Explore "Woman to Man" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Woman is man's enemy, rival, and competitor. -JOHN J. INGALLS.
You do but jest, sir, and you jest not well, / How could the hand be enemy of the arm, / Or seed and sod be rivals! How could light / Feel jealousy of heat, plant of the leaf, / Or competition dwell 'twixt lip and smile? / Are we not part and parcel of yourselves? / Like strands in one great braid we entertwine / And make the perfect whole. You could not be, / Unless we gave you birth; we are the soil / From which you sprang, yet sterile were that soil / Save as you planted. (Though in the Book we read / One woman bore a child with no man's aid, / We find no record of a man-child born / Without the aid of woman! Fatherhood / Is but a small achievement at the best, / While motherhood comprises heaven and hell.) / This ever-growing argument of sex / Is most unseemly, and devoid of sense.