Flatland: A Romance of Many DimensionsAbbott, Edwin Abbott
Science
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions
Abbott, Edwin Abbott
Fourth dimension
Not that it must be for a moment supposed that our Women are destitute
of affection. But unfortunately the passion of the moment
predominates, in the Frail Sex, over every other consideration. This
is, of course, a necessity arising from their unfortunate conformation.
For as they have no pretensions to an angle, being inferior in this
respect to the very lowest of the Isosceles, they are consequently
wholly devoid of brain-power, and have neither reflection, judgment nor
forethought, and hardly any memory. Hence, in their fits of fury, they
remember no claims and recognize no distinctions. I have actually
known a case where a Woman has exterminated her whole household, and
half an hour afterwards, when her rage was over and the fragments swept
away, has asked what has become of her husband and her children.
Obviously then a Woman is not to be irritated as long as she is in a
position where she can turn round. When you have them in their
apartments--which are constructed with a view to denying them that
power--you can say and do what you like; for they are then wholly
impotent for mischief, and will not remember a few minutes hence the
incident for which they may be at this moment threatening you with
death, nor the promises which you may have found it necessary to make
in order to pacify their fury.
On the whole we get on pretty smoothly in our domestic relations,
except in the lower strata of the Military Classes. There the want of
tact and discretion on the part of the husbands produces at times
indescribable disasters. Relying too much on the offensive weapons of
their acute angles instead of the defensive organs of good sense and
seasonable simulation, these reckless creatures too often neglect the
prescribed construction of the women's apartments, or irritate their
wives by ill-advised expressions out of doors, which they refuse
immediately to retract. Moreover a blunt and stolid regard for literal
truth indisposes them to make those lavish promises by which the more
judicious Circle can in a moment pacify his consort. The result is
massacre; not, however, without its advantages, as it eliminates the
more brutal and troublesome of the Isosceles; and by many of our
Circles the destructiveness of the Thinner Sex is regarded as one among
many providential arrangements for suppressing redundant population,
and nipping Revolution in the bud.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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