And what of the isolated young girl? Her case seems to me even more sorrowful and piteous. Half of life is a sealed book to her. She has scarcely any ideas that are not delusions about love and the opposite sex, and the most important offices of her being. Her natural impulses have been suppressed, stunted, and perverted, and her physical health is probably feebler than that of the dissipated young man. She marries late, dazed with joy that her hour has come at last, and frequently awakes in the first year of marriage to the truth that she knew little about men in general, and not nearly enough about the man she has wedded; that she was wofully inexperienced and ignorant, and that Respectability condemns her to drain the bitter cup of disappointment to the dregs, to drain it with composure and a smiling face to the world. She was not allowed to mix freely with men. All her ideas of male human nature are derived from mawkish novels and story books, often written by women as ill-informed as herself. Many women have confessed to me that they did not understand men till they married one, and many men have said the same concerning women.
How, then, can we lessen the chances of drawing the wrong card in the great lottery of marriage? Certainly not by the sequestration of youths and maidens, for that is one of the chief causes of unsuccessful unions. Grundyism and Respectability must be set at defiance, and boys and girls in adolescence allowed to form companionships with each other. The artificial barriers between them must be broken down; the old stupid inhibitions rescinded, and a wholesome association not only permitted, but by every means encouraged. Education in life through the fellowship and the interchange of ideas between the sexes is one safeguard against wreckage in the perilous journey of matrimony.
Discoursing upon the "eternal feminine," Schopenhauer says: "Individual and partial exceptions do not alter the fact that women are, and will always remain, the most thorough and incurable Philistines.... Their domination and influence ruins modern society.... The essentially European lady is a being who ought to have no existence at all; there ought, on the other hand, to be housewives and girls who hope to become such, and who are, in consequence, brought up to domesticity by subordination. Just because there are ladies in Europe, women of a lower grade, who form, therefore, the great majority of the sex, are much more unhappy than they are in the East."
As to the charge of Philistinism, I am, unfortunately, compelled to agree with the pessimistic mysogynist. Women are the larger part of humanity in this country, and, that part being Philistine, it must exercise a bad influence upon society in the mass. I do not deny that the spirit of rebellion lurks in every woman's breast, but, for all that, women are not readily persuaded to rebel against absurd conventions. Their great desire is to be on the popular side, and in the ranks of the mightier force, because unpopular causes are generally accounted discreditable by the majority. Women, therefore, set a high value on Respectability, and they endure much suffering to maintain it. Yet here and there we find women as leaders and foremost fighters in assaults upon irrational institutions and customs, and they are often wise tacticians and valorous assailers. But such women are not of the Respectables; they are thinkers and reformers who have cast aside the cumbrous, tawdry trappings of that order, so that they may be of service to humanity. The Philistine woman cares little or nothing for social advance and the welfare of posterity, and in this respect she is always rather more apathetic or actively hostile to progress than the Philistine man. She feels that a woman has more to lose than a man by abandoning conventionalities and orthodox opinions. But this dread is somewhat ill-founded and exaggerated, because there are many unconventional men only too ready to warmly welcome the women who revolt, and not only to bid them cheer, but to pay them high homage for their bravery and independence. In the long run, a woman gains far more esteem and friendship in the army of the Unconventionalists than she wins from the host of the Respectables.
Timidity is one of the prime sources of the disease of Respectability in both sexes, and women are by nature more timid than men in the matter of revolt against ignorant Public Opinion. The result is that women are much less free than men in so-called free countries. "A man glories in being considered bold, but a woman shrinks from the charge of boldness, as degrading to her sex." [2] And here I shelter myself behind a doughty champion of women, because if I wrote the indictment which he has set down, my ethical-cum-philosophical Gamaliel, and possibly many of my women readers, would charge me with "cynicism" and "sex-bias." I quote again from Mr. Gibson, who, in this charge of the alleged untruthfulness of women, is almost as emphatic as Schopenhauer: "Owing to the subordinate position of women, they are less truthful than men. They work up to their ends without the exercise of force, and must therefore use guile. Men lie as readily as women when they think lies will serve their purpose, but, having more freedom, and being less afraid of conflict, they have less cause to lie. Women are taught to lie from their childhood, in order to hide their desires, their disappointments, and their sufferings. Women are driven in upon themselves, and in sheer self-defence lie as men are not called upon to lie." [3]
I know several charming women who lie most glibly and as to the manner born, without a tinge of shame; indeed, it is a difficult matter to make sure that you have "got them," so to speak, for their speech is so slippery, and they fib so artistically that no reliance can be placed upon their admissions of belief or disbelief in this or that. All that they say must be swallowed with a large grain of salt. But let me qualify this impugnment somewhat. I think we may fairly say that the tarradiddles of women are not generally of the more ignoble order of lies. They are mostly pretty little semi-transparent falsehoods which do not utterly deceive the hearer who has studied the psychology of women. It is Respectability that makes cowards and cozeners of men and women; and those who imagine that they have the most to lose by frankness will naturally practice the most deception. [4] The woman-thrall to convention is forced to use the weapons of falsehood and to don the armour of deceit. In corroboration of this assertion, I shall again quote the words of another writer, and a woman to boot. Miss Violet Hunt, a clever satiric novelist, thus describes the unhappy girl who has been inoculated with the virus of Respectability:—
"How one knows the kind of girl! One meets a specimen in almost every house-party. She is nicely dressed, but not quite so nicely as the other girls staying in the house. She has charming manners, but there is something of the offensive and defensive sharpness of the street Arab about her. She has had to take care of herself ever since she was grown up, and make her tongue do the work of chaperonage. If it rains, she is in mute agony, because she cannot afford to spoil her clothes. She takes Champagne regularly at dinner because she does not have it at home. She is at some pains to propitiate her hostess, because she intends to be asked again. She holds her tongue when grand functions are mentioned, because she was not there. In short, she is a kind of innocent whited sepulchre; a frail, jerry-built edifice, whose prestige may be destroyed at any moment by untoward revelations as to her social standing, whose whole endeavour is to give the impression that she lives in a mentionable part of London, and dresses on more than thirty pounds a year." [5]