Men & Woman relationships: traditional Male Thought and Violence over Women

Wife and Servant are the same
But only differ in the name.
Mary Chudleigh, 1656-1710, English poet, Poems, To the Ladies.

A girl, a young woman, or even an old woman should not do anything independently, even in her own house. In childhood a woman should be under her father’s control, in youth under her husband’s, and when her husband is dead, under her sons.
Manu Laws, Traditional Indian Code, I Century b. C.

It is only males who are created directly by the gods and are given souls. Those who live rightly return to the stars, but those who are ‘cowards’ or lead unrighteous lives may with reason be supposed to have changed into the nature of women in the second generation.
Plato, 428-347 b.C., Greek philosopher, Timaeus.

But some questions remain. What was the exact man-woman relationship in the married couple’s intimacy? Was it entirely devoid of true love?

We can state otherwise, and collect statements showing some male sensibility towards woman, questioning the traditional role and the social inferiority of women:

But who has asserted that Nature has dealt grudgingly with women's natures and has narrowly restricted their virtues? Believe me, they have just as much force, just as much capacity, if they like, for virtuous action; they are just as able to endure suffering and toil when they are accustomed to them.
Seneca, To Marcia on Consolation

Whereas some have attributed the dominion to the man only, as being of the more excellent sex, they misreckon in it. For there is not always that difference of strength or prudence between the man and the woman (…)
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

No slave is a slave to the same lengths, and in so full a sense of the word, as a wife is.
John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women

The principle which regulates the existing social relations between the two sexes – the legal subordination of one sex to the other – is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement.
John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women

The true virtue of human beings is fitness to live together as equals; claiming nothing for themselves but what they as freely concede to everyone else; regarding command of any kind as an exceptional necessity, and in all cases a temporary one.
John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women

We can say that these signs and these words aren’t truly significant. They are isolated and circumstantial assertions, that even do not express the private life of their authors. Just Stuart Mill’s statement is more representative, but he lived not long ago.

So, the main question remains: were the men of past societies, with dominant male stereotypes, as brutal and masters of their wives as often claimed? Were the women as exploited and oppressed by their male partners as appears in many documents or may be deduced from many echoes?

In other words: haven’t many women, through their personalities, shaken off oppression and conquered and diminished the male dominance? Haven’t the dominated women dominated the dominant males, in many cases? Morin suggests this, when he says:

To say yes, absolutely, would be to ignore the strength of prejudice and social involvement. But to state an unequivocal no is to minimize the strength and the female talents too much. To refuse this last hypothesis is also to deny the human capacity of loving and to assert that family love had been systematically denied. And this is too much and declaredly wrong.

Books, Films, Cultural Stuff on feminism, love, sex, men and women nature and other related issues? See Love Essays Store (in association with Amazon)

Quotations
Traditional male thoughts over woman

He who lived well during his appointed time was to return and dwell in his native star, and there he would have a blessed and congenial existence. But if he failed in attaining this, at the second birth he would pass into a woman, and if, when in that state of being, he did not desist from evil, he would continually be changed into some brute who resembled him in the evil nature which he had acquired.

The grand, and that which tends to courage, may be fairly called manly; but that which inclines to moderation and temperance, may be declared both in law and in ordinary speech to be the more womanly quality. This, then, will be the general order of them.
Plato, 428-347 b.C., Greek philosopher, Laws

Quotations
Irony and sarcasm about man-woman relationships

Take my word for it, the silliest woman can manage a clever man; but it takes a very clever woman to manage a fool.
Rudyard Kipling, 1865-1936, English writer, Plain Tales from the Hills

When women go wrong, men go right after them.
Mae West, 1892-1980, American actress, in the movie She Done Him Wrong

I used to be Snow White… but I drifted.
Mae West, 1892-1980, in J. Weintraub Peel me a Grape

Beautiful women don't need to know about men. It's the men who have to know about beautiful women.
Attributed to Katherine Hepburn, 1907-2003, American actress

I'm tired of all this nonsense about beauty being only skin-deep. That's deep enough. What do you want - an adorable pancreas?
Jean Kerr, North-American writer, The snake as all the lines

When light is switch off, all women are fairies.
Plutarch, 50-125, Greek writer, Morals

A lover tries to stand in well with the pet dog of the house.
Moliere, 1622-1673, French writer, Les femmes savantes

Many brief follies – that is what you call love. And your marriage concludes many brief follies, as a long stupidity.

Men are confused. They're conflicted. They want a woman who's their intellectual equal, but they're afraid of women like that. They want a woman they can dominate, but then they hate her for being weak. It's an ambivalence that goes back to a man's relationship with his mother. Source of his life, center of his universe, object of both his fear and his love.

Books, Films, Cultural Stuff on feminism, love, sex, men and women nature and other related issues? See Love Essays Store (in association with Amazon) Quotations Traditional male thoughts over woman

Quotations Irony and sarcasm about man-woman relationships

Books, Films, Cultural Stuff on feminism, love, sex, men and women nature and other related issues? See Love Essays Store (in association with Amazon)

Quotations
Traditional male thoughts over woman

Quotations
Irony and sarcasm about man-woman relationships