Such poor fools, rolling their eyes in appraisement of such meagre
female beauty as is on display in Christendom, bring to their judgments
a capacity but slightly greater than that a cow would bring to the
estimation of epistemologies. They are so unfitted for the business
that they are even unable to agree upon its elements. Let one such man
succumb to the plaster charms of some prancing miss, and all his
friends will wonder what is the matter with him. No two are in accord
as to which is the most beautiful woman in their own town or street.
Turn six of them loose in millinery shop or the parlour of a bordello,
and there will be no dispute whatsoever; each will offer the crown of
love and beauty to a different girl.
And what aesthetic deafness, dumbness and blindness thus open the way
for, vanity instantly reinforces. That is to say, once a normal man has
succumbed to the meretricious charms of a definite fair one (or, more
accurately, once a definite fair one has marked him out and grabbed him
by the nose), he defends his choice with all the heat and steadfastness
appertaining to the defense of a point of the deepest honour. To tell a
man flatly that his wife is not beautiful, or even that his
stenographer or manicurist is not beautiful, is so harsh and
intolerable an insult to his taste that even an enemy seldom ventures
upon it. One would offend him far less by arguing that his wife is an
idiot. One would relatively speaking, almost caress him by spitting
into his eye. The ego of the male is simply unable to stomach such an
affront. It is a weapon as discreditable as the poison of the Borgias.
Thus, on humane grounds, a conspiracy of silence surrounds the delusion
of female beauty, and so its victim is permitted to get quite as much
delight out of it as if it were sound. The baits he swallows most are
not edible and nourishing baits, but simply bright and gaudy ones. He
succumbs to a pair of well-managed eyes, a graceful twist of the body,
a synthetic complexion or a skilful display of ankles without giving
the slightest thought to the fact that a whole woman is there, and that
within the cranial cavity of the woman lies a brain, and that the
idiosyncrasies of that brain are of vastly more importance than all
imaginable physical stigmata combined. Those idiosyncrasies may make
for amicable relations in the complex and difficult bondage called
marriage; they may, on the contrary, make for joustings of a downright
impossible character. But not many men, laced in the emotional maze
preceding, are capable of any very clear examination of such facts. The
truth is that they dodge the facts, even when they are favourable, and
lay all stress upon the surrounding and concealing superficialities.
The average stupid and sentimental man, if he has a noticeably sensible
wife, is almost apologetic about it. The ideal of his sex is always a
pretty wife, and the vanity and coquetry that so often go with
prettiness are erected into charms. In other words, men play the love
game so unintelligently that they often esteem a woman in proportion as
she seems to disdain and make a mock of her intelligence. Women seldom,
if ever, make that blunder. What they commonly value in a man is not
mere showiness, whether physical or spiritual, but that compound of
small capacities which makes up masculine efficiency and passes for
masculine intelligence. This intelligence, at its highest, has a human
value substantially equal to that of their own. In a man’s world it at
least gets its definite rewards; it guarantees security, position, a
livelihood; it is a commodity that is merchantable. Women thus accord
it a certain respect, and esteem it in their husbands, and so seek it
out.