, 1889-10-17
SOMETHING ABOUT WOMEN.
IL There Any More Mystery Con-
cerniuR Women Than Men?

lCharlcs Dudley Warner, In Editors Drawer
OF Harper's Magazine for october.l
There appears to be great quantity of
conceit around, especially concerning
women. The statement was recently
set atloat that a well-known lady had
admitted that George Meredith under
stands women better than any writer
who has preceded him. This may
bc true, and 1t may be n willy statement
to again throw men oil the track; at any
rate 1t contains the old assumption of II
tho gentler sex. Women generally
encourage this notion, and men by their
gingerly treatment of it seem to except
It. But is II well iounded2 Is there any
more mystery about women than about
mon? Is the feminine nature any more
difficult TO understand than the mascu-
line nature? Have women, conscious of
inferior strength, woven this notion
ofmystery about themselves as defense
or have men simply idenlizcd them for
| fictitious purposcsp To recur to the case
cited is there any evidence that Mr.
Meredith understands human nature as
exhibited In woman any better than
human nature in men, oil Is more
consistent in the production Of one than
the other?
Historically 1t would be interesting to
trace the rise of this notion of women as
an enigma. The savages races do not
appear to have 1t. A woman to the
North American Indian is simple affair,
dealt with without circumlocution. In
the Bible records there is not much mys-
terry about her; there are many tributes
to her noble qualities and some pretty
severe and uncomplimentury things are
said about her, but there is little afiecta.
tion OF not understanding her She may
be prophecies or n consoler, or q
snare, but she Is no more "deceitful or
desperately wicked than anybody else,
There is nothing mysterious about
her first recorded performance. Eve
trusted tho serpent and Adam trusted
Eve. The mystery was in the serpent.
! There Is no evidence that the ancient
Egyptian woman was more difficult to
comprehend thun the Egyptian man..
They were both doubtless willy, as
highly civilized people arc apt to be- the
serpent of the Nile" was I'm them both.
Is 1t, in fact, till we come to medieval
times, and chivalric age, that women
are set up as being more incomprc-
hensible than men? That is, less logical,
more whimsical, more uncertain in their
mental process? The playwriters and
essayists OF the seventeenth and
and eighteenth centuries worked" the
notion continually. They always took
all investigating und speculating attitude
toward women that fostered the conceit
of their separateness and yelled per-
sonali,y. Every woman was supposed
to be playing apart behind mask.
We are Roundering about now in n
sea of doubt. As society becomes more
complicated women will become q
greater and greater mystery, or rather
will he regarded so by themselves and
be treated so by men.
Who can tell how much this notion
of mystery in the sex stands in the way
of its free advancement all along the
the liner Suppose the proposal were
made to women to exchange being mys-
terious for the ballot? Would they dc
NJ Or they have n sense of power in the
possession of this conceded incom-
prohensibility that they would not lay
down for any visible insignia of that
power? And If the novelists and essay
lists have raised mist about the sex
which it willingly masquerades in, /.
IL not time that the scientists determine
whether the mystery exists in nature
or only in imagination?