Greek Women

by Mitchell Carroll

I have spoken of the cruelty of an ambitious woman; and it is worth while to pause a moment to consider this trait as displayed in women--not as a means, but as an end. There have been men who loved cruelty for its own sake; but they are few, and their methods crude, compared with the woman who have felt this strange passion. In the days of human sacrifices, it was the women who most thronged to the spectacles, who most eagerly fastened their eyes upon the expiring victims. In the gladiatorial combats, it was the women who greeted each mortal thrust with applause, and whose reversed thumbs won the majority for the signal of death to the vanquished. In the days of terror in France, it was the woman who led the mob that threatened the king and queen, and hanged Foulard to a lamp post after almost tearing him to pieces; it was the women who sat in rows around the guillotine, day after day, and placidly knit their terrible records of death; it was the women who cried for more victims, even after the legal murderers of the tribunals grew weary of their hideous task of condemnation.

Not only thus--not only under the influence of excitement and passion--but in cold blood, there are instances among women of such ghastly cruelty that men recoil from the contemplation of such deeds. There is record of a Slavonic countess whose favorite amusement was to sit in the garden of her country palace, in the rigors of a Russian winter, while young girls were stripped by her attendants and water poured slowly over their bodies, thus giving them a death of enduring agony and providing the countess with new, though unsubstantial, statues for her grounds. This not more than two centuries ago, and in the atmosphere of so-termed Christianity. The annals of the Spanish Inquisition would be ransacked in vain for such ingenuity of torture; and though the Inquisitors may have grown to love cruelty for its own sake, they at least alleged reason for their deeds; the Russian countess frankly sought amusement alone.

Yet in these things there is to be found no general accusation of women. That cruelty should be carried by them to its extreme, that they should love it for its own sake, is but the development of extremism, and is isolated in examples, at least by periods. The Russian countess was not cruel because she was a woman, but, being cruel of nature, she was the more so because of her sex. The ladies of imperial Rome did not love the sight of flowing blood because they were women, but, being women, they carried their acquired taste to bounds unknown to the less impulsive and less ardent nature of men.

Yet there comes a question. Is this lust for blood, this love of cruelty; latent in every woman and but restrained, by the gentler teachings and promptings of her more developed nature in its highest presentation? So some psychists would have us believe; but they have only slight ground for their sweeping assertion. That civilisation is but restrained savagery may perhaps be conceded; but if the restraint has grown to be the ever-dominant impulse, then has the savage been slain. It is not, as some teach, that such isolated idiosyncrasies as we have considered are glimpses of the tiger that sleeps in every human heart and sometimes breaks its chain and runs riot. As a rule, these things are matters of atmosphere. Setting aside such pure isolations as that of the Russian countess, it will almost invariably be found that the display of feminine cruelty, or of any vice, is of a time and place. There has never been a universal rule of feminine depravity in any age. Babylon, Carthage, Greece, Rome, and all the olden civilisations have had their periods when female virtue was a matter of laughter, when women outvied men in their moral degradation, when evil seemed triumphant everywhere; but there always remained a few to "redeem the time," and salvation always came from those few. Moreover, the sphere of immorality and crime was always limited. The Roman world, when it was the world indeed, might be given up to vice and sin, displayed in their most atrocious forms by the women of the Empire; but there still stood the North, calm, virtuous, patient, awaiting its opportunity to "root out the evil thing" and to give the world once more a standard of purity and righteousness. The leaven of Christianity was effective in its work upon the moral degradation of the Roman Empire; but it was not until the scourge of the Northmen was sent to the aid of the principle that success was fully won. So the North was not of the same day with Rome in civilised vice, and the reign of evil in the Latin Empire was but the effect of conditions, not the instincts of humanity. Rome was taught evil by long and steadfast evolution; it did not spring up in a day with its deadly blight, but was the result of progressive causation.

It may be doubted if the feminine intellect has increased since the dawn of civilisation. To-day woman stands on a different plane of recognition, but by reason of assertiveness, not because of increased mental ability. As with that of man, the possibilities of woman's intellect were long latent; but they existed, and the result is development, not creation of fibre. I repeat that I do not believe that the feminine intellect has grown in power. I doubt if the present age can show a mind superior in natural strength to that of Sappho; I do not believe that the present Empress of China, strong woman as she is, is greater than Semiramis, or that even Elizabeth of England was the equal of the warrior-queen of Babylon. But there can be no doubt that there exists a broader culture to-day than ever before and that thus the intellectual sum of women is always growing, though there comes no increase in the mental powers of the individual. It has been so with man. We boast of the mighty achievements of our age; but we have not yet built such a structure as that of the Temple of the Sun at Baalbec, or the Pyramid of Cheops at Ghizeh. We pride ourselves upon our letters; but the grandest poem ever written by man was also the first of which we have record--the Book of Job, and we do not even know the name of the poet who thus set a standard which has never since been reached. We may claim Shakespeare as the equal of Homer in expression; but it requires true hero worship among his admirers to place the Elizabethan singer upon an equality with the old Greek in any other respect. There has been no growth of individual intellect in either sex since the days of which we first find record; but there has been an increase of average and a definition of tendency which are productive of higher general result. And the natural consequence of this state of things is found in the fact that even a Sappho in the world of letters would not stand out so prominently, would not be considered such a prodigy, were she to come in these days. We should admire her genius and her powers without feeling the sensation of wonder that these should be possessed by a woman. It is in the recognition of this fact that we are better enabled to understand the changing aspect in the relations of women to men during these latter years. There has been no alteration in the possibilities within the grasp of the individual, but great change within those which can be claimed by the sex at large. Women can do no more now than in the olden days when they were considered as almost inferior to animals; but woman has profited by the opportunities of her time, and is every day developing powers until now unsuspected.

