GKC on Women

Dale Ahlquist, the president of the American Chesterton Society, has frequently boasted that G.K. Chesterton said something about everything and said it better than anyone else. Well, that includes women!

“Women are the only realists. 

Their whole object in life is to pit their realism against the extravagant, excessive,

 and occasionally drunken idealism of men.”

“If you convey to a woman that something should be done, 

there is always the dreadful danger that 

she may suddenly do it.”

GKC’s attitude of deep respect and wonder towards women revealed itself in nothing so beautiful as in his love for his own wife, Frances Chesterton. She was the first to lead him to Christ, and by a marvelous turn of providence, in the end he was the one to lead her to the Catholic Faith. Of all his writings, the only work he thought worthy of dedicating to her was The Ballad of the White Horse, and in the dedication to his wife he wrote

                                   Therefore I bring these rhymes to you

                                  Who brought the cross to me,

                                  Since on you flaming without flaw, 

                                  I saw the sign that Guthrum saw

                                 When he let break his ships of awe,

                                 And laid peace on the sea.

                                       . . .                                                     

                                 And I thought, "I will go with you,

                                As man with God has gone,

                                And wander with a wandering star,

                               The wandering heart of things that are,

                               The fiery cross of love and war

                               That like yourself, goes on.

          

Beautiful words, indeed! But I think the most beautiful mingling of literature and love that every came from GK’s pen was the letter in which he proposed to Frances:

There are four lamps of thanksgiving always before me.

The first is my creation out of the same earth as such a woman as you.

The second is that I have not with all my faults gone after strange women.

The third is that I have tried to love everything alive in dim preparation for loving you.

The fourth— No words can express this.

Here ends my previous existence.

Take it.

It led me to you.