The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1888-08-17
THE FRENCH WOMAN.
Mrs. Frank Leslie Says She Is Far Less
Romantic Than American Women.
From the PhiIadeLphia Press

Mrs. Frank Leslie Says She Is Far Less
Romantic Than American Women.
From the Philadelphia Press
PARIS, Aug. 2-Curious as it may seem
in a nation so highly and in many respects
so artificially civilized, the virtues which
we find most conspicuous on French soil
are those which in the United States are as
conspicuously absent. Filial piety, the
absence of which is mOurned by nearly
every American father and mother to day,
still forms the substratum of the best quail
ties to be met with among the French in
every rank of society. 1t is not only the
devotion of son to his mother, a feeling
which in France is so unfortunately min
gled with sentimentality as to have lost, III
the eyes of most people, all the merits it
might originally have possessed; but the
obedience and respect of son even to q
bad father is taken for granted, and the
most tyrannical abuse of paternal authority
is not considered in the least as abrogating
filial duty.
The Frenchwoman often seems what she
is not. When bent on amusing herself
and it is through the medium of this mood
of hers that we generally weigh her charac-
ter and judge her actiohs-she leaves, it is
true all care at home, and enters upon the
business of pleasure with the spirit of a
child
But it is unjust to COLL her frivolous and
idle on this account. Perhaps no women are
such Industrious and serious workers as
those of France. The material prosperity
OF their country is certainly largely at
tributahle to their admirable capacity for
making themselves useful in all depart
ments of life from which they are not shut
out by walls they can not hope TO scale
walls which they show their practical
wisdom by not trying to pull down.
The typical Frencnwoman's character is
not deep, but it has been traced out by
nature with no unsteady hand. Her spirit
of Independence, her comparative freedom
from that timidity which is often repre-
sented as charming weakness of the sex,
have enabled her to conquer much of the
ground that belongs traditionally to man,
simply by qualifying herself to compete
with him industrally and intellectually in
"a multitude of ways. She likes to be self
reliant, and to feel that in case or need she
can do battle with the world.
Although Frenchwomen generally marry
early and under conditions of parental in
fiuence which invest the act of putting on
the bridal veil with about as much senti-
ment as that OF taking to their first long
gown or gathering up their giriish tresses
into maidenly coil of plaits, the majority
mothers.
The Frenchwoman is not, perhaps, the
most atpectiouato OF spouses, but i'll her de-
vo edness to her children she is not to be
surpassed, while the interest size takes in
her husbands work and her desire to help
him for the common good throw into bold
relief the strongest side of her character. If
he is a doctor, she will make out his bills
( n him; if a tradesman, she will look after
the accounts and preside over the till {;
whatever his occupation, she will lend him
n helping hand.
What wish to lay stress on is the fact
that the Frenchwoman, although extremely
emotional at times in the ordinary business
of life, looks at nothing through pur ely
romantic and sentimental medium. 1t is
this popularity which marks the chief dis
tinction between ner and the American
woman. The latter is just "a passionate,
but she is less practical
There is dreamy sentimentality in the
nature Of our American woman that easily
and frequently merges into religious melan-
nalady almost unknown in France.
From maidenhood TO old age her views of
life are romantic. Even after much mis-
fortune and disappointment, she rarely sees
things as they really are. Consequently,
she is not the helpmate in material sense
that the French woman is.
But the deficiency is abundantly made
up in other ways 1t is the exception when
she loves her children more than her
husband, while the Frenchwoman's affec-
ton for her off pring is generally all alb
sorbing. The sentimentality of the Ameri-
can woman is at once her strength and her
weakness. 1t is her strength because it is
intimately associated with strong religious
instinct and reverence for moral principles
"A = - u q