dreams whispered the soft right word in her ear, and she murmured
“Yes!” spelling it with two letters and a capital N as in the present
hour. Would the gallant of the past be to her liking to-day? Would she
receive him civilly, or would she tease and taunt him in her provoking
modern way, abusing the qualities she liked in him, sending him away
because she didn’t want him to go, telling him that he should never win
her because she had begun to fear that he would?
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
Neither the brusqueness nor the diffidence of the Puritan lover would
be likely to please her. The Puritan lover would lack a great many
of the qualities she now admires in men, chief among these, mayhap,
the quality of not being too solemn. She is far from Puritan severity
herself, and she would, I fear, see him go with a sigh of relief. In
the quality of not being too solemn, she might find the beau of Louis
XVI.’s time more to her liking, though his eagerness to draw his sword
for her would certainly make her laugh. She never would appreciate the
romance of his dainty duels.
His pretty speeches would amuse her for a little while, but the man
who flatters her nowadays must be a more expert artist to escape the
mortal wound of her ridicule. In a later day compliment undoubtedly
became more of an art, and the dude of the Directoire, whom you might
have found in the quaint drawing-rooms of old Boston, or Philadelphia,
or Georgetown, as well as upon his native soil, was an ingratiating
gallant in many ways. He posed, because Napoleon was making it the
fashion to pose, but he posed well, and he studied the best methods
of saying caressing things without making them nauseatingly sweet.
This art of compliment, of not saying the right thing to the wrong
woman, nor the wrong thing to any woman, reached an interesting
point of development in the contemporaries of Beau Brummel. Possibly
Miss America would have liked a Beau Brummel in an artistic spirit,
and Brummel had, as a spectacle, many traits of gracefulness and
fascination. Her elusiveness would have piqued him and his not too
grovelling deference would have made her think him an entertaining
fellow. His dress was elegant without effeminacy, his hat was the most
extraordinary yet devised by the ingenuity of man--which itself should
be a bond of sympathy. But hats pass away, and beaux melt among the
hazy images in the tapestry of time.
[Illustration]
Yet they are always with us. Every age has blamed its beaux for wanting
the true gallantry of beaux in the past. We all have heard Miss America
say, rather petulantly, that the days of chivalry are gone. Perhaps
they are; perhaps our men give too little attention to the graces of
life. But let us hope that the modern man is not always as satire
paints him, that for the little shams of chivalry he has substituted
some real essence of an even deeper homage.
And we must not forget, in considering courtship, that she, too, though
she may not have greatly changed in fact, has produced an effect quite
as puzzling as the change in man. One of the German painters, possibly
under the influence of Sudermann, has shown the modern girl, assisted,
and possibly instigated by Cupid, paring hearts with a knife. But this
is an old partnership--Cupid & Co., Limited. I cannot say what sign the
firm puts up over the door in Germany. In this country it certainly
should read: “Hearts extracted without pain.”
[Illustration]
Yes, she is cool. The caterer’s sign “Weddings Furnished,” does not,
I fear, ever give her a thrill. She asks no one to furnish a wedding
for her. She seldom appears to be in the mental situation described
by the thought-curers as one of “intense expectancy.” And she is,
it must be frankly admitted, developing a keen, a disconcerting,
critical sense, an inevitable result to be sure, yet carrying its own
bewildering effects. This is the American spirit, the inquiring spirit,
the tendency to insist upon the re-establishment of standards. The
American girl always is in the attitude of being willing to admit the
superiority of man--if he can prove it. Here enters her Americanism.
Her contention is that you cannot transmit relativity. She summons
science to show that new criteria are necessary, and she continually
is calling man into the lists to defend his titles, to repeat his
victories, or surrender the trophies.
If you look at it squarely it simply is iconoclasm, a social form
of image-breaking, the image in this case being traditional man.
Observe, however, that woman does not actually destroy the image.
