the fighting section of humanity--a puny creature whom one blow from a
man's huge fist could annihilate--absolutely fearless, and insolent
with the insolence which only those dare show who know that
retribution cannot follow--what can be done with her? She is afraid of
nothing and to be controlled by no one. Sheltered behind her weakness
as behind a triple shield of brass, the angriest man dare not touch
her, while she provokes him to a combat in which his hands are tied.
She gets her own way in everything and everywhere. At home and abroad
she is equally dominant and irrepressible, equally free from obedience
and from fear. Who breaks all the public order in sights and shows,
and, in spite of King, Kaiser, or Policeman X, goes where it is
expressly forbidden that she shall go? Not the large-boned, muscular
woman, whatever her temperament; unless, indeed, of the exceptionally
haughty type in distinctly inferior surroundings--and then she can
queen it royally enough and set everything at most lordly defiance.
But in general the large-boned woman obeys the orders given, because,
while near enough to man to be somewhat on a par with him, she is
still undeniably his inferior. She is too strong to shelter herself
behind her weakness, yet too weak to assert her strength and defy her
master on equal grounds. She is like a flying fish--not one thing
wholly; and while capable of the inconveniences of two lives is
incapable of the privileges of either. It is not she, for all her
well-developed frame and formidable looks, but the little woman, who
breaks the whole code of laws and defies all their defenders--the
pert, smart, pretty little woman, who laughs in your face and goes
straight ahead if you try to turn her to the right hand or to the
left, receiving your remonstrances with the most sublime indifference,
as if you were talking a foreign language she could not understand.
She carries everything before her, wherever she is. You may see her
stepping over barriers, slipping under ropes, penetrating to the green
benches with a red ticket, taking the best places on the platform over
the heads of their rightful owners, settling herself among the
reserved seats without an inch of pasteboard to float her. You cannot
turn her out by main force. British chivalry objects to the public
laying on of hands in the case of a woman, even when most recalcitrant
and disobedient; more particularly if she be a small and
fragile-looking woman. So that, if it be only a usurpation of places
specially masculine, she is allowed to retain what she has got, amid
the grave looks of the elders--not really displeased at the flutter of
her ribbons among them--and the titters and nudges of the young
fellows.
If the battle is between her and another woman, they are left to fight
it out as they best can, with the odds laid heavily on the little one.
All this time there is nothing of the tumult of contest about her.
Fiery and combative as she generally is, when breaking the law in
public places she is the very soul of serene daring. She shows no
heat, no passion, no turbulence; she leaves these as extra weapons of
defence to women who are assailable. For herself she requires no such
aids. She knows her capabilities and the line of attack that best
suits her, and she knows, too, that the fewer points of contest she
exposes the more likely she is to slip into victory; the more she
assumes and the less she argues, the slighter the hold she gives her
opponents. She is either perfectly good-humoured or blankly innocent;
she either smiles you into indulgence or wearies you into compliance
by the sheer hopelessness of making any impression on her. She may,
indeed, if of the very vociferous and shrill-tongued kind, burst out
into such a noisy demonstration as makes you glad to escape from her,
no matter what spoils you leave in her hands; just as a mastiff will
slink away from a bantam hen all heckled feathers and screeching
cackle and tremendous assumption of doing something terrible if he
does not look out. Any way the little woman is unconquerable; and a
tiny fragment of humanity at a public show, setting all rules and
regulations at defiance, is only carrying out in the matter of benches
the manner of life to which nature has dedicated her from the
beginning.
As a rule, the little woman is brave. When the lymphatic giantess
falls into a faint or goes off into hysterics, she storms, or bustles
about, or holds on like a game terrier, according to the work on hand.
