Spanish women

“ 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. ”

“ Before visiting Spain, I had heard much of the beauty of Spanish women,—their graceful figures,—their bewitching eyes,—their fascinating expression,—in short, their personal attractions. Whether owing to the representations of travellers, or the unreal descriptions of poets, or the romance with which, in the minds of many, every thing in Spain is invested,—it is certain, that a belief in the witchery of Spanish women obtains very general credence in England. ”

“ They watch most jealously over the honour of their wives and daughters. As a rule the men are ugly, though there are numerous exceptions; while the women are pretty, and beauties are not uncommon. The southern blood in their veins inclines them to love, and they are always ready to enter into an intrigue and to deceive the spies by whom they are surrounded. The lover who runs the greatest dangers is always the favourite. In the public walks, the churches, the theatres, the Spanish women are always speaking the language of the eyes. ”

“ The Spanish fondness for the bull-fight and the lottery also springs from the emotional stir which goes with them.
Spanish women.
The above applies principally to the men. The women should be considered apart, and this is much more necessary in dealing with Spain than it would be in treating of the United States, where women come nearer to having an equal liberty with men. Opinions differ as to the personal appearance of Spanish women, and first impressions of the foreigner are apt to be against them. ”

“ 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 beauty of Spanish women has ever been a subject of admiration to all who are endowed with a perception of the lovely. Yet, while acknowledging its irresistible power, there is nothing so difficult as to explain the fascination which it exercises; for, unlike the rest of their sex, the daughters of Andalusia owe nothing to those artificial processes which may be said to form a part of the female education elsewhere. ”

“ I cannot avoid being astonished at such blindness, and I cannot understand how it is that the women, who are generally so clearsighted in all that relates to their beauty, do not perceive that their immense efforts to be elegant only cause them, at most, to look like provincial fashionables, which, after all, is but a poor result. The old costume is so admirably adapted to the peculiar beauty, proportions, and manners of the Spanish women, that it is really the only one that can by any means become them. The fan corrects, to a certain extent, the bad taste of this pretension to Parisianism. ”

“ There is, no doubt, much to be said against the rigid life of seclusion led by the Spanish women, but there is this to be said in its favour: it has created a race of men who honour and respect their homes, a race of men whose attitude toward women is universally respectful and deferential. ”

“ 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. ”

“ She is eminently sociable, and is the life and essence of Spanish society, in which she maintains an imperium over all tastes, affections, and operations. Besides this, it is the universal custom of Spaniards to be constantly going in and out of one another’s houses without ceremony or invitation; and this frequent contact with Spanish women, generally pretty, but almost always amiable and graceful, naturally produces intimate relations, and not unfrequently reciprocal attachments. ”

“ It requires a combination of convent and palace life to produce these finished specimens of mitred infamy.
It is to be regretted that the Spanish women are kept in such systematic ignorance. They have a quicker and more active intelligence than the men. With a fair degree of education, much might be hoped from them in the intellectual development of the country. In society, you will at once be struck with the superiority of the women to their husbands and brothers in cleverness and appreciation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A free and open communication being denied them, they make it their business to secure themselves a secret and hidden one. Hence it is that Spain is the country of intrigue.
The Spanish women are little or nothing indebted to education. But nature has liberally supplied them with a fund of wit and sprightliness, which is certainly no small inducement to those, who have only transient glimpses of their charms, to wish very earnestly for a removal of those impediments, that obstruct their more frequent presence. ”

“ Life can offer worse fates than to be in love in the springtime, under Seville's flowering trees.
This happy starting with romance has much to do with the contented marriages of the race: here, as I said before, is little of the pernicious "dot" system of France and Italy; good looks and attractive personal qualities win a husband. Spanish women make excellent wives, their first fire and passion turning to self-abnegation. ”

“ I speak my sincere opinion when I say that, with the exception of a few fashionable persons, whose lives do indeed seem to pass in one constant round of dissipations, whose time is spent in driving on the Prado, attending the theatre, the opera, or the ball-room, precisely as their compeers do in every other great city, the Spanish women are the most domestic in the world, the most devoted to the care of their children, the most truly pious, and the best ménagères. ”

“ Japanese women will coal a vessel with a rapidity unsurpassable by men. The pit-brow women of the Lancashire collieries are said to be of finer physical development than any other class of women workers. I have seen the women of Northern Spain perform feats of strength that seem extraordinary.
It is worth while to wait to consider these Spanish women, who are well known to me. The industrial side of primitive culture has always belonged to women, and in Galicia, the north-west province of Spain, the old [285] custom is still in active practice, owing to the widespread emigration of the men. ”

“ The Spanish women are small and slender, with dark hair and sparkling black eyes full of expression. They are in general very ignorant, but naturally witty, and much given to lively repartee. Their motions are slow and graceful, and their dress is usually modest. They are rarely seen either in the house or the street without their fans ”

“ Women are held in honour. There is a proverb common over all Northern Spain to the effect that he who is unfortunate and needs assistance should "seek his Gallegan mother." Many primitive customs survive, and one of the most interesting is that by which the eldest daughter in some districts takes precedence over the sons in inheritance. In no country does less stigma fall upon a child born out of wedlock. As far back as the fourth century Spanish women insisted on retaining their own names after marriage. ”

“ It is difficult to say what the condition of Spanish women will be as the years go by, but it is at least certain that they will be better educated than they are to-day, and better able to understand the real meaning of life. Now they are often veritable children, who know nothing of affairs at home or of the world abroad, somewhat proud of their manifest charms and ever ready for a conquest ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 is great fondness for perfumes, which are generally kept burning in their apartments, and ladies are seldom without some high-spiced comfit in their mouths. In no part of the world has the spirit of chivalry lingered so long as in Spain. The Spanish lover moves, speaks, thinks, and breathes only for his mistress. He praises her in the most hyperbolical terms, and approaches her with the deference due to a superior being. Something of this characterizes the Spanish manners toward the whole sex. They never sit down while a lady is standing in the room ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is now time to turn to a consideration of the women of South America as we usually think of them, the product of a grafted Spanish civilization rather than a survival or result of primitive cultures. Yet when we turn to such consideration we find but little that is characteristic or even interesting. It is not to Spanish-founded countries that we must look for the greatest advances in the status or culture of women; in such lands there has ever been stagnation and even retrogression, while there has rarely been any marked individuality of personal or national trait. ”

“ But in a letter from Cadiz Byron notes the weak as well as the strong points of Spanish women. “With all national prejudice, I must confess, the women of Cadiz are as far superior to the English women in beauty, as the Spaniards are inferior to the English in every quality that dignifies the name of man.... The Spanish women are all alike, their education the same.... ”

“ Perhaps there are no children in the world so beautiful as those of the Spanish race. There is a smoothness of skin, a richness in colour, and a noble “hidalgo” expression in their round black eyes that is rare in other countries. Spanish women retain this expression to a good age. The men lose it earlier, because, as I believe, they are oftener of corrupted morals and habits ”

“ Canolles asked.
"'You are very fortunate! Spanish women think of nothing but money, flirting, and lovers, while the women of France refuse to take a lover now until they have sounded him on political questions ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is a novelty for Americans to find that the educated young men of Spain talk quite as easily about literature and art as they do about women,—and they move from one subject to the other without any marked change in the tenor of the conversation. Spanish crimes are usually the result of an emotional impulse. Similarly, the emotions play rather too prominent a part in the Spaniard’s associations with women! Courtesy is almost universal among Spaniards, who will go to considerable personal inconvenience in order to assist a stranger ”

“ 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. ”