She tentatively takes it down from the pedestal. Who knows but that,
having dusted it off, she may, after all, decide to put it back on
the pedestal again? Meanwhile, man is under scrutiny. It is a trying
moment. It is like an examination in a postgraduate course. The
American girl is examining man for a new degree. And man has no choice
but to struggle for it. He absolutely is without an alternative. He
must face the most exacting social service examination ever imposed by
human caution or sociological skepticism. To meet the test will be to
wear a proud title.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
VIII
THE NEW OLD MAID
[Illustration]
The complacence of the unmarried is regarded by many as one of the most
distressing spectacles in modern life. Perhaps there is some resentment
of this as an apparent lack of faith, or at least of hope; others may
be inclined to add, of charity. Eliminate these from woman and it
may be difficult to mend the situation by making her president of a
kindergarten society.
It is natural enough that the unmarried woman rather than the unmarried
man should be the particular mark for attack. There are obvious reasons
why woman’s resentment of the unmarried man should be concealed or
disguised. Woman, outside the resolution committee at a suffrage
convention, cannot gracefully seem to resent an impairment of the
selecting instinct in man. Even though she were quite securely removed
from the possibility of social commiseration she always would be in
danger of appearing to speak with something less than strictly abstract
feeling. She knows her fundamental limitations in the casting of
missiles, and the boomerang of personalities is least to her liking. To
her, natural selection may begin to wear the appearance of a huge joke,
an immense, fantastic contradiction. “This,” she may say, “is natural,
but it is not selection.” Under the circumstances who can blame her
if she resort to a paraphrase of evolution and bewilder man by an
unnatural rejection?
Man’s resentment is more vocal, and so often does it seem to be
touched with real asperity that we well may feel that he has begun to
contemplate the situation with more than a languid interest. I suppose
there is a fair question as to who began it. Gallantry dictates that a
man should neither admit nor declare that he did. The excitements of
scientific controversy doubtless often cause the masculine debater to
overlook this obligation. Certainly it often is beyond all dispute that
the American girl has succeeded, with or without design, in affecting
man with a definite awe, and it is claimed that, in certain quarters
at least, this awe has resulted in making him afraid to marry her,
which, if it were true, would have to be regarded as a calamity of the
profoundest moment. To admit the existence of such a condition would be
deeply humiliating, since it must belittle both man and woman, though
it should be admitted that woman would appear to better advantage as a
creature that had frightened man than as one that had ceased to attract
him.
As I said one day to the Professor, science is not treating us quite
fairly in this emergency. “As a scientific person,” I said to the
Professor, “you will remember the things science once undertook to
tell us about the great dualities. ‘Witness,’ said science, with not a
glimmer of insincerity, ‘the beautiful interdependence of the two lobes
of the cerebrum! How marvellous is their union! Each individual in form
and function, yet working in an eternal harmony. One cannot get along
without the other. Let one side of the brain be hurt and the other
droops in sympathetic inactivity.’ This was lovely. It fortified every
advocate of the fitness of marriage. ‘Observe,’ we could say to the
skeptic, ‘that this duality proceeds throughout nature. Interdependence
is universal,’ and so on. But what happens? Just as we have this
impressive object lesson in good working order, along comes science,
with a frown and a cough, to remark that it was mistaken in the matter
of that absolute interdependence theory, that the brain lobes can,
after all, each get along quite well at times without the other; that
the injury or decay of one is, indeed, sometimes followed by a steady
increase in the powers of the other, one taking up the functions lost
or dropped by the other. Nor was this the worst thing that happened.
You know well enough what they used to say about the marriage of the
two lobes of the cerebrum by the _corpus callosum_. The _corpus
callosum_ at least seemed secure. We could have worried along with
the _corpus callosum_. We always could say: the lobes are highly
independent in action, but they are firmly married by this wonderful
ligament--if it is a ligament. Even this comfort is now taken from
us. Science has just rudely snatched away the _corpus callosum_.
‘The two lobes can get along without it,’ grunts science. ‘People have
lived for years with no impairment of their brain power with a totally
shrivelled _corpus callosum_.’ It is hard to keep pace with these
cynicisms of science.”