The whole value of history is in teaching us to understand our own time and to prognosticate the future with some degree of correctness. More especially is this true of all class history, and the story of sex development may be so rated. It is to find the reason of what is and the nature of what is to come that we turn to the records of the past and ask them concerning their message to us of these things. In our retrospective view of woman, we shall, if we are alive to suggestion, find steadfast tendencies of development. It is true that these tendencies do not always remain in the light; like rivers, they sometimes plunge underground and for a time find their paths in subterranean channels where they are lost to sight; but they always reëmerge, and at last they find their way to the central sea of the present. Future ages will doubtless mark the course of those tendencies not only up to but through our own age; for though I have spoken of a central sea, the simile is hardly correct, inasmuch as the true ocean which is the goal of these rivers is not yet in the sight of humanity. But we at least find promise of that ocean in the steadfast and determined course of the streams which flow toward it; progress has always a goal, though it may be one long undiscerned by the abettors of that progress. So it is with the story of woman. We know what she has been; we see what she is; and it is possible dimly to forecast what she will be. Yet I dare to assert that there will be no radical change; there may be new direction for effort, new lines of development, but the essential nature will remain unaltered. It is not, however, with this informing spirit that we have to do in such a work as this. There have been many misconceptions regarding woman; I would not venture to claim that none now exist. Yet there is a general consensus of agreement concerning her dominating and effective characteristics, and the probability is that in these general laws so laid down the common opinion is of truth.

Of course, I would not dare to make such an absurd claim that there exists, or has ever existed, a man who could truthfully say that he knew woman in the abstract; but that does not necessarily mean that knowledge of the tendencies and characteristics of the sex is impossible. The reason of the dense ignorance which prevails among men concerning women is that the men attempt to apply general laws to particular cases; and that is fatal. It is absolutely necessary, if we are to gather wisdom and not merely knowledge from our researches in history, that we should take into account the result of combination of traits. Otherwise we should not only find nothing but inconsistency as a consequence of our study, but we should utterly fail to understand the tendencies of that which we learn. We must be broad in our judgments if we are to judge truly. When we read of the Spartan women sending forth their sons to die for their country, we must not believe that they were lacking in the depth of maternal affection which is one of the most beautiful characteristics of the feminine nature. Doubtless they suffered as keenly as does the modern mother at the death of her son; but they were trained to subordinate their feelings in this wise, and their training stood them in stead of stoicism. Nay, even when we read of the profligacy of the women of imperial Rome, we must not look upon these women as by nature imbruted and degraded, but we must understand that they but yielded to the spirit of their environment and their schooling. They were not different at heart, those reckless Mænads and votaries of Venus, from the chaste Lucretias or holy Catherines of another day; they simply lacked direction of impulse in right method, and so missed the culmination of their highest possibilities.

There is an old saying which tells us that women are what men make them. Thus generally stated, the saying may be summed up as a slander; but it has an application in history. There can be no doubt that for millenniums of the world's adolescence women were controlled and their bearing and place in society modified by the thought of their times, which thought was of masculine origin and formation. This state of affairs has long since passed away, and it may be said that for at least a thousand years, in adaptation of the saying which I have quoted, the times have been what women have made them. It was the influence of women which brought about the outgrowths of civilisation in the dawn of Christianity that have survived until now. It was the influence, if not the actual activity, of women that was responsible for the birth of chivalry and the rise of the spirit of purity. It was the influence of women that made possible such characters as those of Bayard and Sir Philip Sydney. It was the influence of women that softened the roughness and licentiousness of a past day into the refinement and virtue which are the possessions of the present age.

There has always, in the worst days, been an undercurrent of good, and its source and strength are to be found in the eternal feminine spirit, which in its true aspects always makes for righteousness.

The world's statues have, with few exceptions, been raised to men, the world's elegies have been sung of men, the world's acclamations have been given to men. This is world justice, blind as well as with bandaged eyes. Were true justice done--were the best results, the results which live, commemorated in stone, the world itself, to adapt the hyperbole of the Evangelist, could hardly contain the statues which would be reared to women. But it is precisely in the cause for this neglect that there lies the value of the work which has been done by woman for the welfare of mankind. It is one of the truths of history that the greatest and most enduring effects have always been accomplished in the least conspicuous manner.