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Why Women Are So: Chapter V: The Feminine Temperament

Why Women Are So
Chapter V: The Feminine Temperament
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table of contents
  1. Title Page
  2. The Hypothesis
  3. Section I: The Domestic Traditions
    1. Chapter I: The Conventions of Girlhood
    2. Chapter II: The Great Adventure
    3. Chapter III: The Career of Motherhood
    4. Chapter IV: Domesticity as a Vocation
  4. Section II: The Effect Upon Women
    1. Chapter V: The Feminine Temperament
    2. Chapter VI: Beauty and Weakness
    3. Chapter VII: The Pursuit of Dress
    4. Chapter VIII: Clothes and Character
    5. Chapter IX: The Virtues of Subservience
  5. Section III: Some Exceptions
    1. Chapter X: The Elect Among Women
    2. Chapter XI: The Phantom of the Learned Lady
    3. Chapter XII: Women Insurgents
    4. Chapter XIII: Literary Amateurs
  6. Section IV: From Femininity to Womanhood
    1. Chapter XIV: The Significance of Femininity
    2. Chapter XV: Family Perplexities
    3. Chapter XVI: The Larger Life and Citizenship

Section II: The Effect Upon Women

Chapter V: The Feminine Temperament

"I would rather have a thorn in my side than an echo."

—Ralph Waldo Emerson.

"Mirth and opium, ratafia and tears,

The daily anodyne and nightly draught

To kill those foes to fair ones, time and thought."

—Alexander Pope.

Manners and mannerisms, which are the conscious adjustment of their behavior that human beings make to the conventions of society, have a greater significance than is generally attributed to them. The habitual bearing reflects the social stratum from which the person came, modified by the need of making himself acceptable to the particular circle in which he ultimately found himself. Since manner was always a post-natal acquisition, any unforeseen situation or emotion was likely to bring to the surface the unmannerly, primitive human being. A grown man and an adult woman have a code of behavior quite different from each other, which is usually ascribed to the fundamental sex distinction and which, for want of a better term, we may assign to the "temperament" of each.

In a small town in New Mexico I saw playing opposite my window for several weeks a child perhaps six years of age. It was neatly dressed in boy's trousers, but had two long braids of black hair tied with bows of pink ribbon hanging down its back. From the way in which it ran and played, from its tone of voice and manner, it was impossible to know whether it was a boy or girl, and, curiously enough, neither the children with whom it played, nor the neighbors, seemed to know-nor, I might almost add, to care-nor did I ever learn its sex. Yet in a very few years it will undoubtedly learn a behavior befitting the conventions of its sex; that is, it will acquire the mannerisms of masculinity or femininity.

It is well known that a girl brought up among boys becomes "hoydenish," that is to say, boyish in manner; while a boy brought up in a family of women is apt to be "a sissy," or, so to speak, girlish in his ways. It is probable that if they were brought up together from babyhood without having suggested to them that any difference of behavior was necessary, their manners would vary with their innate temperament more than with their sex. In a society where, from infancy, great stress was laid upon sex differences, the tendency to be bold or shrinking, polite or rude, loud-mouthed or soft-spoken, lively or quiet, emotional or judicial, impulsive or re strained, vulgar or refined, became predominant or was rigidly repressed along the lines of social approval or disapproval. Among the few primitive peoples where men and women were approximately equal in status, there was no essential difference in courage, emotionality, and delicacy; but among the majority of races where the one sex has controlled the destiny of the other, the standards both of morals and manners were laid down by men chiefly for their own convenience and pleasure, and continually tended to become exaggerated in the efforts of women to win and to satisfy their masters. It came about that women, particularly of the well-to-do classes, were expected to be excessively timid, gentle, unreasoning, fastidious, vivacious-in two words, charming and docile. Or, in another phrase, the successful woman must be what men approved.

