infatuation trap. This is a much more elaborate machine, and is worked
by one of those semi-attached couples who might sit to a new Hogarth for
a new edition of _Marriage a la Mode_. The husband's part is very
simple. It is to be as little in the way as possible, and to afford his
sprightlier half every facility for pursuing her little game. The chief
business devolves on the lady. It is her task to make the pigeon fall
madly in love with her, and to keep him so, without overstepping the
bounds of conventional propriety. Happily this can be managed nowadays
without either elopement or scandal. Among the improvements of this
mechanical age, it has been found possible to enlarge the limits of
wedlock so as to include a third person.
A life-long _tete-a-tete_, which was the old conception of marriage, is
quite obsolete. It has given way to the triangular theory, by which a
new element, in the shape of a parasitical adorer, has been introduced
into the holy state. Matrimony, as reconstituted by fashionable
scholiasts, comprises husband, wife, and, to relieve the tedium of the
situation, a good-looking appendage of the male sex, who is an agreeable
companion of the one and the devoted slave of the other. Each
contributes to the harmony of the arrangement--the husband, a
background; the wife, the charms of her presence; the adorer, cash.
Whatever other experience it brings, marriage generally sharpens the
appreciation of the value of money; sentiment is sweet, but it is an
article of confectionery, for which its fair dispensers in the married
ranks exact an equivalent.
In trapping her victim, therefore, a sharp young matron is careful to
let her choice fall on a plump specimen of the pigeon species--a pigeon
with a long purse and little brains. Once reduced to a state of
infatuation, almost anything may be done with him. The luxury of
plucking him will employ her delicate fingers for a long time to come.
He may be sponged upon to any extent. The one thing he can do really
well is to pay. His yacht, his drag, his brougham, his riding-horses,
his shooting-box, all are at her disposal. At his expense she dines at
Greenwich; at his expense she views the Derby; at his expense she enjoys
an opera-box. And in return for all this she has only to smile and
murmur "_so_ nice," for the soft simpleton to fancy himself amply
repaid. Then she exacts a great many costly presents, to say nothing of
gloves, trinkets, and _bouquets_. It is curious to note how the code of
propriety has altered in this particular.
In old-fashioned novels the stereotyped dodge for compromising a lady's
reputation is to force a present or a loan of money on her. Nowadays
Lovelace's anxiety is just the other way--to keep the acquisitive
propensity of his liege lady within tolerable bounds. It would be a
great mistake to suppose that a woman can play this game without special
gifts and aptitudes for it. It requires peculiar talents, and peculiar
antecedents. First and foremost, she must have married a man whom she
both dislikes and despises. And, further, she must be proof against the
weakness which some of her sex exhibit, of growing fond of husbands who,
without being Admirable Crichtons, treat them kindly and with
forbearance. Next, she must have thrown overboard all the twaddle about
domestic duties and responsibilities. If her child sickens of the
measles just as she is starting for her bivouac in Norway, or a course
of dinners in the Palais Royal, her duty is to call in the doctor and
go. Weeks afterwards you will find the little darling picking up flesh,
in mamma's absence, at some obscure watering-place. Then her temperament
must be cool, calculating, and passionless in no ordinary degree, and
this character is written in the hard lines of her mouth and the cold
light of her fine eyes.
Lastly, she must have, not a superstitious, but an intelligent regard
for the world's opinion, or rather for the opinion of the influential
part of it. No one has a nicer perception of the difference in the
relative importance of stupid country gossip and ostracism from certain
great houses in London. No one takes more pains to study appearances so
long as they don't clash with her amusements. Indeed, you will generally
find that her dear friend is a young lady of great simplicity and
irreproachable principles, whom she admits just enough, but not too far,
into her confidence, and who finds it worth while to enact the part, now
of a blind, and now of a foil.
