Part 5

The prolonged association of parents with children, the protraction of mother-love beyond the infancy of offspring, the association of men and women intimately, but not entirely for the perpetuation of the race; the instinct of exclusiveness in the relations of man and woman, and their refinement by sentiments of romance; the development of chivalry and accountability for others in man, and of modesty in woman; the separation of one part of the race from much that the other part must often be in close contact with; the creation of a domestic atmosphere which is not like that of the shop or the field--the essential features of the home and the family--these are the best results of civilization, and against them the Feminist storms. Yet they are more important, if possible, to woman than to man.

Women are different from men as the result of ages of segregation, and that is above all things else the object of Feminist attack. The whole purpose of Feminism is to make the conditions of life the same for men and women. Women are more chaste than men, and the Feminists may be right when they say that this has been forced upon woman by man, but they are mistaken when they treat this not as a gain, but as a grievance. It need not be disputed that men ought to be as pure as women, but it is at least a great gain to hold one sex to a high standard of purity. In the course of time something may be achieved by the other--much has been already, or mixed society would be impossible--but it will not be effected by the Feminists who complain of servitude to man-made standards of morals, and demand for women the freedom practiced surreptitiously by some men.

The common notion of the innate moral superiority of woman is due to fond recollections of happy childhood, to the warm language of poets, to the romance of the male when in the springtime of life his fancies lightly turn to thoughts of love, and to actual differences which are the result of the segregation of women. Feminism is breaking that down, and we are already getting some of the results. In _The Vanishing Lady_, _The Atlantic Monthly_, December, 1911, Mrs. Comer finds that the contrast between the people in the novels of Howells and in those of David Graham Phillips suggests something like a submergence of Christian civilization under a wave of materialism and paganism. The interval between these two writers is the period during which Feminism has been spreading like an epidemic. Women have not saved society from the change. The advanced women have not tried to. Like their clothes, they have been entirely up-to-date, and the materialism and paganism of the day are quite as apparent among women as among men.

This is Mrs. Comer’s description of the type of woman who is being evolved by Feminism:

One cannot travel far in these days without being filled with wonder at the vast numbers of these women roaming the continent. They are usually of a willful fatness, with flesh kept firm by the masseuse; their brows are lowering, and there is the perpetual hint of hardness in their faces; their apparel is exceedingly good, but their manners are ungentle, their voices harsh and discontented; there is no light in their eyes, no charm or softness in their presence. They are fitting mates, perhaps, for the able-bodied pagans who are overrunning the earth, but hardly suitable nurses for a generation which must redeem us from materialism, if, indeed, we are to be so redeemed. Facing them, one wonders if race-suicide is not one of nature’s merciful devices?

In a period of rapidly acquired fortunes women have accepted the dollar as the unit of individual worth quite as readily as men have, and have applied it more relentlessly, for men are more democratic than women; rich and poor wear the same costumes, and in their friendships they do not draw the financial line so closely as their wives do. During the spread of Feminism manners have coarsened, modesty is disappearing, the fiction and drama of the day familiarize the young with vice under the thin pretext of fortifying virtue. If it be true, as is sometimes charged, that women are taking to alcohol and tobacco, it is merely one additional evidence that in breaking down the distinctions between men and women, the standards of the former are not raised, but those of the latter are lowered.

Two women have lately suggested the assimilation of the figures of the male and female of the species. Ellen Key refers to the flattening of woman’s bosom as the result of the growing use of artificial means of nourishing infants, and “Lucas Malet” speaks of “large-boned, athletic, sexless persons, petticoated, yet conspicuously deficient in haunches and busts.”

III

As the garb of male and female in the lower animals does not differ radically, and seldom varies much except in the brighter hues of the male, so the socialist who seeks to assimilate the human sexes, objects to radical differences in their costume, and many essays toward the adoption of the costume of men have been made by advanced women. Morris and Bax, in _Socialism, Its Growth and Outcome_, deplore differences of costume, saying: “Another fault may be noted in all bad periods (as in the present), that an extreme difference is made between the garments of the sexes.” Since that was written the skirts of women have been reduced to a point suggestive of a single trouser instead of a pair, and the divided skirt, the harem skirt and the riding costume for the cross saddle indicate a movement that Morris and Bax would welcome.

