XVII. WOMAN’S COURAGE.

It is the accepted idea of the world that courage is a masculine attribute almost exclu and that all women are timid creatures, needing all sorts of protection and support, shelter and encouragement from man, who, according to St. Paul, “is the head of the woman.”

Perhaps he is, but I must say he does not always keep ahead.

Now, my own theory is that this idea, set up in the dark ages, when woman was either a slave or a servant to man, has, like many other respectable ideas, become outgrown and antiquated. The last fifty years have developed the nature and capacities of woman with a good deal of the instantaneous transformation seen in a pantomime when the clumsy hoyden suddenly develops into the fairy queen, all pink gauze, spangles and diamond-tipped wand, or, to put it more prettily, the effect upon a garden of roses, which in one hour of hot sunshine develop from half-blown buds into flowers of glorious and fragrant maturity.

If this blossoming goes on for another century at the rate it has begun in this, the women of the year 2000 will wonder what those quaint old writers of the nineteenth century could have meant by objecting to women as physicians, lawyers, preachers and legislators.

“Why, just fancy men trying to manage the world without the advice and direction of women!” some fair student of that day will exclaim. And another will add:

“And electricity only in its infancy! What vital force was there in those days to keep the world moving at all?”

Now, one of the errors which time has thus far perpetuated and now is ready to abjure and contradict, is this of the cowardice of women and courage of men as distinctly opposed to each other.

I don’t say but what, in the case of a mouse, a man is more courageous than a woman, and perhaps in that of a lion or tiger, although in the matter of mad dogs I recently had proof that the woman is the more courageous. I was visiting a suburban friend lately when a dog began to show ominous symptoms of madness just in front of the house. My friend called from the window to the man working on the lawn and bade him go at once and throw a pail of water over the poor beast. The man dropped his mower, came and looked at the dog, and flatly refused to approach him any nearer, saying in so many words that he was afraid to do so.

My friend reiterated the order, but to no effect, when of a sudden a brawny, red-armed woman dashed around the corner of the house, pail in hand, and made for the dog, who, after one dreadful backward glower at her, rushed off and was seen no more.

When the story was told at night to the master of the house, he commented on it by smiting his knee, laughing delightedly, and exclaiming: “Give me a woman every time when I want water poured over a mad dog. They don’t know any better than to try it on. I hope you gave the cook a dollar, my dear.”

Then I was present when a sweet little curly-haired thing, a girl of some twenty years old, seized a savage bloodhound by the neck and choked him off her pet kitten, which he had chased into the house—that is, I don’t suppose her tiny dimpled hands were really capable of choking him, but he was so impressed by the dauntless spirit behind them that he dropped the kitten and ran.

When his master was told of the exploit, he turned pale and exclaimed: “My God! That dog has torn a man to pieces before now!”

The strongest spring of action in a woman’s nature is love, and the perfectly reckless courage she will sometimes display must have its root in love. She must feel the need of saving or serving some one whose life is dearer to her than her own, or, like Joan of Arc or Charlotte Corday, she must love her country better than herself and despise the death awaiting her in its defense.

In fact, the truth is that man’s courage is a matter of calculation, and so may be served to order, may be indulged or restrained, may be sold to the highest bidder, and if a higher appear may be transferred and resold without injuring its quality in the least. This is not to be taken as an ill-natured hit at mankind, but a simple statement of fact as relating to mercenary troops and soldiers of fortune, and I only point out the fact as opposed to that other fact just mentioned—namely, that woman’s courage springs only from the personal feeling of the moment and has its root in love.

But, after all, it is more in the moral than the physical world that woman’s courage is most clearly shown, and also man’s cowardice, and in no direction more plainly than in matters of the heart.

Is it not so even in your own experience or observation?

A man and woman are mutually attached, and are desirous of further acquaintance. Now, the theory is—a theory established by man and consented to by woman—that she, whether maid or widow, modestly conceals her preference, not confessing it even to herself, and throwing all sorts of obstacles in the way of her wooer, such as avoiding his society, pretending not to understand his advances, skillfully evading his attempts at a declaration, and when he has valiantly conquered the opportunity and confessed his love and offered his hand and heart the traditional woman is very much astonished at the unforeseen declaration, and in a tremor of sweet confusion utterly denies any reciprocal fondness. Then a siege begins wherein the man, bold, aggressive, persistent, demolishes the defensive works wherein the woman has intrenched herself, refuses to take no for an answer, and finally by courage and perseverance conquers all opposition and secures the prize.

Well, now I ask again, Are these the facts in the case, O woman, so far as you are able to testify?

You know they are not, I know they are not, and every woman in the world, if sufficiently civilized to know anything, knows they are not.

