Open Letters
A Plea for the Suppression of a Catchword
BY HELEN MINTURN SEYMOUR
Essays of Elia
My dear George:
The magazine containing “Confessions of a Novel Reader” arrived not two hours ago, and I have just come from its perusal. When a young man cares enough about his spinster aunt to send her his latest literary production on the very day it appears it does seem ungracious to do what I am about to do—make the letter of acknowledgment one continuous complaint. But you touched me on a sensitive spot, George. Your essay proved the proverbial straw, the drop that filled a cup of bitterness to overflowing.
Perhaps you suspect that this tirade comes from an elderly New Englander’s aversion to those very outspoken writers whom you admire. Not a bit of it. Worship at whatever shrine you please. I, too, in my young days, distressed my elders by my attachment to strange gods. It is a waste of time to be shocked, since most of us have gone in for “daring” literature when we were green in judgment. It is a phase of youth, like a boy’s swagger. No, all the trouble came from one little paragraph, which you probably never dreamed would upset me. You said—oh, you said—that no woman enjoys Dumas! That cut me to the heart, George,—and coming from you!
“A woman cannot read—” “A woman does not like—” We have heard those expressions so often! Sometimes the statement is used to illustrate the limitations of feminine sympathy. Sometimes the supposed limitations of feminine sympathy are used to support the statement. I don’t know which is worse, to go softly all one’s days, lest some individual weakness be foisted on the whole unfortunate sex, or to feel that individual tastes avail nothing as examples of female character.
Hark to Mr. Paul Elmer More on Christina Rossetti. He finds her “perfectly passive attitude toward the powers that command her heart and soul” makes her “the purest expression in English of the feminine genius.” Mrs. Browning sinks to a lower level because “her political opinions, her passion for reform, her scholarship ... simply carry her into the sphere of masculine poets, where she suffers by comparison.” But, “even within the range of strictly feminine powers her genius is not simple and typical.” How he comes to his conclusion regarding the typical woman Mr. More neglects to tell us. But you will observe the advantage of this method for the doctrinaire. One has only to accept a certain premise (it matters not what), and by excluding as “not typical” every instance which might contradict it one can prove anything. Thus, a certain book on the Negro proved, some years ago, that the colored race was a hopeless mass of laziness, vice, and stupidity. The writer hastened to forestall criticism by declaring that the well-conducted Negro, wherever and whenever found, was not typical of the race.
Here comes Dr. William Lyon Phelps, all amazement because women have enjoyed the soldier tales of Kipling. To him the preference is as out of place in a woman as her presence in a bar-room amid oaths and tobacco-juice. Well, if there were as much color, adventure, and excellent broad comedy in the bar-room as in the best of these stories a lady might even forgive the profanity and the filthy floor. And you must remember that life, for all the realists may say, is not literature. We take our broad comedy, selected and arranged, from an author. Life is like a variety show; we sit through a deal of vulgar stupidity for the sake of a laugh or two. Furthermore, I believe plenty of men who enjoyMistress Doll Commonwhen Ben Jonson leads her on the stage would find her sadly dull in real life. Perhaps I have grown more patient with the limitations of sex since the days when I read “Monte Cristo” in the hayloft; but I still fume under that particular form of petticoat tyranny which would extend to books. Sex may pervade all the departments of life, but I hold that it should stop at the library door.
Divest yourself of certain odious catchwords, my dear boy. Toss certain theories into the waste-basket, where they belong. Forget that any one ever called woman “the subjective sex,” and that somebody described her as a “divine totality” (I think it was divine). Any superfluous subjectiveness is wearing away in the freer air which has done so much to destroy woman’s “personal outlook.” Remember that women are no more of a piece than are their fathers or brothers, but a hodge-podge of miscellaneous and often contradictory tastes. “Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are,” runs the saying. “Tell me what you read and I will tell you what you are,” says the critic by implication. Now, what is that middle-aged relative of mine who keeps a place in her heart of hearts for “Pride and Prejudice” and “Pan Michael,” for “The Essays of Elia” and “Junius’s Letters”? Verily, we seek our books as we seek the society of many friends, to suit a mood, with no regard for totalities.
By the way, is not this just another instance of that mania for pigeonholing human tastes and playing them off against one another? If you appreciate Sienkiewicz, you must share the opinion of “The Virginian” (and Mr. Wister) regarding Jane Austen; and if you find entertainment in the human comedy as played in English country towns at the end of the eighteenth century, it stands to reason that you are not the person for the Poland of the seventeenth. It avails you little to protest that you find an equal pleasure in routingLady CatherinewithElizabethand Tartars withVolodyovski. One of these days I intend to found a society for the suppression of useless comparisons. I can understand how a Trinitarian and a Unitarian, a Democrat and a Republican, a suffragist and an anti-suffragist might drift naturally into discussion. But why, when I speak a good word for the canine race, must my acquaintance, B, launch aggressively into praise of cats, as if my love of dogs were a challenge? Why may I not enjoy Tennyson without calling down on myself the scorn of the Browningite? It annoys me to have my pets or my poets made the excuse for a wrangle. I refuse to commit myself to any type of novel.
But, you may remind me, I went so far as to keep a parrot “once, long ago.” I plead guilty, yet, Mark Twain to the contrary, a parrot is no index to character.John Silverkept one, but nobody ever compared him to a maiden lady.
So, dear George, when you meet some gentle spinster with a flavor of “Cranford” about her, give her the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps she likes nothing better than to swagger in imagination through the streets of old Paris in company with the immortal three, brandishing a sheaf of rapiers taken from the cardinal’s guard.
—And between you and me, George, I never saw a “typical woman.”
Your affectionate aunt,
Anne Coddington.