Guestblog: Whigwham on Fickleness

I recall having a debate with you once about whether women are more fickle than men. The controversy stemmed from a passage from Persuasion, quoted below. In it, Anne claims that books can't be used as authorities in the argument. Well, at long last, we have a medium which can settle the issue once and for all!





(When I heard this song on the radio, I was wondering if the singer was a girl or a dude. After watching the video, I'm still not sure. How avant-garde!)

`There is no hurry on my side. I am only ready whenever you are. I am in very good anchorage here,' (smiling at Anne,) `well supplied, and want for nothing. No hurry for a signal at all. Well, Miss Elliot,' (lowering his voice,) `as I was saying we shall never agree, I suppose, upon this point. No man and woman, would, probably. But let me observe that all histories are against you - all stories, prose and verse. If I had such a memory as Benwick, I could bring you fifty quotations in a moment on my side the argument, and I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman's inconstancy. Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman's fickleness. But perhaps you will say, these were all written by men.'

`Perhaps I shall. Yes, yes, if you please, no reference to examples in books. Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything.'

`But how shall we prove anything?'

[Editor's note: Oh, Whigwham, Captain Wentworth even allows that songs should be excluded--especially a song sung by two men/boys! Plus, this song rants against a bad, fickle chick, not all, nor even most, women as fickle.]