“For maids as well as youths have perished
From fruitless love too fondly cherished;”
although this does not seem to agree with the opinion of Shakspere and
Thackeray regarding the rarity of broken lovers’ hearts. Morselli’s work
on Suicide does not contain any definite statistics _à propos_; but I
have seen the statement in a newspaper that in Italy, during 1883,
thirty-six men and nine women committed suicide—four to one; and the
proportion will appear larger still if it is remembered that girls often
commit suicide from an anguish deeper than a refusal.
The myth that woman’s passion is deeper than man’s is commonly expressed
in the form given to it by Byron: that in man’s life love is only an
episode, whereas to a woman it is all in all. Allowing for poetic
exaggeration, it does not at all follow that because a man does not
brood all his life over Love, he therefore loves less. The fact that
Goethe, the poet, also wrote treatises on botany and physics, and made
landscape sketches, did not decrease the depth of his poetic feeling but
added to it. For it is a fundamental law of psychology—except in
pathologic cases—that continuous brooding over an emotion weakens and
exhausts it; but after intervals of rest it emerges more fresh than
ever. The various objects and ambitions that occupy man only serve to
strengthen his feelings, his capacity for Love. That women are more
easily swamped and carried away by emotions does not prove their
feelings to be deeper, but themselves to be weaker. One lake may be
entirely full, and yet not contain half as much water as a larger lake
which is only half-full.
It was evidently with a vague desire to justify or excuse woman’s
comparative weakness in Love that Ninon de L’Enclos wrote “Women and
flowers are made to be loved for their beauty and sweetness, rather than
themselves to love.” And that intelligent observer Mrs. Childs adds the
weight of her feminine testimony by confessing her belief “That men more
frequently marry for love than women.”
To remove all lingering doubt, consider the “overtones” of Love
separately. Is woman ordinarily as absurdly or ferociously Jealous as
man, or quite so Proud of her conquest? Is she so deeply absorbed in
Admiration of his Personal Beauty? Is she as Gallant, and as ready for
Sacrifices? or does she not rather take his devoted services for
granted, and consider them rewarded by a smile or some other trifle?
Indeed, the only element of Love which in woman is stronger than in man
is Coyness; and Coyness, as has been shown, weakens woman’s Love in the
same degree as it increases man’s.
Of course it would be unjust to attribute to the effects of Coyness all
the difference between man’s and woman’s Love. Much is due to the
physiologic law that emotional capacity—amorous included—depends on
brain capacity (_not_ on the “heart”); and man’s brain is more powerful
than woman’s. But crude mediæval Coyness must bear a large share of the
blame; and it is probable that now, having played its _rôle_ of bringing
men to terms and making them gallant and polite towards women, it will
disappear gradually.
“Der Mohr hat seine Schuldigkeit gethan, Der Mohr kann gehen.”
Already, however, there is, especially in America and England, a
superior class of women who, despising Coyness as crude, artificial, and
silly, have adopted in its place a much more refined method of making
men fall in love with them. In one word, they have substituted
Flirtation for Coyness. As this statement will to many appear
paradoxical, if not absurd, it is necessary first to distinguish between
Flirtation and Coquetry before trying to justify it.
_Flirtation and Coquetry._—These two words are so constantly confused by
careless or ignorant writers that some girls are almost as much offended
if accused of Flirtation as of Coquetry. It was bad enough for Winthrop
to say that “A woman without coquetry is as insipid as a rose without
scent, champagne without sparkle, or corned beef without mustard” (!),
but there is no excuse whatever for “Ik Marvel’s” saying that “Coquetry
whets the appetite; flirtation depraves it. Coquetry is the thorn that
guards the rose (!), easily trimmed off when once plucked. Flirtation is
like the slime on water-plants, making them hard to handle, and when
caught only to be cherished in slimy waters.” No excuse, I say, because
the dictionaries on our table tell us the very reverse. Flirtation, in
Webster, is simply “playing at courtship,” without any cruel intentions;
while Coquetry is an attempt “to attract admiration, and gain
matrimonial offers, from a desire to gratify vanity, and with the
intention to reject the suitor.”
That this is the correct definition is shown beyond question by the
adjectives which are commonly coupled with those nouns: a “harmless
Flirtation,” a “heartless Coquette.”
A Coquette seeks to fascinate for the sake of fascinating. Like a miser,
she mistakes the means for the end, and feeds on one-sided passion and
admiration, until one morning she wakes up and finds her beauty gone,
and herself the most disappointed and unamiable of old maids. Or again,
she might be compared to a bank clerk who refused his salary because he
was satisfied with the tinkling of the money which he heard all day
long. The Flirt, on the other hand, displays her accomplishments, her
wit, and personal charms, for the sake of enlarging the facilities of
Courtship, the possibilities of rational Choice.
