Coyness

“ Such passion inflames love but corrodes the soul. In perfect love, as I said at the beginning of this chapter, jealousy is potential only, not actual.
IV. COYNESS When a man is in love he wears his heart on his sleeve and feels eager to have the beloved see how passionately it throbs for her. When a girl is in love she tries to conceal her heart in the innermost recesses of her bosom, lest the lover discover her feelings prematurely. In other words, coyness is a trait of feminine love—the only ingredient of that passion which is not, to some extent, common to both sexes. ”

“ Disadvantages of Coyness.—Beneficial as are no doubt the effects which have been brought about by female Coyness in developing the art of Courtship, there are corresponding evils inherent in that mental attitude which make it probable that Coyness will gradually disappear and be succeeded by something more modern, more natural, more refined. ”

“ To remove all lingering doubt, consider the “overtones” of Love separately. Is woman ordinarily as absurdly or ferociously Jealous as man, or quite so Proud of her conquest? Is she so deeply absorbed in Admiration of his Personal Beauty? Is she as Gallant, and as ready for Sacrifices? or does she not rather take his devoted services for granted, and consider them rewarded by a smile or some other trifle? Indeed, the only element of Love which in woman is stronger than in man is Coyness; and Coyness, as has been shown, weakens woman’s Love in the same degree as it increases man’s. ”

“ In so far as Coyness simply means reserve and dignity, she will of course still be coy; but she will not run away to conceal herself in the forest, or lock the front door, or hide behind a chaperon’s back, or affect to be cynically indifferent to men, or treat the one she likes best with affected cruelty. ”

“ Coyness prolongs the period of courtship and, by keeping the suitor in suspense and doubt, it develops the imaginative, sentimental side of love.
HOW WOMEN PROPOSE Sufficient reasons, these, why coyness should have gradually become a general attribute of femininity. Nevertheless, it is an artificial product of imperfect social conditions, and in an ideal world women would not be called upon to romance about their feelings. As a mark of modesty, coyness will always have a charm for men, and a woman devoid of it will never inspire genuine love. ”

“ Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day. ”

“ For there is not only matter for pleasure, but for pride also, in ruffling and debauching that soft sweetness and infantine modesty." [14] The masculine attitude in the face of feminine coyness may easily pass into a kind of sadism, but is nevertheless in its origin an innocent and instinctive impulse. ”

“ But what I have elsewhere called "spring-chicken coyness"—the disposition of European girls to hide shyly behind their mammas—as chickens do under a hen at the sight of a hawk—is losing its charm in face of the frank confidingness of American girls in the presence of gentlemen; and as for that phase of coyness which consists in concealing affection for a man, girls usually manage to circumvent it in a more or less refined manner. Some girls who are coarse, or have little control of their feelings, propose bluntly to the men they want. ”

“ Already, however, there is, especially in America and England, a superior class of women who, despising Coyness as crude, artificial, and silly, have adopted in its place a much more refined method of making men fall in love with them. In one word, they have substituted Flirtation for Coyness. As this statement will to many appear paradoxical, if not absurd, it is necessary first to distinguish between Flirtation and Coquetry before trying to justify it. ”

“ Man’s superior strength and selfish exercise of it have compelled women to cultivate Coyness as an art of dissembling, hiding, and repressing their real feelings. But to repress the manifestations of anger, of pity, of Love, is to suppress them; hence Coyness has necessarily had the effect of weakening woman’s Love. It weakens it in the same proportion as it strengthens man’s. And hence, as I have said before, the current notion that women love more ardently, more deeply, than men is an absurd myth. The poets have always shown a predilection for this, as for all other myths ”

“ Spencer refers to the Coyness of these maidens as one motive or cause of wife-capture, but he does not inquire into the origin of Coyness itself, which is a much more interesting point in the psychology of Love. The fear “lest they should lose their reputation for modesty,” mentioned above, is the most obvious cause of this exaggerated resistance, as it is of the excessive prudishness often encountered in some European civilised countries of to-day. ”

