CARICATURES OF WOMEN AND MATRIMONY.
[Illustration: "_You_ frank! _You_ simple! Have confidence in _you_!
YOU! Why, you would blow your nose with your left hand for nothing but
the pleasure of deceiving your right, if you could!"--GAVARNI,
_Fourberies de Femmes, Paris, 1846_.]
Observe this picture of man's scorn of woman, drawn by Gavarni, the most
noted of French caricaturists. I place it first, because it expresses
the feeling toward "the subject sex" which satiric art has oftenest
exhibited, and because it was executed by the person who excelled all
others in delineating what he called the _fourberies de femmes_. Such,
in all time, has been the habitual tone of self-indulgent men toward
their victims. Gavarni well represents men in this sorry business of
reviling women; for in all the old civilizations men in general have
done precisely what Gavarni did recently in Paris--first degraded women,
then laughed at them.
The reader, perhaps, after witnessing some of the French plays and comic
operas with which we have been favored in recent years--such as
"Frou-Frou," "The Sphinx," "Alixe," and others--may have turned in wild
amazement to some friend familiar with Paris from long residence, and
asked, Is there _any_ truth in this picture? Are there _any_ people in
France who behave and live as these people on the stage behave and live?
Many there can not be; for no community could exist half a generation if
the majority lived so. But are there any? The correct answer to this
question was probably given the other evening by a person accustomed to
Paris life: "Yes, there are some; they are the people who write such
stuff as this. As for the _bal masque_, and things of that kind, it is a
mere business, the simple object of which is to beguile and despoil the
verdant of every land who go to Paris in quest of pleasure." French
plays and novels we know do most ludicrously misrepresent the people of
other countries. What, for example, can be less like truth than that
solemn donkey of a Scotch duke in M. Octave Feuillet's play of "The
Sphinx?" The dukes of Scotland are not so numerous nor so unconspicuous
a body of men that they can not be known to a curious inquirer, and it
is safe to assert that, whatever their faults may be, there is not among
them a creature so unspeakably absurd as the _viveur infernal_ of this
play. If the author is so far astray with his Scotch duke, he is perhaps
not so very much nearer the truth with his French marquis, a personage
equally foreign to his experience.
We had in New York some years ago a dozen or two of young fellows, more
or less connected with the press, most of them of foreign origin, who
cherished the delusion that eating a bad supper in a cellar late at
night, and uttering or singing semi-drunken nonsense, was an exceedingly
noble, high-spirited, and literary way of consuming a weakly
constitution and a small salary. They thought they were doing something
in the manner of Dr. Johnson and Charles Lamb. Any one who should have
judged New York in the year 1855 by the writings of these young
gentlemen would have supposed that we were wholly given up to silly,
vulgar, and reckless dissipation. But, in truth, the "Bohemians," as
they were proud to be styled, were both few and insignificant; their
morning scribblings expressed nothing but the looseness of their own
lives, and that was half pretense.
Two admiring friends have written the life of Gavarni, the incomparable
caricaturist of _la femme_; and they tell us just how and where and when
the artist acquired his "subtle and profound knowledge" of the sex. It
is but too plain that he knew but one class of women, the class that
lives by deluding fools. "During all one year, 1835," say these admiring
biographers, "it seems that in the life, the days, the thoughts of
Gavarni, there was nothing but _la femme_. According to his own
expression, woman was his 'grand affair.'" He was in love, then? By no
means. Our admiring authors proceed to describe this year of devotion to
_la femme_ as a period when "intrigues were mingled together, crossed
and entangled with one another; when passing inclinations, the fancies
of an evening, started into being together with new passions; when
rendezvous pressed upon rendezvous; when there fell upon Gavarni a rain
of perfumed notes from the loves of yesterday, from the forgotten loves
of last month, which he inclosed in one envelope, as he said, 'like dead
friends in the same coffin.'"[24]
[Footnote 24: "Gavarni, l'Homme et l'Oeuvre," par Edmond et Jules de
Goncourt, Paris, 1873.]
The authors enlarge upon this congenial theme, describing their hero as
going forth upon _le pave de_ Paris in quest of _la femme_ as a keen
hunter takes to the forest for the plump partridge or the bounding deer.
Some he brought down with the resistless magnetism of his eye. "It was
for him a veritable rapture, as well as the exertion of a power which he
loved to try, to magnetize with his eye and make his own the first woman
whom he chanced to meet in the throng." The substance of the chapter is
that Gavarni, casting aside all the restraints of civilization and
decency, lived in Paris the life of a low and dirty animal; and when, in
consequence of so living, he found himself in Clichy for debt, he
replenished his purse by delineating, as the _fourberies de femmes_, the
tricks of the dissolute women who had got his money. That, at least, is
the blunt American of our authors' dainty and elegant French.
[Illustration: Matrimony--A Man loaded with Mischief.[25]
"A monkey, a magpie, and wife
Is the true emblem of strife."
_Old English Tavern Sign._
[Footnote 25: "From History of Sign-boards," by Larwood and Hotten.]]
In the records of the past, we find men speaking lightly of women whose
laws and usages concede least to women.
[Illustration: Settling the Odd Trick. (London, 1778.[26])
[Footnote 26: From Wright's "Caricature History of the Georges," p.
256.]]
The oldest thing accessible to us in these modern cities is the
Saturday-morning service in an unreformed Jewish synagogue, some of the
observances of which date back beyond the historic period. But there is
nothing in it older than the sentiment expressed by the men when they
thank God for his goodness in not making them women. Only men are
admitted to the synagogue as equal worshipers, the women being consigned
to the gallery, spectators of their husbands' devotion. The old Jewish
liturgy does not recognize their presence.
Older than the Jewish liturgy are the sacred books of the Hindoos. The
famous passage of the "Padma Parana," translated by the Abbe Dubois,[27]
has been part of the domestic code of the Hindoos for thousands of
years. According to the Hindoo lawgiver, a woman has no god on earth but
her husband, and no religion except to gratify, obey, and serve him. Let
her husband be crooked, old, infirm, offensive; let him be irascible,
irregular, a drunkard, a gambler, a debauchee; let him be reckless of
his domestic affairs, as if possessed by a devil; though he live in the
world without honor; though he be deaf or blind, and wholly weighed down
by crime and infirmity--still shall his wife regard him as her god. With
all her might shall she serve him, in all things obey him, see no
defects in his character, and give him no cause of uneasiness. Nay,
more: in every stage of her existence woman lives but to obey--at first
her parents, next her husband and _his_ parents, and in her old age she
must be ruled by her children. Never during her whole life can she be
under her own control.
[Footnote 27: "Description of the Character, Manners, and Customs of the
People of India," vol. i., p. 316, by J. A. Dubois, London, 1817.]
These are the general principles upon which the life of women in India
is to be conducted. The Hindoo writer was considerate enough to add a
few particulars: "If her husband laughs, she ought to laugh; if he
weeps, she ought to weep; if he is disposed to speak, she ought not to
join in the conversation. Thus is the goodness of her nature displayed.
What woman would eat till her husband has first had his fill? If he
abstains, she will surely fast also; if he is sad, will she not be
sorrowful? and if he is gay, will she not leap for joy? In the absence
of her husband her raiment will be mean." Such has been the conception
of woman's duty to man by all the half-developed races from time
immemorial, and such to this day are the tacit demand and expectation of
the brutalized males of the more advanced races. Gavarni, married, would
have been content with no subservience much short of that.
Happily, nature has given to woman the means of a fell revenge, for she
usually holds the peace of the household and the happiness of all its
members in her hands. The satirical works that come to us from the
Oriental lands teem with evidence that women have always known how to
get a fair share of domestic authority. If they are slaves, they have
ever been adepts in the arts and devices of slaves. The very squaws of
our Indians often contrive to rule their brawny lords. Is not the whole
history of the war between the sexes included in the little story of the
manner in which Pocahontas was entrapped on board a British vessel lying
in the James River two hundred and fifty years ago? The captain had
promised to the aunt of this dusky princess the gift of a copper kettle
if she would bring her niece to the ship; and accordingly one afternoon,
when she found herself on the river-bank with her husband and
Pocahontas, she was suddenly seized with a longing to go on board,
saying that this was the third time the ship had been in their river,
and yet she had never visited it. Her grumpy old husband refusing, _she
began to cry_, and then, Pocahontas joining her entreaties, of course
the old man had to unfasten his canoe and paddle them off to the vessel.
This model couple returned to the shore poorer by a niece of uncertain
character, and richer by the inestimable treasure of a copper kettle.
What fine lady could have managed this delicate affair better? Is it not
thus that tickets, trinkets, and dresses are won every day in the cities
of the modern world?
[Illustration: "Who was that gentleman that just went out?"
"Why, didn't he see you, after all? He called on business, and has been
waiting for you these two hours. He leaves town this evening. But how
warm you are, dear!"--GAVARNI, _Fourberies de Femmes, Paris, 1846_.]
An attentive study of the Greek and Roman literatures furnishes many
illustrations of the remark just made, that men who degrade women deride
them. Among the Greeks, who kept women in subjection and seclusion, and
gave them no freedom of choice in matters of dearest concern to them,
the foibles of the sex were treated very much as they now are by the
dissolute caricaturists of Paris. Aristophanes's mode of representing
the women of Athens is eminently Gavarnian; and nothing was more natural
than that an Aristophanes should come after an Anacreon. The lyric poet
depicts women as objects of desire, superior in alluring charm even to
wine, rosy wine; and Aristophanes delights to exhibit the women's
apartment of an Athenian house as a riotous and sensualized harem. How
many expressions of utter distrust and dislike of women occur in the
Greek poets!
"For this, and only this, I'll trust a woman,
That if you take life from her she will die;
And, being dead, will come to life no more.
In all things else I am an infidel."
Thus Antiphanes, who died twenty-two hundred years before Gavarni was
born. Menander justifies the gods for tormenting Prometheus, though his
crime was only stealing a spark of fire.
"But, O ye gods, how infinite the mischief!
That little spark gave being to a woman,
And let in a new race of plagues to curse us."
The well-known epigram of Palladas upon marriage expresses a thought
which has been uttered by satirists in every form of which language is
capable:
"In marriage are two happy things allowed--
A wife in wedding garb and in her shroud.
Who, then, dares say that state can be accurst
Where the last day's as happy as the first?"
[Illustration: _She._ "Now, understand me. To-morrow morning he will ask
you to dinner. If he has his umbrella with him, it will mean that he has
not got his stall at the theatre. In that case, don't accept. If he has
no umbrella, come to dinner."
_He._ "But (you know we must think of every thing) suppose it should
rain to-morrow morning?"
_She._ "If it rains, he will get wet--that's all. If I don't want him to
have an umbrella, he won't have one. How silly you are!"--GAVARNI,
_Fourberies de Femmes, Paris, 1846_.]
Many others will occur to the reader who is familiar with the lighter
utterances of the ancients. But in Greece, as in China, India, and
Japan, and wherever else men and women have been joined in wedlock,
there have been marriages in which husband and wife have lived on terms
nobler than those contemplated by the law or demanded by usage. Where
could we find a juster view of the duties of husband and wife than in
that passage of Xenophon's dialogue on Economy where Ischomachus tells
Socrates how he had taken his young wife into his confidence, and come
to a clear understanding with her as to the share each should take in
carrying on the household? Goethe must have had this passage in his mind
when he wrote the fine tribute to the dignity of housekeeping in
"Wilhelm Meister." Ischomachus had married a girl of fifteen, who came
to him as wives in Greece usually came to their husbands--an absolute
stranger to him. He had to get acquainted with her after marriage, as,
indeed, he says, "When we were well enough acquainted, and were so
familiar that we began to converse freely with one another, I asked her
why she thought I had taken her for my wife." Much is revealed in that
sentence. He tells her that, being married, they are now to have all
things in common, and each should only strive to enhance the good of
the household. She stares with wonder. Her mother had told her that her
fortune would be wholly her husband's, and all that she had to do was to
live virtuously and soberly. Ischomachus assents, but he proceeds to
show her that, in the nature of things, husband and wife must be equal
co-operators, he getting the money, she administering it; he fighting
the battle of life out-of-doors, she within the house. At great length
this model husband illustrates his point, and entirely in the spirit of
the noble passage in Goethe. She catches the idea at length. "It will be
of little avail," she says, "my keeping at home unless you send such
provisions as are necessary." "True," he replies, "and of very little
use my providing would be if there were no one at home to take care of
what I send; it would be pouring water into a sieve."
This fine presentation of household economy, like that of the German
poet, is, unhappily, only a dialogue of fiction. It was merely
Xenophon's conception of the manner in which a philosopher of prodigious
wisdom _might_ deal with a girl of fifteen, whom he had married without
having enjoyed the pleasure of a previous acquaintance with her.
Doubtless there was here and there in ancient Greece a couple who
succeeded in approximating Xenophon's ideal.
