Equal rights, equal education, equal chances of an independent career—when women have enjoyed these for so much as a single century in any country, the foibles at which men have laughed for so many ages will probably no longer be remarked, for they are either the follies of ignorance or the vices resulting from a previous condition of servitude. Nor will men of right feeling ever regard women with the cold, critical eye of a Chesterfield or a Rochefoucauld, but rather with something of the exalted sentiment which caused old Homer, whenever he had occasion to speak of a mother, to prefix an adjective usually applicable to goddesses and queens, which we can translate best, perhaps, by our English word REVERED.
CHAPTER XVI.
AMONG THE CHINESE.
Chinese Caricature of an English Foraging Party.[28]
We are apt to think of the Chinese as a grave people, unskilled in the lighter arts of satire and caricature; but, according to that amusing traveler, M. Huc, they are the French of Asia—"a nation of cooks, a nation of actors"—singularly fond of the drama, gifted in pasquinade, addicted to burlesque, prolific in comic ideas and satirical devices. M. Huc likens the Chinese Empire to an immense fair, where you find mingled with the bustle of traffic all kinds of shows, mountebanks, actors, Cheap Jacks, thieves, gamblers, all competing continually and with vociferous uproar for the favor of the crowd. "There are theatres everywhere; the great towns are full of them; and the actors play night and day." When the British officers went ashore, in the retinue of their first grand embassy, many years ago, they were astonished to see Punch in all his glory with Judy, dog, and devil, just as they had last seen him on Ascot Heath, except that he summoned his audience by gong and triangle instead of pipes and drum. The Orient knew Punch perhaps ages before England saw him. In China they have a Punch conducted by a single individual, who is enveloped from head to foot in a gown. He carries the little theatre on his head, works the wires with his hands under the gown, executes the dialogue with his mouth concealed by the same garment, and in the intervals of performance plays on two instruments. He exhibits the theatre reduced to its simplest form, the work of the company, the band, the manager, treasurer, scene-shifter, and property-man all being done by one person.
In the very nature of the Chinese, whether men or women, there is a large element of the histrionic, even those pompous and noisy funerals of theirs being little more than an exhibition of private theatricals. The whole company gossip, drink tea, jest, laugh, smoke, and have all the air of a pleasant social party, until the nearest relation of the deceased informs them that the time to mourn has come. Instantly the conversation ceases and lamentation begins. The company gather round the coffin; affecting speeches are addressed to the dead; groans, sobs, and doleful cries are heard on every side; tears, real tears, roll down many cheeks—all is woe and desolation. But when the signal is given to cease mourning, "the performers," says M. Huc, "do not even stop to finish a sob or a groan, but they take their pipes, and, lo! they are again those incomparable Chinese, laughing, gossiping, and drinking tea."
It need not be said that Chinese women have an ample share of this peculiar talent of their race, nor that they have very frequent occasion to exercise it. Nowhere, even in the East, are women more subject or more artful than in China. "When a son is born," as a Chinese authoress remarks, "he sleeps upon a bed, he is clothed with robes, and plays with pearls; every one obeys his princely cries. But when a girl is born, she sleeps upon the ground, is merely wrapped in a cloth, plays with a tile, and is incapable of acting either virtuously or viciously. She has nothing to think of but preparing food, making wine, and not vexing her parents." This arrangement the authoress approves, because it prepares the girl to accept without repining the humiliations of her lot. It is a proverb in China that a young wife should be in her house but "a shadow and an echo." As in India, she does not eat with her husband, but waits upon him in silent devotion till he is done, and then satisfies her own appetite with inferior food.
Such is the theory of her position. But if we may judge from Chinese satires, women are not destitute of power in the household, and employ the arts of the oppressed with effect. Among the Chinese poems recently translated by Mr. G. C. Stent in the volume called "The Jade Chaplet," there are a few in the satiric vein which attest the ready adroitness of Chinese women in moments of crisis. According to an English author, "A woman takes as naturally to a lie as a rat to a hole." The author of these popular Chinese poems was evidently of the same opinion. The specimen subjoined, which has not been previously published in the United States, shows us that there is much in common between the jokes of the two hemispheres of our mundane sphere.