Duly Chastened

Lest other females, like myself, were beginning to feel a certain insidious pride and confidence, influence and assertiveness, in light of recent political developments, this sage discourse deserves careful reflection. One can never be too wary of feminine woes and wiles.

From A Discourse of the Married and Single Life: Wherein by Discovering the Misery of One, is Plainly Declared the Felicity of the Other by Ionas Man (1621):

Let a man also consider the qualities, wherewith women are indued, which for the most part are opposite to those of men: as, her wantonnesse, to his sobriety; her forwardnesse, to his meekness; her stubornesse, to his patience; her pride, to his humilitie; her lightnesse, to his gravitie; her disliking, to that which he approveth; her covering of which he denieth: wherein they justly resemble the shadow of mans body, which if a man persue, it will runne from him; if he goe away, it will follow him: this is all the comfort that man in his choice can have, that perhaps it may be his fortune, inter malos, non habere pessima : amongst many that are evill, not to light of that which is worst of all.”

And, lest any presumptuous female be not sufficiently shamed, persisting in the delusion that she can hide her true nature from men with such lascivious products as lipstick , I refer her to a more ancient and sagacious authority, Gregory of Nazianzus:

Cosmetics, he informs us, are “the arts and witcheries of the painter . . . that cheap beauty of the infernal creator who works against the Divine, hiding with his treacherous pigments the creation of God, and putting it to shame with his honor, and setting before eager eyes the imitation of a harlot instead of the form of God, so that this bastard beauty may steal away that image which should be kept for God, and for the world to come.”

There you have it. “Frailty, thy name is woman!”