Strength is Feminine

Strength is Feminine

By Theodore Brohm

This brief speech is found in handwritten form in the T. J. Brohm Family Collection at Concordia Historical Institute.

Its occasion is unknown. —M. H.

Purity, love, trust, prudence, wisdom, devoutness, sympathy—these are woman’s signant [sic] qualities. Take them from woman, and you have unsexed the sex. But if this is true, it is equally true that power makes these virtues greater. Power makes purity more lustrous. Power makes love stronger. Power gives energy to prudence, gives largess to wisdom, gives firmness to devoutness, and takes nothing from sympathy. When there is poverty at the root of the vine, few are the tendrils by which it can cling; but give depth of soil and richness of substance to the vine, and power makes it not less of a vine, but more: it will spread it and lift it up, it will give not leaf alone but cluster as well. The frailty of the fair will cease to be a theme of deriding poets when the truth is acknowledged, that strength is feminine. There is no need of changing the province of woman. There is no necessity of undoing creation. Let the power of women be the power of womanly virtue, though it be no other than the power of the tender vine clinging to the massive oak.

At Home in the House of My Fathers.