WOMEN UNDER THE LASH.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.") Sia,—I have been greatly surprised by a sentence in your last week's issue, a single sentence, casual, probably inadvertent, still, as coming from you, hitherto invariably just, generous, and thoughtful in your tone on these subjects, I repeat it, very sur- prising. In your article on " Current Literature," noticing Mrs. Lynn Linton's " Essays on Women," you say: " For the most part, it will please men, and make women angry; for Mrs. Lynn Linton does not spare her own sex, but lays on the lash with almost savage energy." Is it come to this? Are men pleased to see women " savagely lashed "? Is this the feeling of men to the companions of their lives, the inmates of their homes, their mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters? Is this their state of mind toward those who are confessedly by nature, legislation, and custom the weaker and the dependent, who are ordered to regard men as their protectors, as knowing better than they what is for their good and their happiness, which is, we are assured, to be found in associa- tion with, and subjection to, these same men? Is it thus men would deal with the sex whom they profess to regard as flowers of such beauty, delicacy, and sweetness that they must not attempt to strive for or defend themselves, lest they forfeit that same beauty, sweetness, and delicacy? Or does the word "men" here include only the Pall Mall and Saturday Review writers and their " fast " and unthinking readers, the men whose own lives have deprived them of the power to appreciate good and true women, and those of whom it may be said, " They never pardon who have done the wrong "P [Is there no mischievous pleasure felt by women in seeing men's faults under the literary lash? We suspect there is, even when they are far from wholly concurring in the criticism.--• ED. Spectator.]
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