Meaning & Analysis
The phrase literally means to be a human being, acknowledging the biological reality that all people are brought into the world by a mother.
Insights
A Call for Compassion
The proverb serves as a call for compassion and empathy, suggesting that our shared origin should foster a mutual understanding of human feelings, frailties, and suffering.
Inherent Vulnerability and Mortality
To be 'born of woman' implies an inherent vulnerability and mortality. It is a reminder of the natural limitations and imperfections that define the human condition, distinguishing mortals from divine or monstrous beings.
An Appeal to Common Decency
The expression is often used to appeal to a person's sense of decency and moral duty. It implies that acknowledging one's maternal origin carries a responsibility to act with kindness and respect, especially towards others.
The Standard of Human Nature
It defines a baseline for human behavior. Actions that are excessively cruel or unfeeling are deemed unnatural, as if the perpetrator were not born in the normal, human way.
Biblical Resonance
The proverb carries strong biblical undertones, echoing phrases from the Book of Job, such as 'Man that is born of a woman is of few days and full of trouble.' This imbues the expression with a sense of universal human frailty, mortality, and shared suffering.
Psychological Appeal to Empathy
The phrase functions as a powerful rhetorical appeal to a person's fundamental sense of empathy, grounded in the universal experience of having a mother. By invoking this shared origin, it aims to dissolve cruelty and remind an individual of their connection to the rest of humanity.
Literary and Cultural Trope
Frequent use in Elizabethan and Jacobean literature, particularly by Shakespeare and his contemporaries, highlights its role as a cultural shorthand for questioning a character's inhumanity or lack of compassion. To suggest someone was not 'born of woman' was to accuse them of being monstrous or unnatural.
Gendered Conception of Humanity
From a modern perspective, the proverb reflects a gendered view of compassion, linking humane feelings specifically to a female origin. It reinforces the cultural archetype of the mother as the primary source of empathy and gentleness.
Rhetorical Devices
Synecdoche
The phrase uses 'woman' as a synecdoche for the entirety of the human condition—birth, life, emotion, and mortality—encapsulating a complex idea in a simple, powerful term.
Rhetorical Appeal
It functions as a potent rhetorical question or appeal, directly challenging an individual's lack of feeling and forcing them to confront their own humanity.
Archetypal Symbolism
The expression draws on the universal archetype of the mother as the source of life and nurturing, giving it a deep and immediate emotional resonance across cultures.
Transcription
Quotations
In mine opinion thou wert neuer born of a woman, that thou thinkest so hardly of women.
And tell withall, the lamentable plight, In which this Lady languisheth forlorne, That pitty craves, as he of woman was yborne.
As you ever came of a woman.
I suppose the gentleman's a woman-hater; but, sir, I think you ought to remember, that you had a mother.
Shakespeare Citations
Art thou a woman's son, and canst not feel What 'tis to love?
That a woman conceived me, I thank her.
As ever you came of women, come in quickly to Sir John.
Let it not be believ'd for womanhood! Think we had mothers .. —What hath she done, Prince, that can soil our mothers?
Surely, this man Was born of woman.
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
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