第44章 ELIOT'S PULPIT(2)

"What matter of ridicule do you find in this, Miles Coverdale?"exclaimed Zenobia, with a flash of anger in her eyes."That smile, permit me to say, makes me suspicious of a low tone of feeling and shallow thought.It is my belief--yes, and my prophecy, should I die before it happens--that, when my sex shall achieve its rights, there will be ten eloquent women where there is now one eloquent man.Thus far, no woman in the world has ever once spoken out her whole heart and her whole mind.The mistrust and disapproval of the vast bulk of society throttles us, as with two gigantic hands at our throats! We mumble a few weak words, and leave a thousand better ones unsaid.You let us write a little, it is true, on a limited range of subjects.But the pen is not for woman.Her power is too natural and immediate.It is with the living voice alone that she can compel the world to recognize the light of her intellect and the depth of her heart!"Now,--though I could not well say so to Zenobia,--I had not smiled from any unworthy estimate of woman, or in denial of the claims which she is beginning to put forth.What amused and puzzled me was the fact, that women, however intellectually superior, so seldom disquiet themselves about the rights or wrongs of their sex, unless their own individual affections chance to lie in idleness, or to be ill at ease.They are not natural reformers, but become such by the pressure of exceptional misfortune.I could measure Zenobia's inward trouble by the animosity with which she now took up the general quarrel of woman against man.

"I will give you leave, Zenobia," replied I, "to fling your utmost scorn upon me, if you ever hear me utter a sentiment unfavorable to the widest liberty which woman has yet dreamed of.I would give her all she asks, and add a great deal more, which she will not be the party to demand, but which men, if they were generous and wise, would grant of their own free motion.For instance, I should love dearly--for the next thousand years, at least--to have all government devolve into the hands of women.I hate to be ruled by my own sex; it excites my jealousy, and wounds my pride.

It is the iron sway of bodily force which abases us, in our compelled submission.But how sweet the free, generous courtesy with which I would kneel before a woman-ruler!""Yes, if she were young and beautiful," said Zenobia, laughing."But how if she were sixty, and a fright?""Ah! it is you that rate womanhood low," said I."But let me go on.Ihave never found it possible to suffer a bearded priest so near my heart and conscience as to do me any spiritual good.I blush at the very thought! Oh, in the better order of things, Heaven grant that the ministry of souls may be left in charge of women! The gates of the Blessed City will be thronged with the multitude that enter in, when that day comes! The task belongs to woman.God meant it for her.He has endowed her with the religious sentiment in its utmost depth and purity, refined from that gross, intellectual alloy with which every masculine theologist--save only One, who merely veiled himself in mortal and masculine shape, but was, in truth, divine--has been prone to mingle it.

I have always envied the Catholics their faith in that sweet, sacred Virgin Mother, who stands between them and the Deity, intercepting somewhat of his awful splendor, but permitting his love to stream upon the worshipper more intelligibly to human comprehension through the medium of a woman's tenderness.Have I not said enough, Zenobia?""I cannot think that this is true," observed Priscilla, who had been gazing at me with great, disapproving eyes."And I am sure I do not wish it to be true!""Poor child!" exclaimed Zenobia, rather contemptuously."She is the type of womanhood, such as man has spent centuries in making it.He is never content unless he can degrade himself by stooping towards what he loves.In denying us our rights, he betrays even more blindness to his own interests than profligate disregard of ours!""Is this true?" asked Priscilla with simplicity, turning to Hollingsworth."Is it all true, that Mr.Coverdale and Zenobia have been saying?""No, Priscilla!" answered Hollingsworth with his customary bluntness.

"They have neither of them spoken one true word yet.""Do you despise woman?" said Zenobia.

"Ah, Hollingsworth, that would be most ungrateful!""Despise her? No!" cried Hollingsworth, lifting his great shaggy head and shaking it at us, while his eyes glowed almost fiercely."She is the most admirable handiwork of God, in her true place and character.Her place is at man's side.Her office, that of the sympathizer; the unreserved, unquestioning believer; the recognition, withheld in every other manner, but given, in pity, through woman's heart, lest man should utterly lose faith in himself; the echo of God's own voice, pronouncing, 'It is well done!' All the separate action of woman is, and ever has been, and always shall be, false, foolish, vain, destructive of her own best and holiest qualities, void of every good effect, and productive of intolerable mischiefs! Man is a wretch without woman; but woman is a monster--and, thank Heaven, an almost impossible and hitherto imaginary monster--without man as her acknowledged principal! As true as I had once a mother whom I loved, were there any possible prospect of woman's taking the social stand which some of them,--poor, miserable, abortive creatures, who only dream of such things because they have missed woman's peculiar happiness, or because nature made them really neither man nor woman!--if there were a chance of their attaining the end which these petticoated monstrosities have in view, I would call upon my own sex to use its physical force, that unmistakable evidence of sovereignty, to scourge them back within their proper bounds! But it will not be needful.