Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
WOMAN
A slightly one-sided and merrily vicious
compendium of the best and most entertaining
writing about — God bless 'em — women
Edited by
CHARLES NEIDER
E. B. White Richard Armour
j
MAN
AGAINST
WOMAN
Edited by
CHARLES NEIDER
No. 7322A
ch
V r&Tfi,
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2012
http://archive.org/details/managainstwomanvOOneid
MAN
Against
WOMAN
Boo\s by Charles Neider
Edited by
CHARLES NEIDER
FIRST EDITION
M-F
by Richard Armour 9
A Fickle Widow, Anonymous 11
by Benjamin Franklin 85
Part V: J'Accuse
Woman, God Bless Her!, byMar\ Twain 123
Women and Drinks, by Charles W. Morton ng
Are Witty W omen
T
Attractive to Men ?
by Stephen Leacoc\ 135
The Loving Care of Determined Women,
by John Fischer 145
The Little Woman, by L A. R. Wylie 149
Women Are Intellectually Inferior, by Waverley Root 169
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 2CK)
INTRODUCTION
Charles Neider
Pacific Palisades, California
August 13, 1956
Ye must \now that women
have dominion over you: do ye
not labour and toil, and give and
bring all to the woman?
—The Apocrypha
STILL INORDINATELY
MENACING
I
O woman, perfect woman! what
distraction
Was meant mankind when
to
3
4 MAN AGAINST WOMAN
form of liaison. In both cases his inherent sentimentality
is, until the man has revealed his delusion, and so cut
off his retreat; to do otherwise would be to bring down
upon their heads the mocking and contumely of all their
9
Young man, have you seen her in work clothes,
When you do
Get a view
Of your true love that's true,
10
A FICKLE WIDOW
Anonymous
many
and in the
The lady was delighted with his success, and with the
sunniest smile said, "How can I thank you sufficiently
fulness."
married."
"What qualities does he look for in the fortunate woman
he will choose for his wife?" inquired the lady.
"My master says," replied the servant, who had taken
quite as much wine as was good for him, "that if he
could obtain a renowned beauty like yourself, madam,
his heart's desire would be fulfilled."
groom."
"These circumstances need form no obstacle to our
marriage," replied the lady. "As to the first objection, I
relief, however, to find that the Prince and his servant had
disappeared. Taking advantage of this circumstance, she
gay clothing."
"When I went to open your coffin, I had, as I say, a
The only things saved from the flames were the "Sutra of
Reason and of Virtue," and "The Classic of Nan-hwa,"
which were found by some neighbors, and carefully
treasured.
not known, but one thing is certain, and that is, that he
remained a widower for the rest of his life.
ARTIFICIAL BEAUTY
by Lucianus
and justice. . . .
27
No tears, Celia, now shall win
My resolved heart to return;
28
THE INCOMPARABLE BUZZ-SAW
by H. L. Mencken
some banal drudgery all his life long, they offer the only
29
30 MAN AGAINST WOMAN
Solomon's time; they are still inordinately menacing,
and hence inordinately provocative, and hence inordi-
nately charming.
II
35
36 MAN AGAINST WOMAN
non-participant. I heckle from the sidelines. I throw stones
and spit at the players. Hence the nickname: "Sweet Old
Bob/' or sometimes just the initials.
being eased out of the house. This meant that the gaming
was about to begin. But instead of the usual clatter of
you."
"What's this?" I came back into the room. "Are those
poker chips?"
"Sure, they're poker chips. It's all right to play poker,
I was hurt.
gested."
like it. One card up, two down, the last two up. One-eyed
Jacks, sevens, and nines wild. High-low."
"I thought this was going to be poker," I said.
the dealer.
From then on ! My God ! Just like regular poker
Having established myself as an old poker-fan, I didn't
By the time the deal came to me, my pipe had gone out
and I had taken my hat off. Between clenched teeth I an-
nounced "And : this, my f rands, is going to be something
you may not have heard of. This is going to be old-
fashioned draw-po\er, with nothing wild." The women
had to have it explained to them, and remarked that they
didn't see much fun in that. However, the hand was
played. Nobody had anything (in comparison to what
they had been having in the boom days), and nobody bet.
