men and women corresponds more than it differs. There is no mental function absent in either sex. The occupations represent modes in which the mind expresses itself. They are the moral field, the field of will, of experience, of practice, and of concrete purpose. In this sense work is not a duty but a right. Society may not only claim service from the individual, but the individual may claim the right to function.

At present the strain on women even in the well-to-do families is intolerable. Their isolation, the triviality of their interests, and their dependence on the will of another make them nervous and intensely personal, and merely to relieve the tension, if for nothing else, they should prepare themselves for an occupation which they can practice before marriage, continue to practice if they do not enter marriage, which they may intermit in those intervals when the child is entirely helpless, and which they can resume when the child is adult and departed. Such a preparation would not only overcome their feeling of dependence but would tend to make their choice in marriage more rational. And I do not think the ideals of eugenics can be realized until woman is as free as man in the choice of a mate.

Nor would I give a very definite meaning to the term occupation. There is no possible doubt that the lines containing the occupations will continue to shift and that the participation of women will continue to create new occupations. If the women of enforced leisure, for instance, would shift their interests from dress and fashionable functions and standards, that would constitute an occupation engaging their attention for some years. It is even certain that motherhood will become one of the occupations. The occupations imply a preparation and a purpose, and we cannot regard reproduction and the traditional home life of women as occupational, because mere reproduction is an organic act, frequently inadvertent, and the traditional home life has involved no adequate preparation for motherhood. We may fairly set down eugenic motherhood among the occupations, but even then a part of the mother's occupation will be to continue her concrete purposes and practices in the world at large, and to make excursions from the home for the sake of the home.

And, after all, it is not fair play to say that woman's whole life is demanded by the child, and let it go at that. Already the nurture of the child is carried on to a large extent outside of the home. And if those newer ideals of the home and the sentiment of eugenics to which I have referred are realized, if the child is not only in theory but in practice recognized as the main interest of society, the family and society will more and more assist the mother in his nurture. We must remember also that when women are naturally reared they have an astonishing amount of energy. The records of savage society and of peasant life still demonstrate this, as did the home before the coming of the machine. It may seem ungracious to say so, but we indulge a good deal in what the rhetoricians call the "pathetic fallacy" in connection with the bearing of children by women. Nature has given them an energy and disposition in proportion to this very serious function, so that under normal conditions it may be classed among the pleasures, almost among the intoxications. A normal woman can bear children and still retain more energy and more tenacity of life than nature usually gives to man. The close association which we find between marriage and the abandonment of concrete purposes is not therefore a sacrifice to motherhood but a habit. The ordinary woman instantly and utterly abandons all occupational preparation or practice at the altar, and this is quite aside from the anticipation of children. And the university women succumb almost as completely. Women indeed have improved in their mental attitude toward life since the early Victorian period to this extent, that they actually make a preparation for life, which they can use in case they do not accept marriage. But they keep only a wavering eye on the occupational outlook as a makeshift in case of their failure to realize on their matrimonial anticipations. Or at any rate when marriage is proposed to them they are unable to abandon the traditional view that marriage means a retirement from the world only less complete than retirement to a convent.

Woman's responsibility to the race may well be regarded as paramount, but it is not overwhelming, and it is neither wise nor kind to regard her life as a total loss in all points but this single

one. It would indeed seem that opposition to woman's participation in the totality of life is a romantic subterfuge, resting not so much on a belief in the disability of woman as on the disposition of man to appropriate conspicuous and pleasurable objects for his sole use and ornamentation. "A little thing, but all mine own," was one of the remarks of Achilles to Agamemnon in their quarrel over the two maidens, and it contains the secret of man's world-old disposition to overlook the intrinsic worth of woman.

49. THE EFFECT OF SOCIETY LIFE AND FASHION UPON WOMEN IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY1

The society manner was an extension of the habits acquired by girls for the purpose of their 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.

1 By Mary R. Coolidge. Adapted from Why Women are So, pp. 103-107, 114-117, 148–168. Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1912.

It is evident that slow-witted or straightforward 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 practicing 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 "bluestocking," and remain unmarried, or she must conceal her natural commonsense 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 become 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

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THE MODERN WOMAN MOVEMENT

511 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 overdevelopment 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.

THE INFLUENCE OF DRESS AND FASHION

The ideals of art and physique, of beauty and of dress, had a constant reaction upon one another. The Puritan conception of womanhood which dominated this country till quite recently was less patently sexual than that of the older Christian teaching, but, as far as possible, it suppressed romantic love and the beautyloving instinct. While the natural conditions in America were more favorable and were producing a common population of finer physique, orthodox religion was still insisting upon the "vileness" of humanity, the weakness and ensnaring nature of women, and the inevitable connection between vice and every form of art.

The insistence upon the essential sinfulness of every natural instinct which might have flowered in art, had a terrible effect