The Wild Tears Fall

This essay was born in September, where so many times in that month, I saw Father Krzysztof mount the steps to the altar in his samite fiddleback, embroidered with a lush depiction of the Immaculate Conception in swirling robes of white and blue. The Scriptural verses which speak of her and the hymns dedicated to her had resounded throughout St. Clement Church, as the congregation admired the intercessor for both the weak and the strong. And even as she intercedes for us, does she not also soften many who claim to hate God? And can we of the West ever deny that devotion to her moulded the chivalry to which the best of its people yet cling? 

However, has that chivalry (whether cultivated in men or expected by women) occasionally gone too far in elevating women in general for the sake of the Virgin Mother? So far that even men of good will have given up the practice? In the rather insipid (but otherwise inoffensive) hymn, 'Gentle Woman,' there is a verse which is apt to make any member of the male 'species' roll his eyes:

'So estrogen can make you holy?' one priest wrote on his blog concerning that very line. While I agree with him concerning the puffed-up, anti-masculine sentiment the song implies, I winced at his language. Was he reducing womanhood to the hormones and chemicals that govern the characteristics of what it is physically to be female? Whether it is fitting for men to speak of their manhood in such a way is a matter that men must settle, but civilized instinct indicates that just as the reproductive organs of a woman are veiled within her flesh, so should her womanhood be veiled in discourse.


However, the flesh is fallen, and is it not wrong to put a sinful creature on a pedestal? For whether purer than man or not, she is fallen, and eaten up with her peculiar tendencies towards vice. Perhaps attendance at church is mostly made up of women, but when women take control of the liturgy, does it not often give way to hysteria, irreverence, or even spiritual prostitution? Priestesses have always been either possessed virgins or temple harlots, and they had one unifying principle: they were vessels for either gods or demons, not promoters of morality or ethics. More importantly, they were not 'givers of sacred things' as the sacerdotal title would imply. The postmodern, ahistorical attempt to revive paganism only confirms that notion.


All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Therefore, it would seem that no human being in a yet unbeatified state is to be venerated.

Sed Contra, the Gospels do not encourage us to judge. Christian tradition is to esteem one's self as the lowest of the low, which is really the only logical thing to do, for true self-knowledge will always give us cause for improvement. A traditional Catholic justly possesses the lowest opinion of the practice of taking Holy Communion in the hand, but he may not regard the Catholic who even carelessly drops the Host as less virtuous than he. Blessed Teresa of Calcutta says that one learns humility through humiliation. Elevating others at one's own expense can be a very good practice for cultivating that virtue.

Even Aristotle, who could not have foreseen the paradoxical and supernatural demands of Christian ethics, observed that a man possessed of one vice, must sometimes adopt the practice of the opposite vice in order to rescue himself from his own disposition. Alcoholics must become teatotallers, and those who have too severly abused their sexuality may have to practice celibacy for the duration of their lives. Praxis often entails actions not directly following from our rational code in order to produce the proper balance in the soul. 



I was six years old when watching a film where the heroine was said to be able 'to tread on cobwebs without breaking them.' I was ten years old when I began reading books in which the fair maidens almost universally could laugh 'like a silvery peal of music.' 'Really?' I wondered in genuine puzzlement, 'and I thought one was doing well not to sound like a braying ass when laughing heartily.' At fourteen, I came across a novel where the lady had sweet breath even after eating fish. It was not difficult to find similar hyperbolæ regarding their lovely and irresistible characters. By the time one is a teenager though, such metaphors and descriptions are a bit ridiculuous.

One's feelings towards glorifying the feminine, as in the examples cited above, do serve to steer a girl down the path of either the lady or the feminist, and a boy, down that of the gentleman or just simply, the male. 

I turned abruptly about face from the path of feminism at age thirteen for two reasons: the horrific moral evils the movement promotes, (e.g. abortion) and the fact that the major tenet of feminism is that women ought not to be expected to behave better than men. Females would no longer be martyrs in the home, and they would certainly not provide men with the example of spiritual submission, as St. Paul instructed them to. A wife to act as her husband's gentle counsellor? His conscience? No, indeed! 

I will feel equality has arrived when we can elect to office women who are as incompetent as some of the men who are already there. _Maureen Reagan

Only the modern era could produce a movement that would proudly espouse practical and moral evils as the fruits of its labours. No, a woman often does better in the role of Pontius Pilate's wife than that of Pilate himself.