Now, naturally, a member of the ruling class would not like an aggressive subordinate, because she might sometimes cross his will; nor a tooreasoning creature, because she might think otherwise or put him in the wrong; nor a slovenly partner, for she would not make a home pleasant; nor a grumpy one, because she would not be an agreeable companion. In short, civilized man molded woman into the chaste image of what he himself would rather not be, and required her to practise the difficult habits which insured his comfort, pleased his taste, and would not disturb his peace. As a result of a long period of inculcation, in women of successive generations, they have acquired an extreme code of conduct and manners. Having no opportunity and little encouragement to be natural, they suppressed all the masculine, that is to say, the stronger, tendencies of their natures, and became, as idleness and ease permitted, more and more effeminate. The cultivation of abnormal delicacy of feeling, of excessive dependence upon men, and of hyperweakness, or, to use the current mocking phrase of the past time, "the clinging vine," became the pose of the woman who aspired to be a perfect lady.

Since one of the first results of a democratic regime was to make every citizen try to rise into a higher social stratum, American women of every grade were stimulated to be as ladylike as possible in imitation of the affected manners of the women of greater leisure and resources above them. They seized upon the conventional standard of ladyhood, and affected it to a ludicrous degree. In this way there came to be two conflicting ideals of behavior: the one originally developed in the marriageable type by man for purposes of domesticity; the other adopted by women themselves for the purpose of social elevation.

Of all the habits which woman tried to acquire, vivacity was, perhaps, the most conspicuous-the more so as it was not characteristic either of the primitive or the intellectual type. As civilized woman enlarged her social functions, she added to the tricks of allurement other manners with which to fill up her increasing leisure, and to express vicariously the rising status of the family. In earlier times men offered hospitality and their dependents, of whom the wife was chief, performed the labor which it entailed; but in Nineteenth-Century America one of the principal glories of the housewife was to keep an open house. The English custom of after-dinner coffee, wine, and conversation, and the Continental habit of frequenting a cafe or a garden for social diversion, had been replaced by the amusements of the Puritanized domestic circle-and, for a certain class of men, by the saloon.

In this new field of mixed society, women took a much larger share of leadership than they had been allowed in the Old World, and talkativeness became a necessary accomplishment for any young woman who wished to marry well. As the "professional entertainer" of private life, she must decorate her person and cultivate a lively, witty, agreeable manner. Whether she had anything to say or not, she must appear to have-she must learn to keep the ball rolling. Unfortunately, her life being largely indoors, there was very little common ground of conversation between a woman and a man. Starting with the instinctive coquetry of the mating female, there was evolved for social purposes a series of devices for exercising her charm and giving young men a good time. The subjects of conversation were necessarily limited to personal relations and social gossip, in both of which there was lacking the element of unexpectedness. It, therefore, became a part of the talk-game for girls to express themselves in veiled meanings, or by teasing, or by pseudo-quarrels, to produce the sensation of novelty. Such a mental paper-chase afforded amusement to the young of both sexes without committing them to serious courtship. Indeed, girls practised it on their fathers and other elderly men, who were entertained thereby as by the antics of a puppy in training.

In order to enhance the bird-like sprightliness which, at this period, was the ideal behavior of a charming girl, somebody invented "silvery laughter." Children laughed naturally, if not always sweetly, as a sign of physical exuberance rather than of wit. Adults outgrew it as they did the animal instinct to maul each other. If belonging to a crude society, they might sometimes guffaw or titter, according to convention, while in more cultivated strata humor met merely with the appreciation of a low chuckle or smile. The girlish habit of constant laughter over trifles that were not at all funny in themselves, was partly, no doubt, an expression of health, but it was continued into womanhood as a means of entertaining and of appearing gay and young. Among men, on the contrary, a youthful appearance was a disadvantage, and the boy, therefore, assumed gravity at the earliest possible age.

The superficial animation, which was merely a curious habit connected with feminine parade, disappeared with the worn-out trousseau. The wife found out very soon after marriage that her girlish tricks did not any longer entertain her husband, and practised them, if at all, on other women. Though no longer keyed up to the maiden tension, she was apt to keep the habit of petty, driveling, scrappy talk about clothes, recipes, babies, and neighborhood trivialities. She had, as a matter of fact, no incentive to discuss or to inform herself upon the larger affairs of the world, having in nobody's eyes any concern with them. If she did offer opinions or ask questions, her men-folk rarely treated them seriously.

