Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1889-02-17


that all women, save nuns and few
outside convent walls who may be saved,
are creatures of impurity, created 10 be
the bane of man, and in all eases TO be
subject TO his will MOI even the deiiica-
ton of woman in the worship of the
Virgin has been powerful enough to neu-
tralize this influence or 10 make the
actual interior thought of man toward
woman anything beyond contempt.
Born to be a man : enslaver, there
is nothing in her own soul that is pre-
servatiye, or that can be relied upon,
hes been the thought for accumulated
generations. ITO preserve her from
her own weakness, the only security is to
shut her in ii convent. Educate her there,
and the worn man Of the world will find
in her innocent ignorance a new element
Of charm, while she herself will be safe
from forbidden knowledge
1t is this argument that rules to-day,
and that voices still the contempt for
women that underlies all fine phrases, all
tributes to their influence, all the myriad
sentimentalifies that make the staple of
French fiction and Of French daily life.
And here comes the point where the two
sexes must be judged together, since, if
women gave to their sons different
ideal, the whole outlook must necessarily
change The Frenchman has for his
mother q feeling often merely sentimental
and traditional, but also very often Of deep
devotion and confidence. He gives her
the details of his successive amours, and
the mother accepts them as the natural,
and, on the whole, praiseworthy ebulli-
tions of youth and youthful spirits, and
looks to the time Of marriage as the rem
edy for any previous irregularities. She
takes it for granted that, whether stu
dent or clerk, in whatever role he may
intend to fill mistress is the essential
element of his early years, and thus calm
acceptance of two distinct standards of
morality for thu sexes becomes a portion
of the national inheritance.
Admit the numberless exceptions to this
rule, and no one who knows anything of
French provincial life, can fail to feel
that there is very much of what we know
as genuine family life at its best, it is
still fact that, for France as whole,
the baser element predOminates and must
predominant until an utterly different
standard prevails. Here and there
father sees how false is the system under
which both daughters and sons are coming
up, and seeks to introduce new and
wiser method But since the days of
Montaigne, who records III one of his
essays his calm Sinking of responsibility
in regard to his own daughter, putting it
on the ground that women have their
own notions and that he viii fare better
not to interfere, fathers have grated
their personal code of morality upon the
sons, and mothers have FASTENED to put
convent walls about their daughters, and
have vowed that for men and women
must be forever two moral codes and two
sets Of action Nowhere is there stronger
family affection than III France; no
where better examples of all gentle, low
able qualities that woman can own, and
nowhere do the results of blind following
of tradition show themselves more disas-
trously. The convent ignorance is no
security against sudden fall when tempt
alton presents itself, and some of the sad
dest tragedies known in Paris homes
have been born Of this ignorance and the
sudden reaction against the rigidity of
training.
When, then, the mental attitude as a
whole for both women and men can only
be stigmatized as immoral, it is useless !
to question as TO minor facts, and in
quire how far French women are
moral, and how far tinctured with the
which debases whoever holds it, and all
social intercourse no matter of what !
external charm has this blight upon it
Many Americans adopt the system, TO
their unending shame be it said, since in |
so doing they deliberately accept a low |
ideal in the place of a high, and |
tacitly admit that no man is to be |
trusted, and no woman is capable of |
protecting herself Only a week ago, at /
a crowded reception, an American lady, |
who has chosen to become more French /
even than the Parisians, defended the |
system hOtly.
you we got to follow it if you live
here - she said ''There ism t a Paris |
ian or a Frenchman alive, who will not |
insult a woman if he gets the least |
chance. [ know none of them are to be !
trusted. -
Another remark, few moments later, |
to some one who had asked after her son,
held some results of her methods and
may serve to point the moral that VIII
hardly need other putting.
'sClaude? Oh, Claude is so well, but
fancy what he said to me last EVENING"
[ wanted him to take his sister Glare TO
walk, for 1 had had headache and
could not go with her, and had no one to
send. Z wouldn t mind, mamma, if
she were little, he said, but she IS
seventeen, and I can t write on her face
that she 5 my sister, and so, of course,
think she's my mistress,
and you see 1 don t quite like it for
Clare, though wouldn It mind for my
self. 80 HELEN CAMPBELL.