WOMA N.

PART SEVENTH.

CHARACTER AND CONDUCT.

WE Come to the consideration of the most difficult and important portion of our entire subject. To treat it properly will be a matter of great delicacy, and one from which a fastidious writer, or a squeamish reader, might shrink; but it would be cowardly for us to stop short in our investigations, just when we have arrived at the point of the greatest interest and usefulness. All our researches and all we have written, are subordinate to the matter we now enter upon the character, the conduct, the virtues and the vices of woman.

The female character differs from that of the male, as the constitutions of the sexes differ. Their actions are to be judged by different standards. Actions which seem proper to a man, and which we esteem noble and heroic in him, appear coarse and brutal, if performed by a woman. We cannot fancy with pleasure a female Hercules or Samson, nor a female Alexander or Napoleon; much less can we contemplate with feelings even of toleration, a female Abraham or Solomon.

Courage, magnanimity and strength of intellect, are what we admire most in men. In women we look for affection, benevolence and truth. We have a contempt for effeminate men, and a horror of masculine women. A man may be great, with many qualities, and performing many actions which, in a woman, would seem detestablea woman may be very lovely and attractive to us, with many characteristics which we would despise in one of the other sex.

It seems, then, according to a law of nature, that the standards of character should differ in the sexes, and that the virtues, which, in our estimate of women, we place in the foreground, and to which we give the greatest importance, are the ones that are entirely subordinate in our estimate of the character of man. With men, chastity and conjugal fidelity are scarcely considered as elements of character. They have a certain degree of estimation, but are held as quite subordinate to other qualities. But with women these are the leading and almost the only virtues we consider. The very term virtuous woman, has, in its ordinary use, no other signification than a chaste one, or one who lives according to the prescribed forms of morality. ⚫ Love, with woman, seems the absorbing passion of her soul. Honor, glory, riches and power are leading motives with men-in women we find love, friendship and maternity. We regard in men the qualities which favor these objects of their ambition, while in women we place the highest estimate upon the delicacy, purity and fidelity, which give their greatest charm to their predominant qualities.

These sentiments, however, are by no means universal. In different countries and ages, different opinions have prevailed in respect to female virtue and delicacy, and those ́ differences form so curious a subject of inquiry, that we shall first glance briefly at them, before proceeding to the general consideration of our subject.

It is remarkable that a lack of delicacy is to be observed in the most rude and unpolished nations, and also among the most refined and cultivated. The ancient Greeks, the Romans in the early stages of their history, and the ancient Germans, had little idea of delicacy; and at the present time the inhabitants of some of the South Sea Islands, of portions of Africa, and even the north of Europe, have scarcely any inclination to conceal any natural action from public observation.

On the other hand, in France and Italy, countries where modern refinement has been carried to its highest pitch, delicacy has been laughed out of existence as a silly and unfashionable weakness, and subjects which could not be distantly alluded to in our society, are there made matters of conversation.

It is difficult, and perhaps impossible to account for the differences that exist in various countries in this respect. In New Zealand, one of the most savage countries in the South Seas, the women were ashamed to be seen naked, even at a distance, by the English navigators; while in Otaheite, where the people were more polished, dress was used as an ornament, and there did not seem to be the least consciousness of shame. They had not the idea of indecency, and gratified every appetite and passion before witnesses, with no more sense of impropriety than we should feel in satisfying our hunger at the social board.

The ladies of Japan have a sense of delicacy so exquisite, that they have been known to commit suicide from the mortification of an involuntary exposure-and the women of China are exceedingly chaste and pure in all their words and actions. Why should delicacy be an instinct of the women of New Zealand, and be utterly wanting in those of the more northern groups of islands in the same seas? Why should we find this feeling in excess in such countries as Japan and China, and almost discarded among the most polished nations of Europe? In whatever way we account for such differences a careful consideration of the subject will satisfy us, that modesty and delicacy in females are principles founded in nature, and essential to the beauty and perfection of the female character.