The insistent and pervasive character of domestic duty required that women should never forget their household matters, and, if they talked at all, it was inevitably of the things nearest them. It is proverbial that young mothers can seldom be diverted from baby-talk—or talk about the baby—it becomes a sort of obsession. This is, indeed, not so much out of motherly conceit as because the baby itself is so absolutely incessant that it leaves no time for thinking of impersonal matters. The mother, for the first year of a child's life, is much like a patient in a sanatorium, except that her mind is fixed on the infant's symptoms rather than upon her own.

Again, "the typical woman" used to gabble of ephemeral things for the same reason that commercial men will sit smoking and swapping stories in a hotel lobby-it is both amusing and relaxing. But while women, like men, talk not only to amuse others, but to relieve the nervous tension of the day, there was, after all, one striking difference between the domestic woman and the average man in the purpose of their conversation. Having a stake in matters outside the sphere of home, and of general interest, men formed the habit of conversing to get and to give information. Men of superior ability alternated in talking and listening, while the ordinary woman was like a cowboy or a miner, or a countryman whose experience is so limited that he does not willingly listen to accounts of foreign travel or adventure, much less to descriptions of pictures or historic monuments.

The cumulative effect of domesticity has been to produce scrappy-mindedness in woman. The average housewife's attention hops from one thing to another, never having been concentrated upon a continuous, homogeneous occupation, but rather upon a succession of miscellaneous details, all of which are about equally unimportant, but none of which must be forgotten. Many women, even well-bred ones, constantly interrupt the conversation with irrelevant exclamations. Like children they have slight power of inhibition; they can't wait to be heard, and so two talk at the same time; they spill over, so to speak, and say whatever comes uppermost without discretion or discrimination. Half-grown boys, as well as girls, have these same conversational tendencies, but they usually lose them early because men will not tolerate a talkative, foolish kid, while, in the case of girls, the average man of the Nineteenth Century liked them to be childish chatterers. It is a curious fact that civilized men have always put a premium on foolishness in girls—especially in pretty girls—while they spoke scornfully of it in older women.

In no respect have women been supposed to differ more markedly from men than in the expression of emotion. The feminine type of the past century laughed often and too easily; wept almost as readily with any shock of fear or grief, and not infrequently as a sign of extreme anger. It is a significant fact, which is generally over looked, that the women of the Twentieth Century, and particularly those who have made them selves economically independent, no longer be have in this way. Tearfulness, along with talkativeness, has gone out of fashion. The heroines who fainted in the Eighteenth-Century novel, and cried buckets of tears in the fiction of the past generation, now control their emotions almost as well as men—perhaps even better, if one may judge from the copious swear-words which characterize the lively feelings of the typical Western hero. In infants, crying has always been regarded as an evidence that they wanted attention—that they were uncomfortable, or wished to be dandled; and at this age there is certainly no difference between the sexes. Nor throughout childhood—where they have had the same discipline and an equal reason for self-control-did children show any perceptible variation along the line of sex. But by the time the boy and the girl had reached the period of adolescence, girls had usually formed the habit of crying when they were unhappy and displeased; and boys, of fighting, swearing, and smashing things.

In modern systems of education, the power of suggestion is recognized to be as strong as that of authority in molding children. But even in the by-gone period of stricter discipline, suggestion was no less a factor in the formation of character, though not consciously practised. The habits of common decency-brushing the teeth, cleaning the nails, and bathing-as every mother knew-had to be assured not so much by coercion as by appeals to pride and affection. It was suggested to the boy or girl that they could never be grown up till they had learned to button their clothes.