“ The second source of Coyness is probably another instinctive feeling (based on inherited experience) which induces the female to defer her choice until the combats and manœuvres of the males have shown which one is the most energetic, courageous, and 42persistent: for he will obviously be best able to support her brood, and protect it as well as herself against enemies. ”

“ Simply because—once more be it said—the men of former days, the men who lived on pork and port, who delighted in bear-baiting, cock-fights, and similar æsthetic amusements, had nerves so coarse and callous that to make any impression on them the women had to play with them as a cat does with a mouse to make it tender and sweet.
Coyness lessens Woman’s Love.—One more charge, the gravest of all, remains to be piled on top, as a last crushing argument against crude Coyness. An emotion, like a plant, requires for its growth sunshine, light, and open air ”

“ The instinctive perception that a thing is valued in proportion to the difficulty of its attainment is what taught women the “cunning to be strange.” Seeing that they could not compete with man in brute force, they acquired the arts of Beauty and of Coyness, as their best weapons against his superior strength—the Beauty to fascinate him, the Coyness to teach him that in Love, as in fishing, the pleasure of pursuit is the main thing. ”

“ Refined flirtation, in truth, requires much more wit, more tact and culture, than Coyness, or than Prudery, which is the north-pole of Coyness. Prudery bears much resemblance to the artificial dignity of a certain class of young men who, by means of persistent reticence, gain a reputation for aristocratic and cynical superiority. Coquetry even is preferable to Prudery, for it is at any rate entertaining. ”

“ We have now seen, however, that these indications are deceptive, for the reason that lust as well as love can be fastidious in choice, insistent on a monopoly, and jealous of rivals; that coyness may spring from purely mercenary motives, and that the mixed moods of hope and despair may disquiet or delight men and women who know love only as a carnal appetite. ”

“ Could anything be more naïvely, more humanly, more exquisitely feminine? If a lover, says a French philosopher, fails in his suit, let him desist for a moment, and she will presently call him back.
No inquiry has ever been made by naturalists, so far as I am aware, as to the origin of Coyness among animals. ”

“ With refined men of the period Flirting, i.e. fascinating and leaving in doubt, is quite as effective in kindling adoration to ecstasy as crude Coyness was with the coarse-fibred men of the past. Flirtation, indeed, is much more tantalising than Coyness, and therefore a complete modern substitute for it. ”

“ Coyness, of course, occurs only in feminine love, and there are other sexual differences which will be noted later on. Here I wish to point out that the fourteen ingredients named may be divided into two groups of seven each—the egoistic and the altruistic. The prevailing notion that love is a species of selfishness—a "double selfishness," some wiseacre has called it—is deplorably untrue and shows how little the psychology of love has heretofore been understood. ”

“ In love lies the remedy for many of the economic problems of the day.
There is not one of the fourteen ingredients of romantic love which cannot be shown to be useful in some way. Of individual preference and its importance in securing a happy blend of qualities for the next generation I have just spoken, and I have devoted nearly a page (131) to the utility of coyness. Jealousy has helped to develop chastity, woman's cardinal virtue and the condition of all refinement in love and society. ”

“ More than enough has now been said to prove that in cases of sham capture the girls simply follow their village customs blindly. Left to themselves they might act very differently, but as it is, all the girls in each district must do the same thing, however silly. About the real feelings of the girls these comedies tell us nothing whatever. With coyness—that is, a woman's concealment of her feelings toward a man she likes—these actions have no more to do than the man in the moon has with anthropology. ”

“ Coyness.—Just as the Jealousy displayed by two animals fighting for a female is a gross, primitive emotion, so the Coyness of female animals is crude and clumsy compared with the delicious subtlety with which a human maiden veils a Yes under an apparent No. ”

“ Yet, after all, manifestations of Coyness must be the exception and not the rule in the lower races, inasmuch as in the vast majority of cases, where no choice is allowed the bride, there is little or no opportunity for the exercise of such a trait. ”