Many of the ancient fables, while they portray a profligacy of manners, point out the latent principle of delicacy in the female mind. Such is the fable of Actæon and Diana. Acteon, in hunting, seeing Diana and her nymphs bathing in a river, stole into a thicket to get a better view. The goddess, having discovered him, was so affronted at his audacity, that she transformed him into a stag, and he was destroyed by his own hounds.

The Lydians were by no means a virtuous people, but one of their queens, a woman of extraordinary beauty, having been exposed by her husband, so that she was seen naked by his friend, to whom he had boasted of her beauty, sent for him and demanded that he should either kill himself or the king, so that there should not be two men who had seen her in a state of nature. The king was slain, and the queen married her avenger.

The story of Plutarch, respecting the women of Milesia, gives us a high idea of their delicacy. Certain young wo men, tormented by desires which virtue forbade them to gratify, says the historian, killed themselves to be free from the contest. The contagion of their heroic example became every day more general, until a law was made that every female who committed suicide should be exposed naked in the market-place, when self-destruction ceased.

In the early ages of Greece and Rome, delicacy was scarcely known. Afterwards, especially in Rome, it was cultivated to the highest pitch, but in later times it was lost in luxury and corruption. The literature of Greece and Rome does not give us a high idea of the general purity of their ideas. The comedies of Euripides and Aristophanes, and the poems of Martial, and even Horace, are shocking to all modest ears.

The institution of chivalry cultivated an excessive and even ridiculous delicacy in females; but at the decline of that institution, there came a grossness of manners and conversation that tinged the literature of that period, so that its tales, dramas and poetry, can scarcely be read at the present day, and without expurgation, are not considered fit for our libraries.

There is probably no country in the world where the idea of delicacy is more universally diffused and more sedulously cultivated than in the United States, and it exists in connection with a high degree of femalé chastity, if not necessarily connected with this virtue. This delicacy, in some cases, runs into the excess of ridiculous squeamishness, which has been much satirized by foreigners, since it proscribes many expressions and things, which are quite innocent of themselves, and are not considered objectionable in the most refined society of other countries or even of our own.

But we turn from these speculations to the actual facts of female character and conduct, as exhibited in various ages and nations.

Chastity, according to the Mosaic account of primitive history, was not the favorite virtue of the early ages of the world. The licentiousness of mankind is given as one of the reasons for the deluge that destroyed the antediluvian

world. The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities of the Plain had a similar cause assigned. The strange proposition of Lot to give up his two daughters to the lewd men of Sodom, and their subsequent conduct, with the foolish excuse for it, show a terribly debauched state of morals, and a low tone of public sentiment.

Whether we believe in the literal truth of the events recorded in the books of Moses, or not, they reveal not the less truly the prevailing ideas of early times in regard to female virtue, and it is evident that these were low and coarse. These accounts inform us that Abraham, on two occasions, fearing the dissoluteness of the people among whom he sojourned, and that they would murder him, to obtain his wife, made her pass as his sister; thus consenting to her prostitution to save himself from some personal danger-a proceeding utterly repugnant to all our notions of true honor and manhood. It does not appear that Sarah protested against this singular arrangement.

We learn from the same record, that even in those early ages, female prostitution was common, and that it was considered even less offensive than at the present day. The careful reader of the Old Testament cannot fail to come to the conclusion that while the Israelitish women were by no means remarkable for chastity, they were far superior to those of the surrounding nations.

In the early history of Egypt we find some curious fables, which go to show the licentiousness of the people. One of these is of a king, who became blind, and was told that he could be cured only by a woman who was true to her husband. He applied first to his own wife, and then to a vast number of women, and was at last restored to his sight by the virtuous wife of an obscure peasant, whom he rewarded with great honors, while he ordered all the others to be put to death. A story is told of another king. who wished to build a pyramid, but had not the means; but he procured the stones to build it, by his daughter requiring each of her lovers to bring one, as the price of her favors.

These extravagant stories, if not literally true, show the existence of a dissoluteness of manners which their authors took this method to satirize.