Rensselaer Republican, Volume 22, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 October 1889 — THE MYSTERY OF WOMAN. [ARTICLE]

THE MYSTERY OF WOMAN.

It Is an Enigma to Most Modern Thinkers. Charles Dudley Warner in “Editor’s Drawer” of Harper’s Magazine for October says: There appears to be a great quantity bf conceit around, especially concerning women. The statement was recently set afloat that a well-known iady had admitted that George Meredith understands women better than, any writer who has predeeded hiin. This may be true and it may be a wily statement to again throw men off the track; at any rate it contains the old assumption of a mystery, practically insoluble about the gentler sex. Women generally encourage this notion, and men by their gingerly treatment of it seem to accept it. But is it well founded? Is there any more mystery about women- than about men? Is the feminine nature any more difficult to understand than the masculine nature? Have women, conscious of inferior strength, woven this notion of mystery about themselves as a defense, or have men simply idealized them for fictitious purposes? To recur to the case cited, is there any evidence that Mr. Meredith understands human nature as exhibited in women any better than human nature m mentor is it more consistent in the production of one than of the other? Historically it would be interesting to trace the rise of this notion of woman as an enigma. 'The“savage races do not appear to have it. A woman to the North American Indian is a simple affair, dealt with without circumlocution. In the bible records there is not much mystery about her; there are many tributes to her noble qualities and some pretty severe and uncomplimentary things are said about her, but there is little affectation of not understanding her. She may be a prophetess, or a consoler, or a stare, but she is no more “deceitful and desperately wicked” than anybody else. There is nothing mysterious about her first recorded performance. Eve trusted the 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 than the Egyptian man. They were both doubtless wily, as . highly civilized people are apt to be; the “serpent of old Nile” was in them both. Is it. in fact, till we come to mediaeval times and the chivairic age that women are set up as being more incomprehensible than men? That is, less logical, more whimsical; more uncertain in their mental processes? The playwriters and essayists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries “worked” this notion continually.

They always took an investigating and speculating attitude toward women that fostered the conceit of their separateness and veiled personality. Every woman was supposed to be playing a part behind a mask. Of course all this has a very practical bearing upon modern life, the position of women in it, and the socalled reforms. If woman is so different from man, to the extent of being an unexplainable mystery, science ought to determine the exact state of the case and ascertain if there is any remedy for it. If it is only a literary creation we ought-to know it. Science could tell, for instance, whether there is a peculiarity in the nervous system, any complications in the nervous centers, by which the telegraphic action of the will gets crossed, so that, for example, in reply to a proposal for marriage the intended “Yes” gets delivered as “No.” Is it true that the mental process in one sex is intuitive, and in the. other logical, with every link necessary and visible? Is it true, as the romancers teach, that the mind in one sex acts indirectly and in the other directly, or isthis indirect process only, characteristic of exceptions in both sexes? Investigation ought to find this out, so that we can adjust the fit occupations for both sexes on. a scientific basis. We are floundering about now in a sea of doubt. As society becomes more complicated women will become a greater and greater mystery, or rather will be regarded se 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 line? Suppose the proposal wore made to women to exchange being mysterious for the ballot? Would they do it? Or have they a sense of power in the possession of this conceded incomprehensibility that they would not lay down for any visible insignia of that power? And if the novelists and essayists have raised a mist about the sex which it willingly masquerades in, is it not time that the scientists should determine whether the mystery exists in nature or only in the Imagination?