Woman in the golden ages

by Amelia Gere Mason

One can hardly overrate the value of an institution which has given light and an upward impulse to so many lives, and changed the complexion of society so distinctly for the better. But it may be worth while to ask if the women of to-day, with their splendid initiative and boundless aspirations, are not going a little too fast, getting entangled in too much machinery, losing their individuality in masses, assuming more responsibility than they can well carry. Why is it that lines too deep for harmonious thought are so early writing themselves on the strong, tense, mobile, and delicate faces of American women? Why is it that the pure joy of life seems to be lost in the restless and insatiable passion for multitudes, so often thinly disguised as love for knowledge, which is not seldom little more than the shell and husk of things? Is the pursuit of culture degenerating into a pursuit of clubs, and are we taking for ourselves new taskmasters more pitiless than the old? “The emancipation of woman is fast becoming her slavery,” said one who was caught in the whirl of the social machinery and could find no point of repose. We pride ourselves on our liberty; but the true value of liberty is to leave people free from a pressure that prevents their fullest growth. What do we gain if we simply exchange one tyranny for another? Apart from the fact that the finest flowers of culture do not spring from a soil that is constantly turned, any more than they do from a soil that is not turned at all, it is a question of human limitations, of living so as to continue to live, of growing so as to continue to grow. Nor is it simply a matter of individuals. Societies, too, exhaust themselves; and those which reach an exaggerated growth in a day are apt to perish in a day. It is not the first time in the history of the world that there has been a brilliant reign of intelligence among women, though perhaps there was never one so widely spread as now. Why have they ended in more or less violent reactions? We may not be able to answer the question satisfactorily, but it gives us food for reflection.

II

The most remarkable, though by no means the only, precedent we have for a social organization planned by women on a basis of the intellect, was the French literary salon of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These women had relatively as much intelligence as we have, and possibly more power. It must be taken into consideration that they were remote from us by race, religion, and political régime, as well as by several generations of time, and that their spirit, aims, and methods were as unlike ours as their points of view. But that which they did on traditional lines and a small scale we are doing on new lines and a very large scale. Their intellectual life found its outlet in the salon, as ours does in the club. These equally represent the active influence of women in their respective ages. Both have resulted in a mania for knowledge, a change of ideals, a radical revolution in social life, and an unprecedented increase in the authority of women. As they have certain tendencies and dangers in common, it may be of interest to trace a few points of resemblance and contrast between them; also to glance at the elements which have gone into the club and are making it so considerable a factor in American life.

The salon, like the club, was founded and led by clever women in the interests of culture, both literary and social; but, unlike the club, it was devoted to bringing into relief the talents of men. The difference, so far as manners are concerned, is a fundamental one. It would never have occurred to the women of that age to band together for self-improvement. If they had given the matter a thought, it would not have seemed to them likely to come in that way; still less would it have occurred to them that this mode of doing things could be of any service in bettering the world or their own position. Rousseau, who wrote so many fine phrases about liberty, and left women none at all, not even the small privilege of protesting against injustice, said that they were “made to please men”; and it is safe to say that the Frenchwomen had no scheme of life apart from men, until they were ready to go into seclusion for prayer and penance and preparation for the next world. They accepted the fact that men had the ordering of affairs, and that they could make their own influence felt only by acting through them. “What is the difference whether women rule, or the rulers are guided by women?” said Aristotle. “If the power is in their hands, the result is the same.” It was simply a question of the best way of ruling the rulers. In this case the rulers were of a race that has not only a great liking for women in the concrete, but a great admiration for woman in the abstract. So long as her gifts are consecrated to his interest and pleasure, the Frenchman never objects to them—indeed, he is disposed to pay much homage to them. In the interest of some one else, or even in her own, it is another matter. They might be inconvenient. But in this new kingdom of the salon he was quite willing to accord her the supremacy, since she gave him the place of honor and furnished an effective background for his talents without too much parading her own. He had only to shine and be applauded. What more could he desire?

