The Hindu Business Line : Woman begins by resisting a man's advances and ends by blocking his retreat

THERE was an old woman tossed in a basket. Seventeen times as high as the moon; but where she was going no mortal could tell, for under her arm she carried a broom. "Old woman, old woman, old woman," said I, "Whither, oh whither, oh whither so high?" "To sweep the cobwebs from the sky; and I'll be with you by-and-by. That is a kindergarten rhyme well suiting the Women's Bill that gets tossed off and on, only to accumulate cobwebs in the process, so the word for the week is `woman'.

"Frailty, thy name is woman!" exclaims Hamlet, and again screams, "O most pernicious woman!" Woman is a dish for the gods, if the devil dress her not, says the clown to Cleopatra. "You know I am a woman, lacking wit," confesses Queen Katharine in King Henry VIII.

Paulina entreats in The Winter's Tale, "Sir, royal sir, forgive a foolish woman". Suffolk propounds logic in King Henry VI, "She's beautiful, and therefore to be woo'd; she is a woman, therefore to be won". King Richard III comments, "Relenting fool, and shallow, changing woman!" Tranio laments in The Taming of the Shrew, "Unconstant womankind!" And there is the line "A woman, naturally born to fears," in King John.

But these definitions may not be politically right these days, so I turn to Concise Oxford English Dictionary, where woman is defined immediately after wolves as "an adult human female, a female worker or employee, a female domestic help, a wife or lover".

`The little woman' is "a condescending way of referring to one's wife", but I'm sure she may have a grudge to settle if called thus. `Woman of letters' refers to scholar or author, while `woman of the streets' is euphemism for prostitute. In Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, `fancy woman' is a woman of questionable morals; and `other woman' is "a woman with whom a married man has an affair — usually used with `the'.

In Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary, `fallen woman' is a disapproving phrase, as much as `scarlet woman'; and `old woman' is "a man who gets anxious over unimportant matters and details". On www.ultralingua.net, `point woman' is one who is at the forefront of an important enterprise; and `wonder woman' is "a woman who can be a successful wife and have a professional career at the same time."

Woman is "the female part of the human race; womankind," defines Webster Dictionary, 1913. It also provides a few quotes — such as of Thackeray, "Man is destined to be a prey to woman"; and of J. Ledyard - "I have observed among all nations that the women ornament themselves more than the men; that, wherever found, they are the same kind, civil, obliging, humane, tender beings, inclined to be gay and cheerful, timorous and modest." Battered Woman Syndrome or BWS appears to be the product of legal advocacy and not science, suggests www.expertlaw.com. "And the rib, which the Lord god had taken from the man, made he a woman," is a quote from Genesis to explain the origin of woman. However, on the origin of the word, Encarta notes, "Old English wimman, variant of wîfman, wîf `woman, wife' + man `person'".

For more details, look at Online Etymology Dictionary, which informs that wimman literally meant `woman-man'. That may remind you of Dromio of Syracuse who says in The Comedy of Errors, "I am an ass, I am a woman's man and besides myself."

Thus, man meant `human being', referring to both sexes. "Women's liberation is attested from 1966; women's rights is from 1840, with an isolated example in 1632. Verb womanise originally (1593) meant `to make effeminate'; sense of `to chase women, to go wenching' is attested from 1893," is further knowledge from www.etymonline.com.

Were you to see `wife', you'd know that the word is from "OE wif `woman,' from P.Gmc. *wiban... of unknown origin. The modern sense of `female spouse' began as a specialised sense in OE; the general sense of `woman' is preserved in midwife, old wives' tale, and so on."

Being uxorious is to be "excessively fond of or submissive to one's wife"; and, interestingly, gynecology is from French gynécologie, from Greek gynaik-. "Gyne `woman, female,' from Proto-Indo-European *gwen- `woman' (cf. Sanskrit gana `wife of a god, goddess,' janih `wife;' Gothic qino `woman, wife;' Old English cwen `woman, wife, queen').

Second element is from French -logie `study of,' from Greek." How pointless it is for the sexes to fight between each other, because man is born of a woman, but for exceptions as in the assurance of the spirits: "Fear not, Macbeth; no man that's born of woman shall e'er have power upon thee."

Wikipedia clarifies further that in Old English the words wer and wyf (also wæpman and wifman) were what referred to `a man' and `a woman' respectively. `Man' was gender neutral, but in Middle English man displaced wer as term for `male human', while wyfman (which eventually evolved into woman) was retained for `female human', informs The Free Encyclopedia.

On the symbol too, there's input from http://en.wikipedia.org: "The symbol for the planet Venus is the sign also known in biology for the female sex: a stylised representation of the goddess Venus's hand mirror: a circle with a small cross underneath.

The Venus symbol also represented feminity, and in ancient alchemy stood for copper. Alchemists constructed the symbol from a circle (representing spirit) above a cross (representing matter)."

Woman is "a replacement for the Unix man documentation browsing command," informs Free On Line Dictionary Of Computing a.k.a Foldoc.

According to Online Symbolism Dictionary on www.umich.edu, "The woman is the Great mother; she is most commonly symbolised by the moon, the earth, and the waters. She is protective, nurturing, passive, and a hollow to be entered. She is a spiritual guide, but may also be a sign of seduction."

Woman figures under "Words relating to matter — Organic matter — Vitality" in http://thesaurus.reference.com, which lists these snatches under `phrases': "`a perfect woman nobly planned' (Wordsworth); `a lovely lady garmented in white' (Shelley); `earth's noblest thing, a woman perfected' (Lowell); `the beauty of a lovely woman is like music' (G. Eliot); `woman is the lesser man' (Tennyson)."

To these, you may add a sonnet of the Bard too, where he extols "a woman's face with Nature's own hand painted"!

In Merry Wives of Windsor, you meet "Mistress Ford the honest woman, the modest wife, the virtuous creature, that hath the jealous fool to her husband!" A further search for `woman' in Shakespeare's works leads one to Katharina who talks like a hurricane, in The Taming of the Shrew — that a woman moved is like "a fountain troubled, muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty"; to Aemelia's opinion in The Comedy of Errors, that "The venom clamours of a jealous woman poisons more deadly than a mad dog's tooth"; and to Valentine's insight in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, that a woman sometimes scorns what best contents her, short after saying, "More than quick words do move a woman's mind."

There's no end when talking about a topic that constitutes almost half the population on this planet, so let me wrap with a quote from Oscar Wilde, that woman begins by resisting a man's advances and ends by blocking his retreat.

Only, the men who are currently blocking women's advances don't seem to know the fact, at least as yet!

ComingToTerms@TheHindu.co.in

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Woman begins by resisting a man's advances and ends by blocking his retreat

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