XII
ON THE ETHICS OF CLOTHES
This is not a chapter on “What to wear and how to wear it.” It is not a question altogether of becoming and fashionable attire. It is, rather, of our clothes and their relation to the rest of the world that I would speak. We talk a great deal about art; is it not just as desirable in dress as anywhere? God meant women to be attractive just as He meant flowers to be lovely and birds to sing. Why, then, should women of earnest purpose think it advances their work to make frumps of themselves?
Is there a shy, poorly dressed woman coming to your church, always taking a back seat and slipping off like a frightened lamb when the service is over? Hunt her out and say something pleasant to her. And remember, especially if you can afford gorgeous raiment yourself, that that very woman may have something for you. Try it and see. I have often been asked if I do not consider it wrong for a rich woman to wear better clothes to her club than the average member can afford. I say No. As long as women are women half the pleasure of going out anywhere, even to church, lies in the opportunity it gives for seeing what other women wear. And it does not follow, because we cannot wear rich clothing ourselves, that we are unable to bear the sight of it displayed on the person of another woman without that secret stirring of pride and all uncharitableness of which Saint Paul speaks so eloquently. On the contrary, most of us delight in beautiful things, and it is a pleasure to see fine clothes, even if we cannot behold them under our own roof-tree and in our own wardrobes. Another thing. No woman likes to feel that she is being dressed down to, or that some other woman is pitying her because her raiment is not costly. If the choice lies between feeling that some other woman can wear better things than I do, or the consciousness that this other woman feels that she can and is trying to dress down to the limits of my purse, give me the former; I will try to bear the sight of her fine clothes with patience and to believe that my soul is above the glitter of outside adornment. For a woman’s a woman for a’ that.
The time is coming—we see it already around the corner—when clothes do not make the woman. The plain little woman whose garb is just about as noticeable as the feathers of a little brown sparrow is quite as apt to be the leading spirit in her club or town or State, as the one with reception gowns from Felix and tailor suits from Redfern. And yet why should anybody speak or think disparagingly of a woman because she follows Shakespeare’s advice, “Costly thy raiment as thy purse can buy”? May there not be just as much uncharitableness among women in this direction as in the other? Possibly a woman is abundantly able to wear a tailor gown that costs a hundred dollars or more, and her husband is more than particular about her dress. Some husbands are. Is it her duty to wear a cheaper gown because some of her sisters must?
Here is a nice question in club ethics. One’s husband may count his money by the hundred thousands or even the millions; both he and the children may be strenuous about the mother’s clothes. What is her duty? Shall she go against the wishes of her own family, not to mention her personal taste in the matter, and studiously avoid wearing good gowns when she goes to the club—simply because there are women there whose husbands can scarcely afford the “ready-made tailor” or the home-seamstress-made silk which they are wearing?
And as some woman has already said, should it be inconsistent with the Federation idea for the woman who can afford it, and who has always dressed well, to appear elegantly gowned at the conventions? Inconsistency would lie in the discarding of her usual apparel for the time being, and the substitution of plainer garments, and by so doing she would prove conclusively that she was not really democratic.
Should Robert of Lincoln’s Quaker wife—pretty and sensible and plain and brown—wish to change the brilliant plumage of the oriole when she flits into her range of vision? I think not; it would not be natural or fair or kind. And is it necessary in order to be effective in social service, in order to be consistent, in order to reach fulness of power, that we be so serious about it all? I like the expression which one of our ablest women used when she spoke of working “in gay self-forgetfulness.” My mother used to tell me that the best-dressed women were those who, having donned their pretty clothes and satisfied themselves that they were all right, thought no more about them, but went out into company with other women with no more consciousness of clothes than the flowers and birds seem to have of their colors and music. It is true that we should work hard for what is most dear to us, but not so seriously that we cannot see God’s beautiful sunshine and brilliant coloring of sky and field.
And so I contend, from a purely æsthetic standpoint, for the continuation of the wearing of pretty gowns and rare jewels by the possessors of them. Sidney Lanier, in “My Springs,” one of the poems addressed to his wife, after speaking of the “loves” she held for everything in the great world, says:
“And loves for all that God and man
In art and nature make or plan,