Naturally, under such conditions, among the first of her arts was that of making things agreeable. If she had any fine moral lessons to inculcate, she gave them in the form of sugared pills that were pleasant to take. In her category of virtues the social ones were uppermost; but they were the means to an end, and this end must not be lost sight of. Her special mission was to correct coarse manners and bad morals, as well as to secure due recognition for talent; but she went about it in her own way. It may be said that, as a rule, the Frenchwoman is much less interested in what is done than in how it is done. In the early days of the salons she concerned herself little, if at all, with theories and grave social problems; but she did concern herself very much with questions of taste and manners, the refinements of language and literature, the subtleties of sentiment, the dignity of converse between men and women. Nor did she bring to these questions an untrained mind. If she did not make so much of a business of improving it as we do, she did not neglect private study and the reading of the best books, which, though few, were undiluted. “It gives dull colors to the mind to have no taste for solid reading,” said Mme. de Sévigné, who delighted in Montaigne and Pascal, Tacitus and Vergil, with various other classics which are not exactly the food for frivolity. These women did not always spell correctly, and would have declined altogether to write a paper on the “Science of Government” or the “Philosophy of Confucius,”—subjects which the school-girls of to-day feel quite competent to treat,—but they showed surprising clearness and penetration in their criticisms of literature and manners. The coteries which formed an audience for Corneille, sympathized with the exalted thought of Pascal and Arnauld, helped to modify and polish the maxims of La Rochefoucauld,—as those which, a century or so later, discussed the tragedies of Voltaire or the philosophy of Rousseau with men of genius who would have had small patience with platitudes,—needed no lowering of levels to suit their taste or comprehension. They were held firmly to fine literary ideals. All they asked was simplicity of statement, and this was made a fashion, to the lasting benefit of French literature.

It is true that the movement of the salon was in the direction of a brilliant social as well as a brilliant intellectual life; but to fuse such varied materials, to unite men of action and men of letters, nobles and philosophers, statesmen and poets, people within the pale and people outside of it, in a harmonious society, presided over by women who set up new standards and new codes of manners, meant more than intelligence, more than social charm. It involved diplomacy of a high order, which implies flexibility, penetration, and the subtler qualities of the intellect, as well as tact, sympathy, and knowledge of men. This was notably an outgrowth of the salon, where women owed much of their influence to a quick perception of the fine shades of temperament, genius, interest, and passion through which the world is swayed. The result of such training was a mind singularly lucid, great administrative ability, and a character full of the intangible quality that we call charm. If it was a trifle weak as to moral fiber, this may be largely laid to the standards of the time, which were not ours. Mme. du Deffand put the philosophy of her age and race into an epigram when she said that “the virtues are superior to the sentiments, but not so agreeable.” Both temperament and education led these women toward Hellenic ideals. The latter-day woman is inclined to look upon their methods as trivial and their attitude as humiliating; but, whatever we may think of their point of view, we must admit their masterly ability in making vital changes for the better, and attaining a position of influence which we have hardly yet secured for ourselves. They did much more than form society, create a code of manners, and set the fashions, which we are apt to look upon as their special province. They refined the language, stimulated talent, gave fresh life to literature, exacted a new respect for women, and held political as well as social and academic honors in their hands.

If they sometimes dipped into affairs of state in support of their friends, and with a too incidental reference to the interests of the State, I am not sure that even the men of our own time are absolutely free from a personal tinge of the same sort, without the saving grace of altruism. At all events, in the pursuit of a better order of things, they took the pleasant path around the mountain rather than the doubtful and untrodden path over it, which, since they could not go over it if they tried, was, to my thinking, the wiser way.

III

But other times, other conditions and other methods. It was a long step from these fine ladies in rouge and ruffles to the earnest American women of high aims and simpler lives who, not far from thirty years ago, began seriously to group themselves in clubs for social fellowship and mental culture. The difference is equally marked, now that these gatherings are numbered by thousands. It is more vital than a variation in manners, as it lies in the character of the two races.

The club had no prestige of a class behind it, and concerned itself little with traditions. It was a far more radical departure from the old order than the salon, which, though it established a new social basis, did it through delicate compromises that left the aristocratic spirit intact. It was only in its later days that the iconoclasts invaded it, to some extent, and made it a sort of hotbed for the propagation of democratic theories which seemed quite harmless until, one day, a spark set them ablaze, and the generation that had played with them was swept to destruction. The club was democratic from the foundation. It did not revolve round men of letters, or men of any class. There was no man, or influence of man, behind it—no man in the vista. It does not aim to bring into relief the talents of men, but the talents of women who had come, perhaps, to wish a little glory on their own account. There was no longer an outlet for their activities in the salon, which belonged neither to the genius of the age nor the genius of the race. The Anglo-Saxon man is not preëminently a social being, and though he has not been entirely neglected in the matter of vanity or personal susceptibility, he has rather less of either than his Gallic compeers. Nor is he so amenable, either by temperament or training, to the delicate arts that make social life agreeable. Half a century or so ago, the American, in whose chivalrous regard for women we take so much pride, was in the habit of saying many fine things about them in what he was pleased to call the sphere God had assigned them; indeed, he went so far as to offer a great deal of theoretical incense to them as household divinities, with special and very human limitations as to privileges. But he frowned distinctly upon any intellectual tastes or aspirations. His attitude was tersely and modestly expressed in Tennyson’s couplet: