From a Girl's Point of View

by Lilian Bell

WOMAN'S RIGHTS IN LOVE

"She has laughed as softly as if she sighed!
She has counted six and over,
Of a purse well filled and a heart well tried—
Oh, each a worthy lover!
They 'give her time' for her soul must slip
When the world has set the grooving;
She will lie to none with her fair red lip—
But love seeks truer loving.

* * * * *

"Unless you can muse in a crowd all day
On the absent face that fixed you;
Unless you can love as the angels may,
With the breadth of heaven betwixt you;
Unless you can dream that his faith is fast,
Through behooving and unbehooving;
Unless you can DIE when the dream is past—
Oh, never call it loving!"

In love a woman's first right is to be protected from her friends while she considers the man whom she contemplates loving. The well-meant blundering of vitally interested friends has spoiled many a promising love affair, which might have resulted in a marriage so much above the ordinary that it could be termed satisfactory even by the most captious.

At no time in a girl's life has she a greater right to work out her own salvation in fear and trembling than during the period known among girls as "making up her mind." If she is the right kind of a girl, honest and delicate minded, it is nerve-racking to be talked about, and sacrilege to be talked to. Then the bloom is on the grape, which a rude touch mars forever.

Yet these kind friends never think of the delicate, touch-me-not influences at work in the girl's soul, or that the instinct to hide her real interest in the man precludes the possibility of her daring to ask to be let alone. So they, in their over-zeal and ambition, either make the path of love so easy and inevitable that all the zest is taken out of it for both (for lovers never want somebody to go ahead and baste the problem for them; they want to blind-stitch it for themselves as they go along), or else, by critical nagging, and balancing the eligibility of one suitor against another, these friends so harass and upset the poor girl that she doesn't know which man she wants, and so turns her back upon all.

In point of fact, when a man is in love, and a girl does not yet know her own mind; when she is weighing out their adaptability, and balancing his love for football against her passion for Browning; during the delicate, tentative period, when the most affectionate solicitude from friends is an irritation, there ought to be a law banishing the interested couple to an island peopled with strangers, who would not discover the delicacy of the situation until it was too late to spoil it.

"Woman's rights." I certainly agree with the men who think that those words have a masculine, assertive, belligerent sound. "Equal suffrage" is much more lady-like, and we are by way of getting all we wish of the men on any subject, under the gentlest title by which it may be called. Strange, how, with strong men, force never avails, but the softest methods are the surest and swiftest.

However, equal suffrage, wide as it is, is not all that I wish. It does well enough, but it does not cover the entire ground. I never clamored very much for women to be recognized as the equals of men, either in politics or in love, because, if I had clamored at all, I should have clamored for infinitely more than that. I should have clamored for men to recognize us as their superiors, and not for equal rights with themselves, but for more, many more rights than they ever dreamed of possessing. 'Tis not justice I crave, but mercy. 'Tis not equality, but chivalry.

In the whole history of the world, from nineteenth-century Public Opinion clear back to the age of chivalry, men never have been inclined to deal out justice to women. It is their watchword with each other, but with women it always is either injustice or mercy. And in spite of all wrongs and all abuses, I say, Heaven bless the men that this is so. Human nature is more fundamental than customs, and what would become of women if we only got our exact deserts, or had absolute justice dealt to us, either by men or other women or on the Judgment Day?

In these latter days of this progressive, woman's century, however, the most thoughtful men are valiant enough to re-adjust themselves to the idea of woman's development, and allow her equality in progressive thought; at the same time maintaining the old-time chivalry of their attitude towards her. If she asks for justice at the hands of these glorious men, she will get it, and they will uncover in her presence and throw away their cigars while they are dispensing it. Equality to them does not mean either rudeness or insolence. They are always gentlemen.

It requires bravery on their part to take this ground, because the sentiment has not as yet grown popular. But a New Man has been created by the development of the New Woman, and he is the highest type we have.

"Courtesy wins woman as well
As valor may, but he that closes both
Is perfect."

