Again, it surely does not behove the New Woman to throng the streets in front of the establishments of Mr. Peter Robinson or Madame Louise, in admiring ecstasies over novel cuts and colours, bows and bonnets, and all the feminine accoutrements of fashion. Conceive of men crowding the tailors’ and the haberdashers’ in like manner, and taking equal delight in ‘shopping!’ This last occupation, or rather pastime, of women is a certain sign of mental inferiority. A woman will spend a whole day ‘shopping’—that is to say, in the inspection of goods she does not want and has no intention of buying—and will return home when day is done and count her time well and profitably spent. ‘Shopping,’ as apart from any idea of purchasing, is a recognised form of feminine recreation, as tradesfolk know to their cost. Happy the shopkeeper whose trade does not lend itself to ‘shopping,’ but wretched is he where the vice is rampant. For woman is pitiless and exacting, impervious either to criticism, sarcasm, irony, or innuendo, on occasion; and the more logical the man with whom she contends, so much the more baffling is she to him. So, short of plain and possibly offensive speech (for none so readily or more causelessly offended than your ‘shopper’), the unhappy victims of this mania have no redress, but must continue to heap their counters with bales of cloth and rolls of silk for due examination, and must exhibit a Christian patience and forbearance when the ‘shopper’ departs without purchasing or apologising.
No mere man could do this, for such assurance could only proceed from the opposite sex.
A perusal of the advertisement sheets which form the bulk of women’s newspapers and magazines makes for disillusionment and depression; and you would need but little excuse if, after a course of these appeals to feminine love of adornment, you rose from it with a settled conviction that Woman is a Work of Art, padded here, pinched in there, painted, dyed, and carefully made up in every particular. He was, indeed, a philosopher worthy the name (or perhaps it was a more than usually candid woman!) who said that none of the consolations of religion or any pious ecstasies could equal the profound and solemn joy which accompanies a woman’s conviction of her being well dressed and the envy of her fellows.
Here, indeed, is another striking difference between the sexes. A man is happiest when circumstances permit him to don the old clothes which for years have been his only wear in leisure hours: he would wear them while out and about on his business did the convenances permit—so easy and comfortable is the old hat; so well adapted by long use is the old jacket to the form; so easy the bagged and misshapen trousers. But, alas! this may not be, for the world judges a man by his appearance, and it simply does not pay to appear in public otherwise than ‘well dressed.’ For dukes and millionaires ’tis another matter; they can afford to be ‘shabby’ and comfortable, and certainly, whether they manage to attain comfort or not, they generally contrive to appear ill-dressed and dowdy.
Woman is altogether different from and inferior to man: narrow-chested, wide-hipped, ill-proportioned, and endowed with a lesser quantity of brains than the male sex. She will, when sufficiently open to conviction, allow that, mentally, she is not so well equipped as man, but gives herself away altogether in insisting upon the ‘instinct’ that takes the place of reason in her sex; thereby tacitly placing herself on a level with other creatures—like the dog or cat—who act upon ‘instinct’ rather than upon reasoning powers. ‘A woman’s reason’ is a notoriously inadequate mental process; and, having once arrived at a conviction or a determination on any subject, it is of no use attempting to argue her out of it. That is widely acknowledged by the popular saying that ‘it is useless to argue with a woman’
‘If she will, she will, and there’s an end on’t:
If she won’t, she won’t, depend on’t.’
These qualifications, limitations, or defects, as you may variously call them, according to your leanings, explain in great measure the reason why the Liberal and Radical parties in politics hesitate to give women the Parliamentary franchise. Party wirepullers are well aware, putting on one side the small but noisy section of unsexed females who clamour to be in the forefront of all political and social revolutions, that the great majority of women are, by nature and tradition, Tories of the most thorough-going type. They know, also, how hopeless it would be to drive new convictions into their heads, and so, being reasoning creatures, they have hitherto declined to extend the franchise to the sex which would at once swamp their parties throughout the country. The Conservative party, on the other hand, have for some time recognised how useful the women would be in furthering their principles and putting a needful skid upon the wheels of Radical ‘movements;’ and they have voted in favour of Woman Suffrage when that question has come up for discussion from time to time. The wonderful success of the Primrose League, due almost entirely to the personal initiative and enthusiasm of the Dames, opened the eyes of the party to the value of woman as a factor in politics, and if ever she obtains her vote the reform will be the work of the Conservatives. Thus do party needs negative convictions on either side of the House; for what, indeed, are convictions when weighed in the balance against self-interest?
It is a notorious fact among artists and physiologists that the Perfect Woman is of more rare occurrence than the Perfect Man; that it is a matter of extreme difficulty to find a woman whose body is symmetrical and well knit in all its parts. A painter of the nude works, of necessity, from several models, selecting one for her shapely arms, another for her neck, and so on; and so the final work of art in sculpture or painting is always eclectic, and never a portraiture of one woman.
And yet man has always been ready to do battle for her, and to dare death and the Devil himself for her favour. She has, too, continually presumed upon her influence, like the fair lady in the days of chivalry, who threw her glove among the lions of an arena and boasted that her knight would retrieve it for her sake. She did not overrate his courage, but she strained his devotion beyond its strength; for, leaping among the wild beasts, the brave man picked up the glove, and, coming back from the jaws of death, flung it in the woman’s face.
But will men dare the death and slit one another’s weasands for the possession of the New Woman as they have done for the women of the past? I think not. The contempt and incredulity of one sex for the judgment and discrimination of the other, which is chiefly a modern growth induced by woman’s arrogance, is not compatible with suit and service; and, in truth, the enmity between man and woman, shadowed forth in Genesis, is having another lease of life, owing to the fatuous females who cry to-day upon the house-tops.