Femininity

“ Whether or not continuity and sequence, relation and effect, have been maintained in the retraversing of the footsteps of woman in all ages of the history of those isles where femininity has flowered in the most gracious blossoms, it remains for the reader to say. ”

“ A femininity which never fails to act upon the opposite sex. It carries with it an influence that can best be likened, in a metaphoric sense, to a mental aroma which soothes the jagged edges of the rougher senses. ”

“ Not spinning, but knitting, and the social cup of tea we have inherited, also the pride and pleasure in household belongings, bric-a-brac, et cetera, no less than the heart's enjoyment of a choice bit of gossip or news, all belong to our femininity. ”

“ For him to have so thoroughly understood the feminine mind and temperament, to have given to this subtle chameleon its various hues, to have portrayed woman with her many charms and caprices, and to have described woman in her various classes and at all ages, he must have observed her, or rather, he must have known her. ”

“ I cannot better conclude than with the hope that these examples of what may be done may excite a noble emulation in their own sex, and in ours such a conviction of the value of the female mind, as shall overcome our long-cherished prejudices, and induce us to give our earnest endeavors to the promotion of women's best interests. ”

“ There are certain words, suggestive rather than descriptive, the value of which lies in their very vagueness and elasticity of interpretation, by which each mind can write its own commentary, each imagination sketch out its own illustration. And one of these is Womanliness; a word infinitely more subtle in meaning, with more possibilities of definition, more light and shade, more facets, more phases, than the corresponding word manliness. This indeed must necessarily be so, since the character of women is so much more varied in colour and more delicate in its many shades than that of men. ”

“ Lady lecturers and authors often tell us of the higher moral plane from which the gentle sex surveys the world's affairs, but for honest old-world delight in sheer physical force and muscular prowess, can a woman be equalled? ”

“ Looking and listening, "Here," thought I, "is another jewel in the crown of womanhood, to radiate and glorify the lives of all." I have such an intense pride of sex that the triumphs of woman in art, literature, oratory, science, or song rouse my enthusiasm as nothing else can. ”

“ The enchantment of many a feminine hand is easily felt. The surrender, the softness, the concession, the refinement and honesty of many a woman is so clear and open that it streams out, so to speak, and is perceivable by the senses. ”

“ Do not the curious garb and ever-changing and sometimes unattractive and uncomfortable fashions and ornaments of women, in the most refined circles of life, furnish matter of fun and raillery — not always in secret — for the other sex? ”

“ Once only she bursts forth with, "In truth I am not a little annoyed at being a woman. I ought either to have had another sex, another soul, or another country. I ought to have been a Spartan or a Roman woman, or at least a Frenchman. ”

“ But see what (in order to make itself effective) it has had to throw over at each stage of its advance—things to which beautiful names have been given, things which were assumed all through the Victorian era to be essential to womanliness, and to be so engrained in the woman's nature, that without them womanliness itself must perish. ”

“ Yet to us, who are in the secret of her sex, all the proprieties, all the inward harmonies, of her character are exquisitely preserved; and the essential grace of womanhood seems to irradiate and consecrate the dress in which she is disguised. ”

“ From the shining nimbus of her hair to her small tripping feet she was the incarnation of girlhood—of that white and gold girlhood which has intoxicated the imagination of man. She shed the allurement of sex as unconsciously as a flower sheds its perfume. ”

“ Every good quality, every virtue which we regard as distinctively feminine, will, under conditions of greater freedom, develop more freely, like plants brought out into the light from a cellar in which they languished, dwarfed and blanched, without sun or air. The woman is strong in almost every woman ”

“ She possessed all that soft delicacy of appearance that reminds the sterner sex how frail and dependent is woman, while she bore in her face that sweet and winning expression of intellect, that, in other climes more favored by civilization, and where cultivation adds so much to the charms of her sex, would alone have marked her as beautiful. ”

“ No institution of note has yet ventured to admit females much further than into the mysteries of the rudiments." (Female delicacy, female industry, female mind, female college were terms hard worked in those days. A belief of sex in mind was universal.) ”

“ THE woman's question—woman as she is, woman as she will be! That is my subject; and I want, at the outset, to get away from woman as the individual, more or less pleasing, more or less aggravating, more or less useful. I want to study woman in the abstract: the great woman-principle in life, in thought, and in action. ”

“ It is, perhaps, difficult to define it exactly, but there exists, somehow, in the fashionable world, the notion that a pale and sensitive woman is feminine and refined, while one in blooming health is masculine and coarse. ”

“ Though woman is called the weaker sex, here, in one example, is represented the strongest passion and the strongest principle, admirably supported. It is an episode in this work-day world, most interesting, and touched with a daring and delicate hand. The execution of the painting is as perfect as the conception. ”

“ You have all—nay, more than all—those qualities which I have ever regarded as the characteristic excellences of womanhood. The great charm of your sex is its capability of an ardent self-sacrificing affection, and herein we see its fitness to round and complete the existence of our own. ”

“ It is the society of a charming woman, who is feminine in even her thoughts and modes of expression—who is often strangely, bewilderingly beautiful in this changing light. When we pass under the shadow of a tree her eyes shine like stars ”

“ She looked up, and said, "What was I made for? When I go home I shall live in a circle of fashion and folly. I was not made for embroidery and dancing; I was made a woman; but I can not be a true woman, a full-grown woman, in America." ”