The hand was over in a minute and a half, amid terrific
silence.
a.m. Two of the women were the big winners. They had
finally got it down to a game where everything was wild
but the black nines, and everyone was trying for "low."
From now on I not only walk out on "Twenty Ques-
tions" and "Who Am I?" but, when there are ladies
Infinite, undying
Lady, make a note of this:
41
A female poet, a female author of any hjnd, rankj
below an actress, I thinly.
—Ciivrles Lamb
YOU NEVER TELL ME
ANYTHING
by Charles W. Morton
not the wife who comes off as the defective in the contest
The wife does not need to lay any deep plan for using
the gleanings of her half hour under the dryer. They
simply pop into her head that evening at dinner.
"What is going on in Turkey?" she asks. Her air is that
The wife has the situation well in hand by this time. Pa-
tiently, as if according a stubborn child one more chance,
she says, "Well, then tell me some more interesting things
courts and so on. She has just heard the district attorney
"I did so wish you had been with me at the lecture this
afternoon," the wife begins. "I know you don't like that
sort of thing, but this one was simply fascinating. I learned
things about our courts that I'll bet even you didn't know.
."
Somehow, he made it all so simple, so clear. . .
torney —or whatever you call him," the wife replies. "I
ference," says the wife. "I don't think it was either of them.
They think they can cure everything with a great big kiss.
They are annoying when they stay home
And even more annoying when they roam,
And when you tell them about something they have done
they just look unbearably patient and smile a superior
smile,
And then they tell you that women are unreasonable and
don't know anything about logic,
house,
So you get them what they want and then when the bills
the slorterhouse,
And they are brave and calm and cool and collected about
the ailments of the person they have promised to honor
and cherish,
And when you are alone with them they ignore all the
lack them,
CERTAIN SOCIAL PROBLEMS 53
But when there are a lot of people around they hand you
so many chairs and ash trays and sandwiches and butter
you with such bowings and scrapings that you want
to smack them.
Husbands are indeed an irritating form of life,
their wife.
It is only the man whose intellect is clouded by his
sexual impulses that could give the name of the fair sex
to that undersized, narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped, and
short-legged race: for the whole beauty of the sex is bound
up with this impulse.
— Schopenhauer
GETTING ALONG WITH WOMEN
by E. B. White
w,HO IS this
Did any of you read that article ? I mean the article called
women, but they don't ring true. They haven't got what I
55
$6 MAN AGAINST WOMAN
got to have to get along is the ability to "see in every
woman something of the woman eternal." Well, that's
one thing. I call her Father. Old Father Nature. Good old
But I'll let that go. Let's see how a man should behave
to get along with women, according to old Daddy Anony-
mous, the king of Get Alongers.
"If you really are intent on getting along well with your
woman," he says, "anything you do to help things along is
justifiable." Now isn't that just fine ? For the sake of get-
ting along, anything goes. Anonymous, even if I were in-
say chuck her and get one you do love, one who fascinates
you so completely that getting along with her is practically
III
The history of women is the
form of tyr-
history of the worst
anny the world has ever \nown.
The tyranny of the wea\ over the
strong. It is the only tyranny that
lasts,
—Oscar Wilde
THE GARDEN OF EDEN
Anonymous
day from all his work which he had made. And God
blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in
it he had rested from all his work which God created
and made.
These are the generations of the heavens and of the
earthwhen they were created, in the day that the Lord
God made the earth and the heavens, and every plant of
the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the
field before it grew: for the Lord God had not caused it
to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the
ground. But there went up a mist from the earth, and
watered the whole face of the ground. And the Lord God
formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into
his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living
soul.
65
66 MAN AGAINST WOMAN
And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden;
and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out
of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree
that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree
of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of
And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man
should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.
