Flirtation

“ Few things are more vulgar than the readiness to infer a flirtation from every case of marked mutual interest between a man and a woman. The interchange of bright ideas, interspersed with the spontaneous sallies of gallantry and the instinctive repartee of innocent coquetry—an archery of wit and humor, grave and gay,—this is one of the salient features of civilized social life. ”

“ Though the practice of flirtation, or the habit of making use of certain arts of pleasing in the society of men, which are not used in that of women, is a thing of such frequent occurrence, that few can be said to be wholly exempt from it; yet we rarely find a woman so lost to all sense of delicacy, as to make an open profession of flirtation. Indeed, I am convinced, that some do actually practise it unconsciously to themselves, and for this reason I am the more anxious to furnish them with a few hints, by which they may be better able to detect the follies of their own conduct. ”

“ Flirtation is an English art, not a French art, my dear Sylvia. A Frenchman either loves—and when he loves he adores on his knees—or else he has no use, no use at all, for what English people mean by flirtation—the make-believe of love! I should feel much more at ease if the Count had insulted you—"
"Anna!" ”

“ It was a flirtation without the benefits of a flirtation. She was too old to let him fall in love with her, which might have done him good; and her inclination was to keep him young, so that the nonsense he talked might never transgress a certain line. ”

“ Alas! and alas! there is no infatuation like the taste for flirtation—mere empty, valueless, heartless flirtation. You hide the dice-box and the billiard queue, lest your son become a gambler—you put aside the racing calendar, lest he imbibe a jockey predilection—but you never tremble at his fondness for white muslin and a satin slipper, far more dangerous tastes though they be, and infinitely more perilous to a man’s peace and prosperity than all the “queens of trumps” that ever figured, whether on pasteboard or the Doncaster. ”

“ A flirtation to-day is a ripple merely, but to-morrow it will be a breaker, and then a whirlpool, and after that comes hopeless loss of character. Girls, I have seen you gather up your roses from their vases at night and fold them away in damp paper to protect their loveliness for another day. I have seen you pluck the jewels like sun sparkles from your fingers and your ears, and lay them in velvet caskets which you locked with a silver key for safe beeping. ”

“ But, and here is the spice of it, at any moment one of the buttons may come off by accident, or be taken off by fraud, and then—well, then certainly a garment may be torn to rags, possibly a heart may be pierced.
Where does flirtation end? you ask. Well, [101] I can tell you where it never ends. It never ends in a row. Never, at any rate, when he or she has more brains than a guinea-pig. Of course, with downright fools there is no telling. If there be ever so slight a row, ever so faint a scandal, then there has been something more than a flirtation. ”

“ In certain individuals, flirtation takes the place of coitus from the sensual, and love from the sentimental point of view. There are modern crazy natures who spend their existence in all kinds of artificial excitation of the senses, creatures of both sexes incapable of a useful action.
[103] As a momentary and transient expression of all the necessities of love, flirtation has a right to existence; but, when cultivated on its own account and always remaining as flirtation, it becomes a symptom of degeneration or sexual depravity, among idle, crazy and vicious persons of all kinds. ”

“ What an incentive to flirtation is the wily imp who turns ever and anon from his careless gambols to throw his laughter-loving eyes upon you, calling up the mantling blush to both your cheeks! He seems to chronicle the hours of your dalliance, making your secrets known unto each other. ”

“ From my psychotherapeutic activity, I know too well how much vileness and perversity are gently covered by the term flirtation nowadays in the circle of those who have learned early to conceal the traces. ”

“ I said before that their love ebbed and flowed with the sweep of a tide, while men’s love glittered and dulled like the shaken silver of the waves; still, there are more tides than one in many women’s experience. We cannot read the autobiographies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries without observing that.
That love becomes very stale in time is a regrettable fact. Many women distract their thoughts with work or amusements. But [Pg 59] the greatest amusement of all is flirtation. ”

“ The flirtation of a young girl, released for a brief time from the harsh restraint of an unlovely home, develops until it assumes overmastering proportions, and she is barely saved from herself by the steadfast loyalty, unspoken love, and great moral courage of the physically weak brother of her handsome, impulsive, and philandering lover. ”

“ Your English middle-class young man and woman are not adepts at the game of flirtation. I will confess that our methods were, perhaps, elephantine, that we may have grown a trifle noisy as the evening wore on. ”

“ Coquetry, an especially feminine attribute, is not in itself dependent on the sexual appetite; it is an indirect irradiation, purely psychical, and we shall speak of it later on. Flirtation, as we now understand the term, is directly connected with the sexual appetite, and constitutes its external impression in all the wealth of its forms, as much in man as in woman. In a word, flirtation is a polymorphous language which clearly expresses the sexual desires of an individual to the one who awakens these desires, actual coitus alone excepted. ”

“ Then there is the prudent flirt, who trifles only with married women; dangles after those subtle, handsome creatures who affect 35 blighted lives and uncomfortable husbands, and who, having married for convenience, are flirting for love. Such women are safe entertainment for the cowardly male flirt, who fears a flirtation that leads perchance to matrimony, but who has no fears about his liability to commit bigamy. ”

“ Here the natural finesse of woman plays a considerable part. Men wanting in tact are clumsy and offensive in their attempts at flirtation, and thus extinguish instead of exciting the woman's eroticism. The manner in which alcoholic flirtation manifests itself in cynical, dull, obtrusive and stupid conversation, corresponds to its other forms of expression. Woman desires flirtation ”

