What do you think?
Rate this book


72 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1851
You need only to look at the way in which she is formed to see that woman is not meant to undergo great labour, whether of the mind or of the body. [??] She pays the debt of life not by what she does but by what she suffers; by the pains of childbearing and care for the child, and by submission to her husband, to whom she should ['should'?] be a patient and cheering companion.Immediately, Schopenhauer makes these assumptions that are essentially not backed up by anything, and are basically contingent on the reader being beholden to the same ideological bend as he. He quite slyly weaves in certain presuppositions, in what is I suppose a vague hope that they won't be spotted out and will just be taken to be the case - such as in the above quote that says women 'should' submit to their husband - or later (as he does this throughout), where he claims that 'women exist in the main solely for the propagation of the species, and are not destined for anything else'. This he just says, I guess ignoring the male's part of the 'propagation of the species' - he basically posits something, and justifies it with itself, tautologically.
