able to tell, but we are sure they would.

Suppose that the literature of no more than fifty years ago referred to us constantly as frail and delicate creatures, that the traditions which favored us most were those exalting our loyally and faithfulness to the wives that possess us, and that it were urged upon every man, always to lean upon his wife because she will guard and defend him. Or suppose our occupations were restricted to those employments which have heretofore been available to women, — in any of these events our vision might be rather narrow and our sense of honor might be a little attenuated.

Now, far be it from me to decry the songs and poems and beatitudes of the charm of women and all the hurrahs of language that admiration inspires. It is a joy to sing them, and a delight to write them. And of love in its great and deep meaning we are speaking not at all. That abides as a constant benediction upon humanity, and is greater than knowledge or science or wisdom. Of all the things the woman-soul offers for it and of her sacrifices, and of all the things the man-soul offers for it and of his sacrifices, we need not even whisper. Throughout the ages women have held faithfully to the gospel of love and have taught it by example, in spite of cruelty and scorn. But concerning honor, and what is honor’s due, the advice to women that one finds in literature seems so generally based upon the presumption that they are of a sort with defective or delinquent children, that a readjustment of dogma seems timely.

Of course, there is Otto Weininger’s theory that the absolute female is merely an automaton of flesh and blood, without judgment or capacity, and that whatever merit of intelligence a woman may have is due to the modicum of male that is inherent in her. Conversely the absolute male is the Uebermensch who has all the gifts of mind and soul. It is hardly necessary to say that he further maintained that there is no absolute male or absolute female known. The theory squares very well with a great deal that may be found in literature, and even in current opinion. It operates well as a working hypothesis in some families; but the very opposite view, that all intelligence emanates from the female and that the male is not to be relied upon in any way, works equally well in others. Instances of the successful operation of both hypotheses are of such frequent occurrence, and are so well known to all of us, that it would require the faith of a closed mind to assume either of them to be true.

Every reason possible has been given to women to believe themselves fools, and there are many who follow the arguments. In like manner, when a majority of men were serfs they learned that they should look to their lord in all things; and it is fair to presume that in consequence of this many of them did; that they became dependent in spirit and that their sense of honor was rudimentary.

Without attempting to define honor, we know that a glorified and impassioned loyalty to what one believes to be right is included in the expression. It also seems to involve character, and this has always been a possession of both men and women. From a fine, strong character we may expect honor irrespective of sex or condition. For this reason it would hardly appear that the whole ground is covered by the history of the evolution of honor as a group-instinct. Character is not a group-instinct; it is, one might almost say, a structural quality; and it is so closely allied to honor, that honor, like character, would seem to be in part a matter of breeding.

Of course, in discussing Women’s Honor we may speedily become so tangled up that, as somebody has said, our only safety will lie in statistics; but in a big way it does not appear that honor is a matter of sex. It seems, at least to the writer, to be rather a matter of character. Now it may be that women have less character than men, but it would hardly be fair to assert, it until some statistician has computed the exact average of all the women and all the men living at one time.