When this kind of superior being is a woman, there is something pretty in the sublime assumption of her supremacy and the sweeping range of her condemnation. Sheltered from temptation and secure from danger, she looks out on life from the serene heights of her safe place, and wonders how men can fail and women fall before the power of trials of which she knows only the name. Her circulation is languid and her temperament phlegmatic; and the burning desire of life which sends the strong into danger, perhaps into sin, is as much unknown to her as is the fever of the tropics to a Laplander crouching in his snow-hut. But she judges none the less positively because of her ignorance; and, as she looks into your quivering face with her untroubled eyes, lets you see plainly enough how she despises all the human frailties under which you may have tripped and stumbled. Sometimes she rebukes you loftily. Your soul is sore with the consciousness of your sin, your heart is weak with the pain of life; but the superior being tells you that repentance cannot undo the evil that has been done, and that to feel pain is weak.
The superiority which some women assume over men is very odd. It is like the grave rebuke of a child, not knowing what it is that it rebukes. When women take up their parable and censure men for the wild or evil things they do, not understanding how or why it has come about that they have done them, and knowing as little of the inner causes as of the outer, they are in the position of superior beings talking unmitigated rubbish. To be sure, it is very sweet and innocent rubbish, and has a lofty air about it that redeems what else would be mere presumption; but there is no more practical worth in what they say than there is in the child's rebuke when its doll will not stand upright on sawdust legs, nor eat a crumb of cake with waxen lips. This is one reason why women of the order of superior beings have so little influence over men; they judge without knowledge and condemn without insight. If they could thoroughly fathom man's nature, so as to understand his difficulties, they would then have moral power if their aims were higher than his, their principles more lofty, their practice more pure. As it is, they have next to none; and the very men who seem to yield most go only so far as to conceal what the superior being disapproves of; they do not change because of her greater weight of doctrine.
Men show themselves as superior beings to women on another count—intellectually, rather than morally. While women rebuke men for their sins, men snub women for their follies; the one wields the spiritual, the other the intellectual, weapon of castigation, and both hold themselves superior, beyond all possibility of rivalry, according to the chance of sex. The masculine view of a subject always imposes itself on women as something unattainable by the feminine mind. Nine times out of ten it brings them to a due sense of their own inferiority, save in the case of the superior being, to whom of course the masculine view counts for nothing against her own. But even when women do not accept a man's opinions, they instinctively recognize his greater value, his greater breadth and strength. Perhaps they cry out against his hardness, if he is a political economist and they are emotional; or against his lower morality if he goes in for universal charity and philosophical latitudinarianism, and they are enthusiasts with a clearly-defined faith and a belief in its infallibility. These are wide tracts of difference between the two minds, not to be settled by the ipse dixit of even a superior being; but in general the superiority of the man makes itself more felt than the superiority of the woman. While one preaches, the other ridicules; and snubbing does more than condemnation.
FEMININE AMENITIES.
A man's foes are those of his own household, and the keenest enemies of women are women themselves. No one can inflict such humiliation on a woman as can a woman when she chooses; for if the art of high-handed snubbing belongs to men, that of subtle wounding is peculiarly feminine, and is practised by the best-bred of the sex. Women are always more or less antagonistic to each other. They are gregarious in fashions and emulative in follies, but they cannot combine; they never support their weak sisters; they shrink from those who are stronger than the average; and if they would speak the truth boldly, they would confess to a radical contempt for each other's intellect—which perhaps is the real reason why the sect of the 'emancipated' commands so small a following.
Half a dozen ordinary men advocating 'emancipation' doctrines would do more towards leavening the whole bulk of womankind than any number of first-class women. Where these do stand by each other it is from instinctive or personal affection rather than from class solidarity. And this is one of the most striking distinctions of sex, and one cause, among others, why men have the upper hand, and why they are able to keep it. Certainly there are reasons, sufficiently good, why women do not more readily coalesce; and one is the immense difference between the two extremes—the silly being too silly to appreciate the wise, and the weak too weak to bear the armour of the strong. There is more difference between outsiders among women than there is among men; the feminine characteristic of exaggeration making a gap which the medium or average man fills. The ways of women with each other more than all else show the great difference between their morale and that of men. They flatter and coax as men could not do, but they are also more rude to each other than any man would be to his fellow. It is amazing to see the things they can do and will bear—things which no man would dream of standing and which no man would dare to attempt. This is because they are not taught to respect each other, and because they have no fear of consequences. If one woman is insulted by another, she cannot demand satisfaction nor knock the offender down; and it is unladylike to swear and call names. She must bear what she can repay only in kind; but, to do her justice, she repays in a manner undeniably effective and to the point.
There is nothing very pronounced about the feminine modes of aggression and retaliation; and yet each is eloquent and sufficient for its purpose. It may be only a stare, a shrug, a toss of the head; but women can throw an intensity of disdain into the simplest gesture which answers the end perfectly. The unabashed serenity and unflinching constancy with which one woman can stare down another is in itself an art that requires a certain amount of natural genius, as well as careful cultivation. She puts up her eyeglass—not being shortsighted—and surveys the enemy standing two feet from her, with a sublime contempt for her whole condition, or with a still more sublime ignoring of her sentient existence, that no words could give. If the enemy be sensitive and unused to the kind of thing, she is absolutely crushed, destroyed for the time, and reduced to the most pitiable state of self-abasement. If she be of a tougher fibre, and has had some experience of feminine warfare, she returns the stare with a corresponding amount of contempt or of obliviousness; and from that moment a contest is begun which never ceases and which continually gains in bitterness. The stare is the weapon of offence most in use among women, and is specially favoured by the experienced against the younger and less seasoned. It is one of the instinctive arms native to the sex; and we have only to watch the introduction of two girls to each other to see this, and to learn how even in youth is begun the exercise which time and use raise to such deadly perfection.
In the conversations of women with each other we again meet with examples of their peculiar amenities to their own sex. They never refrain from showing how much they are bored; they contradict flatly, without the flimsiest veil of apology to hide their rudeness; and they interrupt ruthlessly, whatever the subject in hand may be. One lady was giving another a minute account of how the bride looked yesterday when she was married to Mr. A., of somewhat formidable boudoir repute, with whom her listener had had sundry tender passages which made the mention of his marriage a notoriously sore subject. 'Ah! I see you have taken that old silk which Madame Josephine wanted to palm off on me last year,' said the tortured listener brusquely breaking into the narrative without a lead of any kind. And the speaker was silenced. In this case it was the interchange of doubtful courtesies, wherein neither deserved pity; but to make a disparaging remark about a gown, in revenge for turning the knife in a wound, was a thoroughly feminine manner of retaliation, and one that would not have touched a man. Such shafts fall blunted against the rugged skin of the coarser creature; and the date or pattern of a bit of cloth would not have told much against the loss of a lover. But as most women passionately care for dress, their toilet is one of their most vulnerable parts. Ashamed to be unfashionable, they tolerate anything in each other rather than shabbiness or eccentricity, even when picturesque; hence a sarcastic allusion to the age of a few yards of silk as a set-off against a grossly cruel stab was a return wound of considerable depth cleverly given.