Читать книгу Common Sense About Women - Thomas Wentworth Higginson - Страница 9

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A highly educated American woman of my acquaintance once employed a French tutor in Paris, to assist her in teaching Latin to her little grandson. The Frenchman brought with him a Latin grammar, written in his own language, with which my friend was quite pleased, until she came to a passage relating to the masculine gender in nouns, and claiming grammatical precedence for it on the ground that the male sex is the noble sex,—”le sexe noble.” “Upon that,” she said, “I burst forth in indignation, and the poor teacher soon retired. But I do not believe,” she added, “that the Frenchman has the slightest conception, up to this moment, of what I could find in that phrase to displease me.”

I do not suppose he could. From the time when the Salic Law set French women aside from the royal succession, on the ground that the kingdom of France was “too noble to be ruled by a woman,” the claim of nobility has been all on one side. The State has strengthened the Church in this theory, the Church has strengthened the State; and the result of all is, that French grammarians follow both these high authorities. When even the good Père Hyacinthe teaches, through the New York Independent, that the husband is to direct the conscience of his wife, precisely as the father directs that of his child, what higher philosophy can you expect of any Frenchman than to maintain the claims of “le sexe noble”?

We see the consequence, even among the most heterodox Frenchmen. Rejecting all other precedents and authorities, the poor Communists still held to this. Consider, for instance, this translation of a marriage-contract under the Commune, which lately came to light in a trial reported in the “Gazette des Tribunaux:”—