Woman's rights! Why, the very first right we expect is to be treated better than anybody else! Better than men treat each other as a body, and better by the individual man than he treats all other women. I abominate the idea of equality, and to be mentally slapped on the shoulder and told I am "a good fellow." I shrink from the idea of independence and cold, proud isolation with my emancipated sister-women, who struggle into their own coats unassisted and get red in the face putting on their own skates, and hang on to a strap in the street-car, in the proud consciousness that they are independent and the equal of men. I never worry myself when a man is on his knees in front of me, tying the ribbons of my slipper, as to whether he considers me his equal politically or not. It is sufficient satisfaction for me to see him there. If he hadn't wanted to save me the trouble, I suppose he wouldn't have offered. He may even think I am not strong enough for such an arduous duty. That would not hurt my feelings either. I have an idea that he likes it better to think that I cannot do anything troublesome for myself than to believe that I could get along perfectly without him. In fact—here's heresy for you, O ye emancipated!—I do not in the least mind being dependent on men—provided the men are nice enough. Let them give us all the so-called rights they want to. I shall never get over wanting to get behind some man if I see a cow. Let them give us a vote, if they will. I shall want at least three men to go with me to the polls—one to hold my purse, one to hold my gloves, and the third to show me how to cast my vote.

If women are serious in wanting to vote in politics, why do they not apply to the body politic the same methods they use with the one man which an all-wise Destiny has committed to their keeping?

If all the women in the world should make up their minds that they wanted to vote worse than anything else on earth—worse even than they want their husbands to go to church with them—and each woman would put on her prettiest clothes, and cuddle up to her own particular man in her softest and most womanish way, when she was begging him to get suffrage for her—why, you all know they would do it. Men would get it for us exactly as they would buy us a pair of horses.

Have you men ever thought about practising for suffrage in politics by giving women suffrage in love? Surely you do not doubt that, should you do this, it would not occur to us to stuff the ballot-boxes, or to put up a ticket with any but honorable candidates for our hands. We do not ask nor wish to indicate who shall run for office. Let the men announce themselves candidates. We would not take the initiative there if it were offered to us for a thousand years. All we ask is to be given plenty of time to canvass the honor of the candidates, thoroughly to understand and investigate the platform (with an eye to how near he will come to sticking to his promises after election), and to be allowed to cast a free and untrammelled vote.

Now, men seem to think that if they allowed woman equal suffrage, the bright white light of our honesty would be too strong a glare for their weak eyes—so long accustomed to darkness—to bear. Um—possibly in politics. Hardly in love.

For myself, I consider absolute honesty most unpleasant. I never knew any really nice, lovable women who were unflinchingly honest. But I have known a few iron-visaged, square-jawed women who were so brutally honest that I have most ingloriously fled at the mention of their approach, and solaced myself with a congenial spirit who is in the habit of skirting delicately around painful truth, and a cozy corner in which to abuse the aforesaid iron-visaged carver of helpless humanity, who loves to draw blood with her truth. Such an one will get a vote in politics long before she gets it in love.

No; men need not fear to give us equal suffrage in love. Our honesty will not be disconcerting. (I would even address a private query, at just this point, to the women, begging that the men will skip it, asking women where in the world we would find ourselves if we were unflinchingly honest with the men who love us?) No one will deny that we would even countenance a certain amount of corruption. We fully agree with those men who tell us weakly questioning women that campaign funds are a necessity. We never have been able to discover just where the money in politics went to, but the expenses of a campaign in our line are more in evidence. I doubt if the most straitlaced Puritan will gainsay me when I declare that bribery from the candidates, in the form of theatres, opera-boxes, flowers, bonbons, and books, would not only be tolerated, but even, in a modest manner, encouraged—having, of course, a keen eye as to the elasticity of the campaign fund. But, of course, just as vulgar bribery, per se, only catches the easy and unthinking voter in politics, so, in like manner, would these evidences of generosity only capture the less desirable voter in love. When you men are trying for a woman's vote you need give yourselves no uneasiness. If she is worth having, character wins every time. You don't believe that. That is why you trust to bribery to do it all. And it is also why so many of you get the girl you try for—which is about the richest punishment you could receive.

