There came a time when she had money to spend, and a host of friends to
spend it upon, and when she certainly had not time personally to conduct
the making of the number of Christmas presents she thought necessary to
bestow. She was much too loyal to leave me out on this occasion, and if
I were to judge of the degree of her affection by the proportion of her
money which she spent upon me, she must have regarded me still as one
of her dearest friends. She gave me a pair of exquisite cut glass vases,
which, when placed in the sunshine, were certainly most beautiful with
the flashing of colors. Their outline too was a lovely curve, but
unfortunately such that it was impossible to put any flowers in the
vases. At the base they were too slender to receive even one rose-stalk,
while they were so broad at the top that it would have required a whole
nosegay to fill them. If I had had a vast empty drawing-room which was
to be filled with _bric-à-brac_, I could have found a place for them;
but they were too delicate for my tiny parlor where there is so little
elbow-room that slight things are in danger of being overturned. Of
course I prize the vases and love the giver, but I know she never would
have given them to me but for the feeling that the time had come to make
a present; and so, while I shall cherish the little purse as long as I
live, I have resolved that if the vases are ever broken, I will not
treasure the fragments.
From these two roots, the love of creating beauty and the desire to
express love for our friends on the same day of every year, such
luxuriant vines have grown that unless we prune them carefully we are in
danger of being completely entangled by them. There are still, perhaps,
some waste places which our useless _bric-à-brac_ might make beautiful,
and if we know any bare homes, let us by all means do something to
brighten them; but let us not make for ourselves or give to our friends
any small article which does not express use as well as beauty. We need
not be at a loss if we remember Oscar Wilde's declaration that every
article used in a house should be something which had given pleasure to
the maker, that is, that it should be artistic. When all useful
_bric-à-brac_ has become beautiful, we shall no longer desire to make or
possess beautiful _bric-à-brac_ which is not useful. Of course I know
that "Beauty is its own excuse for being," and I see in a fine picture,
for instance, an appeal to the higher faculties which is more useful
than usefulness. This I do not see in _bric-à-brac_, certainly not if
the objects are to be so crowded in a small room that no one can see
anything more than prettiness in them. Instead of my beautiful vases
with their shifting lights, which do, after all, give me real pleasure
sometimes when I am not too anxious lest I should break them, cut glass
tumblers would have given me the same æsthetic enjoyment renewed at
every meal. I might break a tumbler to be sure, but I should have the
full enjoyment of it while it lasted.
XIII.
EMOTIONAL WOMEN.
A highly emotional young lady was once defending the reasoning powers of
her sex at the dinner-table of a cultivated and fair-minded physician
who finally took occasion to say sweetly to her: "No doubt the reason of
women equals that of men; but I believe the trouble is that all men like
a woman a little better if she is governed by feeling rather than by
reason."
"Oh," said the young lady in a glow, "that is like saying that you would
a little rather a woman would not be truthful!"
"I hope not," said the physician.
The friend who told me the anecdote added that of the two young ladies
who were at the time members of the physician's family, there was no
question that he greatly preferred the one who was most reasonable and
least emotional!
Some one else tells me of a clever young lady who applied for a position
as dramatic critic upon a newspaper. The editor recognized her ability
and her knowledge of the drama, but he said he was afraid to employ a
woman in such a department, lest her feelings should prevent her
telling the exact truth. She would be biased herself, and praise the
things she liked, and then she would have her personal favorites among
the actors. The young lady who believed herself capable of justice was
greatly hurt.
Are women really excessively emotional? And if so, is it well that they
should be?
I suppose most people would agree that women are more emotional than
men, and that this peculiarity comes in a great measure from their
delicate physical organization, and in a great measure from the
encouragement they get from men in indulging their feelings. Nobody
admires a woman when her emotions reach the point of hysteria, and, in
fact, those who have encouraged her up to that point are often least
patient with her when the crisis comes. The general belief about
hysteria is that it is caused by the culpable weakness of a selfish
nature, and that is often true. But there are important exceptional
cases becoming more and more numerous, where the parents have cultivated
what they and their friends consider fine feelings so assiduously that
the poor child is born helplessly weak and nervous, and a prey to every
vibration in the spiritual atmosphere about her.
Now what are _fine_ feelings? Jealousy, envy, hatred, and others of that
class are not fine, and yet they are extremely common among those women
who are sensitive and highly organized. They do belong more frequently
than we sometimes think to the outfit of an emotional woman. A woman who
would not hurt a fly has violent antipathies to excellent people. She
would not hurt them either. She would delight in giving them food and
clothing if they were in want. She wishes she need not hurt their
feelings, but she usually does give pain, because her own feelings are
paramount. The important point however is that she is unjust in her
judgments. She exaggerates the faults of her foes, as well as the
virtues of her friends, and widens every breach.
