One way in which Romantic Love fulfils its mission of increasing the
amount of Personal Beauty in the world, is by _eliminating ugly and
masculine women as Old Maids_, and thus preventing them from
transmitting their characteristics to the next generation. Were it not
for the fact that the average man is quite devoid of æsthetic taste and
incapable of ardent Romantic Love, and that therefore considerations of
wealth and social advantages guide him in his choice of a wife, _ugly_
women would rarely be found outside the ranks of Old Maids. As it is, it
happens only too often that dowerless beautiful women are condemned to
live and die in single blessedness, while the ugly people fill the world
with photographic copies of themselves.
Why is it that every refined man feels an instinctive aversion to
_masculine_ women? Because a masculine woman is an exception to the laws
of nature, a _lusus naturæ_, a monstrosity. We find even among the lower
animals that the females differ widely, as a rule, in traits and
appearance from the males—sometimes so much so that there are instances
on record of females and males having been for a time supposed to belong
to different species; and the differences grow greater the more the
sexual functions are developed and specialised. Yet Amazons occur even
among animals. “Characters common to the male,” says Darwin, “are
occasionally developed in the female _when she grows old or becomes
diseased_, as, for instance, when the common hen assumes the flowing
tail-feathers, hackles, combs, spurs, voice, and even _pugnacity_ of the
cock.”
Among the warlike Greeks, who knew only masculine or mono-sexual love,
Amazons were naturally esteemed, as they did not clash with their
feminine ideal. “How popular a subject the Amazons were for sculptors,”
says Grote, “we learn from the statement of Pliny that the most
distinguished sculptors executed Amazons, and that this subject was the
only one upon which a direct comparison could be made between them.” But
the progress of time, as we have seen, has more and more differentiated
men and women, in appearance and traits of character; and the modern
ideal of woman is exclusively feminine, _i.e._ devoid of hackles, spurs,
cock-a-doodle-doo, and pugnacity. Hence the political Virago movement is
an evil which will never make any progress, thanks to the constant
elimination of masculine women through that adorable process of Sexual
Selection known as Modern Love.
Masculine women are always condemned to bury their unwomanly
proclivities with their spinster-selves, unless they are very rich, or
unless they can find a correspondingly effeminate man who wishes to
neutralise his abnormalities in his children by marrying a spouse whose
faults are an excess in the opposite direction. In such a case a virago
may possibly even inspire Romantic Love, _mirabile dictu!_
An ugly woman, on the other hand, need never despair of finding a
husband; she has at least eight chances of getting married. In the first
place, she may, like a masculine woman, inspire true Love in a man whose
faults are the opposite of hers; secondly, she may fall in love with a
man of faultless proportions, and while in Love her features will be so
transfigured and beautified that he cannot help returning her Love;
thirdly, she may meet a man who, from want of æsthetic taste, prefers a
chromo to a Titian; or a fourth, who would rather marry an amiable and
useful ugly girl than a spoiled beauty. Wealth and social position
supply two more resources. Accident may favour her, through the absence
of prettier rivals, giving no opportunities for odious comparisons; and,
finally, she may meet an elderly bachelor who has wearied of his single
blessedness and longs for double strife.
As for those Old Maids who are neither ugly nor masculine, some of them
are quondam coquettes who practised their arts just one season too long
and “got left” in consequence; others are girls whom silly methods of
chaperonage or ill-luck have prevented from making the acquaintance of
men whom they could have respected and loved; so that it is often the
most refined and intelligent women who are thus doomed to remain single
because they are unwilling to marry beneath their station, socially or
intellectually. They form that class of whom De Quincey says, that they
“combine more intelligence, cultivation, and thoughtfulness than any
other in Europe—the class of unmarried women above twenty-five—an
increasing class, women who, from mere dignity of character, have
renounced all prospects of conjugal and parental life rather than
descend into habits unsuitable to their birth.”
Women who are too ugly to inspire Love may nevertheless feel proud of
being a class of Vestal Virgins who serve the cause of Love by
abstaining from adding to the number of unattractive people in the world
by hereditary transmission. On the other hand, Old Maids who are blessed
with beauty, owe it to the cause of Love to make every effort,
consistent with feminine modesty, to get married. Not only because their
children will be beautiful, but because a woman who never marries can
never experience the two emotions which do more than any others to
ennoble and mature the feminine mind—conjugal and maternal love.