There are history and politics in clothes. Trousers are described as a product of democracy, because they conceal the material of the stocking, whether silk or wool. Not so very long ago men wore laces, and ribbons, and jewels, and delicate tints. With the gradual breaking down of the caste system, the spread of democracy in politics, and of the brotherhood of man in philanthropy and religion, men have reduced their costumes to the present inartistic, but very serviceable standard. There has been no lasting change in that direction in the costume of women. If the determination of some women to “make men of themselves” had coincided with the severe simplicity of the tailor-made suit there would have been, as there has been in some cases, a certain measure of harmony between the inner and the outer woman. But the period of aggressive Feminism coincides with decrees of fashion that are designed to expose as much of the female figure as the police will permit. The paucity of garments, and their thinness and scantiness are suggestive of Vivien, upon whom

A robe Of samite without price, that more exprest Than hid her, clung about her lissome limbs.

The pageants and tableaux which afford women an opportunity to appear in the garb of statues, leave one somewhat in doubt whether Feminism relies chiefly upon arson and malicious mischief, or upon the arts Vivien practiced upon Merlin, for the accomplishment of its ends. Salome is dancing before Herod in the confident expectation that he will give her the half of his kingdom. But it is idle for women in the Western world, in the Twentieth Century, to pretend that they are odalisques, compelled by their helplessness to appeal to the sensuous side of men. They exhibit themselves for their own pleasure, and they dance the whole list of modern dances, with their vulgar names, because they enjoy them.

The extreme of fashion, in this day when Feminism is demanding larger opportunities to refine, purify and uplift the world, is fast reaching the point of

One Pan Ready to twitch the Nymph’s last garment off,

and on the Paris stage this has already been done, with the approbation of the audience, until the Nymph came forward to the footlights to bow her acknowledgment of the applause, when the audience intimated plainly that she was overdoing her part.

In Berlin, in Chicago, and in Washington, very recently opposition to distinctive titles for married and single women has broken out. It is asked indignantly why women, and not men, should be tagged with their conjugal condition. One woman remarks, not without force, that it is more important to know whether men are married, than to know whether women are wives or maidens.

But men have so far been the more public, and therefore the better known of the two. General information about their status is more probable. Perhaps the conjugal status of men ought to be indicated in their titles, but they do not change their names in marriage, and therefore it is less convenient to change their titles. At any rate, it is better that the conjugal condition of one sex should be indicated than that that of neither should be. The distinctive titles for married and single women go back in England, France and Germany, rather less than 250 years, and they constitute a part of the differentiation of women from men which the Feminist resents, but which is really one of the most valuable products of civilization. It is a necessary feature of a society based upon the family as the unit, but in which women are free to move about without guards, and without the supervision of their men.

Intimately connected with the title is the last name the woman is to bear. The Feminist resents being “branded” upon marriage by her husband’s name. Certainly under Ellen Key’s system it would be folly to change the name for each association. One distinguished Feminist in Boston retained her maiden name after marriage, and her daughter uses the names of both parents. But this does not solve, it only evades, the real problem. What is the mother’s name? It is the name of her father. There is no reason to the Feminist or the socialist why she should bear the name of her father, any more than that her daughter should bear her father’s name.

There are no family names now except the names of the men, and in a Feminist society there can be no family names; which will not matter, for there will be no family. The Feminist is less frank in admitting this than the socialist is, but their programs are equally destructive of it. Each person will select his, or her, own name. To this social individualism leads. In no other way will the Feminist woman be satisfied that her identity is not merged in a man, and her ownership by a man indicated for public information.

IV

Feminism is a declaration of sex war, Edna Kenton proclaims. Yet the havoc involved in this might well give advanced women pause. Miss Tarbell (_The Uneasy Woman_, _The American Magazine_, January, 1912) does not believe that “Man is a conscious tyrant, holding woman an unwilling captive--cutting her off from the things in life that really matter--education, freedom of speech, the ballot.” She asks:

Is man the calculating tyrant the modern uneasy woman charges?... Is not man a victim as well as she--caught in the same trap? Moreover, is woman never a tyrant? That a man’s life may not be altogether satisfactory, she declines to believe. The uneasy woman has always taken it for granted that man is happier than woman.

Mrs. Rogers recognizes that man, not woman, is the idealist. The unselfishness of woman, beyond her willingness to sacrifice herself for her offspring, is poetic license. She is often unselfish; so is man. In a small material way it may be worth noticing that the amount of ordinary life insurance in this country, nearly all of which is paid for by men for the benefit of women, is thirteen times the amount of the national debt. Man and woman have been happy together, or miserable together. There have been times when a man pounded his wife, but she in turn pounded the children, and he in his turn was pounded by men higher than he in the social scale. With an improvement in manners and morals, man ceased submitting to pounding on the one side, and inflicting it on the other. When force was the rule in all social relations, both suffered from it. Since force ceased to be the rule, woman has had very much the better of man; for she cares less about his comfort than he does about hers; and while he will give up a good deal for the sake of peace, there is little that she will not give up peace for the sake of. “It is the perseverance which conquers,” says Thackeray, “the daily return to the object desired. Take my advice, my dear sir, when you see your womankind resolute about a matter, give up at once and have a quiet life.”

