THE NEW WOMAN IN FRANCE
The long-distance gun which has been bombarding Paris has not
terrorized the civil population, as the Germans intended. I was in and
out of the city for a month after the gun began to do its deadly work,
and I can attest to that fact. But I remember three occasions when the
wrath of the Parisians rose to such a height that I shuddered to think
of the retribution that was piling up for Germany.
The first time was when a shell struck an historic old church, killing
seventy-five Good Friday worshipers. The second was when the shell
burst in a ward of a maternity hospital, making victims of mothers and
newly born babes. The third time was when a factory was struck, and at
least seven women workers were savagely slain. The shell struck the
front of the factory, killing the head foreman who was just leaving the
place. The man was torn limb from limb.
The entire front wall of the factory crushed inward and fell upon the
women seated at their work. Six were killed outright, one died on the
way to the hospital, and thirty were desperately hurt. They were nearly
all war widows, wives of soldiers and refugees, those slain women and
their comrades in the factory.
“After the church, after the nursery, the sewing room,” wrote the
editor of _Le Matin_. “It will be said that the barbarians respect
nothing.” Not religion, not infancy, not womanhood.
What deepened the indignation in the minds of the French public was the
almost sublime courage shown by the women in that factory. There was
not a single moment of panic. Instantly picking themselves up, those
who were unhurt began to lift out of the mass of bricks and shattered
timbers the dead and wounded. They vied with one another in their calm,
quick efforts to save life, and by the time the ambulances arrived all
the wounded had received first aid. The next morning at the usual hour
every woman, except the seriously wounded, reported for work. Not one
stayed at home.
“France can not spare workers now,” said one woman to President
Poincaré, who personally visited the wrecked factory to congratulate
these heroines.
Such is the metal of French wives and mothers, who have always, until
this war, lived rather secluded lives within their own homes. In sheer
admiration the French men, who have hitherto monopolized the higher
fields of industry, and who have laughed at the idea of women in
political life, are now ready to yield to any demands that women may in
future put forth.
French women can probably have the vote for the asking. They have not
made up their minds, in great numbers, that they want to vote. But
the suffrage movement is well started, it has good leaders, women of
education and social power, and there is no question as to the outcome.
War has wrought great changes in the status of women in all the
countries directly involved, and in France it has almost overturned the
whole social theory. The rigid system of chaperonage of girls has been
greatly relaxed.
For this the Red Cross has been responsible to a certain degree.
Thousands of young women who never in their lives before saw a man
except in the presence of their mothers now work in station canteens at
all hours of the day and night, cooking, serving, feeding soldiers and
refugees, waiting on the sick and weary with tireless devotion.
I have spoken of the dearth of conductors on the French trains. There
is one train attendant who never fails, and that is the young woman
who collects funds for the Red Cross. Every time a train stops it is
boarded by girls and women in white uniforms, who go through all the
carriages shaking tin money receptacles. These are about the size
and shape of a quart milk bottle, and the girl who holds it neglects
nobody. “_Pour la Croix Rouge! Pour les blessés!_” she cries, and
everybody drops small change into the milk bottle’s insatiable maw. In
the course of a long journey one contributes rather heavily. But then,
one should.
The educated women of France have gone in for hospital nursing as never
before. No part of unpreparedness in France was more serious than the
neglect of the nursing profession. Formerly almost all nursing was
done by the religious orders, and to tell the truth, it was not very
scientific nursing. If a sister happened to be a born nurse, so much
the better. But even the best of them were untrained in the modern
sense.
When the religious orders were broken up in France little or nothing
was publicly done to replace the nurses. I visited a house in Paris, a
sort of a nurses’ settlement, where for some years a highly educated
and philanthropic woman has maintained a small training school of her
own.
This woman, whose name, unfortunately, has slipped my memory, lives
and works in a crowded quarter of the city where there is much
tuberculosis. She established her nurses’ training school in connection
with her tuberculosis work, which is extensive. She induced a number
of educated girls to take up nursing, and many of them in 1914 went
into war work. But they were a drop in the bucket. They were dozens
where thousands were needed. So the women had to leave their homes, as
our leisured women will have to, if this war outlasts 1918, and made
themselves capable and devoted trained nurses.
