However, the young girls of this class who were not thus educated, because their assistance was required at home, received an early training in social as well as in domestic affairs; they had a solid and practical, if uncouth, foundation, combined with a worldly and, often, a frivolous temperament. To them many privileges were opened: they were taken to the opera, to concerts and to balls, to the salons of painting, and it often happened that they developed a craving for the society to which only the nobly born demoiselle was admitted. When this craving went too far, it frequently led to seduction by some of the chevaliers who make seduction a profession.
The marriage customs in these circles differed little from those of to-day. The suitor asked permission to call and to continue his visits; then followed the period of present giving. The young girl was almost always absolute mistress of the decision; if the father presented a name, the daughter insisted upon seeing, receiving, and becoming intimately acquainted with the suitor, a custom quite different from that practised among the nobility. Instead of giving her rights as it did the girl of the nobility, marriage imposed duties upon the girl of the middle class; it closed the world instead of opening it to her; it ended her brilliant, gay, and easy life, instead of beginning it, as was the case in the higher classes. This she realized, therefore hesitated long before taking the final step which was to bind her until death.
With her, becoming a wife meant infinitely more than it did to the girl of the nobility; her husband had the management of her money, and his vices were visited upon her and her children--in short, he became her master in all things. These disadvantages she was taught to consider deeply before entering the marriage state.
This state of affairs developed distinctive physiognomies in the different classes of the middle-class society: thus, "the wives of the financiers are dignified, stern, severe; those of the merchants are seductive, active, gossiping, and alert; those of the artists are free, easy, and independent, with a strong taste for pleasure and gayety--and they give the tone." As we approach the end of the century, the bourgeoisie begins to assume the airs, habits, extravagances, and even the immoralities, of the higher classes.
Below the bourgeoise was the workingwoman, whose ideas were limited to those of a savage and who was a woman only in sex. Her ideas of morality, decency, conjugal happiness, children, education, were limited by quarrels, profanity, blows, fights. At that time brandy was the sole consolation for those women; it supplied their moral force and their moral resistance, making them forget cold, hunger, fatigue, evil, and giving them courage and patience; it was the fire that sustained, comforted, and incited them.
These women were not much above the level of animals, but from them, we find, often sprang the entertainers of the time, the queens of beauty and gallantry--Laguerre, D'Hervieux, Sophie Arnould. Having lost their virtue with maturity, these women had no sense of morality; in them, nothing preserved the sense of honor--their religion consisted of a few superstitious practices. The constituents of duty and the virtue of women they could only vaguely guess; marriage itself was presented to them under the most repugnant image of constant contention.
It was in such an atmosphere as this that the daughters of these women grew up. Their talents found opportunity for display at the public dances where some of them would in time attract especial attention. Some became opera singers, dancers, or actresses, and were very popular; others became influential, and, through the efforts of some lover, allured about them a circle of ambitious débauchés or aspirants for social favors. Through their adventures they made their way up in the world to high society.
From this element of prostitution was disentangled, to a large extent, the great gallantry of the eighteenth century. This was accomplished by adding an elegance to debauch, by clothing vice with a sort of grandeur, and by adorning scandal with a semblance of the glory and grace of the courtier of old. Possessing the fascination of all gifts, prodigalities, follies, with all the appetites and tendencies of the time, these women attracted the society of the period--the poets, the artists, even the scientists, the philosophers, and the nobility. Their reputation increased with the number and standing of their lovers. The genius of the eighteenth century circled about these street belles--they represented the fortune of pleasure.
As the church would not countenance the marriage of an actress, she was forced to renounce the theatre when she would marry, but once married a permit to return to the stage was easily obtained. Society was not so severe as the laws; it received actresses, sought out, and even adored them; it received the women of the stage as equals, and many of them were married by counts and dukes, given a title, and presented at court. The regular type of the prostitute was tolerated and even received by society; "a word of anger, malediction, or outrage, was seldom raised against these women: on the contrary, pity and the commiseration of charity and tenderness were felt for them and manifested." This was natural, for many of them--through notoriety--reached society and, as mistresses of the king, even the throne itself. "If such women as Mme. de Pompadour were esteemed, what principles remained in the name of which to judge without pity and to condemn the débauchés of the street," says Mme. de Choiseul, one of the purest of women.
This class usually created and established the styles. There is a striking contrast between the standards of beauty and fashions of the respective periods of Louis XIV. and Louis XV.: "The stately figure, rich costume, awe-inspiring peruke of the magnificent Louis XIV.--the satins, velvets, embroideries, perfumes, and powder of the indolent and handsome Louis XV., well illustrate the two epochs." The beauty of the Louis XIV. age was more serious, more imposing, imperial, classic; later in the eighteenth century, under Louis XV., she developed into a charming figure of finesse, sveltesse et gracilité, with an extremely delicate complexion, a small mouth and thin nose, as opposed to the strong, plump mouth and nez léonin (leonine nose). More animated, the face was all movement, the eyes talked; the esprit passed to the face. It was the type of Marivaux' comedies, with an esprit mobile, animated and colored by all the coquetries of grace.