Caricature and Other Comic Art Part 16

CHAPTER XV.

CARICATURES OF WOMEN AND MATRIMONY.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "_You_ frank! _You_ simple! Have confidence in _you_!

YOU! Why, you would blow your nose with your left hand for nothing but the pleasure of deceiving your right, if you could!"--GAVARNI, _Fourberies de Femmes, Paris, 1846_.]

Observe this picture of man's scorn of woman, drawn by Gavarni, the most noted of French caricaturists. I place it first, because it expresses the feeling toward "the subject s.e.x" which satiric art has oftenest exhibited, and because it was executed by the person who excelled all others in delineating what he called the _fourberies de femmes_. Such, in all time, has been the habitual tone of self-indulgent men toward their victims. Gavarni well represents men in this sorry business of reviling women; for in all the old civilizations men in general have done precisely what Gavarni did recently in Paris--first degraded women, then laughed at them.

The reader, perhaps, after witnessing some of the French plays and comic operas with which we have been favored in recent years--such as "Frou-Frou," "The Sphinx," "Alixe," and others--may have turned in wild amazement to some friend familiar with Paris from long residence, and asked, Is there _any_ truth in this picture? Are there _any_ people in France who behave and live as these people on the stage behave and live?

Many there can not be; for no community could exist half a generation if the majority lived so. But are there any? The correct answer to this question was probably given the other evening by a person accustomed to Paris life: "Yes, there are some; they are the people who write such stuff as this. As for the _bal masque_, and things of that kind, it is a mere business, the simple object of which is to beguile and despoil the verdant of every land who go to Paris in quest of pleasure." French plays and novels we know do most ludicrously misrepresent the people of other countries. What, for example, can be less like truth than that solemn donkey of a Scotch duke in M. Octave Feuillet's play of "The Sphinx?" The dukes of Scotland are not so numerous nor so unconspicuous a body of men that they can not be known to a curious inquirer, and it is safe to a.s.sert that, whatever their faults may be, there is not among them a creature so unspeakably absurd as the _viveur infernal_ of this play. If the author is so far astray with his Scotch duke, he is perhaps not so very much nearer the truth with his French marquis, a personage equally foreign to his experience.

We had in New York some years ago a dozen or two of young fellows, more or less connected with the press, most of them of foreign origin, who cherished the delusion that eating a bad supper in a cellar late at night, and uttering or singing semi-drunken nonsense, was an exceedingly n.o.ble, high-spirited, and literary way of consuming a weakly const.i.tution and a small salary. They thought they were doing something in the manner of Dr. Johnson and Charles Lamb. Any one who should have judged New York in the year 1855 by the writings of these young gentlemen would have supposed that we were wholly given up to silly, vulgar, and reckless dissipation. But, in truth, the "Bohemians," as they were proud to be styled, were both few and insignificant; their morning scribblings expressed nothing but the looseness of their own lives, and that was half pretense.

Two admiring friends have written the life of Gavarni, the incomparable caricaturist of _la femme_; and they tell us just how and where and when the artist acquired his "subtle and profound knowledge" of the s.e.x. It is but too plain that he knew but one cla.s.s of women, the cla.s.s that lives by deluding fools. "During all one year, 1835," say these admiring biographers, "it seems that in the life, the days, the thoughts of Gavarni, there was nothing but _la femme_. According to his own expression, woman was his 'grand affair.'" He was in love, then? By no means. Our admiring authors proceed to describe this year of devotion to _la femme_ as a period when "intrigues were mingled together, crossed and entangled with one another; when pa.s.sing inclinations, the fancies of an evening, started into being together with new pa.s.sions; when rendezvous pressed upon rendezvous; when there fell upon Gavarni a rain of perfumed notes from the loves of yesterday, from the forgotten loves of last month, which he inclosed in one envelope, as he said, 'like dead friends in the same coffin.'"[24]

[Footnote 24: "Gavarni, l'Homme et l'Oeuvre," par Edmond et Jules de Goncourt, Paris, 1873.]

