From
Emile: or On Education by
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
[After describing the education and
development of a hypothetical young man, Emile, Rousseau turns to an account of
the nature and proper education of a companion for Emile, whom he calls
‘Sophie’.]
[1250:] Sophie should be a woman as Emile is a man. That is to
say, she should have everything that suits the constitution of her species and
of her sex so as to take her place in the physical and moral order.
Let us begin, therefore, by examining the similarities and differences between
her sex and ours.
[1251:] In all that does not relate to sex ,
woman is man. She has the same organs, the same needs, the same faculties. The
machine is constructed in the same manner, the parts are the same, the workings
of the one are the same as the other, and the appearance of the two is similar.
From whatever aspect one considers them, they differ only by degree.
[1252:] In all that does relate to sex, woman and man are in every
way related and in every way different. The difficulty in comparing them comes
from the difficulty of determining what in the constitution of both comes from
sex and what does not. By comparative anatomy and even by mere inspection one
can find general differences between them that seem to be unrelated to sex.
However these differences do relate to sex through connections that we cannot
perceive. How far such differences may extend we cannot tell. All we know for
certain is that everything in common between men and
women must come from their species and everything different must come from
their sex. From this double point of view we find so many relations and so many
oppositions that perhaps one of nature's greatest marvels is to have been able
to make two beings so similar while constituting them so differently.
[1253:] These relations and differences must influence morals.
Such a deduction is both obvious and in accordance with experience, and it
shows the vanity of the disputes concerning preferences or the equality of the
sexes. As if each sex, pursuing the path marked out for it by nature, were not
more perfect in that very divergence than if it more closely resembled the
other! In those things which the sexes have in common they are equal; where
they differ they are not comparable. A perfect woman and a perfect man should
no more be alike in mind than in face, and perfection admits of neither less
nor more.
[1254:] In the union of the sexes, each alike contributes to the
common end but not in the same way. From this diversity springs the first difference which may be observed in the moral relations
between the one and the other. The one should be active and strong,
the other passive and weak. It is necessary that the one have the power and the
will; it is enough that the other should offer little resistance.
[1255:] Once this principle is established it follows that woman
is specially made to please man. If man ought to please her in turn, the
necessity is less urgent. His merit is in his power; he pleases because he is
strong. This is not the law of love, I admit, but it is the law of nature, which is older than love itself.
[1256:] If woman is made to please and to be subjected, she ought
to make herself pleasing to man instead of provoking him. Her strength is in
her charms; by their means she should compel him to discover his strength and
to use it. The surest way of arousing this strength is to make it necessary by resistance. Then amour-propre joins with desire, and
the one triumphs from a victory that the other made him
win. This is the origin of attack and defense, of the boldness of one sex and
the timidity of the other, and even of the shame and modesty with which nature
has armed the weak for the conquest of the strong.
[1257:] Who could imagine that nature arbitrarily prescribed the
same advances to both, or that the first to feel desire should be the first to
show it! What a strange perversion of judgment! The consequences of the act being so different for the two
sexes, would it be natural for them to engage in it with equal boldness? How
can any one not see that with such a great disparity in the common stakes, if
reserve did not impose on one sex the moderation that nature imposes on the
other, the result would be the destruction of both, and the human race would
perish through the very means established for preserving it? With the facility
women have of arousing men's senses and of awakening in the depths of their
hearts feelings that were thought to have died, if there were some unlucky
country where philosophy had introduced this custom (especially if it were a
hot climate where more women are born than men), the men would be tyrannized
over by the women. They would eventually become their victims and would find themselves dragged to their death
without ever being able to defend themselves.
[1258:] Yet female animals are without this sense of shame and
what is the result? Do they, like women, have the same unlimited desires that
shame serves to curb? With female animals, their desire comes only with need.
When the need is satisfied, the desire ceases and they no longer make a
pretense of repulsing the male but do it for real. They do exactly the contrary of what the
daughter of Augustus did; once the boat is filled with cargo, they refuse to
take on more passengers. Even when animals are free the period of their
willingness is very short and soon over; instinct gets them going and instinct
stops them. What would substitute for this negative instinct in women if you
were to rob them of their modesty? To wait for them to lose interest in men is
to wait for them to be good for nothing.
[1259:] The Supreme Being has wanted to do honour
to the human species. By giving man limitless impulses he has at the same time
given him a law to regulate them so that man can be free and can control
himself. While granting him immoderate passions, he joins reason to these
passions as a means of governing them. While granting unlimited desires to
women, the Supreme Being joins modesty to her desires as a means of restraining them. In
addition, it has added an actual bonus for using these faculties well, which is
the taste one develops for decency when one makes it the rule of one's actions.
