Meaning & Analysis
A woman's state of completeness, ideal form, and social standing is achieved through the influence, guidance, or union with a man.
Insights
Social and Marital Hierarchy
Symbolizes the prevailing social and legal structure where a woman's identity, status, and legitimacy were primarily derived from her relationship to a man, typically a father or husband. 'Perfection' here means social and legal completeness.
Moral and Intellectual Guidance
Represents the belief that men are the gatekeepers of reason, knowledge, and moral virtue. A woman's 'perfection' is thus her moral and intellectual development, which is seen as possible only under male tutelage.
Creative and Procreative Power
Reflects a belief in biological essentialism where the male is seen as the catalyst for creation and the definer of form. 'Perfection' metaphorically alludes to the act of procreation, where the man was believed to provide the essential life-giving spark or 'form'.
Philosophical and Biological Roots
This proverb is a direct reflection of Aristotelian philosophy, frequently cited in the provided quotations, which posited that males represent the active, formative principle ('form') while females represent the passive material principle ('matter'). It thus frames male influence not merely as guidance but as a quasi-metaphysical act of completion.
Patriarchal Ideology
As a cultural artifact of the Renaissance, the proverb encapsulates the era's patriarchal ideology, justifying male authority in all spheres by defining women as inherently incomplete and in need of male governance to achieve social, moral, and even spiritual worth.
Psychological Conditioning
The proverb psychologically reinforces a dynamic of female dependency and male superiority. It encourages women to seek their identity and value through male validation while assigning men the role of being the arbiters of that value.
Rhetorical Devices
Authoritative Declaration
The proverb is presented as a declarative, universal truth. Its aphoristic certainty leaves no room for debate, stylistically reinforcing the social hierarchies it describes.
Abstraction
The use of the abstract noun 'perfection' lends the statement a veneer of philosophical depth. It allows a vague yet powerful ideal to be positioned as the goal of female existence, defined and bestowed by men.
Antithetical Pairing
The proverb establishes a stark binary between 'women' (the passive recipients) and 'men' (the active bestowers), creating a powerful rhetorical structure that reinforces a hierarchical gender dynamic.
Transcription
Quotations
Aristotle can make a better reason, for that women by mutual conjunctions receive their perfections from men.
They [women] were made of the perfection of men.
Even so for men's impression do we [value] you; By which alone, our reverend fathers say, Women receive perfection every way.
Women by men receiue perfection.
Man to women giueth all perfection, And as our chiefe Philosophers do say, Woman by man is perfect made each way.
I have read Aristotle's Problems, which saith that woman receiveth perfection by the man.
My mind tells me That I, and only I, must make him perfect.
Come, remember you are imperfect creatures without a man.
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
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