Social intercourse between youths and maidens is everywhere more easy
and unrestrained than in England or Germany, not to speak of France. Yet
there are considerable differences between the Eastern cities, whose
usages have begun to approximate to those of Europe, and other parts of
the country. In the rural districts, and generally all over the West,
young men and girls are permitted to walk together, drive together, go
out to parties and even to public entertainments together, without the
presence of any third person who can be supposed to be looking after or
taking charge of the girl. So a girl may, if she pleases, keep up a
correspondence with a young man, nor will her parents think of
interfering. She will have her own friends, who when they call at her
house ask for her, and are received by her, it may be alone; because
they are not deemed to be necessarily the friends of her parents also,
nor even of her sisters.
In the cities of the Atlantic States it is now thought scarcely correct
for a young man to take a young lady out for a solitary drive; and in
few sets would he be permitted to escort her alone to the theatre. But
girls still go without chaperons to dances, the hostess being deemed to
act as chaperon for all her guests; and as regards both correspondence
and the right to have one's own circle of acquaintances, the usage even
of New York or Boston allows more liberty than does that of London or
Edinburgh. It was at one time, and it may possibly still be, not
uncommon for a group of young people who know one another well to make
up an autumn "party in the woods." They choose some mountain and forest
region, such as the Adirondack Wilderness west of Lake Champlain, engage
three or four guides, embark with guns and fishing-rods, tents,
blankets, and a stock of groceries, and pass in boats up the rivers and
across the lakes of this wild country through sixty or seventy miles of
trackless forest, to their chosen camping-ground at the foot of some
tall rock that rises from the still crystal of the lake. Here they build
their bark hut, and spread their beds of the elastic and fragrant
hemlock boughs; the youths roam about during the day, tracking the deer,
the girls read and work and bake the corn-cakes; at night there is a
merry gathering round the fire, or a row in the soft moonlight. On these
expeditions brothers will take their sisters and cousins, who bring
perhaps some lady friends with them; the brothers' friends will come
too; and all will live together in a fraternal way for weeks or months,
though no elderly relative or married lady be of the party.
There can be no doubt that the pleasure of life is sensibly increased by
the greater freedom which transatlantic custom permits; and as the
Americans insist that no bad results have followed, one notes with
regret that freedom declines in the places which deem themselves most
civilized. American girls have been, so far as a stranger can ascertain,
less disposed to what are called "fast ways" than girls of the
corresponding classes in England, and exercise in this respect a pretty
rigorous censorship over one another. But when two young people find
pleasure in one another's company, they can see as much of each other as
they please, can talk and walk together frequently, can show that they
are mutually interested, and yet need have little fear of being
misunderstood either by one another or by the rest of the world. It is
all a matter of custom. In the West, custom sanctions this easy
friendship; in the Atlantic cities, so soon as people have come to find
something exceptional in it, constraint is felt, and a conventional
etiquette like that of the Old World begins to replace the innocent
simplicity of the older time, the test of whose merit may be gathered
from the universal persuasion in America that happy marriages are in the
middle and upper ranks more common than in Europe, and that this is due
to the ampler opportunities which young men and women have of learning
one another's characters and habits before becoming betrothed. Most
girls have a larger range of intimate acquaintances than girls have in
Europe, intercourse is franker, there is less difference between the
manners of home and the manners of general society. The conclusions of a
stranger are in such matters of no value; so I can only repeat that I
have never met any judicious American lady who, however well she knew
the Old World, did not think that the New World customs conduced more
both to the pleasantness of life before marriage, and to constancy and
concord after it.
In no country are women, and especially young women, so much made of.
The world is at their feet. Society seems organized for the purpose of
providing enjoyment for them. Parents, uncles, aunts, elderly friends,
even brothers, are ready to make their comfort and convenience bend to
the girls' wishes. The wife has fewer opportunities for reigning over
the world of amusements, because except among the richest people she has
more to do in household management than in England, owing to the
scarcity of servants; but she holds in her own house a more prominent if
not a more substantially powerful position than in England or even in
France. With the German _haus-frau_, who is too often content to be a
mere housewife, there is of course no comparison. The best proof of the
superior place American ladies occupy is to be found in the notions they
profess to entertain of the relations of an English married pair. They
talk of the English wife as little better than a slave; declaring that
when they stay with English friends, or receive an English couple in
America, they see the wife always deferring to the husband and the
husband always assuming that his pleasure and convenience are to
prevail. The European wife, they admit, often gets her own way, but she
gets it by tactful arts, by flattery or wheedling or playing on the
man's weaknesses; whereas in America the husband's duty and desire is to
gratify the wife, and render to her those services which the English
tyrant exacts from his consort. One may often hear an American matron
commiserate a friend who has married in Europe, while the daughters
declare in chorus that they will never follow the example. Laughable as
all this may seem to English women, it is perfectly true that the theory
as well as the practice of conjugal life is not the same in America as
in England. There are overbearing husbands in America, but they are more
condemned by the opinion of the neighborhood than in England. There are
exacting wives in England, but their husbands are more pitied than would
be the case in America. In neither country can one say that the
principle of perfect equality reigns; for in America the balance
inclines nearly, though not quite, as much in favor of the wife as it
does in England in favor of the husband. No one man can have a
sufficiently large acquaintance in both countries to entitle his
individual opinion on the results to much weight. So far as I have been
able to collect views from those observers who have lived in both
countries, they are in favor of the American practice, perhaps because
the theory it is based on departs less from pure equality than does that
of England. These observers do not mean that the recognition of women as
equals or superiors makes them any better or sweeter or wiser than
Englishwomen; but rather that the principle of equality, by correcting
the characteristic faults of men, and especially their selfishness and
vanity, is more conducive to the concord and happiness of a home. They
conceive that to make the wife feel her independence and responsibility
more strongly than she does in Europe tends to brace and expand her
character; while conjugal affection, usually stronger in her than in the
husband, inasmuch as there are fewer competing interests, saves her from
abusing the precedence yielded to her. This seems to be true; but I have
heard others maintain that the American system, since it does not
require the wife habitually to forego her own wishes, tends, if not to
make her self-indulgent and capricious, yet slightly to impair the more
delicate charms of character; as it is written, "It is more blessed to
give than to receive."