Not to throw an ad hominem spear in the direction of feminists, but it seems all too often that they never learned to gently laugh at some of those poetic exagerrations mentioned above or to appreciate their sisters to whom these sayings were applied. Bitterness that one has not been worshipped as those women were worshipped is not good ground for any kind of ideology. There is a much better route to take.

Charles Dickens noted that there is a moral beauty which 'only exists in woman': that she is capable of loving in another that which she herself has never possessed. Women who dote on their lovelier, more talented, or more virtuous friends and sisters are examples of this. That affectionate, selfless virtue contra the vice of misogynistic, female envy are the two forces that form the feminine dichotomy between those who love the old notions of exalted womanhood and those who hate it.


And what of men who refuse to put women on a pedestal? As with feminists, there is occasionally an element of anger, though it might just as often arise from indifference. 

Concerning anger, it is not seemly in a man to growl on hearing a woman being praised, and anyone bearing witness to this rancour would immediately assume one of two causes: disappointment in love or overbearing women in his family. Neither of these are worthy things on which to base one's conduct.

As to indifference in men? That is another thing, especially concerning Eros, when one accepts the tenet that only what is truly known is truly loved. Ergo, 'love is blind' is patently false. A lady professor of mine once made the case that Shakespeare's sonnet, 130, in which he rather degrades the form and demeanour of his mistress, was a beautiful expression of realistic love. 

Yet, there was not one female or male in the class bereft of an arched eyebrow. While indeed it would be folly for the Bard to have painted 'roses damask'd' in his lover's cheeks when there were none, the subjectivity of love should have moved him to like her face as it was. Have not men who had always loved sapphire eyes turned their preference to emerald orbs on falling in love with a green-eyed woman?


Leaving aside romance however, perhaps indifference is more justified on the rational scale? After all, one cannot and should not be as devoted to all people as one is to one's spouse. Why should a man rise from his chair, because a skirted creature entered the room or kiss a hand because the owner is female? Why should he curb his language or speak more delicately just because a woman is in earshot? Why is she due any of his particular homage simply because she is the daughter of that first one who was made from a rib?


The answer is that (as science has even proven and continues to prove) the differences between men and women are indeed as psychically entrenched as they are physically. Placing the two genders in the natural world, without the artificial constructions of the postmodern order, woman is still a remarkable thing. She may not be as strong as man, but she is built to endure more, both in stamina of labour and in pain. She is eminently practical and useful, and in beayty, she is the climax of the symphony of Creation. Woman is the last thing God made, and He made her from the best of matter--the flesh and bone of a rational creature. 

Moving the argument again into the civilized realm where her beauty initially inspires poetry of the giddiest (and perhaps silliest) order, woman must also take up the more mundane duties of the home: 

It takes a woman all powdered and pink 
To joyously clean out the drain in the sink 
And it takes an angel with long golden lashes 
And soft dresden fingers 
For dumping the ashes... (Hello Dolly)


There is another paradox in woman that while she may inspire abstract ideals, she is often more fond of what is concrete. At least until some modernist gets a hold of her, women are more realistic than men:

Women are the only realists; their whole object in life is to pit their realism against the extravagant, excessive, and occasionally drunken idealism of men. _G. K. Chesterton


To inspire idealism and to ground the world in realism. What better alloy could there be in the metal of any creature?


It is in such an attitude as Chesterton's, romantic rationality, that allows one to see things in truth. To see something 'in truth' is farther than the seeming 'reality' of how it is and nearer than the chimeric ideal of how it ought to be. Balancing on the slender thread of this paradox allows one to pass over the offenses of a coarse, shrewish woman and treat every female as if she were a lady--to see Dulcinea in even the coarsest concierge. 

When a man moulds his thoughts and acts in this way, he works for the defeat of extreme feminism. For he renders unto women the appreciation they are not allowed to seek. The trials and sufferings of womanhood can only find their glory in silence. Whereas men are allowed to exalt in their victories, and society pays public homage to their entrance into manhood, a girl who takes up the burdens of womanhood must discreetly pass over the details. The male sex must take the female rite of passage for granted. If it does not, the postmodern era has shown us that women who are indignant enough will degrade themselves and their sisters by dragging womanliness and all its secrets into the public eye.


