The Intelligence of Woman

Nothing indeed can compensate a woman for this, except a lover, that is to say, a return to an older state. That is to what she turns, for strange as it may seem, marriage does not vaccinate against the temptations of love. She does not easily love again, for she has been married, and while it is easy to love again when one has been atrociously betrayed, just because one invests the new with everything that the old held back, it is difficult to love again when the promised love turned merely to dullness. There is nothing to strike against. There is no contrast, and so women slip into relationships that are silly, because there is nothing real behind them. Boredom is the root of all evil, and I doubt whether busy and happy women seek adventure, for few of them want it for adventure's sake: they seek only satisfaction. That is what most men cruelly misunderstand; they blame woman instead of searching out their own remissness. Sins of omission matter more than sins of commission, more even than infidelities, for love, which is all a woman's life, is only a momentous incident in that of a man. Love may be the discovery of a happiness, but man remains conscious of many other delights. Woman is seldom like that. You will imagine a man and a woman who have blundered upon mutual understanding standing upon the hill from which Moses saw Canaan. The woman would fill her eyes with Canaan, and could see nought else, while the man gazing at the promised land would still be conscious of other countries. In the heart of a man who is worth anything at all, love must have rivals, – art, science, ambition, – and it is a delight to woman that there should be rivals to overcome, even though it be a poor slave she tie to her chariot wheels.

Marriage does not always suffer when people drift away from their allegiance; in countries such as France notably, where many husbands and wives do not think it necessary to trust, or tactful to watch each other, the problem does not set itself so sharply. It is mainly in Anglo-Saxon countries where the little blue flower has its altars that the trouble begins. A rather fascinating foreigner said to me once: "Englishwomen are very troublesome; they are either so light that they do not understand you when you tell them you love them, or so deep that you must elope every time. This is a difficult country." I do not want to seem cynical, but the polygamous nature of man is so ill-recognized and the boredom of woman such a national institution that when it is too late to pretend that that which has happened has not happened, most of the mischief has already been done. Why a husband or wife who has found attraction in another should immediately treat his partner abominably is not easily understood, for falling in love with the present victim need not make him rude or remiss to the rest of the world. But the British are a strange and savage people. Also, when in doubt they get drunk, so I fear I must leave a clearer recognition of polygamous instincts to the slow-growing enlightenment of the mind of man.

He is growing enlightened; at least he is infinitely more educated than he was, for he has begun to recognize that woman is to a certain extent a human being, a savage, a barbarian, but entitled to the consideration generally given to the Hottentot. I do not think woman will always be savage, though I hope she will not turn into the clear-eyed, weather-beaten mate that Mr. H. G. Wells likes to think of – for the future. She has come to look upon man as an equation that can be solved. He, too, in a sense, and both are to-day much less inclined than they were fifty years ago to overlook a chance of pleasing. It is certain that men and women to-day dress more deliberately for each other than they ever did before, that they lead each other, sometimes with dutiful unwillingness, to the theatre or the country; it is very painful sometimes, this organization of pleasure, but it is necessary because dull lives are bad lives, and better fall into the river than never go to the river at all. It is dangerous and vain to take up the attitude, "I alone am enough." Yet many do: as one walks along a suburban street, where every window is shut, where every dining room has its aspidistra in a pot, one realizes that scores of people are busily heaping ash upon the once warm fire of their love. The stranger is the alternative; he obscures small quarrels; if the stranger is beautiful, he urges to competition; if he is inferior, he soothes pride. But above all, the stranger is change, therefore hope. The stranger is an insurance against loss of personal pride; he compels adornment, for what is "good enough for my husband" is not good enough for the lady over the way. The stranger serves the pleasure lust, this violent passion of man, and cannot harm him because the lust for pleasure, within the limits of hysteria, involves a desire for good looks, for elegance, for gaiety; above all, love of pleasure was reviled of our fathers, and whatever our fathers thought bad is become a good thing. Our fathers did not understand certain forms of pride: there is more than pride of body in good looks, good clothes, and showing off before acquaintances: there is achievement, which means pride of conquest. I imagine that the happiest couple in the world is the one where each lives in perpetual fear that somebody will run away with the other.

