the helpless creatures who may be in her power. I do not know, says
Bourgavel, any one more perfidious, immoral, or perverse than the New
Caledonian woman. In certain portions of Australia women are mortal foes
to each other. When the men wish to punish any one of them, they turn
her over to her companions, who inflict upon her horrible tortures.[29]
Sitting on her body, they cut her flesh with sharpened stones.
In Tasmania, as amongst the ancient Saxons, the unfaithful wife was
punished by her companions; she was not killed, but she was tortured for
a long time with sharp pointed stones or knives, in all parts of her body.
Women have often been cruel mistresses to their slaves. A lady in Guiana,
being envious of a very handsome mulatto slave, had her branded on the
mouth, cheeks and forehead. In the case of another slave, who was also
very beautiful, she had the tendon of Achilles cut thus causing her to
become a deformed and crippled monster.[30]
It is a notorious fact that Roman and Greek ladies often inflicted most
terrible punishments on their slaves, and that it was more particularly
towards the female slaves, the _ancillæ_, that the cruelty of their
mistresses was shown. The Roman ladies, if, while they were having their
hair dressed, they were vexed with their attendants, used to thrust pins
into their arms and breasts. Darwin relates that at Rio Janeiro, an old
lady possessed a kind of thumb screw which she had had made expressly to
crush the fingers of her slaves.
EPIDEMIC CRUELTY.
During periods of great national excitement, such as revolutions,
feminine cruelty shows how far it can go.
The women, writes M. Du Camp, were the fiercest heroines of the Commune;
it was a woman who incited the assassination of the Dominicans. When the
hostages were shot, they surpassed the men in cruelty; they taunted them
with not knowing how to kill. When employed to seek out the insurgents
they were implacable; when acting as infirmarians, they killed the
wounded by giving them brandy to drink.
At the time of the French Revolution, on the days of execution, writes
M. Legouvé,[31] the front rows nearest the guillotine were reserved
for the women of the political clubs. They even hung on to the boards
of the scaffold, in order the better to witness the death throes of
the condemned, and drowned the cries of the victims by their peals of
laughter.
II.
PITY.
But again we find a series of contradictory facts, which bear witness
that the sentiment of pity also is much keener in woman than in man.
Even with animals, we observe this phenomenon. Hens often separate two
young cocks who are fighting together. Sir George Le Grand Jacob has
observed females of the wild goat (Steinbock) raise with their heads
he-goats that had been shot, support them and help them to escape.
Romanes relates, that sometimes the female gibbon, takes great care of
all the members of the troop when they are wounded, even if they are not
related.[32]
The savage woman also is very often kind and good. It is notorious that
the explorers of savage countries have often escaped serious perils,
thanks to the kindness of the native women. Australasian women have
often revealed to European travellers the plots laid against them by
the men of their tribe: they have even risked their own lives for that
purpose.[33] Stanley, at the island of Bambyrch, on the Nyanza, was
roughly greeted by the natives, who were desirous of exterminating his
expedition; but a woman came to warn him and to advise him to perform
a certain ceremony with the King Shekka by which he would acquire his
friendship. In Senegambia an old woman, meeting Mungo Park, who was half
dead of starvation and had just been despoiled by a negro king, gave
him food, and went away without waiting to be thanked. Another time the
same traveller, being left with nothing but his saddle, was hospitably
entertained by some women, whom he heard chant these words as he fell
asleep: “The winds roared and the rain beat, the poor white man came
and sat down under our tree, he had no mother to give him milk, no wife
to grind him corn. Let us take pity on the white man, he has no mother,
etc., etc.”[34] Michelet says that woman was the first physician;
and certainly she fulfils the office of infirmarian among many savage
peoples, the Esquimaux, the Mincopies, etc. etc.
In war the Samoan woman often interferes to make peace between the
belligerents. Among the Khonds, also, when two tribes quarrel, the women
sometimes make peace, calling in the intervention of a third tribe.