All of this is worth more, it seems to me, than the
instincts of animals.
[1260:] Whether the human female shares the man's desires or not,
whether she is willing or unwilling to satisfy them, still she always pushes
him away and defends herself, though not always with the same force nor
consequently with the same success. In order for the attacker to be victorious,
the one attacked must permit it or order it -- for how many skillful ways are
there to stimulate the efforts of the aggressor? The freest and sweetest of
acts does not permit of any real violence; indeed both reason and nature are
against it -- nature, in that it has given the weakest enough strength to
resist when she pleases; reason, in that real violence is not only the most
brutal of acts but the one most contrary to its own ends, not only because the
man thus declares war against his companion and hence gives her a right to
defend her person and her liberty even at the cost of the aggressor's life, but
also because the woman alone is the judge of her condition, and a child would
have no father if any man might usurp a father's rights.
[1261:] Here then is a third consequence of the constitution of the sexes, which is
that the stronger is the master in all appearance and yet in effect depends on
the weaker. And this is not due to any frivolous custom of gallantry nor to any
prideful generosity on the part of the protector, but to an invariable law of
nature which, by giving the woman more of a facility to excite desires than man
has to satisfy them, makes him dependent on her whether she likes it or not and
forces him in turn to please her in order to obtain her consent to let him be
the strongest. Is it weakness which yields to force, or is it voluntary
self-surrender? This uncertainty constitutes the chief charm of the man's
victory, and the woman usually has enough guile to leave him in doubt. In this
respect the woman's mind exactly resembles her body; far from being ashamed of
her weakness, she is glories in it. Her soft muscles offer no resistance, she
professes that she cannot lift the lightest weight; she would be ashamed to be
strong. And why? It is not only in order to appear
delicate; it is for the sake of a more clever precaution. She is providing
herself beforehand with excuses and with the right to be weak when it is
necessary.
[1262:] The progress of enlightenment acquired through our vices
has considerably changed the earlier opinions held among us on this point, and
one hardly hears speak any more of cases of sexual violence since they are so
seldom needed and because men no longer would believe them. Yet such stories are common enough among the
ancient Greeks and Jews, for such views belong to the simplicity of nature; it
is only the experience of libertinage that has been able to uproot them. If fewer acts of violence are cited in our
days, it is surely not because men are more temperate. It is because they are less
credulous, and a complaint which would have persuaded simple people would
provoke only mocking laughter among ourselves. Therefore silence is the better
course. In the Book of Deuteronomy in the Bible there is a law under which the
abused maiden was punished along with her seducer if the crime were committed
in a town, but if in the country or in a lonely place, the latter alone was
punished. "For," says the law, "the maiden cried for help but
was not heard." From this benign interpretation of the law, girls learned
not to let themselves be surprised in well-frequented places.
[1263:] The effect of these divergent opinions on morals is
obvious. The main result has been the appearance of modern gallantry. Having
found that their pleasures depend more than they expected on the good will of
the fair sex, men have secured this good will by attentions which have had
their reward.
[1264:] See how the physical leads us unconsciously to the moral,
and how from the gross union of the sexes gradually arise the sweet laws of
love. Women have held onto their power not because men have wished it but because nature wishes
it; the power was their's even before they appeared
to have it. The same Hercules who believed he could violate all the fifty
daughters of Thespis was nevertheless forced to spin
wool for Omphale; and Samson the Strong was never as
strong as Delilah. Women's power cannot be taken from them even when they abuse
it; if they could ever have lost it they would have lost it long ago.
[1265:] There is no parity between the two sexes when it comes to
the consequence of sex. The male is only a male in certain instances; the
female is female all her life or at least all her youth. Everything reminds her
of her sex, and to fulfill well her functions she needs a constitution that
relates to them. She needs care during pregnancy and rest when her child is
born; she must have a quiet, sedentary life while she nurses her children;
their education calls for patience and gentleness, for a zeal and affection
which nothing can dismay. She serves as a liasion
between them and their father; she alone can make him love them and give him
the confidence to call them his own. What tenderness and care is required to
maintain a whole family as a unit! And finally all this must not come from
virtues but from feelings without which the human species would soon be
extinct.
