f pleasing men is running benevolence into the ground. Not
that women consciously do this, but they do it. They don't mean to
pander to false masculine notions, but they do. They don't know that
they are pandering to them, but they are. Men say silly things, partly
because they don't know any better, and partly because they don't want
any better. They are strong, and can generally make shift to bear their
end of the pole without being crushed. So they are tolerably content.
They are not very much to blame. People cannot be expected to start on
a crusade against ills of which they have but a vague and cloudy
conception. The edge does not cut them, and so they think it is not much
of a sword after all. But women have, or ought to have, a more subtile
and intimate acquaintance with realities. They ought to know what is
fact and what is fol-de-rol. They ought to distinguish between the
really noble and the simply physical, not to say faulty. If men do not,
it is women's duty to help them. I think, if women would only not be
quite so afraid of being thought unwomanly, they would be a great
deal more womanly than they are. To be brave, and single-minded, and
discriminating, and judicious, and clear-sighted, and self-reliant, and
decisive, that is pure womanly. To be womanish is not to be womanly. To
be flabby, and plastic, and weak, and acquiescent, and insipid, is not
womanly. And I could wish sometimes that women would not be quite
so patient. They often exhibit a degree of long-suffering entirely
unwarrantable. There is no use in suffering, unless you cannot help it;
and a good, stout, resolute protest would often be a great deal more
wise, and Christian, and beneficial on all sides, than so much patient
endurance. A little spirit and "spunk" would go a great way towards
setting the world right. It is not necessary to be a termagant. The
firmest will and the stoutest heart may be combined with the gentlest
delicacy. Tameness is not the stuff that the finest women are made of.
Nobody can be more kind, considerate, or sympathizing towards weakness
or weariness than men, if they only know it exists; and it is a wrong to
them to go on bolstering them up in their bungling opinions, when a few
sensible ideas, wisely administered, would do so much to enlighten them,
and reveal the path which needs only to be revealed to secure their
unhesitating entrance upon it. It is absurd to suppose that unvarying
acquiescence is necessary to s