What Makes a Woman a Good Woman? The Domestic Virtues
Guest Post from Jared Trueheart
Foreword
This is a guest post from Jared Trueheart. Some of my readers will know Jared Trueheart from my podcast channel on YouTube because I invited him to talk on three separate occasions. I also reviewed one of his books which was critical of commonly-held beliefs in the manosphere (sadly, his book is no longer available for purchase).
Back in 2019, Trueheart had a website called Legends of Men which was specifically concerned with healthy and inspiring masculine characters, ideas and wisdom. I originally came across Trueheart’s essays on Return of Kings back in 2018 and found his website in short course.
There were two things that Trueheart liked to repeat in his web articles:
Conan the Barbarian is the most masculine character ever created.
The Iliad is the most masculine story ever written.
I didn’t believe him so I started to read the Conan stories and The Iliad and discovered he was telling the truth.
I can honestly say his ideas, thoughts and articles have shaped my own thinking and impacted my life in many positive ways.
In 2020, Trueheart closed down his website just before that eventful US presidential election.
Before this, he published two articles proposing his theory on the most important virtues for women. The virtues by which we measure whether a woman is womanly and good at being a woman.
I asked if I could share these articles and I have been kindly granted permission. I was also given the freedom to edit the articles however I saw appropriate.
Of course, I have edited the following post. Most of the changes have to do with punctuation and spelling (the spelling now follows British English writing conventions rather than US English ones) but I have rephrased one or two sentences here and there.
Where I have rephrased Trueheart’s words, it has not been done to change the style or the meaning of the ideas but instead to increase the clarity of his points and the ease of reading.
Now over to Trueheart.
The Domestic Virtues Part 1
The two greatest books on manhood explain to us the universal measures of manhood.
From David Gilmore’s Manhood in the Making: Cultural Concepts of Masculinity we know that the deep structure of manhood is dependent upon a man’s ability to provide for his people, protect his people and procreate the next generation of his people.
From Jack Donovan’s The Way of Men we know that men are judged by how well they exhibit the Tactical Virtues: Strength, Courage, Mastery and Honour.
These qualities have been exhibited by great men in literature since the beginning of storytelling and this is how we know they are men and great men at that.
But what about women?
We know that women can be great villains in their own way. What we don’t know is how women are judged as women. Just like the measure of manhood is an amoral measure, women also must have an amoral measure of womanhood.
To the best of my knowledge, no such measure has ever been articulated. With that in mind, we will attempt to define the measure of womanhood here using as an example the greatest woman in all literature: Penelope, the wife of Odysseus and Queen of Ithaca, from The Odyssey.
We will begin by defining the qualities that make women better at being women. I call them the Domestic Virtues.
Loyalty
The Domestic Virtue that ties all others together is Loyalty. Most definitions of Loyalty use phrases like “strong feelings of support” or some use of the word “allegiance.”
As a Domestic Virtue these definitions do not work. The use of words like “support” or “allegiance” implies that the loyal person is in some way inferior to the object of Loyalty.
This is not necessarily true.
A woman who is loyal to her husband is not inferior in terms of rank. The sex roles are different, and the values that we place on men and women are accordingly so. Humanity always has and always will value wives who are loyal to their husbands.
This is not the same relationship as, for example, a samurai has with his shogun. In that relationship, shoguns simply delegate tasks to their subordinates. In the marriage relationship, husbands and wives work in different ways towards the same end. Only when they fail to do their manly or wifely duties does either act as a superior to hold the other accountable.
But there is a way in which women show Loyalty to something superior, and that is to their family and people. In the sense that the whole group, whether it be family or tribe, is greater than the sum of its parts, Loyalty to that group can rightly be called strong feelings of allegiance.
Women who demonstrate Loyalty to their family or people are better at being women than those that don’t. These are the types of women that parents want for daughters, husbands want for wives, and children want for parents.
Penelope and Loyalty
The plot of The Odyssey is relatively simple, although the adventure is epic. Odysseus, fresh from his victory after the Trojan War, becomes prideful. Poseidon punishes Odysseus by steering off course during his voyage home. Odysseus doesn’t learn his lesson and through many trials he ends up spending 20 years away from his homeland, Ithaca. Eventually, he comes home.
