WHAT DIANTHA DID
CHAPTER IV.
A CRYING NEED
"Lovest thou me?" said the Fair Ladye;
And the Lover he said, "Yea!"
"Then climb this tree—for my sake," said she,
"And climb it every day!"
So from dawn till dark he abrazed the bark
And wore his clothes away;
Till, "What has this tree to do with thee?"
The Lover at last did say.
It was a poor dinner. Cold in the first place, because Isabel would wait to thoroughly wash her long artistic hands; and put on another dress. She hated the smell of cooking in her garments; hated it worse on her white fingers; and now to look at the graceful erect figure, the round throat with the silver necklace about it, the soft smooth hair, silver-filletted, the negative beauty of the dove-colored gown, specially designed for home evenings, one would never dream she had set the table so well—and cooked the steak so abominably.
Isabel was never a cook. In the many servantless gaps of domestic life in Orchardina, there was always a strained atmosphere in the Porne household.
"Dear," said Mr. Porne, "might I petition to have the steak less cooked?
I know you don't like to do it, so why not shorten the process?"
"I'm sorry," she answered, "I always forget about the steak from one time to the next."
"Yet we've had it three times this week, my dear."
"I thought you liked it better than anything," she with marked gentleness. "I'll get you other things—oftener."
"It's a shame you should have this to do, Isabel. I never meant you should cook for me. Indeed I didn't dream you cared so little about it."
"And I never dreamed you cared so much about it," she replied, still with repression. "I'm not complaining, am I? I'm only sorry you should be disappointed in me."
"It's not you, dear girl! You're all right! It's just this everlasting bother. Can't you get anybody that will stay?"
I can't seem to get anybody on any terms, so far. I'm going again, to-morrow. Cheer up, dear—the baby keeps well—that's the main thing."
He sat on the rose-bowered porch and smoked while she cleared the table. At first he had tried to help her on these occasions, but their methods were dissimilar and she frankly told him she preferred to do it alone.
So she slipped off the silk and put on the gingham again, washed the dishes with the labored accuracy of a trained mind doing unfamiliar work, made the bread, redressed at last, and joined him about nine o'clock.
"It's too late to go anywhere, I suppose?" he ventured.
"Yes—and I'm too tired. Besides—we can't leave Eddie alone."
"O yes—I forget. Of course we can't."
His hand stole out to take hers. "I am sorry, dear. It's awfully rough on you women out here. How do they all stand it?"
"Most of them stand it much better than I do, Ned. You see they don't want to be doing anything else."
"Yes. That's the mischief of it!" he agreed; and she looked at him in the clear moonlight, wondering exactly what he thought the mischief was.
"Shall we go in and read a bit?" he offered; but she thought not.
"I'm too tired, I'm afraid. And Eddie'll wake up as soon as we begin."
So they sat awhile enjoying the soft silence, and the rich flower scents about them, till Eddie did wake presently, and Isabel went upstairs.
She slept little that night, lying quite still, listening to her husband's regular breathing so near her, and the lighter sound from the crib. "I am a very happy woman," she told herself resolutely; but there was no outpouring sense of love and joy. She knew she was happy, but by no means felt it. So she stared at the moon shadows and thought it over.
She had planned the little house herself, with such love, such hope, such tender happy care! Not her first work, which won high praise in the school in Paris, not the prize-winning plan for the library, now gracing Orchardina's prettiest square, was as dear to her as this most womanly task—the making of a home.
It was the library success which brought her here, fresh from her foreign studies, and Orchardina accepted with western cordiality the youth and beauty of the young architect, though a bit surprised at first that "I. H. Wright" was an Isabel. In her further work of overseeing the construction of that library, she had met Edgar Porne, one of the numerous eager young real estate men of that region, who showed a liberal enthusiasm for the general capacity of women in the professions, and a much warmer feeling for the personal attractions of this one.
Together they chose the lot on pepper-shaded Inez Avenue; together they watched the rising of the concrete walls and planned the garden walks and seats, and the tiny precious pool in the far corner. He was so sympathetic! so admiring! He took as much pride in the big "drawing room" on the third floor as she did herself. "Architecture is such fine work to do at home!" they had both agreed. "Here you have your north light—your big table—plenty of room for work! You will grow famouser and famouser," he had lovingly insisted. And she had answered, "I fear I shall be too contented, dear, to want to be famous."
