The Physiology of Marriage, part 2 | Page 6

book. This will be easy. You
will first of all pronounce in a tone of disdain the phrase "Blue
stocking;" and, on her request being repeated, you will tell her what
ridicule attaches, among the neighbors, to pedantic women.
You will then repeat to her, very frequently, that the most lovable and
the wittiest women in the world are found at Paris, where women never
read;
That women are like people of quality who, according to Mascarillo,
know everything without having learned anything; that a woman while
she is dancing, or while she is playing cards, without even having the
appearance of listening, ought to know how to pick up from the
conversation of talented men the ready-made phrases out of which
fools manufacture their wit at Paris;
That in this country decisive judgments on men and affairs are passed
round from hand to hand; and that the little cutting phrase with which a
woman criticises an author, demolishes a work, or heaps contempt on a
picture, has more power in the world than a court decision;
That women are beautiful mirrors, which naturally reflect the most
brilliant ideas;
That natural wit is everything, and the best education is gained rather
from what we learn in the world than by what we read in books;

That, above all, reading ends in making the eyes dull, etc.
To think of leaving a woman at liberty to read the books which her
character of mind may prompt her to choose! This is to drop a spark in
a powder magazine; it is worse than that, it is to teach your wife to
separate herself from you; to live in an imaginary world, in a Paradise.
For what do women read? Works of passion, the /Confessions/ of
Rousseau, romances, and all those compositions which work most
powerfully on their sensibility. They like neither argument nor the ripe
fruits of knowledge. Now have you ever considered the results which
follow these poetical readings?
Romances, and indeed all works of imagination, paint sentiments and
events with colors of a very different brilliancy from those presented by
nature. The fascination of such works springs less from the desire
which each author feels to show his skill in putting forth choice and
delicate ideas than from the mysterious working of the human intellect.
It is characteristic of man to purify and refine everything that he lays up
in the treasury of his thoughts. What human faces, what monuments of
the dead are not made more beautiful than actual nature in the artistic
representation? The soul of the reader assists in this conspiracy against
the truth, either by means of the profound silence which it enjoys in
reading or by the fire of mental conception with which it is agitated or
by the clearness with which imagery is reflected in the mirror of the
understanding. Who has not seen on reading the /Confessions/ of
Jean-Jacques, that Madame de Warens is described as much prettier
than she ever was in actual life? It might almost be said that our souls
dwell with delight upon the figures which they had met in a former
existence, under fairer skies; that they accept the creations of another
soul only as wings on which they may soar into space; features the
most delicate they bring to perfection by making them their own; and
the most poetic expression which appears in the imagery of an author
brings forth still more ethereal imagery in the mind of a reader. To read
is to join with the writer in a creative act. The mystery of the
transubstantiation of ideas, originates perhaps in the instinctive
consciousness that we have of a vocation loftier than our present
destiny. Or, is it based on the lost tradition of a former life? What must
that life have been, if this slight residuum of memory offers us such
volumes of delight?

Moreover, in reading plays and romances, woman, a creature much
more susceptible than we are to excitement, experiences the most
violent transport. She creates for herself an ideal existence beside
which all reality grows pale; she at once attempts to realize this
voluptuous life, to take to herself the magic which she sees in it. And,
without knowing it, she passes from spirit to letter and from soul to
sense.
And would you be simple enough to believe that the manners, the
sentiments of a man like you, who usually dress and undress before
your wife, can counterbalance the influence of these books and
outshine the glory of their fictitious lovers, in whose garments the fair
reader sees neither hole nor stain?--Poor fool! too late, alas! for her
happiness and for yours, your wife will find out that the /heroes/ of
poetry are as rare in real life as the /Apollos/ of