“ After puberty, if not before, there is another form in which the art of love is largely experimented and practised, especially in England and America, the form of flirtation. In its elementary manifestations flirting is entirely natural and normal; we may trace it even in animals; it is simply the beginning of courtship, at the early stage when courtship may yet, if desired, be broken off. Under modern civilized conditions, however, flirtation is often more than this. These conditions make marriage difficult; they make love and its engagements too serious a matter to be entered on lightly ”

“ Many women are in love with love long before the special lover arrives upon the scene, and while there is flirtation that is silly and flirtation that is cruel, there is, too, that flirtation which means attention without intention that is quite a charming pastime, and one that is popular alike with homely or handsome women. ”

“ Clever it may be, but it is a definition of Coquetry not of Flirtation. For Flirtation never excludes possible intentions.
Flirtation versus Coyness.—Flirtation, from the feminine point of view, may be defined as the art of fascinating a man and leaving him in doubt whether he is loved or not. There is no reason why a beautiful and bright girl should not charm, i.e. flirt with, every man who interests her, and to whom she has been properly introduced. No reason why she should not dispense her sweet smiles with complete impartiality, until she has made up her 124mind whom she wishes to marry. ”

“ In general, the male flirt is a much less worthy character than the young lady who makes a pastime of flirtation. He is something more than a flirt. In nine cases out of ten, he is a rake as well. His object in flirting is to gratify a mean propensity at the expense of those who are pure and unsophisticated. ”

“ Some characteristics of the era may not be attributed to anything that is new in our system. Flirtation, for example, is a very old vice. Yet, as every [155] calling has a conscience of its own, I like to think that flirtation has been harshly painted in some respects. If it does not show specific modifications in our longitudes, we must conclude that it is a necessary evil. At any rate we know from more than one biologist that flirting is not solely a human trait. ”

“ Flirtation comprises all the sport of love, kisses, caresses and all kinds of sexual excitation even to orgasm, without reaching the consummation of coitus. All degrees may be noted; and, according to temperament, flirtation may be limited to slight excitation of the sexual appetite or may extend to violent and rapidly increasing emissions. ”

“ A whole volume could be written on the forms of flirtation, which is the indispensable expression of all sexual desire. Among engaged couples it assumes a legal character and even a conventional form. The way in which barmaids flirt with their customers is also somewhat conventional, although in quite a different way. In society, flirtation is generally seasoned with more Attic salt, whether it is not allowed to exceed certain limits, or whether it leads to free liaisons after the manner of the Greek hetaira. ”

“ While flirtation in its natural form—though not in the perverted form of "flirtage"—has sound justification, alike as a method of testing a lover and of acquiring some small part of the art of love, it remains an altogether inadequate preparation for love. This is sufficiently shown by the frequent inaptitude for the art of love, and even for the mere physical act of love, so frequently manifested both by men and women in the very countries where flirtation most flourishes. ”

“ It is cowardly, and vulgar as well, for a girl to let herself be drawn into a silly flirtation, a course that cheapens her own womanly nature and makes her the toy of the moment, just because “the other girls do it.” ”

“ But what do you imagine to be the object of that flirtation? No young lady of prudence or proper self-respect, would encourage so boldly the attentions of a stranger. Supposing him to be what he represents, (a thing by no means certain,) she cannot intend to marry him—a man old enough to be her father! ”

“ We have not the slightest hesitation in pronouncing flirtation as pernicious in the extreme. It exerts a malign influence alike upon the mental, the moral, and the physical constitution of those who indulge it. The young lady who has become infatuated with a passion for flirting, courting the society of young men simply for the pleasure derived from their attentions, is educating herself in a school which will totally unfit her for the enjoyment of domestic peace and happiness should she have all the conditions necessary for such enjoyment other than those which she herself must furnish. ”

“ A girl may whet her appetite by coquetry and deprave it by flirtation, setting at last such a value upon her skill at seduction that she counts that day lost in which some male creature is not brought into subjection to her wiles. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I had not, I said to myself, come into the future to carry on a miniature flirtation. ”

“ In each glance she turns upon the man who happens at any moment to be next to her, lies an entire chapter on the "Whole Art of Flirtation." Were she reduced to penury, and the world a little more advanced in its fashionable ways, she might readily make a small fortune in teaching young ladies "How to Marry Well." No man could resist her pupils, once properly finished by her and turned out to prey upon the stronger sex. ”

“ Flirtation may assume very different forms according to education and temperament. The action of alcohol on the brain develops the coarsest forms of flirtation. Every one knows the clumsy embraces of semi-intoxicated persons which can often be seen at night or on Sundays and holidays, in the street or in railway carriages, etc. ”

“ It is a kind of lovemaking that commits one to no promise, and yet may raise the proudest and wildest anticipations in the breast, and elicit the most unwary confidence. Thus it is difficult to find where flirtation exactly begins, and still more to say where it may end—perhaps in real love and marriage. ”

“ Should you chance to be the rejected suitor of a lady, bear in mind your own self-respect, as well as the inexorable laws [51] of society, and bow politely when you meet her. Reflect that you do not stand before all woman-kind as you do at her bar. Do not resent the bitterness of flirtation. No lady or gentleman will flirt. ”

“ It was not every woman that was capable of putting but her soul in the arms of a lover nor was it every lover whom the ethereality of the proceeding pleased. Dilettantes of crystal flirtations became, like poets, omnipresent and yet rare. ”

“ As a rule, men, at least, have some logic. But women sometimes behave in a strange way. Once, in the past—I really must confess—I had a flirtation with a married woman. And, if you please, why did she select me? ”