Frenchwoman

“ I must confess that the most refined, the most charming and fascinating women that I ever met with, were some English and Irish ladies who had been some years in France, still retaining all those intellectual qualities which are the brightest gems of the British female character, united with that quiet grace which has so much of dignity and ease, and that pleasing affability appearing but as nature in a truly elegant Frenchwoman ”

“ But she was a Frenchwoman, and her day was not yet. Women had so long hidden their light, if they had any, that it blinked perceptibly when exposed to the winds of heaven or the more chilly breezes of masculine criticism. ”

“ For no one plays a more important rôle in the ranks of humanity than the Frenchwoman. She it is who rules the home, and in what an admirable way she rules it can never be sufficiently extolled. She it is who trains, fashions, guides man in every step of his career, from his boyhood into his first love-affair, and makes of him the courteous and indulgent creature he proves in matrimony. As [201] mother, aunt, sister, wife, and daughter, the Frenchman relies on his womankind throughout his whole career. ”

“ Millions of American women are, to the best of their ability (which is not small) , coquettish, feminine, emotional, and all the rest of it; a good many dress as well as Frenchwomen; some even know a little about cooking—and the real reason is quite different, and not nearly as flattering to our national vanity. It is simply that, like the men of her race, the Frenchwoman is grown up. ”

“ That business capability and thriftiness runs through almost all Frenchwomen of a certain class, and when I hear, as of course I often do, the frivolous, butterfly, pleasure-loving Frenchwoman spoken of, that energetic, hard-working bourgeoise comes into my mind. ”

“ Frenchwomen are so incredibly jealous in the conduct of their married life, that they insist on knowing everything; and that is how, in the least difficulty, you feel the wife's hand in the business; the Frenchwoman advises, guides, and warns her husband. ”

“ We have made so much history that historians will be lacking. The age of Louis XIV. had but one Madame de Sévigné; we have a thousand now in Paris who certainly write better than she did, and who do not publish their letters. Whether the Frenchwoman be called ‘perfect lady,’ or great lady, she will always be the woman among women. ”

“ Frenchwoman underwent, before the war, a far more serious social training than did the happy-go-lucky English girl, and was better equipped in consequence, with a knowledge of economic conditions, than the untrained Englishwoman could be. ”

“ The cause of woman would be all right if there were no women—I mean the chief enemy to women’s suffrage is the suffragette. No woman has more influence than the French woman. It is all the more powerful because it is indirect. It is based on love. A Frenchwoman knows that to coax is better than to bully.”
“Oh, you’re always praising up the French women. Why don’t you go over to Paris to live, if you are so fond of them?” ”

“ And it is this practical, personal and daily participation in her husband's job that makes the Frenchwoman more grown up than others. She has a more interesting and more [Pg 107] living life, and therefore she develops more quickly. ”

“ We have not much to learn from the Japanese, I believe, but a touch of their unfailing eye for the proper effect of simplicity and congruity would be an excellent addition to the æsthetic equipment of the Englishwoman, just as in dress she owes herself a lesson from the Frenchwoman in the art of completeness in every detail from hat and hair to shoes. In matters of decoration, domestic as well as personal, the Englishwoman is a good improviser but a bad composer. ”

“ A dawning intelligence, finer than humored precocity can ever show, sits on each tranquil brow. When they speak, it is with propriety and grace. In the restrained alertness of their brown eyes, in their air of simplicity and self-command, in the instinctive elegance of their dress, one may read, plainly written, the subtle possibilities of the future. That offensive and meaningless phrase, the woman problem, is seldom heard in France, where all problems solve themselves more readily than elsewhere. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I don't know how it happens, but I never recollect seeing a French woman that was at all above the lowest class of society that was a slovenly or slattern figure, and very few that were not really elegant, though their faces are, generally speaking, plain. ”

“ 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 ”

“ She, at least, is essentially respectable; the neatness, compactness, and sobriety of her dress, the decision of her movement and accent suggest the civic and domestic virtues—order, thrift, frugality, the moral necessity of making a good appearance. It is, I think, an old story that to the stranger in France the women seem greatly superior to the men. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is no doubt a woman should dress according to her station. If she is the wife of an artisan, she should dress suitably; if the daughter of a professional man, she should dress with care; and if the wife of a millionaire, she might gown herself in such material as will give the greatest amount of employment to the greatest number of people.
Here is where French women excel. They are taught from childhood to regard what is convénable, that is, suitable, not whether velvet pleases their eyes better than serge. ”

