"The Female of the Species" is a poem by Rudyard Kipling originally published in 1911 in The Morning Post. Its title and refrain ("The female of the species is more deadly than the male") have inspired the titles of numerous subsequent works.
Kipling begins the poem by illustrating the greater deadliness of female bears and cobras compared to their male counterparts, and by stating that early Jesuit missionaries to North America were more frightened of Native women than male warriors. He repeats the refrain "The female of the species is more deadly than the male" at the end of the first four stanzas, which returns in the seventh stanza in modified form as "The female of the species must be deadlier than the male." At the end of the poem, the narrator concludes "That the Female of Her Species is more deadly than the Male."
He writes that women take their purpose from the care and protection of their offspring:
In the concluding paragraph, Kipling writes that women "Must command but may not govern" and "shall enthral but not enslave" the male sex.
The poem has provoked controversy, asserting the proclaimed moral strength and single-mindedness of women, compared to men who are posited as being weak, whilst portraying a fear of and hostility towards female militancy. It was written in the context of militant action by the British suffragette movement, led by Emmeline Pankhurst. An anti-suffrage polemic, Carrie Kipling referred to it as "suffragette verses." Kipling believed female suffrage would weaken the British Empire, writing to Canadian writer Andrew McPhail that women would âÂÂruin their reproductive system by standing on their feet for hours and workingâÂÂ.
In 1919, Kipling wrote to his publisher Frank Nelson Doubleday that the poem was âÂÂlikely to provoke some discussion, but based on the facts of human nature." British writer Gilbert Frankau saw it as portraying âÂÂthe essential fierceness of womenâ whilst accusing Kipling of being "antediluvian on the subject of women" and stating that he was born "in the pre-woman age." Peter Keating observed the contradictions of KiplingâÂÂs attitude to women; he described Kipling "a romantic individualist" who "abhorred any restriction on individual rightsâ¦but seems never to have believed that universal suffrage was necessary or particularly desirable." Kipling biographer Charles Carrington noted KiplingâÂÂs "devotion to his mother and wife" and wrote that he was "no scorner of female intelligence."
"The Female of the Species" and its refrain have been referenced in numerous other works: