Fancies Versus FadsChesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
General
Fancies Versus Fads
Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
English essays -- 20th century
There is another case somewhat analogous to this discovery of the new
disease of death. I am puzzled in somewhat the same way when I hear, as
we often hear just now, somebody saying that he was formerly opposed to
Female Suffrage but was converted to it by the courage and patriotism
shown by women in nursing and similar war work. Really, I do not wish to
be superior in my turn, when I can only express my wonder in a question.
But from what benighted dens can these people have crawled, that they
did not know that women are brave? What horrible sort of women have they
known all their lives? Where do they come from? Or, what is a still
more apposite question, where do they think they come from? Do they
think they fell from the moon, or were really found under
cabbage-leaves, or brought over the sea by storks? Do they (as seems
more likely) believe they were produced chemically by Mr. Schafer on
principles of abiogenesis? Should we any of us be here at all if women
were not brave? Are we not all trophies of that war and triumph? Does
not every man stand on the earth like a graven statue as the monument of
the valour of a woman?
As a matter of fact, it is men much more than women who needed a war to
redeem their reputation, and who have redeemed it. There was much more
plausibility in the suspicion that the old torture of blood and iron
would prove too much for a somewhat drugged and materialistic male
population long estranged from it. I have always suspected that this
doubt about manhood was the real sting in the strange sex quarrel, and
the meaning of the new and nervous tattoo about the unhappiness of
women. Man, like the Master Builder, was suspected by the female
intelligence of having lost his nerve for climbing that dizzy
battle-tower he had built in times gone by. In this the war did
certainly straighten out the sex tangle; but it did also make clear on
how terrible a thread of tenure we hold our privileges--and even our
pleasures. For even bridge parties and champagne suppers take place on
the top of that toppling war-tower; an hour can come when even a man who
cared for nothing but bridge would have to defend it like Horatius; or
when the man who only lives for champagne would have to die for
champagne, as certainly as thousands of French soldiers have died for
that flat land of vines; when he would have to fight as hard for the
wine as Jeanne D’Arc for the oil of Rheims.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account