Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Delphi Classics)

by Ambrose Bierce

  Nature has no taste; she makes odious and hideous combinations of tints that swear at one another like quarreling cats — hues that mutually rend and slay. She has the unparalleled stupidity to spread a blue sky above a green plain and draw it down to the horizon, where the two colors exhaust themselves in debating their differences. To be quite plain about it, Nature is a dowdy old vulgarian.

  She has no more taste than Shakspeare.

  Just as Shakspeare poured out the unassorted jewels of his inexhaustible understanding — cut, uncut, precious, bogus, crude, contemptible and superb, all together, so Nature prodigally lavishes her largess of color. I am not sure that Shakspeare did not teach her the trick. Let the ladies, profiting by her bounty, emulate her virtues and avoid her vice, each having due regard to her own kind of beauty, and taking thought for its fitting embellishment and display. Let them not permit the neutral-tinted minds of the “subdued-color” fiends to fray them with utterance of feeble platitude.

  An intolerable deal of nonsense has been uttered, too, about the heartlessness of fashionable women in wearing the plumage of songbirds — and all women are fashionable, and therefore “heartless,” whom fortune has favored with means to that end. It is conceded by those who utter the nonsense that it does no good; and that fact alone would make it nonsense if the lack of wisdom did not inhere in its every proposition. No doubt the offending female is herself somewhat punctured in the conscience of her as she goes beautifuling herself with the 11 starry plumes” which “expanded shine with azure, green and gold,” and remembers the unchristian censure entailed by her passion for this manner of headgear. If so, let her take comfort in this present assurance that she is only obeying an imperious mandate of her nature, which is also a universal law. To be comely in the eyes of the male — that is the end and justification of her being, and she knows it. Moreover, to the task of its accomplishment she brings an intelligence distinctly superior to that with which we judge the result. We may say that we don’t like her to have a fledged head; and that may be true enough: our error consists in thinking that this is the same proposition as that we don’t like her with her head fledged. Clearly, we do: we like her better with her feathers than without, and shall continue to prefer her that way as long as she is likely to hold the feathers in service; then we shall again like her better without them, even as we liked her better with them. The lesson whereof is that what are called the “caprices” of fashion have an underlying law as constant as that of gravitation.

  In this one thing the woman is wise in her day and generation. She may be unable to formulate her wisdom; it must, indeed be confessed that she commonly makes a pretty bad attempt at explanation of anything; but she knows a deal more than she knows that she knows. One of the things that she perfectly apprehends is the evanescence of aesthetic gratification, entailing the necessity of infinite variety in the method of its production; and the knowledge of this is power. In countries where the women of one generation adorn themselves as the women of another did, they are slaves, and their bondage, I am constrained to say, is just. Efface the caprices of fashion — let our women look always the same, even their loveliest, and in a few years we should be driving them in harness. If the fowls of the air can serve her in averting the catastrophe, woman is right in employing their artful aid. Moreover — a point hitherto overlooked — it is mostly men who kill the fowls.

  Urged to its logical conclusion, the argument of the Audubon Society (named in honor of the most eminent avicide of his time) against the killing of song-birds to decorate their betters withal would forbid the killing of the sheep, an amiable quadruped; the fur-seal — extremely graceful in the water; the domestic cow — distinguished for matronly virtues; and the donkey, which, although it has no voice, is gifted with a fine ear and works up well into a superior foreign sausage. In short, we should emancipate ourselves from Nature’s universal law of mutual destruction, and, lest we efface something which has the accidental property of pleasing some of our senses, go naked, feed upon the viewless wind and sauce our privation with the incessant spectacle of song-birds pitching into one another with tigerish ferocity and committing monstrous excesses on bees and butterflies.

  We need not concern ourselves about “extermination”; the fashion is not going to last long enough for that, and if it threatened to do so the true remedy is not abstention, but breeding. Probably there was a time when appeals were made for preservation of what is now the domestic “rooster” — a truly gorgeous bird to look at. If he had not been good to eat (in his youth) and his wife a patient layer their race would have been long extinct. All that preserves the ostrich is the demand for its plumage. If dead pigs were not erroneously considered palatable there would not be a living pig within reach of man’s avenging arm. Who but for the value of their scalps would be at the trouble and expense of breeding coyotes? Thus we see how it is in the economy of nature that out of the nettle danger the lower animals pluck the flower safety; and it may easily be that the hatbird will owe its life to the profit that we have in its death, and in the flare of the plume-hunter’s gun will “hail the dawn of a new era.”

  II

  Women have a comfortable way of personifying their folly under the name “Fashion,” and laying their sins upon it. The “tyranny of Fashion” is of a more iron-handed quality than that of anything else excepting Man. I do steadfastly believe that many women have a distinct and definitive conception of this monster as a gigantic biped (male, of course) ever in session upon an iron throne, promulgating and enforcing brutal decrees for their enslavement. Against this cruel being they feel that rebellion would be perilous and remonstrance vain. The person who complains of “the tyranny of fashion” is a self-confessed fool. There is no such thing as fashion; it is as purely an abstraction as, for example, indolence in a cat, or speed in a horse. Fancy a wild mare complaining that she is a slave to celerity! Moralizers, literarians and divers sorts of homilizers have been cracking this meatless nut on our heads and comforting the stomachs of their understandings with the imaginary kernel for lo! these many generations, and have even persuaded the rest of us that there is something in it — as much, at least as there was in the pocket of Lady Locket. It has not even so much in it as that; not the half of it: the phrase “women’s slavery to fashion” has absolutely no meaning, and one about to use it might as profitably use, instead, John Stuart Mill’s faultless example of jargon: “Humpty Dumpty is an abracadabra.” Woman can not be called submissive to fashion, for the submission and the thing submitted to are the same thing. Even a woman can not be called a slave to slavery; and it is the slavery that is the fashion. What else can we possibly mean by “fashion,” when using the word with reference to women’s bondage, than women’s habit of dressing alike and badly? It can not mean, in this connection, the style of their clothing; that cannot “enslave”; and we do not speak of slavery to anything good and desirable. Habit and addiction to habit are not two things, but one. In short, women, having chosen to make fools of themselves, have personified their folly and persuaded men to see in it a tyrant with a chain and whip.

  The word fashion is used as a convenient generic term for a multitude of related stupidities and cowardices in character and conduct, and for the results of them. To say that one must “follow the fashions” is to say that one is compelled to be stupid and cowardly. What compels? Under what stress of compulsion are women in making themselves hideous in one way or another all the time — each year a different kind of hideousness? Who commands them to get their shoulders above their heads, blow up their sleeves and elongate their lapels to suggest the collar-points of a negro minstrel? When have not men tried to prevent them from doing these things and remain content with a tideless impulchritude — an ugliness having slight and slow vicissitudes, such as themselves are satisfied withal? Doubtless women’s quarrel with their outward and visible appearance is a natural and reasonable sentiment, a noble discontent; for they do look scarecrows, and no mistake; but the effect
which they have at any given time achieved, and at which they afterward are aghast, is not to be bettered by eternal tinkering with the same tools. In new brains and a new taste lies their only hope of repair; lacking which, they would do well to let Time the healer touch our wounded eyes, and inurement bring toleration.

  “The iron hand of custom and tradition,” wails one of the female disputants, “makes a pitiable race of us.” What a way to put it! Could it not occur to this gentle creature that if we were not a pitiable race — pitiable for our brute stupidity — custom and tradition would not be iron-handed? We are savages in the same sense that the N’gamwanee is a savage, who will not appear at any festival without his belly painted a joyous sky-blue. But among us none is so amusing a savage as she who squeals like a pig in a gate at “the tyranny of custom,” when nothing is pinching her.

  III

  An error analogous to this personification of her own folly as a pitiless oppressor is that of considering at length and with gravity the character, fortunes, motives and duties of “woman.” Woman does not exist — there are women. Of woman nothing that has more than a suggestive, literary or rhetorical value can be said. Like the word “fashion,” the word “woman” is convenient, and of legitimate use by persons of sense who understand that it is not the name of anything on the earth, in the heavens above the earth, nor in the waters under the earth — that there is nothing in nature corresponding to it. To others its use should be interdicted, for like all abstract words, it is a pitfall to their clumsy feet. If the word is used to signify the whole body of women it obviously assumes that, with regard to the matters under consideration, they are all alike — which is untrue, for some are dead. If it means less than the whole body of women it is obligatory upon the person using it to say precisely what proportion of the sex it means. The way to determine woman’s true place in the social scheme is simple: make an exhaustive inquiry into the character, capacities, desires, needs and opportunities of every individual woman. When you have finished the result will be glorious: you will know almost as much as you knew before.

  Concerning woman, I should like to be allowed a brief digression into the troubled territory of her “rights” — a field of contention in which her champions manifest an inadequate conception of the really considerable powers of Omnipotence. A distinguishing feature of this logomachy is the frequent outcrop of a certain kind of piety that is unconnected with any respect for, or belief in, the power of Him evoking it. These linked assumptions of God’s worth and God’s incompetence are made variously: sometimes by implication, sometimes with a directness that distresses the agnostic and makes the atheist blush. One disputant says: “Would a woman be less womanly because conceited Man had granted her the rights that God intended she should have?” Now, if man really has the power to baffle the divine will and make the divine intentions void of effect he may reasonably enough cherish a fairly good opinion of himself — perhaps any degree of conceit that is consistent with his scriptural character of poor worm of the dust.

  A noble example of piety undimmed by disrespect is that of a Presbyterian minister, who began his remarks thus: “Has woman today all the rights she ought to have — all the rights Christ meant her to have? I fully concede she has not.” This is not very good English, but I dare say it is good religion, this conception of Christ as a “well-meaning person,” but without much influence in obtaining favors for his friends. Anyhow, it is authenticated by the clerical sign-manual, which sets it at a longer remove from blasphemy than at first sight it may seem to be, and makes it so holy that I hardly dared to mention it. I hope it is not irreverent to say so; it is not said in that spirit, but I can not help thinking that if I were God I should find some way to carry out my intentions; and that if I were Christ and had not a sufficient influence to secure for Lively Woman the rights that I meant her to have I should retire from public life, sever my connection with the Presbyterian church and go to work.

