CHAPTER XV
CAN GRATITUDE ENGENDER LOVE?
Expecting gratitude is asking for the price of a service--Love keeps out of it.
Has love anything to do with gratitude? In other words, does gratitude engender love? No; to kill a woman's love for him a man has only to keep on reminding her of what he has done to earn her gratitude, and by the same means a woman will obtain the same result with a man.
A woman will often hate a man who lavishes money upon her, and will love the first man who comes along to whom she will owe no gratitude, simply because the former degrades her by paying for her favours, whereas the latter enables her to regain her independence and to raise herself in her own estimation.
A man who marries below his rank in society may be loved by his wife, not because, but although, he has raised her to his rank. And a man will seldom love a wife whom he has married for money, because by so doing he has to a certain extent sold himself, and love never goes abreast with either feelings of self-degradation or absence of respect for the other party. This is why mesalliances, as a rule, turn out to be very unhappy marriages. The best guarantee of happiness in matrimonial life is the equal footing on which a husband and wife will go through the years of their association. Neither of them must have a feeling of owing anything to the other. It must be a partnership into which each party has brought the same amount of capital.
Gratitude will engender affection, devotion, great friendship, but not love. Nay, I will go further and risk the following statement: Not only gratitude does not engender love, but it will stand in its way.
A woman does not love a man because she feels it is her duty to love him. Love has nothing to do with duty. You cannot help falling in love any more than you can help becoming gray or bald, and you may fall in love against all the interests of your life. The more you argue against love, the more you love. Love has nothing to do with arguing and reasoning, any more than it has with duty and gratitude. You cannot command love to come or go, and many a woman has been on her knees praying that she might love a man to whom she owed a debt of gratitude, but the prayer has seldom been heard. A woman will remain faithful to a man out of duty or out of gratitude, but all that will not make her love him.
No, no; and I will also say that for a man to feel that he has to be grateful to a woman is injurious to his love for that woman. He so hates himself for being unable to do for her all he would like to do, that he curses himself and fails to love her more for all her patience, for all the devotion she shows to him through the hardships of life. A man loves a woman all the more for all he can do for her, and so does a woman a man. This is the natural consequence of the fact that we often love people (not necessarily of the opposite sex), not for what they actually do for us, but for what they allow us to do for them. M. Perrichon, in 'Le Voyage de M. Perrichon,' by Labiche, a play worthy of Moliere, had a daughter whose hand was sought by two suitors. One saved his life; the other, more cunning, pretended to have his life saved by him. Perrichon prefers the latter, simply because the first reminds him that he cannot ride, and made a fool of him, while the second one made a hero of him by enabling him to boast that he had saved a man's life.
Now, this does not by any means show the better side of human nature. But we are not writing a panegyric of man or woman: we are philosophizing a bit, and seeking to speak the truth and our mind. Of course it is possible, and I hope it is a fact, that a lofty, exalted nature may love through gratitude; but lofty, exalted natures are the exception.
A man may win the love of a woman by risking his own life to save hers; but in this case it is not only gratitude that engenders love; it is an act of heroism, and an act of heroism will always appeal to a woman. On the other hand, a wounded soldier may fall in love with a woman who nurses him; but in this case it is the sweet ministration of a tender woman, nursing--that most womanly role, that of an angel--that will appeal to man, not gratitude pure and simple.
I have known men fall in love with girls of low character, have them educated--physically, mentally, and intellectually--and marry them, with the most disastrous results.
Of course, when people already love, gratitude will increase their love for the one they owe it to; what I mean to say is, that if love does not exist, it is not gratitude that will engender it.
Love is inspired by an exaltation that makes us feel better or greater. Gratitude, like pity, makes us look smaller; that is why gratitude does not, and cannot, engender love.
A cynic once remarked that ingratitude was the independence of the heart. He might have added that gratitude, by attempting to force the heart, fails to touch it in the tender relations between man and woman.