The common interests of men and women, subserved by co-operation and certain to be destroyed by competition, should avert sex war. The bonds of matrimony, which gall so many women, are mainly restraints upon men, and protections of women. Their dissolution would be cheerfully submitted to by very many men, but it ought not to be necessary to refer to the condition women would find themselves in after a few years. The condition of the greater part of the women who have achieved economic independence in the mills and shops is not such as to commend economic independence to all the others, disregarding for a moment the certain destruction of the domestic life, the home, and the family, that would result from the universal economic independence of married women.

The answer to both Feminist and Socialist is that of The Lords of Their Hands, in Kipling’s, _An Imperial Rescript_. They were on the point of signing the pact which would put an end to all struggle in the industrial world--

When--the laugh of a blue-eyed maiden rang clear through the council hall, And each one heard Her laughing, as each one saw Her plain-- Saidie, Mimi, or Olga, Gretchen, or Mary Jane.

After several delegates had expressed themselves energetically in regard to their plans for themselves and the Eternal Feminine, who was untouched by the Feminist movement--

They passed one resolution: “Your sub-committee believe

You can lighten the curse of Adam when you’ve lightened the curse of Eve. But till we are built like angels--with hammer and chisel and pen We will work for ourself and a woman, forever and ever. Amen.”

TABU AND TEMPERAMENT

When, I wonder, did the word “temperament” come into fashion with us? We can hardly have got it from the French, for the French mean by it something very different from what we do; though it is just possible that we did get it from them, and have merely Bowdlerized the term. At all events, whatever it stands for, it long since became a great social asset for women, and a great social excuse for men. Perhaps it came in when we discovered that artists were human beings. At least, for many years, we never praised an artist without using the word. It does not necessarily imply “charm,” for people have charm irrespective of temperament, and temperament irrespective of charm. It is something that the Philistine never has: that we know. But what, by all the gods of clarity, does it mean?

It means, I fancy, in one degree or another, the personal revolt against convention. The individual who was “different,” who did not let his inhibitions interfere with his epigrams, who was not afraid to express himself, who hated _clichés_ of every kind--how well we know that figure in motley, who turned every occasion into a fancy-dress ball! All the inconvenient things he did were forgiven him, for the sake of the amusing things he said. Indeed, we hardly stopped to realize that his fascination was largely a matter of vocabulary. Now it is one thing to sow your wild oats in talk, and quite another to live by your own kaleidoscopic paradoxes. The people who frowned on the manifestations of “temperament” were merely those logical creatures who believed that if you expressed your opinions regardless of other people’s feelings, you probably meant what you said. They did not know the pathology of epigram: the basic truth of which is that word-intoxicated people express an opinion long before they dream of holding it. They say what they think, whether they think it or not. Only, if you talk with incessant variety about what ought to be done, and then never do any of the wild things you recommend, you become in the end perfectly powerless as a foe of convention.

This tactical fact the unconventional folk have at last become aware of; and, accordingly, hostility to convention is ceasing somewhat to take itself out in phrases. Conventions, at the present moment, are really menaced. The most striking sign of this is that people are now making unconventionality a social virtue, instead of an unsocial vice. The switches have been opened, and the laden trains must take their chance of a destination.

The praise of temperament, I verily believe, was the entering wedge. But whatever the first cause, “conventional” is certainly in bad odor as an epithet. And this is really an interesting phenomenon, worth investigating. What is it that makes it a term of reproach? Why must you never say it about your dearest friend? Why must you contradict, in a shocked tone, if your dearest friend is said to be conventional? Most of my best friends are conventional, I am glad to say; but even I should never think of describing them to others thus.

Conventional people are supposed to lack intelligence--the power to think for themselves. (It seems to be pretty well taken for granted that you cannot think for yourself, and decide to think what the majority of your kind thinks. If you agree with the majority, it must be because you have no mental processes.) They are felt to lack charm: to have nothing unexpected and delightful to give you. And, nowadays, they are (paradoxes are popular) supposed to be perilous to society, because they are immovable, because they do not march with the times, because they cling to conservative conceptions while the parties of progress are re-making the world. All these reproaches are, at present, conveyed in the one word.