She will fly at any man who annoys her, and she bears herself as
equal to the biggest and strongest fellow of her acquaintance. In
general she does it all by sheer pluck, and is not notorious for
subtlety or craft. Had Delilah been a little woman she would never
have taken the trouble to shear Samson's locks. She would have stood
up against him with all his strength untouched on his head, and she
would have overcome him too. Judith and Jael were both probably large
women. The work they went about demanded a certain strength of muscle
and toughness of sinew; but who can say that Jezebel was not a small,
freckled, auburn-haired Lady Audley of her time, full of the
concentrated fire, the electric force, the passionate recklessness of
her type? Regan and Goneril might have been beautiful demons of the
same pattern; we have the example of the Marchioness de Brinvilliers
as to what amount of spiritual devilry can exist with the face and
manner of an angel direct from heaven; and perhaps Cordelia was a tall
dark-haired girl, with a pair of brown eyes, and a long nose sloping
downwards.
Look at modern Jewesses, with their flashing Oriental orbs, their
night-black tresses and the dusky shadows of their olive-coloured
complexions. As catalogued properties according to the ideal, they
would be placed in the list of the natural criminals and law-breakers,
while in reality they are about as meek and docile a set of women as
are to be found within the four seas. Pit a fiery little Welsh woman
or a petulant Parisienne against the most regal and Junonic
amongst them, and let them try conclusions in courage, in energy, in
audacity; the Israelitish Juno will go down before either of the small
Philistines, and the fallacy of weight and colour in the generation of
power will be shown without the possibility of denial.
Even in those old days of long ago, when human characteristics were
embodied and deified, we do not find that the white-armed large-limbed
Hera, though queen by right of marriage, lorded it over her sister
goddesses by any superior energy or force of nature. On the contrary,
she was rather a heavy-going person, and, unless moved to anger by her
husband's numerous infidelities, took her Olympian life placidly
enough, and once or twice got cheated in a way that did no great
credit to her sagacity. A little Frenchwoman would have sailed round
her easily; and as it was, shrewish though she was in her speech when
provoked, her husband not only deceived but chastised her, and reduced
her to penitence and obedience as no little woman would have suffered
herself to be reduced.
There is one celebrated race of women who were probably the
powerfully-built, large-limbed creatures they are assumed to have
been, and as brave and energetic as they were strong and big--the
Norse women of the sagas, who, for good or evil, seem to have been a
very influential element in the old Northern life. Prophetesses;
physicians; dreamers of dreams and accredited interpreters as well;
endowed with magic powers; admitted to a share in the councils of
men; brave in war; active in peace; these fair-haired Scandinavian
women were the fit comrades of their men, the fit wives and mothers of
the Berserkers and the Vikings. They had no tame nor easy life of it,
if all we hear of them be true. To defend the farm and the homestead
during their husbands' absence, and to keep these and themselves
intact against all bold rovers to whom the Tenth Commandment was an
unknown law; to dazzle and bewilder by magic arts when they could not
conquer by open strength; to unite craft and courage, deception and
daring, loyalty and independence, demanded no small amount of opposing
qualities. But the Steingerdas and Gudrunas were generally equal to
any emergency of fate or fortune, and slashed their way through the
history of their time more after the manner of men than of women;
supplementing their downright blows by side thrusts of craftier
cleverness when they had to meet power with skill and were fain to
overthrow brutality by fraud. The Norse women were certainly as
largely framed as they were mentally energetic, and as crafty as
either; but we know of no other women who unite the same
characteristics and are at once cunning, strong, brave and true.
On the whole, then, the little women have the best of it. More petted
than their bigger sisters, and infinitely more powerful, they have
their own way in part because it really does not seem worth while
to contest a point with such little creatures. There is nothing that
wounds a man's self-respect in any victory they may get or claim.
Where there is absolute inequality of strength, there can be no
humiliation in the self-imposed defeat of the stronger; and as it is
always more pleasant to have peace than war, and as big men for the
most part rather like than not to put their necks under the tread of
tiny feet, the little woman goes on her way triumphant to the end;
breaking all the laws she does not like and throwing down all the
barriers which impede her progress; irresistible and irrepressible in
all circumstances and under any conditions.