I adore Hamlet. Not because he was so noble as to give up his life to avenge his father's most foul murder. Not because he was a chivalrous King Arthur, to protect Ophelia's womanly pride from the jeers of a coarse court by openly declaring that he had loved her when he hadn't. Not for any of Shakespeare's reasons for painting him a hero. But for two much more reasonable reasons. One that he said, "I myself am indifferent honest"—oh, the humanity of Hamlet!—and the other that, when under the spell of her beauty and in the tentative, interested stage when he cared for her all but enough to ask her to marry him, he had the wit to discover that she was a fool. Imagine the calamity of Hamlet married to Ophelia! That would have been a tragedy. Think of a man clever enough to discover that his idol was made of putty—that his sweetheart was a Rosamond Vincy! Hamlet was a wise man. He withdrew in time. Most men have to be married ten years to discover that they have married an Ophelia or a Rosamond.

It is a trite saying that the whole world is behind a woman urging her to marry. But I find much to interest me in trite sayings. I like to get hold of them, and look them through, and turn them wrong side out, and pull them to pieces to find how much life there is in them. Psychological vivisection is not a subject for the humane society. A trite saying has my sympathy. It generally is stupid and shop-worn, and consequently is banished to polite society and hated by the clever. And only because it possessed a soul of truth and a wonderful vitality has it been kept from dying long ago of a broken heart.

Books could be written of the truth of this particular trite saying. The urging, of course, among people whom we know, is neither vulgar nor intentional. It takes the form of jests, of pseudo-humorous questions if a man sends flowers two or three times. But it takes its worst and most common form in the sudden melting away of the family if the man calls and finds them all together. If a man has no specific intentions towards a girl, and has not determined in his own mind that he wants to marry her; if he is only liking her a great deal, with but an occasional wonder in the depths of his own heart whether this girl is the wife for him; to call upon her casually and see the family scatter, and other callers hastily leave, is enough to scare him to death. And the girl herself has a right to be furiously indignant. When eligible young people are in that tentative stage, it is death to a love to make them self-conscious.

I myself am so afraid of brushing the down from the butterfly wings at this point that, occasionally, when I have been calling, and the girl's possible lover has caught me before I could escape in a natural manner, I have doggedly remained, even knowing that perhaps he wished me well away among the angels, rather than to run the risk of making him conscious that I understood his state of mind. Imagine my feelings of anguish, however, at holding on against my will and against theirs, wanting somebody to help me let go! Much better, I solace myself afterwards, that he should wish me away than to look after my retreating form and wish, in Heaven's name, that I had stayed! Better for the girl, I mean. For my own feelings—but I do not count. I am only giving a girl one of her rights in love. A few judicious obstacles but whet a man's appetite—if he is worth having. And I do not mind being a judicious obstacle once in a while—if I like the girl.

As to how far a girl has a right to encourage a man in love, opinions differ. I once asked a clever literary friend of mine, whose husband is so satisfactory that it is quite a delightful shock to discover it, how far men ought to be encouraged to make love.

"Encourage them all you can, my dear. The best of men require all the encouragement one is capable of giving them."

I pondered over that statement. From her point of view it was, of course, perfectly proper. Married men need all the encouragement they can get to keep them making love to their own wives. But from our standpoint, of being girls—and very nice girls too, some of us, if I do say it myself!—how far have we a right to encourage men to make love to us?

Now I like men; and I like girls. So that I never want anybody to be hurt at this very delicate and dangerous game of love-making. But somebody always is getting hurt, and although she never makes any fuss about it, it is generally the girl.

There are two reasons for this. One is that love means twice—yes, twenty, forty—times as much to a girl as to a man; and the second is that we are a believing set of human geese, and we believe a great deal of what you men say, which is wrong of us, and much more of what your pronounced actions over us imply, which is worse. Girls are just the same along the main lines of sentiment and hope and trust and belief in men now as they ever were, and most of this talk about the new woman being different is mere stuff and nonsense.

Now, the men come in right at this point and declare that we ought not to believe so much; that until they have actually proposed marriage, often they themselves do not know their own minds; that a man has a perfect right to withdraw, à la Hamlet, if he finds insurmountable flaws in the girl's nature, or, what is oftener the case, somebody whom he likes better; and they intimate pretty strongly that broken hearts, or even slightly damaged affections, are largely our own fault, which, from their standpoint, is true enough, and if we were men we would all say so too.

