Becoming America - An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution, 2018a

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
as a most signal instance of this, that an intimate friend of the other sex said in a
fervent moment, that I deserved in some star to be a man. Another used as highest
praise, in speaking of a character in literature, the words “a manly woman.”
It is well known that of every strong woman they say she has a masculine mind.
This by no means argues a willing want of generosity towards woman. Man is
as generous towards her, as he knows how to be.
Wherever she has herself arisen in national or private history, and nobly shone
forth in any ideal of excellence, men have received her, not only willingly, but with
triumph. Their encomiums indeed are always in some sense mortifying, they show
too much surprise.
In every-day life the feelings of the many are stained with vanity. Each wishes
to be lord in a little world, to be superior at least over one; and he does not feel
strong enough to retain a life-long ascendant over a strong nature. Only a Brutus
would rejoice in a Portia. Only Theseus could conquer before he wed the Amazonian
Queen. Hercules wished rather to rest from his labors with Dejanira, and received
the poisoned robe, as a t guerdon. The tale should be interpreted to all those who
seek repose with the weak.
But not only is man vain and fond of power, but the same want of development,
which thus aects him morally in the intellect, prevents his discerning the destiny
of woman. The boy wants no woman, but only a girl to play ball with him, and mark
his pocket handkerchief.
Thus in Schiller’s Dignity of Woman, beautiful as the poem is, there is no
“grave and perfect man,” but only a great boy to be softened and restrained by the
inuence of girls. Poets, the elder brothers of their race, have usually seen further;
but what can you expect of every-day men, if Schiller was not more prophetic as to
what women must be! Even with Richter one foremost thought about a wife was
that she would “cook him something good.”
The sexes should not only correspond to and appreciate one another, but
prophesy to one another. In individual instances this happens. Two persons love
in one another the future good which they aid one another to unfold. This is very
imperfectly done as yet in the general life. Man has gone but little way, now he is
waiting to see whether woman can keep step with him, but instead of calling out
like a good brother; You can do it if you only think so, or impersonally; Any one
can do what he tries to do, he often discourages with school-boy brag; Girls can’t
do that, girls can’t play ball. But let any one defy their taunts, break through, and
be brave and secure, they rend the air with shouts.
No! man is not willingly ungenerous. He wants faith and love, because he is
not yet himself an elevated being. He cries with sneering skepticism; Give us a
sign. But if the sign appears, his eyes glisten, and he oers not merely approval,
but homage.
The severe nation which taught that the happiness of the race was forfeited
through the fault of a woman, and showed its thought of what sort of regard man
owed her, by making him accuse her on the rst question to his God, who gave her
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