A European cannot spend an evening in an American drawing-room without
perceiving that the attitude of men to women is not that with which he
is familiar at home. The average European man has usually a slight sense
of condescension when he talks to a woman on serious subjects. Even if
she is his superior in intellect, in character, in social rank, he
thinks that as a man he is her superior, and consciously or
unconsciously talks down to her. She is too much accustomed to this to
resent it, unless it becomes tastelessly palpable. Such a notion does
not cross an American's mind. He talks to a woman just as he would to a
man; of course with more deference of manner, and with a proper regard
to the topics likely to interest her, but giving her his intellectual
best, addressing her as a person whose opinion is understood by both to
be worth as much as his own. Similarly an American lady does not expect
to have conversation made to her: it is just as much her duty or
pleasure to lead it as the man's is; and more often than not she takes
the burden from him, darting along with a gay vivacity which puts to
shame his slower wits.
It need hardly be said that in all cases where the two sexes come into
competition for comfort, the provision is made first for women. In
railroads the end car of the train, being that farthest removed from the
smoke of the locomotive, is often reserved for them (though men
accompanying a lady are allowed to enter it); and at hotels their
sitting-room is the best and sometimes the only available public room,
ladyless guests being driven to the bar or the hall. In omnibuses and
horse-cars (tram-cars), it was formerly the custom for a gentleman to
rise and offer his seat to a lady if there were no vacant place. This is
now less universally done. In New York and Boston (and I think also in
San Francisco), I have seen the men keep their seats when ladies
entered; and I recollect one occasion when the offer of a seat to a lady
was declined by her, on the ground that as she had chosen to enter a
full car she ought to take the consequences. It was (I was told in
Boston) a feeling of this kind that had led to the discontinuance of the
old courtesy: when ladies constantly pressed into the already crowded
vehicles, the men, who could not secure the enforcement of the
regulations against over-crowding, tried to protect themselves by
refusing to rise. It is sometimes said that the privileges yielded to
American women have disposed them to claim as a right what was only a
courtesy, and have told unfavorably upon their manners. I know of
several instances, besides this one of the horse-cars, which might seem
to support the criticism, but cannot on the whole think it well founded.
The better-bred women do not presume on their sex, and the area of good
breeding is always widening. It need hardly be said that the community
at large gains by the softening and restraining influence which the
reverence for womanhood diffuses. Nothing so quickly incenses the people
as any insult offered to a woman. Wife-beating, and indeed any kind of
rough violence offered to women, is far less common among the rudest
class than it is in England. Field work or work at the pit-mouth of
mines is seldom or never done by women in America; and the American
traveler who in some parts of Europe finds women performing severe
manual labor, is revolted by the sight in a way which Europeans find
surprising.
In the farther West, that is to say, beyond the Mississippi, in the
Rocky Mountain and Pacific States, one is much struck by what seems the
absence of the humblest class of women. The trains are full of poorly
dressed and sometimes (though less frequently) rough-mannered men. One
discovers no women whose dress or air marks them out as the wives,
daughters, or sisters of these men, and wonders whether the male
population is celibate, and if so, why there are so many women. Closer
observation shows that the wives, daughters, and sisters are there, only
their attire and manner are those of what Europeans would call
middle-class and not working-class people. This is partly due to the
fact that Western men affect a rough dress. Still one may say that the
remark so often made, that the masses of the American people correspond
to the middle class of Europe, is more true of the women than of the
men; and is more true of them, in the rural districts and in the West
than it is of the inhabitants of Atlantic cities. I remember to have
been dawdling in a book-store in a small town in Oregon when a lady
entered to inquire if a monthly magazine, whose name was unknown to me,
had yet arrived. When she was gone I asked the salesman who she was, and
what was the periodical she wanted. He answered that she was the wife of
a railway workman, that the magazine was a journal of fashions, and that
the demand for such journals was large and constant among women of the
wage-earning class in the town. This set me to observing female dress
more closely; and it turned out to be perfectly true that the women in
these little towns were following the Parisian fashions very closely,
and were in fact ahead of the majority of English ladies belonging to
the professional and mercantile classes. Of course in such a town as I
refer to, there are no domestic servants except in the hotels (indeed,
almost the only domestic service to be had in the Pacific States was
till very recently that of Chinese), so these votaries of fashion did
all their own housework and looked after their own babies.
