The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 12Brann, William Cowper
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The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 12
Brann, William Cowper
Brann, William Cowper, 1855-1898; Essays; Reformers
The calm assurance of man that the earth and all it
contains were made for his especial benefit; that woman was
created solely for his comfort; that the sun was made to
give him light by day and the moon to enable him to find
his way home from the lodge at night without the aid of a
policeman; that the heavens were hung with a resplendent
curtain of stars and the planets sent whirling through
space in a majestic dance about the God of Day, simply to
afford him matter for wonder or for amusement when too
tired to talk politics or too bilious to drink beer, evinces an
egotism that must amuse the Almighty.
Masterpiece indeed! Why, God made man, and, finding
that he couldn't take care of himself, made woman to take
care of him--and she proposes to discharge her heaven-
ordained duty or know the reason why. Tennyson says
that, "as the husband is the wife is"; but even Tennyson
didn't know it quite all. When wives take their hubbies for
measures of morality, marriage will become an enthusiastic
failure and Satan be loosed for a little season. We
acknowledge woman's superiority by demanding that she be
better than we could if we would, or would be if we could.
We are fond of alluding to woman as "the weaker
vessel"; but she can BREAK the best of us if given an
opportunity. Pope calls man the "great lord of all
things"--but Pope never got married. We rule with a
rod of iron the creatures of the earth and air and sea;
we hurl our withering defi in the face of Kings and brave
presidential lightning; we found empires and straddle the
perilous political issue, then surrender unconditionally to
a little bundle of dimples and deviltry, sunshine and
extravagance. No man ever followed freedom's flag for
patriotism (and a pension) with half the enthusiasm that
he will trail the red, white and blue that constitute the
banner of female beauty. The monarch's fetters cannot
curtail our haughty freedom, nor nature's majestic forces
confine us to this little lump of clay; we tread the ocean's
foam beneath our feet, harness the thunderbolts of imperial
Jove to the jaunting car, and even aspire to mount the
storm and walk upon the wind; yet the bravest of us
tremble like cowards and lie like Cretans when called to
account by our wives for some of our cussedness,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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