French girl

“ There are other reasons which may also be due to the ever-increasing influence of Anglo-Saxon manners and customs on France. The French girl is every day getting freer. She is no longer cloistered, as it were, at home and at school. She now frequents the society of young men, gets better acquainted with them, and on more intimate terms than before. She is more independent, feels more confidence in herself, knows more of life than before, and the consequence is that she is better able to provoke the love which she desires to inspire in a man of her choice. ”

“ I believe that it is quite commonly agreed that while the French girl in society is, perforce, much more reserved than the American, the English girl at a ball or an “evening” exhibits a freedom from restraint not commonly seen in America. These things, however, count for little except as showing the domination of mere form, for there can be no doubt that in social life, using the term broadly, the American girl has more liberty, and uses more liberty than the English girl. ”

“ Yet, it is not easy to reconcile such explanations with the instances we can often observe, of difference of national character manifested under circumstances, or at an age, when the causes assigned can hardly have operated. The peculiarities which appear to us most artificial in the Parisian character and manners, may often be seen in full perfection in very young children. Every little French girl, almost from the time when she begins to speak, seems to place her chief delight in attracting the regard of the other sex, rather than in playing with her female companions. ”

“ Marriage has hitherto been the fixed fact of every French girl's life. Now numbers of women must inevitably, inexorably find another career. These girls here are many of them the daughters of professional men, doctors and lawyers. ”

“ It appears, indeed, as if Frenchwomen, who are naturally bright and quickwitted, endeavoured to make up in grace what they lack in beauty. Hence nothing is more common than Frenchwomen who are so fascinating with their graceful little ways and movements that one almost or quite forgets their homeliness. No French girl ever needs to be taught how to use her eyes to best advantage; and, as a clever newspaper writer has remarked, French girls “can say more with their shoulders than most girls can with their eyes ”

“ A French woman, with a skin like an old drumhead, and the lower jaw of a baboon, will actually "get herself up" to look better than many a really pretty girl of our country, disfigured by unbecoming hairdressing, ill-assorted colors, ill-put-on clothes, and that confounded walk, which is a cross between the stride of a Grenadier and running in a sack! ”

“ None of their made-up and highly finished demoiselles is fit to look at her—such simple beauty, such charms of nature, such enchanting innocence! Ah, that is where those French girls fail—they are always studying how they look, instead of leaving us to think of it. ”

“ Little French girls, for all the superficial strictness of their bringing up, are, apparently, never allowed to look on the world with any other eyes than the eyes of the woman. Our English girls learn to do this quickly enough, but at least they are allowed to begin their lives in perfect innocence. If they pay for this by seldom acquiring the last fine shade of attractive femininity, they gain in the frankness and fearlessness which are the gift of our incomparable English nursery ways. ”

“ The volatile lover excused himself as well as he could, and often laughed with his countrymen, when he told how much trouble he had to escape such excess of kindness.
The French girls are kept under very strict superintendence. They are not allowed to go to parties, or places of public amusement, without being accompanied by some married female relation; and they see their lovers only in the presence of a third person. ”

“ True enough, French writers frequented houses but French girls undoubtedly were different from the sluts at Mona's near the freightyards where he was treated so cavalierly as to make the sexes seem reversed. ”

“ They will become more and more natural and unaffected, and they will acquire that most charming and eminently American quality in a woman—unconventionality. They are now moving, not in the direction of innocent frivolity, but in that of greater independence. The time is soon coming when French girls will cease to regard marriage as a sort of emancipation, and will perhaps look upon it, as an American lady novelist of my acquaintance does, as a rather hard way of making a living.
Those French girls will not lose their charms by the enjoyment of greater liberty and independence. ”

“ Indeed, I know no females to whom the opinion which we entertain of the French women may better apply than to our own, and yet I know none who are so generally well-looking.
The French are not a handsome nation. Personal beauty in either sex is rare: there is a want of simplicity, of repose, of dignity, and even of harmonious expression, what they themselves call finesse, in their countenances, and yet the liveliness of the eyes and the joyous character of their looks render them agreeable. ”

“ It is not the cowl that makes the monk any more than it is the dress that makes the woman. A woman is stylish or not, according to the manner she puts her clothes on, and that is where the French woman is irresistible. To lift her dress modestly, gracefully, and daintily as she crosses a muddy street, she has not her equal in the world. ”

“ Germain lady; a straight, slender figure, always dressed in black, devoted to her children and to all her own family, with the courteous, high-bred manner one always finds in French women of the old school. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is the story of the life of young womanhood in France, dramatically told, with the light and shade and coloring of the genuine artist, and is utterly free from that which mars too many French novels. ”

“ I thoroughly believe that the French women are the most charming and certainly the most sensible women (where would France be now but for the women?) , but they are far from being beautiful. They have not the eyes of the Spanish women, nor the complexion and shapely figures of the English, nor the brilliant faces of the American women; but what makes them charming is that they have a little bit of everything, of which they know how to make the best. The French woman is an ensemble. ”

“ We even quarrel with the beauty of French women, because it is not English. If their features are regular, we find fault with their complexions; and as to their expression, we grow tired of that eternal smile upon their faces; though their teeth are white, why should they be always shewing them? Their eyes have an unpleasant glitter about them; and their eye-brows, which are frequently black and arched, are painted and put on! In short, no individual, no nation is liked by another for the advantages it possesses over it in wit or wisdom, in happiness or virtue. ”