If any one asserts that this treatment of the human pigeon is cruel, we
can only reply, with a correspondent of the _Times_ who writes to rebuke
the humanitarians who would rob a poor boa of his squealing rabbit--away
with such cant! Is a married woman to be stinted of her "small
pleasures" because prudes affect to think the means by which they are
obtained unfeminine? As well might they think it unfeline in pussy to
play with her mouse.
The walking pigeon is as much intended for the prey of a stronger
species as the pigeon that flies. The plucking which he receives at the
hands of his fair manipulator is nothing to what he would get at the
hands of his own sex, in the army, on the turf, or in the city. If the
pigeon has reason to think himself lucky in faring no worse, the
non-pigeon section of society has no less reason to be grateful for a
new illustration of female character. Not that the mercenary development
in some of our young matrons is altogether new. It is only an old
domestic virtue, carried to an extreme--thrift, running into an engaging
rapacity.
AMBITIOUS WIVES.
The recent death of Mrs. Proudie, who was so well known and so little
loved by the readers of Mr. Trollope's novels, is one of those occasions
which ought not to be allowed to pass away without being improved. To
many men it will suggest many things. She was a type. As a type ought to
be, she was perfect and full-blown. But her characteristics enter into
other women in varying degrees, and with all sorts of minor colors. The
Proudie element in wives and women is one of those unrecognised yet
potent conditions of life which master us all, and yet are admitted and
taken into calculation and account by none. It is in the nature of
things that such an element should exist, and should be powerful in this
peculiar and oblique way. We deny women the direct exercise of their
capacities, and the immediate gratification of an overt ambition. The
natural result is that they run to artifice, and that a good-natured
husband is made the conductor between an ambitious wife and the outer
world where the prizes of ambition are scrambled for. He is the wretched
buffer through which the impetuous forces of his wife impinge upon his
neighbors. That is to say, he leads an uneasy life between two ever
colliding bodies, being equally misunderstood and equally reviled by
either.
This is the evil result of a state of things in which natural
distinctions and conventional distinctions are a very long way from
coinciding. The theory is that women are peaceful domestic beings, with
no object beyond household cares, no wish nor will outside the objects
of the man and his children, no active opinion or concern in the larger
affairs of the State. Every man, on the other hand, is supposed to have
views and principles about public topics, and to be anxious to make more
or less of a figure in the enforcement of his views, to exercise in some
shape an influence among his fellows, and to win renown of one sort or
another. Of course if this division of the male and female natures
covered the whole ground, society would be in a very well-balanced
state, and things would go on very smoothly in consequence of the
perfect equilibrium established by the exceeding contentedness of women
and the constant activity and ambition of men.
But a very small observation of life is quite enough to disclose how ill
the facts correspond with the accepted hypothesis about them. We are
constantly being told of some aspiring man that he is, in truth, no more
than the representative of an aspiring wife. He would fain live his life
in dignified or undignified serenity, and cares not a jot for a seat in
the House of Commons, or for being made a bishop, or for any of those
other objects which allure men out of a tranquil and independent
existence. But he has a wife who does care for these things. She cannot
be a member of Parliament or a bishop in her own person, but it is
something to be the wife of somebody who can be these things.
A part of the glory of the man is reflected upon the head of the woman.
She receives her reward in a second-hand way, but still it is glory of
its own sort. She becomes a leading lady in a provincial town, and
during the season in town she is asked out to houses which she is very
eager to get into, and of which she can talk with easily assumed
familiarity when she returns to the provinces again. She is presented at
Court too, and this makes her descend to the provincial plain with an
aroma of Celestial dignity like that of Venus when she descended from
Olympus. A bishop's wife is still more amply rewarded. Without being so
imperious as the late Mrs. Proudie was, she has still a thousand of
those opportunities for displaying power which are so dear to people who
are fictitiously supposed to be too weak to care for power. Minor
canons, incumbents, curates, and all their wives, pay her profound
deference; or, if they do not, she can "put the screw on" in a gushing
manner which is exceedingly effective.
