moderns forget that there is a female point of view
But there is a further fact; forgotten also because we
moderns forget that there is a female point of view.
The woman"s wisdom stands partly, not only for a wholesome
hesitation about punishment, but even for a wholesome hesitation
about absolute rules. There was something feminine and
perversely true in that phrase of Wilde"s, that people should
not be treated as the rule, but all of them as exceptions.
Made by a man the remark was a little effeminate; for Wilde did
lack the masculine power of dogma and of democratic cooperation.
But if a woman had said it it would have been simply true;
a woman does treat each person as a peculiar person.
In other words, she stands for Anarchy; a very ancient
and arguable philosophy; not anarchy in the sense of having
no customs in one"s life (which is inconceivable), but
anarchy in the sense of having no rules for one"s mind.
To her, almost certainly, are due all those working traditions
that cannot be found in books, especially those of education;
it was she who first gave a child a stuffed stocking for
being good or stood him in the corner for being naughty.
This unclassified knowledge is sometimes called rule of thumb
and sometimes motherwit. The last phrase suggests the whole truth,
for none ever called it fatherwit.
