At least five sources or causes of modern female Coyness may be
suggested:—
(1) _An Echo of Capture._—Why are modern city-folks so fond of picnics?
It was Mr. Spencer, I believe, who suggested somewhere that it is
because picnics awaken in civilised men and women a vague and agreeable
reminiscence of the time when their ancestors habitually took their
meals on meadows in the shade of a tree. If it is possible for such
experiences to re-echo, as it were, in our nervous system through so
many generations, thanks to the conservatism of oft-repeated cerebral
impressions, then it does not seem so very fantastic to suggest that one
cause of female Coyness may be a similar echo, or reminiscence, of the
time when the primitive ancestresses of modern women were “courted” by
Capture or Purchase, and so badly treated as wives that in course of
time an instinctive impulse was formed in their minds to shrink back and
say No to man’s proposals.
(2) _Maiden_ versus _Wife_.—It is hardly necessary, however, to rely
upon such a remote sociological echo, so to speak, for an explanation of
a girl’s hesitation to become a wife even if her suitor pleases her. The
thought of exchanging her maiden freedom for conjugal restrictions and
duties; of giving up the homage and admiration of all men for the
possible neglect of one; of probably soon losing her youthful beauty,
etc.—such thoughts would make many girls even more coy than they now
are, did not the fear of becoming an old maid act as a counterbalancing
motive in favour of marriage.
(3) _Modesty._—Esquimaux girls, as we have seen, “affect the utmost
bashfulness and aversion to any proposal of marriage, lest they should
lose their reputation for modesty.” And the greatest analyst of the
human heart puts the same philosophy into the mouth of Juliet in a
passage which, although everybody knows it by heart, must yet be quoted
here—
“O gentle Romeo,
If thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully:
Or if thou think’st I am too quickly won,
I’ll frown and be perverse and say thee nay,
So thou wilt woo; but else, not for the world.
In truth, fair Montague, I am too fond,
And therefore thou may’st think my ’haviour light:
But trust me, gentleman, I’ll prove more true
Than those that have more _cunning to be strange_.
I should have been more strange, I must confess,
But that thou overheard’st, ere I was ware,
My true love’s passion: therefore pardon me,
And _not impute this yielding to light love_,
Which the dark night hath so discovered.”
(4) _Cunning to be Strange._—No huntsman (except a monarch) would care
to go to an enclosure and shoot the deer confined therein, nor a
fisherman to catch trout conveniently placed in a pond. But to wade up a
mountain brook all day long, climbing over slippery rocks, and enduring
the discomforts of a hot sun and wet clothes, with nothing to eat, and
only a few speckled trifles to reward him—that is what he considers
“glorious sport.”
The instinctive perception that a thing is valued in proportion to the
difficulty of its attainment is what taught women the “cunning to be
strange.” Seeing that they could not compete with man in brute force,
they acquired the arts of Beauty and of Coyness, as their best weapons
against his superior strength—the Beauty to fascinate him, the Coyness
to teach him that in Love, as in fishing, the _pleasure of pursuit_ is
the main thing.
At first this Coyness was manifested in a very crude manner, as among
the primitive maidens who hid in the forest; or among the Roman women
celebrated by Ovid, who locked their door and compelled the lover to beg
and whine for admission by the hour; or among the mediæval women who, to
gratify their caprices and enjoy the sense of a newly-acquired power,
sent their admirers to participate in bloody wars before recognising
their addresses. And so coarse-grained were the men that as soon as the
women ceased to tease they ceased to woo; as, for instance, in mediæval
France, about the time of the _Chansons de Geste_, “the man who desires
a woman yet does not appear as a wooer; for he knows he is certain of
her favour,” as we read in Ploss. Hence Cleopatra’s brief and pointed
rejoinder to Charmian when he advises her, in order to win Antony’s
love, to give him way in everything, cross him in nothing: “Thou
teachest like a fool; the way to lose him.”
(5) _Procrastination._—Love at first sight is frequent at the present
day, but in ancient Greece and Rome marriage at first sight appears to
have been more common. The classical suitor’s wooing was generally
comprised in three words: _Veni, Vidi, Vici_; _i.e._ I Came, Saw the
girl’s father, Conquered his scruples by proving my wealth or social
position. Sufficient brevity in this, no doubt: but _brevity is not the
soul of Love_.
“Tant plus le chemin est long dans l’amour, tant plus un esprit délicat
sent de plaisir,” says Pascal, announcing a truth of which ancient and
mediæval nations had no conception until female Coyness taught it them.
Goethe evidently had the same truth in mind when he mentioned as a phase
of ancient love (Roman _Elegies_)—
“In der heroischen zeit, da Götter und Göttinen liebten
Folgte Begierde dem Blick folgte Genuss der Begier.”
