paring the two
sexes in this particular, many persons commit a gross error by
overlooking the fact that there are all kinds and degrees of feminine
characters, not less than of masculine. When Heine says, "I will not
affirm that women have no character; rather they have a new one every
day," he means precisely what Pope meant by the famous couplet in his
poem on the Characters of Women:

Nothing so true as what you once let fall,
Most women have no characters at all.

This want of character is held by many thoughtful men for what
Coleridge asserted it to be, the perfection of a woman; as
tastelessness proves the purity of water; transparency, that of
glass. Plausible ground for this view is furnished by the fact, that
the perfection of fine and noble manners the peculiar province of
feminine genius consists in the absence of egotism, in that chaste
and lustrous exuberance of sympathetic joy which results from the
opposite of all personal domination; namely, spontaneous obedience to
the whole law of duty. Nevertheless, the opinion is unsound; partly
untrue, partly inadequate. It results from the despotic selfhood of
man, who wishes not to reflect another, but only to be reflected. The
absence of fixed individuality makes one a readier mirror; and man,
as the historic master, desires the woman who confronts him to be, at
least apparently, the yielding subject of his will. But since woman
is an independent being, endowed with a separate responsibleness, she
has a distinct personal destiny to fulfil as much as he has, and
should be granted an equal freedom of individuality.

The perfection of a woman in the sight of God is one thing: her
irresistible charmingness to selfish man may be quite another thing.
If the latter requires a soft compliance, involving the absence of
will, the former is not irreconcilable with the firmest constancy of
individual traits; and, in fact, women can no more be lumped together
in level community, either by positives or by negatives, than men can
be. Those differ from each other as widely as these do. Accuracy of
thought has seldom been more recklessly offered up to pungency of
expression than in the above-cited aphorism of Pope. There is an
ample variety of tenacious womanly characters between the extremes
marked by Miriam beating her timbrels, and Cleopatra applying the
asp; Cornelia showing her Roman jewels, and Guyon rapt in God;
Lucrezia Borgia raging with bowl and dagger, and Florence