Rambles in Womanland Part 8

Love does to women what the sun does to flowers: it colours them, embellishes them, makes them look radiant and beautiful; but when it is too ardent it consumes and withers them.

There are two terribly embarra.s.sing moments in the life of a man. The first is when he has to say 'all' to the woman he loves, and the second when all is said.

If a man is not to a certain extent ill at ease in the presence of a woman, you may be quite sure that he does not really love her.

A woman explains the beauty of a woman; a man feels it. A man does not always know why a woman is beautiful; a woman always does.

The sweetest music in the ears of a woman is the sound of the praises of the man whom she loves.

It is a mistake for a married couple to consider that marriage has made them one. To be attractive to each other they should each preserve their personality quite distinct. Marriage is very often dull because man and wife are one, and feel lonely. Most people get bored in their own company.

Happiness in matrimony is sober, serious, based on love, confidence, and friends.h.i.+p. Those who seek in it frivolity, pleasure, noise, and pa.s.sion condemn themselves to penal servitude.

The great misfortune of mankind is that matrimony is the only vocation for which candidates have had no training; yet it is the one that requires the most careful preparation.

On the part of a husband, violent jealousy is an insult to his wife, but delicate, discreet jealousy is almost a compliment to her, for it proves his lack of self-confidence, and that sometimes he feels he is not good enough for her, not worthy of her.

Most women have the hearts of poets and the minds of diplomatists. What makes a wife so useful to an amba.s.sador is that she adds her own power of intuition to the five senses already possessed by her husband.

Love in matrimony can live only on condition that man and wife remain interesting in each other's eyes. Devotion, fidelity, attention to duty, and all the troop of domestic virtues will not be sufficient to keep love alive.

Beauty is not the mother of Love. On the contrary, it is often love which engenders beauty, gives brilliancy to the eyes, gracefulness to the body, vibration to the voice. Love is the sun that hatches the flowers of the soul. The face which reflects all the inner sentiments of the heart betrays the love of its owner, and is beautiful.

Those who in good faith promise eternal love and those who believe in such promises are dupes--the former of their hearts, the latter of their vanity. Wine well taken care of improves by keeping, but not for ever; it is destined to turn to vinegar sooner or later.

Love is a great healer. The worst characteristic traits of a man and of a woman have been known to be cured by it.

Men and women do not love before they are thirty, men especially. Until then it is little more than rehearsing. Fortunate are those who retain for the play the same company they had engaged for the rehearsal.

CHAPTER X

WOMAN'S MISSION IN THIS WORLD

Naturalists make little difference between women and the other females of the animal kingdom: they declare that the mission of woman is to be a mother. Napoleon I., who was a naturalist, being asked to give a definition of the best woman, answered: 'The one who bears most children.' And as for him man was mere 'cannon flesh,' I am surprised he did not say, 'The one who bears most boys.'

Moralists are kinder to women; they go so far as to grant that woman's mission is twofold: that she is intended to be a wife and a mother; that she is to be the guardian of the hearth, submissive and devoted to man, her lord and master; to look after her household, and be absorbed by her duties toward her husband and children.

No sinecure, this mission of woman, as you see--no joke either; but moralists have no sense of humour--not a particle of it.

No doubt this double role of wife and mother is most respectable; it is even sacred; but woman's nature demands something else. To restrict her circle of activity and influence to her family is to misappreciate her many faculties, her aspirations, her feelings, which, like those of men, are ent.i.tled to respect; it amounts to not recognising that her mission is not only familial, but social also.

I will not dwell on the part she is called upon to play in the family as wife and mother. We men all know it, whether we are husbands or sons; but we have also to consider what the role of woman is in that society of which she is the great civilizing element as well as the greatest ornament.

The most n.o.ble part that has been allotted to woman is that of the flower in the vegetable kingdom. This role consists in throwing a spell over the world, in making life more refined and poetical--in a word, in spreading fragrance around her and imparting it to all who come in contact with her. A wag once said that but for the women men could have hoped for Paradise. Good! But what about this world? Is not woman the direct or indirect motive for all our actions? Is she not the embodiment of the beautiful, and therefore the mother of Art?

If she is sometimes the cause of a crime, is she not always the cause of the most heroic deeds performed by man? Can we for a moment suppose society without her? Why, without her it would fall into a state of indolence and degradation, even of utter abjection. Would life be worth living without the sweet presence of kind, cheerful, and amiable women?

Ah, my dear sir, make fun of woman in your club as much as you like; crack jokes at her expense to your heart's content; but acknowledge frankly that you are under her power--at least, I hope, under her influence--and that you could no more do without her than without the air which enables you to breathe.

Talk of woman's mission as wife and mother, as naturalists and moralists do, but let all of us artists cry at the top of our voices that woman's mission is to make life beautiful by the cultivation of her own beauty, beauty of body, mind, and heart.

It is the duty of woman to look as beautiful as she can; it is her imperious duty to charm the world by her sweetness and amiability. A woman who neglects this duty is guilty toward her fellow-creatures, even guilty toward her Maker, by not helping the destiny for which she was created. Countries are civilized in proportion to the influence that women have over men in them.

As long as gardens have flowers and the world has beautiful and amiable women, so long will life be worth living.

CHAPTER XI

IS WOMAN INFERIOR TO MAN?

Many, many years ago a great council was held to discuss the question whether women had souls. I forget the conclusion which that learned a.s.sembly arrived at; but what is certain is that now most men do believe that women have souls, although a great number of them are still of opinion that woman is a being inferior to man.

They hold that man is the lord of creation, the masterpiece, the last word of the Almighty.