But we all know that jealousy and envy and hatred are wrong, even if we
endeavor to dignify them with finer names, and all of us who have any
moral purpose do make our stand against them.
When, therefore, we speak in praise of a woman's emotional nature, we
are thinking of a nature in which generosity swallows up justice, and
duty is forgotten, because "love is an unerring law." We cannot be too
generous, or too loving, or too sensitive to beauty and honor.
But men are as generous and loving as women, so, after all, we do have
something a little different from this in our minds when we speak of the
emotional nature of women. Do we not mean that a woman is unreasonable?
Love can never be too great, but it is often unwise. All affectionate
women who have reached middle age must have received many confidences
from girls who have been mistaken in supposing themselves loved by men
who have grown tired of them. A girl often suffers intensely in such a
case, and it is hard to know how much is due to wounded love, and how
much to wounded pride. I suppose most of us have been astonished to see
how often when a girl's life seems both to herself and her friends to
have been utterly wrecked she is capable of responding to a new lover,
and if he proves to be a fine man, how full and fine her own life
becomes. This is right, and most natural to the most emotional natures,
that is, to those which answer most readily to outside influences. Yet
we all have a feeling that sudden and frequent changes of this kind show
a shallow character, and girls sometimes make a pathetic struggle to
resist new possibilities of happiness, because they cannot bear to admit
that the old love can die.
The weakness of character in this case comes from the being ready to
love any one who will make us the central figure without regard to any
more solid foundation. Such love comes from vanity and is good for
nothing. A girl cannot be too careful to guard against such an emotion.
And then, why should a woman cease to love a man simply because she is
disappointed to find that he does not love her? Many times the fault is
her own. She has believed he loved her because she wished to believe
so. But if she has loved him because he was worth being loved, she has a
right to cherish that love even when she knows it is hopeless, provided
she does not hurt other people. I think it is happily not often that an
altogether hopeless love continues long in full vigor, but occasionally
it does. If the old lover marries, the woman who cannot conquer her love
certainly ought to separate herself as far from him as possible. Any
fine theory of being able to be a silent providence in his life is sure
to prove fallacious, and to bring suffering to somebody. And it is not
best for her to say much to her own friends of her sorrow. She either
pains them or tires them. Any love which causes her to do this is
unreasonable. I suspect that some women find their love slipping away
from them and try to hold it fast by the expedient of talking about it.
No love that has to be held in that way is worth keeping. There are
loves we should cherish just as there are others which we ought to cast
out, but nothing is real which cannot be retained except by making
ourselves a burden to other people.
Another unreasonable love is that which a woman feels for a man who has
really treated her dishonorably. It is true that we do not love simply
for merit. There are sympathies between men and women as between parents
and children with which merit has little to do. One great reason that
emotional women attract men is because they can make a hero out of such
unheroic stuff. And why should we try always to see the exact reality as
if that were nearer the truth than the same reality transfigured by
ideal light? The more we believe in others, the better and happier we
all are. A man full of faults, selfish, and even vicious, may be helped
by a woman who trusts him. But when he has forsaken her, it is not often
that she can be of much real service to him. She must indeed forgive
him, but when she has genuinely forgiven him, the glamour of love will
usually have disappeared. If she insists upon shutting herself up from
other love for his sake, she should question herself as to the part
sentimentality and perversity bear in her character.
Most of the best work done in the world is done in the face of what seem
to be insurmountable difficulties. Our faith moves mountains. An
impossible duty is done. The fact that women ignore the impossibility is
their strongest power. This, I suppose, is what the physician meant when
he said that men liked a woman a little better if she was not always
governed by reason. "Love believeth all things, hopeth all things,
endureth all things." We all like to have such love as that lavished
upon us. It is a noble love which glorifies the object by keeping in
view all the time the ideal which is to be some day realized. It is
something very different from the weak love which distorts the object
simply because of its personal connection with us. But no doubt women
who are weakly emotional in this way do have a great attraction for men,
that is, so long as the man himself is an object of their emotions. Such
women are pretty sure to have lovers when better and more unselfish
women are overlooked. They do not wear very well, and men tire of them,
especially when they exercise their emotions in new fields; and as wives
(after marriage) and sisters and mothers they prefer the quieter and
less impassioned women. But the great and ardent loves which influence a
life still belong to the women of ardent feelings.
Ardent feelings well controlled,--that is our ideal; but how few women
of strong feelings do control them well, and how few who have perfect
self-control have very strong feelings!