In such matters boys and girls received precisely the same suggestions, but in every habit where the conventional standards for men and women differed, the force of suggestion reinforced girlishness in girls and boyishness in boys. When a boy cried with hurt or fury, he was told he could "never be a man" if he cried. Girls, on the other hand, were expected to cry, out of their feminine temperament, and if, now and then, one did not do so, but raged and smashed things, she was regarded as a tomboy and a scandal to her sex. When little girls wept, they were likely to be petted and comforted; if they kicked and yelled, they were punished and made to understand that to behave like a boy was the most outrageous thing they could do-a sin comparable to lying and stealing. Now if, as is well known, a baby a week old learns that somebody will give it attention if it yells long enough, and takes advantage thereby, it is scarcely possible to exaggerate the effect of the constant emphasis on hysteria as the proper form of emotional explosion for women.

Emotional expression is, in fact, determined far more by race and temperament than by sex. The South European peoples are in this respect more highly developed than the Northern, and the negro than the white race. The so-called "artistic" temperament is merely a display of the characteristics commonly attributed to women and, until recently, male artists were looked upon by other men as essentially effeminate. In so far as the artist has a highly developed nervous organization, he is, indeed, like a finely strung woman, but his effeminacy consists, on the other hand, in an over-stimulation of his emotions, and in the absence of the motives for self-control which usually operate among men.

The artist, too, is the victim of a tradition that singers and painters are inevitably erratic and self-indulgent. The artist is by nature a finely sensitive human organism and, since success depends upon very early specialization in the expression of beauty and feeling, the so-called manly qualities are likely to remain in abeyance or to be suppressed. The feminine and the masculine temperaments are at this moment strikingly typified in two men singers now at the height of their fame. One, born of a southern race, and trained from childhood exclusively in the direction of artistic expression, behaves precisely in the manner of a petted, extravagant, emotional woman. The other, of a northern race, educated in the broad, practical manner of the normal man, and rather late in life devoted to the exclusive culture of his artistic gift, is both a great singer and a controlled and manly human being.

In much the same way, the great preacher and the brilliant orator are effeminate, producing their effects far more by the hypnotism of high emotion than by the ideas which they express. Like actors, they, too, are subject to extreme reaction after the culmination of any emotional effort in which they are often as irresponsible as children. It is particularly suggestive that of all the types of men denominated "effeminate," the actor most nearly resembles the type of woman set up as the ideal in the past century. He, like the woman, makes his place in life chiefly by the cultivation of manner and appearance. He, like her, depends for success upon pleasing rather than being admirable. The "matinée idol" is an extreme example of character—or, rather, perversion of character—by the social necessity of being charming and of trading in assumed emotions.

For this was in truth what the American woman was driven to do in the sphere offered in the past century. With the approach of adolescence and the development of the sex instinct, young people of both sexes began to preen themselves, the boy exaggerating the masculine qualities to attract attention; the girl pretending to be extremely delicate, elusive, and emotional in order to enhance her charms. One of the chief elements of courtship is surprise; and emotional outbursts, whether of laughter, tears, or temper, were one of the readiest means of producing unexpected turns in personal relations. The lover, taken unaware, would succumb to the assault of hysteria just as the girl's father had done in earlier years, and as the husband would do later. Hysteria was, indeed, by virtue of convention and cultivation, as much the weapon of the domestic, feminine type as bluffing, bullying, and epithets were "natural" to men whose traditions did not permit the exhibition of weaker forms of emotional expression. The cultivation of anger from bravado to fisticuffs was one of the insignia of manliness, as tears and weakness were of womanliness, though by nature the boy might be a coward and the girl a fighter.

Since men liked docility in wives, marriageable girls must cultivate the appearance of gentleness, whatever their natural disposition might be. Just as boys in the family might throw their clothes on the floor, expecting mother to pick them up, while girls were trained to put away their own garments; so boys were rather admired for getting mad and getting into a fight, while their sisters, under similar provocation, would be called "vixens" and meet with severe disapproval. The girl of high temper-which often indicated superior strength of character-either became the female bully of the neighborhood, or, more often, learned to dissemble her disposition by putting on a "honeyed" manner. One of the "sweetest" women I have ever known—and she was typical of many of her sort-one whose outward manner was invariably deferential, sweet, and considerate toward her neighbors and her family, kept her husband in abject fear of her displeasure. The temper which this delicate and gentle appearing creature would unleash in private to get what she wanted from a refined and too-indulgent husband, was incredibly savage, and was always reinforced with the appeal to tears. She had been a delicate and only daughter, over-indulged, but, nevertheless, brought up in the practice of the strictest conventional behavior. She could and did control herself in every public relation, toward every one except her immediate family, but, when crossed by them, she fought like a man, with the only weapons she knew.