_IDEAL WOMEN._
It is often objected against fault-finders, writers or others, that
they destroy but do not build up; that while industriously blaming
errors they take good care not to praise the counteracting virtues;
that in their zeal against the vermin of which they are seeking to
sweep the house clean they forget the nobler creatures which do the
good work of keeping things sweet and wholesome. But it is impossible
to be continually introducing the saving clause, 'all are not so bad
as these.' The seven thousand righteous who have not bowed the knee to
Baal are understood to exist in all communities; and, vicious as any
special section may be, there must always be the hidden salt and
savour of the virtuous to keep the whole from falling into utter
corruption.
This is specially true of modern women. Certainly some of them are as
unsatisfactory as any of their kind who have ever appeared on earth
before; but it would be very queer logic to infer therefore that all
are bad alike, and that our modern womanhood is as ill off as the
Cities of the Plain, which could not be saved for want of the ten just
men to save them. Happily, we have noble women among us yet;
women who believe in something besides pleasure, and who do their work
faithfully, wherever it may lie; women who can and do sacrifice
themselves for love and duty, and who do not think they were sent into
the world simply to run one mad life-long race for wealth, for
dissipation, for distinction. But the life of such women is
essentially in retirement; and though the lesson they teach is
beautiful, yet its influence is necessarily confined, because of the
narrow sphere of the teacher. When public occasions for devotedness
occur, we in some sort measure the extent to which the self-sacrifice
of women can be carried; but in general their noblest virtues come out
only in the quiet sacredness of home, and the most heroic lives of
patience and well-doing go on in seclusion, uncheered by sympathy and
unrewarded by applause.
Still, it is impossible to write of one absolute womanly ideal--one
single type that shall satisfy every man's fancy; for, naturally, what
would be perfection to one is imperfection to another, according to
the special bent of the individual mind. Thus one man's ideal of
womanly perfection is in beauty, mere physical outside beauty; and not
all the virtues under heaven could warm him into love with red hair or
a snub nose. He is entirely happy if his wife be undeniably the
handsomest woman of his acquaintance, and holds himself blessed when
all men admire and all women envy. But he is blessed for his own
sake rather than for hers. Pleasant as her loveliness is to look on,
it is pleasanter to know that he is the possessor of it. The
'handsomest woman in the room' comes into the same category as the
finest picture or the most thoroughbred horse within his sphere; and
if the degree of pride in his possession be different, the kind is the
same. And so in minor proportions--from the most beautiful woman of
all, to simply beauty as a _sine quâ non_, whatever else may be
wanting. One other thing only is as absolute as this beauty, and that
is its undivided possession.
Another man's ideal is a good housekeeper and a careful mother; and he
does not care a rush whether his wife, if she is these, be pretty or
ugly. Provided she is active and industrious, minds the house well,
brings up the children as they ought to be brought up, has good
principles, is trustworthy and even-tempered, he is not particular as
to colour or form, and can even be brought to tolerate a limp or a
squint. Given the broad foundations of an honourable home, and he will
forego the lath and plaster of personal appearance which will not bear
the wear and tear of years and their troubles. The solid virtues
stand. His balance at the banker's is a fact; his good name and credit
with the tradespeople are facts; so is the comfort of his home; so are
the health, the morals, the education of his children. All these are
the true realities of life to him; but the beauty which changes to
deformity by small-pox, which fades under dyspepsia, grows stale
by habit, and is worn threadbare by the end of twenty years, is only a
skin-deep grace which he does not value. Perhaps he is right.
Certainly, some of the happiest marriages amongst one's acquaintances
are those where the wife has not one perceptible physical charm, and
where the whole force of her magnetic value lies in what she is, not
in how she looks.
