Edward William Johnston (aka Il Secretario): "American Letters," Part VI

Edward William Johnston under the pen name IL SECRETARIO, "American Letters -- Their Character and Advancement." The American Review: A Whig Journal of Politics, Literature, Art and Science. Volume I, Issue 6 (June 1845): pages 575-581.

[Continued page 577*]:

Certainly, there prevaileth, just now, a grand and glorious idea, not only that the human race at large is about to accomplish a multitude of great things heretofore unheard of . . . but that, in this new and mightier order of matters intellectual, woman, rising into the condition of a sort of feminine man – the victim no longer of an education of dolls and samplers, flower and furbelow, strumming and rigadoon – shall seize at last what the pride or artifice of the bearded sex has too long withheld, and vindicate her equality in all things, preserving perfectly, meantime, her superiority in whatever conferred upon her, in rude days even, a natural empire. The eye shall judge of her no longer, nor make its idol of merely outward charms; but that iniquitous award of the Dardan shepherd** shall be set aside forever, and the golden apple be assigned by every future Paris, not / [page 578* begins] to the gay queen of smiles, and graces, and desire, but to sober Minerva, a little hard-featured, of rectangular limbs, bearing before her the worse than Gorgonian terrors of a diploma from some she-university, and enriching her natural gifts of ugliness with a disputatious tongue, the attire of a slattern, and the propensities of a pedant. “The age of chivalry is over” (quoth Burke) for men; so is that of cheesecakes for women; and beauty, and softness, and reserve, those strange superstitions of ignorant times, are presently to fall, as to all ascendancy, into the category of things obsolete. Manliness, to be sure, is on the decline; but gallantry is nevertheless advancing – a new gallantry, of the head, not the heart, that is to render homage no longer to weakness, but to strength – to learning, not loveliness – to woman not as a feebler and purer sex, the refuge and the charm of life and its contests, but their incessant and well-matched rival.

Now, if the New Education is to effect all this for woman . . .

Besides all this, an abundant difference is farther brought about by this – that knowledge is to one a mere decoration, while it is to the other an instrument, and a necessity.  

It is for these that men study science, for instance. Thus learnt, it is, to them, not a mere vanity, but a possession, a practical power; whether to wield the mechanic forces, and hold, by the strength of knowledge, the every elements at command; to pierce far into the bosom of the earth and win its mineral wealth; to span the vast distances of the skies, and trace with unerring precision their mighty mechanism; in airy vehicles to scale the very clouds, higher than the bird itself, unless of the very strongest wing, can venture; to conduct in safety along the perilous bosom of the deep, the merchantman, rich laden with the spoils of the shore, or those great fabrics of war, the hugest and most terrible efforts of human ingenuity: or they rear the tall column and well-proportioned pile; cleave the hill for the winding canal and rapid iron way; and shape the animated marble, or breathe expression into the canvas.

Such, however, are not the feminine tasks nor destiny. It is to soften to the more laborious sex these austerer pursuits – to sweeten life with the affections – to shed over it gaiety and grace and elegance – to be the charm of its moments of ease, the soother of its pains, -- the ornament, the aid of its privacy, the domestic magnet to which the heart, no matter on what ocean of troubles tossed, forever turns; it is to be the silken bond which holds men together in society, that woman is born. For her, whatever can temper the ruder spirits of men out of the agitations and conflict of the great world into the quiet happiness of private life, is fittest and most natural. Her different being is meant, not to rival his, but, by its very diversity, to blend with it, and to complete by that union the circle of the faculties. Would you, enamored of some new distribution of human qualities, wiser, far, than that of Nature – attempt to bestow, by education, upon either sex, some leading attribute of the other – as energy and hardihood upon the woman, pliancy and delicacy upon the man! Go, mighty re-maker of Nature by journey-work, and see if you will not have turned “Heaven’s last, best gift” into a whole sex of viragos, and her sterner mate and lord into a paltry thing of no gender at all! Both will, by / [page 579*] any such interchange, be unsexed as to what is excellent in each; and neither will have attained, except in the most imperfect degree, that which formed an appropriate praise for the other.

[To be continued].

**Paris of Troy, probably from a similar allusion in Lord Byron’s work, in turn inspired by Virgil.  Compare Johnston’s sentiments in this section overall with James Brown’s "It's a Man's Man's Man's World” (1966) – they’re almost exactly the same.