Among the Romans women began to acquire those legal "rights" to which
they owe whatever advance they have ever made toward a just equality
with men. It was Roman law that lifted a wife from the condition of a
cherished slave to a status something higher than that of daughter. But
there was still one fatal defect in her position--her husband could
divorce her, but she could not divorce him. Cicero, the flower of Roman
culture, put away the wife of his youth after living with her thirty
years, and no remonstrance on her part would have availed against his
decision. But a Roman wife _had_ rights. She could not be deprived of
her property, and the law threw round her and her children a system of
safeguards which gave her a position and an influence not unlike those
of the "lady of the house" at the present time. Instead of being
secluded in a kind of harem, as among the Greeks, she came forward to
receive her husband's guests, shared some of their festivities, governed
the household, superintended the education of her children, and enjoyed
her ample share of the honor which he inherited or won. "Where you are
Caius, I am Caia," she modestly said, as she entered for the first time
her husband's abode. He was paterfamilias, she materfamilias; and the
rooms assigned to her peculiar use were, as with us, the best in the
house.
To the Roman law women are infinitely indebted. Among the few hundreds
of families who did actually share the civilization of Cicero, the
Plinys, and Marcus Aurelius, the position of a Roman matron was one of
high dignity and influence, and accordingly the general tone of the best
Roman literature toward woman is such as does honor to both sexes. She
was even instructed in that literature. In such a family as that of
Cicero, the daughter would usually have the same tutors as the son, and
the wife of such a man would familiarly use her husband's library.
Juvenal, that peerless reviler of women, the Gavarni of poets, deplores
the fact:
"But of all plagues the greatest is untold--
The book-learned wife in Greek and Latin bold;
The critic dame who at her table sits,
Homer and Virgil quotes, and weighs their wits,
And pities Dido's agonizing fits.
She has so far the ascendant of the board,
The prating pedant puts not in one word;
The man of law is nonplused in his suit;
Nay, every other female tongue is mute."
[Illustration: "Madame, your cousin Betty wishes to know if you can
receive her."
"Impossible! Tell her that to-day I _receive_."--_Les Tribulations de la
Vie Elegante, par Girin, Paris, 1870._]
The whole of this sixth satire of Juvenal, in which the Gavarnian
literature of all nations was anticipated and exhausted, is a tribute to
woman's social importance in Rome. No Greek would have considered woman
worthy of so elaborate an effort. And as in Athens, Anacreon, the poet
of sensual love, was naturally followed by Aristophanes, a satirist of
women, so, in Rome, Ovid's "Art of Love" preceded and will forever
explain Juvenal's sixth satire. All illustrates the truth that
sensualized men necessarily undervalue and laugh at women. In all
probability, Juvenal's satire was a caricature as gross and groundless
as the pictures of Gavarni. The instinct of the satirist is first to
select for treatment the exceptional instance of folly, and then to
exaggerate that exceptional instance to the uttermost. Unhappily many
readers are only too much inclined to accept this exaggerated exception
as if it were a representative fact. There is a passage in Terence in
which he expresses the feeling of most men who have been plagued, justly
or unjustly, by a woman:
"Not one but has the sex so strong within her,
She differs nothing from the rest. Step-mothers
All hate their step-daughters, and every wife
Studies alike to contradict her husband,
The same perverseness running through them all."
The acute reader, on turning to the play of the "Mother-in-law," from
which these lines are taken, will not be surprised to learn that the
women in the comedy are in the right, and the men grossly in fault.
[Illustration: A Scene of Conjugal Life. (Daumier, Paris, 1846.)]
The literature of the Middle Ages tells the same story. The popular
tales of that period exhibit women as equally seductive and malevolent,
silly, vain, not to be trusted, enchanting to the lover, a torment to
the husband. Caricatures of women and their extravagances in costume and
behavior occur in manuscripts as far back as A.D. 1150, and those
extravagances may serve to console men of the present time by their
enormity. Many specimens could be given, but they are generally too
formless or extravagant to be interesting. There are also many rude
pictures from those centuries which aimed to satirize the more active
foibles of the sex. One of these exhibits a wife belaboring her husband
with a broom, another pounding hers with a ladle, another with a more
terrible instrument, her withering tongue, and another with the surest
weapon in all the female armory--tears. In the Rouen Cathedral there are
a pair of carvings, one representing a fierce struggle between husband
and wife for the possession of a garment the wearing of which is
supposed to be a sign of mastery, and the other exhibiting the
victorious wife in the act of putting that garment on. On the portal of
a church at Ploermel, in France, there is a well-cut representation of a
young girl leading an elderly man by the nose. More violent contests are
frequently portrayed, and even fierce battles with bellows and pokers,
stirring incidents in the "eternal war between man and woman."
