31. Theano, in putting on her mantle, once showed a glimpse of her arm.
Upon some one saying, ‘A beautiful forearm!’ she retorted, ‘But not for
the public!’ A well-conducted woman will keep, not only her forearm, but
her speech, from [Sidenote: D] publicity. She will be as shy and
cautious about her utterances to the outside world as if they were an
exposure of her person, inasmuch as, when she talks, they are a
revelation of feelings, character, and disposition.
32. Pheidias, in representing the Elean Aphrodite with her foot upon a
tortoise, meant women to take it as a symbol of home-keeping and
silence. A woman should talk either to, or through the medium of, her
husband; nor should she resent it if, like a player on the clarinet, she
finds a more impressive utterance through another tongue than through
her own.
33. When rich or royal persons pay respect to a philosopher, they do
honour both to themselves and to him. But when a philosopher pays court
to rich people, he is not conferring [Sidenote: E] distinction upon
them, but lowering his own. The same is the case with women. By
submission to their husbands they win regard; by seeking to govern them
they demean themselves worse than the men so governed. Meanwhile it is
only right that the husband, in controlling the wife, should not be like
an owner dealing with a chattel, but like the mind dealing with the
body—sympathetic with the sympathy of organic union. It is possible to
care for the body without being a slave to its pleasures and desires,
and it is possible to rule a wife and yet do things to please and
gratify her.
34. Compound objects are classified by philosophers as follows. In some
the parts are distinct, as in a fleet or army. [Sidenote: F] In some
they are conjoined, as in a house or ship. In others they form an
organic unity, as in all living creatures. We may say much the same of
marriage. The marriage of love is the ‘organic unity’; the marriage for
a dowry or for children is that of persons ‘conjoined’; marriage without
sharing the same couch is that of persons ‘distinct’, who may be said to
[Sidenote: 143] dwell together, but not to live together. With persons
marrying, there should be a mutual blending of bodies, means, friends,
and relations, in the same way as, according to the scientists, when
liquids are mixed, the mixture runs through the whole. When the Roman
legislator forbade married couples to exchange presents, he did not mean
that they should not impart to each other, but that they should look
upon everything as joint property.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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