GENTLE LADY
The soul that idleth will surely die.
I am sorry to have to say so, but there are some women who love to be
miserable, who have a perfect genius for martyrdom, who take a delight
in seeing how badly they can be treated, who seek out hard ways for
their feet, who court tears rather than laughter. Such a one is hard
to live with, for they glory in their cross, and simply revel in their
burdens, and they so contrive that all who come in contact with them
become a party to their martyrdom, and thus even innocent people, who
never intended to oppress the weak or harass the innocent, are led into
these heinous sins.
Mrs. M. was one of these. She prided herself on never telling anyone
to do what she could do herself. Her own poetic words were: "I'd crawl
on my hands and knees before I would ask anyone to do things for me.
If they can't see what's to be done, I'll not tell them." This was her
declaration of independence. Needless to say, Mrs. M. had a large
domestic help problem. Her domestic helpers were continually going and
coming. The inefficient ones she would not keep, and the efficient
ones would not stay with her. So the burden of the home fell heavily
on her, and, pulling her martyr's crown close down on her head, she
worked feverishly. When she was not working she was bemoaning her sad
lot, and indulging in large drafts of self-pity. The holidays she
spent were in sanatoriums and hospitals, but she gloried in her
illnesses.
She would make the journey upstairs for the scissors rather than ask
anyone to bring them down for her, and then cherish a hurt feeling for
the next hour because nobody noticed that she was needing scissors.
She expected all her family, and the maids especially, to be mind
readers, and because they were not she was bitterly grieved. There is
not much hope for people when they make a virtue of their sins.
She often told the story of what happened when her Tommy was two days
old. She told it to illustrate her independence of character, but most
people thought it showed something quite different. Mr. M. was
displeased with his dinner on this particular day, and, in his
blundering man's way, complained to his wife about the cooking and left
the house without finishing his meal. Mrs. M. forthwith decided that
she would wear the martyr's crown, again and some more! She got up and
cooked the next meal, in spite of the wild protests of the frightened
maid and nurse, who foresaw disaster. Mrs. M. took violently ill as a
result of her exertions just as she hoped she would, and now, after a
lapse of twenty years, proudly tells that her subsequent illness lasted
six weeks and cost six hundred dollars, and she is proud of it!
A wiser woman would have handled the situation with tact. When Mr. M.
came storming upstairs, waving his table-napkin and feeling much
abused, she would have calmed him down by telling him not to wake the
baby, thereby directing his attention to the small pink traveler who
had so recently joined the company. She would have explained to him
that even if his dinner had not been quite satisfactory, he was lucky
to get anything in troublous times like these; she would have told him
that if, having to eat poor meals was all the discomfiture that came
his way, he was getting off light and easy. She might even go so far
as to remind him that the one who asks the guests must always pay the
piper.
There need not have been any heartburnings or regrets or perturbation
of spirit. Mr. M. would have felt ashamed of his outbreak and
apologized to her and to the untroubled Tommy, and gone downstairs, and
eaten his stewed prunes with an humble and thankful heart.
This love of martyrdom is deeply ingrained in the heart of womankind,
and comes from long bitter years of repression and tyranny. An old
handbook on etiquette earnestly enjoins all young ladies who desire to
be pleasing in the eyes of men to "avoid a light rollicking manner, and
to cultivate a sweet plaintiveness, as of hidden sorrow bravely borne."
It also declares that if any young lady has a robust frame, she must be
careful to dissemble it, for it is in her frailty that woman can make
her greatest appeal to man. No man wishes to marry an Amazon. It also
earnestly commends a piece of sewing to be ever in the hand of the
young lady who would attract the opposite sex! The use of large words
or any show of learning or of unseemly intelligence is to be carefully
avoided.
People have all down the centuries blocked out for women a weeping
part. "Man must work and women must weep." So the habit of martyrdom
has sort of settled down on us.
I will admit there has been some reason for it. Women do suffer more
than men. They are physically smaller and weaker, more highly
sensitive and therefore have a greater capacity for suffering. They
have all the ordinary ills of humanity, and then some! They have above
all been the victims of wrong thinking--they have been steeped in tears
and false sentiments. People still speak of womanhood as if it were a
disease.
Society has had its lash raised for women everywhere, and some have
taken advantage of this to serve their own ends. An orphan girl,
ignorant of the world's ways and terribly frightened of them, was told
by her mistress that if she were to leave the roof which sheltered her
she would get "talked about," and lose her good name. So she was able
to keep the orphan working for five dollars a month. She used the lash
to her own advantage.
