Poetry and Romance Favorable to Women

It really amazed me that you should find any satisfaction in that book [Moby-Dick]. It is true that some men have said they were pleased with it, but you are the only woman — for as a general thing, women have small taste for the sea. But, then, since you, with your spiritualizing nature, see more things than other people, and by the same process, refine all you see, so that they are not the same things that other people see, but things which while you think you but humbly discover them, you do in fact create them for yourself — 

Herman Melville, Letter to Sophia Hawthorne, January 8, 1852

Right around the time of Melville's letter to Sophia Hawthorne, our "Captain of U. S. Dragoons" is similarly keen to explore the refined and spiritual nature of women compared with men. In dialogue with his "Imaginary Friend," the Captain bemoans the systemic mistreatment of women in supposedly civilized nations. Among many injustices, the withholding of educational opportunities from women is cited as one of the most "cruel" and profound. As a remedy, the Captain offers a philosophy of "romantic devotion," a kind of cultural chivalry that would embrace poetry and romance as the best means of justly honoring and appreciating women. This knightly advocacy of poetry and romance for the rightful estimation of women appears in the June 1852 installment of "Scenes Beyond the Western Border." It was only a few months before that Melville (in that letter to Sophia Hawthorne, quoted above) was comparing men and women and employing knightly language to recommend his just-finished romance, Pierre:

 "My Dear Lady, I shall not again send you a bowl of salt water. The next chalice I shall commend, will be a rural bowl of milk."  (Letter to Sophia Hawthorne)

In the book version the section on the just appreciation of women is designated in the table of contents as follows:

Dialogue, Women Compared with Men—
Poetry and Romance Favorable to Women 

Below, the whole conversation as it originally appeared in the June 1852 Southern Literary Messenger, 379-81:

I. F.  "Our friends, the Sioux,—of the Oglollah and Brule bands,—came in with the thunderstorm, with a fine, indeed startling effect; but for the women, I should have imagined they were dashing through the river to attack us. I was delighted with their fearless and hearty bearing; but the contrast of the men and women is painful."

C.  "The Sioux are rather my favorites: their freedom and power have imparted to the warriors—the men—some gentlemanly qualities: they are cleanly, dignified, and graceful in manner; brave, proud, and independent in bearing and deed. Their misfortune, their deep stain —the law of barbarism—is their treatment of women; they apply to them the brute law of the stronger!  Woman, the martyr! who rises only, and rises ever, as mind feeding upon knowledge, ascends to the throne of humanity! Oh! how powerful is education with its first impressions; how strong the harness of association and habit—despotic mental habit, which chains the very soul!"

I. F.  "Truly, these squaws bear the mark; bright-eyed as some of them are, a few only seem really to have souls.  But, do I understand you, that you esteem woman equal, or superior to her mate?"

C.  "I have made that ever a question to myself.  We say, Nature has given her an inferior part to play; that is, has assigned to her duties, which we choose to call inferior:  but there, she actively exhibits beautiful and high qualities, which we seldom possess, and underrate; how magnanimous is their patience, their self-denial and devotion! They are different from men. How generally in society, with the audacious but seldom denied claim to civilization, do men (alas! uneducated), like savages look upon them and treat them as drudges,—laborers in their service and ministers to their pleasure.  And what ever saves them from this common treatment, and the real degradation which it inevitably entails?" 

I. F.  "Religion?"

C.  "Religion, truly, elevates mankind; but, compared to women, how very few men indeed are religious. It is a proof of her naturally superior refinement; and doubtless her recompense for many ills; but it exaggerates her virtues to a humble resignation, of which the obtuse and hard hearts of men only take advantage. No! the remedy is the appreciating refinement of mental culture, delicacy of taste, a high sentiment of the Beautiful—in a word, the spirit of Poetry!  How palpably did the Providential romance of an otherwise barbarous age—of chivalry— rescue her from slavery and place her so near her proper level!" 

I. F.  All must observe that the noblest, and in general the most eminent men, evince the highest regard for women; that a profound and deferential respect for them is the first characteristic of a perfect gentleman:  but would you, like the knights of old, convert love into worship?  Do you advocate the blind devotion which led to violence and bloodshed?" 

