Of course the motive of this excessive activity on the part of American men and women alike is the passionate wish to appear young. As in the extreme East age is worshipped, here in the extreme West youth constitutes a religion, of which young women are the high priestesses. Far from moving steadily on to a climax in ripe maturity, life for the American girl reaches its dazzling apex when she is eighteen or twenty; this, she is constantly told by parents, teachers and friends, is the golden period of her existence. She is urged to make the most of every precious minute; and everything and everybody must be sacrificed in helping her to do it.
As a matter of course, she is given the most comfortable room in the house, the prettiest clothes, the best seat at the theatre. As a matter of course, she accepts them. Why should it occur to her to defer to age, when age anxiously and at every turn defers to her? Oneself as the pivot of existence is far more interesting than any other creature; and it is all so brief. Soon will come marriage, with its tiresome responsibilities, its liberty curtailed, and children, the forerunners of awful middle age. Laugh, dance, and amuse yourself today is the eternal warning in the ears of the American girl; for tomorrow you will be on the shelf, and another generation will have come into your kingdom.
The young lady is not slow to hear the call—or to follow it. With feverish haste, she seizes her prerogative of queen of the moment, and demands the satisfaction of her every caprice. Her tastes and desires regulate the diversion and education of the community. What she favours succeeds; what she frowns on fails. A famous American actress told me that she traced her fortune to her popularity with young girls. “I never snub them,” she said; “when they write me silly letters, I answer them. I guard my reputation to the point of prudishness, so that I may meet them socially, and invite them to my home. They are the talisman of my career. It matters little what I play—if the young girls like me, I have a success.”
The wise theatrical manager, however, is differently minded. He, too, has his harvests to reap from the approval of Miss New York, Jr., and arranges his program accordingly. Thus the American play-goer is treated to a series of musical comedies, full of smart slang scrappily composed round a hybrid waltz; so-called “society plays,” stocked with sumptuous clothes, many servants, and shallow dialogue; unrecognizable “adapted” pieces, expurgated not only of the risqué, but of all wit and local atmosphere as well; and finally the magnificently vacuous extravaganza: this syrup and mush is regularly served to the theatre-going public, and labelled “drama”! Yet thousands of grown men and women meekly swallow it—even come to prefer it—because Mademoiselle Miss so decrees.
She also is originally responsible for the multitude of “society novels,” vapid short stories, and profusely illustrated gift books, which make up the literature of modern America. On her altar is the vulgar “Girl Calendar,” the still more vulgar poster; flaunting her self-conscious prettiness from every shop window, every subway and elevated book-stall. She is displayed to us with dogs, with cats, in the country, in town, getting into motors, getting out of boats, driving a four-in-hand, or again a vacuum cleaner—for she is indispensable to the advertising agent. Her fixed good looks and studied poses have invaded the Continent; and even in Spain, in the sleepy old town of Toledo, among the grave prints of Velasquez and Ribera, I came across the familiar pert silhouette with its worshipping-male counterpart, and read the familiar title: “At the Opera.”
From all this superficial self-importance, whether of her own or her elders’ making, one might easily write the American girl down as a vain, empty-headed nonentity, not worth thoughtful consideration. On the contrary, she decidedly is worth it. Behind her arrogance and foolish affectations is a mind alert to stimulus, a heart generous and warm to respond, a spirit brave and resourceful. It takes adversity to prove the true quality of this girl, for then her arrogance becomes high determination; her absurdities fall from her, like the cheap cloak they are, and she takes her natural place in the world as a courageous, clear-sighted woman.
I believe that among the working girls is to be found the finest and most distinct type of American woman. This sounds a sweeping statement, and one difficult to substantiate; but let us examine it. Whence are the working girls of New York recruited? From the families of immigrants, you guess at once. Only a very small fraction. The great majority come from American homes, in the North, South, or Middle West, where the fathers have failed in business, or died, or in some other way left the daughters to provide for themselves.
The first impulse, on the part of the latter, is to go to New York. If you are going to hang yourself, choose a big tree, says the Talmud; and Americans have written it into their copy-books forever. Whether they are to succeed or fail, they wish to do it in the biggest place, on the biggest scale they can achieve. The girl who has to earn her living, therefore, establishes herself in New York. And then begins the struggle that is the same for women the world over, but which the American girl meets with a sturdiness and obstinate ambition all her own.
She may have been the pampered darling of a mansion with ten servants; stoutly now she takes up her abode in a “third floor back,” and becomes her own laundress. For it is part of all the contradictions of which she is the unit that, while the most recklessly extravagant, she is also, when occasion demands, the most practical and saving of women. Her scant six or seven dollars a week are carefully portioned out to yield the utmost value on every penny. She walks to and from her work, thus saving ten cents and doing benefit to her complexion at the same time in the tingling New York air. In the shop or office she is quiet, competent, marvellously quick to seize and assimilate the details of a business which two months ago she had never heard of. Without apparent effort, she soon makes herself invaluable, and then comes the thrilling event of her first “raise.”
I am talking always of the American girl of good parentage and refinement, who is the average New York business girl; not of the gum-chewing, haughty misses of stupendous pompadour and impertinence, who condescend to wait on one in the cheaper shops. The average girl is sinned against rather than sinning, in the matter of impudence. Often of remarkable prettiness, and always of neat and attractive appearance, she has not only the usual masculine advances to contend with, but also the liberties of that inter-sex freedom peculiar to America. The Englishman or the European never outgrows his first rude sense of shock at the promiscuous contact between men and women, not only allowed, but taken as a matter of course in the new country. To see an employé, passing through a shop, touch a girl’s hand or pat her on the shoulder, while delivering some message or order, scandalizes the foreigner only less than the girl’s nonchalant acceptance of the familiarity.