“ My idea in going was not to gratify my curiosity but to do what I could for the cause of France as well as for my own country by studying specifically the war-time work of its women and to make them better known to the women of America.
The average American woman who never has traveled in Europe, or only as a flitting tourist, is firm in the belief that all Frenchwomen are permanently occupied with fashions or intrigue. ”

“ And the first stroke is your modern word lady."
"You are right, Prince," said de Marsay. "The 'perfect lady,' issuing from the ranks of the nobility, or sprouting from the citizen class, and the product of every soil, even of the provinces is the expression of these times, a last remaining embodiment of good taste, grace, wit, and distinction, all combined, but dwarfed. We shall see no more great ladies in France, but there will be 'ladies' for a long time, elected by public opinion to form an upper chamber of women, and who will be among the fair sex what a 'gentleman' is in England." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The French women certainly excel in the art of dress and everything which appertains to the decoration of the person, but the devotion which exists amongst them to that passion tends greatly towards frivolising the mind; hence I find their inferiority, generally speaking, to English women ”

“ However beautiful, or valuable, or poetic may have been the feminine types of other nationalities, it is in France that we find the forerunners of the intelligent, self-poised, clear-sighted, independent modern woman. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The supreme science of the Frenchwomen was a knowledge of men. Understanding their tastes, their ambitions, their interests, their vanities, and their weaknesses, they played upon this complicated human instrument with the skill of an artist who knows how to touch the lightest note, to give the finest shade of expression, to bring out the fullest harmony. In their efforts to raise social life to the most perfect and symmetrical proportions, the pleasures of sense and the delicate illusions of color were not forgotten. ”

“ They are so still, in another generation; and it seems to be generally true that French women of all ranks are more habitually in the confidence of their husbands, fathers, and brothers, about the business of life than women of other nations are. ”

“ You say that the men of France are what the women have made them; there I think that you are wrong—at least in this: that in your mind the word woman stands for those of the sex who are pure and loyal as well as those for who are not. It is not the women of France who have made the men, milor, rather it is the men who—looking to the Pompadours, the Irène de Stainvilles, not only for companionship and for pleasure, but also, [Pg 288] heaven help them! for ideals—have made the women what they are! ”

“ Do not mock me, sweet Frances: the world will say, and say rightly, you are much nearer perfection than I am; you have far more of the woman—the open, cheerful, confiding woman. But hear me say a few words more,—and apply them as you will. ”

“ Society at that time in France was brilliant, intellectual, and wicked. "There was the blending of calculating interest and religious asceticism," when women of the world, after having exhausted its pleasures, retired to cloisters, and "sacrificed their natural affections to family pride." It was an age of intellectual idlers, when men and women, having nothing to do, spent their time in salons, and learned the art of conversation, which was followed by the art of letter-writing. ”

“ In general, the women of France have always been conscious of their duty, their importance, and their limitations, appreciating their power and cultivating the characteristics that attract man and retain his respect and attention: sociability, morality, esprit, artistic appreciation, sensitiveness, tact. These qualities became manifest to a remarkable degree in French women of the seventeenth century, and created in every writer, great or unimportant, the desire to win their favor. ”

“ She lived at a time when great events brought out great qualities. Her clear intellect, her positive convictions, her boundless energy, and her ardent enthusiasm, gave her a powerful influence in those early days of the Revolution, that looked towards a world reconstructed but not plunged into the dark depths of chaos, and it is through this that she has left a name among the noted women of France. In more peaceful times her peculiar talent would doubtless have led her towards literature. ”

“ At every stage in French history, in war, in politics, in literature, in art and in religion, women have played a splendid and a decisive part; but none more splendid or more decisive than the obscure part played by the millions of wives and mothers whose thrift and prudence silently built up her salvation in 1872. ”

“ Those of the French women are by no means calculated for the meridian of America, neither are they adapted to render the sex so amiable or agreeable in the English acceptation of those words. But you must confess that they are more accomplished, and understand the intercourse of society better, than in any other country. We are irresistibly pleased with them, because they possess the happy art of making us pleased with ourselves. ”

“ As the outcome of their desire to think, feel, and act with greater delicacy, women introduced propriety in expression, finesse in analysis, keenness of esprit, psychological subtleness: qualities that surely tended to higher standards of morality, purer social relations, finer and more subtle diplomacy, more elegance and precision in literature. Therefore, préciosité in France had a wholesome influence, which was possible because woman had won for herself her rightful position, and her aspirations were toward social and moral elevation. ”