Which shall we choose, the strong feelings or the self-control? We have
not complete choice in the matter, for we must begin with the
temperament we are born with. Others may choose to love or hate us for
the temperament we are not responsible for, but what can we do for
ourselves?
I believe the hardest task is that of the cool-blooded women. How are
they to make themselves feel without becoming hypocrites? Pretending to
feel any emotion is no help in feeling it. Nevertheless, we are not
entirely helpless. There are ways of nourishing noble germs of feeling
even when the natural soil is cold and dry.
One way is to clear the ground of weeds. A cool nature is sometimes
peculiarly prone to envy and suspicion. A woman with little love of her
fellow-creatures sits alone in her home day after day, and thinks of her
own troubles and the shortcomings of her neighbors till it seems
impossible to love anybody but herself. Such emotions as stir the dull
current of her life are all selfish. But if she has the one saving
virtue of being able to perceive her narrowness, the remedy is in her
own hands. For she can go out and speak to somebody, and even a passing
greeting sometimes sets the blood flowing afresh. And there is always
somebody she can help, though, it may be only a child who is in some
trifling difficulty. Every act of this kind makes another easier, and
every such act nourishes the little germ of love in the heart. I have no
doubt that persistence in doing small kindnesses for every one about her
would be potent enough to transform the coldest of us into a woman
glowing with love. Yet I cannot say I have ever seen such a
transformation. I suppose that is because the cold nature does not
perceive its coldness or desire to change. Still there are surely some
of us who know that love in us is only a stunted plant, and who do
sincerely desire its more luxuriant growth. Those of us who have ardent
feelings towards our friends know that we are often worse than cold
towards those we do not fancy. We sometimes, alas, take a certain pride
in our sensitiveness in this particular. We justify our hatred for
uncongenial people till we have fairly faced the truth that love is the
law of our being, and that we _must_ love our neighbor. Then, though we
cannot change our temperament, yet by the doing of prosaic duties, the
germ of love may be made to bud and blossom. At least do not let us
allow the turmoil of every-day affairs to crowd out love. We have not
time to see our friend. A letter written to us with love and care is
hastily skimmed and thrown aside. We do not answer it for many weeks,
and then our haste is our apology for saying nothing we really care for.
And by and by the love grows faint. Perhaps our friend dies, and the
package of affectionate letters we once saved as precious lies forgotten
in a drawer. Our friend did not fail us, we should love her just as
dearly again if we were with her daily, but the love has been crowded
out.
Now, some of us are really overtasked with necessary work; but usually
our hurry comes from our ambition or our indolence. If love were really
first with us, we should find time for our friends.
But some of us are so placed that we are continually meeting new people
whom we can warmly love. Now there is a limit to the number of people
who can form a part of our daily life. It is possible to love a hundred
people dearly, but it is not possible to talk intimately with a hundred
people every day, or to write a hundred affectionate letters every week.
But because we cannot cling closely to so many, let us not believe that
we cannot cling closely to a few. Let us at least hold fast to a few
friends, and without trying to form a part of the lives of the rest meet
them all warmly when we do meet. We cannot love too much or too many
people, and loving one helps us to love another, but we can only fully
give ourselves to a few.
I seem to be speaking altogether of nourishing emotion, and we ought to
nourish noble emotions. But the task set especially to women is to
control less noble emotions. We know well enough what is our duty in
regard to jealousy, envy, and so forth, though so many of us who mean to
be good women do not make a very heroic struggle even here, and perhaps
justify our weakness by the plea that our feelings are strong.
I will therefore speak particularly of some of our failings which lean
to virtue's side. What is it, for instance, to be a sensitive woman? The
highest women are exquisitely sensitive, they respond to beauty, to
love, to truth, and goodness instantly. But suppose they also tremble at
ugliness, and shrink from pain? The two kinds of sensitiveness do often
exist together. The perfect woman would follow the example of Christ
and look through outward ugliness and suffering to inward beauty and
goodness, and would keep herself unspotted from the world not by
shrinking from it, but by helping it upward.
But as we are imperfect, our sensitiveness shows itself most frequently
in making us feel every jar to our pride and vanity. And we make a
virtue of this. We ought to guard ourselves against such sensitiveness.
It is a fault which lies very deep. It is almost impossible for a _very_
sensitive woman to be just. In fancying wrong to herself she imputes
wrong to everybody about her. In trying to shield herself she wounds
others. She fears a slight was intended, and rather than submit to it,
deliberately hurts some one who she knows may be innocent. Would it not
be better to believe that the person who has hurt her is innocent, and
submit to the slight even if it was intended? What harm can it do her to
think a guilty person innocent? And what harm can a slight do her? But
it always does harm to stoop to an ignoble feeling.