There are women, it is true, with souls above these light social
matters. They do not particularly value the privilege of figuring as
lady-patroness of a ball or bazaar, or the delights of trampling on a
curate, or of being distantly adored by the wife of a minor canon. But
they really have an interest in politics, or in some one or two special
departments of that comprehensive subject. They would like to pass an
Act of Parliament making it a capital offence for any guardian of the
poor or relieving-officer to refuse to give the paupers as much as they
should choose to ask for. Drainage is the strong point of some women.
Sewage with them is the key to civilization.
Perhaps most political women are actively interested in public affairs
simply because they perceive that this is the most openly recognised
sphere of influence and power; and what they yearn after is to be
influential, and to stand on something higher than the ordinary level in
the world, for no other reason than that it is higher than the ordinary
level. Nobody has any right to find fault with this temper, provided the
ladies who are possessed by it do not mistake mere domineering for the
extraordinary elevation after which they aspire. It is through this
temper, whether in one sex or the other, that the world is made better.
If a certain number of men and women were not ambitious, what would
become of the rest of us who possess our souls in patience and
moderation?
The only question is whether what we may call vicarious ambition, or
aspirations by proxy, are particularly desirable forms of a confessedly
useful and desirable sentiment. For the peace of mind of the man who is
not ambitious, but is only pretending to be so, we may be pretty sure
that the domestic stimulus has some drawbacks. We do not mean drawbacks
after the manner of Mrs. Caudle. These show a coarse and vulgar
conception of the goads which a man may have applied to him in his inner
circle. There are moral and unheard reproofs. There is a consciousness
in the mind of a man that his wife thinks him (with all possible
affection and tenderness) rather a poor creature for not taking his
position in the world. And if he happens to be a man of anything like
fine sensibility, this will make him exceedingly uneasy.
The uneasiness may then become sufficiently decided to make him willing
to undergo any amount of labor and outlay, rather than endure the
presence of this aethereal skeleton in the family closet. He is quite
right. He could barely preserve his self-respect otherwise. But he is
mistaken if he fancies that a single step or a single series of steps
will demolish the skeleton entirely. One compliance with the ambition of
his wife will speedily beget the necessity for another. It is notorious
that a thoroughly aspiring man is never content without the prospect of
scaling new heights. No more is an aspiring woman. Whether you are
directly ambitious, as a man is, and for yourself, or indirectly and for
somebody else, as a woman is, in either case the law is the same. New
summits ever glitter in the distance. You have got your husband into the
House of Commons. That glory suffices for a month.
At the end of two months it seems a very dim glory indeed, and having
long been at an end, it by this time sinks into the second place of a
means. The sacrificial calf must next be made to speak. He must acquire
a reputation. Here in a good many cases, we suspect, the process finally
stops. A man may be got into the House, but the coveted exaltation of
that atmosphere does not convert a quiet, peaceable, dull man into an
orator. It does not give him ideas and the faculty of articulate speech.
At this point, if he be wise, he draws the line. He endures the skeleton
as best he may, or else his wife, quenching her ambition, resigns
herself to incurable destiny, and learns to be content with the limits
set by the fates to her lord's capacities. There are still certain
fields open to her own powers, irrespective of what he is able to do.
For example, she may open a _salon_, and there may exert unspeakable
influence over all kinds of important people. This is not at present
particularly congenial to English ground. As yet, the most vigorous
intellectual people seem to have felt an active social life as something
beneath them, and the highly social people have not been conspicuous for
the activity of their intellectual life. The people who go so greatly to
parties do not care for what they sum up, with an admirably
comprehensive vagueness, as "intellect;" while, on the other hand,
scholars and thinkers are wont to look on time given to society as
something very like time absolutely wasted. In such a state of feeling,
it is difficult for a clever woman to exercise much power.
But, as other things improve, this unsocial feeling will dissolve.
Clever men will see that a couple of hours spent with other clever men
are not wasted just because a lady is of the party. Nobody would
seriously maintain that this is so even now, but people are very often
strongly under the influence of vague notions which they would never
dream of seriously maintaining. When women get their rights, the
_salon_ will become an institution. It will create a very fine field for
the cultivation of their talents. And in proportion as it allows a woman
to make a career for herself, it will bring relief to many excellent
husbands who will then no longer have to make careers for them at the
expense of overstraining their own too slender powers.