Quite recently, among the Montenegrins and Albanians, fierce strife
broke out between different families, but in these fights, if a man took
refuge with a woman and she covered him with her apron, he was safe.
Among the Bedouin Arabs a woman can save the life of the condemned man
who implores her protection. So it also was among the Roman Vestals,
when in the streets they accidentally met a man condemned to death; it
was required, however, that the meeting should be evidently a chance
one, for it was feared that the privilege might be carried too far.
Among civilised nations this sentiment of pity becomes naturally more
developed. Christianity owed a great deal of its success among women
to the fact, that it knew how to make use of their pity, by organising
those associations of women which are its greatest ornament. From the
earliest years after the death of Jesus, in the cenobitic form of society
lived by the disciples of the Messiah, they made use of the charitable
sentiment of childless widows and created the order of Deaconesses, which
was devoted to the care of the poor and the sick.[35] Legouvé says:
“Women offered their services to Christianity like a volunteer battalion
consecrated to charitable work. In the Apostles’ time their mission was
one of sympathy and watchfulness, a mother’s vocation; in the time of the
Martyrs they remained womanly in their modesty, while exhibiting a manly
courage; in the time of the Doctors, whilst orators speak and learned men
write, women continue to love and console.”[36]
This Christian tradition has survived and is still powerful, thanks to
the deeply laid sentiment of pity in the heart of woman. “Private charity
in Paris,” writes M. du Camp,[37] “is almost entirely in the hands of
women. There are in Paris women of the world, young and beautiful, born
for pleasure, accustomed to every luxury, who visit the poor, nurse
the sick, rock little motherless children, and all this they do simply
without a word of self-praise.”
The society of “Les Dames du Calvaire,” in Paris, is composed of widows,
who, without binding themselves by religious vows, engage to nurse the
sick gathered into the hospitals of the association, poor outcasts
attacked by loathsome diseases—cancer, for example. Women of wealth and
belonging to great families often obtain admission to this society.
Female religious orders are rarely contemplative; they are nearly always
charitable in aim. “The Daughters of Charity” possess establishments all
over the known world; they migrate, says M. du Camp, “like benevolent
birds, carrying with them the principle of self-sacrifice and the love
of those that suffer. In all countries I have visited, among sects most
antagonistic to their religion, I have beheld them at work; their faces
shadowed by the immense cap, which resembles the wings of a white swan;
instructing children, visiting the sick, caring for the plague-stricken,
blessed by our sailors whom they nurse in the French hospitals in foreign
lands.”[38]
Pity in woman is sometimes so powerful a sentiment that it supplies the
place in her of a higher faculty, intelligence. It was thus that a humble
servant-maid, without learning, who could neither read nor write, founded
one of the most prominent nursing sisterhoods in France, “Les petites
Soeurs des Pauvres,” which to-day numbers 3,400 sisters, and possesses
207 houses, where more than 25,000 old men are received and cared for.
In the first half of this century there was such misery in Brittany that
the old men were literally abandoned by all. Jeanne Jugau, whose earnings
hardly sufficed to maintain herself, took in one, then two, then a number
of them, without a thought of her own poverty, slaving might and main for
their support. Two women, Virginie Tredaniel and Marie Catherine, helped
her; a priest, Le Pailleur, took the direction of their work, and in a
short time the order was founded, and grew apace. There, where genius
might have failed, the love and pity of a servant-maid succeeded.
