Pleasure is the business of woman's life, according to the present
modification of society, and while it continues to be so, little can be
expected from such weak beings. Inheriting, in a lineal descent from the
first fair defect in nature, the sovereignty of
beauty, they have, to maintain their power, resigned the natural rights,
which the exercise of reason might have procured them, and chosen rather
to be short-lived queens than labour to obtain the sober pleasures that
arise from equality. Exalted by their inferiority (this sounds like a
contradiction), they constantly demand homage as women, though experience
should teach them that the men who pride themselves upon paying this
arbitrary insolent respect to the sex, with the most scrupulous exactness,
are most inclined to tyrannize over, and despise, the very weakness they
cherish. Often do they repeat Mr. Hume's
sentiments; when, comparing the French and Athenian character, he alludes
to women. 'But what is more singular in this whimsical nation, say I to
the Athenians, is, that a frolick of yours during the Saturnalia, when the
slaves are served by their masters, is seriously continued by them through
the whole year, and through the whole course and through the whole course
of their lives; accompanied too with some circumstances, which still
further augment the absurdity and ridicule. Your sport only elevates for a
few days those whom fortune has thrown down, and whom she too, in sport,
may really elevate for ever above you. But this nation gravely exalts
those, whom nature has subjected to them, and whose inferiority and
infirmities are absolutely incurable. The women, though without virtue,
are their masters and sovereigns.'
