I have before me a new book by Mrs. Egerton, and two new photographs. In the one she is sitting curled up in a chair, reading peacefully. She has a delicate, rather sharp-featured profile, with a long, somewhat prominent chin, that gives one an idea of yearning. The other is a full-length portrait. A slender, girlish figure, with narrow shoulders, and a waist, if anything, rather too small; a tired, worn face, without youth and full of disillusion; the hair looks as though restless fingers had been passed through it, and there is a bitter, hopeless expression about the lines of the mouth. In her letters—in which we never wholly possess her, but merely her mood—she comes to us in various guises,—now as a playful kitten, that is curled up cosily, and sometimes stretches out a soft little paw in playful, tender need of a caress; or else she is a worried, disappointed woman, with overwrought and excitable nerves, sceptical in the possibility of content, a seeker, for whom the charm lies in the seeking, not in the finding. She is a type of the modern woman, whose inmost being is the essence of disillusion.
When we examine the portraits of the four principal characters in this book—Sonia Kovalevsky, Eleonora Duse, Marie Bashkirtseff, and George Egerton—we find that they all have one feature in common. It was not I who first noticed this, it was a man. Ola Hansson, seeing them lying together one day, pointed it out to me, and he said: “The lips of all four speak the same language,—the young girl, the great tragedian, the woman of intellect, and the neurotic writer; each one has a something about the corners of the mouth that expresses a wearied satiety, mingled with an unsatisfied longing, as though she had as yet enjoyed nothing.”
Why this wearied satiety mingled with an unsatisfied longing? Why should these four women, who are four opposites, as it were, have the same expression? The virgin in body and soul, the great creator of the rôles of the degenerates, the mathematical professor, and the neurotic writer? Is it something in themselves, something peculiar in the organic nature of their womanhood, or is it some influence from without? Is it because they have chosen a profession which excites, while it leaves them dissatisfied, for the simple reason that a profession can never wholly satisfy a woman? Yet these four have excelled in their profession. But can a woman ever obtain satisfaction by means of her achievements? Is not her life as a woman—as a wife and as a mother—the true source of all her happiness? And this touch of disillusion in all of them—is it the disillusion they have experienced as woman; is it the expression of their bitter experiences in the gravest moment in a woman’s life? Disappointment in man? The man that fate thrust across their path, who was their experience? And their yearning is now fruitless, for the flower of expectant realization withered before they plucked it.
Two of these women have carried the secret of their faces with them to the grave, but the others live and are not willing to reveal it. George Egerton would like to be as silent about it as they are; but her nerves speak, and her nerves have betrayed her secret in the book called “Discords.”
When we read “Discords” we ask ourselves how is it possible that this frail little woman could write such a strong, brutal book? In “Keynotes” Mrs. Egerton was still a little coquette, with 5¾ gloves and 18-inch waist, who herself played a fascinating part. She had something of a midge’s nature, dancing up and down, and turning nervous somersaults in the sunshine. “Discords” is certainly a continuation of “Keynotes,” but it is quite another kind of woman who meets us here. The thrilling, nervous note of the former book has changed into a clashing, piercing sound, hard as metal; it is the voice of an accuser in whom all bitterness takes the form of reproaches which are unjust, and yet unanswerable. It is the voice of a woman who is conscious of being ill-treated and driven to despair, and who speaks in spite of herself in the name of thousands of ill-treated and despairing women. Who can tell us whether her nerves have ill-treated this woman and driven her to despair, or whether it is her outward fate, especially her fate with regard to the man? Women of this kind are not confidential. They take back to-morrow what they have confessed to-day, partly from a wish not to let themselves be understood, and partly because the aspect of their experiences varies with every change of mood, like the colors in a kaleidoscope.
But throughout these changes, one single note is maintained in “Discords,” as it was in “Keynotes.” In the latter it was a high, shrill treble, like the song of a bird in spring; in “Discords” it is a deep bass note, groaning in distress with the groan of a disappointed woman.
V
The tone of bitter disappointment which pervades “Discords” is the expression of woman’s disappointment in man. Man and man’s love are not a joy to her; they are a torment. He is inconsiderate in his demands, brutal in his caresses, and unsympathetic with those sides of her nature which are not there for his satisfaction. He is no longer the great comic animal of “Keynotes,” whom the woman teases and plays with—he is a nightmare which smothers her during horrible nights, a hangman who tortures her body and soul during days and years for his pleasure; a despot who demands admiration, caresses, and devotion, while her every nerve quivers with an opposite emotion; a man born blind, whose clumsy fingers press the spot where the pain is, and when she moans, replies with coarse, unfeeling laughter, “Absurd nonsense!”
Although I believed myself to be acquainted with all the books which women have written against men, no book that I have ever read has impressed me with such a vivid sense of physical pain. Most women come with reasonings, moral sermons, and outbursts of temper: a man may allow himself much that is forbidden to others, that must be altered. Women are of no importance in his eyes; he has permitted himself to look down upon them. They intend to teach him their importance. They are determined that he shall look up to them. But here we have no trace of Xantippe-like violence, only a woman who holds her trembling hands to the wounds which man has inflicted upon her, of which the pain is intensified each time that he draws near. A woman, driven to despair, who jumps upon him like a wild-cat, and seizes him by the throat; and if that does not answer, chooses for herself a death that is ten times more painful than life with him, chooses it in order that she may have her own way.
What is this? It is not the well-known domestic animal which we call woman. It is a wild creature belonging to a wild race, untamed and untamable, with the yellow gleam of a wild animal in its eyes. It is a nervous, sensitive creature, whose primitive wildness is awakened by a blow which it has received, which bursts forth, revengeful and pitiless as the lightning in the night.