It is possible, however, that even then the husband of an ambitious wife
may not be fully contented. For people with any degree of weakness or
incapacity in them are always more prone than their neighbors to
littlenesses and meannesses, and a man who is not able to win much
renown on his own account may possibly not be too well pleased to see
his Wife surrounded by his intellectual betters. Indeed, he may even, if
he is of a very mean nature indeed, resent the spectacle of her own
predominance. It is some comfort to think that in such case the man's
own temper will be his severest punishment.
As a rule, however, it is pleasant to think that with ambition in women,
which is not their peculiarity, is yoked tact, which is their
peculiarity emphatically. Hence, therefore, wives who are ambitious for
their lords have often the discretion to conceal their mood. They may
rule with a hand of iron, but the hand is sagely concealed in a glove of
velvet. A man may be the creature of his wife's lofty projects, and yet
dream all the time that he is altogether chalking out his own course.
George II. used to be humored in this way by Queen Caroline. Bishop
Proudie, on the other hand, was ruled by his wife, and knew that he was
a mere weapon in her hands; and, what was even worse than all, knew that
the rest of mankind knew this. This must be uncommonly unpleasant, we
should suppose. The middle position of the husband who only now and then
suspects in a dreamy way that he is being prompted and urged on and
directed by an ambitious wife, and has sense enough not to inflame
himself with chimerical notions about the superiority and grandeur of
the male sex--this perhaps is not so bad. If the tide of ambition runs
rather sluggish in yourself, it is a plain advantage to have somebody at
your side with enthusiasm enough to atone for the deficiency.
It is impossible to tell how much good the world gets, which otherwise
it would miss, simply out of the fact that women are discontented with
their position. Now and then, it is understood, the husband who is thus
made a mere conductor for the mental electricity of a wife who is too
clever for him may feel a little bored, and almost wish that he had
married a girl instead. But enthusiasm spreads, and in a general way the
fervor of the wife who aspires to distinction proves catching to the
husband. Some ladies are found to prefer this position to any other.
They are full of power, and have abundance of room for energy, and yet
they have no responsibility. They get their ample share of the spoil,
and yet they do not bear the public heat and burden of the day. It is
only the more martial souls among them for whom this is not enough.
PLATONIC WOMAN.
In the wearier hours of life, when the season is over, and the boredom
of country visits is beginning to tell on the hardy constitutions that
have weathered out crush and ball-room, there is usually a moment when
the heroine of twenty summers bemoans the hardships of her lot. Her
brother snuffed her out yesterday when she tried politics, and the
clerical uncle who comes in with the vacation extinguished a well-meant
attempt at theology by a vague but severe reference to the Fathers. If
the afternoon is particularly rainy, and Mudie's box is exhausted, the
sufferer possibly goes further, and rises into eloquent revolt against
the decorums of life.
There is indeed one career left to woman, but a general looseness of
grammar, and a conscious insecurity in the matter of spelling, stand in
the way of literary expression of the burning thoughts within her. All
she can do is to moan over her lot and to take refuge in the works of
Miss Hominy. There she learns the great theory of the equality of the
sexes, the advancement of woman and the tyranny of man. If her head
doesn't ache, and holds out for a few pages more, she is comforted to
find that her aspirations have a philosophic character. She is able to
tell the heavy Guardsman who takes her down to dinner and parries her
observations with a joke that they have the sanction of the deepest of
Athenian thinkers.
It is, we suppose, necessary that woman should have her philosopher, but
it must be owned that she has made an odd choice in Plato. No one would
be more astonished than the severe dialectician of the Academy at the
feminine conception of a sage of dreamy and poetic temperament, who
spends half his time in asserting woman's rights, and half in inventing
a peculiar species of flirtation. Platonic attachments, whatever their
real origin may be, will scarcely be traced in the pages of Plato; and
the rights of woman, as they are advocated in the Republic, are sadly
deficient in the essential points of free love and elective affinity.