Fear of "talk" has kept many a woman quiet. Woman's virtue has been
heavy responsibility not to be forgotten for an instant.
"Remember, Judge," cried out a woman about to be sentenced for
stealing, "that I am an honest woman."
"I believe you are," replied the judge, "and I will be lenient with
you."
The word "honest" as applied to women means "virtuous." It has
overshadowed all other virtues, and in a way appeared to make them of
no account.
The physical disabilities of women which have been augmented and
exaggerated by our insane way of dressing has had much to do with
shaping women's thought. The absurdly tight skirts which prevented the
wearer from walking like a human being, made a pitiful cry to the
world. They were no doubt worn as a protest against the new movement
among women, which has for its object the larger liberty, the larger
humanity of women. The hideous mincing gait of the tightly-skirted
women seems to speak. It said: "I am not a useful human being--see! I
cannot walk--I dare not run, but I am a woman--I still have my sex to
commend me. I am not of use, I am made to be supported. My sex is my
only appeal."
Rather an indelicate and unpleasant thought, too, for an "honest" woman
to advertise so brazenly. The tight skirts and diaphanous garments
were plainly a return to "sex." The ultra feminine felt they were
going to lose something in this agitation for equality. They do not
want rights--they want privileges--like the servants who prefer tips to
wages. This is not surprising. Keepers of wild animals tell us that
when an animal has been a long time in captivity it prefers captivity
to freedom, and even when the door of the cage is opened it will not
come out--but that is no argument against freedom.
The anti-suffrage attitude of mind is not so much a belief as a
disease. I read a series of anti-suffrage articles not long ago in the
_New York Times_. They all were written in the same strain: "We are
gentle ladies. Protect us. We are weak, very weak, but very loving."
There was not one strong nourishing sentence that would inspire anyone
to fight the good fight. It was all anemic and bloodless, and
beseeching, and had the indefinable sick-headache, kimona,
breakfast-in-bed quality in it, that repels the strong and healthy.
They talked a great deal of the care and burden of motherhood. They
had no gleam of humor--not one. The anti-suffragists dwell much on
what a care children are. Their picture of a mother is a tired, faded,
bedraggled woman, with a babe in her arms, two other small children
holding to her skirts, all crying. According to them, children never
grow up, and no person can ever attend to them but the mother. Of
course, the anti-suffragists are not this kind themselves. Not at all.
They talk of potential motherhood--but that is usually about as far as
they go. Potential motherhood sounds well and hurts nobody.
The Gentle Lady still believes in the masculine terror of tears, and
the judicious use of fainting. The Jane Austin heroine always did it
and it worked well. She burst into tears on one page and fainted dead
away on the next. That just showed what a gentle lady she was, and
what a tender heart she had, and it usually did the trick. Lord
Algernon was there to catch her in his arms. She would not faint if he
wasn't.
The Gentle Lady does not like to hear distressing things. Said a very
gentle lady not long ago: "Now, please do not tell me about how these
ready-to-wear garments are made, because I do not wish to know. The
last time I heard a woman talk about the temptation of factory girls,
my head ached all evening and I could not sleep." (When the Gentle
Lady has a headache it is no small affair--everyone knows it!) Then
the Gentle Lady will tell you how ungrateful her washwoman was when she
gave her a perfectly good, but, of course, a little bit soiled party
dress, or a pair of skates for her lame boy, or some such suitable gift
at Christmas. She did not act a bit nicely about it!
The Gentle Lady has a very personal and local point of view. She
looks, at the whole world as related to herself--it all revolves around
her, and therefore what she says, or what "husband" says, is final.
She is particularly bitter against the militant suffragette, and
excitedly declares they should all be deported.
"I cannot understand them!" she cries.
Therein the Gentle Lady speaks truly. She cannot understand them, for
she has nothing to understand them with. It takes nobility of heart to
understand nobility of heart. It takes an unselfishness of purpose to
understand unselfishness of purpose.
"What do they want?" cries the Gentle Lady. "Why some of them are rich
women--some of them are titled women. Why don't they mind their own
business and attend to their own children?"
"But maybe they have no children, or maybe their children, like Mrs.
Pankhurst's, are grown up!"
The Gentle Lady will not hear you--will not debate it--she turns to the
personal aspect again.
"Well, I am sure _I_ have enough to do with my own affairs, and I
really have no patience with that sort of thing!"
That settles it!
