THE FEMINIST OF FRANCE

The Feminist of France, headpieceTHE FEMINIST OF FRANCE

The Feminist of France, headpiece

BY ETHEL DEAN ROCKWELL

FEMINISTS include as many different kinds of women in France as elsewhere. The term can be applied equally to a George Sand or a Marguérite Audoux. We find the movement as marked, too, in France as in other countries. But the interesting thing about it is that though similar to all the others in basic principles, the French feminist is instinctively individual, always French. Compare her, for instance, with her sister across the channel. In England she bends all her energies to winning the suffrage, to carrying reforms by act of Parliament; in France she takes no part in political campaigns, cares not at all for the vote. In England the ladies of the aristocracy are the prime movers; in France, with few exceptions, the women of the upper classes look on the movement with indifference, and the leaders come from a small group of intelligent and ambitious women of the bourgeoisie. In England women are working for the cause of all women rather than for individual advantage; in France they impress one as working for their own benefit, not for humanity. In England, throwing off their feminine garb, they often become blatant, clamorous, unwomanly; in France, believing that woman’s deadliest weapon is her womanliness, they never withdraw the battery of their feminine charms. In England the feminist is still a conformist to moral law; in France, unfortunately, she is too often a rebel against moral as well as social restrictions.

The tendency has existed in many brilliant women since French history began. We naturally think of the women of the salons, for instance. But they were only sporadic examples of cleverness. A general “woman movement” was not known till the French Revolution.

“Since when have women occupied themselves with politics?” asked Napoleon of Mme. de Staël.

“Since they have been guillotined,” was her reply.

But the Revolution brought them no recognition, for upon its heels came Napoleon, who took from them even that which they had. Two other movements also came to naught: followers of St. Simon, the Socialist, who believed in the complete emancipation of woman and in her entire equality with man, owed their failure to the extravagance of some of their doctrines, and to lack of organization. The other attempt was snuffed out in 1851 with thecoup d’étatof Napoleon III. Through the twenty years of political reaction succeeding that event, there werealways women, often famous, who fought valiantly, if not always wisely, for emancipation; and since the establishment of the republic, their efforts have made uninterrupted headway.

WEspeak of steady advance. Yet measured by American standards, or those of other Northern countries, Frenchwomen must yet travel far to reach the point where these were fifty years ago. Americans accept as a matter of course liberty of thought and action, equal opportunities for study and work, and the respect of men. Frenchwomen are not generally possessed of these blessings. Why this difference? Among many causes, three stand out preëminent—social, civil, and religious reasons.

Socially, France belongs with the Latin races. In these countries man has generally treated woman with gallantry, but not respect, and has received her attempts at higher life in a spirit of mockery which it has been almost impossible to overcome. Because her happiness depended on his good will, her one aim in life has been to please him. As Pierre de Coulevain expresses it, “She is entirely absorbed by man and maternity.” The moral standard of both men and women has been low, and the well-known bargaining about the dowry has added sordidness. The case of thejeune filleserves as an example. Her carefully guarded, restricted life, her interests, and her education, not fitting her to think or to be of service to her community, are too well known to need amplification. It well illustrates how, in Southern countries, their Latin heritage has been a strong social factor in the retarded awakening of women.

In France these conditions were fixed still more immutably by Napoleon’s civil code, which thus becomes the second, or civil, reason. Napoleon’s only use for women was as producers of more men for his wars. “Make them believers, not thinkers,” was his command. In legal status he classed them with children, imbeciles, and criminals. A married woman could possess no property; her husband owned what she brought him in marriage and what she inherited or earned thereafter. The pitiful plight of Balzac’sEugénie Grandetand her mother was not an exceptional case, but the rule. Furthermore, she could not testify in civil suits, or be a witness to any legal document, or have any part in the family council for the government of her children. Yet this Frenchwoman, a nullity in the eyes of the law, is respected by all the world for her marvelous common sense and managing ability. So marked is this that virtually all the petty retail business in the country is in her hands, and she manages her business, her children, and her husband as a matter of course.

This principle of the subjection of woman to the higher authority of man, installed by immemorial custom, fast bound in civil law by Napoleon’s code, has in general also been emphasized by the church. It has consistently developed the passive virtue of sacrifice and the cheerful acceptance of things as they are. Therefore, although conditions have changed, to-day, and there are many noble Catholic feminists, it has in the past been the exception rather than the rule; and Frenchwomen of the upper classes have been led by their convent training to accept without question the position assigned them by social custom and the Napoleonic code. Two of these three conditions are aptly summed up by Pierre de Coulevain when she says, “France is the land of femininity, not of feminism: femininity is Latin and Catholic; feminism is Anglo-Saxon and Protestant.”

