Women's Oaths

1895

The Fair Sex Swore More in Old Times Than Nowadays

Dr. Barker Newhall, of Brown University, in his paper on "Women's Speech in Classic Literature," said: "Disconnected thought and inconsequent expression are characteristic of the female mind, and are exhibited, e.g., in oration 32 of Lysias, by the lack of connection between the sentences in one place and by the excess of it in another; while in Terence the insertion of a parenthesis often breaks the continuity. Again, we notice the prolixity of style, as shown by useless repetitions or such diffuseness and garrulity as are familiar in Chaucer's 'Wife of Bath.' Plato and Cicero tell us that women are conservative and keep many antiquated phrases. Such are found in Corndia's letter and elsewhere, while proverbs abound in Theocritus's fifteenth idyll. Women also show their emotion by pathetic repetitions and exaggeration, as in the speeches ascribed by historians to certain Roman matrons and in Alciphron's love letters. Swearing was once quite common among English women, so Juliet's nurse and Dame Quickly swear very freely, while Hotspur reproaches Kate for using the weak oaths of women. In classic antiquity the weaker sex swore the more frequently and matrons most of all. In Greece, as men swore by no goddess save Demeter, so the women by no god but Zeus, while oaths by Aphrodite were especially characteristic. In the best period Roman men never called Castor to witness, nor the women Hercules. Similarly certain interjections were the exclusive property of the women, as among some savage tribes they have peculiar names for many objects."