Another heroine of charity, though of a different type, was Jeanne
Garnier. She was perpetually haunted by a desire to do good, to help
and succour the unfortunate. M. du Camp has portrayed her character
in a most graphic manner: impulsive, prone from childhood to adopt
extreme measures, while in the convent she was given to rebellious and
untractable conduct, for which she was sent away. When she was twenty
years old she married; the love she bore her husband and two sons was
deep and ardent. Three years after her marriage she had the unspeakable
grief of losing both husband and sons at one fell stroke. After this
occurrence her life had but one aim, ceaselessly and untiringly to
succour and help the sorrowful. One day she was told that a woman,
disfigured by a cutaneous disease, was lying in an attic in Lyons,
abandoned by every one. She went at once to her, ministered to her, and
every day went to wash her sores. Thus was suggested to her the founding
of the association of “Les Dames du Calvaire,” of which we have already
spoken, and the idea of pressing into the service of the sick, widows
who found themselves in the same position as herself. She was not rich,
but being an untiring and determined worker, capable of attacking the
same person ten times a day, she obtained money. When they had to convey
the sick to the new hospital, there was among them one woman so horribly
disfigured by burns that no conveyance could be found whose driver was
willing to take her. Jeanne Garnier then took her on her own shoulders
and carried her there herself. The association of “Les Dames du Calvaire”
was not the only charitable work which owes its existence to her. She
conceived a great many other plans, of which many were carried out, for
she never ceased working, up to the moment of her death, which occurred
at forty-two years of age, of exhaustion.
In the United States, where woman enjoys much greater freedom than
in Europe, she makes an excellent use of her liberty. In fact, all
associations of women have a charitable end in view; and these societies
not being subjected to the severe rules of Catholic religious orders,
and not requiring from their members so absolute a renunciation of the
pleasures of life, exhibit the most perfect and most modern form of
charitable associations, which have been known up to the present day. The
first woman’s club that was founded in that country, the Sorosis, has for
its object the amelioration of the condition of shop-girls: it has also
founded asylums for homeless children. The Temperance Union, founded by
women, seeks to stem the tide of intemperance. The Women’s League has
obtained the admission of women on commissioners boards for schools and
hospitals. The College Settlement Girls, composed of female graduates
from universities, carry help into the purlieus of the city.[39]
CRUELTY, PITY, AND THE MATERNAL SENTIMENT.
Is woman kind or cruel? Can we reconcile these two series of facts, so
contradictory in themselves? That is the question which now comes before
us. Let us seek, first of all, the origin and the genesis of feminine
cruelty. We have seen women exhibiting great ingenuity in torturing; she
does not wish to destroy her enemies, but to torment and torture them;
she seeks to protract their pain as long as possible, and to lengthen
out her enjoyment of vengeance. On this point woman goes much further
than man: for among savages men do not amuse themselves by prolonging the
miseries of their enemies; they rather wreak their vengeance by killing
them at one stroke. Savages often make a wholesale carnage, massacring
whole tribes and nations. But it is always the woman who practices the
art of killing a man by inches, over a slow fire, as it were. Thus we
find that the redskins give their prisoners of war over to their women.
Notice, even at the present day, the difference between the quarrels of
men and women. Women scratch each other, tear out the hair, fly at the
eyes of their adversaries, trying to inflict some painful wound: men
give blows and stabs; they strive to disable or stun their enemy, or to
destroy him. There is the same difference but on a smaller scale. This
aptitude in inflicting pain is an outgrowth of weakness. We know from
the Darwinian theory of natural selection, and from the struggle for
life, that every living being must be provided with a certain number of
means of defense and offense, and amongst these means must be classed
many instincts and sentiments which spring from natural selection,
adaptation, and heredity. The cruelty of woman is one of these instincts
and sentiments. Woman not being powerful enough to destroy her enemies,
had to seek for the means of defending herself, by wounding their more
delicate organs, by inflicting such acute pain as would serve to disable
them. This tendency to protect one’s self by such means has become
instinctive by heredity; and so much the more since the woman who was
able thus to defend herself, had at the outset of man’s evolution a far
better chance of survival.
All this is so true, that we find other weak creatures also to be cruel.
Children take pleasure in tormenting insects, birds, or little dogs, and
are very cruel to each other. I knew a child who used to cut his nails
like the teeth of a saw, in order to inflict more painful scratches on
his companions. Humming birds, says Brehm, are the smallest and the
cruelest of birds. When they are attacked by a more powerful enemy they
try to peck out his eyes with their long, sharp beaks. The struggle for
life and natural selection has provided their weakness with this means of
defense, and they are even cruel to each other when they fight, to such
an extent has the sentiment of cruelty in them become instinctive.
