Having no real deep passion to direct them, the men and women of this type are actually drawn into marriage in the first place solely from motives of vanity, because the state of being betrothed is a state of (1) supreme importance, (2) conspicuousness, (3) intense and unscrupulous mutual worship, and (4) romantic glamour.
Their marriage is likely to be the least stable of all marriages among negative people, however, for the moment their vanity ceases to be fed, or humoured, they are likely to weary of an association that affords them ever less and less of the joys of their engaged days. Lacking the sound physiological promptings which make a fully-adapted life sufficient for their happiness and serenity, they become restless the moment (1) adulation declines from the quarter of the spouse, (2) the attention of their world ceases from being concentrated upon them, and (3) that feeling of exaltation which filled their breast during courtship—and particularly on their wedding day—shows signs of waning.
The woman in this kind of match finds out soon after marriage that while she has become the mistress of her own home, she is living in an atmosphere which, compared with that she had grown accustomed to in the days when her matchmaking mother directed her life, and during the months or years of her courtship, is depressingly deficient in appeals to her vanity.
Her husband is securely bound to her by law. His first raptures are over, and the two seem to be settling down to a hum-drum existence, in which those deep thrills of yore seem entirely to have gone from her life. But precisely those thrills were the breath of her nostrils. All the joys of marital intimacy with the man she “loves” do not make up for the loss of that. Her body is not tonic or vital enough to provide any comfort for the exaltation her vanity once afforded her.
She therefore contrives so to modify her hum-drum existence as to restore to it some of the atmosphere of her late adolescence and the days of her courtship. She goes in search of company; she insists on men coming to the house. She sings, or acts, or goes in for sports—all with a view to restoring that atmosphere in which she became engaged. In the end, she easily finds some idiot of a man who will be ignorant and vain enough to court her, and when this happens she will at last breathe deeply again.
These courtships which the vain negative woman contrives to bring about, in order to feed her vanity, may or may not lead to adultery. Frequently they do, because, although she is certainly not actuated by passion in contriving them, she may by chance light upon a paramour who is passionate, and then, in order to prolong the farce, she finds she must yield to his importunacies. Indeed, unless she do yield, the whole of the realistic nature of the love affair, which she has done her best to impart to the experience, will be destroyed. Thus, despite her lack of real passion, this kind of vain adulteress frequently finds herself in the Divorce Court, with the most damning evidence against her, when all the time she has never desired the illicit consummation. What was necessary—nay, essential—to her, was the breath of adulation, not the final embrace of the procreator. She wanted a life that was a long courtship, because courtship is the time when vanity receives its strongest appeals. As, however, she could hardly simulate une grande passion without actually appearing desirous of the consummation, her first marriage is ruined.
Very frequently indeed these women do not allow the consummating step to be taken. Not being at all disposed to it physically, their caution, their cowardice, and their indolence easily get the upper hand, and they ultimately disappoint their expectant lover; but as a rule this happens only when they have squeezed him dry of every possible flattering epithet and attention.
But, the reader will object, as far as behaviour and results are concerned, where is the difference here between the negative woman acting on the impulse of vanity, and the positive woman acting on the impulse of passion?
To judge from the evidence heard in the Divorce Court, the difference is admittedly slight. There is the same dissatisfaction with the home and the mate, leading to the same longing for amusements and activities of all kinds which promise a chance of variety. In actual practice, however, the differences are marked. The positive woman goes about the business with more solemn, even sullen determination. She does not smile, laugh, and frivol about it as the negative woman does. The latter betrays her immediate aim, which is the satisfaction of vanity, by her extreme enjoyment of every step along her irregular path. She enjoys the mere means to an end, which supply the gratification that her vanity needs. The former, having only the end in view, accepts the means as a necessary preliminary, but these means obviously leave her much more unmoved than they do her negative sister.
Thus negative women are notoriously what the French call grimacières. They proclaim their true nature by the perpetual grin that distorts their features throughout the whole period in which they receive attentions from their worshipper. Deep passion does not grin in this way. It is either too deeply stirred, or it is too shy, to make an open exhibition of its feelings. Besides, it is greatly agitated and anxious about the issue.