While he has been gone his wife, Penelope, has been raising their only son, Telemachus. More importantly, in Odysseus’ absence 108 suitors have come to Ithaca to take Penelope as their wife and, consequently, the title of King of Ithaca. During this time, Penelope refuses to choose a suitor. She is loyal to her husband and the people of Ithaca who both deserve their rightful king. She has faith that Odysseus will return. Even when her faith wanes she would rather be alone then betray the Loyalty she has for her husband and for Ithaca.
To calm the suitors for a few years she announces that she will make a burial shroud for her husband and once it is complete she will choose a suitor. Each day she sews the shroud and each night she destroys the same work she did during the day. The whole act is a ploy to buy time for Odysseus’ return and it works for three years. That is until Melantho, an unfaithful serving maid, betrays her queen by exposing her scheme to the suitors.
Homer’s brilliance in this tale is his contrast between the Loyalty demonstrated by Penelope and the disloyalty displayed by Melantho. Penelope is loyal to her husband and king, while Melantho is not. We don’t need to be told who the villain is.
We know instinctively who is better as a woman; who we would want as our wife, mother, or daughter.
Patience
There is common proverb that goes “good things come to those who wait.” And a proverb that responds to this by adding “but better things come to those who don’t.”
The response phrase is meant for men. As providers and protectors men cannot afford to wait instead of fulfilling their duties as men. Men must go out and aggressively provide for their families and people. We must aggressively attack our enemies before they get the upper-hand on us.
That’s not true of women. Women’s primary duty, while men are away from the house (where danger hides), is to raise the kids. This requires patience. Babies especially require patience. Loyalty requires patience.
In the ancient world, men could be out for days on a hunt. Loyal women had to be patient as they waited for their husband to return. They could not abandon their husbands or brothers if they took longer than usual to return.
Patience is the virtue that informs womanly Loyalty and allows them to raise healthy children.
Penelope and Patience
For twenty years Penelope waits for Odysseus’ return. Her patience and loyalty are seemingly infinite. During this time she raises their only son Telemachus, and she does a good job at that.
When Odysseus does return he organizes the slaughter of all the suitors with Telemachus and two loyal commoners. Penelope patiently raised her son to be a man among men in Odysseus’ absence. When the time came, Telemachus demonstrated the Tactical Virtues.
Anyone with children knows that child rearing requires patience. But so does Loyalty. Part of the reason The Odyssey is still a beloved story today is because of Penelope, the model of womanhood. We see how women can be better women through her.
Her Loyalty and her Patience serve as shining examples of the Domestic Virtues that make women better at being women.
The Domestic Virtues Part 2
Last week, I introduced the concept of the Domestic Virtues.
Jack Donovan has asked the question “what makes a man better at being a man?”
This is not to be confused with a moral valuation. “Better” is not meant as more moral, though many will interpret it that way. Some men are better at being men than others.
But what makes them so? He posited the Tactical Virtues (Strength, Courage, Mastery and Honour) as measures of manhood and wrote about them in-depth in The Way of Men, one of the two greatest books on manhood ever written.
What makes a woman better at being a woman? After much thought and research, I posit it is the Domestic Virtues (Loyalty, Patience, Fidelity, and Compassion). Perhaps one day I’ll write in-depth on the Domestic Virtues, compile it into a book, and call it “The Way of Women.” But if you beat me to that, I’ll be the first to buy it.
I introduced the first two of those virtues last week. Here, I’ll introduce the last of the Domestic Virtues. The figure that best represents the domestic virtues in all of literature is Penelope, wife of Odysseus and Queen of Ithaca, from Homer’s epic The Odyssey.
She serves as our exemplar of the Domestic Virtues.
Compassion
It is a man’s duty or purpose or responsibility (choose any such term, they all fit) to brave the harsh, natural world to provide for his family and his people. He must meet his enemies in battle to protect them. To do this he must leave the comfort and safety of home.
While the men are gone, what are the women’s purposes/duties/responsibilities? The most prominent, and perhaps most important, is to raise the children.