The gentle German priest who wrote the moral ditties of the "Ship of
Fools" ought not to have known much of the tribulations of husbands; but
in his poem on the "Wrath and great Lewdnes of Wymen," he becomes a kind
of frantic Caudle, and lays about him with remarkable vigor. He calls
upon the "Kinge most glorious of heaven and erth" to deliver mankind
from the venomous and cruel tongues of froward women. One chiding woman,
he observes, "maketh greater yell than a hundred magpies in one cage;"
and let her husband do what he will, he can not quiet her till "she hath
chid her fill." No beast on earth is so capable of furious hate--not
the bear, nor the wolf, nor the lion, nor the lioness; no, nor the cruel
tigress robbed of her whelps, rushing wildly about, tearing and gnawing
stock and tree.
"A wrathfull woman is yet more mad than she.
Cruell Medea doth us example shewe
Of woman's furour, great wrath and cruelty;
Which her owne children dyd all to pecis hewe."
This poet, usually so moderate and mild in his satire of human folly, is
transported with rage in contemplating the faults of women, and holds
them up to the abhorrence of his readers. A woman, he remarks, can
wallow in wicked delights, and then, _giving her mouth a hurried wipe_,
come forward with tranquil mind and an air of child-like innocence,
sweetly protesting that she has done nothing wrong. The most virulent
woman-hater that was ever jilted or rejected could not go beyond the
bachelor priest who penned this infuriate diatribe upon the sex.
[Illustration: A Splendid Spread. (Cruikshank, 1850.)]
Nor was Erasmus's estimate of women more favorable than Brandt's, though
he expresses it more lightly and gayly, as his manner was. And curious
it is to note that the foibles which he selects for animadversion are
precisely those which form the staple of satire against women at the
present time. In one of his Colloquies he describes the "Assembly of
Women, or the Female Parliament," and reports at length the speech of
one of the principal members, the wise Cornelia. This eloquent lady
heartily berates the wives of tradesmen for presuming to copy the
fashions of the rich and noble. Would any one believe that the following
sentences were written nearly four hundred years ago?
"'Tis almost impossible by the outside," says Cornelia to her parliament
of fine ladies, "to know a duchess from a kitchen-wench. All the ancient
bounds of modesty have been so impudently transgressed, that every one
wears what apparel seems best in her own eyes. At church and at the
play-house, in city and country, you may see a thousand women of
indifferent if not sordid extraction swaggering it abroad in silks and
velvets, in damask and brocard, in gold and silver, in ermines and sable
tippets, while their husbands perhaps are stitching Grub-street
pamphlets or cobbling shoes at home. Their fingers are loaded with
diamonds and rubies, for Turkey stones are nowadays despised even by
chimney-sweepers' wives. It was thought enough for your ordinary women
in the last age that they were allowed the mighty privilege to wear a
silk girdle, and to set off the borders of their woolen petticoats with
an edging of silk. But now--and I can hardly forbear weeping at the
thoughts of it--this worshipful custom is quite out-of-doors. If your
tallow-chandlers', vintners', and other tradesmen's wives flaunt it in a
chariot and four, what shall your marchionesses or countesses do, I
wonder? And if a country squire's spouse will have a train after her
full fifteen ells long, pray what shift must a princess make to
distinguish herself? What makes this ten times worse than otherwise it
would be, we are never constant to one dress, but are as fickle and
uncertain as weathercocks--or the men that preach under them. Formerly
our head-tire was stretched out upon wires and mounted upon barbers'
poles, women of condition thinking to distinguish themselves from the
ordinary sort by this dress. Nay, to make the difference still more
visible, they wore caps of ermine powdered. But they were mistaken in
their politics, for the cits soon got them. Then they trumpt up another
mode, and black quoiss came into play. But the ladies within Ludgate not
only aped them in this fashion, but added thereto a gold embroidery and
jewels. Formerly the court dames took a great deal of pains in combing
up their hair from their foreheads and temples to make a tower; but they
were soon weary of that, for it was not long before this fashion too was
got into Cheapside. After this they let their hair fall loose about
their foreheads; but the city gossips soon followed them in that."
And this game, we may add, has been kept up from that day to this; nor
does either party yet show any inclination to retire from the contest.
