There is a strangely feeble pulsation in these three books, the voice
is hushed, the colours broken. In reading them we seem to sit as on
a rainy day in a finely furnished, richly perfumed drawing-room,
before an open fire-place with a red glass screen, in which the flame
flickers and is magnified, producing an effect that is wonderfully
sleepifying and unreal. Yet in the midst of all this luxury we can
hear the pattering of the rain outside, and our souls shiver as the
artificial home comforts glide further and further away, and we are
left surrounded by cold and emptiness....
The reason is that the women who live in this home have no warmth to
give, their charms are restless and unsatisfying, their vanity is
cruel and insatiable, they need men as they need the mirrors in their
dressing-rooms, in order that they may be surrounded by them and able
to see their own images reflected from every possible point of view.
The new element in these French writers consists in their having
simultaneously discovered and appropriated this type, a type which
is international, but which, in its psycho-physiological development
can only be properly studied through the medium of a French author’s
unprejudiced views, and only properly appreciated by the moral
large-heartedness of a French public.
The women in these books are ladies, of whom it is said in society that
they are “without reproach.” Their conduct is blameless, they never
forget themselves. They keep within the bounds of innocent flirtation,
and have developed the same to the dimensions of a science which
renders them almost irresistible; they are intelligent coquettes, and
they are more, they are creative coquettes, who turn themselves into
works of art, and only as such do they wish to be admired and enjoyed;
they are _objets d’art_ which must not be touched or handled, and their
cunning consists in endowing these works of art with an appearance
of life, soul and passion. They, with their empty natures, are not
satisfied with emptiness in the opposite sex.
They have a longing to replenish their own natures at the cost of
others, and they cling like vampires to the men who have something to
give, and who are able to vouchsafe to them the delight of seeing them
suffer. For they never satisfy the wishes which they have awakened.
They never forget themselves.
So far it is fortunate for the man who falls in love with them that
they do not forget themselves, for however worthless their gifts may
be, there is nothing so worthless as the gift of themselves. All the
disappointments of which they are the cause are as nothing compared
to the disappointment of the man when he clasps them in his arms.
There is something strangely soulless and impersonal about them, his
heart seems to beat against a lifeless body, no warmth encircles him,
no electric stream proceeds from them, they give him no joy, nor do
they experience any. These women who have so much mind, cleverness,
intelligence and reflection, who are so beautiful, so fashionable, so
superior--they have no nature. They are like those barren ears of corn
that tower above the corn-field with their long stalks and slender
pannicles, waving to and fro, and attracting attention to themselves,
but in whose husks we find no seed. They are like those large empty
nuts, which, when cracked, are found to contain nothing but a little
mildew. And all the while they seek for that which is lacking in
themselves, they like to talk about the weariness of life, the vanity
of hope, the secret attractions of love; they tease and charm and
beckon from afar, they let it be supposed that they have much to give,
yet all their desire is to play with their idle delicate fingers upon
the soul of man as upon an instrument of music. They want to strike a
note to hear it sound and vibrate, and they make themselves his friends
for the sake of being loved, and of quivering with the passion of
self-love, they nod to their reflections in the mirror, and invent a
new way of doing the hair, or a new and sprightly _aperçu_ when they
find that they have succeeded in their desire, which is to experience a
faint reflex glow from the feelings which they have kindled in man.
Their looking-glass is their lover, their sole interest is centred in
themselves, the aim and object of their lives is to be self-conscious,
and life for them consists in circling round themselves.
Men of this sort, men who are sterile egoists, have frequently been
described; but until now no one has ever probed the depths of woman’s
lack of feeling. Here, as in almost every subject that is new to
literature, the French are the first to lead the way. But in real life
these types meet us long before literature sees them and makes them her
own, and women have long been familiar with this side of one another’s
nature. The silent struggles which man does not perceive, and which
both parties conceal from him, the coquette from vanity and her rival
from pride, these silent struggles are legion as the sacrifices which
they have cost.
It is not moral prejudice that restrains the best types of the species
from satisfying the more or less forbidden love which they awaken, for
they pride themselves on their open minds; and it is not cowardice, for
they are clever enough to escape any suspicion of scandal attaching
to themselves; their inward coldness is the only cause. They are not
willing to disturb themselves, lest in so doing the work of art, which
is their own selves, should discover its defects. They lose nothing, or
if they do, it is their imagination that is the loser. And if at the
last they forget themselves it is not their blood or their heart, but
it is the glow of reflex desire that forgets itself.