These are the new women of France, and it would be extraordinary if,
after finding freedom from the old restrictions and conventions, they
should ever go back to the old ways. I met several women who were as
emancipated as any young American feminist, and who seemed very happy
in their new independence.
At Aix-les-Bains, where our soldiers went for their first vacation
leaves, there was a young girl who was an almost startling example. She
was about twenty years old and very pretty, in a delicate, patrician
way. Before the war this girl would never have gone out of the house
unattended. She had been educated in a private school with girls of her
own social class, and but for the war would have been married by this
time to a man chosen for her in the family council.
Now she was driving her own little Ford ambulance for the benefit of
the American soldiers. She had joined the American Y. M. C. A., wore
its becoming gray and blue uniform, with a boy’s soft hat pulled down
over her bobbed black hair, and she was as busy as a maternal little
wren.
I don’t know where she and the little car had operated before, but when
the boys began to arrive at Aix she drove down from Paris, entirely
alone except for a girl chum, an English girl, I believe, and a dozen
times a day she sat at the wheel speeding between Aix and Chambéry,
four miles away, carting supplies from one Y. M. C. A. headquarters to
the other, and taking soldiers back and forth as well.
Mademoiselle Marcelle spoke English quaintly but fluently, but she
was not a very conversational young person. She was grave and very
dignified, and she loved all American soldiers too well to favor any
one very much. They treated her like a princess and were ready any
minute to clean the car, or oil it, or spend half a day doing things to
its insides.
She was a charming little creature, Mademoiselle Marcelle. My son
confided in me one evening that he didn’t think he would have to look
farther for his life’s ideal, but then, so did at least a dozen other
doughboys, so I considered his chances rather slim.
Even before the war the position of the French girl showed signs of
change. The quality of her education had immensely improved, and in
fact was practically the same as that of boys. Coeducation was unknown
in the schools and in higher institutions, but in the Sorbonne, the
oldest of all French universities, men and women attended the same
lectures.
There have been individual parents who desired the fullest freedom
for their daughters, and who educated them for the professions. There
are not many women doctors in France, but the woman lawyer is highly
respected and even encouraged.
One daughter of such modern parents is at present rendering good
service to her country in the French foreign office. Mademoiselle
St. René Taillandier is a member of the press section of the foreign
office, and because of her fluent English is of the greatest assistance
to English and American correspondents, especially women correspondents.
Mademoiselle St. René Taillandier’s father is a veteran member of the
diplomatic corps, and her mother is a very modern minded woman. Having
lived in many countries of the world, and observing the constantly
widening field of women’s activities, they agreed that their daughter
should be brought up as an English or an American girl. She was given
a sound education, part of it in England, and she was allowed the
fullest possible freedom of choice and action.
Very recently having received at the Sorbonne a degree corresponding
to our master of arts, this fortunate young French woman has entered
upon a most promising literary career. She has acted in the capacity
of secretary to the famous novelist, Paul Bourget, and it was he who
discovered her literary gift and insisted upon her developing it. Her
first stories were published in the dignified _Revue des Deux Mondes_,
and have just appeared in book form.
These changes in the status of women are going to be very good for
France and her people. Already one sees their broadening effect. In the
old days the French showed a certain lack of hospitality to strangers.
You had to be very well known to a French family before you were
invited to visit the house. This is the real reason why the French have
been so little understood.
It has been said of them that they had no word for home, hence they
must be less domestic than other people. They have a word for home. It
is “_foyer_,” which means literally hearth. The family hearth was to
them so sacred that they couldn’t bring themselves to admit foreigners
there.
That, too, is changing. Not only middle class people, but people of
wealth are opening their homes, especially to Americans. I received
the most unexpected invitations to the homes of almost strangers. One
woman of prominence whom I met for the first time told me that she had
a country house in Brittany which she wanted to place at the disposal
of American soldiers this summer.
“I have lost several near relatives in the war,” she said, “and it
would be a consolation to me to feel that I was doing something for the
ally that came in time to save our France from perishing. I want to
know the American young man. If your son should be so unfortunate as to
be wounded I hope I can take him to my house for his convalescence. I
would gladly receive him and any of the American soldiers.”
The kaiser’s atrocious war, meant to crush and alienate and enslave the
English, French and Americans, has had quite another effect. It has
brought us into new and noble friendship. It has forged ties that never
will be broken.