“ If it is possible for such experiences to re-echo, as it were, in our nervous system through so many generations, thanks to the conservatism of oft-repeated cerebral impressions, then it does not seem so very fantastic to suggest that one cause of female Coyness may be a similar echo, or reminiscence, of the time when the primitive ancestresses of modern women were “courted” by Capture or Purchase, and so badly treated as wives that in course of time an instinctive impulse was formed in their minds to shrink back and say No to man’s proposals. ”

“ For us, however, who have followed these motives from the moment when they first appeared in a primitive form, it will be easy to distinguish them and subject each one to a separate analysis. We shall first consider those which, like Coyness and Jealousy, are already familiar and need only be considered in their modern forms, and then pass on to those which are more and more exclusively modern. ”

“ Coyness and caprice have in consequence become a heritage of the sex, together with a cohort of allied weaknesses and petty deceits, that men have come to think venial and even amiable in women, but which they would not tolerate among themselves. ”

“ This sort of spring-chicken coyness does infinitely more harm than good; it makes the girls weak and frivolous, and as for the men, if they are systematically treated as birds of prey, how can they avoid falling in with their rôle? ”

“ It is true; and hence the cleverest women of the period, feeling this change in the masculine heart, have adopted a different method of fascinating men and bringing them to their feet, as we shall presently see.
Women, in turn, are injured by Coyness; first, because it makes them act foolishly. French and German girls are systematically taught to take immediate alarm at sight of a horrid man (whom they secretly consider a darling creature, with such a moustache) and conceal themselves behind their mamma or chaperon, like spring chickens creeping under the old hen at sight of a hawk. ”

“ His experience of women was great enough for him to be aware that the negative often meant nothing more than the preface to the affirmative; and it was little enough for him not to know that in the manner of the present negative there lay a great exception to the dallyings of coyness. ”

“ In vain I may pray to Love's Powers,
To ease me and pity my Pain;
Since the Heart that I sue for is yours,
Who all other Powers disdain:
Like a Goddess you Absolute reign,
You alone 'tis can save or kill;
To whom else then should I complain,
Since my fate must depend on your will.
The Coy Lass dress'd up in her best Commode and Top-knot. ”

“ I am your friend you know, and I’ll never forsake you.
Miss Sky. Nay, Mr. Damper, if his fancy is fixed there, why should he not gratify it? Miss Coy is still a handsome woman, past the summer of her existence, certainly; but what I call a fine autumnal maiden.
Nig. So she is; and if I do possess a preference for any female, I certainly admire one at that season of life: when her charms are in the richest state of perfection. None of your just budding April misses for me; who, after all, may turn out to be very indifferent blossoms. ”

“ Such stoical indifference usually appears too much for the feelings of some of the fair ones to bear. A female coyly glides close to him and bows her head in pretty submissiveness, but he turns away, pecks at a bit of food and moves off ”

“ Who can like any thing better than his own flesh? Besides, thou shouldst remember that I am a bachelor, and bachelors are apt, naturally, to feel more for their own flesh than for that of others. Stand aside, and let the procession pass, that we may go to the banquet, which waits. If Jacques Colis will none of thy girl, I hove not the power to make him. Double the dowry, good woman, and thou shalt have a choice of husbands, in spite of the axe and the sword that are in thy escutcheon. ”

“ Miss Coy. Remain then as you are, sir, a melancholy bachelor. Be guided by your friend, sir, do; be guided by a man that supposes he has formed a perfect acquaintance with our sex, when the creature never had a female friend that confided her heart’s feelings to him in all his life. Go, sir. Enjoy your freedom ”

“ Coyle became so nervous about their persecuted young friend, and so possessed by the fear that that wicked girl had availed herself of his invitation to put him to an abominable test, that she begged her husband to go and look into the matter, at whatever cost to his own equilibrium. ”