That is, in prose, there were no preliminaries in the love-drama, which
had only one act, the fifth, in which the marriage is celebrated.
_Goldsmith on Love._—In Goldsmith’s _Citizen of the World_ there is a
chapter on “Whether Love be a Natural or Fictitious Passion,” in which
reference is likewise made to the value of procrastination. As this
passage shows Goldsmith to have been the first author who had an
approximate conception of the development and psychology of Love, I will
quote it almost entire. It is in the form of a dialogue, and one of the
speakers remarks: "Whether love be natural or no ... it contributes to
the happiness of every society in which it is introduced. All our
pleasures are short and can only charm at intervals; love is a method of
protracting our greatest pleasure; and surely that gamester who plays
the greatest stake to the best advantage will, at the end of life, rise
victorious. This was the opinion of Vanini, who affirmed that ‘every
hour was lost which was not spent in love.’ His accusers were unable to
comprehend his meaning; and the poor advocate for love was burned in
flames; alas! no way metaphorical. But whatever advantages the
individual may reap from this passion, society will certainly be refined
and improved by its introduction; all laws calculated to discourage it
tend to embrute the species, and weaken the state. Though it cannot
plant morals in the human breast, it cultivates them when there: pity,
generosity, and honour receive a brighter polish from its assistance;
and a single _amour_ is sufficient entirely to brush off the clown.
“But it is an exotic of the most delicate constitution: it requires the
greatest art to introduce it into a state, and the smallest
discouragement is sufficient to repress it again. Let us only consider
with what ease it was formerly _extinguished in Rome_, and with what
difficulty it was _lately revived in Europe_: it seemed to sleep for
ages, and at last fought its way among us through tilts, tournaments,
dragons, and all the dreams of chivalry. The rest of the world, _China
only excepted_, are, and have ever been, utter strangers to its delights
and advantages. In other countries, as men find themselves stronger than
women, they lay a claim to rigorous superiority: this is natural, and
love, which gives up this natural advantage, must certainly be the
effect of art—an art calculated to lengthen out our happier moments, and
add new graces to society.”
To this conclusion the lady interlocutor in the dialogue objects on the
ground that “the effects of love are too violent to be the result of an
artificial passion”; and suggests, by way of accounting for the absence
of love, that “the same efforts that are used in some places to suppress
pity, and other natural passions, may have been employed to extinguish
love”; and that “those nations where it is cultivated only make nearer
advances to nature.”
Goldsmith thus leaves it in doubt whether he considers Love a natural or
an artificial passion. In the three passages which I have italicised, he
errs: first, in saying that Love was “extinguished” in Rome, when in
fact it never existed there, except incompletely in the poetic intuition
of Ovid and possibly one or two other poets; secondly, he errs in
remarking that it was lately “revived” in Europe, when in fact it was
newly-born; and his excepting China, in speaking of the absence of Love,
can only be looked on in the light of a joke in view of the absolute
subjection of women to parental dictation, and the fact that, as one
writer remarks, “a union prompted solely by love would be a monstrous
infraction of the duty of filial obedience, and a predilection on the
part of the female as heinous a crime as infidelity.” But his definition
of Love as “the effect of art—an art calculated to lengthen out our
happier moments and add new graces to society” is exceedingly good. The
art in question is known as Courtship: and it is the latest of the fine
arts, which even now exists in its perfection in two countries
only—England and America. The Italian language has no equivalent for
Courtship, as Professor Mantegazza tells us in his _Fisiologia dell’
Amore_; and a German commentator on this passage in Mantegazza comments
dubiously: “Das Eutsprechende deutsche Wort _dürfte wohl_ Werbung sein;”
“the corresponding German word is presumably _Werbung_.” “Presumably” is
very suggestive. Yet the Germans have another expression of mediæval
origin apparently, namely, “Einem Mädchen den Hof machen”—"to pay court
to a girl," which, though somewhat conversational, has evidently the
same historic origin as our word Court-ship; implying that formerly it
was the custom at court alone to prolong the agony of Love by gallant
attentions to women, which enabled them to exercise the “cunning to be
strange.”
_Disadvantages of Coyness._—Beneficial as are no doubt the effects which
have been brought about by female Coyness in developing the art of
Courtship, there are corresponding evils inherent in that mental
attitude which make it probable that Coyness will gradually disappear
and be succeeded by something more modern, more natural, more refined.
There are four serious objections to Coyness, one from a masculine,
three from a feminine point of view.
Men, in the first place, can hardly approve of Coyness; for it certainly
indicates a coarse mediæval fibre in a man if he is obliged to confess
that he can love a girl not for her beauty and amiability, but only
because she tantalises and maltreats him:
“Spaniel-like, the more she spurns my love,
The more it grows and fawneth on her still.”