Another man wants a tender, adoring, fair-haired seraph, who will
worship him as a demigod and accept him as her best revelation of
strength and wisdom. The more dependent she is, the better he will
love her; the less of conscious thought, of active will, of
originative power she has, the greater will be his regard and
tenderness. To be the one sole teacher and protector of such a gentle
little creature seems to him the most delicious joy and the best
condition of married life; and he holds Milton's famous lines to be
expressive of the only fitting relations between men and women. The
adoring seraph is his ideal; Griselda, Desdemona, Lucy Ashton, are his
highest culminations of womanly grace; and the qualities which appeal
the most powerfully to his generosity are the patience which will not
complain, the gentleness that cannot resent, and the love which
nothing can chill.
Another man wants a cultivated intelligence in his ideal. As an
author, an artist, a student, a statesman, he would like his wife to
be able to help him by the contact of bright wit and ready intellect.
He believes in the sex of minds, and holds no work complete which
has not been created by the one and perfected by the other. He sees
how women have helped on the leaders in troublous times; he knows that
almost all great men have owed something of their greatness to the
influence of a mother or a wife; he remembers how thoughts which had
lain dumb and dormant in men's brains for more than half their
lifetime have suddenly wakened up into speech and activity by the
influence of a woman great enough to call them forth. The adoring
seraph would be an encumbrance and nothing better than a child on his
hands; and the soul which had to be awakened and directed by him would
run great chance of remaining torpid and inactive all its days. He has
his own life to lead and round off; and, so far from wishing to
influence another's, he wants to be helped for himself.
Another man cares only for the birth and social position of the woman
to whom he gives his name and affection. To another yellow gold stands
higher than blue blood, and 'my wife's father' may have been a
rag-picker, so long as rag-picking had been distilled in a
sufficiently rich alembic leaving a residuum admitting no kind of
doubt. Venus herself without a dowry would be only a pretty seaside
girl with a Newtown pippin in her hand; but Miss Kilmansegg would be
something worth thinking of, if but little worth looking at.
One man delights in a smart, vivacious little woman of the
irrepressible kind. It makes no difference to him how petulant
she is, how full of fire and fury; the most passionate bursts of
temper simply amuse him, like the anger of a canary-bird, and he holds
it fine fun to watch the small virago in her tantrums, and to set her
going again when he thinks she has been a long enough time in
subsidence. His ideal of woman is an amusing little plaything, with a
great facility for being put up, and a dash of viciousness to give it
piquancy. Another wants a sweet and holy saint whose patient humility
springs from principle rather than from fear; another likes a
blithe-tempered, healthy girl with no nonsense about her, full of fun
and ready for everything, and he is not particular as to the strict
order or economy of the housekeeping, provided only his wife is at all
times willing to be his pleasant playmate and companion. Another
delights in something very quiet, very silent, very home-staying. One
must have first-rate music in his ideal woman; another, unimpeachable
taste; a third, strict order; a fourth, liberal breadth of nature; and
each has his own ideal, not only of nature but of person--to the exact
shade of the hair, the colour of the eyes and the oval of the face.
But all agree in the great fundamental requirements of truth and
modesty and love and unselfishness; for though it is impossible to
write of one womanly ideal as an absolute, it is very possible to
detail the virtues which ought to belong to all alike.
If this diversity of ideals be true of individuals, it is especially
true of nations, each of which has its own ideal woman varying
according to what is called the genius of the country. To the
Frenchman, if we are to believe Michelet and the novelists, it is a
feverish little creature, full of nervous energy but without muscular
force; of frail health and feeble organization; a prey to morbid
fancies which she has no strength to control nor yet to resist; now
weeping away her life in the pain of finding that her husband--a man
gross and material because husband--does not understand her, now
sighing over her delicious sins in the arms of the lover who does;
without reasoning faculties but with divine intuitions which are as
good as revelations; without cool judgment but with the light of
burning passions which guide her just as well; thinking by her heart
and carrying the most refined metaphysics into her love; subtle;
incomprehensible by the coarser brains of men and women who are only
honest; a creature born to bewilder and to be misled, to love and to
be adored, to madden men and to be destroyed by them.
