Montaigne's Maiden Warriors

Montaigne's essay is incredibly fascinating for being so long. I just keep chugging along with it, despite the fact that it never seems to be getting any closer to a conclusion that is not arrived at already within the first five pages. The unfolding of Montaigne's argument is ultimately the subject of the essay, and the experience of it is illuminating. Montaigne's fluid musings on fundamental human issues of life and death, aging, and sexuality are not only profound but humorous. The simple thesis of Montaigne's essay is something like: Sexual pleasure should be enjoyed by older men who can properly appreciate it. But there are many sub-arguments within the essay:
1) The mind can rescue itself from old age, but struggles against the needs of the body in order to do so.
2) It is a mistake to marry for love. Marriage should be entered into as an economic and familial arrangement for "posterity and family" (7).
3) Love should be sought outside of marriage.
4) Women and men have the same sexual desires and urges, and women should be allowed to pursue theirs outside of marriage. Men are hypocritical to deny women this freedom.
5) There are worse vices than promiscuity. Unsanctioned sexual activity, particularly as practiced by women, has only been condemned because human beings are jealous by nature.

Montaigne frequently contradicts himself, but this becomes a strength of the essay, as he is able to anticipate counterarguments, and debunk prevailing thinking through sarcasm. Contradiction, juxtaposition, and oxymoron are ubiquitous in the essay. To characterize his age, exaggerating his decrepit seniority, Montaigne juxtaposes, "From the excess of sprightliness I am fallen into that of severity" (1). He then humorously juxtaposes wisdom and folly, "Both wisdom and folly will have enough to do to support and relieve me by alternate services in this calamity of age" (2). Then, the mind and the body, "Seeing it is the privilege of the mind to rescue itself from old age, I advise mine to it with all the power I have; let it meanwhile continue gree, and flourish if it can, like mistletoe upon a dead tree" Montaigne invokes plaintively, with a fantastically morbid simile (3). The juxtaposition continues throughout, as I have outlined. Montaigne's argument relies on dualities to represent the complexity of human experience.

Montaigne's frequent use of oxymorons exposes how ridiculous and ineffective the prevailing oppression of female sexuality is. "We, on the contrary, would have them at once sound, vigorous, plump, high-fed, and chaste; that is to say, both hot and cold, for the marriage, which we tell them is to keep them from burning, is but small refreshment to them as we order the matter" (11). Later, Montaigne provides an even clearer image of the problems of suppressing female sexuality, in oxymoron, "There is no doing more difficult than that not doing, nor more active; I hold it more easy to carry a suit of armor all the days of one's life than a maidenhood; and the vow of virginity of all others is the most noble, as being the hardest to keep" (15). Montaigne seems to comment on his own use of oxymoron when he says, "there is neither continency nor virtue where there are no opposing desires" (19).

One of the strongest rhetorical facets of Montaigne's argument is his complete omission of the subjects he is discussing, and occasional euphemism. As soon as Montaigne actually starts talking about sex, he completely refrains from using the word. Montaigne writes at length about the penis, but never uses the word penis. The euphemism he uses most often is "member"; he also uses "shameful parts," "implements," and "natural furniture."

"In the greatest part of the world, that member of our body was deified; in the same province, some flayed off the skin to offer and consecrate a piece; others offered and consecrated their seed." (13)
"To what end do we make a show of our implements in figure under our gaskins, and often, which is worse, above their natural size, by falsehood and imposture?" (13)

The fact that Montaigne effectively omits the subject of these sentences, and yet we know exactly what he is talking about, forces us to agree with him.
In this fantastic passage, Montaigne again writes with humor about activities performed on his "member," this time in the context of aging:

"Nature should satisfy herself in having rendered this age miserable, without rendering it ridiculous too. I hate to see it, for one poor inch of pitiful vigor which comes upon it but thrice a week, to strut and set out itself with as much eagerness as if it could do mighty feats; a true flame of flax; and laugh to see it so boil and bubble and then in a moment so congealed and extinguished. This appetite ought to appertain only to the flower of beautiful youth: trust not to its seconding that indefatigable, full, constant, magnanimous ardor you think in you, for it will certainly leave you in the lurch at your greatest need; but rather transfer it to some tender, bashful, and ignorant boy, who yet trembles at the rod and blushes" (32). Montaigne's overwrought account of masturbation among old men is so hilarious and pitiable, he wins us over, as at the beginning when he characterizes himself as a pitiable old man. The passage is another oxymoron: Montaigne argues that pleasure should be reserved for older men who can appreciate it properly, but then reveals that his body is not quite up to the task. Alas, youth and experience do not go hand in hand, again the problem of mind/body disconnect.

"Every member I have, as much one as another, is equally my own, and no other more properly makes me a man than this," Montaigne writes, in case we had any doubt as to which member he had been referring to throughout the essay. Montaigne emphasizes the fact that the word member is not specific, that it could really mean any appendage of the body, but we knew exactly what he meant all along, which means we have already experienced his point and must therefore agree with him.

Later, Montaigne compares the sexual organs and apetites of males and females:

"The gods, says Plato, have given us one disobedient and unruly member that, like a furious animal, attempts, by the violence of its appetite, to subject all things to it; and so they have given to women one like a greedy and ravenous animal, which, if it be refused food in season, grows wild, impatient of delay, and infusing its rage into their bodies, stops the passages, and hinders respiration, causing a thousand ills, till, having imbibed the fruit of the common thirst, it has plentifully bedewed the bottom of their matrix" (14). Montaigne's account of Plato is so wildly imaginative it allows his radical argument to pass as comical, although sincere.

Montaigne very rarely refers to women directly in the essay, only using a sex indicator when it is absolutely necessary to clarify the attributes of one sex versus the other. When he can, Montaigne simply uses 'us and them'. While the assumption that the writer was male at the time would have been pretty much universal, the fact that Montaigne can describe the conditions under which women lived without referring to women directly, again forces us to agree with him. Montaigne's delightful assay proceeds with a will of its own through humour, juxtaposition, oxymoron, and above all, euphemism.