And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast
of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them
unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatso-
ever Adam called every living creature, that was the name
THE OLD GUARD 6j
fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for
Adam there was not found a help meet for him. And the
instead thereof. And the rib, which the Lord God had
taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto
the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones,
Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the
field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto
the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every
tree of the garden ? And the woman said unto the serpent,
We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: but of
And when the woman saw that the tree was good for
food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be
68 MAN AGAINST WOMAN
desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof,
and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her;
and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened,
and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig
in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid them-
selves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the
trees of the garden. And the Lord God called unto Adam,
and said unto him, Where art thou ? And he said, I heard
thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was
naked; and I hid myself. And he said, Who told thee that
And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou
hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above
every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and
dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: And I will put
ing, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy
sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy
and unto dust shalt thou return. And Adam called his
wife's name Eve ; because she was the mother of all living.
Unto Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make
coats of skins, and clothed them.
And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as
one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put
forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat,
and live for ever: therefore the Lord God sent him forth
from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence
he was taken. So he drove out the man: and he placed at
— Spanish proverb
trouble with the whole sex. But now our privileges, over-
powered at home by female contumacy, are, even here in
the Forum, spurned and trodden under foot ; and because
we are unable to withstand each separately we now dread
their collective body. I was accustomed to think it a fabu-
lous and fictitious tale that in a certain island the whole
race of males was utterly extirpated by a conspiracy of the
women.
But the utmost danger may be apprehended equally
from either sex if you suffer cabals and secret consultations
If, then, you suffer them to throw these off one by one, to
tear them all asunder, and, at last, to be set on an equal
74 M AN AGAINST WOMAN
footing with yourselves, can you imagine that they will be
any longer tolerable? Suffer them once to arrive at an
equality with you, and they will from that moment be-
But, indeed, they only object to any new law being made
against them; they mean to deprecate, not justice, but
severity. Nay, their wish is that a law which you have ad-
mitted, established by your suffrages, and found in the
luxury and avarice; those pests which have ever been the
ruin of every great state. These I dread the more, as the
had not been made; and yet not one woman accepted a
present. What, think you, was the reason ? That for which
our ancestors made no provision by law on this subject:
receive gold and purple that was thrown in their way and
offered to their acceptance. If Cineas were now to go round
the city with his presents, he would find numbers of
law relieves you with regard to both; you want only that
which it is unlawful for you to have.
This equalization, says the rich matron, is the very thing
that I cannot endure. Why do not I make a figure, dis-
tinguished with gold and purple? Why is the poverty of
others concealed under this cover of a law, so that it should
be thought that, if the law permitted, they would have
such things as they are not now able to procure ? Romans,
do you wish to excite among your wives an emulation of
this sort, that the rich should wish to have what no other
can have; and that the poor, lest they should be despised
as such, should extend their expenses beyond their abili-
ties?Be assured that when a woman once begins to be
ashamed of what she ought not to be ashamed of, she will
78 MAN AGAINST WOMAN
not be ashamed of what she ought. She who can, will
purchase out of her own purse; she who cannot, will ask
her husband.
Unhappy is the husband, both he who complies with the
request, and he who does not; for what he will not give
79
80 MAN AGAINST WOMAN
This dame has just got to keep howling.
Another the Olympians made of Earth. This one is
Another God made of the sea. One day she does noth-
ing but laugh, and a stranger, seeing her, will say: "This
is without doubt the best wife in the world, as well as the
meantime she eats all day long, no matter where she hap-
pens to be, and all men are welcome to her bed.
There is also the kind made of a cat, who is not pretty,
pleasant or physically desirable. This one is always meow-
ing for a mate, but when she gets one she turns his
stomach. She also manages to do her neighbors lots of
and the favor of men, just then will his wife find cause to
blame and battle him. Where there is a woman, a stranger
83
Women . . . are only children of a larger growth; they
X I
O MY DEAR FRIEND:
know of no medicine fit to diminish the violent natural
inclinations you mention; and if I did, I think I should
not communicate it to you. Marriage is the proper remedy.