Those Old Maids, however, who have not yet passed their thirtieth year,
may even claim that they represent the most perfect and advanced type of
maidenhood, and look down on girls who marry before twenty-five as
little better than savages. For it is well known that the age of
marriage advances with civilisation. Among Australians and other savages
girls marry at eleven, ten, or even nine years; among semi-civilised
Egyptians, Hindoos, etc., the age is from twelve to fourteen; southern
European peoples marry their girls between the ages of fifteen and
eighteen; while with those nations who lead modern civilisation, the
average age of marriage for a woman is now twenty-one, with a tendency
to rise. Does it not follow from this, by inexorable logic, that girls
who remain single at twenty-five or twenty-nine are forerunners of a
still higher type of civilisation? and that the only trouble with them
is that they are so far in advance of their age and civilisation? True,
ungrateful man does not look upon them in that light; but herein they
share the fate of all true greatness. There is one difference, however,
between undervalued men of genius and Old Maids: the men of genius admit
they are in advance of their age, and are proud of it; the Old Maids
never, at least, hardly ever.
In one of his most fascinating essays on _The Main Currents of Modern
Literature_, the Danish critic, Dr. Georg Brandes, discusses the proper
age of feminine Love in a manner which Old Maids will especially
appreciate. He points out that Eleonore, the heroine of Benjamin
Constant’s novel _Adolphe_, is the first specimen of a modern type
subsequently made fashionable by Balzac and George Sand, namely, _the
woman of thirty in Love_. Formerly, as Jules Janin remarks, the woman
between thirty and forty years of age was lost for passion, for romance,
and the drama; now she rules alone. The girl of sixteen, as adored by
Racine, Shakspere, Molière, Voltaire, Ariosto, Byron, Lesage, Scott, is
no more to be found. And Mme. Emile de Girardin thus attempts to defend
Balzac: “Is it Balzac’s fault that the age of thirty to-day is the age
of love? Balzac is compelled to depict passion where he finds it, and at
this day it is not to be found in the heart of a girl of sixteen.”
So far as these remarks are true they afford a new confirmation of my
assertions that true Romantic Love is dependent on a certain amount of
intellectual power and maturity, and that in consequence man loves more
deeply than woman at the age preceding marriage. In England and America
novelists still persist in making women love at any age from eighteen,
and they have a right to do so, because in these two countries women are
well enough educated and experienced in life at eighteen to be able to
love. In France girls receive such a superficial education that they are
ordinarily quite impervious to any deep emotions before they are either
Old Maids or married. But in most cases they are married before twenty
without regard to their own wishes. And then happens what is indicated
in Fuller’s aphorism: “It is to be feared that they who marry where they
do not love, will love where they do not marry.” And hence it is that
the only love depicted by French novelists and playwrights is the
adulterous love of a faithless wife. Could anything more vividly
illustrate the criminal absurdities of French education and the French
system of chaperonage?
In France a girl is not even allowed to cross the street alone until she
is willing to assume the name and with it the comparative freedom of an
Old Maid. In Spain, the author of _Cosas de España_ tells us, Old Maids
are rare because a girl generally accepts her first offer; and there are
probably not many girls who do not receive at least one offer in their
life—masculine women always excepted. In Russia, where women, according
to Schweiger-Lerchenfeld, enjoy almost as much liberty as in America, a
curious custom prevails by which a girl of uncertain age may escape the
appellation of Old Maid. She may leave home and become lost for two or
three years in Paris, London, or some other howling wilderness of
humanity. Then she may return to her friends neither as maid nor wife,
but as a widow. And it is “good form” in Russian society to accept this
myth without asking for details.
Finally the important question remains: “What is an Old Maid?” That
depends very much on individuals and the care they take of their Health
and Beauty. Some women are Old Maids at twenty, the majority at thirty,
and some not before forty; while those girls who will read the chapters
on Personal Beauty in the last part of this treatise, and follow all the
advice there given, will never become Old Maids at all, but will be
gobbled up before twenty-three by eager bachelors previously considered
hopeless cases of celibacy.
Even if it were possible to name a definite age as that when a girl
begins to be an Old Maid, it would be a bit of useless information,
because nobody ever knows how old a woman is. Often it is easier to tell
a woman’s age by her conversation than by her looks: some incipient Old
Maids constantly hint at their former numerous flirtations, which they
never did while they really had them.