That was only some year and a-half ago,—but Isabel, lying there by her sleeping husband and sleeping child, was stark awake and only by assertion happy. She was thinking, persistently, of dust. She loved a delicate cleanliness. Her art was a precise one, her studio a workshop of white paper and fine pointed hard pencils, her painting the mechanical perfection of an even wash of color. And she saw, through the floors and walls and the darkness, the dust in the little shaded parlor—two days' dust at least, and Orchardina is very dusty!—dust in the dining-room gathered since yesterday—the dust in the kitchen—she would not count time there, and the dust—here she counted it inexorably—the dust of eight days in her great, light workroom upstairs. Eight days since she had found time to go up there.
Lying there, wide-eyed and motionless, she stood outside in thought and looked at the house—as she used to look at it with him, before they were married. Then, it had roused every blessed hope and dream of wedded joy—it seemed a casket of uncounted treasures. Now, in this dreary mood, it seemed not only a mere workshop, but one of alien tasks, continuous, impossible, like those set for the Imprisoned Princess by bad fairies in the old tales. In thought she entered the well-proportioned door—the Gate of Happiness—and a musty smell greeted her—she had forgotten to throw out those flowers! She turned to the parlor—no, the piano keys were gritty, one had to clean them twice a day to keep that room as she liked it.
From room to room she flitted, in her mind, trying to recall the exquisite things they meant to her when she had planned them; and each one now opened glaring and blank, as a place to work in—and the work undone.
"If I were an abler woman!" she breathed. And then her common sense and common honesty made her reply to herself: "I am able enough—in my own work! Nobody can do everything. I don't believe Edgar'd do it any better than I do.—He don't have to!—and then such a wave of bitterness rushed over her that she was afraid, and reached out one hand to touch the crib—the other to her husband.
He awakened instantly. "What is it, Dear?" he asked. "Too tired to sleep, you poor darling? But you do love me a little, don't you?"
"O yes!" she answered. "I do. Of course I do! I'm just tired, I guess. Goodnight, Sweetheart."
She was late in getting to sleep and late in waking.
When he finally sat down to the hurriedly spread breakfast-table, Mr.
Porne, long coffeeless, found it a bit difficult to keep his temper.
Isabel was a little stiff, bringing in dishes and cups, and paying no
attention to the sounds of wailing from above.
"Well if you won't I will!" burst forth the father at last, and ran upstairs, returning presently with a fine boy of some eleven months, who ceased to bawl in these familiar arms, and contented himself, for the moment, with a teaspoon.
"Aren't you going to feed him?" asked Mr. Porne, with forced patience.
"It isn't time yet," she announced wearily. "He has to have his bath first."
"Well," with a patience evidently forced farther, "isn't it time to feed me?"
"I'm very sorry," she said. "The oatmeal is burned again. You'll have to eat cornflakes. And—the cream is sour—the ice didn't come—or at least, perhaps I was out when it came—and then I forgot it. . . . . I had to go to the employment agency in the morning! . . . . I'm sorry I'm so—so incompetent."
"So am I," he commented drily. "Are there any crackers for instance?
And how about coffee?"
She brought the coffee, such as it was, and a can of condensed milk.
Also crackers, and fruit. She took the baby and sat silent.
"Shall I come home to lunch?" he asked.
"Perhaps you'd better not," she replied coldly.
"Is there to be any dinner?"
"Dinner will be ready at six-thirty, if I have to get it myself."
"If you have to get it yourself I'll allow for seven-thirty," said he, trying to be cheerful, though she seemed little pleased by it. "Now don't take it so hard, Ellie. You are a first-class architect, anyhow—one can't be everything. We'll get another girl in time. This is just the common lot out here. All the women have the same trouble."
"Most women seem better able to meet it!" she burst forth. "It's not my trade! I'm willing to work, I like to work, but I can't bear housework! I can't seem to learn it at all! And the servants will not do it properly!"
"Perhaps they know your limitations, and take advantage of them! But cheer up, dear. It's no killing matter. Order by phone, don't forget the ice, and I'll try to get home early and help. Don't cry, dear girl, I love you, even if you aren't a good cook! And you love me, don't you?"
