WOMAN'S INFLUENCE FOR GOOD AND EVIL
A woman at the beginning--The first love-story--Different
versions--'Cherchez la femme'--The influence of woman on national
characteristics.
If we look back into the dawn of the world, we see that, from her first
appearance, woman has always been a great power. Indeed, she had the
leading part in the first great drama of which the literature of the
world gives any account. A snake and a poor weak man had the minor
parts, the snake playing the villain and the poor man the fool. I
have never read that story without feeling ashamed of the first
representative of my sex. If I had been Adam, I would have stuck to
Eve through thick and thin. To save, even only to shield, a woman
(especially one I loved, or one who would have been as kind to me as
Eve had been to Adam), I would tell lies by the yard and by the hour,
and I admire that English judge who, being told so by a male
co-respondent in a divorce case, replied, 'And so would I.'
How I prefer that story of our first parents as related in the sacred
books of the Buddhists! There, as in the version that we know, man is
tempted by woman, and, as in our version, and as he has done ever
since, and will do for ever and ever, he succumbs. But when he is found
out and sentence is to be passed on him, what a difference! He does not
turn around and say, 'Please, it was not I who tempted her; it was she
who tempted me.' No, he acknowledges his guilt, affirms that he alone
disobeyed, and that he alone should be punished. Then Eve intervenes,
and she, too, confesses her guilt. There is a regular attempt each at
shielding the other. Then both fall on their knees and beg to be
punished together, and their request is granted, and they go forth hand
in hand into exile. This is the first record of love and devotion, not,
as in our version, a first record of man's cowardice and selfishness.
From that memorable day to this, Her Royal Highness Woman has been the
greatest power for good and evil that the world has known, for ever
since Adam and Eve there have been men and women--especially women.
A beautiful woman was the cause of the Trojan War; the cause of David's
single sin, a woman; the cause of Solomon's decadence, a woman, or
rather, many women. A woman was the instigator of the greatest crime
ever recorded in history, the terrible massacre of St. Bartholomew. A
woman, who has dearly paid for it since, was the cause of the
Franco-German war. On the other hand, France was saved in the fifteenth
century by a sweet peasant girl at a time when King and people had
given up all hope of ever again seeing France a free and independent
nation--but that was a long time ago.
There is no country where the influence of women over men is so great
as France, and the famous phrase 'Cherchez la femme'--'Seek the
woman'--emanated from the lips of the greatest jurisconsult France ever
produced, President Dupin, in the reign of King Louis Philippe. And it
is a fact that among French prisoners who belong to the better classes,
there are ninety-nine out of every hundred who have committed murder,
forgery, embezzlement, theft, for the sake of a woman. The English
people (and the Americans, too, I believe) say that drunkenness is
responsible for the great majority of crimes committed in Great Britain
and America. The expensive ways of French women are responsible for the
majority of crimes and offences committed by men in modern France, as
these expensive ways of women are responsible for their own downfall
nine times out of ten.
On the other hand, a man owes all his best qualities to the influence
of the first woman he has known, his mother. A man will be what his
mother has made him. A man does not learn how to be a gentleman at
school, at college, or at the university. There he may improve his
manner, but his mind is formed at home much earlier than that.
It is woman, and woman alone, that makes society polite. Men together
can talk or chat, but it is only when women join them that they can
_causer_, an equivalent for which the English language does not
possess. And why? Simply because Englishmen do not as a rule care for
the restraint that results from the presence of women.
Thanks to the tact, the brilliancy, and the high intellectual
attainments of American women, one can _causer_ in America, and the
vocabulary of the language used in the United States ought to be richer
by one word, a good equivalent for this French verb which both 'to
talk' and 'to chat' most imperfectly translate; for _causer_ means 'to
chat with wit, humour, brilliancy, and great refinement.'