Thus there is in America almost a third sex: a sex of superwomen, in whom mentality triumphs to the sacrifice of the normal female. One cannot say that this side of the generally admirable “self-made” woman is appealing. It is rather hard, and leads one to speculate as to whether the victorious bachelor girl of today is on the whole more attractive or better off than the despised spinster of yesterday. Of course, she has raised and strengthened the position of women, economically speaking; socially, too. But one cannot but think that she is after all only a partially finished superwoman, and that the ultimate creature will have more of sweetness and strong tenderness than one sees in the determined, rather rigid faces of the army of New York business women of the present.
As for the New York man (whom one is forever slighting because his rôle is so inconspicuous), we have a type much less complex—quite the simplest type of normal male, in fact. The average New Yorker (that is, the New Yorker of the upper middle class) is a hard-working, obvious soul, of obvious qualities and obvious flaws. His raison d’être is to provide prodigally for his wife and children; to which end he steals out of the house in the morning before the rest are awake, and returns late in the evening, hurriedly to dress and accompany Madame to some smart restaurant and the play.
Underwood & Underwood
THE TRIUMPHANT “THIRD SEX” TAKES WASHINGTON
Here, as at the opera or fashionable reception, his duty is simply that of background to the elaborate gorgeousness and inveterate animation of his womenfolk. Indeed, throughout all their activities the American husband and wife seem curiously irrelevant to one another: they work as a tandem, not as a team. And there is no question as to who goes first. The wife indicates the route; the husband does his best to keep up to her. If he cannot do it, no matter what his other excellences, he is a failure. He himself is convinced of it, hence his tense expression of straining every nerve toward some gigantic end that usually he is just able to compass.
The man who cannot support a woman, not in reasonable comfort, but in the luxury she expects, thinks he has no right to her. The woman has taught him to think it. Thus a young friend of mine, who on twenty-five thousand a year had been engaged to a charming New York girl, told me, simply, that of course when his income was reduced to five thousand he could not marry her.
I asked what the girl thought about it. “Oh, she’s a trump,” he said enthusiastically; “she wouldn’t throw me over because I’ve lost my money. But of course she sees it’s impossible. We couldn’t go the pace.”
From which ingenuous confession we rightly gather that “the pace” comes first with both husband and wife, in New York; the person of one another second, if it counts at all. Their great bond of union is the building up of certain material circumstances both covet; their home life, their friends, their instinctive and lavish hospitality—everything is regulated according to this. Instead of a peaceful evening in their own drawing-room, after the man’s strenuous day at the office, the woman’s no less strenuous day at bridge and the dressmaker’s, they must rush into evening clothes and hasten to show themselves where they should be seen. Other people’s pleasures become to the American couple stern duties; to be feverishly followed, if it helps them in ever so little toward their goal.
Thus we hear Mrs. Grey say to George: “Don’t forget we’re dining with the Fred Baynes’ tonight. Be home early.”