Against these germs of arrested development have sprung up other germs which have almost killed the first and have produced the present epidemic of feminism. World forces which affect even China are of course felt in France. One of these is economic pressure. By the introduction of machinery and the constantly increasing cost of living, women of the lower classes have been forced into industry in France as everywhere else, until it has been stated that sixty per cent. of the women of France are now wage-earners. Naturally, then, industrial conditions have compelled them to demand recognition on the same basis as men. In the middle classes this same pressure postpones the age of marriage for the man, thus throwing the burden of support for a longer time on the girl’s father; at the same time it makes it increasingly difficult for the father to provide the necessary dot. It therefore sends girls into professions to ease the family burden, instead of into the convent. “To ease the family burden,” I say, for she seldom works, as do so many American young women, for her own enrichment. Her earnings go to her parents.

Photograph by T. T.MME. MARGUÉRITE DURANDEditor and journalist.Photograph by Chéri-RousseauMME. DIEULAFOYLecturer and archæologist.Photograph by Henri ManuelMME. CURIEThe joint discoverer of radium,who succeeded her husbandin a chair of physics andchemistry at the Sorbonne.From the portrait by GandaraCOUNTESS MATHIEU DE NOAILLESNovelist and poet.Photograph by TouranchetMME. BLANC (TH. BENTZON)Novelist and journalist.

Photograph by T. T.MME. MARGUÉRITE DURANDEditor and journalist.Photograph by Chéri-RousseauMME. DIEULAFOYLecturer and archæologist.

Photograph by T. T.MME. MARGUÉRITE DURANDEditor and journalist.

Photograph by Chéri-RousseauMME. DIEULAFOYLecturer and archæologist.

Photograph by Henri ManuelMME. CURIEThe joint discoverer of radium,who succeeded her husbandin a chair of physics andchemistry at the Sorbonne.

From the portrait by GandaraCOUNTESS MATHIEU DE NOAILLESNovelist and poet.Photograph by TouranchetMME. BLANC (TH. BENTZON)Novelist and journalist.

From the portrait by GandaraCOUNTESS MATHIEU DE NOAILLESNovelist and poet.

Photograph by TouranchetMME. BLANC (TH. BENTZON)Novelist and journalist.

Then, too, the tradition that every girl must marry or retire to a convent has left too many women unaccounted for in the social scheme. Four and a half million women in France have no home or children—unmarried women, widows, divorcées, or mothers whose children are grown. Olive Schreiner says that the woman movement is the endeavor on the part of women to find new fields of labor as the old slip from them—a demand for a continued share in the work of the world. And these millions of Frenchwomen with no home ties are clamoring for their share. They claim the privilege of employing their hitherto ingrowing energy in useful work, and in whatever field they wish.

To these economic and social stimuli a third factor should be added—the result of the separation of church and state in 1905; and with time this change will be increasingly felt. Since the convents exerted a conservative influence, their dissolution minimizes that tendency. The convents had been almost exclusively the schools of the girls of the higher classes; they had been the refuge of unmarried and unfortunate women; the sisters had had charge of the hospitals, nursing, and nearly all other charities. But since girls must now follow the nuns to the border countries for their education, not so many go; and those who stay at home receive a more modern and less conservative training. Since the unsought in marriage must leave France in order to take refuge in a convent, more stay in the world. And since the hungry and sick were left without caretakers, other women had to take up the works of charity discontinued by the nuns. Thus perforce, since the separation, new fields of activity, new occupations, new responsibilities have been thrust upon the women of France. The withdrawal of the nuns created a vacuum into which others have rushed.

They are ready for these fresh fields and pastures new. They see women of other nations so engaged, and example is contagious. A gain for feminism inSweden gives impetus in France; a rebellion against long-established custom in Constantinople gives courage for one in Paris. Above all, the several international women’s conferences that have met in Chicago, Berlin, London, and Paris in the last fifteen years have been great educators, great awakeners. Then, too, Parisians never lack for foreign examples, for Paris is cosmopolitan, and Americans especially she has always with her. The Frenchwoman, who, when her children are grown, is inclined to lose all interest in life, and settle down to old age, sees American grandmothers making a tour of the world, and tries to find the secret of their eternal youth. Thus it may be that as French diplomats have won half Africa by the skilful use of American inventions and institutions, so Frenchwomen may yet win all France by clever adaptation of the American type of woman.

