The complete works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Miscellanies [Vol. 11]

But it is cheap wit that has been spent on this subject; from Aristophanes, in whose comedies I confess my dulness to find good joke, to Rabelais, in whom it is monstrous exaggeration of temperament, and not borne out by anything in nature,—down to English Comedy, and, in our day, to Tennyson,1 and the American newspapers. In all, the body of the joke is one, namely, to charge women with temperament; to describe them as victims of temperament; and is identical with Mahomet's opinion that women have not a sufficient moral or intellectual force to control the perturbations of their physical structure. These were all drawings of morbid anatomy, and such satire as might be written on the tenants of a hospital or on an asylum for idiots. Of course it would be easy for women to retaliate in kind, by painting men from the dogs and gorillas that have worn our shape. That they have not, is an eulogy on their taste and self-respect. The good easy world took the joke which it liked. There is always the want of thought; there is always credulity. There are plenty of people who believe women to be incapable of anything but to cook, incapable of interest in affairs. There are plenty of people who believe that the world is

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Title: The complete works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Miscellanies [Vol. 11]
Author: Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1803-1882.
Canvas: Page 417
Publication: Boston ; New York :: Houghton, Mifflin,; [1903-1904].

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Full citation: "The complete works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Miscellanies [Vol. 11]." In the digital collection The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/4957107.0011.001. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed June 13, 2025.

The complete works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Miscellanies [Vol. 11]

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