Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 | Page 8

been, to a great extent, a legitimate thing. To all appearance, history
would have been impossible without it, just as it would have been
impossible without an epoch of war and slavery. It is simply a matter of
social progress, a part of the succession of civilizations. The past has
been, and inevitably, a period of ignorance, of engrossing physical
necessities, and of brute force,--not of freedom, of philanthropy, and of
culture. During that lower epoch, woman was necessarily an
inferior,--degraded by abject labor, even in time of peace,--degraded
uniformly by war, chivalry to the contrary notwithstanding. Behind all
the courtesies of Amadis and the Cid lay the stern fact,--woman a child
or a toy. The flattering troubadours chanted her into a poet's paradise;
but, alas! that kingdom of heaven suffered violence, and the violent
took it by force. The truth simply was, that her time had not come.
Physical strength must rule for a time, and she was the weaker. She was
very properly refused a feudal grant, because, say "Les Coustumes de
Normandie," she is not trained to war or policy: _C'est l'homme ki se
bast et ki conseille_. Other authorities put it still more plainly: "A
woman cannot serve the emperor or feudal lord in war, on account of
the decorum of her sex; nor assist him with advice, because of her
limited intellect; nor keep his counsel, owing to the infirmity of her
disposition." All which was, no doubt, in the majority of cases, true,
and the degradation of woman was simply a part of a system, which has
indeed had its day, but has bequeathed its associations.
From this reign of force woman never freed herself by force. She could
not fight, or would not. Bohemian annals, indeed, record the legend of
a literal war between the sexes, in which the women's army, was led by
Libussa and Wlasla, and which finally ended with the capture, by the
army of men, of Castle Dziewin, Maiden's Tower, whose ruins are still
visible near Prague. The armor of Libussa is still shown at Vienna, and
the guide calls attention to the long-peaked toes of steel, with which, he

avers, the tender Princess was wont to pierce the hearts of her
opponents, while careering through the battle. And there are abundant
instances in which women have fought side by side with men, and on
equal terms. The ancient British women mingled in the wars of their
husbands, and their princesses were trained to the use of arms in the
Maiden's Castle at Edinburgh and in the Isle of Skye. The Moorish
wives and maidens fought in defence of their European peninsula; and
the Portuguese women fought, on the same soil, against the armies of
Philip II. The king of Siam has at present a bodyguard of four hundred
women; they are armed with lance and rifle, are admirably disciplined,
and their commander (appointed after saving the king's life at a
tiger-hunt) ranks as one of the royal family and has ten elephants at her
service. When the all-conquering Dahomian army marched upon
Abbeokuta, in 1851, they numbered ten thousand men and six thousand
women; the women were, as usual, placed foremost in the assault, as
being most reliable; and of the eighteen hundred bodies left dead before
the walls, the vast majority were of women. The Hospital of the
Invalides, in Paris, has sheltered, for half a century, a fine specimen of
a female soldier, "Lieutenant Madame Bulan," now eighty-three years
old, decorated by Napoleon's own hand with the cross of the Legion of
Honor, and credited on the hospital books with "seven years'
service,--seven campaigns,-- three wounds,--several times
distinguished, especially in Corsica, in defending a fort against the
English." But these cases, though interesting to the historian, are still
exceptional, and the instinctive repugnance they inspire is
condemnatory, not of women, but of war.
The reason, then, for the long subjection of woman has been simply
that humanity was passing through its first epoch, and her full career
was to be reserved for the second. As the different races of man have
appeared successively upon the stage of history, so there has been an
order of succession of the sexes. Woman's appointed era, like that of
the Scandinavian tribes, was delayed, but not omitted. It is not merely
true that the empire of the past has belonged to man, but that it has
properly belonged to him; for it was an empire of the muscles, enlisting
at best but the lower powers of the understanding. There can be no
question that the present epoch is initiating an empire of the higher
reason, of arts, affections, aspirations; and for that epoch the genius of

woman has been reserved. The spirit of the age has always kept pace
with the facts,