Englishwomen also furnish examples in their interest in sport. “Sport” is fashionable. Bicycling was once a fad; tennis, riding, and swimming are popular. The girls’ schools are now advertising swimming-pools and tennis-courts. For one woman that you met skating thirty years ago, you now meet five hundred. We long ago learned, if we ever had to learn, the moral and intellectual value of exercise. The French, both men and women, are only now discovering it. We find, therefore, that the hothouse products are vanishing, and with them, morbidity, unhealthy thoughts, overstimulated emotions, sluggish brains. In their stead we find healthy bodies, healthy minds, initiative, organizing ability, development of the dormant will power, and last, but not least, natural and unrestrained meeting with men in all sorts of games.

Certain classes of men have been strong and active supporters of the feminist cause. Indeed, this is one of the most characteristic features of the movement in France. It seems sometimes as though the men were more ardent and intelligent feminists than the women themselves. The little band of French Protestants is naturally in the forefront of sympathy for the movement. There are fewer Protestants in all France than there are Jews in New York City, but they exercise an influence for progress far out of proportion to their small number. Almost all literary men,no matter what their creed, and lawyers, teachers, professional men in general, as well as a few deputies and senators, are on the side of the feminists. The constant pounding away on the question by playwrights and poets such as Brieux, Lavédan, Mirbeau, and Jules Bois, has done much to break down prejudice and widen the point of view. The Odéon and Comédie Française have struck sounding blows against the old order of “The Doll’s House,” and novelists like Victor Margueritte, and Marcel Prévost have done their part in arousing sympathy for theNorasof France. Socialists, too, espouse the women’s cause.

INthe combination of all these causes, then, economic, industrial, cosmopolitan, social, religious, and literary, the awakening has come to the women—and men—of France. The successive steps, seeming slow as they were laboriously gained, become rapid in retrospect. In professional studies, since 1868, when the first woman was admitted to a medical school, one after another all barriers have come down, till to-day all doors are wide open, and in the University of Paris alone there are over two thousand women students. After permission to study and take a degree was obtained, came the more arduous struggle to be allowed to practise their profession, for prejudice acted as a complete boycott. The prejudice was of two sorts. One was that of friends and family, who considered a woman utterly disgraced if she worked. This attitude is still general, and is the cause of untold unhappiness and estrangement. The other prejudice, and a strong one, was from her competitors, the men. Women medical students could obtain their degree, but had no opportunity to attend clinics or to be internes in hospitals. Law students, likewise, could not take the bar examinations or practise. It is owing to the unflagging efforts of two or three able women that this competitive struggle is also now a thing of the past. Mlle. Jeanne Chauvin was the test case in law practice. She won after a long and bitter struggle only ten years ago. In the profession of university teaching women have been on a par with men since Mme. Curie, having twice won the Nobel prize for her benefits to mankind through her chemical discoveries, was appointed to succeed her deceased husband in the chair of physics and chemistry in the Sorbonne. Three years ago she became the test case in yet another contest—a contest over the right of women to public recognition of their attainments by admission to the Academy. In this first engagement, like most pioneers, she lost; but the decision raised such a storm of protest and discussion that there is scarcely a question of the ultimate victory in this also. We shall yet see women taking their honored place among the seats of the famous Forty.

The struggle to change woman’s legal status has been particularly long and hard, and is still in progress. This cause owes much to Mlle. Maria Chéliga, a Pole, who has lived most of her life in Paris, and by her essays, lectures, stories, and plays has awakened public sympathy; and to Mlle. Jeanne Schmahl, editor of “L’Avant Courrière,” who succeeded after many years of effort in getting a bill through the Chamber of Deputies giving to married women the control of their own earnings. At first it failed in the Senate. Undaunted, she worked for eleven years more until, in 1907, she wrested from an unwilling Senate the vote in favor of the bill. For the last five years, therefore, a married woman has been able to spend what she earns, and to have her own bank-account. Within the last four years women at the head of large business houses have been able to vote for the judges of the tribunals of commerce, and thus see that their business interests are not unfairly dealt with by this powerful body. Women teachers have for some time been allowed to vote for the members of the board of education, though women are not eligible for office in either of these bodies. A married woman can now testify, and act as a witness in legal documents. She still has no voice in the family council, a vital institution in France; and if she invests her earnings in furniture or other portable property, these possessions belong to the husband.