The authors enlarge upon this congenial theme, describing their hero as going forth upon _le pave de_ Paris in quest of _la femme_ as a keen hunter takes to the forest for the plump partridge or the bounding deer.

Some he brought down with the resistless magnetism of his eye. "It was for him a veritable rapture, as well as the exertion of a power which he loved to try, to magnetize with his eye and make his own the first woman whom he chanced to meet in the throng." The substance of the chapter is that Gavarni, casting aside all the restraints of civilization and decency, lived in Paris the life of a low and dirty animal; and when, in consequence of so living, he found himself in Clichy for debt, he replenished his purse by delineating, as the _fourberies de femmes_, the tricks of the dissolute women who had got his money. That, at least, is the blunt American of our authors' dainty and elegant French.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Matrimony--A Man loaded with Mischief.[25]

"A monkey, a magpie, and wife Is the true emblem of strife."

_Old English Tavern Sign._

[Footnote 25: "From History of Sign-boards," by Larwood and Hotten.]]

In the records of the past, we find men speaking lightly of women whose laws and usages concede least to women.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Settling the Odd Trick. (London, 1778.[26])

[Footnote 26: From Wright's "Caricature History of the Georges," p.

256.]]

The oldest thing accessible to us in these modern cities is the Sat.u.r.day-morning service in an unreformed Jewish synagogue, some of the observances of which date back beyond the historic period. But there is nothing in it older than the sentiment expressed by the men when they thank G.o.d for his goodness in not making them women. Only men are admitted to the synagogue as equal worshipers, the women being consigned to the gallery, spectators of their husbands' devotion. The old Jewish liturgy does not recognize their presence.

Older than the Jewish liturgy are the sacred books of the Hindoos. The famous pa.s.sage of the "Padma Parana," translated by the Abbe Dubois,[27]

has been part of the domestic code of the Hindoos for thousands of years. According to the Hindoo lawgiver, a woman has no G.o.d on earth but her husband, and no religion except to gratify, obey, and serve him. Let her husband be crooked, old, infirm, offensive; let him be irascible, irregular, a drunkard, a gambler, a debauchee; let him be reckless of his domestic affairs, as if possessed by a devil; though he live in the world without honor; though he be deaf or blind, and wholly weighed down by crime and infirmity--still shall his wife regard him as her G.o.d. With all her might shall she serve him, in all things obey him, see no defects in his character, and give him no cause of uneasiness. Nay, more: in every stage of her existence woman lives but to obey--at first her parents, next her husband and _his_ parents, and in her old age she must be ruled by her children. Never during her whole life can she be under her own control.

[Footnote 27: "Description of the Character, Manners, and Customs of the People of India," vol. i., p. 316, by J. A. Dubois, London, 1817.]

These are the general principles upon which the life of women in India is to be conducted. The Hindoo writer was considerate enough to add a few particulars: "If her husband laughs, she ought to laugh; if he weeps, she ought to weep; if he is disposed to speak, she ought not to join in the conversation. Thus is the goodness of her nature displayed.

What woman would eat till her husband has first had his fill? If he abstains, she will surely fast also; if he is sad, will she not be sorrowful? and if he is gay, will she not leap for joy? In the absence of her husband her raiment will be mean." Such has been the conception of woman's duty to man by all the half-developed races from time immemorial, and such to this day are the tacit demand and expectation of the brutalized males of the more advanced races. Gavarni, married, would have been content with no subservience much short of that.

Happily, nature has given to woman the means of a fell revenge, for she usually holds the peace of the household and the happiness of all its members in her hands. The satirical works that come to us from the Oriental lands teem with evidence that women have always known how to get a fair share of domestic authority. If they are slaves, they have ever been adepts in the arts and devices of slaves. The very squaws of our Indians often contrive to rule their brawny lords. Is not the whole history of the war between the s.e.xes included in the little story of the manner in which Pocahontas was entrapped on board a British vessel lying in the James River two hundred and fifty years ago? The captain had promised to the aunt of this dusky princess the gift of a copper kettle if she would bring her niece to the ship; and accordingly one afternoon, when she found herself on the river-bank with her husband and Pocahontas, she was suddenly seized with a longing to go on board, saying that this was the third time the ship had been in their river, and yet she had never visited it. Her grumpy old husband refusing, _she began to cry_, and then, Pocahontas joining her entreaties, of course the old man had to unfasten his canoe and paddle them off to the vessel.

