Rambles in Womanland Part 15

CHAPTER XXIX

SHALL LOVE BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY?

This momentous question has been asked, and is daily answered, in a Paris paper called _La Fronde_, on the staff of which all the writers are women. This is a very delicate question to ask, and I am not sure that it is particularly politic to do so on the part of women.

That women take love more seriously than men is a fact which, I believe, is incontestable; but what would become of women if men were to decide in the negative and answer that love should not be taken seriously?

Their only protection, their only weapon would be taken away from them.

See what happens in countries, not civilized, I must quickly add, where men do not take love seriously.

In these countries there is practically no difference between a woman and a slave, and even a beast of burden. The Arab, the Kaffir, the Zulu, the Soudanese, can be seen on horseback, or walking majestically with a blanket slung over his shoulder, while his womankind are following, carrying a baby on their backs, a pail of water or a cask of beer on their heads, and the rest of the burden in their hands.

These primitive creatures find all this quite natural, men as well as women, and their greatest source of amus.e.m.e.nt is to see a white man carry his wife's umbrella. How they pity and scorn that poor white man!

They look at him, and seem to say: 'Aren't you a man?' The more these men treat their women as inferior beings, the more highly the women think of the men, and the more respect they feel for them. And we would probably do the same if love, which we men do take seriously, did not subject, and even enslave, us to women.

Indeed, this would be our right--our Divine right--and women, I repeat, are very impolitic to compel us to remind them of what happened at the beginning.

We men have a Divine right to rule over women, and if we use that power given to us only with the greatest moderation, it is because we love women seriously.

This love for you, ladies, is your only safeguard. See how imprudent of you it is to come and ask us if we take love seriously.

Not only do we take love seriously, but I believe that there is nothing else in this world that is taken so seriously.

Love is the only universally serious thing in the world. Ask scientists what they think of actors. They will tell you that there is no such despicable profession in the world. Yet actors--and rightly, too--take their art seriously.

Literature and music appear to those who cultivate them the most absolutely serious things in existence, yet men of business, whose chief object in life is money-making, shrug their shoulders, and feel ready to say, like a London Lord Mayor to his son, who wanted to devote his life to literature: 'I will be very much obliged to you if you will decide on choosing an honest and respectable calling.'

What is serious to some is not to others. There is nothing in this world which is universally serious--that is to say, recognised as serious by all the civilized members of the human race, except bread and love.

The mission of man is to keep it alive with bread, and we perpetuate it with love. When we have eaten and when we have loved, we have fulfilled our mission. All the rest is accessory, and only more or less serious.

Poets and artists, who help make life beautiful, are not indispensable; they are not serious. Scientists, who make great discoveries, help make life more comfortable; they protect us against disease; they drug us; they cure us, but they are not indispensable--the world would go on without them; they are not serious.

Only as long as there is bread and there is love will the world go on and the earth continue to be inhabited by the human race; bread and love are serious.

I fear that I may have offended many people who think that they are indispensable and that their vocation is serious. Well, I am very sorry--very sorry indeed--but I cannot help it. The world was made thus, and when it was made I was not consulted.

Put aside a few men and women, most of them to be found in the leisure cla.s.s or among the parasites of society, for whom love is a pastime, and you will find that love is taken very seriously by men, if not quite in the same way as it is taken by women, who are more delicate and refined psychologists than men generally are.

But, my dear ladies, as long as we men are only too proud and happy to fight the battle of life for you, to live for you, and, when occasion arises, sometimes die for you, please thank the progress of civilization, which has made us forget the origin of our relations toward each other; do not give us reasons for reminding you of it, and, for Heaven's sake! when we have spent years working twelve hours a day, providing you with all the comforts, and often the luxuries, of life, reared and settled in the world a large family of boys and girls, do not come and ask us if we take love seriously. You are adding insult to injury. Yes, indeed, we take love seriously, and matrimony too.

CHAPTER x.x.x

ARE MEN FAIR TO WOMEN?

'You are often writing about women,' fair correspondents keep writing to me, 'sometimes praising them, often criticising them. Couldn't you now and then tell us something of what you think of men, especially in their relations with women? We know you to be fair, sometimes generous, always good-humoured. Now, do have a try.'

The invitation is tempting and intended to be pleasant, and I yield to it, not only without any reluctance, but with a good deal of pleasure.

To plunge _in medias res_, Are men fair to women? The laws, which are made by men, the usages--everything is calculated to cause men to reduce to a minimum the qualities, the intelligence, and the influence of women.

For instance, let a woman make a reputation in art or literature, and men begin to smile and shrug their shoulders: they dispute her talent.

I maintain, without much fear of contradiction, that a woman, in order to succeed in a profession, must have ten times more talent than a man, inasmuch as a man will have friends and comrades to help him, and a woman only difficulties put in her way by man to surmount.

Man receives encouragements from all sides. If he is successful, he even knows that his talent will receive official recognition. In France he may become a member of the French Academy; in England, of the Royal Academy. Orders will be given him by rich patrons, and 'orders'

conferred on him by sovereigns and statesmen.

Why should not women get all this? Why, simply because man, being both 'verdict' and 'execution,' has kept everything for himself. Personally, I have no great liking for female genius--to my prejudiced mind a female genius is a freak; but what I like or do not like is quite out of the question. Here I state facts, and why women should not have as much chance to prove their genius as men I should like to know.

Everybody knows that the famous School of Alexandria, in the fifth century, had as orators and teachers the greatest philosophers and theologians of the time, such men as St. Jerome, St. Cyril, etc.

Among these sublime intellects rose a young girl, twenty years old, pure, radiantly beautiful, who modestly said to them:

'Please make room for me--hear me. I want my place in the glorious sun.'

She ascended the famous chair and began to explain before an enthusiastic crowd the works of Plato and Aristotle. Her talent, her learning, her eloquence astonished the people who thronged to hear young and fair Hypatia, daughter of Theo.

Now, do you believe that all those learned, bearded philosophers and theologians encouraged her, applauded her? No. History tells us they lay in wait in a street where she used to pa.s.s, and when she appeared in her chariot, resplendent with youth, beauty, and glory, acclaimed by the crowd, they--St. Cyril and his companions--seized her, killed her, cut her body in hundreds of pieces, which they threw to the four winds of the earth.

Now, modern Hypatias are not treated quite so roughly by men, who content themselves with turning them to ridicule, although I have heard of some who did not hesitate in disposing of successful women's reputations as the learned doctors of Alexandria disposed of the body of Hypatia.

Women, perhaps unfortunately, cannot all be intended to be mothers, or spend their lives mending socks and attending to spring house-cleaning.

Such women, who have received a high education, may not feel inclined to be shop-girls, ladies'-maids, or cooks. If they feel that they have talent, and can paint or write successfully, every man ought to give them a helping hand.

CHAPTER x.x.xI

A PLEA FOR THE WORKING WOMAN

'There are too many men in the world,' once exclaimed H. Taine. This was only a joke, but there is a great deal of truth in it. There are, in France especially, far too many men engaged in official Government offices, in professional occupations, and in stores; too many doctors without patients; too many lawyers without briefs; too many functionaries, each doing little or nothing, and the others seeing that he does it; too many men in stores showing women dresses, silks, and gloves.