CORRESPONDENCE.

THE "AMERICAN WOMAN."—I.

PTO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR:1

$In,—The old-fashioned American novelist who was pressed for an explanation of the waywardness of his heroine found it in the fact that she was born of a French mother. The English writer of early romance attributed the vagaries of his heroines to the circumstance that they grew up without mothers at all. So shall we explain the unsophisticated Miranda, the ingenuous Desdemona, the vivacious Rosalind, and the wayward Jessica. The ostentatious prudery of Pamela, the sprightly courage of Sophia Western, the dour- ness of Jane Eyre, the wrong-beadedness of Dorothea Brooke, the obvious virtues of all Scott's heroines with the single exception of Lucy Ashton, and all Shakespeare's with the exception of Juliet,. are traceable to the circumstance that they were motherless. The novelist of to-day finds quite another explanation, not of the virtues—for novelists no longer find virtuous women interesting—but of the caprice of his heroine in the fact that she is, or is descended from, an American woman. All novels are written for women except the few which are worth writing. Time was when the characters achieved distinction by reason of the temptations which they resisted rather than by the concessions which they made. The English heroine resists or yields to her desire for place ; her French sister is impelled by love; it is luxurious idleness alone which appeals to the American woman of fiction. In literature and life this is the clue to her actions.

This prodigy which looms so portentous will bear some investigation. The term " American woman," whilst it has a certain definitive value, is capable of wide extension in time and place. We suspect her presence at Ephesus and in Corinth, and the Proverbialist had her in his mind when be declared in his great eulogy that "favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain." The manifestation is not confined to the American Continent, nor even to the United States; indeed, it. is entirely inaccurate as a description of the mothers, wives, and daughtera of the average American man. This anomaly in classification is not confined to any one department of natural history. We speak of that anatoid, web-footed bird, which is larger than a duck and smaller than a swan, as the Canada goose, whilst in reality the animal is the Branta canadensis. It is not a goose, and is not especially indigenous to Canada. To speak of the "American woman" as if she were confined to, or even especially characteristic of, the United States is as if one were to assume that the common scale which destroys apple-trees is found nowhere else than in San Jose, or that the potato-bug confines its ravages to Colorado. These pests did not even originate in the places whose names they bear, and the "American woman" was a common occurrence long before the United States were dis- covered. It is a familiar fact, however, that a disease which occurs sporadically in one milieu will burst into an epidemic of unexampled fury when it is transferred to a new environment. Upon this analogy, it would appear probable that the "American woman" was introduced into the United States at a very early period, and finding there a suitable environment, began to develop an exuberant growth and to thrive exceedingly.

It would be too large a task to trace the genesis of the "American woman" beyond the period of her entry into the New World, fascinating as that investigation would be. She was early upon the scene in New England, probably as early as 1620, the year in which the first shipload of passengers arrived. The annals of the community are full of accounts of her doings. One of the most forward harassed the ministers for five years by arising in church and asking questions, apparently to elucidate the sermons, but in reality to afford her the oppor- tunity of applying opprobrious epithets to them. Another woman pushed her recalcitrancy to such a point that "she would not bow her knee even at the name of Jesus." The whip and cleft stick were her portion; yet in spite of these precautionary measures the evil had grown so. large that in ten years sixty women assembled regularly to " revolve points of doctrine." A Diet of ministers was established to consider further measures of repression, but it is perhaps

needless to add that nothing very definite came of their deliberations.

The origin of evil has always been a fascinating speculation to the novelist as well as to the theologian; but all writers are agreed that it lies somewhere outside of their own hearts and beyond the confines of their own country. When Canadians discover political and social evils in their midst they are quite sure that they came from the United States. The outbreaks of wickedness which occurred sporadioally, though not infre- quently, in Scotland, ranging in heinousness from assassination to sleeping in church, were ultimately traced across the Tweed to England, or across the Channel to France. The early inhabitants of New England, Puritan though they were, found that the " American woman" was also present with them, and, having no neighbours from whom they could acquire the infection, they boldly ascribed the phenomenon to an outside source, and laid it to the charge of the Devil. One his a certain hesitancy in contradicting the divines of New England upon a question in which they were so much at home. Yet I think that by a less esoteric exegesis we may arrive at an understanding of this phenomenon. Idleness alone, which they described as the "mother of naughtiness," will account for all those characteristics which are expressed by the term "American woman."