Let us at least be just. But the special accusation against women is
that they are not just, and sometimes their special virtue is believed
to be a romantic generosity which shuts out justice. Women are prone to
be so generous to one person as to be unjust to another. They are strong
partisans, and are determined to believe those they love always in the
right. That seems like an amiable failing; but is it? Do we wish even
our enemy to be wronged to save our friend? I think every high-minded
woman would choose to be just, even if she must make her friend suffer;
but it is very hard to live by that standard.
Most men who write novels describe women as ready to forgive the man who
has forsaken them for another woman, but as implacable towards the rival
however innocent she may be. There is too much truth in such a picture,
but the best women know that good women are not so unjust. That Dorothea
in her anguish at finding Will Ladislaw singing with Rosamund Lydgate
should do her utmost to help Rosamund take a better stand is of course
unusual, but it is not unnatural. That was a splendid kind of generosity
which did indeed swallow up justice, but it was founded on justice, the
justice which strove to restore all things to their true relations. If
any girl is puzzled as to the true province of feeling, and wishes to
know how to reconcile warm-heartedness and self-control, let her read
the wonderful chapter in "Middlemarch" which describes the interview
between Dorothea and Rosamund.
Wherever we have to choose between justice and generosity we must be
just. Otherwise, our generosity is mere sentimentality. And it does no
good even to the person on whom we lavish it. Perhaps justice in its
highest sense includes generosity. It is just that the rich should help
the poor, and more truly generous to give with that thought than with
the feeling that one has done something meritorious in giving. It is
also mere justice that in dealing with our fellow-creatures we should
always think of them as they may be, as they ought to be, and not to
remember simply what they are. Our faith in them helps them to rise, but
not our pretense that they are right when they are wrong.
After all, however, who is perfectly balanced? There are worthy women
who have all their feelings well in hand, who are pleasant to live with,
and who do an immense amount of good in the world, and yet who never
rise above common-placeness, and never lift anybody else much above the
material plane. And there are other women so ardent and generous and
loving that they seem to lend wings to everybody they meet, who are yet
crushed and ruined themselves by the excess of their grief not only for
their own sorrows, but for those of the whole world, until by and by
they drag their dearest and most sympathetic friends down into the same
abyss of woe.
How shall we keep the true balance? I believe that it always is kept by
religious faith, though that too is frequently distorted. The one thing
necessary to believe is that a good God rules the universe. There is no
limit to the love we may give to such a being or to the creatures He
has made, and there is no sorrow which cannot be comforted by the
thought that love underlies it, and that it has a meaning though we
cannot see it, and there is nothing else which is so sure a spur to
duty.
Even this simple creed, however, is not possible to all of us. The
upheavals in religious beliefs which this century has seen reach even
emotional women and unthinking girls. We cannot believe a thing simply
because we should like to believe it. Without this one article of faith,
I believe happiness to be impossible, but we need not fail in our duty.
A noble woman whose beautiful life is a benediction to all about her,
but whose suffering has been intense, says that as her life has been an
exceptionally favored one, it is impossible for her to believe in God.
But she adds, "Though things are not for the best, we must make the best
of them. We can always lighten somebody's burden." I believe she is
wrong in saying things are not for the best, but there could be no more
sublime resolution than to determine to do all we can to make wrong
right.
XIV.
A QUESTION OF SOCIETY.
I cannot say how it is in other places, but every one who knows much of
society girls in Boston must have been struck with a certain earnest
note which sounds through all their frivolity. Few of them are satisfied
to be simply society girls. They wish to identify themselves with some
charity, or to make a thorough study of some art or science. It may be
due to their Puritan ancestry, forbidding them to make pleasure the only
business of life.
Many of them seem to be always on the eve of revolt and ready to give up
society altogether. They join a Protestant sisterhood or even become
Roman Catholics, or they enter a training-school for nurses. I heard
only the other day of one of the loveliest "buds" of this season who has
already decided that a society life is an unsatisfactory one, and who is
almost prepared to go as a missionary to India.
A young girl told me not long ago that she was wretched at the thought
she must soon leave school, for she dreaded the society life from which
there seemed no escape. She wished to find some charitable work
instantly which would be on the face of it so absorbing that it would be
a complete excuse for her to refuse all invitations. She is only one
among many who have the same feeling.
It is hard to know what to say to such a girl. Motives are so mixed that
it is hard to stimulate the growth of the wheat without stimulating that
of the tares also. Most serious women would regret to see any young
friend become a mere society girl, but how far it is best for a girl to
give up society it is not easy to say.