One reason why Flirtation and Coquetry are so apt to be confounded is
because the English peoples alone have the word Flirtation—naturally
enough, as they alone allow their young people the blessings of
Courtship and rational choice promoted by it. Foreigners, not
appreciating exactly what is meant by the word, are apt to translate it
as Coquetry. One Frenchman, who has lived long in England, has tried to
define Flirtation for his countrymen by saying it consisted of
“attentions without intentions.” This definition was widely welcomed as
very clever. Clever it may be, but it is a definition of Coquetry not of
Flirtation. For Flirtation never excludes _possible_ intentions.
_Flirtation_ versus _Coyness_.—Flirtation, from the feminine point of
view, may be defined as _the art of fascinating a man and leaving him in
doubt whether he is loved or not_. There is no reason why a beautiful
and bright girl should not charm, _i.e._ flirt with, every man who
interests her, and to whom she has been properly introduced. No reason
why she should not dispense her sweet smiles with complete impartiality,
until she has made up her mind whom she wishes to marry. In so far as
Coyness simply means reserve and dignity, she will of course still be
coy; but she will not run away to conceal herself in the forest, or lock
the front door, or hide behind a chaperon’s back, or affect to be
cynically indifferent to men, or treat the one she likes best with
affected cruelty. With refined men of the period Flirting, _i.e._
fascinating and leaving in doubt, is quite as effective in kindling
adoration to ecstasy as crude Coyness was with the coarse-fibred men of
the past. Flirtation, indeed, is much more tantalising than Coyness, and
therefore a complete modern substitute for it.
There is a passage in Hume’s _Dissertation on the Passions_ which,
though occurring in a different connection, strikes home the truth of
the last sentence most forcibly. “Uncertainty,” he says, “has the same
effect as opposition. The agitation of the thought, the quick turns
which it makes from one view to another, the variety of passions which
succeed each other, according to the different views: all these produce
an agitation in the mind; and this agitation transfuses itself into the
predominant passion. Security, on the other hand, diminishes the
passions. The mind, when left to itself, immediately languishes; and in
order to preserve its ardour, must be supported every moment by a new
flow of passion.”
Of course to those of a girl’s admirers who are for a while left in
doubt and finally “get left” altogether, female flirtation may seem a
cruel pastime. But there is a sort of _historic justice_ in this torture
which, indeed, almost amounts to an excuse for _Coquetry_; it is a
species of feminine revenge for the long centuries of slavery in which
muscular man held weak woman. Besides, no man has ever died of a broken
heart, except in novels. And, again, who is to blame a pretty girl for
having fascinated an unsuccessful lover? A rose yields its fragrance and
beauty to all who wish to admire it. If a conceited young man comes
along, imagines that all its beauty is for him alone, and tries to pluck
it, he has only himself to blame if he feels the thorn of
disappointment.
When Lord Chesterfield wrote, “I assisted at the birth of that most
significant word ‘flirtation,’ which dropped from the most beautiful
mouth in the world,” he perhaps hardly realised how very significant a
factor of social life Flirtation was destined to become. Mr. Galton
wrote, not long ago, that without female Coyness “there would be no more
call for competition among the males for the favour of the females; no
more fighting for love in which the strongest male conquers; no more
rival display of personal charms in which the best-looking or
best-mannered prevails. The drama of courtship, with its prolonged
strivings and doubtful success, would be cut quite short, and the race
would degenerate through the absence of that sexual selection for which
the protracted preliminaries for love-making give opportunity.” When Mr.
Galton wrote this, he did not apparently realise the social revolution
that is going on, or understand that frank and natural Flirtation, which
recognises every man as a gentleman until he has proved the contrary,
affords much better opportunity for Sexual Selection and “protracted
preliminaries of love-making” than crude, hypocritical, unnatural
Coyness, which regards every gentleman as a beast of prey and a
libertine.
Flirtation being the modern art of widening the field of amorous
competition and prolonging the duration of Courtship, it follows that
there cannot be too much of it—quantitatively speaking. Qualitatively it
easily degenerates into frivolity, as in the case of those girls who get
engaged repeatedly before marriage, which shows a lack of judgment, of
tact, and especially of delicacy, because a peach should never be
touched on the tree but allowed to retain its first blush for the man
who is to eat it.
Refined flirtation, in truth, requires much more wit, more tact and
culture, than Coyness, or than Prudery, which is the north-pole of
Coyness. Prudery bears much resemblance to the artificial dignity of a
certain class of young men who, by means of persistent reticence, gain a
reputation for aristocratic and cynical superiority. Coquetry even is
preferable to Prudery, for it is at any rate entertaining.