He kissed her till she had to smile back at him and give him a loving hug; but after he had gone, the gloom settled upon her spirits once more. She bathed the baby, fed him, put him to sleep; and came back to the table. The screen door had been left ajar and the house was buzzing with flies, hot, with a week's accumulating disorder. The bread she made last night in fear and trembling, was hanging fatly over the pans; perhaps sour already. She clapped it into the oven and turned on the heat.
Then she stood, undetermined, looking about that messy kitchen while the big flies bumped and buzzed on the windows, settled on every dish, and swung in giddy circles in the middle of the room. Turning swiftly she shut the door on them. The dining-room was nearly as bad. She began to put the cups and plates together for removal; but set her tray down suddenly and went into the comparative coolness of the parlor, closing the dining-room door behind her.
She was quite tired enough to cry after several nights of broken rest and days of constant discomfort and irritation; but a sense of rising anger kept the tears back.
"Of course I love him!" she said to herself aloud but softly, remembering the baby, "And no doubt he loves me! I'm glad to be his wife! I'm glad to be a mother to his child! I'm glad I married him! But—this is not what he offered! And it's not what I undertook! He hasn't had to change his business!"
She marched up and down the scant space, and then stopped short and laughed drily, continuing her smothered soliloquy.
"'Do you love me?' they ask, and, 'I will make you happy!' they say; and you get married—and after that it's Housework!"
"They don't say, 'Will you be my Cook?' 'Will you be my Chamber maid?' 'Will you give up a good clean well-paid business that you love—that has big hope and power and beauty in it—and come and keep house for me?'"
"Love him? I'd be in Paris this minute if I didn't! What has 'love' to do with dust and grease and flies!"
Then she did drop on the small sofa and cry tempestuously for a little while; but soon arose, fiercely ashamed of her weakness, and faced the day; thinking of the old lady who had so much to do she couldn't think what to first—so she sat down and made a pincushion.
Then—where to begin!
"Eddie will sleep till half-past ten—if I'm lucky. It's now nearly half-past nine," she meditated aloud. "If I do the upstairs work I might wake him. I mustn't forget the bread, the dishes, the parlor—O those flies! Well—I'll clear the table first!"
Stepping softly, and handling the dishes with slow care, she cleaned the breakfast table and darkened the dining-room, flapping out some of the flies with a towel. Then she essayed the parlor, dusting and arranging with undecided steps. "It ought to be swept," she admitted to herself; "I can't do it—there isn't time. I'll make it dark—"
"I'd rather plan a dozen houses!" she fiercely muttered, as she fussed about. "Yes—I'd rather build 'em—than to keep one clean!"
Then were her hopes dashed by a rising wail from above. She sat quite still awhile, hoping against hope that he would sleep again; but he wouldn't. So she brought him down in full cry.
In her low chair by the window she held him and produced bright and jingling objects from the tall workbasket that stood near by, sighing again as she glanced at its accumulated mending.
Master Eddy grew calm and happy in her arms, but showed a growing interest in the pleasing materials produced for his amusement, and a desire for closer acquaintance. Then a penetrating odor filled the air, and with a sudden "O dear!" she rose, put the baby on the sofa, and started toward the kitchen.
At this moment the doorbell rang.
Mrs. Porne stopped in her tracks and looked at the door. It remained opaque and immovable. She looked at the baby—who jiggled his spools and crowed. Then she flew to the oven and dragged forth the bread, not much burned after all. Then she opened the door.
A nice looking young woman stood before her, in a plain travelling suit, holding a cheap dress-suit case in one hand and a denim "roll-bag" in the other, who met her with a cheerful inquiring smile.
"Are you Mrs. Edgar Porne?" she asked.
"I am," answered that lady, somewhat shortly, her hand on the doorknob, her ear on the baby, her nose still remorsefully in the kitchen, her eyes fixed sternly on her visitor the while; as she wondered whether it was literature, cosmetics, or medicine.
She was about to add that she didn't want anything, when the young lady produced a card from the Rev. Benjamin A. Miner, Mrs. Porne's particularly revered minister, and stated that she had heard there was a vacancy in her kitchen and she would like the place.
