Here is a meme that I saw:
""Women Arent Capable of Love" by Florence Nightingale (1820 - 1910)
Women crave for being loved, not for loving. They scream out at you for sympathy all day long, they are incapable of giving any in return, for they cannot remember your affairs long enough to do so. They cannot state a fact accurately to another, nor can that other woman attend to it accurately enough for it to become information. Now is not all this the result of want of sympathy?
I am sick with indignation at what wives and mothers will do of the most shocking selfishness. And people call it all maternal or conjugal affection, and think it pretty to say so. No, no, let each person tell the truth from their own experience.
They really dont have sympathy or the ability to empathize, because they are always judging everyone and every thing as a product on a social value scale that relates to their own egos and bounces off of themselves. There is no capability for genuine feeling.
This is what I have experienced with women, there is no capability for genuine feeling for other humans, or really in general, except when those feelings are for themselves and the other people are just proxies to bounce ideas off of."
Intrigued, I decided to look it up. It turns out the first 2 paragraphs are real - but the third and fourth are made up.
Here is the original quote in context:
"13 December [1861]
I have read half your book through and am immensely charmed by it. But some things I disagree with and more I do not understand. This does not apply to the characters but to your conclusions, e.g., you say ‘‘women are more sympathetic than men.’’ Now if I were to write aI have read half your book through and am immensely charmed by it. But some things I disagree with and more I do not understand. This does not apply to the characters but to your conclusions, e.g., you say ‘‘women are more sympathetic than men.’’ Now if I were to write a book out of my experience, I should begin, Women have no sympathy.
Yours is the tradition. Mine is the conviction of experience. I have never
found one woman who has altered her life by one iota for me or my
opinions. Now look at my experience of men. A statesman [Sidney Her-
bert], past middle age, absorbed in politics for a quarter of a century, out
of sympathy with me remodels his whole life in policy, learns a science,
the driest, the most technical, the most difficult, that of administration,
as far as it concerns the lives of men, not, as I learnt it, in the field from
stirring experience, but by writing dry regulations in a London room by
my sofa with me. This is what I call real sympathy. Another (Alexander,
whom I made director-general) does very nearly the same thing. He is
dead too. Clough, a poet born if ever there was one, takes to nursing
administration in the same way, for me. I only mention three whose
whole lives were remodelled by sympathy for me. But I could mention
ver y many others—Farr, McNeill, Tulloch, Storks, Martin, who in a lesser
degree have altered their work by my opinions. And, the most wonderful
of all, a man born without a soul, like Undine, all these elderly men.
Now just look at the degree in which women have sympathy—as far as my experience is concerned. And my experience of women is almost as large as Europe. And it is so intimate too. I have lived and slept in the same bed with English countesses and Prussian Bäuerin- nen [farm women]. No Roman Catholic supérieure has ever had charge of women of the different creeds that I have had. No woman has excited ‘‘passions’’ among women more than I have. Yet I leave no school behind me. My doctrines have taken no hold among women. Not one of my Crimean following learnt anything from me or gave herself for one moment after she came home to carry out the lesson of that war or of those hospitals. . . . No woman that I know has ever appris à apprendre [learned to learn]. And I attribute this to want of sympathy.
Nothing makes me so impatient as people complaining of their want of memory. How can you remember what you have never heard? . . . It makes me mad, the women’s rights talk about ‘‘the want of a field’’ for them—when I know that I would gladly give £500 a year for a woman secretar y. And two English lady superintendents have told me the same thing. And we can’t get one. They don’t know the names of the Cabinet ministers. They don’t know the offices at the Horse Guards. They don’t know who of the men of the day is dead and who is alive. They don’t know which of the churches has bishops and which not. Now I’m sure I did not know these things. When I went to the Crimea I did not know a colonel from a corporal. But there are such things as army lists and almanacs. Yet I never could find a woman who, out of sympathy, would consult one, for my work. The only woman I ever influenced by sympathy was one of those lady superin- tendents I have named. Yet she is like me, overwhelmed with her own business. . . .
In one sense, I do believe I am sure that my contemporaries, Parthe, Hilar y, Marianne, Lady Dunsany, were all cleverer than I was, and sev- eral of them more unselfish. But not one had a bit of work for her hus- band (which I have had to do without) out of pure sympathy. She did not understand his policy. Yet she could write his letters for him ‘‘like a man.’’ I should think Mme Récamier was another specimen of pure sympathy. . . . Women crave for being loved, not for loving. They scream out at you for sympathy all day long, they are incapable of giving any in return, for they cannot remember your affairs long enough to do so. . . . They cannot state a fact accurately to another, nor can that other attend to it accurately enough for it to become information. Now is not all this the result of want of sympathy? . . .
You say [of] Mme Récamier that her existence was ‘‘empty but bril- liant.’’ And you attribute it to want of family. Oh, dear friend, don’t give me into that sort of tradition. People often say to me, You don’t know what a wife and mother feels. No, I say, I don’t and I’m very glad I don’t. And they don’t know what I feel. . . . I am sick with indignation at what wives and mothers will do of the most egregious selfishness. And people call it all maternal or conjugal affection, and think it pretty to say so. No, no, let each person tell the truth from his own experience. Ezekiel went running about naked, ‘‘for a sign.’’ I can’t run about naked because it is not the custom of the country. But I would mount three widows’ caps on my head ‘‘for a sign.’’ And I would cry, This is for Sidney Her- bert, this is for Arthur Clough, and this, the biggest widow’s cap of all, is for the loss of all sympathy on the part of my dearest and nearest. . . .
I cannot understand how Mme Récamier could give ‘‘advice and sympathy’’ to such opposite people as, e.g., Mme Salvage and Château- briand. Neither can I understand how she could give ‘‘support’’ with- out recommending a distinct line of policy, by merely keeping up the tone to a high one. It is as if I had said to Sidney Herbert, be a states- man, be a statesman, instead of indicating to him a definite course of statesmanship to follow. Also I am sure I never could have given ‘‘advice and sympathy’’ to Gladstone and S. Herbert, men pursuing opposite lines of policy. Also I am sure I never could have been the friend and adviser of Sidney Herbert, of Alexander, and of others, by simply keeping up the tone of general conversation on promiscuous matters. We debated and settled measures together. That is the way we did it. Adieu, dear friend. . . . I have had two consultations. They say that all this worry has brought on congestion of the spine which leads straight to paralysis."
Source: From a letter to Mary Clarke Mohl, in E.T. Cook, The Life of Florence Nightingale 2:13-16 (ellipses in printed letter)
--- Florence Nightingale on Women, Medicine, Midwifery and Prostitution. Collected Works of Florence Nightingale, Volume 8 / Lynn McDonald