Erasmus was, indeed, an unmerciful satirist of women. In his "Praise of
Folly" he returns to the charge again and again. "That which made Plato
doubt under what genus to rank woman, whether among brutes or rational
creatures, was only meant to denote the extreme stupidness and folly of
that sex, a sex so unalterably simple, that for any of them to thrust
forward and reach at the name of wise is but to make themselves the more
remarkable fools, such an endeavor being but a swimming against the
stream, nay, the turning the course of nature, the bare attempting
whereof is as extravagant as the effecting of it is impossible: for as
it is a trite proverb, _That an ape will be an ape, though clad in
purple_; so a woman will be a woman, _i. e._, a fool, whatever disguise
she takes up." And again: "Good God! what frequent divorces, or worse
mischief, would oft sadly happen, except man and wife were so discreet
as to pass over light occasions of quarrel with laughing, jesting,
dissembling, and such like playing the fool? Nay, how few matches would
go forward, if the hasty lover did but first know how many little tricks
of lust and wantonness (and perhaps more gross failings) his coy and
seemingly bashful mistress had oft before been guilty of? And how fewer
marriages, when consummated, would continue happy, if the husband were
not either sottishly insensible of, or did not purposely wink at and
pass over, the lightness and forwardness of his good-natured wife?"
[Illustration: American Lady walking in the Snow.
"I have often shivered at seeing a young beauty picking her way through
the snow with a pale rose-colored bonnet set on the very top of her
head. They never wear muffs or boots, even when they have to step to
their sleighs over ice and snow. They walk in the middle of winter with
their poor little toes pinched into a miniature slipper, incapable of
excluding as much moisture as might bedew a primrose."--MRS. TROLLOPE,
_Domestic Manners of the Americans_, vol. ii., p. 135. 1830.]
The ill opinion entertained of women by men during the ages of darkness
and superstition found expression in laws as well as in literature. The
age of chivalry! Investigators who have studied that vaunted period in
the court records and law-books tell us that respect for women is a
thing of which those records show no trace. In the age of chivalry the
widow and the fatherless were regarded by lords, knights, and "parsons"
as legitimate objects of plunder; and woe to the widow who prosecuted
the murderers of her husband or the ravagers of her estate! The homage
which the law paid to women consisted in burning them alive for offenses
which brought upon men the painless death of hanging. We moderns read
with puzzled incredulity such a story as that of Godiva, doubtful if so
vast an outrage could ever have been committed in a community not
entirely savage. Let the reader immerse himself for only a few months in
the material of which the history of the Middle Ages must be composed,
if it shall ever be truly written, and the tale of Godiva will seem
credible and natural. She was her lord's chattel; and probably the
people of her day who heard the story commended _him_ for lightening the
burdens of Coventry on such easy terms, and saw no great hardship in
the task assigned to her.
People read with surprise of Thomas Jefferson's antipathy to the poems
and novels of Sir Walter Scott. He objected to them because they gave a
view of the past ages utterly at variance with the truth as revealed in
the authentic records, which he had studied from his youth up.
[Illustration: "'_My dear Baron, I am in the most pressing need of five
hundred franc!_' Must I put an _s_ to franc?"
"No. In the circumstances it is better not. It will prove to the Baron
that, for the moment, you really are destitute of every thing--even of
orthography."--ED. DE BRAUMONT, _Paris_, 1860.]
[Illustration: "Madame, I have the honor--"
"Sir, be good enough to come round in front and speak to me."
"Madame, I really haven't the time. I must be off in five
minutes."--CHAM, _Paris_, 1850.]
Coming down to recent times, we still find the current anecdote and
proverb in all lands bearing hardly upon the sex. A few kindly and
appreciative sayings pass current in Scotland; and the literatures of
Germany, England, and the United States teem with the noblest and
tenderest homage to the excellence of women. But most of these belong to
the literature of this century, and bear the names of men who may be
said to have created the moral feeling of the present moment. It is
interesting to notice that in one of our latest and best dictionaries of
quotation, that of Mr. M. M. Ballou, of Boston, there are one hundred
and eleven short passages relating to women, of which only one is
dishonorable to them, and that dates back a century and a half, to the
halcyon day of the British libertine--"Every woman is at heart a
rake.--POPE." So thought all the dissolute men of Pope's circle, as we
know from their conversation and letters. So thought the Duc de
Rochefoucauld, who said, "There are few virtuous women who are not weary
of their profession;" and "Most virtuous women, like concealed
treasures, are secure because nobody seeks after them." So thought
Chesterfield, who told his hopeful son that he could never go wrong in
flattering a woman, for women were foolish and frail without exception:
"I never knew one in my life who had good sense, or who reasoned and
acted consequentially for four-and-twenty hours together." And so _must_
think every man who lived as men of fashion then lived. "If I dwelt in a
hospital," said Dr. Franklin once, "I might come to think all mankind
diseased."
[Illustration: "Where are the diamonds exhibited?"
