"battle of/ war between the sexes"

[Jonathan Lighter]

Here's a cliche' missed by Bartlett's and the _Oxford Book of Quotations_. (If it's in the _Yale_, my apologies and congratulations to Fred.)

  Bartlett's credits James Thurber for his cartoon series, "The War Between Men and Women," but Thurber's phrase merely alludes to one already well established.

  In the pages of _The Methodist Review_ (Mar., 1889, p. 290) Frances Willard observed that "by the laws of nature and of God there can never be a war between the sexes, save now and then, in the retirement of the domestic circle, a war of words."

  Thirty years earlier, though, Thomas Wentworth Higginson had written that "Bohemian annals, indeed, record the legend of a literal war between the sexes, in which the women's army was led by Libussa and Wlalsa, and which finally ended with the capture, by the army of men, of the Castle Dziewin, Maiden's Tower, whose ruins are still visible near Prague"  ("Ought Women to Learn the Alphabet? No. 3," (_Liberator_, Feb. 25, 1859, p.52/1).

  The ultimate source of the phrase, in English at least, now appears to be a poem by the Rev. Samuel Wesley, Jr. (1690-1739, the brother of John and Charles), titled precisely _The Battle of the Sexes_ (London: J. Roberts,. 1723). [Viewable through ECCO.]

  From Canto II:

  "Of arms, which erst contending Sexes bore,
  I sing; and wars for Fame and Empire made.
  Despotick Man rul'd with Tyrannick Pow'r,
  Obey'd, but with Reluctance still obey'd;
  With Words his long disputed Cause he tries,
  But Woman's equal Wit disdains to yield....

  The upshot is a symbolic battle, fought out upon "a Plain...call'd Life" (p. 10), which is finally settled by the appearance of Love and by Marriage, who perfoms the appropriate mass ceremony.


  JL












---------------------------------
How low will we go? Check out Yahoo! Messenger’s low  PC-to-Phone call rates.

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org