And now we must seek for the genesis of the other phenomenon, pity. It
is a notorious fact, that maternity being the great function of woman,
through the whole order of animal life, with the exception of some few
fishes, it is always the female who is thus the benefactress of the race.
Maternity is always an altruistic function; in the inferior orders this
altruism is a purely physical act, and consists merely in a material
sacrifice; (the detaching of a portion of the maternal body, under
the form of bud, or egg;) in the higher orders, this altruism becomes
psychical and consists in a conscious sacrifice of self and of vitality
in the interests of the race.
What then is the essential nature of these altruistic sacrifices?
Maternity is protection given to weakness; for the infant is above all
other created things a being requiring succour.
It is thus that, the images relating to the state of weakness being in
great numbers strongly impressed on the mind of woman, when one of them
presents itself to her, by the law of association it awakens all those
maternal sentiments whose function it is to help the weak. At first,
motherhood only extends from a woman’s own children to those of others;
this is the first stage of pity, such as we find it in the animals and
among many undeveloped savage peoples. Afterwards in a region of higher
psychical development the sentiment of pity broadens till it embraces a
wider group, the sick, the aged, those condemned to death; for all those
unfortunates who claim the pity of woman are the weak appealing for help
to the strong. It is only the weak who can inspire pity. Thus pity, in
woman, is but the outgrowth of the maternal sentiment applied to a larger
class of helpless people. “Woman,” says M. du Camp, “may bind herself
by the religious vow of chastity; but she is a born mother and remains
a mother, even though circumstances may have broken the physical law of
her sex. The Little Sisters of the Poor, call their pensioners ‘the good
little old men,’ and themselves ‘the good little sisters,’ their superior
‘the good little mother.’ With them everybody is good and little; all
these expressions are the reflection of maternal love.”
We must mention also, that one cause of a livelier sense of pity in
woman, is her own weakness and her lower intellect. “Anger,” writes A.
Bain, “the passion for war, are bound up with activity and strength;
conditions of weakness and of repose are favorable to the softer
sentiments.” Strong men who display great muscular or mental activity,
and who often experience the satisfactions arising from power, only
realise with extreme difficulty the feelings of the weak; for, as H.
Spencer remarks,[40] “to feel pity for any suffering which we witness,
we must have experienced it ourselves to the same extent or in an
approximate degree.” Thus healthy persons become, after a serious
sickness, more feeling than they formerly were for those who are
suffering; women are continually in a state of ill-health.
Besides which women have not been involved in the struggle for life,
as have men during the whole process of evolution: this struggle for
life implying, as it does, the necessity of pursuing one’s own object
irrespective of the ills which it may entail on the unhappy competitors,
and often rendering a man insensible to the sorrows of those around him.
To this we add, that love for man has not been without influence in
developing the sense of pity in woman. The main characteristic of the
love of woman towards man, is self-abnegation and devotion; woman finds
her happiness in devotion to the man she loves and in making for him
the most painful sacrifices. Read the “Letters of Heloise,” the “Life
of Carlyle,” or the “Life of Mme. de Lespinasse.” Each woman, carries
hidden in her heart, an inexhaustible treasure of devotion which heredity
has added to through all the centuries, during which woman has lived in
contact with man and sought to win his good-will, displaying an affection
and an ardent zeal in his behalf; nothing then is easier than to spend
this treasure on the unhappy, when she has not found the man on whom to
lavish it.
The close relationship between pity, maternity, and love, is also shown
by this fact, that the heroines of charity are almost always widows
without sons, or unmarried women. When a woman has a husband or sons
to love and cherish, she does not feel the same tenderness towards
the suffering; this goes to prove that if these two sentiments are
interchangeable, they are but two different forms of the same thing.
PITY AND CRUELTY.
We are now in a position to answer the question: Is woman kind or cruel?
