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· New Mania for Knowledge ·
· Women’s Clubs as Central Points ·
· Parallel between the Literary Salon and the
Woman’s Club ·
· French and American Women ·
· Attitude of Anglo-Saxon Men toward Women ·
· Puritan Gospel of Feminine Liberty ·
· The Woman’s Club not a School of Manners ·
· Its Moral Value ·
· Its Social and Intellectual Value ·
· Imitation Culture ·
· Special Distinction of American Women ·
· Their Foibles ·
· Multiplication of Clubs ·
· Warning in the Excesses of the Later Salons ·
· Tendency to Separate Men and Women ·
· The Charm of Social Life ·
· Wisdom of Consulting the Past ·
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I
It is not too much to say that the entire present generation of women
is going to school. Infancy cultivates its mind in the kindergarten,
while the woman of threescore seeks consolation and diversion in clubs
or a university course, instead of resigning herself to seclusion
and prayers, or the chimney-corner and knitting, after the manner of
her ancestors. Even our amusements carry instruction in solution.
Childhood takes in knowledge through its toys and games; the débutante
discusses Plato or Coquelin in the intervals of the waltz; youth and
maturity alike find their pleasure in papers, talks, plays, music,
and recitations. In these social menus everything is included, from a
Greek drama or an Oriental faith to Wagner and the latest theory of
economics. We have Kipling at breakfast, Rostand or Maeterlinck at
luncheon, and the new Utopia at dinner. After a brilliant day of being
adored and talked about, Browning has been duly labeled and put away,
but Homer classes and Dante classes still alternate with lectures
on the Impressionists or the Decadents. In this rage for knowledge,
science and philosophy are not forgotten. Fashion ranges the field
from occultism to agnosticism, from the qualities of a microbe to the
origin of man. To-day it searches the problems of this world, to-morrow
the mysteries of the next. There is nothing too large or too abstruse
for the eager, questioning spirit that seeks to know all things, or at
least to skim the surface of all things.
Nor is this energetic pursuit of intelligence confined to towns or
cities. Go into the remote village or hamlet, and you will find the
inevitable club, where the merits of the last novel, the labor problem,
the political situation, the silver question, the Boer war, and the
state of the universe generally, are canvassed by a circle of women as
freely, and with as keen a zest, as the virtues and shortcomings of
their neighbors were talked over by their grandmothers--possibly may be
still by a few of their benighted contemporaries.
In its extent, this mania for things of the intellect is phenomenal.
One might imagine that we were rapidly becoming a generation of
pedants. Perhaps we are saved from it by the perpetual change that
gives nothing time to crystallize. The central points of all this
movement are the women’s clubs, of which the social element is a
conspicuous feature, and we take our learning so comfortably diluted
and pleasantly varied that it ceases to be formidable, though on the
side of learning it may leave much to be desired.
But it is notably in this mingling of literature and life that women
have always found their greatest intellectual influence, and the club
is not likely to prove an exception. The rapidity of its growth is
equaled only by the extent of its range. Of women’s clubs there is
literally no end, and they are yet in their vigorous youth. We have
literary clubs, and art clubs, and musical clubs; clubs for science,
and clubs for philanthropy; parliamentary clubs, and suffrage clubs,
and anti-suffrage clubs--clubs of every variety and every grade, from
the luncheon club, with its dilettante menu, and the more pretentious
chartered club, that aims at mastering a scheme of the world, to the
simple working-girls’ club, which is content with something less:
and all in the sacred name of culture. They multiply, federate, hold
conventions, organize congresses, and really form a vast educational
system that is fast changing old ideals and opening possibilities of
which no prophetic eye can see the end. That they have marvelously
raised the average standard of intelligence cannot be questioned, nor
that they have brought out a large number of able and interesting women
who have generously taken upon themselves not only their own share of
the work of the world, but a great deal more.
One can hardly overrate the value of an institution which has given
light and an upward impulse to so many lives, and changed the
complexion of society so distinctly for the better. But it may be worth
while to ask if the women of to-day, with their splendid initiative
and boundless aspirations, are not going a little too fast, getting
entangled in too much machinery, losing their individuality in masses,
assuming more responsibility than they can well carry. Why is it that
lines too deep for harmonious thought are so early writing themselves
on the strong, tense, mobile, and delicate faces of American women? Why
is it that the pure joy of life seems to be lost in the restless and
insatiable passion for multitudes, so often thinly disguised as love
for knowledge, which is not seldom little more than the shell and husk
of things? Is the pursuit of culture degenerating into a pursuit of
clubs, and are we taking for ourselves new taskmasters more pitiless
than the old? “The emancipation of woman is fast becoming her slavery,”
said one who was caught in the whirl of the social machinery and could
find no point of repose. We pride ourselves on our liberty; but the
true value of liberty is to leave people free from a pressure that
prevents their fullest growth. What do we gain if we simply exchange
one tyranny for another? Apart from the fact that the finest flowers of
culture do not spring from a soil that is constantly turned, any more
than they do from a soil that is not turned at all, it is a question
of human limitations, of living so as to continue to live, of growing
so as to continue to grow. Nor is it simply a matter of individuals.
Societies, too, exhaust themselves; and those which reach an
exaggerated growth in a day are apt to perish in a day. It is not the
first time in the history of the world that there has been a brilliant
reign of intelligence among women, though perhaps there was never one
so widely spread as now. Why have they ended in more or less violent
reactions? We may not be able to answer the question satisfactorily,
but it gives us food for reflection.