Under _Woman_ we find the adjectives--soft, mild, pitiful and flexible,
kind, civil, obliging, humane, tender, timorous, modest.

Who can doubt that the dictionary maker defined and distributed his
adjectives aright for the year 1856? Since then, however, many alarming
heresies have taken root in our land, and some are heard to declare that
both these sets of adjectives apply to men and women alike, and are, in
fact, necessities of any decent human outfit. Otherwise the conclusion
is obvious, that no one desirous of the adjective 'manly' must ever
be--soft, mild, pitiful and flexible, kind, civil, obliging, humane,
tender, timorous, or modest; and no one desirous of the adjective
'womanly' be--firm, brave, undaunted, dignified, noble, or stately.

But surely the essentials of 'manliness' and 'womanliness' belong to man
and woman alike--the externals are purely artistic considerations, and
subject to the vagaries of fashion. In art no one would think of
allowing fashion any serious artistic opinion. It is usually the art
which is out of fashion that is most truly art. Similarly, fashions in
manliness or womanliness have nothing to do with real manliness or
womanliness. Moreover, the adjectives 'manly' or 'womanly,' applied to
works of art, or the artistic surfaces of men and women, are
irrelevant--that is to say, impertinent. You have no right to ask a
poem or a picture to look manly or womanly, any more than you have any
right to ask a man or a woman to look manly or womanly. There is no such
thing as looking manly or womanly. There is looking beautiful or ugly,
distinguished or commonplace, individual or insignificant. The one law
of externals is beauty in all its various manifestations. To ask the sex
of a beautiful person is as absurd as it would be to ask the publisher
the sex of a beautiful book. Such questions are for midwives and