“You simply have been punishing yourself for whimsical analogies,”
remarked the Professor dryly. “Moreover, you are quoting abnormalities.”
“Alas, Professor!” I cried, “it makes little difference about the
abnormality. Admit an exception and the law is dead. We could conjure
with the law. What can we hope to do now? The American girl dotes on
exceptions--especially on illustrating them.”
[Illustration]
“You must remember,” said the Professor, her eyes glowing solemnly,
and with the tone of being consciously judicial and at a great
altitude, “you must remember certain facts about the selecting--the
pairing--instinct. Now, in the case of man it is necessary that the
selecting instinct be special and not general. So long as a man permits
himself to think of woman as an abstraction, continues to admire
ideals of womanhood and does not seek or is not drawn to seek charms
in a particular woman, he is likely to remain a bachelor. His
instinct must be, and has become by centuries of custom, an instinct
for specific selection. On the other hand, the instinct of specific
selection so favorable to the man, is distinctly unfavorable to the
woman--that is to say, unfavorable to the woman if we accept marriage
as her natural destination. A woman who grows up with the habit of
mind which predisposes her to search for a particular man, is likely
to remain unmarried. To favor pairing in her case, the instinct toward
marriage must be general rather than specific. A woman does not select
a mate from all the men in the world, as a man is supposed to select a
mate from all the women in the world. She selects from among those who
ask her, or, at most, from the group which she may have attracted into
debatable ground.”
“But--” I interposed.
“Wait a moment,” pursued the Professor firmly. “This is not to say
that a woman has no actual right to a privilege of selecting quite
as definite as that permitted to man. It simply is saying that under
present customs an effort toward specific selection on her part is not
favorable to marriage. There may, and probably will, come a time when
custom will permit to woman a more specific selection, without hazard
as to the chance of marriage, and without loss of status on her part in
any resulting marriage.”
“I am glad,” I said, “that you have touched that point, for of course
woman could not afford to be specific at the loss of prestige. It
seems to me that the present system gives an immense advantage to
women, since, in any matrimonial emergency she may always retort,
‘Nobody asked you, sir.’ Man’s initiative gives her the benefit of
the doubt in all after judgments from the world; for if man selects
her, and she accepts him or yields to his selection, and there should
possibly be error, plainly, as with Mark Twain’s mistaken lynchers,
the joke is on him. She cannot escape responsibility, but her
responsibility always is lesser, and all the privileges of reservation
are on her side.”
“My personal opinion,” observed the Professor (I always accept this
form of approach as a great concession), “is that she loses more than
she gains by these conditions. It is generally believed that during the
past century, particularly during the past half-century, woman, and
especially the American woman, has been selecting more definitely than
at any previous time in the history of civilized society. One result
of the habit of a more specific selection on the part of woman is a
decrease in the number of early marriages among women in circles or
classes where these ideas prevail, and a general increase in the whole
number of unmarried women. It may be that a further development of this
instinct will still further increase the proportion of the unmarried,
unless custom shall so far modify the arrangement of marriages that
women may more equally participate in the selection without, as at
present, exciting the antipathy of society, or, as you have suggested,
destroying her prestige under the partnership. There is, of course, no
final reason why matrimonial partnerships should not be arranged upon a
basis of as perfect equality as any other partnership. It simply is a
question of instinct on the one hand and expediency on the other.”
[Illustration]
I quote the Professor’s opinions here with especial gratification,
since in this instance they seem triumphantly free from sex bias,--a
freedom which, indeed, is a growing trait with women. And there is
something not always comfortable in the sign. Is the time coming when
we no longer can say, “Just like a woman”?
Perhaps we may discover that sentiment has more to do with the case
than has been supposed. If the progress of education has menaced
sentiment, who shall say that the greatest of sentiments may not be the
first to suffer? Nothing is truer than that all women are not equally
capable of sentiment. Some women seem to like the symbol of an emotion
quite as well as if it were the genuine article. To them the innocuous
make-believe of love is quite as satisfactory as the real thing. They
play with a great sentiment as they used to play with their dolls,
which gave much less trouble than real children and furnished just
as much sentimental excitement as if they actually had been alive. I
suppose this is particularly true of imaginative women, who know how
to drape their souls in nun’s garb and let their fancy play the devil.
