IX
In all of these women one observed a strangely child-like quality.
When better conversational subjects were exhausted, several of them requested that I guess their ages. Oddly enough, in this land where frankness is seldom encountered, women make no effort to hide the number of their years. Perhaps it is because their personal vanity, so very manifest in younger girls, practically ceases after marriage has been achieved.
One of them I judged to be fifty. To please her I guessed forty. She proved in reality to be thirty-two. They grow old so quickly here. Yet in their manner they retain toward men that air of a child toward a parent. Should a husband see fit to discuss with them any serious subject, they listen in awed admiration to his opinions, exclaiming occasionally, “I see! Ah, I understand!”
It would probably offend the average Latin-American to discover that his spouse knew as much about anything as he did himself. He likes the rôle of the patient mentor. He prefers that his wife be a gentle pet rather than a comrade. I dined one day with a Salvadorean gentleman and his wife; the lady, who came from one of the leading families, had been educated abroad and had traveled extensively; yet the gentleman, although he conversed quite brilliantly with the men at the table, chattered only playful nonsense to his wife. In consideration of his pride, she artfully concealed the fact that she was his intellectual equal.
Now and then one reads in our newspapers or magazines about the equal suffrage movement in Mexico or the organization of a new women’s club in Chile. But such innovations have yet to gain an extensive following. With the same conflict of idealism and materialism that distinguishes Latin-American men, the women may verbally deplore their lack of liberty but are in reality quite satisfied with it. They are of a race which is inclined to follow the easiest course, and the easiest course is to attach themselves to some convenient man and allow him to worry about life’s problems. In these pleasant tropical countries no girl of the lower classes escapes maternity; most girls of the middle classes, not being over-critical about whom they marry, can land some one; even in the more particular aristocratic circles the spinster is a rarity. The wife usually has her own way when questions arise about the household or the children. Beyond that she is quite content with complete male dominance. And she is passively happy.
IN THESE PLEASANT TROPICAL COUNTRIES NO PEON GIRL ESCAPES MATERNITY
So accustomed are the Latin-Americans to the timid, gently-shrinking type of woman that they usually misunderstand the visiting American girl. When the native gentlemen observe her chatting with masculine acquaintances upon the street in her frankly carefree manner, they leap immediately to the conclusion that she is of the demi-monde. And when a gringo informs them that her smiles mean nothing, they shake their heads in wonderment.
“Ay!” they exclaim. “Your Anglo-Saxon females are so cold! So unsentimental! Altogether sexless!”
They shake their heads again, in pity, reflecting that the poor girl is missing all the most delicious of life’s sensations. But since they are ever hopeful, they linger awhile, to make sure that the gringo did not err in stating that her smiles meant nothing.