“ The young ladies certainly bore some resemblance to the type of American girl which one never fails to meet in travelling. They were dressed in the height of the fashion, pretty with the delicate evanescent beauty of too many of our girls, and all gifted with the load voices, shrill laughter, and free-and-easy manners which so astonish decorous English matrons and maids. ”

“ Of course, there were many light-footed, shrill-voiced American girls, handsome, lifeless-looking English ditto, and a few plain but piquante French demoiselles, likewise the usual set of traveling young gentlemen who disported themselves gaily, while mammas of all nations lined the walls and smiled upon them benignly when they danced with their daughters. ”

“ And there was one thing which characterized these French women, and that was, the entire absence of jealousy and envy of the talents and virtues of others. Wherever they see a man or woman of intellect or virtue, they recognize them as a brother or sister; and they never ask from whom a great thought or a virtuous action comes, but, is it good, is it noble? It seemed to her that the character of the French women was the very essence of human nobility. They are ready to welcome, with heart and hand, every reformer, without stopping to inquire whether he is English, American, German, or Turk. ”

“ A little Parisian dressmaker, who would come over and set up in England to teach English women to hold their dresses up in the street, ought to make a fortune in no time. It is the most graceful, artistic, and typical movement of the French woman."
"On the other hand, my dear Gerald," said Dora, "French women mince or trot or proceed, English women walk. We are their superiors in many things." ”

“ Time was when the phrase, 'a fair young English girl,' meant the ideal of womanhood; to us, at least, of home birth and breeding. It meant a creature generous, capable, modest; something franker than a Frenchwoman, more to be trusted than an Italian, as brave as an American but more refined, as domestic as a German and more graceful. ”

“ In a well-educated French woman, there is an ease, an affability, a desire to please and be pleased, which not only render her manners peculiarly engaging, but also influence her gait, her gestures, her whole deportment in short, and captivate admiration. Her natural cheerfulness and vivacity spread over her features an animation seldom to be found in our English fair, whose general characteristics are reserve and coldness. Hence that striking expression which exhibits the grace of the French belles to superior advantage. ”

“ Content apparently to spend the rest of her life in a remote country place, superintending her household, attending to the vintage, compiling articles for her husband, she was what may be called the highest type of the Frenchwoman—that is, of the Frenchwoman of the middle classes, who, so far from being the frail, fair, and frivolous coquette of the French novelist, is, on the contrary, the most active, practical, and sagacious specimen of her sex. Every traveller in France is doubtless struck by seeing women taking so very large a share in trade and commerce ”

“ A handsome French woman, besides the ease of her manner, has commonly a look of cheerfulness and great vivacity.—She appears willing to be acquainted with you, and seems to expect that you should address her. ”

“ A sturdy little English girl, rather short for her age, with rosy cheeks and bright intelligent brown eyes, that glance here, there, and everywhere; long light-brown hair, tied back from her face with a blue ribbon, that matches in colour the blue serge dress she wears. The face has a bright, open expression, and the girl's whole appearance speaks of the happy, peaceful life she leads. ”

“ After the privilege of close association with them for some time I have come to feel that the most noticeable and lovely thing about the girls is the way they wear their womanhood, as if it were a flower, or a rare jewel. One of these girls, who, by the way, had been nine months in France, all of it under shell fire, said to me:
“I used to wish I had been born a boy, they are not hampered so much as women are; but after I went to France and saw what a good woman meant to those boys in the trenches I changed my mind, and I’m glad I was born a woman. It means a great deal to be a woman.” ”

“ We believe it to be owing to the influence of the causes we have noticed, that this manner, so often ridiculed by the French, under the name of "hauteur" and "fiertè Anglaise," is hardly ever to be seen among women of any rank in France. And to a similar influence of the tastes and sentiments of our own sex, it is easy to refer the more serious faults of the female character in that country. ”

“ She was a very pretty woman—French in type, pale-faced, dark-lashed, red-haired, violet-eyed—exquisitely soignée from head to foot, with languid, lovely hands as slim as a child's, and as caressingly savante as a courtesan's. ”

“ But a French woman, in giving way to unlawful love, knows that she does no more than her mother did before her; if she is of the lower ranks, she is not necessarily debarred from honest occupation; if of the higher, she loses little or nothing in the estimation of society ”

“ The word lady is supposed to have been derived from the Saxon word hlaf-dig, meaning a loaf-giver, from the custom of distributing bread among retainers, after a feast in baronial halls. It was customary to bind the tender limbs of infants in tight bandages.
After the sixteenth century, books or verses in praise of women gradually diminished; tournaments were abolished; and manners became less reserved and respectful. Ladies of rank began to throw aside the pedantry of learned languages, and acquire what the French call “the talent of society.” ”

“ What struck the lad's raw mind with more and more force as he gathered his French books about him was the profound gulf which seemed to divide the average French conception of the relation between the sexes from the average English one. In the French novels he read every young man had his mistress; every married woman her lover. ”

“ On the other hand, the better parts of the character of the French women are all their own. It is not certainly from the men that they have learnt those truly feminine qualities, that interesting humility and gentleness of manner, that pleasing gaiety of temper, and native kindness of disposition, to which it is very difficult, even for the proverbial coldness of northern critics, to apply terms of ridicule or reproach. ”

“ French women and especially Parisians possess in a marvelous degree the secret by which such scenes are enacted, and to these scenes their voices, their sex, their toilet, their manner give a wonderful charm. How often do the tears upon the cheeks of these adorable actresses give way to a piquant smile, when they see their husbands hasten to break the silk lace, the weak fastening of their corsets, or to restore the comb which holds together the tresses of their hair and the bunch of golden ringlets always on the point of falling down? ”