"Introducing Mrs. D. Bell, well known to friends of mine."
"I don't know—" said Mrs. Porne, reading the card without in the least grasping what it said. "I—"
Just then there was a dull falling sound followed by a sharp rising one, and she rushed into the parlor without more words.
When she could hear and be heard again, she found Mrs. Bell seated in the shadowy little hall, serene and cool. "I called on Mr. Miner yesterday when I arrived," said she, "with letters of introduction from my former minister, told him what I wanted to do, and asked him if he could suggest anyone in immediate need of help in this line. He said he had called here recently, and believed you were looking for someone. Here is the letter I showed him," and she handed Mrs. Porne a most friendly and appreciative recommendation of Miss D. Bell by a minister in Jopalez, Inca Co., stating that the bearer was fully qualified to do all kinds of housework, experienced, honest, kind, had worked seven years in one place, and only left it hoping to do better in Southern California.
Backed by her own pastor's approval this seemed to Mrs. Porne fully sufficient. The look of the girl pleased her, though suspiciously above her station in manner; service of any sort was scarce and high in Orchardina, and she had been an agelong week without any. "When can you come?" she asked.
"I can stop now if you like," said the stranger. "This is my baggage. But we must arrange terms first. If you like to try me I will come this week from noon to-day to noon next Friday, for seven dollars, and then if you are satisfied with my work we can make further arrangements. I do not do laundry work, of course, and don't undertake to have any care of the baby."
"I take care of my baby myself!" said Mrs. Porne, thinking the new girl was presuming, though her manner was most gently respectful. But a week was not long, she was well recommended, and the immediate pressure in that kitchen where the harvest was so ripe and the laborers so few—"Well—you may try the week," she said. "I'll show you your room. And what is your name?"
"Miss Bell."
LITTLE LEAFY BROTHERS
Little, leafy brothers! You can feel
Warmth o' the sun,
Cool sap-streams run,
The slow, soft, nuzzling creep
Of roots sent deep,
And a close-anchored flowing
In winds smooth-blowing.
And in the Spring! the Spring!
When the stars sing—
The world's love in you grows
Into the rose!
Little hairy brothers! You can feel
The kind sun too;
Winds play with you,
Water is live delight;
In your swift flight
Of wings or leaping feet
Life rushes sweet—
And in the Spring! the Spring!
When the stars sing—
The world's love stirs you first
To wild, sweet thirst,
Mad combat glorious, and so
To what you know
Of love in living. Yes, to you first came
The joy past name
Of interchange—the small mouth pressed
To the warm, willing breast.
But O! the human brothers! We can feel
All, all below
These small ones know;
Earth fair and good,
The bubbling flood
Of life a-growing—in us multiplied
As man spreads wide;
Not into leaves alone,
Nor flesh and bone,
But roof and wall and wheel
Of stone and steel;
Soft foliage and gorgeous bloom
Of humming loom;
And fruit of joy o'er-burdened heart
Poured forth in Art!
We can not only leap in the sun,
Wrestle and run,
But know the music-measured beat
Of dancing feet,
The interplay of hands—we hold
Delight of doing, myriad-fold.
Joy of the rose, we know—
To bloom—to grow!—
Joy of the beast we prove—
To strive—to move!
And in the Spring! the Spring!
When the stars sing,
Wide gladness of all living men
Comes back again,
A conscious universe at rest
In one's own breast!
The world's love! Wholly ours;
Through breathing flowers,
Through all the living tumult of the wood,
In us made good;
Through centuries that rise and fall—
We hold it all!
The world's love! Given music, fit
To carry it.
The world's love! Given words at last, to speak,
Though yet so weak.
The world's love! Given hands that hold so much,
Lips that may touch!
The worlds's love! Sweet!—it lies
In your dear eyes!
OUR ANDROCENTRIC CULTURE; or, THE MAN-MADE WORLD
IV.
MEN AND ART.
Among the many counts in which women have been proven inferior to men in human development is the oft-heard charge that there are no great women artists. Where one or two are proudly exhibited in evidence, they are either pooh-poohed as not very great, or held to be the trifling exceptions which do but prove the rule.
