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FWIW, here is a little something from H.L. Mencken. Women are feral realists:

Henry Louis Mencken once wrote "A man’s women folk, whatever their outward show of respect for his merit and authority, always regard him secretly as an ass, and with something akin to pity" (1). While Mencken’s blunt declaration provides shock-value humor, it is also a serious and profound statement that reflects his intellectual deviation from the gender stereotypes of his time.

Mencken’s ideas about the societal roles of women differed greatly from those of traditional, conservative, Victorian Americans in the nineteen twenties. In fact, he frequently criticized this genre of Americans, whom he labeled the "booboise", for their "provincialism of attitude in manners, morals, politics, and taste" (Martin 67). In order to compare Mencken’s view with that of the "booboise", however, traditional ideas about gender roles must first be explored.

Women in the 1920’s were placed in a socially subordinate position relative to their male counterparts. This was influenced directly by the preceding Victorian era, in which women were expected to be subservient to men in nearly all walks of life. But, even with the "New Woman" of the modern era and notions of female empowerment, the advertising industry still did much to perpetuate ideas of the woman as a domestic servant (Horn 104). Thus, women in the twenties were viewed as domestic creatures, second class citizens, and emotional beings.

The advertisement pages of any "Ladies Home Journal" or "Vanity Fair" from the roaring twenties can testify that women were viewed in this time as the administrators of domestic life. Though the flood of new consumer products promised to "empower" women by offering the right to choose, the twenties paradoxically imprisoned them by further entrenching the connection between women and the private, domestic world. This necessarily precluded women from participating in the public arenas of politics, government, and business on the same level as men.

This is not to say that there were no women active outside of the family domain. Women created potent political lobbies, fought for birth control rights, started businesses, and entered the work force. Many women succeeded in areas typically deemed "masculine". These success, however, were only relative to previous eras of exclusion and remained extremely limited. For example, it has been noted that female voter turnout was significantly lower than that of males, racial and socioeconomic barriers limited the political power of women as a whole, and women attained only a fraction of the pay, skills, and status of men in the workplace. (Dumenil 108-112). Women were indeed "second class citizens" in the United States. Even the discourse and rhetoric of the times constructed women in the public sphere as second rate. Law professionals were called "lady lawyers" and government officials were referred to as "lady magistrates."

Finally, there pervaded in the twenties a conviction that women were emotionally guided individuals, usually incapable of thinking rationally. This notion perhaps has its roots, again, in the Victorian culture. The biological ability of the woman to bear children branded her as the caretaker, mother, and consequently, the giver of moral and emotional guidance. This feminine lack of reason served largely as the justification to exclude women from the realm of the public.

Mencken’s ideas about the roles of women countered those prominent at the time. He made public his ideas in the 1918 book "In Defense of Women". He attempted to explain the vast social mischaracterization of women and satirically scrutinize middle-class notions of masculinity.

Women, according to Mr. Mencken, were not a second class group of individuals, but an inherently superior one. He argued in his gender treatise that the source of a woman’s superiority lay in her intelligence when he wrote that "women, in point of fact, are not only intelligent: they have an almost monopoly on certain of the subtler and more utile forms of intelligence. The thing itself, indeed, might be reasonably described as a special feminine character" (8-9). Mencken argues further that the feminine intelligence has been mischaracterized throughout history and labeled as "women’s’ intuition". This "intuition," he claims, is nothing more than a male social construct, invented to mask the raw intelligence of women (28). Mencken concedes in his writings, however, that women have historically been and shall continue to be utter failures in law, business, and other "masculine" fields of interest. But, he challenges the validity of these domains and calls them "superficial", "imbecile" and "childish" practices which put "little more strain on the mental powers than a chimpanzee suffers in learning to scratch a match" (13). Women tend to succeed as teachers, nurses, and artists. These are the trades that Mencken hails as requiring ingenuity, quick comprehension, and courage (23). So, while he held that no external societal forces barred women from entering the public domain, women gravitated naturally toward the occupations that were truly worthwhile and beneficial to society, and thus away from law, business, and government.

These ideas strongly challenged the old-stock American views that women were subordinate and that their domestic role was a product of natural male superiority. In his mind, women were the leaders of the race and their role in the private sphere was only a result conscious rejection of the mind-numbing and intellectually futile public sphere of men.

Mencken also directly contested the notion of women as emotionally guided creatures by asserting that "women are not sentimental, i.e., not prone to permit mere emotion and illusion to corrupt their estimation of a situation. The doctrine, perhaps, will raise a protest" (29). To evidence this claim, he sites the example of monogamous marriage, which he claims men run from and women pursue adamantly. Mencken’s argument is that the occurrence of marriage in society proves that women alone have the capacity to maintain cool-headed and pursue their long-term interests without being subject to emotional distractions, such as love or pulchritude. Men, on the other hand, eventually give in and marry (though it is ultimately against their best interests). They are "bowled over in a combat of wits" (Mencken 32). Thus it is clear to Mencken that women are the harsh realists of the species rather than the emotional idealists. Mencken also scoffs at the suggestion that a woman’s maternal instinct and caretaker mentality naturally assign her an emotional role. He argues that this maternity comes only from pity for the weaker male sex and out of necessity. All men are boys, in Mencken’s opinion, that are still nourished by a mother’s milk.

Benjamin De Casseres once said "[Mencken] puts his finger squarely and surely on the eternal enemy of superior men: women" (qtd. in Schaum, 379). The concept of men as superior beings pervaded most of the cultural mores in America during the twenties. Henry Louis Mencken’s views of womens’ roles in society contrasted deeply with those mores. Mecken, lead the modern crusade against Calvinist patriarchal structures (Martin 69).

It is critical to explore Mencken’s analysis of societal gender roles on a level of pure understanding. Before a true understanding of how gender roles functioned in the twenties (and during other periods in our history), one must be aware of the many contrasting ideas that existed. Consciousness precedes understanding, and Mencken’s view exemplifies a situation in which it is vital to raise consciousness about a set of ideas that did not conform to social dogma in order for a broader understanding to be attained.

Adler, Betty. H.L.M. The Mencken Bibliography. Baltimore:John Hopkins Press 1961

Bulsterbaum, Allison. H.L. Mencken: A Research Guide. New York and London: Garland Publishig, 1988

Dumenil, Lynn. The Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920's. New York: Hill and Wang

Horn, Pamela. Women in the 1920's. United Kindgom: Alan Sutton Publishing, 1995.

Martin, Edward A. "H.L. Mencken and Equal Rights for Women." The Georgia Review 35 (1981): 65-76

Schaum, Melita. "H.L. Mencken and American Cultural Masculinism." Journal of American Studies 29 (1995): 379-398

Mencken, Henry Louis. In Defense fo Women. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1918