The Feminine Mind

My Ebook Publishing House

• Publisher: My Ebook Publishing House
• eBook ISBN: 9781311737267
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Feminism & Feminist Theory
• Index: Social Sciences

Daring and fiercely original, The Feminine Mind is a psychological study and a sociopolitical manifesto at the same time. It is conceived as a series of portraits that analyzes many topics, which include frigidity, the problem of the monogamous ideal, maternal conflicts, the distrust between the sexes, feminine masochism, and the neurotic need for love.
This book examines women's troubles from mind to spirit.

1. Dialogue with an old acquaintance

I address myself to you as to an old friend, because I know you from ancient times, from the beginnings of culture and civilization. For millenniums we have fought together against natural disasters, benefiting from the experience of our ancestors and transmitting it, enriched, to our descendants.

The secret to our assertion and supremacy on this minuscule planet and the grandeur of our struggles doesn’t consist so much in a series of epochal discoveries, such as the one of fire, but in the execution of that “miracle” of the transfer through the linguistic vehicle of some material and palpable realities. I have attained, by conquering time, the freedom of looking ahead and aback, I have created history and built ideals. Thereby, the connection between generations, from a biological one, became a spiritual one; the union between man and woman, from an instinctual one, became a moral and legal one, and your role as a mother and wife has achieved an immensurable significance. It is true that, sometimes exploiting my physical strength as a man or abusing of certain advantages, I haven’t equally divided my life’s burdens and difficulties, but, in the moments of complete self-honesty, I have adhered to the sayings of a certain Anatole France: “The woman makes all the difference in this world. She is sovereign: nothing is done unless it’s through her or for her. Or, the woman is the great governess of the man; she teaches him wonderful virtues such as courtesy, discretion and the pride of fearing to be inopportune.”… “From her, we learn that society is much more complex and has more delicate customs that it is usually imagined.”… (Le Jardin d’Epicure).

I have said that I know you from ancient times, but I also have known you in the past few days in the circumstances other have known you: as a mother, a sister, a wife, a daughter, a grand-daughter… I can still feel your glance, ardent with curiosity and following me from the desk at my classes; I catch you flashing throbs of joy or indignation, which accompany your daily life stories; I record the echoes of you scholar, academic events… I am watching you with interest and sympathy. I am interested in the young person hidden in you, experiencing adolescence and youth. By your leave, I have addressed some questions regarding your life, your interests and ideals; you have graciously answered my questions. You will allow commenting some of them together. Thus, the dialogue that had begun a long time ago will continue, an interesting, lively and full of pleasant surprises dialogue, which will help us in discovering ourselves. You have always honored me with your candor. This is why I allow myself to continue our spirited dialogue. You are now on the verge of adulthood. You will have the willingness of remaking, if needed, along with me, your journey from the last few years, perhaps the path that seems the most interesting one to you: from the end of you adolescence, the age of uncertainty, momentums and indecision, afterwards passing through a period filled with exuberance and self-affirmation, towards you ager today, an age of calm and balance, in threshold of having a career and also, a family, prepared for being a wife and a mother. Please let me know, with all the sincerity that characterizes you, when my opinions will seem wrong to you. They sometimes mirror an already read science book, a book that is, perhaps, out-of-date; sometimes, they reveal the creases of an age left behind or perhaps, the prejudices of a gender hidebound in his self-pride superiority, gifted with another temperamental tonality, but void of the intuition that characterizes you. During this period of time, especially from the age of15-16 years old until today, I have noticed you listening-in towards what was happening inside you, towards your inner-self, towards the being at her second birth, seeking to find the answer to the following question: “Who am I?” In this inner-world, which is new to you, you were trying to distinguish your heart’s voice in particular, the challenges and invocations of the emotion, always asking yourself: “What do I feel?”

Today, you have already found the answers to these questions or you are about to discover them. Would you like to comment them?

2. The mystery-woman; the perennial essence.

Is it truly necessary to attempt the painting of your portrait, when there is no book or novel that is not about you? Some worship you, others detest you. That is why it is hard for me to shape a righteous portrait of you. You thyself cannot be indifferent towards the way you are being seen by others. Your judgments concerning people are the answers to their opinions about you, and your feelings towards you own personality are also shaped according to what others think of you. These attitudes and emotions diversify with age, with the nation you belong to and with your personal experience. The questions still lingers: “Who are you, woman?” Am I capable of finding the answer to this question? Do you know this answer? And if you do, are you confident that it represents the truth? Can you see yourself, the woman standing here today, in your sister that had disappeared many moons ago, in the fair-complexioned woman from North, or in the dark-skinned one from South, in the ruddy one or in the pale-faced one from the West? Can you truly rediscover yourself with the same ease in the English society, as well as in the Japanese or Danish one, in the Italian society? Do you have something general about you, which allows us to call you women? Does the eternal feminine, written by poets, truly exist? Or are you a protean, an indistinguishable being, we being constrained to accept as an unalterable reality the Latin saying: “varium et mutabile semper femina?” (The woman is a fickle and changeable being.) Let’s acknowledge the fact that the answer is not simple. Illustrious men have written about you, they have described you, in self-portraits, famous women. You have certainly read a textbook in which the psychology of the women and adolescent was discussed but, especially and above all, you have recorded, as a sensible seismograph, starting from childhood, the attitude of others towards you; from this manifold threads you have embroidered the image you present today. Can you entrust it to me? Nevertheless, I am afraid for your self-portrait not to be too sentimental, and, as such, versatile to contraposition, and, as any sentiment, polarized into love and hatred. There are times when you are satisfied with yourself and times when you are suffering because of the major flaws you find in yourself. Along with these swings, your vision of people and of those around you also oscillates. If we would decide to specify the nature of your feminine personality, the keynote of your consciousness, my young friend, I believe you would agree with me on the fact that the dissimilarities between a man and a ...

Table of contents

• 1. Dialogue with an old acquaintance
• 2. The mystery-woman; the perennial essence.
• 3. The successive metamorphosis of the feminine personality
• 4. The feelings towards yourself
• 5. Friends and models
• 6. Family relationships
• 7. Dreams and realities: Love, Marriage and Career