The appearance of a real Platonic woman in the midst of a caucus of such
female agitators as those who were lately engaged in stumping with
singular ill success the American States of the West would, we imagine,
give a somewhat novel turn to the discussion, and strip of a good deal
of adoring admiration the philosopher in whom strong-minded woman has of
late found a patron and friend. Plato is a little too logical and too
fond of stating plain facts in plain words to suit the Miss Hominys who
would put the legs of every pianoforte in petticoats, and if the
Platonic woman were to prove as outspoken as her inventor, the
conference would, we fear, come abruptly to an end. But if once the
difficulty of decorum could be got over, some instruction and no little
amusement might be derived from the inquiry which the discussion would
open, as to how far the modern attitude of woman fulfils the dreams of
her favorite philosopher.
The institution of Ladies' Colleges is a sufficient proof that woman has
arrived at Plato's conception of an identity of education for the two
sexes. Professors, lecturers, class-rooms, note-books, the whole
machinery of University teaching, is at her disposal. Logic and the
long-envied classics are in the curriculum. Governesses are abolished,
and the fair girl-graduates may listen to the sterner teachings of
academical tutors. It is amusing to see how utterly discomfited the new
Professor generally is when he comes in sight of his class. He feels
that he must be interesting, but he is haunted above all with the sense
that he must be proper. He remembers that when, in reply to the
lady-principal's inquiry how he liked his class, he answered, with the
strictest intellectual reference, that they were "charming," the stern
matron suggested that another adjective would perhaps be more
appropriate. He felt his whole moral sense as a teacher ebbing away.
In the case of men he would insist on a thorough treatment of his
subject, and would avoid sentiment and personal details as insults to
their intelligence; but what is he to do with rows of pretty faces that
grow black as he touches upon the dialect of Socrates, but kindle into
life and animation when he depicts the sage's snub nose? Anecdotes,
pretty stories, snatches of poetical quotation, slip in more and more
as the students perceive and exercise their power. Men, too, are either
intelligent or unintelligent, but the unhappy Professor at a Ladies'
College soon perceives that he has to deal with a class of minds which
are both at once. A luckless gentleman, after lecturing for forty
minutes, found that the lecture had been most carefully listened to and
reproduced in the note-books, but with the trifling substitution in
every instance of the word "Phoenician" for "Venetian." Above all, he
is puzzled with the profuse employment of these note-books.
To the Platonic girl her note-book takes the place of the old-fashioned
diary. It is scribbled down roughly at the lecture and copied out fairly
at night. It used to be a frightful thought that every evening, before
retiring to rest, the girl with whom one had been chatting intended
seriously to probe the state of her heart and set down her affections in
black and white; but it is hardly less formidable to imagine her
refusing to lay her head on her pillow before she has finished her fair
copy of the battle of Salamis. The universality of female studies, too,
astounds the teacher who is fresh from the world of man; he stands
aghast before a girl who is learning four languages at once, besides
attending courses on logic, music, and the use of the globes. This
omnivorous appetite for knowledge he finds to co-exist with a great
weakness in the minor matters of spelling, and a profound indifference
to the simplest rules of grammar. We do not wonder then at Professors
being a little shy of Ladies' Colleges; nor is it less easy to see why
the Platonic theory of education has taken so little with the girls
themselves. After all, the grievance of which they complain has its
advantages.
The worst of bores is restrained by courtesy from boring you if you give
him no cue for further conversation, and the plea of utter ignorance
which an English girl can commonly advance on any subject is at any rate
a defence against the worst pests of society. On the other hand, the
ingenuous confession that she really knows nothing about it can be
turned by a smile into a prelude to the most engaging conversation, and
into an implied flattery of the neatest kind to the favored being whose
superiority is acknowledged. Ignorance, in fact, of this winsome order
is one of the stock weapons of the feminine armory.