Do Men & Women Have the Same Question About Strength & Tenderness?

The Oneness of Hardness and Softness in a Woman

One of the reasons Rebecca is so admirable is because we feel she is trying to have a good relation of hardness and softness, opposites related to tenderness and strength. As I said earlier, these have been very big in my life. I could be sweet, but also terrifically stubborn. Early in my marriage to Bennett, we had a quarrel concerning who knew more about the computer. I had prided myself at my speed and knowledge on the PC, but Bennett was an expert on the Mac, which I didn't know so much about, and I'Â'm sorry to say that I found my hackles going up at the idea of having to learn from my husband.

We told about this in an Aesthetic Realism class, and to have me get some perspective, Miss Reiss said humorously "Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning never argued about the computer."

Then she asked me an important question which I recommend every woman ask as to her husband. "What do you think you do that most annoys Mr. Cooperman?" I said, "My desire to manage him, hover over him when he's doing something in the house. I say 'I think I could be of use.'" Ellen Reiss asked:

Do you think "I could be of use" is really "I can do this better than you, so step aside"? That's superiority.

This was so true, and Miss Reiss asked about ways I could be sweet and yielding and then get my back up. She asked: "Do you think you have good will for Mr. Cooperman?" I said, no. And she continued:

Good will is the firmest thing in the world...And it's the most flexible thing—you give up any notion of yourself that would get in the way of being fair to that person.

I thank Ellen Reiss for teaching me how I can be proud of myself as a woman and wife.

One of the reasons I am so affected by Rebecca and am learning from her is that she is a means of seeing what real strength and true tenderness are. She is not obstinate or stubborn as I have been, nor is she strategically sweet. Also—different from me and many women—she doesn't use a man not seeing her right to ratify a case against the world and see it as a jewel. As Ivanhoe continues, we see Rebecca has that beautiful oneness of firmness and flexibility that are in good will. In a lecture titled "Poetry and Strength," Mr. Siegel said that "one idea of strength" is the:

Ability to take many things and to remain what you are...The ability to endure, to remain the same amid much vicissitude.

This, we see in Rebecca as she meets great danger. She is captured with Ivanhoe and others, and they are held prisoner in the castle Torquilstone by the evil Brian de Bois-Gilbert and King John's men. As Brian de Bois-Guilbert tries to force Rebecca to submit to him, and she shows magnificently what Mr. Siegel described—the "ability to take many things and remain what you are." They are high in the turret of Torquilstone castle, and Bois-Guilbert says:

Thou art the captive of my bow and spear, subject to my will by the laws of all nations; nor will I...abstain from taking by violence what thou refusest.

'Stand back,' said Rebecca—'stand back, and hear me ere thou offerest to commit a sin so deadly! My strength thou mayst indeed overpower...but I will proclaim thy villainy...from one end of Europe to the other...I defy thee.'

As she spoke, she threw open the latticed window which led to the bartizan, and in an instant after stood on the very verge of the parapet, with not the slightest screen between her and the tremendous depth below...'Remain where thou art, [or] thou shalt see that the Jewish maiden will rather trust her soul with God than her honour to the Templar!"

While Rebecca spoke thus, her high and firm resolve...gave to her...a dignity that seemed more than mortal. Her glance quailed not, her cheek blanched not...on the contrary, the thought that she had her fate at her command....gave...yet a more brilliant fire to her eye. Bois-Guilbert...thought he never beheld beauty so animated and so commanding.

He respects her tremendously. Rebecca is courageously strong and critical of him throughout this novel, but he feels he has to have her. She is falsely accused by the Templars of bewitching Bois-Guilbert and is sentenced to death, unless she can find a Champion Knight to fight Bois-Guilbert on her behalf. Even in the midst of such peril we see she is brave and true to herself. She says in a room full of her accusers:

God will raise me up a champion...It cannot be that in merry England, the hospitable, generous, the free, where so many are ready to peril their lives for honour, there will not be found one to fight for justice.

Then, in a dramatic moment, Scott writes this sentence—itself a beautiful oneness of tenderness and strength, delicacy and power:

She took her embroidered glove from her hand, and flung it down before the Grand Master with an air of simplicity and dignity which excited universal surprise and admiration.

As the novel nears its end, Rebecca is rescued by the noble Ivanhoe; and we see tenderness and strength as one thing become triumphant.

Aesthetic Realism which can teach every woman and man how to have these opposites which people have felt would always war in them honestly work together in our lives. This, I am thankful to say is what is happening to me—and I want to be a means of it happening to people everywhere.

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