Now it is a great mistake to confound conventionality with simplicity--with that simplicity which indicates a brain inadequate to dealing with subtleties; or to confound “temperament” and unconventionality with a highly organized nature. The anthropologists have exploded all that. I have looked warily at anthropologists ever since the day when I went to hear a great Greek scholar lecture on the Iliad, and listened for an hour to talk about bull-roarers and leopard-societies. I doubt if the anthropologists have any more perspective than other scientists. I am as near being an old Augustan as any twentieth-century observer can be: “nihil humani,” _etc._ But, for God’s sake, let it be human! Palæontology is a poor substitute for history. No: I do not love any scientists, even the anthropologists. But I do think we ought to be grateful to them for proving to us that primitive people are a hundred times as conventional as we; and that their codes are almost too complicated for European minds to master. If anyone is still under the dominance of Rousseau, Chateaubriand _et Cie._, I wish he would sit down impartially before Messrs. Spencer and Gillen’s exposition of group-marriage among the Australian aborigines. If, in three hours, he knows whom, supposing he were a Matthurie of the dingo totem, he could marry without incurring punishment, or even the death penalty, he had better take his subtlety into Central Australia: he is quite wasted on civilization. Or he might go over and reform Yuan-Shi’h-Kai’s administration: the Chinese would take to him enormously.

Someone may retort that I am not exactly making out a shining case for _tabu_, in citing the very nasty natives of Australia as notable examples of what _tabu_ can do for society. My point is only this: that it is folly to chide conventional people for simplicity, since convention is a very complicated thing; or for dulness, since it takes a good deal of intelligence and a great many inhibitions to follow a social code. To be different from everyone else, you have only to shut your eyes and stop your ears, and act as your nervous system dictates. By that uncommonly easy means, you could cause a tremendous sensation in any drawing-room, while your brain went quite to sleep. The natives of Central Australia are not nice; but they are certainly nicer than they would be if they practised free love all the year round, instead of on rigidly specified occasions. Their conventions are the only morality they have. Some day, perhaps, they will do better. But it will not be by forsaking conventions altogether. For surely, in order to be attractive, we must have some ideals, and above all some restraints. Civilization is merely an advance in taste: accepting, all the time, nicer things, and rejecting nasty ones.

When the temperamental and unconventional people are not mere plagiarists of dead eccentrics, they lack, in almost every case, the historic sense. I am far from saying that all conventional folk have it; but they have at least the merit of conforming. If they do not live by their own intelligence, it is because they live by something that they modestly value a good deal more. It is better that a dull person should follow the herd: his initiatives would probably be very painful to himself and everyone else. No convention gets to be a convention at all except by grace of a lot of clever and powerful people first inventing it, and then imposing it on others. You can be pretty sure, if you are strictly conventional, that you are following genius--a long way off. And unless you are a genius yourself, that is a good thing to do. Unless we are geniuses, the lone hunt is not worth while: we had better hunt with the pack. Unless we are geniuses, there is much more fun in playing the game; there is much more fun in caste and class and clan. Unconventional people are apt to be Whistlers who cannot paint. Of course there is something very dull about the person who cannot give his reasons for his social creed. But if it is all a question of instinct, better a trained instinct than an untrained one. I am inclined to think that the mid-Victorian prejudice against--let us say--actors and actresses, was well founded. Under Victoria (or should one say under mid-Victoria?) stock companies were not chaperoned, and ladies and gentlemen went on the stage very infrequently. What is the point of admitting to your house someone who will be very uncomfortable there himself, and who will make everyone else even more uncomfortable? It is not that we are afraid he will eat with his knife: that is a detail we might put up with. But eating or not eating with your knife is merely one of the little signs by which we infer other things. In this mad world, anyone may do or be anything; but the man who has been brought up to eat with his knife is the less likely to have been brought up by people who would teach him to respect a woman or not to break a confidence. It is a stupid rule of thumb; but, after all, until you know a person intimately, how are you going to judge except by such fallible means? I have nothing in the world against Nature’s noblemen; but the burden of proof is, of practical necessity, on their shoulders. Manners are not morals--precisely; yet, socially speaking, both have the same basis, namely, the Golden Rule. No one must be made more uncomfortable or more unhappy because he has been with you. Now, in spite of Oscar, it is worse to be unhappy than to be bored; and I would rather be the heroine of a not very clever comedy of manners than of a first-class tragedy. Most of us, when we are once over twenty, are no more histrionic, really, than that. The conventional person may bore you (though it is by no means certain that he will) but he will never, of his own volition, make you unhappy unless by way of justified retort. He will never put you, verbally or practically, into a nasty hole. Perhaps he will never give you the positive scarlet joys of shock and thrill. But, dear me! that brings us to another point.