Their character is illustrated by the modern fashion which permits them
to wear gowns sombre to superficial observation, but which, you may
have the opportunity to discover, possess a riotously crimson lining.
What is to happen to the world if women are to acquire a fondness for
the mere symbols of sex, if femininity is to become disembodied, is
a vast and vital question which prudence well might refer to one of
their own eager and tireless committees.
The other day I boldly put the thing to the Professor. “What,” I asked,
“is going to happen to the world if the number of old maids keeps on
increasing?”
“Well,” mused rather than replied the Professor, “the present rate of
increase in the number of old maids--”
“By which,” I said, “I assume that you mean hopelessly unmarried women.”
“I do not like that word,” retorted the Professor, a little sharply,
“it makes me think of hopelessly insane. I should prefer to say
affirmatively unmarried--the present rate of increase in the number
of affirmatively unmarried American women might suggest at the
first glance that something very annoying to evolution was going to
happen by-and-by. Indeed the conditions might seem to be positively
detrimental to the Darwinian hypothesis.”
“Not at all,” I protested, “if you remember the married old maids.
Their transmitted instinct is bound to count sooner or later.”
“But I have no fear that anything absurd is going to happen.” (I adored
the smile of which the Professor was guilty at this point.) “Nature
will work out the scheme. I mean supply and demand.”
“I hope you cannot mean,” I protested, “that the American girl has
deliberately set about creating a corner in wives for the sake of
raising the market--”
“Not precisely that,” returned the Professor; “though in the evolution
of altruism that might not be so absurd. But you must see that
old-maidism will not flourish unless it advantages the race somehow.
You cannot think that a girl would set about being an old maid for any
other reason than to please or profit herself--”
“Unless,” I said, “it were to get even.”
“Get even!” laughed the Professor, “think of getting even by being odd!
No. The American girl simply is experimenting in independence. If it
pays, she will keep it up. If it does not pay, she will revert to the
alternative.”
“Yes,” I admitted, “she always can do that.”
“And meanwhile,” pursued the Professor, “I insist that girl-bachelorism
must not be considered as in any sense final. The suggestion that woman
can get along without man is an impeachment of his charm and of her
wisdom. One thing is always to be remembered: a man cannot reasonably
expect to conquer a woman by not marrying her. If the girl bachelor
does not know what is good for her, if her position is untenable, if
she is losing precious time, a cynical attitude in the man bachelor
does not seem at all likely to help the matter. The presumption that
the American girl knows what she is about may be erroneous, but ill
temper in the opposition will simply fortify her. She will smile and
smile and be a spinster still.”
[Illustration: A SPINSTER]
A spinster! How oddly the word sounded! How grotesque the contrast
between the image called up by the name and the image that fills the
eye of modern contemplation! The old maid of tradition has become a
fantastic figure, as fantastic as if she had no actual successor--which
possibly is the real fact, for old-maidism is not strictly a social
condition but a state of mind. Nothing could better demonstrate this
than the prominence and multiplicity of married old maids. It is a mere
truism to say that old-maidism is not even restricted by gender. Who
does not know the masculine old maid! He is an altogether different
creature from the normal bachelor. Indeed, _he_ sometimes is
married. In this instance contemporary satire is entirely within facts;
he alone is the new woman.