Photograph by Henri ManuelJEAN BERTHEROY (MME. LEBARILLIER)Poet and historical novelist.Photograph by Henri ManuelMME. HENRI DE REGNIER(GÉRARDD’HOUVILLE)Poet and novelist.Photograph by OgerauMME. SÉVÉRINEA fervent and eloquentpublic speaker, whoseconférences at theOdéon are a featureof Parisian life.Photograph by NadarJUDITH GAUTIERDaughter of Théophile Gautier.Photograph by Boisonnas and TapoulerMARCELLE TINAYREAuthor of “La Maison du Péché.”

Photograph by Henri ManuelJEAN BERTHEROY (MME. LEBARILLIER)Poet and historical novelist.Photograph by Henri ManuelMME. HENRI DE REGNIER(GÉRARDD’HOUVILLE)Poet and novelist.

Photograph by Henri ManuelJEAN BERTHEROY (MME. LEBARILLIER)Poet and historical novelist.

Photograph by Henri ManuelMME. HENRI DE REGNIER(GÉRARDD’HOUVILLE)Poet and novelist.

Photograph by OgerauMME. SÉVÉRINEA fervent and eloquentpublic speaker, whoseconférences at theOdéon are a featureof Parisian life.

Photograph by NadarJUDITH GAUTIERDaughter of Théophile Gautier.Photograph by Boisonnas and TapoulerMARCELLE TINAYREAuthor of “La Maison du Péché.”

Photograph by NadarJUDITH GAUTIERDaughter of Théophile Gautier.

Photograph by Boisonnas and TapoulerMARCELLE TINAYREAuthor of “La Maison du Péché.”

Another sign of the times is the ever-present discussion over the education and training of thejeune fille. Thirty years ago there was not a public school for girls in the country. To-day there are many, though five for the whole of Paris seems insufficient. The inadequate curriculum is a constant bone of contention, and has already been much widened and strengthened in both state and Catholic schools to meet the demand for vocational training. Thejeune filleis gaining slowly in independence, and we find her in novels, spoken of as looking forward quite naturally to activities and spheres of usefulness outside of, as well as within the home. “A whole woman is too much for a man,” one heroine declares.

Owing to the gap left by the nuns’ departure, we find one important movement of humanitarian interest in the attempts to reorganize and strengthen the profession of nursing. It had been left either to the sisters, who were not always as modern in their methods as could be desired, or to an outside class ofSairey Gamps, lower in intelligence and decency than domestic servants. Now they are trying to interest girls of the better classes in the profession, founding training-schools and studying American methods.

The fact that the international professional-women’s club of London, the Lyceum, has now a branch in Paris, and that there are many other women’s clubs, is significant. Till recently the club movement has found no response in France. The woman has been too much occupied in her own household, too much claimed by an army of relatives, to be drawn outside by clubs or anything else for the sake of her own development. Then, again, the Frenchwoman of leisure and ability has been content with her own lot and oblivious of her duty to her less fortunate sisters. She has therefore not felt the need of united effort through club organization for a common humanitarian cause. And even when she has felt this call of duty, she has always shown an astonishing lack of appreciation of the value of system and organization for attaining the desired results. Sixty years ago the feminist pioneers might have succeeded if their efforts had not been scattered and individual. Indeed, even now French feminism gives one an impression of ununified restlessness. That there is now a “club movement,” therefore, shows that at last there is in France desire for individual development, a sense of duty to one’s neighbor, and an appreciation of the value of organization. There are still countless activities that American women are habitually engagedin—municipal improvement, efforts to improve labor conditions, child-labor laws, social settlements, etc.—that have not yet reached France to a noticeable extent. But now that a beginning has been made, we shall look for all these and more.

Marked as is this general leavening of the lump, art and literature show the most complete conquest. The art prizes are all open to women, and at one time or another most of them have been won by women. To say nothing of their success in painting, sculpture, and architecture, women absolutely own the field in illustrating, arts-and-crafts work and in making innumerable small art objects. They also nearly monopolize literature: in essays, poetry, novels, journalism, their name is legion, their influence unbounded.