[1266:] The severity to the duties relative to the two sexes is
not and cannot be the same. When a woman complains in this regard about the
unjust inequality in which men are placed, she is wrong. This
inequality is not at all a human institution, or at least it is not the work of
prejudice but of reason. The one to whom nature has entrusted children must
answer for them to the other. No doubt it is not permitted to anyone to violate
his faith, and every unfaithful husband who deprives his wife of the sole
reward of the austere duties of her sex is an unjust and cruel man. But the
unfaithful wife does more; she dissolves the family and breaks the bonds of
nature. By giving the man children that are not his own she betrays all of
them; she adds treachery to infidelity. It is hard to imagine any disorder or
crime which would not follow from that. If there is one terrible position to be
in it is that of a miserable father who cannot trust his wife, dares not give
in to the sweetest sentiments of his heart, and who wonders while embracing his
child whether he may be embracing the child of someone else -- a proof of his
dishonor, a robber of his own children's inheritance. What is such a family if
not a society of secret enemies armed against each other by a guilty wife who
forces them to pretend to love each other?
[1267:] It is thus not only important that the wife be faithful
but that she be judged so by her husband, by those
near him, by everyone. She must be modest, attentive, reserved, and she must have
in others' eyes as in her own conscience the evidence of her virtue. If it is
important that a father love his children, it is important that he respect
their mother. Such are the reasons that put appearance on the list of the
duties of women and make honor and reputation no less indispensable to them
than chastity. Along with the moral differences between the sexes these
principles give rise to a new motive for duty and convenience, one that
prescribes especially for women the most scrupulous attention to their conduct,
to their manners, to their behavior. To maintain vaguely that the two sexes are
equal and that their duties are the same is to get lost in vain speeches. One
hardly need to respond to all that.
[1268:] Do you really think you are on solid ground when you try
to find exceptions to such well-founded general laws? Women, you say, do not
always have children. No, but their proper aim is to do so. Just because there
are a hundred or so large cities in the world where women live licentiously and
have few children can you claim that their role is to have few children? And
what would become of your cities if the remote country districts, where women
live more simply and more chastely, did not make up for the sterility of your
fine ladies? There are plenty of country places where women with only four or
five children are reckoned as being not very fertile. Finally, although here
and there a woman may have few children, what difference does it make? Is it
any the less a woman's role to be a mother? And do not the general laws of
nature and morality make provision for this state of things?
[1269:] Even if there were these long intervals, which you assume,
between the periods of pregnancy, can a woman suddenly change her way of life
without danger and without risk? Can she be a nursing mother to-day and a
warrior tomorrow? Will she change her tastes and her feelings as a chameleon
changes its color? Will she pass at once from being sheltered and enclosed with
household duties, to facing the harshness of the winds, the toils, the
fatigues, the perils of war? Will she be first timid, then brave, first
fragile, then robust? If the young men raised in Paris have a hard time
enduring a soldier's life, how would a woman who for fifty years has never been
exposed to hot sun and can hardly walk on her own endure it? Would she take on
this difficult profession at the age when men are retiring from it?
[1270:] There are countries, I grant you, where women bear
children almost without pain and nurture them almost without worry, but in
these same countries the men go half-naked in all weathers, they hunt down wild
beasts, carry a canoe as easily as a knapsack, pursue game for 700 or 800
leagues, sleep in the open on the bare ground, bear incredible weariness and go
many days without food. When women become strong, men become even stronger;
when men become soft, women become softer. When the two terms change equally,
the difference stays the same.
[1271:] I am quite aware that Plato in the Republic assigns the same gymnastics to
women and men. Having rid his government of private families and knowing not
what to do with the women, he was forced to make them into men. That great
genius has figured out everything and foreseen everything; he has even thought
ahead to an objection that perhaps no one would ever have raised;
but he has not succeeded in meeting the real difficulty. I am not speaking of
the alleged community of wives, the oft-repeated reproach concerning which only
shows that those who make it have never read his works. I refer to the civil
promiscuity which everywhere brings the two sexes in the same occupations, the
same work, and could not fail to engender the most intolerable abuses. I refer
to that subversion of all the tenderest of our
natural feelings, which are sacrificed to an artificial sentiment that can only
exist by their aid. As if a natural bond were not required in order to form
conventional ties; or that love for one's relations were not the basis for the
love that one owes to the state; or that it is not through one's attachment to
the small society of the family that the heart becomes attached to the larger
society of one's nation; or that it is not the good son, the good husband, the
good father who makes a good citizen!
[1272:] Once it is demonstrated that men and women neither are nor
ought to be constituted the same, either in character or in temperament, it
follows that they ought not to have the same education. In following the
directions of nature they ought to act together, but they ought not to do the
same things. The purpose of their tasks is the same, but the tasks are
different, as are also the feelings that direct them.