Three causes combine to create among American women an average of
literary taste and influence higher than that of women in any European
country. These are the educational facilities they enjoy, the
recognition of the equality of the sexes in the whole social and
intellectual sphere, and the leisure which they possess as compared with
men. In a country where men are incessantly occupied at their business
or profession, the function of keeping up the level of culture devolves
upon women. It is safe in their hands. They are quick and keen-witted,
less fond of open-air life and physical exertion than English women are,
and obliged by the climate to pass a greater part of their time under
shelter from the cold of winter and the sun of summer. For music and for
the pictorial arts they do not yet seem to have formed so strong a taste
as for literature; partly perhaps owing to the fact that in America the
opportunities of seeing and hearing masterpieces, except indeed operas,
are rarer than in Europe. But they are eager and assiduous readers of
all such books and periodicals as do not presuppose special knowledge in
some branch of science or learning, while the number who have devoted
themselves to some special study and attained proficiency in it is
large. The fondness for sentiment, especially moral and domestic
sentiment, which is often observed as characterizing American taste in
literature, seems to be mainly due to the influence of women, for they
form not only the larger part of the reading public, but an
independent-minded part, not disposed to adopt the canons laid down by
men, and their preferences count for more in the opinions and
predilections of the whole nation than is the case in England. Similarly
the number of women who write is infinitely larger in America than in
Europe. Fiction, essays, and poetry are naturally their favorite
provinces. In poetry more particularly, many whose names are quite
unknown in Europe have attained wide-spread fame.
Some one may ask how far the differences between the position of women
in America and their position in Europe are due to democracy? or if not
to this, then to what other cause?
They are due to democratic feeling, in so far as they spring from the
notion that all men are free and equal, possessed of certain inalienable
rights and owing certain corresponding duties. This root idea of
democracy cannot stop at defining men as male human beings, any more
than it could ultimately stop at defining them as white human beings.
For many years the Americans believed in equality with the pride of
discoverers as well as with the fervor of apostles. Accustomed to apply
it to all sorts and conditions of men, they were naturally the first to
apply it to women also; not indeed as respects politics, but in all the
social as well as legal relations of life. Democracy is in America more
respectful of the individual, less disposed to infringe his freedom or
subject him to any sort of legal or family control, than it has shown
itself in Continental Europe; and this regard for the individual inured
to the benefit of women. Of the other causes that have worked in the
same direction, two may be mentioned. One is the usage of the
Congregationalist, Presbyterian, and Baptist churches, under which a
woman who is a member of the congregation has the same rights in
choosing a deacon, elder, or pastor, as a man has. Another is the fact
that among the westward-moving settlers women were at first few in
number, and were therefore treated with special respect. The habit then
formed was retained as the communities grew, and propagated itself all
over the country.
What have been the results on the character and usefulness of women
themselves?
Favorable. They have opened to them a wider life and more variety of
career. While the special graces of the feminine character do not appear
to have suffered, there has been produced a sort of independence and a
capacity for self-help which are increasingly valuable as the number of
unmarried women increases. More resources are open to an American woman
who has to lead a solitary life, not merely in the way of employment,
but for the occupation of her mind and tastes, than to a European
spinster or widow; while her education has not rendered the American
wife less competent for the discharge of household duties.
How has the nation at large been affected by the development of this new
type of womanhood, or rather perhaps of this variation on the
English type?
If women have on the whole gained, it is clear that the nation gains
through them. As mothers they mold the character of their children;
while the function of forming the habits of society and determining its
moral tone rests greatly in their hands. But there is reason to think
that the influence of the American system tells directly for good upon
men as well as upon the whole community. Men gain in being brought to
treat women as equals, rather than as graceful playthings or useful
drudges. The respect for women which every American man either feels, or
is obliged by public sentiment to profess, has a wholesome effect on his
conduct and character, and serves to check the cynicism which some other
peculiarities of the country foster. The nation as a whole owes to the
active benevolence of its women, and their zeal in promoting social
reforms, benefits which the customs of Continental Europe would scarcely
have permitted women to confer. Europeans have of late years begun to
render a well-deserved admiration to the brightness and vivacity of
American ladies. Those who know the work they have done and are doing in
many a noble cause will admire still more their energy, their courage,
their self-devotion. No country seems to owe more to its women than
America does, nor to owe to them so much of what is best in social
institutions and in the beliefs that govern conduct.
By permission of James Bryce and the Macmillan Company.
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