It does not much signify that the reality is a shrewd, calculating,
unromantic woman, with a hard face and keen eyes, who for the most
part makes a good practical wife to her common-sense middle-aged
husband, who thinks more of her social position than of her feelings,
more of her children than of her lovers, more of her purse than of her
heart, and whose great object of life is a daily struggle for
centimes. It pleases the French to idealize their eminently practical
and worldly-wise women into this queer compound of hysterics and
adultery; and if it pleases them it need not displease us. To the
German his ideal is of two kinds--one, his Martha, the domestic
broad-faced _Hausmutter_, who cooks good dinners at small cost, and
mends the family linen as religiously as if this were the Eleventh
Commandment specially appointed for feminine fingers to keep, the
poetic culmination of whom is Charlotte cutting bread and butter; the
other, his Mary, his Bettina, full of mind and æsthetics and
heart-uplifting love, yearning after the infinite with holes in her
stockings and her shoes down at heel. For what are coarse material
mendings to the æsthetic soul yearning after the Infinite and
worshipping at the feet of the prophet?
In Italy the ideal woman of late times was the ardent patriot, full of
active energy, of physical force, of dauntless courage. In Poland it
is the patriot too, but of a more refined and etherealized type,
passively resenting Tartar tyranny by the subtlest feminine scorn, and
living in perpetual music and mourning. In Spain it is a woman
beautiful and impassioned, with the slight drawback of needing a world
of looking after, of which the men are undeniably capable. In
Mohammedan countries generally it is a comely smooth-skinned Dudù,
patient and submissive, always in good humour with her master,
economical in house-living to please the meanness, and gorgeous in
occasional attire to gratify the ostentation, of the genuine Oriental;
but by no means Dudù ever asleep and unoccupied. For, if not
allowed to take part in active outside life, the Eastern's wife or
wives have their home duties and their maternal cares like all other
women, and find to their cost that, if they unduly neglect them, they
will have a bad time of it with Ali Ben Hassan when the question comes
of piastres and sequins, and the dogs of Jews who demand payment, and
the pigs of Christians who follow suit.
The American ideal is of two kinds, like the German--the one, the
clever manager, the woman with good executive faculty in the matters
of buckwheat cakes and oyster gumbo, as is needed in a country so
poorly provided with 'helps;' the other, the aspiring soul who puts
her aspirations into deeds, and goes out into the world to do battle
with the sins of society as editress, preacher, stump-orator and the
like. It must be rather embarrassing to some men that this special
manifestation of the ideal woman at times advocates miscegenation and
free love; but perhaps we of the narrow old conventional type are not
up to the right mark yet, and have to wait until our own women are
thoroughly emancipated before we can rightly appreciate these
questions. At all events, if this kind of thing pleases the Americans,
it is no more our business to interfere with them than with the French
compound; and if miscegenation and free love seem to them the right
manner of life, let them follow it.
In all countries, then, the ideal woman changes, chameleon-like, to
suit the taste of men; and the great doctrine that her happiness
does somewhat depend on his liking is part of the very foundation of
her existence. According to his will she is bond or free, educated or
ignorant, lax or strict, housekeeping or roving; and though we
advocate neither the bondage nor the ignorance, yet we do hold to the
principle that, by the laws which regulate all human communities
everywhere, she is bound to study the wishes of man and to mould her
life in harmony with his liking. No society can get on in which there
is total independence of sections and members, for society is built up
on the mutual dependence of all its sections and all its members.
Hence the defiant attitude which women have lately assumed, and their
indifference to the wishes and remonstrances of men, cannot lead to
any good results whatever. It is not the revolt of slaves against
their tyrants which they have begun--in that we could sympathize--but
it is a revolt against their duties.