It is an eternal law—at least it has been a law since the beginning of created things—that an organ, an animal, or a species cannot exist, independently of its function. Life and growth are bound up with work, and we have not yet grown so mighty that we have emancipated ourselves from the dominion of this law. The primitive functions of the woman were to prepare food and clothing, to care for her mate and the offspring which she had assisted in producing. In course of time, and for reasons largely beyond her control, these obligations have become less incumbent upon her. With one exception, they have been usurped by the male or placed• in the hands of hirelings. In the progress of civilisation and by the division of labour the food is purchased partially or wholly prepared, as the advertisements boast. In Ainerica this industrial change has been remarkably rapid, and there are women living in idleness to-day who in their youth were accustomed to take the sheaf from the field and prepare the evening meal from it before the night fell.

Every advance in that industrial development of which we are boasting continually makes for the destruction of the family. Originally each family was more or less self-con- tained and mutually supporting. The man procured food from the forest, from the sea, or from the soil, and he was aided in these occupations by his boys, who became competent at a very early age. The woman dressed the skins, made them into garments, and prepared the food for eating. In later times she carded the wool, spun the yarn, wove the cloth, and fashioned it into clothing ; and there are men yet living who look back with yearning to a family life in which these occupations were the chief concern. At an early age the girl, too, was initiated into these mysteries. She was self-supporting from her childhood, and, indeed, added to the wealth and comfort of the family. The child, instead of being a burden, was an asset. Both male and female were efficient members of the community, and there was an honoured place for even the maiden aunt, made honourable by her usefulness.• Into this community of families comes the manufacturer with his machinery, and his love of money. and his formulas about. efficiency, saving of labour, industrial progress, and commercial development. Every turn of his wheels disintegrates the family by destroying its multifarious occupations. The butter, which used to be churned in the dairy kept cool by an overhanging willow-tree, is now made in a factory. The sheep which the children tended upon the hillside are gone, and with them the occupations of carding, spinning, and weaving which made the long winter evenings too short for the work to be done. The larder is stored day by day from the grocer's waggon, and those delectable times are vanished in which the womankind gathered the apple and the berry and preserved them in shining rows, not for this year alone, but for next year and the year after. The country has grown rich, but the family, is destroyed. There is money and idleness for the Women of the well-to-do : idleness alone for the women of the poor. For the daughters of the poor there is the refuge of the factory and its sisters, the slum and the street. For

the daughters of the rich there is nothing but idleness, and both classes are more unhappy than when they lived in trees.

The care of the offspring has been handed over to mate and female hirelings—physicians and nurses—and thus a wide outlet for the physical and mental activity of the woman has been effectually stopped. Deprived of the care of her children, the woman suffers a diminution of her affection, and it is replaced by a noisy sentimentalism which is equally disastrous for mother, child, and husband. It is the maternal instinct running riot. It exhausts itself upon the infant, and none remains for the growing child to whom it might be of some value. The American mother is famous for the care of her infant and the neglect of her

child.

We have seen that women have handed over their function of preparing food to the cook, the making of clothing to the tailor, the care of their children to the physician. If these substitutes were females, the case would not be so anomalous ; but, on the contrary, they are males, and I believe that all women now recognise the superiority of the man- cook, the man-tailor, and the man-midwife. It was left to Ibsen to discover that a woman could not sew a button to a garment effectually, and he was in the habit of performing that humble office fOr himself. Since his death, however, his wife has confessed that she made it a secret practice to reinforce his attempt with her own needle. In a society which has grown up by natural process in the course of slow centuries, the woman performs her duties easily, almost unconsciously. In a society which is the product of only a generation, the woman who aspires beyond her primitive functions is an amateur in a new role. We have all seen and pitied an animal compelled to perform a new and uncongenial task,—a dog in a dance, or a monkey sedulous over his sewing. Off the stage, we are told that these animals are subject to fits of ill-temper, to outbursts of emotion, to discontent, that they crave for excitement, and that, finally, they "break down." It is not disclosing any professional confidences to say that symptoms of a somewhat similar nature have been observed in the case of the "American woman" as a result of her performance.

The man and the woman are complementary the one to the other. In so far as the woman acquires the qualities and characteristics of the man she becomes to that extent futile, as futile as the man who has acquired the quality of effeminacy. No matter how effeminate a man becomes, he can never be so adorable as a woman. He will always be an amateur in that role, and the woman has him beaten at the start. The man qud man, in virtue of his own and his ancestral experi- ence, has an advantage over the woman in such exercises as playing golf and smoking cigarettes which she will find it difficult to overcome even by the most assiduous effort at imitation. In our lifetime at least she must remain an amateur, and her self-consciousness destroys all pleasure to herself or the beholder in her heroic endeavour to be some- thing other than that for which she was designed. Reduced by a power not her own to a condition of idleness, her case is a moat unhappy one, and her manifold activities in the street, in places of entertainment, and finally in the Divorce Court, are merely blind strivings to free herself from an intolerable ennui. Her life is one of rivalry for appearance and position. The struggle exhausts her energy and all other means at her disposal. Her mind becomes warped and her ambition dis- torted. Eternal restlessness is her portion, a dislike of any discipline, a hatred of any law save that which her own whim, will, or desire imposes. To impose this law upon others becomes her constant occupation.

