A Parisian invites you to dinner, and will probably take you to an expensive restaurant; a Londoner will offer his roast-beef in his own house. The separation of the sexes is much greater in France than in England. You may know a great number of married Frenchmen and have a very slight acquaintance with their wives, perhaps not enough to recognise them in the street. Nay, you may even habitually visit Frenchmen in their own private apartments without ever seeing their wives and daughters at all. Frenchwomen (I do not mean in Paris, but in the provinces) often live in something like oriental seclusion, but beyond this there is in the feminine mind an extreme tenacity about real or imaginary rank. The husband may have intimate friends, whom he respects for their character or admires for their talents, whilst his wife rejects them because they have not the particule, or because their grandfathers have been in trade. We know that character, talent, culture, count for nothing whatever in the aristocratic estimate,[84] and we must remember that in France the spirit of aristocracy, where it exists, is extremely pure, and does not allow itself to be seduced from its own principles either by merit or wealth, nor even by such offices and honours as a republic can confer. It is not exactly convenient for me to give special instances, because these pages may be translated and the cases recognised, but I will say, speaking generally and without special application, that if M. de B. is the intimate friend of M. C., and if the two call each other Jules and Jacques, it does not at all follow that Madame de B. will recognise Madame C., or allow their children to associate.
Less of it in England.
There is really very little necessity for this kind of morgue in France, as the French are not pushing, and care very little about distinguishing themselves by having fine acquaintances. It might be more necessary in England, where people are proud to know a lord, yet in England I have not observed that extreme difference between the sexes which certainly exists in France. I should say that in England, as a rule, a man and his wife, in whatever rank, will either repel you or accept you together. You would hardly, in England, be on terms of affectionate friendship with a man, and on terms of the most formal and distant acquaintanceship with his wife—acquaintanceship remaining equally formal, equally distant, for an unlimited number of years.
Distance does not diminish.
The Dislike to what is “Unfeminine.”
Essentially French.
Education of French Girls.
Further Separation of Men and Women.
This distance between the sexes does not diminish in provincial France. I am not speaking of the great cities like Lyons and Marseilles, which may have something of Parisian openness and ease, but of the country and especially of the aristocratic parts of it. I should say that if there is any perceptible change it is rather towards a still wider separation of the sexes. The French have a very keen sense, perhaps an exaggerated sense, of what is feminine and what is unfeminine. Englishmen of the last generation were French in their feelings about this; they would have considered it unfeminine for a woman to make political speeches, to deliver sermons, to be a leader in the Salvation Army, and to press for the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts. They would even have thought it unfeminine to want a grand classical and mathematical education. All that feeling of objection to the “unfeminine” is essentially French, and it remains in France whilst in England it is passing away. I remember talking to some French people about George Eliot’s extensive education. It did not exalt her in their eyes, but the contrary; they thought it unfeminine. There is a partial reaction against this opinion in France, of which one symptom is the establishment of lycées for girls; but it is only one party, and but a section of that party, which advocates this, and the real object is not so much to educate girls as to deliver them from clerical domination. All the tendencies of modern amusements and occupations separate men and women in France. As examples I may mention the increase of smoking and gambling, and the decline of conversation and dancing. The increase of smoking has the effect of leaving men together after dinner “to smoke a cigarette.” In former times they went to the drawing-room with the ladies, and looked upon the English as boors for doing otherwise. Now, under pretext of a cigarette, Frenchmen will remain away from ladies almost the whole evening. The increase of gambling makes the card-table more interesting than feminine small talk. Young Frenchmen are now becoming too old, too blasés, to enjoy dancing, which is one of the pleasures of healthy and natural youth. As to conversation, it is difficult to maintain it with ladies in a country where they have such a small share in the political and religious opinions of men, and where literature has little interest for either. In Paris there are the theatres, and the Salon whilst it is open. Perhaps the best subject in common between men and women in modern France is business, for which the women often have a natural aptitude.
The Want of Amusement in France.