Such is the necessity of chivalry in man. In woman, it cultivates the attitude that will not only lead her towards striving for sainthood, but to secure the same for the men about her. When she says, 'I must act in this way, because it is the proper sphere of my sex. I must do this humble thing, because it is not a man's province. I must bear this suffering quietly because of Eve's curse. I must bend, because I am woman, and the Lord has asked this of me,' she steps on the head of the serpent that lured our first mother from her throne.

Before the defense started, I had been an absolute nervous wreck. The whole idea of my pitiful attempt to write a work of disciplined truth after years of being humbled by giants of thought seemed absolutely absurd and presumptuous, and I was reckoning on being showed as much in a painful manner as I was to defend my thesis before three of the college's doctors.

However, my self-consciousness and butterflies shrivelled up within moments after the defense commenced. The affair became as my advisor had said it would be: a conversation with three other people, and what's more, a conversation about a topic that had interested me very much. I was having a lot of fun before I knew it, when of the doctors nailed me with this question: 'So you argue that the practice of heroism is different for men and women. Is there then such a thing as masculine virtue and feminine virtue?'

I think all four of us smiled (as well as my one fellow student attending) at a question that was by now very sentimental. The Great Books program fittingly begins with Plato, and the first thing Thomas Aquinas College students read for philosophy was his dialogue, Meno. The person of Meno, serving as the omnipresent Lestrade/Watson to the Holmesian Socrates, stated that virtue was not only different for the two genders, but also the various walks of life in society:

Meno: There will be no difficulty, Socrates, in answering your question. Let us take first the virtue of a man - he should know how to administer the state, and in the administration of it to benefit his friends and harm his enemies... A woman's virtue...is to order her house, and keep what is indoors, and obey her husband. Every age, every condition of life, young or old, male or female, bond or free, has a different virtue: there are virtues numberless, and no lack of definitions of them; for virtue is relative to the actions and ages of each of us in all that we do. And the same may be said of vice, Socrates. (Plato, Meno, 71e, translated by Benjamin Jowett)

And so, along with the questions: 'What is a sign?' 'Is the wrath of Achilles justified?' et al., the idea of virtue being different for men and women is one of the first ideas TAC's pupils struggle with as freshmen, while the tutors preside reservedly over the debate. However, Socrates's opinion on the subject is unequivocal:

Meno: I am beginning to understand; but I do not as yet take hold of the question as I could wish.

Socrates: When you say, Meno, that there is one virtue of a man, another of a woman, another of a child, and so on, does this apply only to virtue, or would you say the same of health, and size, and strength? Or is the nature of health always the same, whether in man or woman?

Meno: I should say that health is the same, both in man and woman.....

....Socrates: Were you not saying that the virtue of a man was to order a state, and the virtue of a woman was to order a house?

Meno: I did say so.

Socrates: And can either house or state or anything be well ordered without temperance and without justice?....Then they who order a state or a house temperately or justly order them with temperance and justice?...Then both men and women, if they are to be good men and women, must have the same virtues of temperance and justice?.....
..... (ibid., 71e-73b)

Socrates then defines virtue/virtues differently from Meno, and he more explicity names the forms in the dialogue, Protagoras, giving us what we in the Western School call the cardinal virtues: justice, fortitude, temperance, and prudence. Since men and women both are virtuous in so far as they participate in these forms, there would be appear to be no such thing as masculine and feminine virtues, just as there is no difference between masculine and feminine health.

Yet, one is not 'wise, brave, sober, and just' by virtue of a single act, much less an abstract one, though it may correspond to the four pillars. A drunk who makes it home in a state of sobriety for but one night of the week is not temperant. Virtue, as Aristotle showed, must be a habit, and habits vary widely due to empirical realities. Type the term 'woman's health' into an internet search engine, and you will not receive the response, 'Silly fool! Health is the same for men and women!' Rather the results will literally number millions. While health, in the sense of 'the state of being free from illness or injury' (O.E.D.), is obviously the same for men and women, what defines that state positively--rather than negatively--may indeed vary.

Blood-pressure levels, susceptibility to alchohol (regardless of weight and size), immune system strength, nutritional needs, vulnerabilitiy to cancer and sexually-transmitted diseases all vary according to gender. Not only are different health habits necessary to maintain an ideal state, but the actual ratios determining the quality of health is different. Nature may be styled feminine, but she does not hear woman's roar.