Looking at it broadly, I see marriage as a Chinese puzzle, almost, but not quite, insoluble. Spoilt by coldness, spoilt by ardour, spoilt by excess, spoilt by indifference, spoilt by obedience, by stupidity, by self-assertion, spoilt by familiarity, spoilt by ignorance. Spoilt in every possible way that man can invent. Spoilt by every ounce of influence a jealous or ironical world can muster, spoilt by habit, by contrast, by obtuseness quite as much as by overclose understanding. And yet it stands. It stands because there is nothing much to put into its place, because marriage is the only road that leads a man away from his dinner when he is forty-five, or teaches a woman to preserve her complexion. It stands like most human things, because it is the better of two bad alternatives. Only because it stands we must not think that it will never change. All things change, otherwise one could not bear them. I suspect that marriage, that was once upon a time the taking of a woman by a man, which has now grown legalized, and may become courteous, will turn into a very skilled occupation. It will be recognized still more than now that all freedom need not be lost after putting on the wedding ring. As legal right and privilege grow, as women develop private earnings, a consciousness of worth must arise. Already women realize their value and demand its recognition. If they demand it long enough, they will get it. I suspect that the economic problem is at the root of the marriage problem, for people are not indiscriminate in their relationships, and even Don Juan, after a while, longs to be faithful, if only somebody could teach him how to be it. Marriage can be made close only by making divorce easy, by extending female labor. For labor makes woman less attractive and to be attractive is rather a trap: how much higher can a woman rise? But the economic freedom of woman will mean that she need not bind herself; she will be able to break away, and in those days she will be most completely bound, for who would run away from a jail if the door were always left open?

I detest Utopia, and these things seem so far away that I am more content to take marriage as it is in the hope that unhealthy novels, unnecessary discussions, unwholesome views, and unnatural feelings may little by little reform mankind. Meanwhile, I hold fast to the private maxim that hardly anything is unendurable if one sets up that all mankind could not give one a quite worthy mate. But there is another alleviation: understanding not only that one is married to somebody else, but also that somebody else is married to yourself, and that it is quite as hard for the other party. There are many excellent things to be done; here are a few:

(1) Do not open each other's letters. (For one reason you might not like the contents.) And try not to look liberal if you don't even glance at the address or the postmark.

(2) Vary your pursuits, your conversation, and your clothes. If required, vary your hair.

(3) If you absolutely must be sincere, let it be in private.

(4) (Especially for wives.) Find out on the honeymoon whether crying or swearing is the more effective.

(5) Once a day say to a wife: "I love you"; to a husband: "How strong you are!" If the latter remark is ridiculous, say: "How clever you are!" for everybody believes that.

(6) Forgive your partner seventy times seven. Then burn the ledger.

1

The notes as to Case 51 have not an absolute bearing upon logic in general, but the reasons put forth in her defense by Case 51 are indicative of a certain kind of logic which is not masculine. I must add that Case 51 is a woman of very good education, with many general interests. – The Author.

2

Probably owing to woman's having for centuries been taught to regard the vain aspirations of the male as her perquisites. – The Author.

3

I have observed for two years the steady growth in the accuracy of the work of Case 33, due to her having concentrated upon her instinctive inaccuracy. – The Author.

4

See "Uniforms for Women," and observe extreme figures and details of feminine expenditure on clothes.

5

I associate the arts with intellectual quality. (See "Woman and the Paintpot.") Broadly, I believe that all achievements, artistic or otherwise, proceed from intellect.

6

La Femme dans le Théâtre d'Ibsen, by Friedericke Boettcher. – The Author.

7

My Past, by Countess Marie Larisch.

8

Note: This chapter should be taken as the summary of an intellectual position. Its points are considered in detail in the four chapters that follow.