But, looking at it from our standpoint, does it not seem as if the men had all the rights on their side? And will they be as generous in this as they are in everything else where we are concerned, and view the matter from our point of view, with the sidelights turned on?

In the first place, there is practically the whole world of women before men from which to choose. Think of that! Thousands of women, and with the additional advantage of the right to make the first advances! How many do we have to choose from? We can't roam around the world by ourselves, even to see all the desirable men, much less manage to meet and study them. We have to wait to be approached even by the meagre few which a gracious Providence casts in our way. If a girl receives three proposals, that, I am told, is a fair average. If she receives ten, she is either an heiress or a belle. If she receives more than ten, she must visit in the West. Think now, reasonably, of the limited opportunities of the most fortunate of us, compared with the limitless opportunities of the least fortunate of you.

Then, too, in order to make ourselves desirable, we are not to be forward or unduly prominent. We are to sit quietly at home and wait to be asked. We are not to take a man's words, uttered under the magnetism of our presence, for truth. We are not to judge by his manner if he does not speak. We are not to flirt with any other man when one man is considering us as a possible wife (although we don't know that he is, and it is dangerous to guess), because he does not like that. It shows, he thinks, a "frivolous nature," or "a desire to attract," or a "tendency to flirt," or, it is "unwomanly," or "unworthy a true woman." There are some other things men say to us if several men are attentive at the same time, but I have forgotten the rest. They are very convincing, however. Then, when the man has made up his mind that he wants us as his wife (that grammar sounds polygamous, but my whole philosophy of life is against that idea), why, we are to be ready to drop into his arms like a ripe plum and not keep him on tenter-hooks of anxiety, because only coquettes do that.

Now I am not endeavoring to do an exceptional man justice, who will resent that somewhat broad platform. I am only presenting the attitude of man in general, from a girl's standpoint. And if you will view it as referring to "other men" and not to yourself, you will be quite willing to admit that it is, in the main, true.

Now if, in order to avoid heartaches, and so be able to blame you for something you never intended and which you are not willing to shoulder, we are not to let ourselves go, when we feel like falling in love with you, do you give us leave to allow every one of you to get clear up to the proposing-point and come flatly out with the words "Will you marry me?" before we let you know whether we want you or not, or before we begin to let ourselves go?

Come now. Own up, you men. How well do we girls know you when you have called on us three hundred and sixty-five times in succession? Not at all. We know only what we can see and hear. How well do we know you when we have been engaged to you six months? Not at all. We know only what you have been unable to conceal of your faults, and the virtues you have displayed in your show-windows. How long must a woman be married to a man before she understands him thoroughly—as thoroughly as she ought to have understood him before she ever dared to stand up at an altar and promise to love him and live with him until death did them part?

A broken engagement ought to be considered a blessed thing as a preventive of further and worse ills. But it is not. It militates seriously against a girl. Not so much with men as with women. That is one of the times, and there are many others, when men are broader and more just than women. The ordinary man, taken at random, will say, "Probably he was a worthless fellow." The ordinary woman will say, "She ought to have known her own mind better."

The odd part of all this is that, even if you men, as a body, should say to all the girls: "Go ahead. Encourage us to the top of your bent. Let us propose without any knowledge based on your past actions or words as to whether we are going to be accepted or not, and we will take the result cheerfully and won't rage or howl about it"—that not one of us would do it.

"How conscience doth make cowards of us all!" We might consider that you were only giving us our rights in love. We might theorize beautifully about it, and even vow we were going to take you at your word and do it. But we couldn't. It simply isn't in us. We could not be so unjust to you—so untrue to ourselves. The great maternal heart of woman, which bears the greater part of all the sufferings in this world that the men and little children may go free, prevents us from taking any such so-called rights from you, at the cost of suffering on your part. Women have tenderer hearts than men for a purpose, and if they are hurt oftener than men's, why, that is for us to bear. We cannot make ourselves over and turn Amazons at your expense.