At an early age she perceived the inequalities between the sexes, and
refused to submit to the injustice of an unfair distribution of human
qualities. After due deliberation, she suddenly announced to her
friends: "I notice that the most frivolous things are charged up to
the account of women, and that men have reserved to themselves the
right to all the essential qualities; from this moment I will be a
man." From that time--she was twenty years of age--until her death,
seventy years later, she maintained the character assumed by her,
exercised all the rights and privileges claimed by the male sex, and
created for herself, as the distinguished Abbe de Chateauneauf says,
"a place in the ranks of illustrious men, while preserving all the
grace of her own sex."
LIFE OF NINON DE L'ENCLOS
CHAPTER I
Ninon de l'Enclos as a Standard
To write the biography of so remarkable a woman as Ninon de l'Enclos
is to incur the animadversions of those who stand upon the dogma, that
whoso violates one of the Ten Commandments is guilty of violating them
all, particularly when one of the ten is conventionally selected as
the essential precept and the most important to be observed.
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