Shaping and moulding the next generation of men and women is no small task. In our modern world we undervalue childrearing by outsourcing it to day-care centres and nannies. But from our ancient past all the way up to the turn of the 21st century having and raising children was a woman’s primary purpose.
To do that well women need several virtues. Patience, which I outlined last week, is the first. The second is Compassion.
Babies can be horrible. As can toddlers, and kids, and pre-teens, and especially teenagers. Tolerating their crying and whining and their needs requires immense amounts of Compassion. Parents, especially mothers, sacrifice their time and energy to provide for their children. They hold them when they need holding and punish them when they need punishing.
Men can do these things too, but we are not measured by them. Women are measured by their Compassion. When they direct their Compassion away from their group we view them as less womanly. This is because Loyalty informs and directs Compassion.
Women who show more Compassion to their families and peoples are better at being women than those who do not.
Penelope and Compassion
While Odysseus was outsmarting the Cyclops, listening to siren songs, and journeying to Hades and back, Penelope was raising their only son, Telemachus. For twenty years she did this. The Compassion she had for their son cannot be understated. But the best example of her Compassion is when she came to the aid of a beggar.
The beggar is Odysseus in disguise. This has been revealed to Telemachus and together they prepare to kill Penelope’s suitors. Penelope shows kindness to the beggar and arranges a bath and food for him, all without knowing that he is truly her husband.
On the other hand, Melantho, the unfaithful servant of Penelope, insults the beggar. This is another example of Homer contrasting Penelope, the most virtuous of women, with Melantho, the least.
Virtue is mirrored with its opposing vice.
Fidelity
The last Domestic Virtue is probably the most contentious. This is because men are not measured by their Fidelity but women are. That strikes a chord with our American, Christian sensibilities but it is true of the sex differences.
Wives who cheat on their husbands are labelled sluts, whores, bitches, etc. They are scolded, beaten and sometimes killed. An evolutionary psychological investigation of husband-wife murders reveals that a disproportionate amount of these were “crimes of passion”. These are murders in which the husband found the wife being unfaithful and killed her in the heat of the moment. This is outlined in the book Homicide by Margot Wilson and Martin Daly and is not culturally specific.
Parents are ashamed of their unfaithful daughters, siblings are ashamed of their unfaithful sisters and children are ashamed of their unfaithful mothers.
The best evidence that fidelity is a virtuous to women but not to men is the fact that polygyny (one man married to several women) is now and always has been more widespread and accepted than polyandry (one woman married to several men).
Penelope and Fidelity
For twenty years Penelope remained loyal to her husband. Not only did she refuse to marry any of her suitors and cede the Kingdom of Ithaca to him, she also refused to sleep with any of them.
This is just as important.
For a woman, Loyalty to one’s husband, and more importantly to one’s people, requires Fidelity. Had she slept with her suitor(s) but not married them, she would have demonstrated some Loyalty to her people, but it would not have been laudable. But by remaining faithful to Odysseus she exemplifies the height of womanhood.
Again Homer contrasts Penelope, who represents the Domestic Virtues, with Melantho, her treacherous servant. Melantho sleeps with at least one of the suitors and does so for some time.
After all the suitors have been killed by Odysseus, Telemachus and their loyal allies, they hang Melantho and the rest of the treacherous maid servants for their disloyalty and infidelity.
That is the fate of women who do not exhibit the Domestic Virtues. We despise them just like we despise the weak men who fail to exhibit the Tactical Virtues. But women like Penelope, who demonstrate the Domestic Virtues, we hold dear as daughters, wives, and mothers.
Message for Men
For the men reading this, it’s time to ask yourself: how good are you at being a man? And how good is your woman at being a woman?
If you do not have a woman yet, the Domestic Virtues can serve as guide to discerning if a woman would make a good wife and mother.
Next week, I’'ll be using Trueheart’s framework of the Domestic Virtues to analyse and compare Katara from Avatar: The Last Airbender to Rayla from The Dragon Prince.
Please do subscribe to be notified when this article drops.
Glad to see Jared's writing again! I missed reading his articles and supporting his work!