Defenders of women generally make the mistake of over-estimating their performances, instead of accepting, and explaining, the visible facts. What are the facts as to the relation of men and women to art? And what, in especial, has been the effect upon art of a solely masculine expression?
When we look for the beginnings of art, we find ourselves in a period of crude decoration of the person and of personal belongings. Tattooing, for instance, is an early form of decorative art, still in practice among certain classes, even in advanced people. Most boys, if they are in contact with this early art, admire it, and wish to adorn themselves therewith; some do so—to later mortification. Early personal decoration consisted largely in direct mutilation of the body, and the hanging upon it, or fastening to it, of decorative objects. This we see among savages still, in its gross and primitive forms monopolized by men, then shared by women, and, in our time, left almost wholly to them. In personal decoration today, women are still near the savage. The "artists" developed in this field of art are the tonsorial, the sartorial, and all those specialized adorners of the body commonly known as "beauty doctors."
Here, as in other cases, the greatest artists are men. The greatest milliners, the greatest dressmakers and tailors, the greatest hairdressers, and the masters and designers in all our decorative toilettes and accessories, are men. Women, in this as in so many other lines, consume rather than produce. They carry the major part of personal decoration today; but the decorator is the man. In the decoration of objects, woman, as the originator of primitive industry, originated also the primitive arts; and in the pottery, basketry, leatherwork, needlework, weaving, with all beadwork, dyeing and embroideries of ancient peoples we see the work of the woman decorator. Much of this is strong and beautiful, but its time is long past. The art which is part of industry, natural, simple, spontaneous, making beauty in every object of use, adding pleasure to labor and to life, is not Art with a large A, the Art which requires Artists, among whom are so few women of note.
Art as a profession, and the Artist as a professional, came later; and by that time women had left the freedom and power of the matriarchate and become slaves in varying degree. The women who were idle pets in harems, or the women who worked hard as servants, were alike cut off from the joy of making things. Where constructive work remained to them, art remained, in its early decorative form. Men, in the proprietary family, restricting the natural industry of women to personal service, cut off their art with their industry, and by so much impoverished the world.
There is no more conspicuously pathetic proof of the aborted development of women than this commonplace—their lack of a civilized art sense. Not only in the childish and savage display upon their bodies, but in the pitiful products they hang upon the walls of the home, is seen the arrest in normal growth.
After ages of culture, in which men have developed Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, Music and the Drama, we find women in their primitive environment making flowers of wax, and hair, and worsted; doing mottoes of perforated cardboard, making crazy quilts and mats and "tidies"—as if they lived in a long past age, or belonged to a lower race.
This, as part of the general injury to women dating from the beginning of our androcentric culture, reacts heavily upon the world at large. Men, specializing, giving their lives to the continuous pursuit of one line of service, have lifted our standard in aesthetic culture, as they have in other matters; but by refusing the same growth to women, they have not only weakened and reduced the output, but ruined the market as it were, hopelessly and permanently kept down the level of taste.
Among the many sides of this great question, some so terrible, some so pathetic, some so utterly absurd, this particular phase of life is especially easy to study and understand, and has its own elements of amusement. Men, holding women at the level of domestic service, going on themselves to lonely heights of achievement, have found their efforts hampered and their attainments rendered barren and unsatisfactory by the amazing indifference of the world at large. As the world at large consists half of women, and wholly of their children, it would seem patent to the meanest understanding that the women must be allowed to rise in order to lift the world. But such has not been the method—heretofore.
We have spoken so far in this chapter of the effect of men on art through their interference with the art of women. There are other sides to the question. Let us consider once more the essential characteristics of maleness, and see how they have affected art, keeping always in mind the triune distinction between masculine, feminine and human. Perhaps we shall best see this difference by considering what the development of art might have been on purely human terms.
The human creature, as such, naturally delights in construction, and adds decoration to construction as naturally. The cook, making little regular patterns around the edge of the pie, does so from a purely human instinct, the innate eye-pleasure in regularity, symmetry, repetition, and alternation. Had this natural social instinct grown unchecked in us, it would have manifested itself in a certain proportion of specialists—artists of all sorts—and an accompanying development of appreciation on the part of the rest of us. Such is the case in primitive art; the maker of beauty is upheld and rewarded by a popular appreciation of her work—or his.
