These two principles of the servitude and the sovereignty of women
retain possession of the ground, each of them defended by fresh
arguments.
The Salic law, which was a legal error, was a triumph for the
principle of political and civil servitude for women, but it did not
diminish the power which French manners accorded them, for the
enthusiasm of chivalry which prevailed in Europe supplanted the party
of manners against the party of law.
And in this way was created that strange phenomenon which since that
time has characterized both our national despotism and our
legislation; for ever since those epochs which seemed to presage the
Revolution, when the spirit of philosophy rose and reflected upon the
history of the past, France has been the prey of many convulsions.
Feudalism, the Crusades, the Reformation, the struggle between the
monarchy and the aristocracy. Despotism and Priestcraft have so
closely held the country within their clutches, that woman still
remains the subject of strange counter-opinions, each springing from
one of the three great movements to which we have referred. Was it
possible that the woman question should be discussed and woman's
political education and marriage should be ventilated when feudalism
threatened the throne, when reform menaced both king and barons, and
the people, between the hierarchy and the empire, were forgotten?
According to a saying of Madame Necker, women, amid these great
movements, were like the cotton wool put into a case of porcelain.
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