The Anatomy of Melancholy

Let Simonides, Mantuan, Platina, Pietro Aretino and such woman-haters bear the blame if anything has been said amiss. I have not written a tenth of what might be brought forward from them and others: “All the invectives and satires written against women cannot be contained in one volume.”

And, to tell the truth, what I have said concerns women no more than men, though women are named more often in this treatise. To make my defence once and for all, I am neither prejudiced against them nor bitter on that account. What is said of one sex, “with the name changed,” may for the most part be understood of the other.

My words are like the picture by Passus in Lucian. A fellow commissioned him to paint a horse with its heels in the air, rolling on its back; he painted it walking. When the man came for his picture, he was very angry and said that it was the exact opposite of what he wanted. But Passus immediately turned the picture upside down, showing him the horse in the position he had requested, and so satisfied him. If anyone objects to my words, let him change the name, read “him” for “her,” and the meaning is just the same.

But to my point: if women in general are so bad, and men worse than they are, what a risk it is to marry! Where will a man find a good wife, or a woman a good husband? A man may avoid a woman, but not a wife. A wedding is an undoing, some say; marrying is marring, wooing is woeing. “A wife is a wasting fever,” as Scaliger calls her, “cured only by death.” As Athenaeus adds, quoting Menander:

You throw yourself into a sea of troubles— Not the Libyan or Aegean, where out of thirty ships Not three are lost: no man who takes a wife is saved at all.

You wade into a very sea of woes; In the Libyan and Aegean seas everyone knows That fewer than three ships out of thirty are wrecked, But on this rock, I say, not one escapes.

For the worldly cares, miseries and discontents that accompany marriage, please learn from those who have experience; I have none. “I have begotten writings as my children”; “books are the mind’s children.” For my part, I will pretend along with the poet:

Keep far away, nymphs; keep away, girls, deceitful race: A life under the yoke does not suit my nature. I delight in—etc.

Many married men cry out against its miseries and rail openly at wives. I have never tried it, but I hear some of them say:

The sea is no sea; you are the fiercest sea.

An Irish Sea is less turbulent and raging than a quarrelsome wife.

Scylla and Charybdis, churning the Sicilian straits, Are less to be feared; every wild beast is better.

Scylla and Charybdis are less dangerous; No beast is so harmful.