But if you will not take this Counsel & persist in think-
& great, & are the most tender and useful of Friends when
you are sick. Thus they continue amiable. And hence there
the highest part. The Face first grows lank and wrinkled;
then the Neck; then the Breast and Arms; the lower Parts
continuing to the last as plump as ever: so that covering all
Benjamin Franklin
THE NEW LOOK
IV
She will stay at home, perhaps,
if her leg be bro\e.
—Thomas Fuller
THE CASE AGAINST WOMEN
by James Thurber
A
more
BRIGHT-EYED woman,
of eagerness than of
whose sparkle was rather
intelligence, approached
me at a party one afternoon and said,"Why do you hate
women, Mr. Thurberg?" I quickly adjusted my fixed grin
and denied that I hated women; I said I did not hate
the time —to set down these reasons, just as they came up
out of my subconscious.
In the first place, I hate women because they always
know where things are. At first blush, you might think
that a perverse and merely churlish reason for hating
women, but it is not. Naturally, every man enjoys having
a woman around the house who knows where his shirt
studs and his briefcase are, and things like that, but he
Permission the author
Copyright 1936, The New Yorker Magazine, Inc.
91
92 MAN AGAINST WOMAN
detests having a woman around who knows where every-
thing is, even things that are of no importance at all, such
as, say, the snapshots her husband took three years ago at
Elbow Beach. The husband has never known where these
down to sip his own, she will say, "George, I wish you
would go and get those snapshots we took at Elbow
Beach and show them to the Murphys." The husband, as
talk. But Grace Murphy says that she wants to see the pic-
tures; she is crazy to see the pictures; for one thing, the
wife, who has brought the subject up, wants Mrs. Murphy
to see the photo of a certain costume that the wife wore at
where they are. It turns out, after a lot of give and take,
one that annoys him most of all her smiles) and reiterates
that the snapshots are in the upper right-hand drawer of
the desk. He simply didn't look, that's all. The husband
knows that he looked; he knows that he prodded and dug
and excavated in that drawer and that the snapshots
simply are not there.The wife tells him to go look again
and he will find them. The husband goes back and looks
—
again the guests can hear him growling and cursing and
rattling papers. Then he shouts out from the next room.
you have in your hand ?" What he has in his hand turns
out to be an insurance policy and an old bankbook —and
the snapshots. The wife gets off the old line about what it
what she is wearing. The cold, flat look that comes into
a woman's eyes when she does this, the swift coarsening
of her countenance, and the immediate evaporation from
it of all humane quality make the male shudder. He is
office and lock himself in for hours. I know one man who
surprised that look in his wife's eyes and never afterward
would let her come near him. If she started toward him,
he would dodge behind a table or a sofa, as if he were
engaging in some unholy game of tag. That look, I be-
lieve, is one reason men disappear, and turn up in Tahiti
or the Arctic or the United States Navy.
I (to quit hiding behind the generalization of "the
the 2:57 tram , °n a day that the 2:57 does not run, or, if
it does run, does not stop at the station where you are
supposed to get off. Many men, separated from a woman
by this particular form of imprecision, have never showed
up in her life again. Nothing so embitters a man as to
at Westport.
I hate women because they have brought into the cur-
rency of our language such expressions as "all righty" and
"yes indeedy" and hundreds of others. I hate women be-
99
100 MAN AGAINST WOMAN
goose, for according to Genesis, the fowl was first
created."
is a digression.
vant.
tempt Eve.
As a conservative, I must say that the inferiority of the
stay the blow, where would our Miss have been then?
she never would have married Rolfe. What would the
first families of Virginia have done for somebody to
descend from?
The disturbing female, my former schoolmistress, of
whom I have spoken once or twice, maintains that
women's qualifications entitle them to vote. I answer that
such is not the case. For example, my friend is learned.
Then the ivy has her oak. Then, if her husband is a good
man, a kind man, an honest man, a sober man, an in-
will be tolerably certain to, at least, have all that she can
eat, and all that she can wear, as long as he continues so.
at home—with me.
