CORRESPONDENCE.
THE "AMERICAN WOMAN."—II.
[To TUE EDITOR OF TUE " SPECTATOft.".1 Sin,—It is proper to repeat the reservation which was made in the outset that the term "American woman" is intended to define a type, and not to describe the mothers, wives, and daughters of the average American man.
There yet remains one function which is in the exclusive possession of the woman, and no means have been discovered up to the present time by which it can be better performed. That is the part which she plays in the propagation of the species. Deprived of this excuse for existence, the female of the human race becomes entirely a parasite. And yet in respect of this remaining function there is some evidence that the "American woman" is not doing her best, that she is following the example of that unprofitable servant who wrapped up his one talent in a napkin. It is quite possible that this indisposition to exercise a natural function is not due to recalcitrancy, but to an instinct that the species is not worth reproducing. By a purely mental process a woman might arrive at the conclusion that this human race is not worth propagating, and there is some ground for that view of the case. But she should remain true to the austerity of this doctrine, and not vitiate the intellectual independence of which she boasts by involving herself in social conditions. The time for proclaiming one's freedom is before, not after, one has consented to eat the bread of another. But the plea which the "American woman" puts forward is the less cynical one that the quality of offspring is more important than quantity. This, I believe, is a favourite subject of discussion at those assemblages of women which with some degree of incongruity are styled mothers' meetings. At one of these meetings, inquiry showed that the technical motherhood estimated in terms of offspring amounted to •87 per cent. An examination of this defence of quality against quantity involves the assumption that it is worth considering the opinion of persons who know nothing of the matter in hand, and the further assumption that motherhood is conferred by the mere act of attendance at these meetings. The plea is fallacious, for it is a law of life discovered by experience that individual degeneration of the offspring accompanies numerical diminution. But one who would not object much to the sudden extiuction of the race might well deplore a long gradation of decay. There is a profound scientific refutation of this fallacy that quality may be obtained at the expense of quantity. Professor Karl Pearson has shown from his investigations into the inherit- ance of tuberculosis that the earlier members of a large family are more apt to inherit disease than those who are born later, and that, therefore, the limitation of families to two children, which now appears to be the desirable namber, is increasing the percentage of persons with weak constitu- tions. This is Nature's method of dealing with the fictitious law of primogeniture. Human ingenuity is powerless in face of the mysterious laws by which reproduction is governed ; and created beings invariably get the worst of it when they set themselves in opposition to those laws. But, fortunately or unfortunately, a diminishing birth-rate is confined only to those societies which we are accustomed to think of as highly civilised. The phenomenon is not new. The Greeks fore- saw and feared it. To them the Amazon was the woman broken away from her natural obligations, always a peril to the race. Amongst the Romans Juvenal made his griin jests at her expense. A false education, he affirmed, which stimulated false energies and excited abnormal ambitions, made her contemptuous of her femininity, and encouraged her to substitute for it an ideal which was hybrid and grotesque. It was a favourite view of Sir Thomas Browne that the stork only chose to inhabit those countries which were free. Strangely enough, in these days it is to the countries which are free—if freedom be indicated by a Republican form of government—that this bird of good omen comes the least frequently.
An instinct fails when it ceases to be exercised. When women in the progress of civilisation abandoned the practice of living in trees for the comfort of a cave, it may be well imagined that they quickly forgot the nice art of tree-keeping. Similarly those who live in " flats " no longer retain a remem- brance of the days when they dwelt in houses, and the house as a habitation has become as extinct for them as the cave. The instinct for propagating the species is no exception to this law, and in time the female of this type will become sexless in all but form, which is now so firmly fixed that we may not expect any fundamental alteration. And yet a variation in type is appearing. The "American woman" retains her girlhood until comparatively late in life, and then suddenly, to her grief and rage, falls into a condition of senility which no devices • serve long to ' postpone. Indeed, the expression " married girls " is commonly employed in those periodicals which concern themselves with her doings. And the proof that this instinct is failing is found in the remedy which is offered,—that the nature of it be taught in schools from books on physiology. Self-reliance is the most deadly gift which the female of this race can possess ; and yet the girl who is destined to develop into an "American woman" is taught from her earliest years to be assertive of her opinions, insistent upon her rights, and clamorous for a consideration which can only be given ungrudgingly when it is least demanded. And so she goes through life with squared shoulders and set face, alert fdr " any insult to her womanhood." The American man, loving peace, desiring to be left to his employments and devices, pretends to acquiesce, and so leaves her in the enjoyment of the fool's paradise which she has created for herself. A militant woman is as futile as a militant Church. The American boy who has been sedulously taught by the spoken and printed word that the American girl is the highest product of civilisation—a miracle of beauty, conduct, and character—does not for ever retain this illusion. Certainly one out of ten does not after an intimate experience lasting 342 years, according to the best statistics available. The root of the matter is that the "American woman" is lawless,—without law. The law is that the physically weak are subject to the physically strong. By no subterfuge, or evasion, or resort to simile, analogy, or hyperbole can weak be converted into strong. Things are as they are because the world of life has grown up under this law. The "American woman" pro- claims that by reason of her strength of intellect, her profundity of affection, her dazzling beauty, and the height of her emotion she has emancipated herself. Even if she were iu possession of all these qualities—which in itself is an assumption—that would not involve her freedom. But the American man has acquiesced in this declaration of rights, and the woman is without the shelter which her weakness gives.