“ Our dames were the physicians of their time and districts. An exaggerated sense of sex wastes accomplishments on the pursuit of mere feminine attractiveness, which might minister to and promote the highest interests of society. ”

“ Instead of making a subtle and seductive appeal to the imagination, she is a prosaic fact; interesting, possibly, as an anatomical study, she loses in a peculiar way the fascinations of the feminine gender. When tights enter into the problem, there is a vast difference between the womanly woman and the womanish woman. ”

“ The stories of which it is composed have been mainly written with the end of creating for woman, in the various life-trials through which she has to pass, sympathy and true consideration, as well in her own sex as in ours. ”

“ I confess I can imagine no tribute to a manly nature from a feminine more final even than the confidence in "mere" consideration here embodied—the comfort of the consideration being in the fact that the character with which the feminine nature was dealing lent it, could it but come, such weight. ”

“ For example, a woman (the same may be said of the other sex) all beautiful and accomplished, will, while her hand and heart are undisposed of, turn the heads and set the circle in which she moves on fire. ”

“ Late hours, children's parties, sensational novels, 'flashy' papers, love stories, the drama, the ball-room, talk of beaux, love, and marriage,—that atmosphere of riper years which is so often and so injudiciously thrown around childhood,—all hasten the event which transforms the girl into the woman. ”

“ She was of that species of women whom you commend rather for good qualities than beauty, and who are generally called, by their own sex, very good sort of women—as good a sort of woman, madam, as you would wish to know. ”

“ The inherent narrowness of the feminine nature, its unswerving devotion to the traditional dogmas of womanliness, now expressed itself in every line of her face and figure.
“I don't think any woman has any call to talk as you are doing,” she said with grave reproof. ”

“ They have given us exquisite and just delineations of the more peculiar characteristics of women, as modesty, grace, tenderness; and when they have attempted to portray them with the powers common to both sexes, as wit, energy, intellect, they have blundered in some respect; they could form no conception of intellect which was not masculine, and therefore have either suppressed the feminine attributes altogether and drawn coarse caricatures, or they have made them completely artificial. ”

“ Some attribute had departed from her, the permanence of which had been essential to keep her a woman. Such is frequently the fate, and such the stern development, of the feminine character and person, when the woman has encountered, and lived through, an experience of peculiar severity. ”

“ Here then lies the main Defect, that we are taught only our Mother Tongue, or perhaps French, which is now very fashionable, and almost as Familiar amongst Women of Quality as Men; whereas the other Sex by means of a more extensive Education to the knowledge of the Roman and Greek Languages, have a vaster Feild for their Imaginations to rove in, and their Capacities thereby enlarg’d. ”

“ But what you've got to learn—how to be a wife, how to live on a modest income, how to take care of me, and help me in my career, how to be a woman instead of, largely, a dressmaker's or a dancing-master's expression for lady-likeness—to learn all that is going to take time. ”

“ Other girls were ladylike and soft-spoken. Was there a streak of commonness in her that made possible such a scene as she had just gone through? In her heart she longed to be a lady—gentle, refined, sweet of spirit. ”

“ The changes that are made in the opinions of our sex as to female beauty, according to the different situations in which women are placed, and the different qualities on which we fix the idea of their excellence, are curious and striking. ”

“ It is not until she has renounced all communion with the glorification of woman and the assertion of woman’s superiority, that a woman with a sense of intellectual propriety can occupy herself with the question of the social work of her sex. ”

“ Never were seen ladies so proper and handsome, so miniard and dainty, less forward, or more ready with their hand, and with their needle, in every honest and free action belonging to that sex, than were there. ”

“ Perhaps I'll make a lady's-maid of her, though it doesn't seem quite the right thing to do.”
“No, it doesn't. Don't go and spoil what you have done by any such folly as that.”
“Do you want me to make a lady of her—or what?”
“A lady? Well that is a difficult question to answer; but I have heard that sometimes ladies, like poets, are born, not made. At all events, it would not be right, I fancy, to keep the girl here. It might give rise to disagreeable complications, as you always have a parcel of fellows hanging about you.” ”

“ Submissiveness, clinging affection, humility, all the traits accounted distinctively feminine, and the natural and ever-increasing result of steady suppression of all stronger ones stood in the way of any resistance. ”

“ Impossible, I suppose, is a word not to be found in the dictionaries of lovely ladies who all their lives have seen the most obdurate doors fly open before them. And this lovely lady evidently had her share of the resolution, or of a certain indifference to the realities of life, for which her sex is noted. ”

“ So that, aside from the mysterious working of feminine motive, which makes woman a law unto herself, there should be practical unanimity in regard to this habit. There is in the cap and gown a subtle suggestion of the union of learning with womanly charm that is very captivating to the imagination. ”

“ In the women who present the attributes of their sex with the greatest unity, we distinguish, especially during youth and adult age, the traits of the sanguine temperament, which may be regarded as the most suitable to the organization of woman. ”

“ Though some ladies, of intelligence and refinement, do fall unconsciously into such a practice, it is certainly very unlady-like, and in very bad taste, to scold; and the further a woman departs from all approach to it, the more perfectly she sustains her character as a lady. ”

“ It sounds mere idiotcy, the thing is so obvious, when one reduces it to words, but yet neither men nor women themselves—for the most part—seem to recognize the fact that womanliness is a matter of sex, not of circumstances, occupation, or clothing; and each sex has instincts and proclivities which are peculiar to it, and do not differ to any remarkable extent even in the most diverse characters ”