Chivalry

Anthony Trollope (1815-1882), Australia and New Zealand (Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1873), II, 127:

Women, all the world over, are entitled to everything that chivalry can give them. They should sit while men stand. They should be served while men wait. Men should be silent while they speak. They should be praised,—even without desert. They should be courted,—even when having neither wit nor beauty. They should be worshipped,—even without love. They should be kept harmless while men suffer. They should be kept warm while men are cold. They should be kept safe while men are in danger. They should be enabled to live while men die in their defence. All this chivalry should do for women, and should do as a matter of course. But there is a reason for this deference. One human being does not render all these services to another,—who cannot be more than his equal before God,—without a cause. A man will serve a woman, will suffer for her,—if it come to that will die for her,—because she is weaker than he and needs protection. Let her show herself to be as strong, let her prove by her prowess and hardihood that the old idea of her comparative weakness has been an error from the beginning, and the very idea of chivalry, though it may live for awhile by the strength of custom, must perish and die out of men's hearts.