Althouse: "It is a mistaken idea, which men generally entertain, that nature has made women especially prone to throw their whole being into what is technically called love."

April 6, 2014

"It is a mistaken idea, which men generally entertain, that nature has made women especially prone to throw their whole being into what is technically called love."

"We have, to say the least, no more necessity for it than yourselves; only we have nothing else to do with our hearts. When women have other objects in life, they are not apt to fall in love. I can think of many women distinguished in art, literature, and science — and multitudes whose hearts and minds find good employment in less ostentatious ways — who lead high, lonely lives, and are conscious of no sacrifice so far as your sex is concerned."

That's a passage I marked in my paperback copy of one of my favorite novels when I read it quite a few years ago.

High, lonely lives... conscious of no sacrifice...

25 comments:

Jaq said...: Evolution, which shaped our emotions, works in the aggregate and over generations. Individuals are always welcome to opt out of the game.; 4/6/14, 11:07 AM
Sorun said...: I wonder if it's a good idea to start an orgasmic meditation business to serve all those women artists etc.; 4/6/14, 11:13 AM
YoungHegelian said...: When women have other objects in life, they are not apt to fall in love. I can think of many women distinguished in art, literature, and science — and multitudes whose hearts and minds find good employment in less ostentatious ways — who lead high, lonely lives, and are conscious of no sacrifice so far as your sex is concerned."

Convents used to be full of such women. Today, sadly, they aren't.; 4/6/14, 11:16 AM
Ann Althouse said...: "Today, sadly, they aren't."

You think more women should be nuns? Or are you just sad that convents are insufficiently staffed these days?; 4/6/14, 11:19 AM
Austin said...: With all due respect, this is not a particularly novel or perspicacious observation. It is a given that both men and women have an equal capacity to be kind, decent, caring, gentle, selfless, and compassionate, as well as mean, nasty, vicious, selfish, odious, and violent. Again, this is all well understood.; 4/6/14, 11:19 AM
Anonymous said...: Comedy Stage Open Mic Night Comic says:

There was a woman I was quite fond of, quite fond: beautiful, smart, funny. And -- yes -- I realize I put 'beautiful' first, I'm shallow, you should know this by now (laughter). Face it: If I had said "smart, funny, beautiful' you would automatically be suspicious of the 'beautiful' part, like I tossed it in at the last minute to cover my bases (laughter), just in case word got back to her (laughter)...

Anyway, I was very fond of her, we'd have great conversations that didn't revolve around masturbation (laughter). Much. (laughter) She'd do all kinds of cute things, very cute: for instance, before eating a donut she would push her finger back-and-forth through the hole in 'that way' -- a real keeper (laughter)...

Then she told me her life was too full of things to have room for a relationship right now. Well, that kinda stopped me in my tracks (laughter), I think my donut drooped (laughter). I mean, I live in my parents' basement, I'VE got time (laughter), but she was an artist who was going to be a lawyer who was going to help the disadvantaged and she was going to turn these experiences into a volume of poetry. And, well -- who am I to ask if the world really needs another volume of poetry (laughter)...

Here's the thing: she had wonderful big breasts, she'd wear tight t-shirts and you could practically hear her bra straps hum from the exertion of keeping her tray in the up-and-locked position (laughter). So, to recap: beautiful, smart, funny, with wonderful big breasts; I'm doing my best not to masturbate right now in front of you fine folks (laughter)...

So I thought: her life may seem too full of things, but it seems like she had extra storage capabilities (laughter), maybe she could fill one breast with love for me (laughter). It was not to be, it was not to be: no doubt one day she'll be famous for her accomplishments, and me -- I'll be the guy who remembers her finger-f**king a donut (laughter)... Thank you, you've been very kind...; 4/6/14, 11:29 AM
YoungHegelian said...: @Prof Althouse,

Yes to both your questions.

Remember, that the Irish came to the US the poorest of the poor, poorer at the time than free blacks. Today, the Irish are with the Jews & Japanese, the wealthiest, best educated ethnic group in America.

What turned these starving potato farmers around? The American Catholic Church. Because there were all those church-educated nuns, brothers, and priests who basically worked for subsistence, a poor immigrant community could afford to educate its children up to a level competitive with anything the larger society could muster. That could never happen today. There simply aren't enough clergy to make it happen anywhere in the world now.

I hope that all those numerous & nameless clergy who sacrificed their lives in service to their community & their God do get their reward in Heaven, because the numbers are in, and they did a damn good job.; 4/6/14, 11:33 AM
Jaq said...: Orgasmic Meditation...

Once we fully reject the patriarchal male monopoly over the female orgasm, women will truly be free.

I swear that a lot of these liberals are unacknowledged, even to themselves, creationists.

Which is it? Was our universe created by a random variation in some kind of quantum substrate and life generated as consequence of emergent phenomena built on an underlying chaos?

Or were we created by some being who handed out attributes with assiduous fairness and equality to the human sexes, but to few of the other animals on this planet?

It is our purpose on this planet to discover these laws of perfect fairness and to impose them on the rest of humanity. Those of us who are the disciples of the one true faith, scientific liberalism, know this.; 4/6/14, 11:36 AM
Anonymous said...: Ann Althouse said...
"Today, sadly, they aren't."

You think more women should be nuns? Or are you just sad that convents are insufficiently staffed these days?

4/6/14, 11:19 AM

-------------------------------

Why not both?

______________________________

@Hegelian You need to add the Poles, Italians, and Slovaks to the list with the Irish.; 4/6/14, 11:52 AM
Wince said...: "We have, to say the least, no more necessity for it than yourselves; only we have nothing else to do with our hearts. When women have other objects in life, they are not apt to fall in love."