My reply to the three tutors was far more meandering and fuzzy than the one I shall present, but in all honesty, I do not remember what I said five years ago: 'I think that there are two defininitions of virtue, the first being the form that we seek, and the second being the qualities in us that are disciplined to obtain it. For example, chastity is praised in both men and women by civlized societies. For men, the habit of this virtue indicates high-mindedness and self-mastery. For women, it indicates a constancy of the heart and a sense of modesty and self-worth.'


'Is it a requirement that men teach these habits to men and women teach them to women?' the same tutor asked.

I opened my mouth to agree, but closed it again (at least I hope I didn't leave it parted while I was thinking). I couldn't help but think of how modesty does not come to most girls naturally. A girl's first prerogative is to dress like her peers and in a way that makes her appear most beautiful and appealing. This is her instinct. While there is also a self-conscious instinct to veil her feminine shape as she buds into a woman, her inability to read the minds of males and the desire for masculine attention will erode this earlier bashfulness in time.

Even mothers naturally want their daughters to look pretty and to be successful in society. Only the wisest or the most pious, or saddest of all, the most experienced of women give serious thought to how males will react to their daughters' garb. Obviously, the women who envy their daughters' beauty and thus try to conceal it do not serve as examples of loving mothers who are trying to protect their children. The desire to cultivate true modesty comes from selfless virtue not selfish vice. However, two of the good qualities that make the mother fit to be a judge of appropriate clothing--barring ageless piety--are inaccessible to the young daughter.

It usually results that the father's word carries the most weight with his daughter about what she should wear, and his judgement is clearer and more focused than the mother's. He cares only for his child's dignity and safety, and provided that he holds the proper place as head of his home, he is the best teacher for his girl.

I said as much in my own clumsy way to the tutors at the defense. And I received this reply: 'So is modesty a masculine virtue then?' I felt like a Meno or one of the many Platonic strawmen at that moment, for I had not seen that bolt coming at all. Physical modesty seemed something so obviously belonging to the feminine (after all, when men wear revealing clothing, it repulses the onlooker). Yet, could it even exist if it did not concern men?

In the novel and film, Enchanted April, by Elizabeth von Arnim and Mike Newell respectively, there is a memorable scene at one of the exclusively female suppers:

Mrs. Fisher: That's a beautiful dress...
Caroline: No I've had it a hundred years.
Mrs. Fisher: ...but you must be very cold in it. Its easy to catch a chill here after dark. You look as if you had nothing on underneath.
Caroline: I haven't.

The matronly Mrs. Fisher is predictably horrified, while a third woman, Lottie observes that the fact can hardly be inappropriate as no men were about.

Perhaps those reading this post are rolling their eyes at this apparent conclusion, but in an age where many of us ladies resent or even bristle at the intrusion of male voices on feminine issues, it is important to note that modesty is a habit that cannot exclude male opinion. Men throughout the ages have been overly harsh, true, but it is often only because they credit women with telepathy. To a certain extent, we do have such an intuition and are aware of the reaction we engender in the opposite gender. Many women enjoy turning heads, but while they think they are provoking admiration or a light, flattering attraction, they may be arousing something much more ugly and even dangerous.

Therefore, when I come to the more practical application of modesty, I will not always be able to proceed rationally, as modesty is subjective to the reaction of men. Before someone thus objects: 'Wait, wait, wait! Some men will think dirty thoughts no matter what. Do we have to wear burkas?' don't be so hasty! As with all things, we must find the Golden Mean, and this will entail only considering the opinions of well-balanced, well-meaning people (e.g., not the tyrannical father or the prudish cleric), and one's own common sense and logic will definitely play a part.

However, a certain element of a woman's trust in a man's word is necessary for dressing with dignity. I once saw a skirt in a catalog I liked with a hemline stopping properly below the knee. At the bottom, there was a lovely pattern formed by holes cut out of the fabric in a lacy pattern. My mother said the skirt however was immodest, not because of actual exposure, but because of its 'peekaboo' appeal.

One of my sisters refused to accept the theory as having any weight in reality, so an argument ensued. It ended with 'wait until your father comes home,' and all agreed that his say would be the final verdict. He soon came in with bleach in one hand and laundry detergent in the other. Without giving him any background concerning the argument, my mother showed him the picture and asked him what he thought of the garment. 'Slut,' he said laconically and went back to the car to get the rest of the groceries.

What can be said? Sometimes experienced people are actually knowledgable, and men occasionally even know their own gender!

The Desires of a Woman's Heart: Conclusion by Rachel Rudd is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at foolishnessntears.blogspot.com.