There is a nice balance in Nature. The strong and the weak exiit side by side, because the weak know that they are weak, and conduct themselves accordingly. They acquire' a caution, a pretty cunning, an adaptability to their sur- roundings. They learn to evade what they cannot resist, to avoid what they cannon master, because they are aware that resistance is stupidity, and means destruction. The woman differs only in degree from the rest of created beings. Her natural resources, those by which she will prevail, are gentle- ness, long-suffering, kindness. When she abandons these, she does not necessarily, in the present stage of civilisation, lose her life. She merely becomes an " American woman." In striving for her "rights" the American woman has lost her influence, and has given us a new reading of the old fable of the bone and its shadow. The world has never had more than five main ideas, and all but one have come from the East. This problem of the woman exercised the minds of the patriarchs of Lower Asia, and it was solved before Solomon was yet born. Paul, himself half Oriental and half Hellene, gives us the solution in the words : the woman who has a veil on her head wears authority on her head. The veil of the Eastern woman is the sign of her mystery. When she discards the veil her sanctity, her honour, her dignity, her authority all vanish. I shall not be guilty of the absurdity which there would be in recommending that women who of an afternoon drive in the Park or walk in the Avenue should swathe their heads in Oriental wrappings. But the light can be a veil as well as the darkness. In a brilliant room one sees nothing of the foulness which lurks without. Every woman is born with a veil. She is an eternal mystery, as even Lord Byron confessed after his assiduous research. Gentleness, and goodness, and continual quietness, and beauty of nature are always mysterious. I am not saying that all women are in possession of these qualities. Indeed, it is the very absence of them which makes the veil a greater necessity. The assemblage of boys with girls for education, as it is called with some degree of assumption, serves to dispel this mystery. Studies are assigned to girls because they are identical with those given to boys, and not that they are best for the girls, or for the boys either. This also draws aside the veil. The comradeship which athletics engender is based upon the performance of physical feats in which the woman is always at a disadvantage, and so is inferior. A man expects very little of a woman, nothing more than that she shall willingly receive kindness at his hands, and that she will permit herself to be loved. Little as this is, it is much. Without it he is condemned to a brutish isolation. And what has a man to offer to a woman in return for her adorable qualities? Nothing beyond this, that " the husband render to the wife due benevolence." By no process of bargaining can she obtain more.
The " American woman" thinks the American man is as good as he is because she loves him so much. She is so self- satisfied that she thinks every one must love her, and must continue to love her, entirely irrespective of the conduct which she may choose to indulge in. A husband who should cease to love so glorious a creature must be a fool whose love is not worth striving to retain. The influence of woman is the subject of all verse, and is best expressed by the word " charm." And what is charm ? Certain things it is not. It is not excessive talkativeness, nor that distortion of the countenance in public places which is called laughter. Not intellectual attainment nor the artistic temperament assures its possession. It does not necessarily lie in the physical beauty of a symmetrical muscu- lature. Teeth and eyes and hair are mere epidermal modifica- tions. Charm is everything which the " American woman" thinks it is not. Charm lies in what a woman is, not in what she does, nor in how she looks. The American women—all women—should turn upon the " American woman," as judges and executioners, with cold, deliberate indignation, in such virgin fury as the workers in the hive display towards the great, idle, sugary-mouthed drones unconscious on the melliferous walls. And, happily, there is evidence that the people are tired of the farce. This revulsion of feeling is led by the really educated women who are willing to confess that even they themselves have missed the mark, and that their humbler sisters have chosen the better part. For the ignorant and newly rich the educated women have nothing but scorn; for those who would emancipate themselves from the law they have infinite compassion. The woman who is happy is she who obeys the law of kindness, who goes quietly. Her husband yields her benevolence. His heart doth safely trust in her, and her children call her blessed. The woman who will prevail is the effeminate woman, who overcomes man by the force of continual quietness. She may understand all knowledge, and have strength to remove all public grievances, yet she is nothing if she has not entered into the mystery of gentleness. The woman who finally attains to consideration is she who suffers long and is kind, who envieth not, who vaunteth not herself and is not puffed up, who doth not behave herself unseemly, who seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, who thinketh no evil, beareth all things, and believeth all things.—I am, Sir, &e.,
ANDREW MACIPHAIL.
216 Peel Street, Montreal.
[We have commented on this letter in our note to a com- munication from Mrs. Bethune-Baker.—En. Spectator.]
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