WOMEN v. LADIES.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume IV, Issue 320, 23 August 1848, Page 4

WOMEN v. LADIES.

I address you on behalf of the proprietors of language — hoping that you will take pity upon affectation and pinch it. The women and the females are all gone — and the feminine terminations are following them very fast. To supply their places we have ladies, — always ladies. There are no authoresses — only lady authors ; and there aie lady-friends, lady-cousins, lady-readers. &c. Do the women know that lady is derived from hide ? It either is so — or will arrive at that. It will be one of the ugliest words in the language, if it continue to be so fearfully abused. This affectation was at its height some fifteen or t»enty years ago. It is a fact, that to an action brought, in which plaintiff set torth that he had hired the whole of defendant'scoach, but when it was about to start, a woman was inside wiihouthis con&eut, defendant pleaded amongst other things, tbattlip person described as a woman was in fact a lady. At that time, and Tor years afterwards, shocking to relate, there were no wives in the country. Look at an ok 1 newspaper, and you will see, "On the - th instant, in street, the lady of Esq., of a daughter." It ought to have been lady-son, not daughter — and any gentleman ought to have called any other gentleman out if that other gentleman d*red to speak ol his lady-brother by the style and title of his sister. But maiteis have mended a good deal : — men own their wives now in the newspapers. An honest Otaheit- | ian (or Tahitian, as we call it now, I believe) who came over here at the time I speak of, told his countrymen that the English, whenever one of their children was born cut off the fourth finger of their wives' left hands as an offering to a goddess called Fashion, — but that the fiuger grew again hi a little while. This was the only rendering his language would yield ; which is very creditable to the Tahitian tongue, and shows that it puts things in tlieir true light. I am, myself, of the ancient school, which believes and maintains the true faith to be that all adult hUviian creatures not being men are women ; which declares openly that all women, be they ladies or not, are females — and all married females, wives. The same old-fashioned community asserts that our language has no adjective which can be substituted for female, and that womanly and feminine are adjectives having meu to whom j they are applicable, and women to whom they are not. It was oue of the former — probably Fribble himself — who invented the term ladyfriend — and it would have been a good thing I for the language if the first wonr.an who hear ! it had been of the latter, and had kicked him for his pains. As to authors (meaning authoresses), I once got a book from one marked " from the author " I wondered to mysell whether she meant to stand up for the old song-r-Adam was the first man, Eve was to t'other. I w ; sh the women would snd the word lady back to its proper sphere. Something will be sure to happen if they do not. Gentleman was abused until it was shortened into gent; — nnd what a strait the gents are in just now ! Woman is a term of high honour — it is a great pity it may not be used in respect to any female whatever, were it from a beggar to a princess. Its corresponding Greek term, gune, is that by which slaves often address their mistresses in the Greek tragedy. With our notions, the address of Christ to his mother, begintiing with the word voman, appears disrespectiul — in the original it is exactly the reverse. Let women notice that with the term lady in our language, as used to supplant wo~ mm, arose the school of men which sneered at females of cultivated mind under the name of " blue stockings." Search antiquity through time and space, from age to age, and from country to country, and it will be found that respect for knowledge in females is always co-ex'stent with their designation under homely names. The word lady, generically used, ought to be odious as the product of 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 lecnale philosophers. N.iy, Suidas himself has preserved the name of an historian who has preserved the names of a large numbei of emale Pythagoreans. Madame Dacier ought to have reminded her husband to mention this (which I cannot find that he has done,) iv his life, of 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 woiks at all unlikely ; for Menage has collected the names of sixty-four 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-piece. , Plutarch dedicated more than one work to women. Three empresses (and an empress w»« then only a woman) have

distinguished the name of Eudocia by their , literary acquirements. The last ;has 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 said to the same effect ; but it woul'i uke up too much rpora. I hope all good women. will leave lady to ap-pe-ir where it is properly wanted, and not continue to degrade their sex by speaking of the 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." — Athcnaum. '

[From the Government Gazette, August 22.]