FEMALE PERSEVERANCE.
Reading edition
“Nous n’avons point de diable, assez diable, pour tenir tête à une méchante femme.”[36]
La Descente de Mezzeten en Enfers.
Why are women so much more pertinacious than men? Voyons un peu! A woman is like a mastiff; once she seizes on an idea, she never lets go, till she has fairly worried out her end. She has no physical strength; no force of reason comparable with man’s; but she has a stronger volition. The toughness of her will is a set-off against the fragility of her means; and she substitutes perseverance for power. Man yields, after a struggle, to her concentrated weakness, because he hates whatever interferes with his enjoyment. Like Falstaff, he loves above all things, “To take mine ease in mine inn;” and to avoid a domestic bore, will assent to much, even when he does not approve. Man is essentially an epicurean; and woman, from necessity, a stoic. In public affairs the mere force of volition often supplies the place of talent and resources; while its absence neutralizes and renders inefficient intellects of the finest and highest quality. To this may be referred much of the success of female intrigue, under the governments which have permitted its operation. It was doubtless to the reiterated attacks of Madame du Barri, that Louis the Fifteenth yielded, when he abandoned the most estimable and enlightened of his ministers, De Choiseul; and a similar obstinacy in the unfortunate Marie Antoinette goaded her reluctant husband into that course of duplicity and vacillation, which brought them both to a scaffold.