In the matter of wages, I do not see how it is to be
and as, for every vacant place, there are a hundred women
eager for it, their pay — as a matter of course — is brought
down to a fine point.
the oldest.
some men leer into the face of every woman who strives
edge the position in life nature fixed for them, they rebel,
and the sash kept out a portion of the smell. In this de-
lightful retreat, she sat and sat and sewed and sewed.
Sometimes, in her zeal, she would sew till late in the
night, and she was always at her work very early in the
morning. She paid rent promptly, for the genial old
gentleman of whom she leased her room had a sportive
habit of kicking girls into the street who did not pay
promptly. She managed every now and then, did this
economical girl, to purchase a loaf of bread, which she
ate.
woman cry, kicked her out of his store into the snow.
What did this wicked girl do? Did she go back and
ask pardon of her good, tender-hearted employer? Not
she! On the contrary, she clenched her hands, and, passing
sixty days.
head, fell into bad ways. Remorse for the stealing of that
loaf of bread so preyed upon her, that she wandered
about the streets of New York for five days, asking for
WOMEN AS PLAYTHINGS
by George Jean Nathan
A
defined
.LTHOUGH
woman
so great a philosopher as Nietzsche
as a plaything
—"the reward of the war-
rior" was his phrase —any lesser man who would repeat
III
112 MAN AGAINST WOMAN
nomenon among women offers illuminating evidence.
This phenomenon is, in essence, nothing but a challenge
and a resentment.
but she no longer has the right playmate. For one can't
be a playmate when illusion has gone its way. It is thus
that married women so frequently seek innocent unction
a score who win by their toy quality. ... I have said that,
know one who wouldn't fall down the first open coal-
hole running after the first pretty girl who gave him a
wink.
THE NEW LOOK 119
and we admired his attitude and loved her the more for
it. For we knew other fathers who looked on our boy
friends' mothers with harder and prosier eyes, and we
saw that these mothers of our boy friends showed it. They
scolded their sons, we noticed, a lot more and a lot
oftener than our mother did us; and their smiles, we no-
ticed, were sometimes sort of cold smiles where those of
our mother seemed not to be. We noticed these differences
and many others, and if we then, as youngsters, didn't
know the reason for them, that reason we began to know
in our more mature and reflective years. . . . There is
V
Her best and safest club is the
home. . . and respon-
. Sensible
sible women do not want to
vote. The relative positions to
ways ready to receive ; and before you can get the door-mat
before your eyes she is in your midst. Then, again, the
j 'accuse 125
charm without dress; and some would lose all of it. The
daughter of modern civilization dressed at her utmost
best, is a marvel of exquisite and beautiful art and expense.
All the lands, all the climes, and all the arts are laid
under tribute to furnish her forth. Her linen is from
Belfast, her robe is from Paris, her lace is from Venice, or
Spain, or France; her feathers are from the remote
regions of Southern Africa, her furs from the remoter
home of the iceberg and the aurora, her fan from Japan,
her diamonds from Brazil, her bracelets from California,
her pearls from Ceylon, her cameos from Rome; she
has gems and trinkets from buried Pompeii, and others
that graced comely Egyptian forms that have been dust
and ashes now for forty centuries; her watch is from
Geneva, her card-case is from China, her hair is from
from — I don't know where her hair is from; I never could
find out. That is, her other hair —her public hair, her
Sunday hair; I don't mean the hair she goes to bed with.
126 MAN AGAINST WOMAN
Why, you ought to know the hair I mean; it's that thing
which she twists and then coils round and round her
head, beehive fashion, and then tucks the end in under
the hive and harpoons it with a hairpin. And that reminds
hairpin; but not to save your life can you get any woman
in that car to acknowledge that hairpin. Now, isn't that
strange ? But it's true. The woman who has never swerved
from cast-iron veracity and fidelity in her whole life
j 'accuse 127
trusted.
—Homer
probably leaks.
Ice, as used by women, is as massive a difficulty as all
barrelhead.
