And in nine cases out of ten, if she has the intelligence to make use of what a combination of average abilities and experience has developed in her, she succeeds, and permanently; for women do not go to pieces between forty and fifty as they did in the past. They have learned too much. Work and multifarious interests distract their mind, which formerly dwelt upon their failing youth, and when they sadly composed themselves in the belief that they had given the last of their vitality to the last of their children; to-day, instead of sitting down by the fireside and waiting to die, they enter resolutely upon their second youth, which is, all told, a good deal more satisfactory than the first.
Every healthy and courageous woman's second vitality is stronger and more enduring than her first. Not only has her body, assisted by modern science, settled down into an ordered routine that is impregnable to anything but accident, but her mind is delivered from the hopes and fears of the early sex impulses which so often sicken the cleverest of the younger women both in body and mind, filling the body with lassitude and the mind either with restless impatience or a complete indifference to anything but the tarrying prince. To blame them for this would be much like cursing Gibraltar for not getting out of the way in a storm. They are the tools of the race, the chosen mediums of Nature for the perpetuation of her beloved species. But the fact remains—that is to say, in the vast majority of girls. There is, as we all know, the hard-shell division of their sex who, even without a gift, infinitely prefer the single and independent life in their early youth, and only begin to show thin spots in their armor as they approach thirty, sometimes not until it is far too late. But if you will spend a few days walking through the department stores, for instance, of a large city and observing each of the young faces in turn behind the counters, it will be rarely that you will not feel reasonably certain that the secret thoughts of all that vast army circle persistently about some man, impinging or potential. And wherever you make your studies, from excursion boats to the hour of release at the gates of a factory, you must draw the same conclusion that sex reigns, that it is the most powerful factor in life and will be so long as Earth at least continues to spin. For that reason, no matter how persistently girls may work because they must or starve, it is the competent older women, long since outgrown the divine nonsense of youth, who are the more satisfactory workers. Girls, unless indifferently sexed, do not take naturally to work in their youth. Whether they have the intelligence to reason or not, they know that they were made for a different fate and they resent standing behind a counter all day long or speeding up machinery for a few dollars a week. Even the highly intelligent girls who find work on newspapers often look as if they were at the end of their endurance. It is doubtful if the world ever can run along without the work of women but the time will surely come when society will be so constituted that no woman in the first flush of her youth will be forced to squander it on the meager temporary reward, and forfeit her birthright. If she wants to, well and good. No one need be deeply concerned for those that launch out into life because they like it. Women in civilized countries are at liberty to make their own lives; that is the supreme privilege of democracy. But the victims of the propelling power of the world are greatly to be pitied and Society should come to their rescue. I know that the obvious answer to this is "Socialism." But before the rest of us can swallow Socialism it must spew out its present Socialists and get new ones. Socialists never open their mouths that they do not do their cause harm; and whatever virtues their doctrine may contain we are blinded to it at present. This war may solve the problem. If Socialism should be the inevitable outcome it would at least come from the top and so be sufferable.
V
It is all very well to do your duty by your sex and keep up the birth-rate, and there are compensations, no doubt of that, when the husband is amiable, the income adequate, and the children are dears and turn out well; but the second life is one's very own, the duty is to one's self, and, such is the ineradicable selfishness of human nature after long years of self-denial and devotion to others, there is a distinct, if reprehensible, satisfaction in being quite natural and self-centered. If, on the other hand, circumstances are such that the capable middle-aged woman, instead of living entirely for herself, in her clubs, in her increasing interest in public affairs, and her chosen work, finds herself with certain members of her family dependent upon her, she also derives from this fact an enormous satisfaction, for it enables her to prove that she can fill a man's place in the world, be quite as equal to her job.
Instead of breaking down, this woman, who has outlived the severest handicap of sex without parting with any of its lore, grows stronger and more poised every year, retaining (or regaining) her looks if she has the wisdom to keep her vanity alive; while the girl forced to spend her days on her feet behind a counter (we hear of seats for these girls but we never see them occupied), or slave in a factory (where there is no change of shift as in the munition factories of the European countries in war time), or work from morning until night as a general servant—"one in help"—wilts and withers, grows pasée, fanée, is liable to ultimate breakdown unless rescued by some man.
The expenditure of energy in these girls is enormous, especially if they combine with this devitalizing work an indulgence in their natural desire to play. Rapid child-bearing would not deplete them more; and it is an intensely ignorant or an intensely stupid or, in the United States, an exceptionally sensual woman who has a larger family than the husband can keep in comfort. Moreover, unless in the depths of poverty, each child means a period of rest, which is more than the girl behind the counter gets in her entire working period.
These women, forced by a faulty social structure to support themselves and carry heavy burdens, lack the intense metabolism of the male, his power to husband his stores of carbon (an organic exception which renders him indifferent to standing), and the superior quality of his muscle. Biologically men and women are different from crown to sole. It might be said that Nature fashioned man's body for warfare, and that if he grows soft during intervals of peace it is his own fault. Even so, unless in some way he has impaired his health, he has heretofore demonstrated that he can do far more work than women, and stand several times the strain, although his pluck may be no finer.
If one rejects this statement let him look about among his acquaintance at the men who have toiled hard to achieve an independence, and whose wives have toiled with them, either because they lived in communities where it was impossible to keep servants, or out of a mistaken sense of economy. The man looks fresh and his wife elderly and wrinkled and shapeless, even if she has reasonable health. It is quite different in real cities where life on a decent income (or salary) can be made very easy for the woman, as I have just pointed out; but I have noticed that in small towns or on the farm, even now, when these scattered families are no longer isolated as in the days when farmers' wives committed suicide or intoxicated themselves on tea leaves, the woman always looks far older than the man if "she has done her own work" during all the years of her youth and maturity. If she renounces housekeeping in disgust occasionally and moves to an hotel, she soon amazes her friends by looking ten years younger; and if her husband makes enough money to move to a city large enough to minimize the burdens of housekeeping and offer a reasonable amount of distraction, she recovers a certain measure of her youth, although still far from being at forty or fifty what she would have been if her earlier years had been relieved of all but the strains which Nature imposes upon every woman from princess to peasant.
It remains to be seen whether the extraordinary amount of work the European women are doing in the service of their country, and the marked improvement in their health and physique, marks a stride forward in the physical development of the sex, being the result of latent possibilities never drawn upon before, or is merely the result of will power and exaltation, and bound to exhibit its definite limit as soon as the necessity is withdrawn. The fact, of course, remains that the women of the farms and lower classes generally in France are almost painfully plain, and look hard and weather-beaten long before they are thirty, while the higher you mount the social scale in your researches the more the women of France, possessing little orthodox beauty, manage, with a combination of style, charm, sophistication, and grooming, to produce the effect not only of beauty but of a unique standard that makes the beauties of other nations commonplace by comparison.
Nevertheless, the fact remains that these girls and young women working in the Usines de Guerre, are better looking than they were before and shine with health. The whole point, I fancy, lies in the fact that they work under merciful masters and conditions. If they were used beyond their capacity they would look like their sisters on the farms, upon whom fathers and husbands have little mercy.