WOMEN V. LADIES.

New Zealander, Volume 4, Issue 227, 2 August 1848, Page 4

WOMEN Y. LADIES.

J address you in bphnlf of the proprietor!? of lanrua-'e— hoping that you will take pity upon adVctntioi/and pinch it. The women and the feranlrs aie all gone— and the feminine leirumaiions are following ihrra vjry fast To supply tlieir places svp have ladies, — always lathes. There are no anr thorissi-d — only lady authors; and there art* ladye friends, lacly-consin^, kdj- readers, &c. Do the women know that lady* is derivtd from laide? It either is so— or will arrive at thut. It will be one of the ugliest words in the language, \l it continue to be so fearfully abided. This tffectation was at its heip.ht some fifteen or twenty years ago. It is a fact thnt to an action brought m which plaintiil set forth that he had hit oil the whole of defendants coach, but that whfn it was about to start, a woman was inside without his consent, deftndant pleaded amongst other things, that the person described as a « aman was in fact a lady. At that time, and for yrars afterwards; shocking to relate, there were no wivis in the country. Look at any old newspaper, and you will see, "On the — tb iiutant, in ——street, tho lady of Etq., of a daughter." It ought to Lave been lady-sun, not daughter — and any gentleman ought to have called any other gentleman out if that other gentleman dared to speak of his lady-hothei by the stylo and title of his .sister. Butjmattcra have minded a good dial:— Mien own their wtves now in the newspapers. An hoest Otaheiiinn (or Tahuion, as we call \t now, 1 believe) who came over here at the time I speak of, told his countrymen that the Engiuh, whenever one of their children was borni cut off the fourth finger of their wives' left hands as an offering to a goddess called Fashion,— but that the finger grew again in a liMe while. This was the only rendering his language would yield ; which is very creditable to the Tahiti nn tongue, andbbows that it puts things in their true light. I am, myself, of the ancient school, which believes and maintains the true faith to be that all adult hvroan creatures not being men are women ; which declares openly that all women, lie they ladies oe not, arc females — and all married femaks, wives. The same old-fashioned community asserts that our langanpe has no adjective which can be substituted (or female, and that womanly and feminine are adjectives having men to whom they are applicable, and women to ■whom they aie not. It was ono of the former— j probably Fribble himarlf— who invented the term ladyfnend — and it would have been a good thing for the j language if the first woman who heard it had bten of the lhttcr, and had kicked him for his pains. As to authors (meaning authoresses), I onre got a book j Iron) one marked " from the author j" I wondered to myself whether she meant to etpnd up for the old EOng— Adam wqb the first man, Eve was the t'other. j I wish the women would send the word lady back to its proper spheie. Something will be sure to happen if they do not. Gentleman was abuse i until it waß shortened into gent ,— and wliat a strait the gents aie in just now I Woman is a term of high honour — it is a great pity it may not be used in respect to any female nluuc\ei« were it from a beggar to a princess. Its conesponding Greek term, gunc, is that by which slaves often aeU dress their aistrcsses in the Greek tragedy. "With our notions, the address of Christ to his mother, be» ginning with the woid woman, appears disrespectful — iv the original it it exactly ithe reverse. Let women notice that with the term lady in our language, as used to supplant woman, arose the school of men which sneered at females of cultivated mind under the name of •' blue stockings." Search antiquity through tune and space, from age to oge, and fiom country to country, and it will be found that respect for koowledge in females is always to-eii&tent with their designation under homely names. The word lady, geneiically used, ought to be odious as the product ot a time in which women are taken to be necessarily frivolous. But when women were women, we have the account of an Apollonius, who wrote a biography filled with no names but female philosophers. Nay, Suidas hivnseU has preserved the name ot a historian who has preserved the names of a large number of female Pythagoreans. Madame Daeier ought to have reminded her husband to mention this (which I cannot find that he has done,) in his hie ot Pythagoras : — for it shows that, in spite of all he says to the contrary, a whole bookful of women endured the silent system to ■which the followers of that sect were subjected. Nor are the accounts of these works at all unlikely ; for Menage has collected the names of aixtyofour women who had distinguished themselves in the schools of philosophy, — with as much information about them as gives to one with another more than an octavo page a-piecc. Plutarch dedicated more than one work to women. Three empresses (and aa empiess was then only a woman) have distinguished the name of Eudocia by their literary acquirements. The last lias left us (and in the dark eleventh century) the historical dictionary, which is frequently quoted in support of or in opposition to Suidas. A great deal more might be siid to the same effect; but it would take up too much room. I hope all good women will leave lady to appear where it is properly wanted, and not continue to degrade their sex by speaking ot it as a whole under a term which merely signifies a conventional distinction. If they will not, we must have a new translation of Genesis ; and it must appear «' Gentleman and lady created he them.'' — Atbencewn,