feels like a woman

La Philosophie, 1502
By Albrecht Dürer, via Wikimedia Commons

In each example, feeling woman-like is something confessed--or rather, proclaimed--by a man in dialogue with an imaginary traveling companion. Yoomy to Media in Melville's Mardi; the narrator "C." to his Imaginary Friend "I. F." in Scenes Beyond the Western Border. Also true in each case, what inspires or enables the profession of woman-like feeling is fresh air, of the mountain or desert. 

Herman Melville, in Mardi: and a Voyage Thither :

"My lord, my lord!" cried Yoomy. "The air that breathes my music from me is a mountain air! Purer than others am I; for though not a woman, I feel in me a woman's soul."

From the June 1852 installment of Scenes Beyond the Western Border:

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 will follow where truth may lead, may ever startle [1857 improvement: 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."  

--also, slightly revised, in Scenes and Adventures in the Army

Our wandering Captain of U. S. Dragoons exults in "free desert air." Elsewhere (as above, in the example from Melville's Mardi) he associates his bold free-thinking with "mountain air."  Hey we were just talking about that in the post on Flings at the World.

Ah! my good friend, let this wild mountain air have fair play; let us with the desert's freedom joyously flout convention and opinion—upstart usurpers—let us make mocking sport of the prosaic solemnity of ignorant prejudice;—let us shoot popguns at least, against the solid bulwarks where folly and selfishness sit enthroned!"

--Scenes Beyond the Western Border, August 1852

Obviously the two examples here show different concerns, different ways of feeling like a woman. The Captain surprises us with his passionate digression on the socio-economic oppression of women, protesting conventions of cultural and material exploitation. Yoomy seems particularly mindful of the feminine soul, maybe the Platonic and Neo-Platonic world soul. So, too, was the Captain in a previous dialogue when he exasperated his Imaginary Friend by philosophically asserting (again while defending poetry and romance) with reference to Sophia that:

". . . Wisdom was ever feminine." --April 1852 Scenes Beyond the Western Border

For earlier Dragooned posts on that exchange from April 1852, check out Mardi-style dialogue and Amigo and Amigo mio and eve of a snowstorm. About the June 1852 manifesto of medieval feminism see Poetry and Romance Favorable to Women and more on the theme of poetry and romance.

For background and more intersections with literature and philosophy, try that chapter "Melville and the Platonic Tradition" in Pursuing Melville by Merton Sealts, Jr. For a book-full of Melville and Philosophy read John Wenke on Melville's Muse.

As for Melville's feeling woman-like you could almost write a whole dissertation about--oh wait, Claudia A. Dixon already has:

The Woman in Herman Melville