WOMAN AND I1ER MASTER.
TIIE real purpose of this publication is to display the read- Mg and rhetoric of' Lady 31ontoos. Its avowed object, so far as we can discover any definite meaning in a plan imper- fectly fulfilled, is to portray the subordinate condition of women in every stage of society ; to expound the oppression and injustice to which that subordination has given rise ; to show the effects of their reaction upon the unjust oppressor, " 3laster Man ;" and finally, how the exquisite sensibility, and all that sort of' thing, of " Woman," has frequently triumphed over the circumstances which surrounded ker. What the book really is, may be soon told. It commences with a well-sounding but flashy and commonplace introduction, that takes a view of the miseries of mankind in past ages; the extent to which they have been alle- viated by throwing open " the monopoly of knowledge" in modern times; and concludes with the very just conclusion that there are still a great many evils to be remedied before social wrongs will be extinct and happiness attainable by all. Lady Motteax then plunges into her subject. Taking a survey of' women in savage life, first among the aborigines of Australia, then among the Red Indians, and lastly among the .:egroes, she paints a dark enough Picture of their condition. She next proceeds to the women of the East ; instancing the small feet alai confined lives of the Chinese, and the occasional suttee of the Ilindoo females : after which, she surveys a subject, of which we know very little—the women of Oriental antiquity, including Semiramis. She then goes to Scrip- ture ; beginning with Adam and Eve, and arguing the mental superiority of weman from the Devira having succeeded in tempting her by the promise of "knowledge," and from Adam being doomed to the coarse labour of earning his bread by the sweat of his brow. The character of wmnan in the world before the Flood is of course conjectural ; nnd Lady Moueax passes on to her condition under the Hebrews, front Sarah the wile of Abraham down to the deaths of Marianme and her mether e.alexandra under Halton. This branch uf the subject is handled at great length; forming, in fitet, a series of female biographies, and embreeing with their acces- sories a sort of memoir of Jewish history. Woman in classical
and generally in antiquity is treated in a similer .0 ay—more beietly Greece. Aspasia being the lady who is coneigerea least elaborately— more fully in Rome than even emongst the di \vs; time subject be- ginning with Cornelia and the neutrons of the republic, and closing with Ilelema the mother of Censtantine. Here the pre- sent work closes ; the completion of the suisject being reserved for another publicat ion.
Throughout cull this long period. the mode of Lady MoacaN is the saute : the merits of women are at to themselves, their faults to the men. Nor is she much more even-handed with respect to records, makiug little scruple to eta ntide authorities when they militate ageinst her views. Tat-tries himself is hardly handled, and accused of probably stealing his at he frela a woman whose works have perished. and the elessieal wriuers et' the lower age are dismissed as " scribblers." whenever their statements oppose the lady's preconceptions. Judging from Its r authorities and her mode of refers nee, she does me, however. seem to have a very thmiliar acquaintance with the classics: aed sometimes she either misapprehends what she reads, or f:tils to exgress her eppechension with perspicuity. For example, she states that'' CaCline is said to have murdered his Own son, that I. y .ss, ss hialSelf of his beautiffil ntistrees, Aurelia Orestills.--ohlu We rightly interpret Lady Morauax's 0111:1•0■•:11 only, we imagine, been said by herself Aer. I .1 to marry Cataline on account of his lousing a son by a former mayriage ; and there was little doubt (pro tyre, 07,(; ifoir) that he muagged the N'Olall to remove the impediment. 'Neither are her inferences always the most probable. l.ady MouGAN adduces as part of the " tbbris of the history of undated times. through which fragments of' a legislation ffivouralde to woman's rights arc most apparent,- a siat einem of' lii no:al-et s. that in certain African nations, the descent was traced thromth the female line,—a practice still extant in that coetiuent. and in India too, we believe ; but not exactly ffirniehing a eure proof of' the esti- mation of the sex. The Ash:tutees, amongst whom a somewhat stint hut' practice obtains, (the children of the sister suceeeding,) as- sign for it the philosophical reason. that by reason of the gallantry of their women. there is no other mode of having It succession in the true blood ; anti so far as the his:ory oh' tinted times goes, this is generally the reason given t'or finale descents. In Oriental learning she seems equally at fault. She asserts that " the Em perms of Persia, like those of modern Turkey, are prohibited by -1.tobonicton :,sat... in from having legitimate wives." If this were so, Al klIOMET W011ki clearly have been a prophet, to have laid down special rules for empires of the titithful not then in being : but it is no such thing. The Turkish Sultans had wives till the time of BAJAZET, but after his capture by TAMERLANE the custom was discontinued, on account of the indignities his wife was ex- posed to. It was, however, merely a rule of expediency, or rather of pride; and if our memory serves us, SOLTMAN the Magnificent did marry ROXOLANA. The position of woman is.a matter of vast importance, and de- serves a much more searching and philosophical inquiry than it is in Lady MORGAN'S power to give ; nor would there be a better sub- ject for an acute and impartial mind than to investigate the re- spective nature and relation of the sexes arising from their physical structure ; to narrate fairly and calmly the condition and influence of women in various stages of society, so far as it can be traced in the descriptions of foreign travellers, and in the laws and literature of the peoples themselves ; and to estimate the reaction of woman's degradation in the general effects upon society. But nothing of this kind has Lady MORGAN attempted: what she has done is to produce a dashing and striking piece of one-sided declamation— extending over a wide field of human history, always fluent, but often false.