  IV

  Ladies of “health culture” clubs are sharply concerned about the length of the skirts they wear. The purpose of their organizations, indeed, is to protect them against their habit of wearing the skirts too long. It has apparently not occurred to them that here, too, nobody is compelling them to continue a disagreeable practice, and that with a pair of scissors any woman can accomplish for herself all that she wants the clubs to do for her. If the long skirt no longer please, why not drop it? Nothing is easier. No concert of action definitely agreed on was required to bring it in; none is required to oust it. The enterprising gentleman who, having laid hold of the tail of a bear, called lustily for somebody to help him let go, acted from an intelligible motive, but 1 submit that if a woman stop following a disagreeable fashion it will not turn and rend her.

  No more hideous garment than the skirt is knowable or thinkable. In its every aspect it discloses an inherent and irremediable impulchritude. It is devoid of even the imaginary beauty of utility, for it is not only needless but obstruent, impeditive, oppugnant. Promoting the sense of restraint, it enslaves the character. Had one been asked to invent a garment that should make its wearer servile in spirit one would have consulted the foremost living oppressor and designed the skirt. That reasonless habiliment ought long ago to have been flung into Nature’s vacant lot and found everlasting peace along with gone-before cats, late-lamented dogs, unsouled tin cans and other appurtenances and proofs of mortality. There is not a valid reason in the world why a skirt of any length, shape or material should ever have been worn; and one of the strongest evidences of women’s unfitness for a part in the larger affairs of the race is their obstinacy in clinging to the skirt — or rather in permitting it to cling to them. So long as women garb their bodies and their legs foolwise they may profitably save that part of their breath now wasted in becoloneling themselves and reducing Tyrant Man to the ranks.

  Doubtless the skirt figures as one count in the long indictment against the Oppressor Sex, as once bracelets and bangles did — it being pointed out with acerbity that these are vestigial remnants of chains and shackles. The same “claim” has been made for the eviscerating corset — I forget upon what grounds. Of course men have had nothing to do with the corset, excepting, in season and out of season, to implore women not to wear it. The skirt we have merely tolerated, or from lack of thought assented to. But if we were the sons of darkness which in deference to the lady colonels we feel that we ought to confess ourselves, and if we had been minded to enslave our bitter halves, we could hardly have done better than to have “invented and gone round advising” the skirt. Any constant restraint of the body reacts upon the mind. To hamper the limbs is to subdue the spirit. Other things equal — which they could not be — a naked nation would be harder to conquer than one accustomed to clothing. The costume of the modern “civilized” man is bad enough in this way, but that of his female is a standing challenge to the fool-killer. Considering the use and purpose of the human leg, it seems almost incredible that this hampering garment could have been imposed upon women by anything less imperative than a divine commandment.

  One reads a deal about the “immodesty” of the skirtless costume, not, I think, because any one believes it immodest, but because its opponents find in that theme an assured immunity from prosecution in making an indecent exposure of their minds. This talk of immodesty is simply one manifestation of public immorality — the immorality of an age in which it is considered right and reputable for women and girls, in company with men, to witness the capering of actresses and dancers who in the name of art strip themselves to the ultimate inch — whose every motion in their saltatory rites is nicely calculated to display as much of the person as the law allows! Why else do they whirl and spin till their make-believe skirts are horizontal? Why else do they spring into the air and come down like a collapsed parachute? These motions have nothing of grace; in point of art they are distinctly disagreeable. Their sole purpose is indelicate suggestion. Every male spectator knows this; every female as well; yet we
lie to ourselves and to one another in justification — lie knowing that no one is thereby deceived as to the nature of the performance and our motives in attending it. We call it art, and if that flimsy fiction were insufficient would doubtless call it duty. The only person that affects no illusion in the matter is the exhibiting hussy herself. She at least is free of the sin of hypocrisy — save when condemning “bloomers” in the public press.

  As censors of morals the ladies of the ballet are perhaps half-a-trifle insincere; I like better the simple good faith of the austere society dame who to a large and admiring audience of semi-nude men displays her daughter’s charms of person at the bathing beach, with an occasional undress parade of her own ample endowments. She is in deadly earnest, the good old girl — she is entirely persuaded of the wickedness of the “bloomers.” Why, it would hardly be more indelicate (she says) to wear her bathing habit in the street or drawing-room! If she were not altogether destitute of reason she would deprive herself of that illustration, for a costume is no more indelicate in one public place than in another. One of the congenital ear-marks of the Philistine understanding is inability to distinguish inappropriateness from immodesty — bad taste from faulty morals. The blush that would crimson the cheek of a woman shopping in evening dress (and women who wear evening dress sometimes retain the blush-habit; such are the wonders of heredity!) would indubitably have its origin in a keen sense of exposure. It would make a cat laugh, but it would be an honest blush and eminently natural. The phenomenon requiring an explanation is the no-blush when she is caught in the same costume at a ball or a dinner.