The man is attracted to the woman. He asks an introduction perhaps, and the acquaintance begins on his part with a vague feeling of distrust and curiosity. He does not in the very least understand this enchanting sphinx, and although confessing her charm in his heart is afraid of what she may develop. He has—that is, all sensible men have—an innate consciousness that the subtlety, the quickness, the unexpectedness of a woman’s maneuvers are far out of reach of his comprehension, and he awaits what she will do and say with very much the feeling Watt and Fulton may have had when they first set their steam engines going and stood by in admiring awe, uncertain whether this wonderful new agent they had evoked would destroy them in one splendid flash or deign to follow their lead and prove a blessing to them and mankind.

Should the woman thus approached feel disposed to torment her tentative lover, she has a thousand ways of doing so. She laughs at his sentimental speeches. She fails to understand his clever compliments. She asks him ironical and teasing questions with an air of seraphic innocence and ingenuous desire for information. She entertains him with praises of his rival. She cares nothing for boating, which is the end and aim of his being, and dotes upon horses, of which he knows nothing.

Then when she sees him utterly daunted and defeated, when she sees, in fact, that the courage which should have sustained him is utterly exhausted, and he is about to seek safety in flight, she flashes upon him a smile, a long, sweet look, a tone, a gesture, a word, and he is at her feet again.

Perhaps, on the other hand, the woman is attracted to the man who has hardly noticed her. She is not delayed in her approaches by any sense of doubt or mystery; she does not in the least look upon the object of her regard as a sphinx or a mystery; she is not at all afraid of him or of what he may do or say; she understands his nature, so far at least as she needs to for her present purposes, and she feels instinctively that she has the battle in her own hand; she goes into the fray—that is to say, into the sweet combat of love—with calm and assured courage, while he, as we have said, is tremulous with that fear of the unknown which is the most demoralizing of all fears. We will suppose that she really desires this man as a husband and does not, as in the former case, wish merely to amuse herself with conquering him. Her tactics are now altogether different, and the theory held by man of what a woman is and should be is based upon the course pursued by a woman in love who intends a permanent result from her passion.

She now shows herself gentle, docile, thirsting for information upon any subject the man fancies himself learned in, let it be boots or horses, Aristotle or Bismarck, pork or grain, or bonds, or theosophy, or finance. No matter which of these or a hundred more does he discourse upon, it is the one subject on which she has always longed to be informed, and she combines with the innocent ignorance of the dove so much of the wise intelligence and quickness of the serpent that the man, fooled to the top of his bent, is presently ready to declare that such sweet and suggestive sympathy is precisely what he has always needed to enable him to carry out his life’s work, and if he can only secure it as his own, etc.

Or, if the declaration is not so easily reached, if the man’s inherent cowardice holds him back even while his love urges him forward, how the woman’s calm courage and self-command enable her to general the situation! How quietly she gives him the opportunity which he never could have found for himself! How easily and gently she guides the conversation into the channel, conducting by easy if sinuous reaches to the desired haven! With what tact she interprets his awkward, stammering phrases and puts into his mouth turns of speech which he dimly desired, yet never could have originated! And all the time, like the acting commander in a battle, she leaves the baton in the hands of the marshal, who sits in the shade and looks on.

and the man goes away from the scene of his betrothal with the step and mien of a conqueror, and thinks to himself what a dear, sweet, gentle, docile little wife he is to have, and what a clever fellow he is to have drawn that timid confession of love from her reluctant lips.

Life goes on, and the courage of womanhood develops in grander ways and more useful forms. Riches take wings, and the man, finding himself embarrassed, shrinks with masculine timidity from facing the fact himself or from confessing it to the world. Perhaps he even tries to hide it from the wife of his bosom, but she smiles at the attempt at evasion, plucks out the secret, and holding it up in calm, courageous hands, shows it for the poor thing it is, and tells so bravely how it is to be conquered and put aside that the man plucks up heart of grace to meet the foe before whom he had been ready to fall down in abject submission.

And if poverty—deep, dire poverty—comes, it is woman’s courage that meets it and makes the best of it; it is she who dares to show herself to the world, to their own world, in the garb and equipage and occupation of poverty; it is she who says, virtually, if not in words,

and reigns a queen within that kingdom undisturbed by the stupid comments of poor souls who cannot comprehend her or her royalty.

Perhaps the man breaks down utterly, for men are far more prone to break than bend, and then nine times out of ten the wife finds courage and ability to take up the laboring oar that he has dropped, and becomes the breadwinner of the family. And with what brave and strong resolution is that labor accomplished, even when the frail physique seems crumbling beneath the strain!

The mother of one of our governors sat up in bed when he was but a few days old and sewed upon boys’ trousers for a clothing store, that she might pay the woman who nursed her for one week more. Another woman, crippled from the waist down, rolled herself around the house in a chair and did her own housework, because her husband could not afford to hire it done.

And how many more have done as much and never were heard of?

In other ways, too—is there a disagreeable truth to be told, or a caution given, or a warning conveyed in social or moral matters, who has the courage to do these things? Is it a woman or a man?