Women, Children, Love, and Marriage

by C. Gasquoine Hartley

Women were the world’s primitive carriers. In Spain I have seen women bearing immense burdens, unloading boats, acting as porters and as firemen, and removing household furniture. I saw one woman with a chest of drawers easily poised upon her head, another woman bore a coffin, while another, who was old, carried a small bedstead. A beautiful woman porter in one village carried our heavy luggage, running with it on bare feet without sign of effort. She was the mother of four children, and her husband was at the late Cuban war. She was as upright as a young pine, with the shapeliness that comes from perfect bodily equipoise. I do not wish to judge from trivial incidents, but I have found in these Spanish women a strength and beauty that has become rare among women to-day. When a fire breaks out in a small town or village it is the women water-carriers who act as firemen. They fetch the water from fountains and pour it upon the flames. Just recently I have read of three of these women who lost their lives in an attempt to rescue a cripple girl from a burning house.

I was never tired of looking at the Spanish water-carriers; the fountains that are in every town are the most delightful watching-places. The grace with which the women walk on the uneven roads and their perfect skill in balancing their beautiful jarras of stone or copper called forth my unceasing admiration. One result of this universal burden-carrying on the head is the perfect and dignified character of the women’s manner of walking. These women walk like priestesses who are bearing sacred vessels. They move erectly, but without stiffness, with a secure and even stride, planting the foot and heel together, light and firmly. There is something of the grace of an animal in their movements—the alertness, the perfect balance, the suggestion of hidden strength. I recall a conversation I had once with an Englishman, of the not uncommon strongly patriotic and censorious type. We were walking on the quay at La Coruna; he pointed to a group of women-bearers, who were at work unloading a vessel, and said in his indiscriminate British gallantry, “I can’t bear to see women doing work that ought to be done by men.” “Look at the women!” was the answer I made him.

It is interesting to contrast the robust heroines of Spanish writers with the feminine feebleness and inanity which so often are the ideal of English novelists. In Spanish literature vigour and virility, are qualities apart from sex and are bestowed on women equally with men.

Again and again the thoughtful reader will be struck with this in the works of the Spanish writers. It is a point of such interest that one would like to linger upon it. I may mention, as one instance, Cervantes’ heroines: the “illustre Fregona,” “beautiful, with cheeks of rose and jessamine, and as hard as marble,” and Sancho’s daughter, who was “tall as a lance, as fresh as an April morning, and as strong as a porter.” Of Tirso de Molina, the great Spanish dramatist, it has been said that he gives “all vigour to his women and all weakness to his men.” Nor has this robust ideal of womanhood changed. We meet the same qualities among the women depicted by the Spanish writers to-day. Blasco Ibanez, in his “Flor de Mayo,” describes a young woman who could meet “a stolen embrace with a superb kick, which more than once had felled to the ground a big youth as strong and firm as the mast of his boat.” Among the heroines of Juan Valera we find “Juanita” who, “as a girl could throw stones with such precision that she could kill sparrows, and leap on the back of the wildest colt or mule,” while Dona Luz “could dance with a sylph, ride like an Amazon, and in her walk resembled the divine huntress of Delos.”

It may of course be argued that these are chosen types that cannot fairly be said to represent Spanish women. Yet the Spanish writers are realists in a much truer sense than is understood amongst English novelists, and it must be admitted that the persistence of the same qualities in so many heroines proves a fundamental veracity in the type presented; and from my own experience, I can testify that the women I have known, in their vigour and independence, show the qualities of these portrait women.

The fact can scarcely be passed over that these heroines almost all belong to the country districts, sometimes even to the poorest people, and if, as in the case of “Dona Luz,” they spring from a different class, they are, as a rule, illegitimate, combining aristocratic distinction with plebian vigour. This corresponds with my own observations. I have found the women workers more robust and more intelligent than the women of the middle and upper classes.

Nor is the explanation far to seek. The preparation that these women receive for life is far inferior to that of the workers, who co-operate with men, and whose lives are as actively productive, and work as capably performed. The women of the richer classes lead lives of marked inferiority; without opportunity for work, and compelled to an existence of restricted activity, it is impossible to develop their physical and intellectual qualities.

Most of these ladies, except when quite young, are stout, they are less intelligent than the peasants, and few of them have ever appealed to me as being beautiful. I hasten to add, however, that they all have the fascination that belongs to Spanish women; a charm not easy to define. I have spoken of this quality before, let me try to make it clearer now. I believe it is that all these “senoras” and “senoritas” understand that they are women, and instead of this bringing them unhappiness and causing, as it so often does, the indefinite unquietness that characterises so many English and American women, you feel that they are glad that this is so. This is why they are so attractive. Spanish women are in harmony with themselves, which gives them something of that exquisite appeal which belongs to all natural things. This is the reason too, why the older women are so good-humoured, smiling and gay; they have none of them missed their womanhood.

Here is the real reason of the admiration which these women so universally arouse,—as women they are so perfect. This is a question that reaches very deeply; it is a quality so easy to see, so difficult to explain. What I wish to make clear is that the modern English ideal for women leaves a wide margin open to desire; the innermost forces of life too often are left unsatisfied, while the women of Spain, with all their restrictions, know what it is that, after all, really brings happiness for women. Which is the wiser knowledge?

The restrictions for women will pass with the expansion of modern life, and then the strong personality of Spanish women, their energy and good sense, will inevitably find expression when opportunity is given to them. But never can they fall, in pursuit of outside things, into the error of forgetfulness of their womanhood. There does not appear to be any vagueness in the souls of these women: our women have so often too much. In the composed presence of the Spanish ladies I have felt that it is little profit to a woman if, in gaining the world, she should lose herself.