In Defense of Women was published by Philip Goodman in 1918, revised for Knopf in 1922, and it is vintage Mencken: a sustained argument presented with such rhetorical brio that the reader is carried along by the prose even when the logic is dubious.
Mencken’s thesis is that women are superior to men in all matters of practical intelligence. Women, he argues, are more realistic (they see through male posturing), more shrewd (they understand the economics of marriage), more emotionally stable (they are less susceptible to the delusions that drive men to war, religion, and philosophy), and more honest (they lie strategically, while men lie to themselves). The “defense” is not of women’s rights — Mencken is skeptical about the value of suffrage — but of women’s nature, which he considers fundamentally more competent than men’s.
The book is impossible to classify politically. Feminists rejected it because Mencken’s “defense” defines women primarily in relation to men (as wives, seducers, managers of male behavior) and because his tone, however admiring, is consistently patronizing. Anti-feminists rejected it because Mencken genuinely argues for female superiority. The book is best understood not as political argument but as entertainment — Mencken deploying his rhetorical skills on a subject that guaranteed maximum outrage from all sides.
Collecting In Defense of Women
First edition (Philip Goodman, New York, 1918): Cloth binding.
Market values:
- First edition (Goodman) in dust jacket: $100–$300
- Revised Knopf edition (1922): $30–$80
- Later editions: $8–$20