"CAN A MAID FORGET HER ORNAMENTS?"
Presently Edith and her mother went into the house to study out the
letters, and the doctor being so delightfully absorbed with the stocks
and bonds that it would have been unkind not to leave him alone, it
struck me that the occasion was favorable for the execution of a private
project for which opportunity had hitherto been lacking.
From the moment of receiving my credit card I had contemplated a
particular purchase which I desired to make on the first opportunity.
This was a betrothal ring for Edith. Gifts in general, it was evident,
had lost their value in this age when everybody had everything he wanted,
but this was one which, for sentiment's sake, I was sure would still seem
as desirable to a woman as ever.
Taking advantage, therefore, of the unusual absorption of my hosts in
special interests, I made my way to the great store Edith had taken me to
on a former occasion, the only one I had thus far entered. Not seeing the
class of goods which I desired indicated by any of the placards over the
alcoves, I presently asked one of the young women attendants to direct me
to the jewelry department.
"I beg your pardon," she said, raising her eyebrows a little, "what did I
understand you to ask for?"
"The jewelry department," I repeated. "I want to look at some rings."
"Rings," she repeated, regarding me with a rather blank expression. "May
I ask what kind of rings, for what sort of use?"
"Finger rings," I repeated, feeling that the young woman could not be so
intelligent as she looked.
At the word she glanced at my left hand, on one of the fingers of which I
wore a seal ring after a fashion of my day. Her countenance took on an
expression at once of intelligence and the keenest interest.
"I beg your pardon a thousand times!" she exclaimed. "I ought to have
understood before. You are Julian West?"
I was beginning to be a little nettled with so much mystery about so
simple a matter.
"I certainly am Julian West," I said; "but pardon me if I do not see the
relevancy of that fact to the question I asked you."
"Oh, you must really excuse me," she said, "but it is most relevant.
Nobody in America but just yourself would ask for finger rings. You see
they have not been used for so long a period that we have quite ceased to
keep them in stock; but if you would like one made to order you have only
to leave a description of what you want and it will be at once
manufactured."
I thanked her, but concluded that I would not prosecute the undertaking
any further until I had looked over the ground a little more thoroughly.
I said nothing about my adventure at home, not caring to be laughed at
more than was necessary; but when after dinner I found the doctor alone
in his favorite outdoor study on the housetop, I cautiously sounded him
on the subject.
Remarking, as if quite in a casual way, that I had not noticed so much as
a finger ring worn by any one, I asked him whether the wearing of jewelry
had been disused, and, if so, what was the explanation of the abandonment
of the custom?
The doctor said that it certainly was a fact that the wearing of jewelry
had been virtually an obsolete custom for a couple of generations if not
more. "As for the reasons for the fact," he continued, "they really go
rather deeply into the direct and indirect consequences of our present
economic system. Speaking broadly, I suppose the main and sufficient
reason why gold and silver and precious stones have ceased to be prized
as ornaments is that they entirely lost their commercial value when the
nation organized wealth distribution on the basis of the indefeasible
economic equality of all citizens. As you know, a ton of gold or a bushel
of diamonds would not secure a loaf of bread at the public stores,
nothing availing there except or in addition to the citizen's credit,
which depends solely on his citizenship, and is always equal to that of
every other citizen. Consequently nothing is worth anything to anybody
nowadays save for the use or pleasure he can personally derive from it.
The main reason why gems and the precious metals were formerly used as
ornaments seems to have been the great convertible value belonging to
them, which made them symbols of wealth and importance, and consequently
a favorite means of social ostentation. The fact that they have entirely
lost this quality would account, I think, largely for their disuse as
ornaments, even if ostentation itself had not been deprived of its motive
by the law of equality."
"Undoubtedly," I said; "yet there were those who thought them pretty
quite apart from their value."
"Well, possibly," replied the doctor. "Yes, I suppose savage races
honestly thought so, but, being honest, they did not distinguish between
precious stones and glass beads so long as both were equally shiny. As to
the pretension of civilized persons to admire gems or gold for their
intrinsic beauty apart from their value, I suspect that was a more or
less unconscious sham. Suppose, by any sudden abundance, diamonds of the
first water had gone down to the value of bottle glass, how much longer
do you think they would have been worn by anybody in your day?"
I was constrained to admit that undoubtedly they would have disappeared
from view promptly and permanently.
"I imagine," said the doctor, "that good taste, which we understand even
in your day rather frowned on the use of such ornaments, came to the aid
of the economic influence in promoting their disuse when once the new
order of things had been established. The loss by the gems and precious
metals of the glamour that belonged to them as forms of concentrated
wealth left the taste free to judge of the real aesthetic value of
ornamental effects obtained by hanging bits of shining stones and plates
and chains and rings of metal about the face and neck and fingers, and
the view seems to have been soon generally acquiesced in that such
combinations were barbaric and not really beautiful at all."
"But what has become of all the diamonds and rubies and emeralds, and
gold and silver jewels?" I exclaimed.
"The metals, of course--silver and gold--kept their uses, mechanical and
artistic. They are always beautiful in their proper places, and are as
much used for decorative purposes as ever, but those purposes are
architectural, not personal, as formerly. Because we do not follow the
ancient practice of using paints on our faces and bodies, we use them not
the less in what we consider their proper places, and it is just so with
gold and silver. As for the precious stones, some of them have found use
in mechanical applications, and there are, of course, collections of them
in museums here and there. Probably there never were more than a few
hundred bushels of precious stones in existence, and it is easy to
account for the disappearance and speedy loss of so small a quantity of
such minute objects after they had ceased to be prized."
