La Grande Mademoiselle, 1627-1652. Barine Arvède

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      They were quarrelsome, but brave. Perchance as wild as outlaws, but devoted, gay, and loving. They were extraordinarily lively, because they were—or had been but a short time before—extraordinarily young, with a youth that is not now, nor ever shall be.

      They inspired the women with their boisterous gallantry. In the higher classes the sexes led nearly the same life. They frequented the same pleasure resorts and revelled in the same joys. They met in the lanes and alleys, at the theatre (Comédie), at balls, in their walks, on the hunt, on horseback, and even in the camps. A woman of the higher classes had constantly recurring opportunities to drink in the spirit of the times. As a result the ambitious aspired to take part in public life; and they shaped their course so well, and made so much of their opportunities, that Richelieu complained of the importance of women in the State. They were seen entering politics, and conspiring like men; and they urged on the men to the extremes of folly.

      Some of the noblewomen had wardrobes full of disguises; and they ran about the streets and the highways dressed as monks or as gentlemen. Among them were several who wielded the sword in duel and in war, and who rode fearlessly and well. They were all handsome and courageous, and even in the abandon of their most reckless gambols they found means to preserve their delicacy and their grace. Never were women more womanly. Men adored them, trembling lest something should come about to alter their perfection. Their fear was the cause of their desperate and stubborn opposition to the idea of the education of girls, then beginning to take shape among the elder women.

      I cannot say that the men were not in the wrong; but I do say that I understand and appreciate their motives. Woman, or goddess, of the order of the nobles of the time of Louis XIII., was a work of art, rare and perfect; and to tremble for her safety was but natural!

      It happened that La Grande Mademoiselle came to the age to profit by instruction just when polite circles were discussing the education of girls. The governess whose duty it had been to guide her mind was caught between two opposing forces: the defendants of the ancient ignorance and the first partisans of the idea of "enlightenment for all."

      V

      Les Femmes Savantes might have been written under Richelieu. Philamente had not awaited the advent of Molière to protest against the ignorance and the prejudice that enslaved her sex. When the piece appeared, more than half a century had elapsed since people had quarrelled in the little streets about woman's position—what she ought to know, and what she ought not to know. But if the piece had been written long before its first appearance, the treatment of the subject could not have been the same. It would have been necessary to agree as to what woman ought to be in her home and in her social relations; and at that time they were just beginning to disagree on that very subject. Nearly all men thought that things ought to be maintained in the existing conditions. The nobles had exquisite mistresses and incomparable political allies; the bourgeois had excellent housekeepers; and to one and all alike, noble and bourgeois, it seemed that any instruction would be superfluous; that things were perfect just as they were. The majority of the women shared the opinions of the men. The minority, looking deeper into the question, saw that there might be a more serious and more intellectual way of living to which ignorance would be an obstacle; but at every turn they were met by men stubbornly determined that women should not be made to study. Such men would not admit that there could be any difference between a cultivated woman and "Savante,"—the term then used for "blue-stocking." It must be confessed that there was some justice in their judgment. For a reason which escapes me, when knowledge attempted to enter the mind of a woman it had great trouble to make conditions with nature and simplicity. It was not so easy! Even to-day certain preparations are necessary—appointment of commandants, the selection of countersigns, establishment of a picket-line—not to say a deadline. We have précieuses in our own day, and their pretensions and their grimaces have been lions in our path whenever we have attempted the higher instruction of our daughters; the truly précieuses, they who were instrumental in winning the cause of the higher education of women—they who, under the impulsion given by the Hôtel de Rambouillet, worked to purify contemporary language and manners—were not ignorant of the baleful affectation of their sisters, nor of the extent of its compromising effect upon their own efforts. Mlle. de Scudéry, who knew "nearly everything that one could know" (by which was probably meant "everything fit to be known"), and who piqued herself upon being not less modest than she was wise, could not be expected to share, or to take part in, and in the mind of the public be confounded with, the female Trissotins whose burden of ridicule she felt so keenly. She would not allow herself to resemble them in any way when she brought them forth in Grand Cyrus, where the questions now called "feminist" were discussed with great good sense.

      Damophile, who affects to imitate Sapho, is only her caricature. Sapho "does not resemble a 'Savante'"; her conversation is natural, gallant, and easy (commodious).

      Damophile always had five or six teachers. I believe that the least learned among them taught her astrology.

      She was always writing to the men who made a profession of science. She could not make up her mind to have anything to say to people who did not know anything. Fifteen or twenty books were always to be seen on her table; and she always held one of them in her hand when any one entered the room, or when she sat there alone; and I am assured that it could be said without prevarication that one saw more books in her cabinet than she had ever read, and that at Sapho's house one saw fewer books than she had read.

      More than that, Damophile used only great words, which she pronounced in a grave and imperious voice; though what she said was unimportant; and Sapho, on the contrary, used only short, common words to express admirable things. Besides that, Damophile, believing that knowledge did not accord with her family affairs, never had anything to do with domestic cares; but as to Sapho, she took pains to inform herself of everything necessary to know in order to command even the least things pertaining to the household.

      Damophile not only talked as if she were reading out of a book, but she was always talking about books; and, in her ordinary conversation, she spoke as freely of unknown authors as if she were giving public lessons in some celebrated academy.

      She tries … with peculiar and strange carefulness, to let it be known how much she knows, or thinks that she knows. And that, too, the first time that a stranger sees her. And there are so many obnoxious, disagreeable, and troublesome things about Damaphile, that one must acknowledge that if there is nothing more amiable nor more charming than a woman who takes pains to adorn her mind with a thousand agreeable forms of knowledge—when she knows how to use them—nothing is as ridiculous and as annoying as a woman who is "stupidly wise."

      Mlle. de Scudéry raged when people, who had no tact, took her for a Damophile, and, meaning to compliment her, consulted her "on grammar," or "touching one of Hesiod's verses." Then the vials of her wrath were poured out upon the "Savantes" who gave the prejudiced reason for condemning the education of woman, and who provoked annoying and ridiculous misconception by their insupportable pedantry; when there were so many young girls of the best families who did not even learn their own language, and who could not make themselves understood when they took their pens in hand.

      "The majority of women," said Nicanor, "seem to try to write so that people will misunderstand them, so strange is their writing and so little sequency is there in their words."

      "It is certain," replied Sapho, "that there are women who speak well who write badly; and that they do write badly is purely their own fault. … Doubtless it comes from the fact that they do not like to read, or that they read without paying any attention to what they are doing, and without reflecting upon what they have read. So that although they have read the same words they use when they write, thousands and thousands of times, when they СКАЧАТЬ