This model couple returned to the sh.o.r.e poorer by a niece of uncertain character, and richer by the inestimable treasure of a copper kettle.

What fine lady could have managed this delicate affair better? Is it not thus that tickets, trinkets, and dresses are won every day in the cities of the modern world?

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Who was that gentleman that just went out?"

"Why, didn't he see you, after all? He called on business, and has been waiting for you these two hours. He leaves town this evening. But how warm you are, dear!"--GAVARNI, _Fourberies de Femmes, Paris, 1846_.]

An attentive study of the Greek and Roman literatures furnishes many ill.u.s.trations of the remark just made, that men who degrade women deride them. Among the Greeks, who kept women in subjection and seclusion, and gave them no freedom of choice in matters of dearest concern to them, the foibles of the s.e.x were treated very much as they now are by the dissolute caricaturists of Paris. Aristophanes's mode of representing the women of Athens is eminently Gavarnian; and nothing was more natural than that an Aristophanes should come after an Anacreon. The lyric poet depicts women as objects of desire, superior in alluring charm even to wine, rosy wine; and Aristophanes delights to exhibit the women's apartment of an Athenian house as a riotous and sensualized harem. How many expressions of utter distrust and dislike of women occur in the Greek poets!

"For this, and only this, I'll trust a woman, That if you take life from her she will die; And, being dead, will come to life no more.

In all things else I am an infidel."

Thus Antiphanes, who died twenty-two hundred years before Gavarni was born. Menander justifies the G.o.ds for tormenting Prometheus, though his crime was only stealing a spark of fire.

"But, O ye G.o.ds, how infinite the mischief!

That little spark gave being to a woman, And let in a new race of plagues to curse us."

The well-known epigram of Palladas upon marriage expresses a thought which has been uttered by satirists in every form of which language is capable:

"In marriage are two happy things allowed-- A wife in wedding garb and in her shroud.

Who, then, dares say that state can be accurst Where the last day's as happy as the first?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: _She._ "Now, understand me. To-morrow morning he will ask you to dinner. If he has his umbrella with him, it will mean that he has not got his stall at the theatre. In that case, don't accept. If he has no umbrella, come to dinner."

_He._ "But (you know we must think of every thing) suppose it should rain to-morrow morning?"

_She._ "If it rains, he will get wet--that's all. If I don't want him to have an umbrella, he won't have one. How silly you are!"--GAVARNI, _Fourberies de Femmes, Paris, 1846_.]

Many others will occur to the reader who is familiar with the lighter utterances of the ancients. But in Greece, as in China, India, and j.a.pan, and wherever else men and women have been joined in wedlock, there have been marriages in which husband and wife have lived on terms n.o.bler than those contemplated by the law or demanded by usage. Where could we find a juster view of the duties of husband and wife than in that pa.s.sage of Xenophon's dialogue on Economy where Ischomachus tells Socrates how he had taken his young wife into his confidence, and come to a clear understanding with her as to the share each should take in carrying on the household? Goethe must have had this pa.s.sage in his mind when he wrote the fine tribute to the dignity of housekeeping in "Wilhelm Meister." Ischomachus had married a girl of fifteen, who came to him as wives in Greece usually came to their husbands--an absolute stranger to him. He had to get acquainted with her after marriage, as, indeed, he says, "When we were well enough acquainted, and were so familiar that we began to converse freely with one another, I asked her why she thought I had taken her for my wife." Much is revealed in that sentence. He tells her that, being married, they are now to have all things in common, and each should only strive to enhance the good of the household. She stares with wonder. Her mother had told her that her fortune would be wholly her husband's, and all that she had to do was to live virtuously and soberly. Ischomachus a.s.sents, but he proceeds to show her that, in the nature of things, husband and wife must be equal co-operators, he getting the money, she administering it; he fighting the battle of life out-of-doors, she within the house. At great length this model husband ill.u.s.trates his point, and entirely in the spirit of the n.o.ble pa.s.sage in Goethe. She catches the idea at length. "It will be of little avail," she says, "my keeping at home unless you send such provisions as are necessary." "True," he replies, "and of very little use my providing would be if there were no one at home to take care of what I send; it would be pouring water into a sieve."

