PIECES, PATCHES, ROPES OF HAIR

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Why are women more argumentative, so full of idle gossip and more talkative than men? Because they are made of bone, while our bodies are fashioned of clay: bone makes more noise than clay. 

-Lamentations of Matheolus

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Les femmes visita premieres, / Car de jongler sont coustumieres.

-Les Lamentations de Matheolus

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God made women to weep, talk and spin.

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The Machinery, Madam, is a term invented by the Critics, to signify that part which the Deities, Angels, or Dæmons are made to act in a Poem: For the ancient Poets are in one respect like many modern Ladies: let an action be never so trivial in itself, they always make it appear of the utmost importance. These Machines I determined to raise on a very new and odd foundation, the Rosicrucian doctrine of Spirits. I know how disagreeable it is to make use of hard words before a Lady; but't is so much the concern of a Poet to have his works understood, and particularly by your Sex, that you must give me leave to explain two or three difficult terms. ...

-Pope, dedication to The Rape of the Lock

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Shee that with Poetry is won, / Is but a Desk to write upon; / And what men say of her, they mean, / No more, than that on which they lean.

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You must not forget to use the natural accents of dying persons, as my Heart, my Life, my Soul, I Dye, let us Dye together, and the like, which imply a counterfeit, if not a real sense. You must add to these, ejaculations, aspirations, sighs, intercision of words, and such like gallantries, whereby you may give your Mate to believe, that you are melted, dissolved, and wholly consumed in pleasure, though Ladies of large business are generally no more moved by an imbrace, than if they were made of Wood or Stone.

-The Whores Rhetorick

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To trust thee from my side, imagin'd wise, Constant, mature, proof against all assaults, And understood not all was but a shew Rather then solid vertu, all but a Rib Crooked by nature, bent, as now appears,  More to the part sinister from me drawn, Well if thrown out, as supernumerarie To my just number found. 

-Paradise Lost (Adam to Eve, Book 10)

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And it is necessary to be very careful about this, for it is an error into which countless women fall, who ordinarily desire above all else to be beautiful: and since having many lovers seems to them a proof of their beauty, they put all their efforts into getting as many of them as they can. Thus, they often indulge in immodest behavior; and, abandoning that tempered modesty which so becomes them, they indulge in certain bold glances, in scurrilous words and impudent behavior, thinking they are well viewed and well heard for this, and that by such ways they cause themselves to be loved: which is not true, because the demonstrations of love that are made to them come from a desire excited by the notion that they are willing, and not by love.

-Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier

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~ The Young Man’s Guide, by William Alcott, 1846

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You are pictures out of door, bells in your parlors, wild-cats in your kitchens, saints in your injuries, devils being offended, players in your housewifery, and housewives in your beds.

-Iago in Othello

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Yet nevertheless, the rudeness of common and mother tongues is no bar for wise speaking. For in the rudest country, and most barbarous mother language, many be found can speak very wisely; but in the Greek and Latin tongue, the only two learned tongues, which be kept, not in common talk, but in private books, we find always wisdom and eloquence, good matter and good utterance never or seldom asunder.

-Ascham, The Scholemaster

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OLIVIA

Are you a comedian?

VIOLA

No, my profound heart: and yet, by the very fangs of malice I swear, I am not that I play. Are you the lady of the house?

OLIVIA

If I do not usurp myself, I am.

VIOLA

Most certain, if you are she, you do usurp yourself; for what is yours to bestow is not yours to reserve. 

-Twelfth Night

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I will be master of what is mine own: She is my goods, my chattels; she is my house, My household stuff, my field, my barn, My horse, my ox, my ass, my any thing; And here she stands, touch her whoever dare; I'll bring mine action on the proudest he That stops my way in Padua.

-Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew

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Go now fond Sex that on your Face Do all your useless Study place, Nor once at Vice your Brows dare knit Lest the smooth Forehead wrinkled sit Yet your own Face shall at you grin, Thorough the Black-bag of your Skin; When knowledge only could have fill'd And Virtue all those Furows till'd.

-Marvell, "Upon Appleton House"

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But truly I imagine it falleth out with these poet-whippers as with some good women who often are sick, but in faith they cannot tell where. So the name of poetry is odious to them, but neither his cause nor effects, neither the sum that contains him nor the particularities descending from him, give any fast handle to their carping dispraise.

-Sidney, The Defense of Poesy

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Thou who wilt not love, do this, Learn of me what woman is. Something made of thread and thrum, A mere botch of all and some, Pieces, patches, ropes of hair ; Inlaid garbage everywhere. Outside silk and outside lawn ; Scenes to cheat us neatly drawn. False in legs, and false in thighs ; False in breast, teeth, hair, and eyes ; False in head, and false enough ; Only true in shreds and stuff.

-Robert Herrick, "Upon Some Women"