"I haven't the least idea; but I let myself be guided by my wife. Women
get at such things by instinct."--CHAM, _Paris_, 1868.]
But a man need not be a fine gentleman nor a _roue_ to think ill of
womankind. He needs only to be commonplace; and hence it is that the
homely proverbs of all time bear so hardly upon women. The native land
of the modern proverb is Spain, as we might guess from Sancho Panza's
exhaustless repertory; and most of those homely disparaging sentences
concerning women that pass current in all lands appear to have
originated there. What Spain has left unsaid upon women's foibles, Italy
has supplied. Most of the following proverbs are traceable to one of the
two peninsulas of Southern Europe: "He that takes an eel by the tail or
a woman by her word may say he holds nothing." "There is one bad wife in
Spain, and every man thinks he has her." "He that loses his wife and a
farthing hath great loss of his farthing." "If the mother had never
been in the oven, she would not have looked for her daughter there."
"He that marries a widow and three children marries four thieves." "He
that tells his wife news is but newly married." "A dead wife's the best
goods in a man's house." "A man of straw is worth a woman of gold." "A
woman conceals what she knows not." "As great a pity to see a woman weep
as to see a goose go barefoot." "A woman's mind and winter's wind change
oft." "There is no mischief in the world done but a woman is always
one." "Commend a wedded life, but keep thyself a bachelor." "Where there
are women and geese, there wants no noise." "Neither women nor linen by
candle-light." "Glasses and lasses are brittle ware." "Two daughters and
a back-door are three thieves." "Women commend a modest man, but like
him not." "Women in mischief are wiser than men." "Women laugh when they
can and weep when they will." "Women, priests, and poultry never have
enough."
[Illustration: Evening Scene in the Parlor of an American
Boarding-house.
"Ladies who have no engagements (in the evening) either mount again to
the solitude of their chamber, or remain in the common sitting-room, in
a society cemented by no tie, endeared by no connection, which choice
did not bring together, and which the slightest motive would break
asunder. I remarked that the gentlemen were generally obliged to go out
every evening on business; and, I confess, the arrangement did not
surprise me."--MRS. TROLLOPE, _Domestic Manners of the Americans_, vol.
ii., p. 111. 1830.]
Among the simple people of Iceland similar proverbs pass current:
"Praise the fineness of the day when it is ended; praise a woman when
she is buried; praise a maiden when she is married." "Trust not to the
words of a girl; neither to those which a woman utters, for their hearts
have been made like the wheel that turns round; levity was put into
their bosoms."
Among the few broadsides of Elizabeth's reign preserved in the British
Museum there is one which is conceived in perfect harmony with these
proverbs. It presents eight scenes, in all of which women figure
disadvantageously. There is a child-bed scene, in which the mother lies
in state, most preposterously dressed and adorned, while a dozen other
women are idling and gossiping about the room. Women are exhibited also
at the market, at the bakehouse, at the ale-house, at the river washing
clothes, at church, at the bath, at the public well; but always
chattering, gossiping, idling, unless they are fighting or flirting.
Another caricature in the same collection, dated 1620, the year of the
_Mayflower_ and Plymouth Rock, contains seven scenes illustrative of the
lines following:
"Who marieth a Wife upon a Moneday,
If she will not be good upon a Twesday,
Lett him go to y{e} wood upon a Wensday,
And cutt him a cudgell upon the Thursday,
And pay her soundly upon a Fryday;
And she mend not, y{e} divil take her a Saterday,
That he may eat his meat in peace on the Sunday."
To complete the record of man's ridicule of the sex to which he owes his
happiness, I add the pictures given in this chapter, which bring that
record down to date. They tell their own story. The innocent fun of
English Cruikshank and Leech contrasts agreeably with the subtle
depravity indicated by some of the French caricaturists, particularly by
Gavarni, who surpasses all men in the art of exaggerating the address of
the class of women who regard men in the light of prey. The point of
Gavarni's satire usually lies in the words printed underneath his
pictures, and the pictures generally consist of the two figures who
utter those words. But the expression which he contrives to impart to
his figures and faces by a few apparently careless lines is truly
wonderful, and it can scarcely be transferred to another surface. He
excels in the expression of a figure with the face turned away, the
whole effect being given by the outline of the head three-quarters
averted. There is one picture of his, given on the following page, of a
woman and her lover, he sitting in a chair reading _with his hat on_,
indicating the extreme of familiarity, she standing at the window
sewing, and keeping an eye on the pavement below. "He's coming!" she
says; "take off your hat." In the attitude of the woman there is a
mingled effect of tranquillity and vigilance that is truly remarkable.
