Charles George Harper

Well, this was ugly. Or hilarious – YMMV. Either way, I learnt a lot about late 19thC anti-feminism, and I laughed heartily at some of the mindbogglingly stupid crap that Harper pronounces on with deadly earnestness.

The male, Victorian author of this nasty piece of work has written a 140-page rant against the New Woman. You know, silly, wool-brained, weak women who, instead of accepting their hereditary guilt from all that Eve business, are nastily and sneakily usurping men’s position in society. Not content with upsetting the natural order this much, these uppity shrews also seek to dominate men! Well I never! Cue a vomity mess of uninformed 19thC prejudice laced with religious indignation and smug tunnel vision. Much of this book is such that today’s parody sketches could use passages from it verbatim, and they’d be considered over the top.

One chapter lists famous men from history and flatly states or insinuates that they all suffered from nagging, money-grubbing and insufficiently submissive women – Socrates, Racine, Thomas More (who perhaps wrote his Utopia “as a welcome relief from domestic broils”), Shakespeare, Milton, Coleridge, … All of these artists, whose nature is solitary and not given to domestic work, were saddled with evil women, and “the active ill-humours and spiteful opposition of their wives have far outweighed the indifference or want of thought of which these men of parts may have been unconsciously guilty in their homes.” (p. 97). Another chapter piles scorn and hatred on women for wearing trousers. Even divided skirts are a big no-no – anything that isn't a traditional, long skirt Harper will disapprove of.

I could go on writing about this book, but instead I’ll share a few representative direct quotes (I highlighted my way through it: virtually every page had some quotable nastiness). Should you still want to read the book, it's available at the Internet Archive.

Woman is the irresponsible creature who cannot reason nor follow an argument to its just conclusion —who cannot control her own emotions, nor rid herself of superstition. What question more pertinent, then, to ask than this: If mankind is to be led by the New Woman, is she, first of all, sure of the path? (p. xi)

For woman has ever been the active cause of sin, from the Fall to the present time, and doubtless will so continue until the end. (p. 5)
{Elsewhere Harper states that Eve’s transgression should bring enough hereditary shame on all womankind to keep them submissive until the end of time.}

Woman is altogether different from and inferior to man: narrow-chested, wide-hipped, ill-proportioned, and endowed with a lesser quantity of brains than the male sex. She will, when sufficiently open to conviction, allow that, mentally, she is not so well equipped as man, but gives herself away altogether in insisting upon the ‘instinct‘ that takes the place of reason in her sex; thereby tacitly placing herself on a level with other creatures—like the dog or cat—who act upon ‘instinct‘ rather than upon reasoning powers. (p. 24)
{In other words: females rank between Men and the Animals in the Great Chain of Being}

Women […] may exercise their brains and their muscles to their utmost tension; but let them not in those cases exercise the natural function of woman and bring children into the world. For nature, which never contemplated the production of a learned or a muscular woman, will be revenged upon her offspring, and the New Woman, if a mother at all, will be the mother of a New Man […] But it is not to be supposed that even the prospect of peopling the world with stunted and hydrocephalic children will deter the modern woman from her path, even though her modernity lead to the degradation and ultimate extinction of the race. (p27)
{If women study, they will give birth to deformed babies and the human race will go extinct. I lol’d at that.}

Modern doctrinaires preach heresies which would make miserable that very strong man, St. Paul, who constantly enjoined woman to silence and submission. (p46)
{Harper repeatedly treats contradicting Paul as a crude transgression, going so far as to quote many of his anti-woman verses in support of his own case, as if Paul saying something would automatically render it God’s Own Truth.}… (plus d'informations)