C.  "No; you mistake a concomitant for a cause; the redeeming virtue of those ages was this romantic devotion, but tinctured, of course, with prevailing rudeness and crime. Love, always powerful, was ennobled and purified by martial romance; and, thus allied, was successful against barbarism. Worn out by change, romance is gone; but poetry, its vital element, is left; and its refined spirit alone can save love from materialism and degradation, and elevate its objects, so that man can bow with respectful devotion. I view woman as born superior; and often nobly sacrificing herself for our sake; the minister to, and our only hope for happiness. Striving always to make us more worthy of ourselves, and of her. How apt is vain man to undervalue those powers and qualities which he possesses not, or cannot understand: —as rude workmen despise the physical weakness, or the untutored hands of the student, who ennobled by science, pities the lowliness of their mental estate. Woman generally lacks that mathematical element, which in man, makes him often a little superior to some admirable machines; but she possesses instead, intuitively, certain delicate and refined perceptions, which to my mind are the 'impress of divinity.' We admit her mind developes more rapidly than ours, and call it precociousness; we choose to forget that this superiority lasts while she is receiving the education, which we cruelly stint. She is our superior in those qualities of our cultivated nature, which are so high, that the mass not only possess them not, but do not recognize them; but this is only the case when our physical advantage is forgotten in the poetical refinement of a just appreciation;—the homage which makes, if it do not find her worthy. 

"Ah! at humble distance, with all my soul, I have sought to study and understand some of these pure and beautiful natures, whose beauty was a subtle essence—a divine revelation through features that charmed not vulgar souls; a beauty that inspired a poetic—a pure and lasting worship at its altar. How earnestly then should woman cultivate and encourage, by every means, this romantic devotion, which is so essential to place and sustain them in their proper sphere. They have to combat in the world the sneers, the vices, the sensuality of fallen natures; but man's loss of their just appreciation, is a sure step towards degradation and crime, which involves poor woman too. All honor, then, to Poetry—the aspiring effort to admire, to develope and to praise, the Beautiful—the Noble,—the Grand." 

I. F.  "There are noble minds, who would pronounce much of that extravagant—too double-refined for any application."

C.  "And there are ingrained conventional prejudices, which warp the views of the highest natures." 

I. F.  "You believe, then, that human happiness is to be found in some reformed and higher state of civilization? Have I not heard you envy the fate of these red sons of nature—some wild chieftain—with two or three slavish wives!"

C.  "I might envy his freedom from factitious laws—the tyranny and fanaticism of society. But as for 'human happiness'—ha! ha!—suffer me to laugh, I pray you (if you will not call that happiness). Happiness would be the infraction of an immutable law; that all sin, is certainly not more inevitable, than that all should be unhappy; those who suffer as little as they enjoy, have a calmness which may deceive. I prefer at times to disturb the philosopher's equilibrium, and to brave his fated reactions for the joy which for a moment sublimes both soul and sense.  Strange! that laughter, man's lowest attribute, is distinctive; while the smile, which seems borrowed from Heaven, and which can confer rapturous joy, if not happiness, is shared, I think, in a slight degree by brutes." 

I. F.  "Heaven help you of your mood! I give it up."

C.  "My mood? I was never in a more sober mood; I feel as cool and practical as any downtrodden woman." 

I. F.   "Then your antitheses are rather overpowering!"

C.  "Yes, he that follows where truth may lead, will ever startle; I am still at my theme. I attack this semi-civilization, which halts when woman is only no longer like these brutish squaws; and, with the help of the faithful drudge herself, builds up a conventional system which defies the powers of human reason; nay, with an infernal perversity, resists the very light of heaven. But it is a law that we ever seek happiness. And it is this free desert air alone, that emboldens me in the search, to question the dogmas which society holds so precious.

'But let me quit man's work, again to read
His Maker's spread around me.'"

I. F.  "Nay, I go; luck to your prairie philosophy. It is the hour of rest. May your dreams be—rational!"