The society manner was an extension of the habits acquired by girls for the purpose of their sphere, which included entertaining along with sphere, which included entertaining along with housekeeping and motherhood. Objectively, it was intended to make the guest have a good time by putting him at ease, and at the same time pleasing and piquing him with interest; subjectively, it was the accepted method of displaying the feminine charm, of giving marriageable girls a chance to make their market, and of maintaining the social status of the household. It, therefore, demanded a careful attention to appearances, the playing up of all the attractive resources of the feminine members of the family, and the concealment of whatever might not be creditable. If a woman thus set out to please everybody, even within the confines of her own social circle, she could never say what she thought nor behave as she felt. Indeed, the more charming she was, the more insincere she must necessarily be. She must always be complimentary to her acquaintances, praising their dress, belongings, and performances. The guest who loved music and sang off the key, must be invited to perform as cordially as if she were a really pleasing musician; the man who told wearisome anecdotes must be met with all the spontaneous laughter due to wit. The more tactful the woman contrived to be, the more social success she attained and, per contra, the more insincere she became.

It is evident that slow-witted or straight-forward women would have no chance at all in a society where the coin of exchange was mutual and graceful flattery. In the nature of things the quickest-witted women were the most capable of practising concealment of their thoughts, while those of more solid qualities would either not be able to attain the acrobatic grace necessary to social success, or would have an honest distaste for its superficiality. The more intellectual and sincere, and the more reasonable a young woman was, the less likely she was to be socially successful, and she must either be content to be a "blue-stocking," and remain unmarried, or she must conceal her natural common-sense and imitate the feminine characteristics then in vogue.

Thus imitation rather than originality became the keynote of women's lives. In a democratic society composed largely of people born in the working classes, whose social ambitions were chiefly limited to financial ease and the hope of rising into the next higher stratum, there were many kinds of men, but only two sorts of women. The success of a man consisted in material achievement; of a woman in appearing to be what was pleasing to man in order that she might be invited to share his height. Men were making themselves, so to speak, of the genuine stuff—soft or hard, fine or coarse-grained, of pine, oak, or mahogany; while women, of whatever material, must be carefully veneered with a thin and costly layer of unreality—a sort of imitation composite, a spurious femininity.

It is certainly significant that, in proportion as the women of the Nineteenth Century were released from domestic, manual labor, they became more and more extravagantly feminine; and that this phenomenon was a repetition of what had previously marked the behavior of every class of women at leisure throughout the world's history. There is no evidence that our manufacturing grandmothers of the early Nineteenth Century were afflicted with any such degree of effusive, excitable, unreasoning temperament as that which characterized the strictly feminine ideal of their immediate descendants. Among Parisians at the present day, where there is almost no line drawn between the economic sphere of men and women, and where both husband and wife among the masses must work to make a living, there is no marked difference between them in respect to emotional expression. The women of Paris have fought as savagely as men in the revolutions; and French men are notoriously as emotional as the typical American woman, and as unreasoning when carried beyond self-control.

There can be no doubt that the social behavior which is commonly described as "typically feminine" is an over-development of characters not at all uncommon among men, and often lacking in women. When women have been more given to superficial talk and gayety than men, it is because men desired them to be so, and because it was, therefore, to their advantage. If they have been accustomed to use hysteria as their weapon of defense, instead of talking reason or using their fists, it was probably because they had never had either encouragement or opportunity to employ mind or brute force.

With the opening of all occupations to woman, and with nearly equal opportunities for intellectual training, there has been developed in a single generation a large number of American women who are less excitable than a Frenchman, less sentimental than a German, and less emotional than an Italian—in short, almost as reasonable and self-poised as the men of their own class and race.

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