absence of love, that “the same efforts that are used in some places to suppress pity, and other natural passions, may have been employed to extinguish love”; and that “those nations where it is cultivated only make nearer advances to nature.”
Goldsmith thus leaves it in doubt whether he considers Love a natural or an artificial passion. In the three passages which I have italicised, he errs: first, in saying that Love was “extinguished” in Rome, when in fact it never existed there, except incompletely in the poetic intuition of Ovid and possibly one or two other poets; secondly, he errs in remarking that it was lately “revived” in Europe, when in fact it was newly-born; and his excepting China, in speaking of the absence of Love, can only be looked on in the light of a joke in view of the absolute subjection of women to parental dictation, and the fact that, as one writer remarks, “a union prompted solely by love would be a monstrous infraction of the duty of filial obedience, and a predilection on the part of the female as heinous a crime as infidelity.” But his definition of Love as “the effect of art—an art calculated to lengthen out our happier moments and add new graces to society” is exceedingly good. The art in question is known as Courtship: and it is the latest of the fine arts, which even now exists in its perfection in two countries only—England and America. The Italian language has no equivalent for Courtship, as Professor Mantegazza tells us in his Fisiologia dell’ Amore; and a German commentator on this passage in Mantegazza comments dubiously: “Das Eutsprechende deutsche Wort dürfte wohl Werbung sein;” “the corresponding German word is presumably Werbung.” “Presumably” is very suggestive. Yet the Germans have another expression of mediæval origin apparently, namely, “Einem Mädchen den Hof machen”—"to pay court to a girl," which, though somewhat conversational, has evidently the same historic origin as our word Court-ship; implying that formerly it was the custom at court alone to prolong the agony of Love by gallant attentions to women, which enabled them to exercise the “cunning to be strange.”
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.
There are four serious objections to Coyness, one from a masculine, three from a feminine point of view.
Men, in the first place, can hardly approve of Coyness; for it certainly indicates a coarse mediæval fibre in a man if he is obliged to confess that he can love a girl not for her beauty and amiability, but only because she tantalises and maltreats him:
“Spaniel-like, the more she spurns my love,
The more it grows and fawneth on her still.”
Or, in Heine’s delightful persiflage of this attitude—
“Ueberall wo du auch wandelst,
Schaust du mich zu allen Stunden,
Und jemehr du mich misshandelst,
Treuer bleib ich dir verbunden.
“Denn mich fesselt holde Bosheit
Wie mich Güte stets vertrieben;
Willst du sicher meiner los sein
Musst du dich in mich verlieben.”
In one English sentence: Your amiability repels, your malice attracts me; if you wish to get rid of my attentions, you must fall in love with me.
If a refined man can feel ardent affection for an animal, a friend, a relative, without being “spurned” and consequently “fawning,” why should not the same be true of his love for a beautiful girl? 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. 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? If men are to behave like gentlemen they must be treated as gentlemen, as they are in England and America.
Coyness, again, makes women deceitful and insincere. “Amongst her other feminine qualities,” says Thackeray of one of his characters, “she had that of being a perfect dissembler.” And in another place, “I think women have an instinct of dissimulation; they know by nature how to disguise their emotions far better than the most consummate courtiers can do.” It cannot be said that dissimulation is a virtue, though it may be a useful weapon against coarse and selfish men. If not the same thing as hypocrisy, it is next door to it; and it cannot have a beneficial effect on a woman’s general moral instincts if she is compelled constantly to act a part contrary to her convictions and feelings. Though as deeply in love as her suitor, she is commanded to treat him with indifference, coldness, even cruelty—in a word, to do constant violence to her and his feelings, and to lacerate her own heart perhaps even more than the unhappy lover’s. Thus instead of mutually enjoying the period of Courtship, and indulging in harmless banter, “they gaze at each other fiercely, though ready to die for love”; or, as Heine puts it—
“Sie sahen sich an so feindlich,
Und wollten vor Liebe vergehen.”
And why all this perverseness, this unnaturalness, this emotional torture? 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; if kept in a dark cellar and stifled, it soon becomes weak and pale and languishes. 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; and as it is still served up as a self-evident truth in a thousand books every year, it is worth while to clear away the underbrush and let in some daylight on the subject.
Masculine versus Feminine Love.—One thing may be conceded at the outset: that woman’s Love, when once kindled, is apt to endure longer than man’s. Shakspere’s “ ’Tis brief, my Lord, as woman’s love” is therefore a libel on the sex. The difficulty is to get it under way. It takes so much of the small kindling wood of courtship (“sparking” it is called) to set a female heart aflame, that many men give it up in despair and remain bachelors; or else, like the young man in Fidelio, they finally tell their girl, “If you will not love me, at least marry me.”
It may also be conceded that Rousseau exaggerates when he says that “Women