In all the range of caricature it would be difficult to find a better
specimen of the art than this, or a worse. The reader may be curious to
see a few more of these _fourberies de femmes_, as evolved from the
brain of the dissolute Gavarni. It is almost impossible to transfer the
work of his pencil, but here are a few of his verbal elucidations:
Under a picture of a father and daughter walking arm-in-arm: "How did
you know, papa, that I loved M. Leon?" "Because you always spoke of M.
Paul."
Two young ladies in confidential conversation: "When I think that M.
Coquardeau is going to be my husband, I feel sorry for Alexander." "And
I for Coquardeau."
[Illustration: "He's coming! Take off your hat!"--GAVARNI, _Paris_,
1846.]
Two married ladies in conversation: "Yes, my dear, my husband has been
guilty of bringing that creature into my house before my very eyes, when
he knows that the only man I love in the world is two hundred leagues
from here."--"Men are contemptible" (_laches_).
Husband writing a note, and his wife standing behind him:
"MY DEAR SIR,--Caroline begs me to remind you of a certain duet,
of which she is extravagantly fond, and which you promised to
give her. Pray be so good as to dine with her to-day, and bring
your music with you. For my part, I shall be deprived of the
pleasure of hearing you, for I have an engagement at Versailles.
Pity me, my dear sir, and believe me always your affectionate
COQUARDEAU."
A young man in wild excitement reading a letter:
"On receipt of this, mount, fly; overtake in the Avenue de
Neuilly a yellow cab, the steps down, gray horse, old coachman,
108, one lantern lighted! Follow it. It will stop at the side
door of a house at Sablonville. A man and a woman will get out.
That man--he was my lover! And that woman--she is yours!"
[Illustration: The Scholastic Hen and her Chickens. (Cruikshank, 1846.)
_Miss Thimblebee loquitur._ "Turn your heads the other way, my dears,
for here are two horridly handsome officers coming."]
Lady fainting, and a man in consternation supporting her head: "Clara,
Clara! dearest, look up! Don't! Clara, I say! You don't know _any_ nice
young man! I am an ass, with my stupid jealousy. And you shall have your
velvet shawl. Come, Clara! Now then, Clara, _please_!"
Lady dropping two letters into the post-office. First letter:
"MY KIND AMEDEE,--This evening, toward eight, at the Red Ball.
Mind, now, and don't keep waiting your
CLARA."
Second letter:
"MY HENRY,--Well-beloved, judge of my despair--I have a sore
throat that is simply frightful. It will be impossible for me to
go out this evening. They even talk of applying twenty leeches.
Pity a great deal, and love always, your
CLARA."
In these numberless satires upon women, executed by pen and pencil,
there is a certain portion of truth, for, indeed, a woman powerfully
organized and fully developed, but without mental culture and devoid of
the sentiment of duty, can be a creature most terrific. If the
possession of wealth exempts her from labor, there are four ways in
which she can appease the ennui of a barren mind and a torpid
conscience. One is deep play, which was, until within seventy years, the
resource chiefly relied upon by women of fashion for killing the hours
between dinner and bed; one is social display, or the struggle for the
leadership of a circle, an ambition perhaps more pernicious than
gambling; another is intrigues of love, no longer permitted in the more
advanced countries, but formerly an important element in fashionable
life everywhere; finally, there is the resource of excessive and
ceaseless devotion, the daily mass, the weekly confession, frequent and
severe fasting, abject slavery to the ritual. Of all these, the one
last named is probably the most injurious, since it tends to bring
virtue itself into contempt, and repels the young from all serious and
elevated modes of living. Accordingly, in studying the historic families
of Europe, we frequently find that the devotee and the debauchee
alternate, each producing the other, both being expressions of the same
moral and mental defect. But whether a mindless woman gambles, dresses,
flirts, or fasts, she is a being who furnishes the satirist with
legitimate material.
Equal rights, equal education, equal chances of an independent
career--when women have enjoyed these for so much as a single century in
any country, the foibles at which men have laughed for so many ages will
probably no longer be remarked, for they are either the follies of
ignorance or the vices resulting from a previous condition of servitude.
Nor will men of right feeling ever regard women with the cold, critical
eye of a Chesterfield or a Rochefoucauld, but rather with something of
the exalted sentiment which caused old Homer, whenever he had occasion
to speak of a mother, to prefix an adjective usually applicable to
goddesses and queens, which we can translate best, perhaps, by our
English word REVERED.