To sum up this matter in one sentence: The coy Prude says No, even when
she means Yes; the cold Coquette says Yes and always means No; the
modest and refined Flirt says neither Yes nor No, but looks and smiles a
sweet “Perhaps—if you can win my Love.”
_Modern Courtship._—What a grotesque and topsy-turvy parody of history
it is, this modern comedy of Courtship, in which the man is the slave
and walks on his knees! And how gracefully the newly-crowned girl-queen
plays her _rôle_, little suspecting that in the next act the husband
will probably throw away his self-assumed mask, and insist again on his
historic rights as lord and master of the household!
The shock which follows this transition from the romance of Courtship to
the realism of conjugal life is much the greatest in the case of the
Prude. The Coquette need not be considered; she was born without a
heart, and marriage will not give her one. But the Prude often owes her
unnaturalness solely to an absurd educational system, and may be at
heart the best of women. Previous to marriage she is taught to rely on
passive Coyness to arouse the desires of man. After marriage, when she
yields herself up, body and soul, she loses this weapon, the lover
recovers his courage and lowers the pitch of his devotional ecstasy.
This alarms the girl, who eagerly endeavours to recover the romantic
Adoration by trying to please and coax and caress. But pleasing—or
_active_ fascination—being an art which she never has practised, she
does it in a bungling way—overdoes it, in fact—thus increasing the
husband’s indifference. Had she learned the art of refined Flirtation,
_i.e._ active fascination with wit and accomplishments, this domestic
tragedy would never have been enacted. Her skill and tact would then
have enabled her to preserve her husband’s Gallantry, by supplying a
constant variety and novelty in those feminine charms and graces in
which a superior woman is as fertile as a man of genius in ideas.
By her extremely reserved and passive attitude during Courtship the
Prude not only mars the probabilities of conjugal happiness, she also
weakens her own Love directly, through Coyness, and indirectly, by
making the man too servile and over-anxious to worship. For if a man
immediately yields up his sword and proclaims himself fatally stabbed by
a white wench’s black eye, there can be in her mind none of those small
obstacles and doubts which, like short absences, increase Love.
Love-making should be a duel of wit and mutual fascination. The Flirt
does her part of the fencing; the Prude simply hides behind her shield
and waits to see if the man can break it, or coax her to throw it away.
With a Flirt a man need not be a servile worshipper, but he may be a
Flirt likewise: which is a much more desirable attitude, not only
because male flirtation will fan the woman’s Love into a brighter flame
through the stimulus of uncertainty, but also because it enables the man
to preserve his dignity. Hence Beatrix’s pointed advice to Henry Esmond:
“Shall I be frank with you, Harry, and say that if you had not been down
on your knees, and so humble, you might have fared better with me? A
woman of my spirit, cousin, is to be won by gallantry and not by sighs
and rueful faces. All the time you are worshipping I know very well I am
no goddess, and grow weary of the incense.”
The girl of the period is the girl who flirts, and who expects every
eligible man to take up her challenge for a tournament of wit and
playing at Courtship. The reason why there is much more Romantic Love in
America and England than in other countries is because there is more
Flirtation, more opportunity for Courtship. On the Continent young folks
are too constantly regarded from the marriage point of view. In Italy
and France, when a young lady comes back from boarding-school, she is
married as quickly as possible before she has had a chance to fall in
love with a man of her choice. Consequence: she falls in love _after_
marriage, and not always with her husband. In Germany a young lady is
allowed to see young men and even to walk with them in the street, in
the daytime or in the evening, if properly chaperoned; but under no
circumstances will she take a young man’s arm, for that would imply an
engagement. In America it is otherwise; but even there, in the South, it
is taken for granted that if a young man calls on a young lady three or
four times he can have no other object than to marry her. His object may
be to marry, but not necessarily _her_. What he wants is to become
acquainted, and if acquaintance “by summer’s ripening breath” blossoms
into Love, so much the better; if not, it is a thousand times better he
should be allowed to depart in peace than that two beings should be
mated who do not feel really sympathetic and companionable. How is a
young man to find his Juliet if he is not allowed to see a number of
women, without being called fickle? And how is Juliet to find her Romeo,
if mothers frighten young men into bachelorhood by such absurd customs?
The word Courtship, in fact, should have a wider meaning than it has
now. It should be almost synonymous with Flirtation, which provides the
means of bringing together, from a wide circle of acquaintances, two
beings who are really suited to each other, instead of two whom blind
chance, a few “calls,” or the advantages of intimacy resulting from
cousinship, have fortuitously mated for a life of probable conjugal
misery.
Plato’s advice that opportunity should be given to the sexes to become
acquainted before marriage is much more followed to-day than at any
previous time in the world’s history; but there is still vast room for
improvement.