This fine presentation of household economy, like that of the German poet, is, unhappily, only a dialogue of fiction. It was merely Xenophon's conception of the manner in which a philosopher of prodigious wisdom _might_ deal with a girl of fifteen, whom he had married without having enjoyed the pleasure of a previous acquaintance with her.

Doubtless there was here and there in ancient Greece a couple who succeeded in approximating Xenophon's ideal.

Among the Romans women began to acquire those legal "rights" to which they owe whatever advance they have ever made toward a just equality with men. It was Roman law that lifted a wife from the condition of a cherished slave to a status something higher than that of daughter. But there was still one fatal defect in her position--her husband could divorce her, but she could not divorce him. Cicero, the flower of Roman culture, put away the wife of his youth after living with her thirty years, and no remonstrance on her part would have availed against his decision. But a Roman wife _had_ rights. She could not be deprived of her property, and the law threw round her and her children a system of safeguards which gave her a position and an influence not unlike those of the "lady of the house" at the present time. Instead of being secluded in a kind of harem, as among the Greeks, she came forward to receive her husband's guests, shared some of their festivities, governed the household, superintended the education of her children, and enjoyed her ample share of the honor which he inherited or won. "Where you are Caius, I am Caia," she modestly said, as she entered for the first time her husband's abode. He was paterfamilias, she materfamilias; and the rooms a.s.signed to her peculiar use were, as with us, the best in the house.

To the Roman law women are infinitely indebted. Among the few hundreds of families who did actually share the civilization of Cicero, the Plinys, and Marcus Aurelius, the position of a Roman matron was one of high dignity and influence, and accordingly the general tone of the best Roman literature toward woman is such as does honor to both s.e.xes. She was even instructed in that literature. In such a family as that of Cicero, the daughter would usually have the same tutors as the son, and the wife of such a man would familiarly use her husband's library.

Juvenal, that peerless reviler of women, the Gavarni of poets, deplores the fact:

"But of all plagues the greatest is untold-- The book-learned wife in Greek and Latin bold; The critic dame who at her table sits, Homer and Virgil quotes, and weighs their wits, And pities Dido's agonizing fits.

She has so far the ascendant of the board, The prating pedant puts not in one word; The man of law is nonplused in his suit; Nay, every other female tongue is mute."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Madame, your cousin Betty wishes to know if you can receive her."

"Impossible! Tell her that to-day I _receive_."--_Les Tribulations de la Vie elegante, par Girin, Paris, 1870._]

The whole of this sixth satire of Juvenal, in which the Gavarnian literature of all nations was antic.i.p.ated and exhausted, is a tribute to woman's social importance in Rome. No Greek would have considered woman worthy of so elaborate an effort. And as in Athens, Anacreon, the poet of sensual love, was naturally followed by Aristophanes, a satirist of women, so, in Rome, Ovid's "Art of Love" preceded and will forever explain Juvenal's sixth satire. All ill.u.s.trates the truth that sensualized men necessarily undervalue and laugh at women. In all probability, Juvenal's satire was a caricature as gross and groundless as the pictures of Gavarni. The instinct of the satirist is first to select for treatment the exceptional instance of folly, and then to exaggerate that exceptional instance to the uttermost. Unhappily many readers are only too much inclined to accept this exaggerated exception as if it were a representative fact. There is a pa.s.sage in Terence in which he expresses the feeling of most men who have been plagued, justly or unjustly, by a woman:

"Not one but has the s.e.x so strong within her, She differs nothing from the rest. Step-mothers All hate their step-daughters, and every wife Studies alike to contradict her husband, The same perverseness running through them all."

The acute reader, on turning to the play of the "Mother-in-law," from which these lines are taken, will not be surprised to learn that the women in the comedy are in the right, and the men grossly in fault.