"The reasons you give for the passing of jewelry," I said, "certainly
account for the fact, and yet you can scarcely imagine what a surprise I
find in it. The degradation of the diamond to the rank of the glass bead,
save for its mechanical uses, expresses and typifies as no other one fact
to me the completeness of the revolution which at the present time has
subordinated things to humanity. It would not be so difficult, of course,
to understand that men might readily have dispensed with jewel-wearing,
which indeed was never considered in the best of taste as a masculine
practice except in barbarous countries, but it would have staggered the
prophet Jeremiah to have his query 'Can a maid forget her ornaments?'
answered in the affirmative."
The doctor laughed.
"Jeremiah was a very wise man," he said, "and if his attention had been
drawn to the subject of economic equality and its effect upon the
relation of the sexes, I am sure he would have foreseen as one of its
logical results the growth of a sentiment of quite as much philosophy
concerning personal ornamentation on the part of women as men have ever
displayed. He would not have been surprised to learn that one effect of
that equality as between men and women had been to revolutionize women's
attitude on the whole question of dress so completely that the most
bilious of misogynists--if indeed any were left--would no longer be able
to accuse them of being more absorbed in that interest than are men."
"Doctor, doctor, do not ask me to believe that the desire to make herself
attractive has ceased to move woman!"
"Excuse me, I did not mean to say anything of the sort," replied the
doctor. "I spoke of the disproportionate development of that desire which
tends to defeat its own end by over-ornament and excess of artifice. If
we may judge from the records of your time, this was quite generally the
result of the excessive devotion to dress on the part of your women; was
it not so?"
"Undoubtedly. Overdressing, overexertion to be attractive, was the
greatest drawback to the real attractiveness of women in my day."
"And how was it with the men?"
"That could not be said of any men worth calling men. There were, of
course, the dandies, but most men paid too little attention to their
appearance rather than too much."
"That is to say, one sex paid too much attention to dress and the other
too little?"
"That was it."
"Very well; the effect of economic equality of the sexes and the
consequent independence of women at all times as to maintenance upon men
is that women give much less thought to dress than in your day and men
considerably more. No one would indeed think of suggesting that either
sex is nowadays more absorbed in setting off its personal attractions
than the other. Individuals differ as to their interest in this matter,
but the difference is not along the line of sex."
"But why do you attribute this miracle," I exclaimed, "for miracle it
seems, to the effect of economic equality on the relation of men and
women?"
"Because from the moment that equality became established between them it
ceased to be a whit more the interest of women to make themselves
attractive and desirable to men than for men to produce the same
impression upon women."
"Meaning thereby that previous to the establishment of economic equality
between men and women it was decidedly more the interest of the women to
make themselves personally attractive than of the men."
"Assuredly," said the doctor. "Tell me to what motive did men in your day
ascribe the excessive devotion of the other sex to matters of dress as
compared with men's comparative neglect of the subject?"
"Well, I don't think we did much clear thinking on the subject. In fact,
anything which had any sexual suggestion about it was scarcely ever
treated in any other than a sentimental or jesting tone."
"That is indeed," said the doctor, "a striking trait of your age, though
explainable enough in view of the utter hypocrisy underlying the entire
relation of the sexes, the pretended chivalric deference to women on the
one hand, coupled with their practical suppression on the other, but you
must have had some theory to account for women's excessive devotion to
personal adornment."
"The theory, I think, was that handed down from the ancients--namely,
that women were naturally vainer than men. But they did not like to hear
that said: so the polite way of accounting for the obvious fact that they
cared so much more for dress than did men was that they were more
sensitive to beauty, more unselfishly desirous of pleasing, and other
agreeable phrases."
"And did it not occur to you that the real reason why woman gave so much
thought to devices for enhancing her beauty was simply that, owing to her
economic dependence on man's favor, a woman's face was her fortune, and
that the reason men were so careless for the most part as to their
personal appearance was that their fortune in no way depended on their
beauty; and that even when it came to commending themselves to the favor
of the other sex their economic position told more potently in their
favor than any question of personal advantages? Surely this obvious
consideration fully explained woman's greater devotion to personal
adornment, without assuming any difference whatever in the natural
endowment of the sexes as to vanity."
"And consequently," I put in, "when women ceased any more to depend for
their economic welfare upon men's favor, it ceased to be their main aim
in life to make themselves attractive to men's eyes?"
"Precisely so, to their unspeakable gain in comfort, dignity, and freedom
of mind for more important interests."
"But to the diminution, I suspect, of the picturesqueness of the social
panorama?"
"Not at all, but most decidedly to its notable advantage. So far as we
can judge, what claim the women of your period had to be regarded as
attractive was achieved distinctly in spite of their efforts to make
themselves so. Let us recall that we are talking about that excessive
concern of women for the enhancement of their charms which led to a mad
race after effect that for the most part defeated the end sought. Take
away the economic motive which made women's attractiveness to men a means
of getting on in life, and there remained Nature's impulse to attract the
admiration of the other sex, a motive quite strong enough for beauty's
end, and the more effective for not being too strong."
"It is easy enough to see," I said, "why the economic independence of
women should have had the effect of moderating to a reasonable measure
their interest in personal adornment; but why should it have operated in
the opposite direction upon men, in making them more attentive to dress
and personal appearance than before?"
"For the simple reason that their economic superiority to women having
disappeared, they must henceforth depend wholly upon personal
attractiveness if they would either win the favor of women or retain it
when won."