Journalism in France is an influential literary profession, with strong leaders that no other country can surpass. Women hold responsible positions on the staff of most of the leading French reviews, and contribute an astonishing number of articles, generally under men’s names. Beginning with Mme. Juliette Adam, the line is unbroken. She was the last of the old school, the first of the new, wielding high political influence at first through her salon, then through the pages of the “Nouvelle Révue,” which she founded in 1879. She also wrote novels, essays, and reminiscences. Mme. Sévérine, a fervent and eloquent public speaker, with rather a permanent instinct for revolt, shouts her war-cry in the “Echo de Paris.” The “Révue des Deux-Mondes” and the “Journal des Débats” include on their staff, among other women, Mme. Arvède Barine. Three times has the Academy crowned a work of hers, and she wears the cross of the Legion of Honor, as did Mme. Thérèse Bentzon, who died five years ago. Mme. Blanc, as she was better known, was on the staff of these two periodicals. This estimable woman also wrote novels and essays, some crowned by the Academy. She was especially loved in America, to which she made several visits, because she was the most faithful interpreter to the French of American literature, social customs, and educational methods. She was an ardent Roman Catholic. Mlle. Maria Martin edits the “Journal des Femmes,” and Marguérite Durand, “Les Nouvelles.” The latter is perhaps the most popular woman in France, and charmingly and essentially feminine.

Photograph by Eug. PirouMME. PEYREBRUNENovelist and poet.Photograph by Chéri-RousseauYVONNE SARCEYWriter and feminist.Photograph by OgerauMME. ADAM (JULIETTELAMBER)Founder of the “Nouvelle Révue.”One of the most influential ofmodern Frenchwomen.Photograph by Henri ManuelMME. LUCIE DELARUS-MARDRUSDramatist and poet.Photograph by Chéri-RousseauMME. LUCIE FÉLIX-FAURE GOYAUDaughter of Félix Faure.

Photograph by Eug. PirouMME. PEYREBRUNENovelist and poet.Photograph by Chéri-RousseauYVONNE SARCEYWriter and feminist.

Photograph by Eug. PirouMME. PEYREBRUNENovelist and poet.

Photograph by Chéri-RousseauYVONNE SARCEYWriter and feminist.

Photograph by OgerauMME. ADAM (JULIETTELAMBER)Founder of the “Nouvelle Révue.”One of the most influential ofmodern Frenchwomen.

Photograph by Henri ManuelMME. LUCIE DELARUS-MARDRUSDramatist and poet.Photograph by Chéri-RousseauMME. LUCIE FÉLIX-FAURE GOYAUDaughter of Félix Faure.

Photograph by Henri ManuelMME. LUCIE DELARUS-MARDRUSDramatist and poet.

Photograph by Chéri-RousseauMME. LUCIE FÉLIX-FAURE GOYAUDaughter of Félix Faure.

Novelists and poets have much in common. They are rather too apt to be feminists of most advanced type, drowned in a noxious wave of free-thinking, swinging too far in their revolt, and disregarding moral laws.

GEORGETTE LEBLANC MAETERLINCK, ACTRESS, SINGER, AND WRITER; THE WIFE OF MAURICE MAETERLINCK

This epidemic of free-thinking seems to be most evident in the upper classes, leaving the women of the bourgeoisie untouched. But perhaps all this is only the fledgling trying its wings, a phase of development, an ugly stage of self-consciousness, which the French temperament, essentially one of harmony, will sooner or later adjust. In poets this characteristic manifests itself in a tendency to reveal without restraint the inmost secrets of their woman’s soul. Mme. de Noailles, though admitted by men critics to be in the first rank, is no exception. She is alsoa novelist and is on the staff of the “Révue des Deux-Mondes.” Gérard d’Houville is another poet as well as novelist; and Lucie Delarus-Mardrus another, seeking unusual and exotic effects by travels in Eastern lands. The novelists confine their plots for the most part to studies of feminists. Thus, Marcelle Tinayre’s “La Rebelle” is a beautiful young journalist; her heroine in “Hellé” is a charming example of the noblest type of emancipated young womanhood; Colette Yver’s “Les Dames du Palais” deals with women lawyers and the divorce question; her “Princesses de Science” takes up scientific women. Gabriel Réval’s “Ruban de Venus” shows us artists; and women interested in sociological questions are the heroines of Renée and Tony d’Ulmès. But the inevitable underlying theme of them all is the irresistibility of passion, “the impossibility of woman’s escaping the brutal laws of her own temperament,” as one commentatorexpresses it. Moreover, the heroines are all selfish in their feminism; they are in search of their individual happiness.