Had this condition remained, we should find a general level of artistic expression and appreciation far higher than we see now. Take the one field of textile art, for instance: that wide and fluent medium of expression, the making of varied fabrics, the fashioning of garments and the decoration of them—all this is human work and human pleasure. It should have led us to a condition where every human being was a pleasure to the eye, appropriately and beautifully clothed.
Our real condition in this field is too patent to need emphasis; the stiff, black ugliness of our men's attire; the irritating variegated folly of our women's; the way in which we spoil the beauty and shame the dignity of childhood by modes of dress.
In normal human growth, our houses would be a pleasure to the eye; our furniture and utensils, all our social products, would blossom into beauty as naturally as they still do in those low stages of social evolution where our major errors have not yet borne full fruit.
Applied art in all its forms is a human function, common to every one to some degree, either in production or appreciation, or both. "Pure art," as an ideal, is also human; and the single-hearted devotion of the true artist to this ideal is one of the highest forms of the social sacrifice. Of all the thousand ways by which humanity is specialized for inter-service, none is more exquisite than this; the evolution of the social Eye, or Ear, or Voice, the development of those whose work is wholly for others, and to whom the appreciation of others is as the bread of life. This we should have in a properly developed community; the pleasure of applied art in the making and using of everything we have; and then the high joy of the Great Artist, and the noble work thereof, spread far and wide.
What do we find?
Applied art at a very low level; small joy either for the maker or the user. Pure art, a fine-spun specialty, a process carried on by an elect few who openly despise the unappreciative many. Art has become an occult profession requiring a long special education even to enjoy, and evolving a jargon of criticism which becomes more esoteric yearly.
Let us now see what part in this undesirable outcome is due to our
Androcentric Culture.
As soon as the male of our species assumed the exclusive right to perform all social functions, he necessarily brought to that performance the advantages—and disadvantages—of maleness, of those dominant characteristics, desire, combat, self-expression.
Desire has overweighted art in many visible forms; it is prominent in painting and music, almost monopolizes fiction, and has pitifully degraded dancing.
Combat is not so easily expressed in art, where even competition is on a high plane; but the last element is the main evil, self-expression. This impulse is inherently and ineradicably masculine. It rests on that most basic of distinctions between the sexes, the centripetal and centrifugal forces of the universe. In the very nature of the sperm-cell and the germ-cell we find this difference: the one attracts, gathers, draws in; the other repels, scatters, pushes out. That projective impulse is seen in the male nature everywhere; the constant urge toward expression, to all boasting and display. This spirit, like all things masculine, is perfectly right and admirable in its place.
It is the duty of the male, as a male, to vary; bursting forth in a thousand changing modifications—the female, selecting, may so incorporate beneficial changes in the race. It is his duty to thus express himself—an essentially masculine duty; but masculinity is one thing, and art is another. Neither the masculine nor the feminine has any place in art—Art is Human.
It is not in any faintest degree allied to the personal processes of reproduction; but is a social process, a most distinctive social process, quite above the plane of sex. The true artist transcends his sex, or her sex. If this is not the case, the art suffers.
Dancing is an early, and a beautiful art; direct expression of emotion through the body; beginning in subhuman type, among male birds, as the bower-bird of New Guinea, and the dancing crane, who swing and caper before their mates. Among early peoples we find it a common form of social expression in tribal dances of all sorts, religious, military, and other. Later it becomes a more explicit form of celebration, as among the Greeks; in whose exquisite personal culture dancing and music held high place.
But under the progressive effects of purely masculine dominance we find the broader human elements of dancing left out, and the sex-element more and more emphasized. As practiced by men alone dancing has become a mere display of physical agility, a form of exhibition common to all males. As practiced by men and women together we have our social dances, so lacking in all the varied beauty of posture and expression, so steadily becoming a pleasant form of dalliance.
As practiced by women alone we have one of the clearest proofs of the degrading effect of masculine dominance:—the dancing girl. In the frank sensualism of the Orient, this personage is admired and enjoyed on her merits. We, more sophisticated in this matter, joke shamefacedly about "the bald-headed row," and occasionally burst forth in shrill scandal over some dinner party where ladies clad in a veil and a bracelet dance on the table. Nowhere else in the whole range of life on earth, is this degradation found—the female capering and prancing before the male. It is absolutely and essentially his function, not hers. That we, as a race, present this pitiful spectacle, a natural art wrested to unnatural ends, a noble art degraded to ignoble ends, has one clear cause.
