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 WHAT ARE WOMEN MADE OF?

In the palmy days of childhood we were taught in nursery jingle, and we implicitly believed, that little girls were made of

But, growing older, we learned to our disappointment that they were produced from Adam's rib; and when we asked why woman was made of that particular bone, we were told because it was the most crooked in Adam's body.

"Observe the result," preached Jean Raulin, in the beginning of the sixteenth century: "man, composed of clay, is silent and ponderous; but woman gives evidence of her osseous origin by the rattle she keeps up. Move a sack of earth and it makes no noise; touch a bag of bones and you are deafened with the clitter-clatter."

This observation did not fall to the ground; it was repeated by Gratian de Drusac in his Controversies des Sexes Masculin et Féminin, 1538. The learned in medieval times did not spare women. 102