The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 01Brann, William Cowper
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The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 01
Brann, William Cowper
Brann, William Cowper, 1855-1898; Essays; Reformers
Much is said by self-constituted reformers of the
lachrymose school anent trusting maids "betrayed" by
base-hearted scoundrels and loving wives led astray by
designing villains; but I could never work my sympathies up
to the slopping over stage for these pathetic victims of
man's perfidy. It may be that my tear-glands lack a hair-
trigger attachment, and my sob-machine is not of the most
approved pattern. Perchance woman is fully as big a fool
as these reformers paint her--that she has no better sense
than a blind horse that has been taught to yield a ready
obedience to any master--to submit itself without question
to the guidance of any hand. Will the "progressive"
woman--who is just now busy boycotting Col. Breckinridge
and spilling her salt tears over his discarded drab--kindly
take a day of and tell us what is to become of this glorious
country when such incorrigible she-idiots get control of it?
It is well enough to protect the honor of children with severe
laws and a double-shotted gun; but the average young
woman is amply able to guard her virtue if she really values
it, while the married woman who becomes so intimate with
a male friend that he dares assail her continence, deserves
no sympathy. She is the tempter, not the victim. True it is
that maids, and matrons too, as pure as the white rose that
blooms above the green glacier, have been swept too far
by the fierce whirlwind of love and passion; but of
these the world doth seldom hear. The woman whose sin
is sanctified by love--who staked her name and fame upon
a cowardly lie masquerading in the garb of eternal truth--
never yet rushed into court with her tale of woe or aired her
grievance in the public prints. The world thenceforth can
give but one thing she wants, and that's an unmarked
grave. May God in his mercy shield all such from the
parrot criticisms and brutal insults of the fish-blooded,
pharisaical female, whose heart never thrilled to love's wild
melody, yet who marries for money--puts her frozen charms
up at auction for the highest bidder, and having obtained a
fair price by false pretenses, imagines herself preeminently
respectable! In the name of all the gods at once, which is
the fouler crime, the greater "social evil": For a woman to
deliberately barter her person for gold and lands, for gew-
gaws, social position and a preferred pew in a fashionable
church--even though the sale be in accordance with law,
have the benediction of a stupid priest and the sanction of
a corrupt and canting world--or, in defiance of custom and
forgetful of cold precept, to cast the priceless jewel of a
woman's honor upon the altar of illicit love?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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