All
generations of women having been bred under the shadow of intellectual
contempt, they have, of course, done much to justify it. They have often
used only for frivolous purposes even the poor opportunities allowed them.
They have employed the alphabet, as Moliere said, chiefly in spelling the
verb _Amo_. Their use of science has been like that of Mlle. de Launay,
who computed the decline in her lover's affection by his abbreviation of
their evening walk in the public square, preferring to cross it rather
than take the circuit; "from which I inferred," she says, "that his
passion had diminished in the ratio between the diagonal of a rectangular
parallelogram and the sum of two adjacent sides." And their conception,
even of art, has been too often on the scale of Properzia de Rossi, who
carved sixty-five heads on a walnut, the smallest of all recorded symbols
of woman's sphere.
All this might, perhaps, be overcome, if the social prejudice which
discourages women would only reward proportionately those who surmount the
discouragement. The more obstacles, the more glory, if society would only
pay in proportion to the labor; but it does not. Women being denied, not
merely the training which prepares for great deeds, but the praise and
compensation which follow them, have been weakened in both directions. The
career of eminent men ordinarily begins with college and the memories of
Miltiades, and ends with fortune and fame: woman begins under
discouragement, and ends beneath the same.
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