Pity and cruelty coexist together in her; we might call this state in
woman a state of unstable equilibrium; to-day she is kind, divinely
good, charitable; to-morrow she will be perverse and cruel. On one side
her feebleness renders her cruel, and her impulsive nature prevents her
from repressing the outbursts of anger and of vengeance; on the other
hand, the gentle habits of maternal affection, her lower intelligence,
and even the weakness of her nature develop in her kindly sentiments.
Woman may experience the strongest feelings of maternal affection at the
sight of a helpless creature; but that will not prevent her from cruelly
persecuting a rival, especially if she has been wounded in her sentiments
of wife or mother. Thus woman, who is the natural protector of the weak,
treats them oftentimes with a cruelty of which man is totally incapable.
Woman loves, hates, consoles, inflicts pain, according as she finds
herself in the presence of a friend, an enemy, a helpless being, or of a
rival.
Many of the fiercest heroines of the Paris Commune, had been trained
nurses during the war, and distinguished for their devotion to the sick.
There is nothing astonishing in this, for contradiction in feeling is so
often a psychical law that a great Italian philosopher, Robert Ardigò,
has said that man is not a logical being.
We have noticed before that weakness is in part the cause of cruelty and
partly also of pity, and this accounts for the co-existence of the two
contrary sentiments. They coexist because they have a common origin.
But this instability of equilibrium is lessened by evolution, and pity
becomes stronger than cruelty. Among civilised nations the cruelty of
women has become merely a moral attitude: the civilised woman, less
powerful than her savage sister, no more subjects her enemies to physical
pain, does not shed their blood; she contents herself with slandering
them, turning them into ridicule, and humiliating them. The diminution
of muscular strength is in itself favorable to the softening of female
character.
Furthermore, sexual selection also helps in this; in the human race
as civilisation advances the male assumes more and more the right of
selection, and man shrinks instinctively from meeting in a woman a high
development of the qualities which he himself possesses, for he wishes
to dominate her and to be her superior. This explains to us the singular
fact, which we notice every day, that of a _savant_ marrying a stupid
or unintelligent wife; this is why the normal man, as also the vicious,
choose gentle and good women when they desire to found families. If
sometimes the choice falls on a wicked woman, it is because the man
desires to form a criminal co-partnership, such as was perhaps the normal
condition of family life during the early days of human evolution. Many
of the domestic tragedies which we witness to-day can be traced to no
other cause than this _penchant_ of the male, even of the vicious, to
choose the woman who appears to be the most gentle. Women with their
clear penetration and sure instincts have seized upon this inclination
in man and made capital out of it with infinite ability: do we not see
many young women simulate a gentleness, a sweetness, and kindness which
they do not naturally possess in order to capture the good-will of men?
Women have thus practised the habit of repressing their evil _penchants_,
through interested motives, because they saw that men chose the most
gentle among them as wives.
Besides sexual selection, physical grace plays a conspicuous part, as
well as those psychical qualities which are associated with it. Man
having set a high value on graceful demeanour, woman sought and still
seeks with all her strength to adorn herself with it.
We know that by the law of association between the emotional states and
their outward expression, which mutually correspond, each gesture, each
attitude, and each graceful expression of the countenance has a tendency
to throw the mind into some sweet and peaceful condition; this is why the
culture of physical grace has been for woman an exercise of goodness.
This fostering of physical beauty has had a beneficial influence on her
moral character. We might say that as woman grew in beauty, she became
better. Finally woman being in the present day more respected than in
former times, she has less often the occasion to exercise her instinctive
cruelty, which on this account is being gradually obliterated. Pity each
day becomes more and more the normal state of the feminine mind, and
cruelty the exception. In order to be cruel, a woman’s character must
be perverted, as is the case in female criminals, whose vice exceeds
that of man in similar circumstances. Or she must have received some
deep provocation, wounding her profoundly in her deepest and tenderest
sentiments, which has awakened the original cruelty slumbering latent in
the depths of her heart.
We may thus predict that in the ages to come, woman will become entirely
good.
GUILLAUME FERRERO.
FOOTNOTES:
[24] Spencer. _Principles of Sociology_, II., p. 361.