The most oppressive burden which a woman is called upon to endure is that anomaly amongst created beings,—the wearing of clothes. In the state of Nature it is ordained that the female shall go quietly. The male is the gaudy, strutting creature. But in the race to which we belong it is the woman who is glorious ; and this burden of splendour, falling upon an organism which is unqualified for the task, breaks it down hopelessly, and renders it unfit for the performance of its proper functions. The possession of splendid apparel involves the necessity for its display, and out of that arises vanity, jealousy, rivalry, and all uncharitableness. This is the genesis of the thing which is known as society. To the American man there is something mysterious about this society, and his

womenkind alone are supposed to understand it. He is in reality a simple-minded person, and his women have entered into a conspiracy against him by which they shall live in idle- ness, and he shall " labour and toil, and rob, and steal, and bring all to his love." The mark of social distinction in primitive communities is idleness on the'part of the woman. One mark of poverty is that women are obliged to work. Brought up in an old-fashioned way, the American man thinks that he has extricated himself from poverty when he has succeeded in keeping his womenkind free from the necessity of work. Speaking generally, this is the aim of the " American woman,"—to live a life of luxurious idleness.

The next anomaly under which we labour is that we are compelled to live in houses, and have not yet become con- vinced what the proper form of habitation is. The American man is himself without taste. The possession of taste is the prerogative of the woman. Accordingly she is the one who deals with the architect and decorator, and she is supposed to understand all matters pertaining to architecture, decoration, and furnishing in virtue of her femininity alone. When it comes to a question of building a "home "—as if a home could be built with bands—the rich, free woman, to demon- strate her equality with the rich woman of older communities, must have a house which resembles "the stately homes' of England," or a villa which vies in beauty with the abode of a " merchant-prince" of mediaeval Florence; or, to demon- strate the catholicity which exists in a free country, she will probably achieve a combination of both, with certain features added, which belong exclusively to a cathedral or a fortress.

In the more degrading social conditions which prevail in older communities each citizen wears clothing which he has learned by experience and tradition is most suitable to his occupation in life, and this practice leads to a distinction between workers in various trades, to the creation of clasSes. The flare and pearlies of the costermonger, the hobnailed boots of the ploughman, the blue smock of the butcher, the corduroy trousers of the labourer, the garb of the city clerk, all proclaim the class as clearly as a uniform betrays the Colonel or the clergyman. In a free country a style is established, no one can say exactly howand in a month the wives of all members of the community—plumber, barber, factory-hand, and millionaire—are clad in imitation and rivalry of each other. And now there are women who propose to add to these burdens the additional obligation of casting the ballot and engaging in public life.—I am, Sir; &c., 216 Peel Street, Montreal.

ANDREW MACPHAIL.

[The conclusion of Dr. Ma,cphail's striking letter will 'be published next week. While feeling no small pleasure in finding space in our columns for a communication so vivid,' so suggestive, and so incisive in style, and, we may add, in many particulars so timely and so wholesome, we are bound to make certain reservations. It is not necessary to disclaim any intention of giving publicity to a general attack on the women of America. Dr. Macphail renders it abundantly clear that he makes no such attack. He recognises the soundness of the women of America as a whole, and does not fail to realise that the "American woman" of his indictment is to be found throughout the modern world,—in Britain, in France, and in Canada, as well as in the United States. She is more visible in America because she is more adulated and more advertised there, and accordingly is conveniently distinguished by the designation imposed upon her by our correspondent. She is also a special danger to America; and that is why We, who yield to none in our sympathy with and admiration for the people of the Union, shall be glad if we can do anything to call attention to a very great danger to the larger half of our race. We desire to point out that we by no means agree with Dr. Maaphail in his opinion that the luxurious idleness which he rightly condemns is to be cured by all women becoming nurses and cooks. That is a view as erroneous as it is con- ventional. A woman rich enough to employ nurses' and cooks is quite justified in doing so, and in devoting herself to the care of her household and her children'in other ways. She can find plenty to do if she has the will and is inspired by a sound tradition of domestic and social duty. There are many rich women who are neither idle nor luxurious, and yet avail themselves of the freedom from hard work which their wealth allows them.—ED. Spectator.]