She does not see, of course, that the new movement among women is a
spiritual movement--that women, whose work has been taken away from
them, are now beating at new doors, crying to be let in that they may
take part in new labors, and thus save womanhood from the enervation
which is threatening it. Women were intended to guide and sustain
life, to care for the race; not feed on it.
Wherever women have become parasites on the race, it has heralded the
decay of that race. History has proven this over and over again. In
ancient Greece, in the days of its strength and glory, the women bore
their full share of the labor, both manual and mental; not only the
women of the poorer classes, but queens and princesses carried water
from the well; washed their linen in the stream; doctored and nursed
their households; manufactured the clothing for their families; and, in
addition to these labors, performed a share of the highest social
functions as priestesses and prophetesses.
These were the women who became the mothers of the heroes, thinkers and
artists, who laid the foundation of the Greek nation.
In the day of toil and struggle, the race prospered and grew, but when
the days of ease and idleness came upon Greece, when the accumulated
wealth of subjugated nations, the cheap service of slaves and subject
people, made physical labor no longer a necessity; the women grew fat,
lazy and unconcerned, and the whole race degenerated, for the race can
rise no higher than its women. For a while the men absorbed and
reflected the intellectual life, for there still ran in their veins the
good red blood of their sturdy grandmothers. But the race was doomed
by the indolent, self-indulgent and parasitic females. The women did
not all degenerate. Here and there were found women on whom wealth had
no power. There was a Sappho, and an Aspasia, who broke out into
activity and stood beside their men-folk in intellectual attainment,
but the other women did not follow; they were too comfortable, too well
fed, too well housed, to be bothered. They had everything--jewels,
dresses, slaves. Why worry? They went back to their cushions and rang
for tea--or the Grecian equivalent; and so it happened that in the
fourth century Greece fell like a rotten tree. Her conqueror was the
indomitable Alexander, son of the strong and virile Olympia.
The mighty Roman nation followed in the same path. In the days of her
strength, and national health, the women took their full share of the
domestic burden, and as well fulfilled important social functions.
Then came slave labor, and the Roman woman no longer worked at
honorable employment. She did not have to. She painted her face, wore
patches on her cheeks, drove in her chariot, and adopted a mincing
foolish gait that has come down to us even in this day. Her children
were reared by someone else--the nursery governess idea began to take
hold. She took no interest in the government of the state, and soon
was not fit to take any. Even then, there were writers who saw the
danger, and cried out against it, and were not a bit more beloved than
the people who proclaim these things now. The writers who told of
these things and the dangers to which they were leading unfortunately
suggested no remedy. They thought they could drive women back to the
water pitcher and the loom, but that was impossible. The clock of time
will not turn back. Neither is it by a return to hand-sewing, or a
resurrection of quilt-patching that women of the present day will save
the race. The old avenues of labor are closed. It is no longer
necessary for women to spin and weave, cure meats, and make household
remedies, or even fashion the garments for their household. All these
things are done in factories. But there are new avenues for women's
activities, if we could only clear away the rubbish of prejudice which
blocks the entrance. Some women, indeed many women, are busy clearing
away the prejudice; many more are eagerly watching from their boudoir
windows; many, many more--the "gentle ladies," reclining on their
couches, fed, housed, clothed by other hands than their own--say: "What
fools these women be!"
There are many women who are already bitten by the poisonous fly of
parasitism; there are many women in whose hearts all sense of duty to
the race has died, and these belong to many classes. A woman may
become a parasite on a very limited amount of money, for the corroding
and enervating effect of wealth and comfort sets in just as soon as the
individuality becomes clogged, and causes one to rest content from
further efforts, on the strength of the labor of someone else. Queen
Victoria, in her palace of marble and gold, was able to retain her
virility of thought and independence of action as clearly as any
pioneer woman who ever battled with conditions, while many a
tradesman's wife whose husband gets a raise sufficient for her to keep
one maid, immediately goes on the retired list, and lets her brain and
muscles atrophy.
The woman movement, which has been scoffed and jeered at and
misunderstood most of all by the people whom it is destined to help, is
a spiritual revival of the best instincts of womanhood--the instinct to
serve and save the race.
Too long have the gentle ladies sat in their boudoirs looking at life
in a mirror like the Lady of Shallot, while down below, in the street,
the fight rages, and other women, and defenseless children, are getting
the worst of it. But the cry is going up to the boudoir ladies to come
down and help us, for the battle goes sorely; and many there are who
are throwing aside the mirror and coming out where the real things are.
The world needs the work and help of the women, and the women must
work, if the race will survive.