Spanish woman

“ If the Church belongs to the woman, ruling Spain through her, she has remained outside the exhaustive activities of her husband. The Spanish woman has been untouched by metaphysics: her heroine, Santa Teresa de Jesús, is an ennobled house-cleaner, a glorified matron of Christ. The Spaniard’s wife has not, like him, been split into intricate traits of will and of expression: nor in the sequel need she spend herself to win back unity from an inner chaos. She is naturally whole: she is the foe of even the fairest anarchies of the spirit. ”

“ In contrast witness France whose women are the subtle partners of all deep events; or matriarchal Spain in which suffragists are as rare as they would be superfluous. [26]
The Spanish woman is a pragmatist in love. Love to her is the means of raising children in the grace of Christ. No less sensual, no less amorous woman exists in Europe. As a girl she is lovely: a crisp expectancy makes her flesh sweet and rounds her darkling eyes. She looks to marriage as the highest and most powerful career. ”

“ That the Spanish woman is passionate, goes without saying; one only has to watch the quick flash of her eye—"throwing out sparks," as their own expression may be translated—to be aware of that. While the eyes of the men are for the most part languid, only occasionally flashing forth, those of the women are rarely quiet for a moment; they sparkle, they languish, they flame—a whole gamut of expression in one moment of time; and it must be confessed that they look upon man as their natural prey. ”

“ Except for it the women of Spain have succumbed to the ugly creations of Paris; may that day be centuries distant when the abomination masquerading under the name of woman's hat makes its way into the peninsula. Yet there is never among Spanish women that gaudy affectation of style so frequent elsewhere. Give her the merest strip of gay calico and the española will make it truly ornamental; with a red flower to wear over one temple and a mantilla draped across the back of her head she is more pleasingly adorned than the best that Paris can offer. ”

“ In the peasant classes, she is arbiter of culture and thought: in the middle classes she is economic judge: in the noble classes the lineage descends through her in equality with her husband.
The nature of Spain calls imperatively for the dominance of woman. Woman’s mind is individualistic, and Spain is a congeries of consonant parts rather than an organism. Woman builds her familial molecule from the Spanish atoms: she erects a great simplicity in which her man can dwell. ”

“ For the rest, the Spanish woman, wherever you meet her, and in whatever rank of society, is devout, naturally kind-hearted and sympathetic, polite, and entirely unaffected; a good mother, sister, daughter; hard-working and frugal, if she be of the lower class ”

“ If a Spanish woman is seen in this dress it looks, on her, most improper. Little Indian girls who are growing up with Spanish women become great embroiderers, seamstresses, and patchers, and they make things that are sold at large prices and much esteemed. ”

“ I smiled at the remark, for although it has long been the fashion for Spanish gallants to tell English girls they resemble the Queen when they want to offer the greatest flattery, I could not imagine how even the most fervent gratitude could find any resemblance between an old woman with white hair and the beautiful young Queen. ”

“ The bringing up of a Spanish woman tends to make her ornamental merely, and surely she is of the loveliest of her sex. She spends the greater part of her day in bed, rises and adorns herself for dinner ”

“ The Creole woman has ever been a favourite theme of poets, and their black, bewitching eyes have won many a eulogy from both poetic and prose writers; and deservedly so, for woman is ever an excuse for a eulogy and toast in all countries and in all languages. The Spanish-American woman is always interesting, and perhaps, as often as in other bloods, is beautiful. ”

“ Nor is the fascinating mantilla quite extinct among women, in spite of their more than Parisian grace and splendor of modern robing. There are humble old women squatted on the sidewalk at street corners, who sell water and liquors and shrub from bottles kept in a singular little stand with brass knobs like an exaggerated pair of casters; and when one sees the varied types of peasant, soldier, citizen, or priest, with perhaps a veiled woman of the middle class, gathered around one of these, the Spanish quality of the town re-asserts itself distinctly. ”

“ From the Spain that looked with suspicion upon a woman who could more than barely read and write, to the Spain that counts the literary renown of Emilia Pardo Bazán among its modern glories, is a long way; and the chapters recording the struggles and successive triumphs of Spanish women in their efforts to get within reaching-distance of the tree of knowledge, will be, when they come to be written, among the most striking in the history of the emancipation of woman. ”

“ An unmarried woman must not be seen alone out of doors, nor must she sit tête-à-tête with a gentleman, even when the doors of the room are open; but, as soon as she is married, she may go by herself where she pleases, and sit alone with any man for many hours every day. You have in England strange notions of Spanish jealousy. I can, however, assure you, that if Spanish husbands were, at any time, what novels and old plays represent them, no race in Europe has undergone a more thorough change. ”

“ At these parties, the ladies are rarely dressed in the Spanish fashion, but{146} generally à la Française, with white or coloured dresses,—the only distinguishing, and never to be mistaken mark of a Spanish woman, being the fan. The Spanish ladies invariably dance well ”

“ I saw reflected there a small, shrinking figure, with a white face, in a white dress, crowned with a circlet of gold, and hung with necklaces that made brightness in the shadow. I heard the Spanish Woman's voice speaking excitedly close beside my cheek.
"There is not their like in this state, in this country. Some of those have come out of the greatest houses in Spain. They will make you rich, they will make you beautiful! ”

“ In these the artist has for all time fixed and immortalized the finest physical type of Spanish womanhood, in which an occasional lack of perfect proportion is compensated for by elegance, grace, and unexaggerated curve and figure, without doubt one of the most exquisite feminine types which has been produced by any race. ”

