European woman

“ These women never again can return to the lives they have left, to the sheltering positions from which the awful needs of this war have driven them. The cultivated European woman, who I think on the whole was the highest product of our civilization, has gone. She has fallen to the American level. ”

“ Though America was spared the adoption of the notable extravagances of European fashions, yet everywhere, in every aspect, were to be seen European conditions of society. Even the type of American woman, preserved till now in certain peculiarities of mental attitude, began to fail. ”

“ In process of time, the gifted waiting-woman changed her nursery-tales with the theory of European manners and customs; and being herself a warm patriot, and recollecting her native country with delight, she painted the superiorities of Italy so vividly, that the fancy of her tender nursling became filled with the subject, and the pleasant impression never afterwards faded from her memory. The more this fair Princess grew in stature, the stronger grew in her the love for foreign decoration; and her whole demeanour shaped itself according to the customs of Europe rather than of Egypt. ”

“ East European peasants are brutal in the assertion of marital rights, so when the poor immigrant woman, noticing the lot of the American wife, comes to the point of rebelling against the overlarge family, she runs the risk of rough treatment. Some nationalities are almost Oriental in the way they seclude their women. It is significant that the Ruthenian, Polish, Portuguese, South Italian, and Greek female employees who have lived here from five to ten years are further [237] behind their men-folk in speaking English than the women from northern and western Europe. ”

“ The women who could have founded European salons, could have guided opinion and turned it inside out like a glove, could have ruled the world by ruling the men of art or of intellect who ought to have ruled it, have committed the blunder of abandoning their ground; they were ashamed of having to fight against the citizen class drunk with power, and rushing out on to the stage of the world, there to be cut to pieces perhaps by the barbarians who are at its heels. ”

“ Curiously enough, if she marries in Europe, she is apt to "settle down" and become an altogether admirable example of American-European womanhood, because she is sound fruit at heart—merely wrapped in tawdry gilt paper trimming by her adoring but ignorantly unwise parents who, in their effort to show her off, disguise the very qualities which should have been accentuated.
Ladies Traveling Alone In Europe.
Europeans can not possibly understand how any lady of social position can be without a maid. A lady traveling alone, therefore, has this trifling handicap to start with. ”

“ Chivalry and knighthood and their still surviving but greatly impaired counterparts are peculiarly Nordic traits, and feudalism, class distinctions and race pride among Europeans are traceable for the most part to the north.
The social status of woman varies largely with race but here religion plays a part. In the Roman Republic and in ancient Germany women were held in high esteem. In the Nordic countries of to-day women’s rights have received much more recognition than among the southern nations with their traditions of Latin culture. ”

“ Few oriental people seem more susceptible to European culture than the Japanese. But whatever woman’s rights movement there is in non-European countries, it owes its origin almost without exception to the activity of educated occidentals,—to the men and women teachers, educators, doctors, and missionaries. Here is an excellent field for our activities; here is a duty that we dare not forget in the midst of our own struggles. For we cannot estimate the noble work and uplifting power that the world loses in those countries where women are merely playthings and beasts of burden. ”

“ The enlightenment and conversational talents of some of the better class do not fall far short of those of European ladies. Those less endowed by education and nature have a quiet modest bearing, and evince a great desire to improve. The most striking faults in the Greek woman’s character are fondness of dress and display, vanity, and jealousy of the better circumstances of her neighbors. ”

“ And never again—you hear me, man—never again does our shop go back to men. The ten or twelve dollar skirt has made a hit with me! Have a cigarette?"
The net gain of women in this war, all over the world is, of course, a gain in fellowship.
But after all fellowship will be futile if it does not bear fruit. And the first fruit of the fellowship between men and women in Europe surely will be a wider and deeper influence of women upon the destinies of the European world. And who can doubt who knows woman, that her influence will be thrown first and heaviest toward a just and lasting peace. ”

“ When a young woman stands in an illicit relation to a man, she attempts no concealment; if the man be a European, indeed, she positively glories in it, and it seems to procure her additional consideration among her female friends. For this state of things the Europeans themselves are chiefly to blame. ”

“ In the Orient and the Far East woman is almost without exception a plaything or a beast of burden; and to a degree that would incense us Europeans. In the uncivilized countries, and in the countries of non-European civilization, the majority of the women are insufficiently nourished; in all cases more poorly than the men. Early marriages enervate the women. ”

“ The victory now gained in Norway, municipal suffrage and eligibility to municipal office for a great many women, will no doubt in time influence every home in our country; but we could not have won this victory without receiving impulses from other civilized nations. We are indeed indebted to men and women in several European countries for the privileges which we now possess, but from no other country in the world have we received the inspiration in our work which we have had from the United States; to no women in the world are we so indebted as to the women of this country. ”

“ In no European country has the woman’s rights movement been confronted with more unfavorable conditions; nowhere has it been more persistently opposed. In recent times the women of no other country have lived through conditions of war such as the German women underwent during the Thirty Years’ War and from 1807 to 1812. ”

“ Their domination and influence ruins modern society.... The essentially European lady is a being who ought to have no existence at all; there ought, on the other hand, to be housewives and girls who hope to become such, and who are, in consequence, [Pg 42] brought up to domesticity by subordination. Just because there are ladies in Europe, women of a lower grade, who form, therefore, the great majority of the sex, are much more unhappy than they are in the East. ”