Sometimes this declamation is very effective : exaggerated, it is true, and so far unreal that on13, those striking points are taken vihich answer her purpose, but it will be very telling never- theless with minds of a certain class. Take as an example this picture of
NEW HOLLAND AND ITS ABORIGINES.
The climes and bald aspects of this island. continent (Australasia) were infinitely diversified ; but all WAS new, all was original. There was, however, . one division w hich seeined %venting, in the tbregone conclusions drawn of the general beauty and brightness of nature in that region—a spot %%lore vegetation was dark and dull, end where animal life bore scarce any resemblance to the types of the other quarters of the globe. The fbliage was coriaceous and spiny; the fruits ligneous and devoid of nutriment ; and nothing recalled the majesty of the virgin fbrests of the Western world, or the rich variety of the vegetable genera of the East The birds, the quadrupeds, and the fishes, partook equally of these characteristics: the hideous amphibious mole, the frightful wombat, the wild dog that looked amd howled a wolf, squirrels which flew, swans that were black, and various other specimens of helpless deformity and monstrous vitality. proper only to the spells of witchcraft—the poetry of disgusting terror. Nor was man himself an exception : the lord of a soil which seemed thus created by another power than that which moulded the elegant form of the antelope and brightened the eye of the gaze!; he was not formed to resemble those godlike creatures, whose high aspirations banished them their Eden, to people a scarcely less paradisaical earth with races of angelic form and glorious mind; he seemed of another creation, a specimen apart from man. In his person he was all deformity and disproportion ; in his intellectual frame he was alt density and insensibility. His head was immense and misshapen, his eyes dim and sunk, his brows hnshy, and his mouth (frightful as that of a crocodile) opened extravagantly wide to show enormous teeth above a prominent lower jaw. His nose was flat, his nostrils wide, his colour swarthy, his hair long and straight, his limbs dwindled, his trunk swollen, and his whole aspect horrible and disgusting. Thus framed by nature, his appearance was still further degraded by the symbols of brutal taste and of fierce cruelty, with which lie adorned his unsightly person. The teeth of men or of kangaroos were fastened In his gum-clotted hair, the bones of fish were stuck through his nostrils, and incisions made in his arms and breasts marked his callous insensibility to pain.
" Naked and unaccommodated," he was indifferent to the inelemencies of clime and season, and inapprehensive of decency : humanity has in vain inter- fered to improve his native condition ; and civilization has failed to draw hint within her lines. As huntsman, he still made the !tallow of a tree his den ; as fisherman, a hole in the rock his dwelling. Ile slept, like the wild beast of the forest, the deep sleep of fatigue and surfeit ; and he awakened, without fore- thought or fear of the coming day, to destroy or to be destroyed, with equal indifference.
Human nature could go no lower : yet this defective and ill-conditioned creature, this unideal and unawaked animal, bad one strong moral conviction that of his own superiority over the female of his own species.
Ile believed that woman was of anti her nature from himself, and that he was born her master—she ilk servant by the divine right of the strongest. He marked her at the hour of her birth fhr his slave, by breaking the joints of her fbre.fingers ; he renewed the covenant of his supremacy in her first youth, by knocking out her front teeth ; and when he elected his bond- slave as the object of his passions, he intimated his preference by spitting in her face and forcing her to his den. Thus atlianeed through contempt ant suffer- ing, the Henault submitted, and the master assumed, uncontrolled, a power of life, death, and property over her. Ile loaded her shoulder, wounded by lila stnpes, with weights which his own indolence refused to bear, and speared her to the earth, if she resisted the itnposition.
Having quoted the passage, we should warn our readers that more extended and accurate observation has thrown doubts upon the correctness of some of' these remarks, and that the " Master' of' New Holland is held by Major MITCHELL to have been underrated by authors.
We take the following as one of the few approaches to a philoso- phical remark we have met with, or as indicating any idea that women as a race can have a moral influence for good, and that, as soon as man ceases to exercise mere brute force, his own character very greatly depends upon woman's.
(Psoriss Hemarkuble for the dignity of her deportment, and for that moral decency %thick respects all the exterior hams of liht (the biensiiance of positive virtnes,) she introduced by her ex,onple a censorlip of taste, which extended its influence even to the lowt,t public am ll,CMCI Its of the people. The most seandalous licence had been perunitted dueler; former reigns, in the theatres and pantomimes; and Tit es had endeavoured- to suppress this inde- cency by an edict ; hat the corrupted people, seconded by a libertine aris- tocracy, had forced the Emperor Nerva to repeal the edict, and to restore the scandal. It was not until the improvitor influence of Trajati and Plotina With felt in the circles of Rome, that the petq7le themselves, becoming disgusted with their own licence, or, as a modern historian observes, "recenu an sentiment de Its psi/cur,'' called upon the government to renew the decree of Titus, and to annul the indulgences of the often tot) facile Nerve, The power of woman over the moral tastes of the public was never more strongly illustrated ; and the example should net be lost upon posterity. The women of mudern times, who boast the possession of a moral code of purer ob.. servanee and of a more imposing sanction, have too generally abdicated this power, from deficiency in that moral courage so necessary to resist the tyranny of fashion, and to withhold protection from practices or from persons in vogue, when they arc at war with public decency. Societyras at present constituted is, in this respect, a perpetual compromise between principles and convert: tions—an attempted reconcilement of the dignity. of virtue with the conve. nienees of sycophancy: and, as the fault lies principally with the women, so does the penalty. The condition of public morals has in all ages been desi. sive of the place and consideration of the sex.
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