Ice is cheap. It's rather attractive. It sounds good when
agitated in abundance. Yet many a man drafted to shake
The man files his disclaimers. All that his hostess will
132 MAN AGAINST WOMAN
need, he assures her, will be three bottles of rum, a third
as much lemon juice, some granulated sugar, and plenty
of ice.
for five p.m. The man finds that he must walk oil on
various office responsibilities, but he rushes out and ar-
rives at five-fifteen. About a dozen people are already
there. They all look at him sternly when the hostess an-
nounces that they just couldn't have anything to drink
until he was there to mix what she insists on calling "his
specialties."
glasses. The man takes off the cap from the shaker
spout and tries to pour a drink. Enough of a cocktail
comes forth to fill perhaps an eighth of the glass. From
j 'accuse 133
filler. It takes a long time to fill the first glass. The second
is getting nowhere, and the man recaps the shaker and
gives it a hard shake. He gains enough volume to fill
man replies.
135
I36 MAN AGAINST WOMAN
Having said this I dodge behind the Editor and explain
it.
a girl who talks all the time, that exactly suits him. He
doesn't have to say anything. Ten years later you'll
j 'accuse 137
of his ill temper, and never knows that he adored her till
All men, you see, have the idea that they are always
busy, and if they are not, a woman can soon persuade them
that they are. Just say, "I don't see how you do it all,"
Women are apt to fall for a poet, for anything with long
the procession, comes last, with only a cap and bells be-
hind it.
never make puns; never did; they think them silly. Per-
haps they can't make them I hope not. —
Nor have women that unhappy passion for repeating
funny stories in order to make a hit, which becomes a sort
of mental obsession with many men. The "funny story"
right for looking out from the golden bars of heaven, but
anywhere.
It might easily be objected that all such opinions about
sweetness in women are just left-over Victorianism, half
ferent plane. All the old hoodoos and taboos are gone.
All the girls smoke. They use language just as bad as
any themen care to use. They drink cocktails and give the
weaker men the cherry. In other words, they can curse
of physique, they may not be equal to the men but after all
they can drive a car and fly a plane and telemark all
You only knew her when she was wrinkled and hobbling,
reading the Epistle to the Thessalonians in a lace cap
and saying she didn't know what the world was coming
to. The young have always been young, and the old
always old . . . men and women don't change. It took
thousands, uncounted thousands, of years to make them
what they are. The changes that you think you see lie
just on the surface. You could wash them away with soap
Then came the war in the air. ... It has bombed the
the individual will have its own again under his feet.
the strength and power of our kin and kind, bred in our
garden and trim grass and flower and vegetable beds, and
father trying to plant a cherry tree from a book.
coal mine.
L IKE
tremulous.
all brides, she
As they turned
looked heartbreakingly sweet and
to march up the aisle, she
lifted a radiant face to the man beside her and whispered:
"Stand a little straighter, dear."
145
I46 MAN AGAINST WOMAN
This undaunted approach may, perhaps, have some-
thing to do with the divorce rate, axe murders, and the
number of morose characters nursing a shot glass late at
night in men's bars. Nevertheless, it has made American
civilization the envy of the world; or, anyhow, the
feminine half of it. Never before in history has any na-
tion devoted so large a share of its brains and resources to
cal labor.
is low, they know they can pressure him into almost any-
And thereby won his bet and withdrew his neck into
safety.
149
150 MAN AGAINST WOMAN
first and foremost a poet or a plumber, is a sort of chronic
interrogation mark, the unsolved riddle of the ages, a
that has never been before and will never be again —in
other words the Exceptional Woman who has, inciden-
we can only dimly discern the First Man and the First
Woman fighting, for no very obvious reason, to survive. In
that struggle one thing is biologically certain. Though
there were undoubtedly differences in point of view and
temperament, there was little to choose between them in
muscle and brain power. (If anything the woman may
have been the more agile and enduring and almost cer-
gether.
j'accuse 157
nents where they did not belong, and as the original in-
habitants raised objections, started the glorious business of
had cared enough to fight for it. They had torn up paving
stones, destroyed property and broken heads. They had
even died for it. The Little Woman, of course, would not
and indeed could not do such things. Ergo, she didn't
j'accuse 159
care enough. Ergo, since she could not fight for her rights,
but later because it was good to find her home, fun to hear
her. She was a great sport. She had guts. For the first
It was not yet a total war and total effort was not de-
manded of them. They were not yet to fight and die, ex-
If men still pat them on the head and allow them to write
nationalism.
