On the Gentlewoman
If gentleman is already a contradiction, then gentlewoman is an impossibility. For the word itself admits she cannot stand on her own. A “gentlewoman” is a man by proxy, a derivative of the male form. She is not granted gentility in herself but only by extension—her gentleness defined against his.
Etymology betrays the theft: woman as wif-man—the man attached to another man. She may be gentled, but only as a shadow of his nobility. She is never an origin, only a reflection.
How curious, then, that the slang of Grose makes this absurdity so naked:
A horse godmother—a masculine woman, a “gentlemanlike lady,” praised for approximating male presence while mocked for the deformity of it.
A lady—reduced to crookedness, the humped body as a sign that she does not fit the mould.
A gentry mort—the gentlewoman again, but cast in thieves’ cant, as though even in crime her refinement must be borrowed.
One sees the pattern clearly. When a man is called a gentleman, it elevates him above his fellows, however fraudulently. When a woman is called a gentlewoman, it reduces her twice over: once by reminding her she is not a man, and again by ridiculing any attempt to claim the word as her own.
This is why I distrust the language of “ladylike.” It is not only prescriptive but parasitic. It asks women to be polite versions of men, pliant shadows, crooked silhouettes against the outline of their betters.
Better, I say, to dispense with gentlewoman altogether. A woman is no more gentle for being a wife, no less noble for being alone. Let her speak in her own name, without being saddled with borrowed syllables from the opposite sex.
Until then, every so-called gentlewoman is little more than a counterfeit gentleman, stamped with an authority not her own, and expected to smile at the theft.
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