Of the novelists and essayists, more than a passing word should be given to Marcelle Tinayre, conceded by men critics to be the most vigorous and virile of women writers, and even classed by one above George Sand. Her works have been crowned by the Academy, and she has won the cross of the Legion of Honor. Daniel Lesueur and Mme. Peyrebrune are both important, and have been distinguished with many honors. Mme. Maeterlinck is opera-singer, essayist, and lecturer, as well as novelist. Jeanne Bertheroy and Judith Gautier, daughter of Théophile Gautier, are famous, as are also Mme. Dieulafoy and Mme. Félix-Faure Goyau, daughter of the former president of the republic. Colette Yver, with her “Princesses de Science,” was the first to win the prize offered by the woman’s paper, “La Vie Heureuse.” (This is the prize that was awarded to the seamstress Marguérite Audoux for “Marie Claire.”) Pierre de Coulevain, remarkably cosmopolitan, and with a wonderfully wide point of view, is read more by foreigners than by the French. Mme. Yvonne Sarcey is exceptional in appealing to a sense of duty as the controlling force in life.

Much as we should like to linger over this long literary list, we must pass on to other topics. In the matter of the suffrage, progress is not so marked. Small suffrage societies here and there have existed for twenty-five years, but the National French Woman’s Suffrage Association was formed only three years ago. It has converted many teachers and employees of the post, telegraph, and telephone service, but has not made any impression on the women of the working-classes. In 1911 it had a membership of 3000 out of a total female population of 20,000,000. So it can be seen that the suffrage movement in France is still in its swaddling-clothes. The most encouraging thing for the suffrage supporters is the number of “hommes-femmes”; that is, influential men who give devoted service to the suffrage cause. We have already spoken of the broad-minded men who have done much to educate public opinion to more enlightened views on women. They generally go further still, and are suffragists. About three years ago they formed a men’s association, called “The Voters’ League for Woman Suffrage,” which counts among its members two senators and nine deputies. This league holds itself in readiness to push forward whatever legislative measures it considers worth while. It has been working on a bill for women’s vote in municipal elections, and it is stated as a possibility that it may be passed. Socialists also favor the suffrage, both because from the anti-reactionary nature of their doctrines they must, to be consistent, and because they want the women’s vote. But their help is of little practical value, for the labor party and the unions control the socialist party, and these two powerful organizations are bitter and formidable enemies of women’s entrance into the economic and political field. Opposition is strong from the politicians in power. Having brought about the separation of church and state seven years ago, they fear that all the old clerical question, which has been the cause of many years of most bitter wrangling, would be reopened by the women at the first opportunity, under the instigation of the priests. It is asserted, moreover, that there is no decided Catholic opposition, as such, to woman suffrage.

It must have become evident from the foregoing pages, however, that feminism in France is not a matter of the suffrage. There have been other conquests to make, in the realm of thought rather than action; old prejudices, old traditions to be removed, rights of moral and intellectual equality to be established. Indeed, French feminism can well be defined as “a state of mind, not yet crystallized into aggressive agitation for reform.” After all, in the last analysis, we see that for the realization of the feminist ideals must come, and is coming, a change in man—in his moral standards, in his attitude toward women, in his whole Latin conception of the social basis of society. Olive Schreiner says that the new woman is accompanied by the new man, or there would be no new woman. We see this development in France to-day. Says Marcel Prévost: “The new college youth cares more for sport, is more robust physically and is more healthy-minded. He is less sentimental,more athletic; he does not think of woman.” In this one statement lies more hope for the ultimate complete emancipation of woman than in all her literary and professional achievements.

The newer type of Frenchwoman, breaking away from tradition, strong-willed, earnest, Maeterlinck is striving to depict in his later heroines, likeAglavaineandAriane. His talented wife thus interprets them for us:

Apparently vainglorious, almost brazen, free, and unsubjected, marching in the light of day, without faith or principle, we are in reality the submissive slaves of to-morrow. Beneath our songs of gladness rises a sorrowful prayer, which no one hears. No one understands our obscure duty. Sprung from the present, we are daughters of the future, and it is but natural that the moment which created us should distinguish us but imperfectly. To hasten our work, would that men might understand us better, fear us less. Let them learn that for centuries and throughout the ages, there has been but one divine woman, lover, mother, sister. If at the present moment we appear different, rebellious, it is only that we may one day offer them stronger companions and nearer to perfection. For centuries men hailed in us a beauty that was all effacement. The women who charm the most in the past appear like those frescoes that old walls still offer to our eyes half-discolored, pale, ideal, frozen in contemplative attitude, with lilies in their hands. An abyss seems to separate theseGriseldasfrom theAglavainesandArianes. And yet these two are loving handmaids of the future.... It is customary to say that woman, influenced by man, perfects herself according to his ideal. But to-day, grown clearer-sighted, she seems to look over the shoulder of her mate, and perceive what he does not yet descry on the horizon.

The Feminist of France, headpiece

Back to Index Next