But we have to hope. If we want to survive —and it
169
170 MAN AGAINST WOMAN
The failure of genius to appear among women has been
remarked ever since men began to entertain the idea that
are wont to point out sniffishly that the books which refuse
to concede genius to women have been written by those
self-impressed creatures, men. Unfortunately, no woman
of genius has yet composed a refutation of them.
even sadder since about half the names were included be-
cause their owners had been eminent as sovereigns, politi-
They come closest; but they do not attain it. There are
not, even in literature, any feminine names which can
stand beside those of the real titans among the men. Who
are the greatest women novelists? Jane Austen, the
Brontes, George Eliot, George Sand ? This is virtually the
11
ture more often scaled to the feminine mind. This was not
true in the days when poetry used to perform the functions
later taken over by the novel; there never has been a
woman epic poet. But insofar as poetry has become re-
duced to the artistic arrangement of words and to the ex-
who feel that even in her own field there have been mascu-
line workers who made greater contributions, such as
Lord Rutherford, whose research established the existence
and nature of radioactive transformations. Because it was
astonishing and unprecedented that such an achievement
should have been attained by a woman, the romantic pub-
lic tended to magnify that achievement to a point which
overshadowed the parallel work of masculine scientists,
whose successes were less surprising.
abdicate.
These facts are not cited with the intention of fixing upon
these women the stigma, in many cases unjustified, of that
in
the man.
The difference between the true arts and the half-arts,
ondary sexual character, like the beard and the bass voice.
"Poetic genius is intimately associated with sexual power,
rv
genius.
VI
Men are women s playthings;
women are the devil's.
—Victor Hugo
A PAIR OF SEXES
by Franklin P. Adams
A MAN TELEPHONES
ii
a woman telephones
six seven, please. Oh, this is Caledonia five eight six seven ?
Oh, I beg your pardon, I'm terribly sorry. I thought it
was the operator. I've had so much trouble with the tele-
phone lately. May I speak to Miss Lucille Webster, please ?
Oh, speaking? Oh, I'm terribly sorry. Is this Miss Webster ?
Is this you, Lucille ? I didn't recognize your voice at first.
185
1 86 MAN AGAINST WOMAN
Oh, you sound as though you had. There's so much
of it around this wretched weather. I never saw any-
thing like it in my whole life. Well, I'm glad you
haven't got a cold, though at first you certainly sounded
like it. ... I was just talking to Ethel for a second, and
she had such a cold she could hardly talk. That's the
reason I asked you. There's an awful lot of it around this
take a cab. If I can get one. Did you ever see anything
like how hard it is to get a cab nowadays ? My dear, last
me. But if I can't get one I'll walk. It's only a block. And
I guess a little exercise wouldn't do me any harm. . . .
between Park and Madison on the — let's see —on the down-
town, that's the south side of the street. I'll be there by one,
or anyway one-thirty, and if I'm there first I'll get a table,
and you do the same if you are. But I ought to be there
by one. My appointment is for half-past twelve, and it may
take me only a few minutes. I might be there before one.
But surely by quarter past, and certainly by one-thirty
All right, then. Suppose we say about one, at Maillard's.
. . . Oh, no, what am I thinking of? We decided that
would be too crowded, didn't we? Unless you'd rather
go there. That little tea shop is very nice. . . . Well, yes,
189
Perverse though their taste in cravats
Is deemed by their lords and their betters,
How high are their minds and how noble the motive.