“ But I am far from saying that the women fret and groan under this system, or crave for the freedom which European women enjoy. Seclusion is the custom of centuries. Their idea of liberty is peril, and I quite believe that they think that they are closely guarded because they are valuable chattels. ”

“ Their eager desire to make friends among European women is perfectly natural: they are to them like revelations of another world. They are never weary of hearing descriptions of some grand theatrical performance or ball or state reception—of the doings of women of the world, the brilliant society, adventures during Carnival time, long journeys, and all the other strange features of that wonderful Western life; and these glowing scenes take complete possession of the poor little brains, sick to death of the dull monotony of the harem and gloomy shadow of the garden-walls. ”

“ I believe that according to character as well as physique the French and the Germans, i.e., French men and German women, or German men and French women, are above all destined to establish by intermingling the new generation of a nobler race on European soil. ”

“ That high exterior polish, those brilliant conversational talents, which I have seen in many English and French women, must be rare among the Germans: they are too simple, and too much in earnest. The trifling of a polished French woman is often most graceful; the trifling of an Englishwoman gracious and graceful; but the trifling of a German woman is, in comparison, heavy work; to use a common expression, it is not in them. ”

“ The European young lady associates the idea of marriage with tenderness, and indulgence, and domestic enjoyment; emancipation from maternal authority, and comparative personal liberty. She smiles in the stillness of her own spirit at the fair visions of happiness that rise before her ”

“ An increasing cackle of complaints, orders, and jests, and what to a European would have been bad language, came from behind the curtains. Here was evidently a woman used to command. ”

“ Nations, where women have to work much harder than is proper for them in our opinion, often respect women more highly than Europeans do. The lady of civilized countries, surrounded with sham homage and a stranger to all real work stands on a far lower social level than a hard-working barbarian woman, regarded as a real lady (frowa-lady-mistress) and having the character of such. ”

“ For the jealous and voluptuous Asiatic, women are but the sensual instruments of his secret pleasures.... Does the European, in spite of the apparent deference which he affects towards women, really treat them with more respect? While we refuse them a sensible education, while we feed their minds with tedium and trifles, while we allow them to busy themselves only with playthings and fashions and adornments, [Pg 197] while we seek to inspire them only with the taste for frivolous accomplishments, do we not show our real contempt, while we mask it with a show of deference and respect? ”

“ But what am I to think of the women of Europe? The artful composition of their complexion, the ornaments with which they deck themselves, the care they have of their bodies, the desire to please which occupies them continually, are so many stains on their virtue, and affronts to their husbands. ”

“ Wit, beauty, and every accomplishment united in one woman, could not fix the volatility of a Frenchman; the love of variety, and the vanity of new conquests, would make him abandon this phœnix for birds far less rare and estimable. The women in France, who are full of spirit and sensibility, could never endure such usage, if they were not as fickle and as fond of new conquests as their lovers.
In Italy, such levity is viewed with contempt, and constancy is, by both sexes, still classed among the virtues. ”

“ Naturally, one of the chief reasons why American women have so great a liking for European society is to be found in the fact of the far more important position that married ladies occupy in that society than they do with us. ”

“ That does not-only concern politicians, but also women. I do not speak of the fact that American women can gain an infinitely greater store of conceptions from the literature of Germany and France, from the profound discussions of the social and humane questions in Europe, than from the limited literature of materialistic America. But I should especially like to make it clear to them that it is indirectly for their greatest interest to see the ideas which have been awakened through German and French literature translated to action and life by the victory of the European revolution. ”

“ It was this constant sense of claims above those of earthly love or happiness that made the Spanish lady who shared this spirit a guerdon to be won by toils and blood and constant purity, rather than a chattel to be bought for pleasure and service.
Germany did hot need to learn a high view of Woman; it was inborn in that race. Woman was to the Teuton warrior his priestess, his friend, his sister,—in truth, a wife. ”

“ Hindoo and the Turk, for these realize their wives as Woman. Generally they have never seen a woman of their own class, and so she is a revelation, she is indeed the bulbul, while he, being the first, is the King of men. But the Europeans have mixed too freely, they have skimmed, they have flirted, they have been so ashamed of true emotion that they have made the Song of Solomon into a vaudeville ditty. They have watered the wine of life. ”

“ The whole attitude of France toward its womanhood is compounded of sentiment, lightness, and cynicism. Less independent than the American [Pg 15] woman, less free than the English, less domestic than the German, the French woman is more a being to charm man than a companion for him. And so runs the current of the short-story, side by side with the sweep of life. ”

“ Prior to coming to Europe I had supposed that the women of the United States had made more progress along these lines than those of any other country. But I was mistaken. The women of Europe are far ahead of the women of America in the equality of the sexes. A women in continental Europe not only has the right to go out in the field and labor, but she can work on the roads, and she can engage in any business that a man can. In Italy I saw women harnessed alongside of dogs and in Holland I find them harnessed to canal-boats, the same as men. ”

“ THE EUROPEAN PLAN. Every mishap among American women brings out renewed suggestions of what maybe called the “European plan” in the training of young girls,—the plan, that is, of extreme seclusion and helplessness. It is usually forgotten, in these suggestions, that not much protection is really given anywhere to this particular class as a whole. Everywhere in Europe, the restrictions are of caste, not of sex. Even in Turkey, travellers tell us, women of the humbler vocations are not much secluded. ”