The Women of the French Salons [54]
of men, who, in turn, did not reserve their best thoughts for the club or an after-dinner talk among themselves. There was stimulus as well as diversity in the two modes of thinking and being. Men became more courteous and refined, women more comprehensive and clear. But conversation is the spontaneous overflow of full minds, and the light play of the intellect is only possible on a high level, when the current thought has become a part of the daily life, so that a word suggests infinite perspectives to the swift intelligence. It is not what we know, but the flavor of what we know, that adds"sweetness and light" to social intercourse. With their rapid intuition and instinctive love of pleasing, these French women were quick to see the value of a ready comprehension of the subjects in which clever men are most interested. It was this keen understanding, added to the habit of utilizing what they thought and read, their ready facility in grasping the salient points presented to them, a natural gift of graceful expression, with a delicacy of taste and an exquisite politeness which prevented them from being aggressive, that gave them their unquestioned supremacy in the salons which made Paris for so long a period the social capital of Europe. It was impossible that intellects so plastic should not expand in such an atmosphere, and the result is not difficult to divine. From Mme. de Rambouillet to Mme. de La Fayette and Mme. de Sevigne, from these to Mme. de Stael and George Sand, there is a logical sequence. The Saxon temperament, with a vein of La Bruyere, gives us George Eliot.
This new introduction of the feminine element into literature, which is directly traceable to the salons of the seventeenth century, suggests a point of special interest to the moralist. It may be assumed that, whether through nature or a long process of evolution, the minds of women as a class have a different coloring from the minds of men as a class. Perhaps the best evidence of this lies in the literature of the last two centuries, in which women have been an important factor, not only through what they have done themselves, but through their reflex influence. The books written by them have rapidly multiplied. Doubtless, the excess of feeling is often unbalanced by mental or artistic training; but even in the crude productions, which are by no means confined to one sex, it may be remarked that women deal more with pure affections and men with the coarser passions. A feminine Zola of any grade of ability has not yet appeared.
It is not, however, in literature of pure sentiment that the influence of women has been most felt. It is true that, as a rule, they look at the world from a more emotional standpoint than men, but both have written of love, and for one Sappho there have been many Anacreons. Mlle. de Scudery and Mme. de La Fayette did not monopolize the sentiment of their time, but they refined and exalted it. The tender and exquisite coloring of Mme. de Stael and George Sand had a worthy counterpart in that of Chateaubriand or Lamartine. But it is in the moral purity, the touch of human sympathy, the divine quality of compassion, the swift insight into the soul pressed down by
The heavy and weary weight Of all this unintelligible world,
that we trace the minds of women attuned to finer spiritual issues. This broad humanity has vitalized modern literature. It is the penetrating spirit of our century, which has been aptly called the Woman's Century. We do not find it in the great literatures of the past. The Greek poets give us types of tragic passions, of heroic virtues, of motherly and wifely devotion, but woman is not recognized as a profound spiritual force. This masculine literature, so perfect in form and plastic beauty, so vigorous, so statuesque, so calm, and withal so cold, shines across the centuries side by side with the feminine Christian ideal--twin lights which have met in the world of today. It may be that from the blending of the two, the crowning of a man's vigor with a woman's finer insight,
This new introduction of the feminine element into literature, which is directly traceable to the salons of the seventeenth century, suggests a point of special interest to the moralist. It may be assumed that, whether through nature or a long process of evolution, the minds of women as a class have a different coloring from the minds of men as a class. Perhaps the best evidence of this lies in the literature of the last two centuries, in which women have been an important factor, not only through what they have done themselves, but through their reflex influence. The books written by them have rapidly multiplied. Doubtless, the excess of feeling is often unbalanced by mental or artistic training; but even in the crude productions, which are by no means confined to one sex, it may be remarked that women deal more with pure affections and men with the coarser passions. A feminine Zola of any grade of ability has not yet appeared.
It is not, however, in literature of pure sentiment that the influence of women has been most felt. It is true that, as a rule, they look at the world from a more emotional standpoint than men, but both have written of love, and for one Sappho there have been many Anacreons. Mlle. de Scudery and Mme. de La Fayette did not monopolize the sentiment of their time, but they refined and exalted it. The tender and exquisite coloring of Mme. de Stael and George Sand had a worthy counterpart in that of Chateaubriand or Lamartine. But it is in the moral purity, the touch of human sympathy, the divine quality of compassion, the swift insight into the soul pressed down by
The heavy and weary weight Of all this unintelligible world,
that we trace the minds of women attuned to finer spiritual issues. This broad humanity has vitalized modern literature. It is the penetrating spirit of our century, which has been aptly called the Woman's Century. We do not find it in the great literatures of the past. The Greek poets give us types of tragic passions, of heroic virtues, of motherly and wifely devotion, but woman is not recognized as a profound spiritual force. This masculine literature, so perfect in form and plastic beauty, so vigorous, so statuesque, so calm, and withal so cold, shines across the centuries side by side with the feminine Christian ideal--twin lights which have met in the world of today. It may be that from the blending of the two, the crowning of a man's vigor with a woman's finer insight,