190
;
iqi
To the open view of all men they paint and embellish
themselves with counterfeit and borrowed beauties. I have
seen them swallow gravel, ashes, coals, dust, tallow can-
vously down the sofa at the girl in the fringed dress. She
193
194 MAN AGAINST WOMAN
trouble for anything," she said. "It's awfully sweet of you
to think of it. Thank you ever so much."
"Will you for God's sakes stop thanking me?" he said.
know what it feels like to get your feelings hurt. I'm sure
I didn't realize it was an insult to say 'thank you' to a
or something."
"Do you want me to go out and get you some cigarettes;
"Be what way?" she said. "I'm not being any way."
"What's the matter?" he said.
"I beg your pardon," she said. "What did you say I
was?"
"Well, I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to say that.
your home and use language like that to you, that's all.
here and have someone tell you you interfere with his
business."
"Oh, didn't you?" she said. "Well, that was the impres-
sion I got. It must be my stupidity."
"I guess maybe I better go," he said. "I can't get right.
said, 'Oh, how do you do' —just like that, 'Oh, how do
you do' —and you turned right away and wouldn't look
at me."
"I wouldn't look at you?" she said. "Oh, that's awfully
funny. Oh, that's marvelous. You don't mind if I laugh, do
you?"
"Go ahead and laugh your head off," he said. "But you
wouldn't."
"Well, the minute you came in the room," she said,
could I?"
"I certainly didn't see you try," she said.
"And what did you do? 'Oh, how do you do/ Then
FACT OR FICTION? 199
he said.
"She has got an awfully funny nose," she said. "I really
"I think you're just perfectly crazy," she said. "I was not
sore!What on earth ever made you think I was? You're
simply crazy. Ow, my new pearl beads! Wait a second till
I take them off. There!"
"My dear Mr. Bennet," said his lady to him one day,
"have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last?"
"But it is," returned she; "for Mrs. Long has just been
here, and she told me all about it."
201
202 MAN AGAINST WOMAN
This was invitation enough.
"Why, my dear, you must know, Mrs. Long says that
least."
"Ah you do
! not know what I suffer."
"But I hope you will get over it, and live to see many
young men of four thousand a-year come into the neigh-
bourhood."
"It will be no use to us, if twenty such should come,
since you will not visit them."
"Depend upon it, my dear, that when there are twenty,
ness of her life was to get her daughters married ; its solace
for her to introduce him, for she will not know him her-
self."
take it on myself."
The girls stared at their father. Mrs. Bennet said only,
"Nonsense, nonsense!"
"What can be the meaning of that emphatic exclama-
tion?" cried he. "Do you consider the forms of introduc-
tion, and the stress that is laid on them, as nonsense? I
cannot quite agree with you there. What say you, Mary?
for you are a young lady of deep reflection, I know, and
read great books and make extracts."
;
"I am sorry to hear that; but why did not you tell me
so before ? If I had known as much this morning I cer-
when the first tumult of joy was over, she began to declare
that it was what she had expected all the while.
"How good it was in you, my dear Mr. Bennet! But I
1935
John Fischer and Harpers Magazine for "The Loving Care of
Determined Women" by John Fischer in Harpers Magazine,
August, 1955
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. for "Women Are Playthings" from The
World of George Jean Nathan, edited by Charles Angoff, and
209
210 MAN AGAINST WOMAN
"The War Between Man and Woman" and "The Incomparable
Buzz-Saw" from A Mencken Chrestomathy by H. L. Mencken
J. B. Lippincott Company for "Women and Drinks" and "You
Never Tell Me Anything" from How to Protect Yourself
Against Women by Charles W. Morton
McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc. for "What You Don't Know
Won't Hurt You Till Later" and "Lady, Your Claws Are
Showing" from Light Armour by Richard Armour. These poems
first appeared in the Saturday Evening Post.
Ogden Nash "What Almost Every Woman Knows Sooner
for
No. 7323A
Charles Neider and his wife, Joan, share one of those moments of calm
reflection which occasionally punctuated the preparing of man against
woman for the press.
No. 4895