It is not always an easy matter to estimate or to define the effect
of the new-spinsterism upon the mind of the opposition. If we were
to judge from certain acrid comments, the new state of mind not only
is more affirmative, but is vastly more aggressive than the old. A
shrill tenor note here and there complains that the sopranos are
sounding with an inelegant and disproportionate vigor. There is an
ill-concealed admission that man in general is still wholly unadjusted
to the affirmative attitude on the part of woman. Man cannot open the
door for her or help her out of the coach unless she lets him precede
her. The whole structure of gallantry is built upon her acquiescence in
his leadership,--his giving upon her taking. If she is to ignore the
tradition of his leadership and goes forth upon her own account, what
is to prevent the occasional, perhaps even the frequent, awkwardness of
her actual leadership? And when she ceases to follow she already has
begun to restrain. So runs the charge. You would think, to hear some
people talk, that the modern woman should be indicted for delaying the
males.
It is hard to live down a tradition. Take the tradition about the
college girl, for example, the tradition that she is a sombre person,
strenuous, unlovely, dominated by an ambition to subdue man and
emancipate her sex by sheer force of learning. You can call up a
picture of her at work, her brain throbbing with great thoughts, her
face seared by study, greeting you with a smileless challenge to
talk to the point, mostly in Latin, and with a decent frequency in
quotations from Plato and Epictetus. This gruesome tradition makes her
the pallid, gloomy, absorbed, spectacled member of the household, with
a soul above clothes, glorying in unfeminine incapacities, shuddering
at fashion magazines and peevishly rebuking the frivolities of
girlhood. She uses vast words, communes with literary gods, and stands
forth as a sort of Book in Bloomers.
[Illustration: THE COLLEGE GIRL OF SATIRE]
[Illustration: THE COLLEGE GIRL OF FACT]
This, I say, is the college girl of tradition, of the older comic
papers. But what is the simple fact?--no, I cannot say the simple
fact, for she is a fact of the most complex variety; what, rather is
the literal, photographable truth? Very different, surely from the
absurdities of satire; in fact, simply the American girl, alive to
all of life, woman first and student afterward, continually up to the
mischief of teasing the social scientist by being lovely and actually
marrying, college education and all!
Yes, we are making some new traditions. The new old maid is a charming
perplexity. The old maids of the past read Plato together and
established Boston marriages. They read in Cicero and elsewhere that
friendship is less undebatable than love. The traditional old maid
talked about “the faded fire of chivalry.” Like Walpole on his Paris
journey, she “fell in love with twenty things and in hate with forty,”
which fully restored her equilibrium. Yet she did not “vow an eternal
misery,” nor grow combative at the thought that St. Chrysostom found
woman to be a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic
peril, a deadly fascination and a painted ill. She acquired a beautiful
serenity. She could read Schopenhauer’s proposition to rid the world of
old maids by establishing polygamy, without even an audible snort of
contempt. She filled her leisure by admonitions to younger girls as to
the fathomless hazards of credulity. She was securely and splendidly
detached.
Of the new old maid, variously titled, it is, of course, too early to
write. Whether she is sweeter or the world less sour, there certainly
is less antipathy between her and the world. Society certainly likes
her. She has been discovered to be immensely convenient. She has no
asperity. “It is not,” she murmurs to man, “that I love you less, but
that I love my freedom more,” for answer to which, man is sitting up o’
nights in profound thought. She does not even claim that her mood is
permanent. At the first feeling of heart failure she knows just when to
appoint a receiver.
All women can fool us some of the time, and some women can fool us all
of the time.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
IX
“AND SO THEY WERE MARRIED”
[Illustration]
One day when the Professor had called a bachelor a bird without feet,
and I had retorted that an old maid was a bird without wings, the
Professor remarked significantly: “the old maid at least settles
better,” and we fell to talking of settling as a proposition. Between
the predicament of a bird who cannot fly and that of a bird who cannot
alight, there might not be much of a choice, though the Professor did
her utmost to prove that the bird condemned to perpetual flitting was
in the more pitiful situation. But it occurred to me as significant
that the man should dread to lose the privilege of flight, and the
woman the privilege of settling. I wondered if there was anything more
in it than the accident of contention.
We had agreed with Tolstoi, that “nothing complicates the difficulties
of life so much as a lack of harmony between married people”; we had
agreed that much of complication arose from a lack of antecedent
harmony as to the matrimonial proposition.