"THE JOYS OF BEING A WOMAN" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kirkland Winifred)

NOTE.-- _Several of these essays have appeared in_
THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW,
THE UNPOPULAR REVIEW, and THE CHURCHMAN, _and are
here reprinted with the kind permission of the
editors of those magazines._



I

_The Joys of Being a Woman_

Some years ago there appeared in the "Atlantic" an
essay entitled "The joys of Being a Negro." With a
purpose analogous to that of the author, I am moved to
declare the real delights of the apparently
downtrodden, and in the face of a bulky literature
expressive of pathos and protest, to confess frankly
the joys of being a woman. It is a feminist argument
accepted as axiomatic that every woman would be a man
if she could be, while no man would be a woman if he
could help it. Every woman knows this is not fact but
falsehood, yet knows also that it is one of those
falsehoods on which depends the stability of the
universe. The idea that every woman is desirous of
becoming a man is as comforting to every male as its
larger corollary is alarming, namely, that women as a
mass have resolved to become men. The former notion
expresses man's view of femininity, and is flattering;
the latter expresses his view of feminism, and is
fearsome. Man's panic, indeed, before the hosts he
thinks he<1> sees advancing, has lately become so acute
that there is danger of his paralysis. Now his
paralysis would defeat not only the purposes of
feminism, but also the sole purpose of woman's conduct
toward man from Eve's time to ours, a course of which
feminism is only a modern and consistent example.
It is for man's reassurance that I shall endeavor
gradually to unfold this age-old purpose, showing that
while the privileges which through slow evolution we
have amassed are so enjoyable as to preclude our
envying any man his dusty difficulties, still our
attitude toward these our toys is that of a friend of
mine a woman aged four. Left unprotected in her hands
for entertainment, a male coeval was heard to burst
into cries of rage. Her parents, rushing to his
rescue, found their daughter surrounded by all the
playthings, which she loftily withheld from her