Tolstoy too, in his younger days, has described the natural instinct of women as few have succeeded in doing, and he, too, was one of those who revealed woman to herself. But there was no good in either of these writers now that the confidence which had existed between man and woman had become a thing of the past. The source of their most intimate relationship was poisoned, the union between man and woman was changed into an ugly, brutal act, from which both needed to be purified, and above the yawning gulf that stretched between the sexes sat two fierce, suspicious-looking beasts of prey, who lay in wait for one another.
This was the latest revelation which woman received from her authors.
The well of her existence—the rich stream of her life—was beginning to be drained, man no longer wanted it, he asked for nothing better than to be quite free of her. She had become a torment to him.
There is yet another generation which consists of quite young girls, and the latest school of so-called “authors,” viz., our young naturalists.
They are there, no doubt. But these young people are the last to have any idea as to how they are to treat women!
Naturalism, as through a slight misunderstanding it is generally called, is the point of view taken by the Philistine in literature. In Germany it is through naturalism especially that the bourgeois spirit tries to become literary. These “authors” seem to say: “We cannot afford to waste anything, we have no superfluities, and we must do our best to succeed. Neither can we afford to give, we would sooner accept from others. For Heaven’s sake leave us in peace with your problems, and with the woman-problem in particular. As a matter of fact there is no such thing as a woman-problem, there are washer-women, and there are Christian mothers, and of course there are family quarrels and hereditary peculiarities, just as there are free unions which end badly. Once we saw a girl student who fell in love—but in quite a sisterly fashion—with a book, and therefore we have the right to maintain that we understand women. We also knew a socialist who married a baron after having presided for many years over a mantle warehouse. And one of our young girls actually went off on the spot with the very first young man whose acquaintance she made; but it did very well on the stage. We describe life exactly as we understand it, and everything that we do not understand is false and fantastical. Women are a useful institution as wives and readers, but in other ways they are as useless and insignificant as ourselves.”
Authors are the most conspicuous feature of any given period. When they are not great precursors, they are like the little house-masters of a school—a rather more presentable example of the whole class whom they affect to despise.
What the little house-masters despise most is the populace. But then Tolstoy and Strindberg despise it also—the former the Christians, the latter the Atheists. Ours, which is the plebeian age par préférence, makes the same enquiry about everything that is brought under its notice: “Of what use is it to me?” And even the women are judged from this point of view.
The man of this weary, utilitarian age is half a decadent and half a barbarian. What does he want with the superior woman? Nothing, of course. She is merely an annoyance to him, a burden. If he is enterprising, he marries a well-filled purse; if he has an affectionate disposition, he marries a wife of his own class. The more cultured, more highly developed women are thrust on one side, nay more, they are starved. They have a gnawing at the heart, a rankling distrust of happiness, of love, and of men in particular. They are driven to seek for consolation in their mutual affection for one another, and they refuse to have anything more to do with men.
This is the phenomenon which Maupassant, with the unfeigned astonishment of a full-blooded man, has described in Notre Cœur. His is the fin de siècle woman whose whole being has become unproductive, her intellect, her grace, her gentle nature, and even her powers of affection. Man is no longer there for her soul and her senses! She is self-sufficient.