Architecture, in its own nature, is least affected by that same cause. The human needs secured by it, are so human, so unescapably human, that we find less trace of excessive masculinity than in other arts. It meets our social demands, it expresses in lasting form our social feeling, up to the highest; and it has been injured not so much by an excess of masculinity as by a lack of femininity.
The most universal architectural expression is in the home; the home is essentially a place for the woman and the child; yet the needs of woman and child are not expressed in our domestic architecture. The home is built on lines of ancient precedent, mainly as an industrial form; the kitchen is its working centre rather than the nursery.
Each man wishes his home to preserve and seclude his woman, his little harem of one; and in it she is to labor for his comfort or to manifest his ability to maintain her in idleness. The house is the physical expression of the limitations of women; and as such it fills the world with a small drab ugliness. A dwelling house is rarely a beautiful object. In order to be such, it should truly express simple and natural relations; or grow in larger beauty as our lives develop.
The deadlock for architectural progress, the low level of our general taste, the everlasting predominance of the commonplace in buildings, is the natural result of the proprietary family and its expression in this form.
In sculpture we have a noble art forcing itself into some service through many limitations. Its check, as far as it comes under this line of study, has been indicated in our last chapter; the degradation of the human body, the vicious standards of sex-consciousness enforced under the name of modesty, the covered ugliness, which we do not recognize, all this is a deadly injury to free high work in sculpture.
With a nobly equal womanhood, stalwart and athletic; with the high standards of beauty and of decorum which we can never have without free womanhood; we should show a different product in this great art.
An interesting note in passing is this: when we seek to express socially our noblest, ideas, Truth; Justice; Liberty; we use the woman's body as the highest human type. But in doing this, the artist, true to humanity and not biassed by sex, gives us a strong, grand figure, beautiful indeed, but never decorated. Fancy Liberty in ruffles and frills, with rings in her ears—or nose.
Music is injured by a one-sided handling, partly in the excess of the one dominant masculine passion, partly by the general presence of egoism; that tendency to self-expression instead of social expression, which so disfigures our art; and this is true also of poetry.
Miles and miles of poetry consist of the ceaseless outcry of the male for the female, which is by no means so overwhelming as a feature of human life as he imagines it; and other miles express his other feelings, with that ingenuous lack of reticence which is at its base essentially masculine. Having a pain, the poet must needs pour it forth, that his woe be shared and sympathized with.
As more and more women writers flock into the field there is room for fine historic study of the difference in sex feeling, and the gradual emergence of the human note.
Literature, and in especial the art of fiction, is so large a field for this study that it will have a chapter to itself; this one but touching on these various forms; and indicating lines of observation.
That best known form of art which to my mind needs no qualifying description—painting—is also a wide field; and cannot be done full justice to within these limits. The effect upon it of too much masculinity is not so much in choice of subject as in method and spirit. The artist sees beauty of form and color where the ordinary observer does not; and paints the old and ugly with as much enthusiasm as the young and beautiful—sometimes. If there is in some an over-emphasis of feminine attractions it is counterbalanced in others by a far broader line of work.
But the main evils of a too masculine art lie in the emphasis laid on self-expression. The artist, passionately conscious of how he feels, strives to make other people aware of these sensations. This is now so generally accepted by critics, so seriously advanced by painters, that what is called "the art world" accepts it as established.
If a man paints the sea, it is not to make you see and feel as a sight of that same ocean would, but to make you see and feel how he, personally, was affected by it; a matter surely of the narrowest importance. The ultra-masculine artist, extremely sensitive, necessarily, and full of the natural urge to expression of the sex, uses the medium of art as ingenuously as the partridge-cock uses his wings in drumming on the log; or the bull moose stamps and bellows; not narrowly as a mate call, but as a form of expression of his personal sensations.
The higher the artist the more human he is, the broader his vision, the more he sees for humanity, and expresses for humanity, and the less personal, the less ultra-masculine, is his expression.