This one goes out to the one I love
This one goes out to the one I've left behind
A simple prop to occupy my time
This one goes out to the one I love

This one goes out to the one I love
This one goes out to the one I've left behind
Another prop has occupied my time
This one goes out to the one I love; 4/6/14, 11:54 AM
Anonymous said...: If Althouse had my comments in a paperback copy I would hope she'd mark the one above. Tenderness,female appreciation and masturbation humor: hat trick.

I love you Althouse America.; 4/6/14, 11:54 AM
Ann Althouse said...: The passage in the book that's not just marked but has significant marginalia (by me) is the first paragraph of Chapter 41, "Snowdrops and Maidenly Delights":

"It being still considerably earlier than the period at which artists and tourists are accustomed to assemble in Rome, the sculptor and Hilda found themselves comparatively alone there. The dense mass of native Roman life, in the midst of which they were, served to press them near one another. It was as if they had been thrown together on a desert island. Or, they seemed to have wandered, by some strange chance, out of the common world, and encountered each other in a depopulated city, where there were streets of lonely palaces, and unreckonable treasures of beautiful and admirable things, of which they two became the sole inheritors."

I invite you to see what bothered me so much about that.; 4/6/14, 11:59 AM
Ann Althouse said...: I should use that paragraph in the anti-travel book I'm writing (in my dreams).; 4/6/14, 12:00 PM
YoungHegelian said...: @Lars,

You need to add the Poles, Italians, and Slovaks to the list with the Irish.

I know that there were many ethnicities in the US that were trained by the American Church.

For whatever reasons (ethnic culture, modern income numbers not normalized by region, etc), the results for the other ethnic groups aren't as stellar as for the Irish. So, to be dramatic, I used the Irish as my example.

But your larger point applies, and I would never, ever think that Sister Mary Augusta, who smacked around little Slovaks, didn't deserve her place in Heaven next to Sister Mary Margaret, who smacked around little Irish.; 4/6/14, 12:03 PM
Auntie Ann said...: "It is, perhaps, our [women's] fate rather than our merit. We cannot help ourselves. We live at home, quiet, confined, and our feelings prey upon us. You are forced on exertion. You have always a profession, pursuits, business of some sort or other, to take you back into the world immediately, and continual occupation and change soon weaken impressions.

"[Men] have difficulties, and privations, and dangers enough to struggle with. You are always labouring and toiling, exposed to every risk and hardship. Your home, country, friends, all quitted. Neither time, nor health, nor life, to be called your own."

--Anne Eliot (Jane Austen), Persuasion; 4/6/14, 12:04 PM
n.n said...: Tolerance. Not normalization. When women and men normalize the latter, then welcome the Dodo Dynasty. I wonder if dodos were victims of their own inflated egos.; 4/6/14, 12:08 PM
Michael K said...: "I hope that all those numerous & nameless clergy who sacrificed their lives in service to their community & their God do get their reward in Heaven, because the numbers are in, and they did a damn good job."

Agreed and though they had their problems, many were quite happy and felt rewarded. I grew up being educated by nuns and brothers and serving mass with priests. Some of the priests became friends although several got caught up in the sex trials of American priests later. The ones I knew were interested in women, not boys.; 4/6/14, 1:13 PM
rhhardin said...: Emily Brudick in Engendering Romance explains it all, including Hawthorne.; 4/6/14, 1:26 PM
rhhardin said...: The stories Burdick considers, as I recall at a distance of several decades, she took as showing what happens in a world without women, just men.

Which is a starting point for all sorts of commentary.; 4/6/14, 2:07 PM
rhhardin said...: Women in films make some inexplicable problem for themselves, which either ends as it began or ends happily with a man.

Just based on a few DVDs.

Perhaps women empathize better with the problem than guys do.; 4/6/14, 2:15 PM
traditionalguy said...: One career feminist principle has been stated as, "My Plan is not a man."

But on second thought, to enjoy life a good man is a great plan.; 4/6/14, 3:04 PM
Al said...: "I wonder if dodos were victims of their own inflated egos."

Neil Innes wrote a song about this. "Say Sorry Again," from the LP "The Rutland Weekend Songbook."; 4/6/14, 4:43 PM
ALP said...: "What turned these starving potato farmers around?"
**********************
Well, coming to the US with a command of the English language didn't hurt either, an advantage the Italians, Germans, etc... did not have.; 4/6/14, 6:06 PM
Michael K said...: "Well, coming to the US with a command of the English language didn't hurt either, an advantage the Italians, Germans, etc... did not have."

This was a point made by someone, perhaps Theodore White, about how the Irish knew the English common law and the language so many became policemen.; 4/6/14, 8:33 PM
Wince said...: Sick for Toys

This girl I know
She's sick for toys, sick for toys
She needs a new toy
A brand new toy

She's tired of her old toys
She's got a big house full of old toys
What can she do?
She needs a new toy

Sick, sick, sick for toys
Sick, sick, sick for toys

She is sick, sick for toys

She disposes of her old toys
She badly needs a new toy
In a small garden she finds a small boy
She smiles, she's happy

She found her new toy, a small boy
She's sick for toys
She needs a new toy
To watch her, comb her hair
Comb all of her hair

Sick, sick, sick for toys
She is sick, sick for toys
She really is sick for toys

This girl I know found a new toy
A boy, she used him to watch her comb hair
Day in, day out, night in, night out
She really was sick for toys

In the end she fell asleep
The boy cut off her hair, all of her hair
She was bald
She might not now be sick for toys; 4/6/14, 9:11 PM