“ It explains the recognition given in old Spain to the unmarried mother; even to-day in no country, that I know, does less social stigma fall on a child born out of wedlock. The profound Spanish veneration of the Virgin Mary, as well as the number of female saints, is another indication of the honour paid to women, which must, I am certain, be connected with a far back time when goddesses were worshipped. ”

“ To be sure, it has not there become fashionable for ladies to keep bonnet-shops or dress-making establishments, nor to open afternoon tea-rooms or orchaterias, still less to set up as so-called financiers, as it has with us. However, even that may come to pass in the struggle for "el high life," of which some of the Spanish writers complain so bitterly. Imagination absolutely refuses, however, to see the Spanish woman of rank in such surroundings. ”

“ Many of the objectionable features of Spanish life which spring from these long-standing notions in regard to women are bound to disappear as both men and women become more educated, and in several particulars already encouraging progress has been made. Marriage laws and customs may always be considered as telling bits of evidence in the discussion of any question of this nature, and in Spain, as the result of modern innovations, the rights of the woman in contracting the marriage relation are superior to those enjoyed elsewhere on the continent or even in England. ”

“ But certainly the Spanish beauty of song and story is rarer than rubies today; while the animation that gives charm even to an ugly French or American woman is utterly lacking in the Española’s heavy, rather sensual features. I am inclined to think, from the fact that it is saliently a man’s country, she is as he has made her, or allowed her to become. And when you remember that her highest enjoyment is to drive through the rough-paved streets, hour after hour, that she may see and be seen ”

“ Her little nuns tell that when she wrote her hand moved so rapidly, it seemed hardly possible it could form human words, while in her face was an expression of exaltation. "She ranks as a miracle of genius, as perhaps the greatest woman who ever handled pen, the single one of all her sex who stands beside the world's most perfect masters," is the testimony of the ablest English critic of Spanish literature. ”

“ The introduction of modern institutions, and especially the empty forms of chivalry, has lowered the position of women. Yet there can be no question that some feature of the ancient mother-right customs have left the imprint on the domestic life of the people. Spanish women have, in certain directions, preserved a freedom and privilege which in England has never been established and is only now being claimed. ”

“ Both the French and Spanish are extremely gallant to women; and yet the condition of women in both France and Spain is vastly inferior to that of our fair countrywomen, notwithstanding the Spanish caballero and the Parisian elegant can couch their heart [Pg 119] less compliments in terms our plain people would vainly attempt to imitate. But what cares a woman for fine phrases, if she knows that the respect due to her sex is wanting? The condition of the women of Cuba is eminently Spanish, and she is here too often the slave of passion and the victim of jealousy. ”

“ Fernán Caballero, in one of her sleepy little romances, refers to this illiterate character of the Spanish ladies, and says it is their chief charm,--that a Christian woman, in good society, ought not to know anything beyond her cookery-book and her missal.' There is-an old proverb which coarsely conveys this idea: A mule that whinnies and a woman that talks Latin never come to any good. ”

“ Those who survived by intermingling with the Spaniards produced a new race, the Andalusians, famous for their graceful women. The Spaniards adopted many of the Moorish manners and institutions, among them certain restrictions in the intercourse of the two sexes. Writers of the 15th Century state, that in these times the Spanish women used to sit in Oriental fashion, with legs crossed, on carpets and cushions, spending their time with embroideries and gossip, or telling the beads of the rosary. The husbands seldom sought their company, and even preferred to take their meals alone. ”

“ There are some women in the world whose very manner carries with it an impression of power. Such was the woman whom I saw before me now. Not young; dark of skin, clad only in the simplest possible hemp-cloth garment, there was in her face a dignity which could not but win instant recognition. [164]
“Who are you?” she asked in Spanish. “And why do you come here?”
I told her as simply and as plainly as I could, who I was, and why I had come up the mountain. She kept her place in front of the girl, screening her from sight during all the time that we were talking. ”

“ Argentine women? This is a subject on which one is not only tempted but almost forced to confine oneself to the usual platitudes concerning beauty of the Spanish type: large-eyed and opulent and at its apogee during the decade between 15 and 25 years of age.
It is seldom that an Argentine woman of any class troubles her head with business matters ”

“ Married when a mere child to a profligate who, after squandering his own fortune, had sought a profitable alliance, as the best means of squandering another’s, that woman, a{246} model of wives and mothers, had refused to gratify the least of her caprices that she might save some part of her inheritance for her daughter and that she might maintain in outer appearance the dignity of her house at the height which it had always held in Spanish society. ”

“ There is a fascination about Spanish women not easy to define. Many of them are not beautiful, but they are always graceful, and they all walk beautifully. Then, most of them have the soft, expressive eyes which the East has bequeathed to Spain. ”

“ As to the factory-girls smoking cigarettes in public, it is an operatic fiction: no such practice is common in Spain. And the beauty of these Carmens has certainly been exaggerated. It may be remarked here that, as an offset to occasional disappointment arising from such exaggerations, all Spanish women walk with astonishing gracefulness, a natural and elastic step; and that is their chief advantage over women of other nations. ”

“ The dark beauty of the Spanish women has long been a favorite theme, and there is little to say on that subject which has not been said a thousand times before, but no account of them would be complete without some word in recognition of their many personal charms. ”

“ The queen’s splendors are reserved for display that shall bespeak her greatness to the world. When she enters Avila or Seville, it is upon a tide of gold and rubies. But when the doors shut upon her castle and the drawbridge rises, when she is alone with her family or her confessor, the jewels and the cloth of gold are gone: a woman, resolute and stark like the Castilian mountains, looks within herself for God’s next message.
She is the spirit of Spain. Her husband, often unruly, often rebellious, is muscle, skill, craft—he is not the spirit of Spain. ”