Why Personify Virtues as Women?

I remember walking around with a dear friend of mine at an art museum, admiring classical paintings and making fun of modern ones together. I remember having a brief conversation about a particular type of paintings. They were of personifications of different virtues: faith, hope, charity, prudence, justice, temperance, and courage. One interesting thing of note was that all the personifications used female figures. My friend's answer was that, since the virtues fully actualized are perfections, the male painters probably projected the women they were in love with to the virtues for they would have idealized those women they so loved. My answer was that the male painters probably refused to use male figures for they found in men a vicious nature far often than they found them in women. A part of my answer came from my experience of being a male, and also from the fact that I did not idealize a woman in my life. Even my dear friend, who is a female, I do not idealize. The virtues of prudence, temperance, and courage I cannot exactly attribute to her ( :p ). But I digress. I didn't expound upon my reasoning then, so I mean to put my thought process on record through this post.


I will first present paintings that are like the ones I saw at the museum. I couldn't find the ones I saw on Google, but these three will have to do:

These paintings personify the seven virtues. As you can see, all the personifications are of women. The third one in particular is striking for the painting has seven male saints under the virtues which are personified as women.

     As they are all of Catholic origins, one might argue that the virtues were likely personified as women for the perfect example of virtue - Christ Himself - was born of a woman, namely Virgin Mary. So perhaps the classical painters started the tradition of personifying the virtues as women for it would be fitting considering their knowledge of Catholic Marian theology.

     But this tradition of personifying the virtues as women go back further than the Christian tradition. Roman goddesses Iustitia and Prusentia are both personifications of virtues (justice and prudence). Iustitia is particularly familiar with the modern Western tradition for we see blind ladies holding a sword and a scale in front of courthouses. For a further non-Christian example, we can look to Lady Liberty.

     Now, the artists were all men in male-dominant societies. Despite the perceived superiority of men, they depicted the virtues - perfections - as women. Why? Since the painters are men, and since I am a man myself, perhaps I could search in myself to empathize with them, hopefully arriving at a conclusion they have.

     Personally, I have had more female friends than male friends. Apart from when I was a little boy mocking fights with other boys as a form of play, I made most of my male friends in a religious context. If you have seen my hanging out with guy friends at a church, they are almost the complete extent of my male friends. For others I hang out occasionally, I only describe them as my associates. The reason for this is that I've come to be irritated with a vast majority of men, and I have met many.

     I suppose I will have to describe few behaviors that irritate me in men. If you are a guy reading this, perhaps you could use the occasion to search your conscience.

     Men like to talk about women with other men. I have heard very few men talking about a woman's character traits. In most cases, they talk about how "hot" a woman is. One time, one of the church associates was talking to me about women with another guy. One guy asked me, "Are you a boobs guy or a butt guy?" I was appalled at the question. Should a Christian striving for virtue ask that question? The answer is a clear no. The one who asked aid: "I'm a butt guy myself. I like big butts." He had a girlfriend. And indeed, her girlfriend has the physical attribute he likes. I wonder... Did he start dating her because of her character trait or something else? Thus began a conversation I desperately wanted to get out of. Apart from naming a specific body part they are attracted to, I know of men who consistently are attracted to blondes, Asians, redheads, etc. Such fetishes are disturbing to me.

     Another time, this time an atheist who is supposedly a fully fledged supporter of feminism, did a similar thing. Me and two other guys were watching a movie and he was in his room studying or something. One guy next to me, also a supposed fully-fledged supporter of feminism, said, "Hey, [name]! Boobs!" during a scene with nudity. And soon enough, this guy rushed out of his room to see the nudity. He also had a girlfriend. Their behaviors remind me of the recent season of South Park which involved a politically correct fraternity who act like they care about social justice issues in order to attract women for sex with their seemingly solid moral principles.

     Speaking of deceptions through appearances, I have also seen many of deceptions by men. In a show Marco Polo, there is a scene where a Daoist monk reflects upon Mongolian warriors celebrating by saying, "When men drink and tell stories they tend to hide within the stables. Why? It is the perfect repository for horse manure." It is very accurate. I have seen that most men bloat stories and add new details in every other sentence in hopes of appeasing their vanity. This habit of decepting, I have observed, increases dramatically during a date. I have had the privilege of observing a few guys on their dates and get feedbacks from them about how it went afterward. They lied through their teeth.

     Yes, I have seen plenty of vices from women. I know of many who objectify men as sexual objects; I know of a few who have a fetish for Korean guys. I know of an army of those who feel that they need to reveal their bodies to attract men, crossing their arms while sitting across a guy to make the cleavage appear bigger to angling their legs so that the man could see underneath their shorts or skirts; indignifying acts they are. I have also had women lie to me, clearly bloating their stories during a date, but not as much as men do. I initially thought that it was cute of them to lie in order to have me like them in return. But dishonesty is a vice nonetheless. I also know economically frugal women who say yes to dates just to have men buy them meals. But whatever vices they may have, not many result in violence and trauma like when men turn to their base nature.

     When men turn to their base nature, they learn to take advantage of their physical prowess against others. I know of men who have abused their wives or girlfriends, the ones who have raped multiple women and men, the ones who have imprinted permanent scars within people's minds. In sitcoms and cartoons, men are depicted as idiots. Homer in The Simpsons, Peter in Family Guy, every single guy in Friends, Ted and Barney in How I Met Your Mother, they are all depicted as idiots. The shows are comedic, so the characters should all be idiotic to a degree, that is true. Yet men in these shows are clearly idiotic to greater severities than women. Perhaps these shows reflect the dark part of our society with a comedic facade. The writers' decisions to create character profiles as such must have come from their own experiences (comedy writers are predominantly male).

     We have but to look to the modern state of family to see how men could be portrayed as idiots so often. We see too often men who do not know how to treat women correctly even when their prefrontal cortex has been fully developed at the age of 25. We see women appealing to incompetent men enslaved by their sexual impulses for they do not know what competent men seek in a woman. Social psychologists can easily point to our society's severe lack of a father figure. Even in a non-divorced home, a father can be distant, choosing a career that would put him and his children in situations where they cannot spend adequate times together. Divorces, of course, take a toll in a child's psyche. Flannery O'Connor titled one of her short stories as "Good Men are Hard to Find." It is a chilling tale depicting how ordinary people can be so evil as well as extraordinary people. Perhaps her observation is not so much a dark pessimism but rather a reality.

     The flaws of men I have mentioned would have been observed by classical Romans also. These behaviors are nothing new to humankind. I do not meant to disregard the evils done by women (for I know many). But I am pointing to the severity of consequences when men are incompetent.

     From what has been said, I think that you, reader, can draw an inference as to why I think that the artists refused to use men and preferred women in personifying the virtues.