The Writer's E-Zine Home

Writers' Village University - F2K: Free Fiction Writing Course - ePress-online
Writers' Village University Membership Information

Inclinations

Priscilla Fagan

Men are from Mars. So says John Gray. But the older I get, the more I really believe this. Talk about a generation gap, I’d take that any day compared to the gender gap. Sometimes it downright wears me out. Vincent of Beauvais said in the 13th century: Woman is man’s confusion. I for one can’t understand this. Why? Because they (men)are from Mars! That’s the only logical explanation.

Rudyard Kipling wrote: A woman’s guess is much more accurate than a man’s certainty. Oh I wish I could have known this man. Sigh. If men would only listen to us, I mean truly listen. Oh they can be so bullheaded sometimes. I mean . . . really.

Back to Mars and proof that we don’t look at the same thing the same way. George Bernard Shaw wrote: Women upset everything. When you let them into your life, you find that the woman is driving at one thing and you’re driving at another. Perhaps, but if you end up in the same place I bet the woman is there first.

Jean Kerr has a great theory in "How to Talk to a Man." She says, Women speak because they wish to speak, whereas a man speaks only when driven to speech by something outside himself -like, for instance, he can’t find any clean socks. Oh I can hear you men bristling at that one.

Talk about ridiculous and really showing their alien form, M.L. Mencken actually wrote in 1919: The allurement that women hold out to men is precisely the allurement that Cape Hatteras holds out to sailors: they are enormously dangerous and hence enormously fascinating. Oh yuck!

Dear Margaret Meade put it just about as succinctly as possible. Women want mediocre men, and men are working hard to be as mediocre as possible. I won't touch that with a 20 foot pole.

Lord Tennyson wrote in 1859: Man at most differ as heaven and earth, / but women, worst and best, as heaven and hell. Puleeze. As I was researching these opinions of the sexes, I began to chuckle when I looked up the heading, ‘women’. Seven pages of quotes, mostly by men to a mere two columns on quotes under the heading ‘men’. I mean where did they come up with some of this, if not on Mars?

Example: Women would rather be right than reasonable. . . Ogden Nash. To be married to a good woman is to live with a tender surprise. . . Norman Mailer. She wavers, she hesitates: in a word, she is a woman. . . Racine, 1691. Do these guys remember who brought them into this world, nurtured them, taught them?

Well, I’ve vented my frustrations this month. I was on a mission but have no conclusions except to leave you with this Inclination by George Eliot (1859): I’m not denyin’ the women are foolish: God almighty made ‘em to match the men.

Perhaps the next century will shed more light on this subject, but as for now I wish you all a safe, peaceful and happy Holiday Season. And please, listen to each other!

Priscilla -- the eternal optimist, waiting for the e-mail...;-)