Vanishing Roads and Other Essays | Page 7

explanation. To cry
"sex" and to talk of nature's mad preoccupation with the species throws
no light on the matter, and robs it of no whit of its magic. The rainbow
remains a rainbow, for all the sciences. And woman, with or without
the suffrage, stenographer or princess, is of the rainbow. She is beauty
made flesh and dwelling amongst us, and whatever the meaning and
message of beauty may be, such is the meaning of woman on the
earth--her meaning, at all events, for men. That is, she is the
embodiment, more than any other creature, of that divine something,
whatever it may be, behind matter, that spiritual element out of which
all proceeds, and which mysteriously gives its solemn, lovely and tragic
significance to our mortal day.
If you tell some women this of themselves, they will smile at you. Men
are such children. They are so simple. Dear innocents, how easily they
are fooled! A little make-up, a touch of rouge, a dash of henna--and you
are an angel. Some women seem really to think this; for, naturally, they

know nothing of their own mystery, and imagine that it resides in a few
feminine tricks, the superficial cleverness with which some of them
know how to make the most of the strange something about them
which they understand even less than men understand it.
Other women indeed resent man's religious attitude toward them as
sentimental, old-fashioned. They prefer to be regarded merely as
fellow-men. To show consciousness of their sex is to risk offence, and
to busy one's eyes with their magnificent hair, instead of the
magnificent brains beneath it, is to insult them. Yet when, in that old
court of law, Phryne bared her bosom as her complete case for the
defence, she proved herself a greater lawyer than will ever be made by
law examinations and bachelor's degrees; and even when women
become judges of the Supreme Court, a development easily within
sight, they will still retain the greater importance of being merely
women. Yes, and one can easily imagine some future woman President
of the United States, for all the acknowledged brilliancy of her
administration, being esteemed even more for her superb figure.
It is no use. Woman, if she would, "cannot shake off the god." She
must make up her mind, whatever other distinctions she may achieve,
to her inalienable distinction of being woman; nothing she can do will
change man's eternal attitude toward her, as a being made to be
worshipped and to be loved, a being of beauty and mystery, as strange
and as lovely as the moon, the goddess and the mother of lunatics.
What a wonderful destiny is hers! In addition to being the first of
human beings, all that a man can be, to be so much else as well; to be,
so to say, the president of a railroad and yet a priestess of nature's
mysteries; a stenographer at so many dollars a week and yet a nymph of
the forest pools--woman, "and yet a spirit still." Not without meaning
has myth endowed woman with the power of metamorphosis, to change
at will like the maidens in the legend into wild white swans, or like
Syrinx, fleeing from the too ardent pursuit of Pan, into a flowering reed,
or like Lamia, into a jewelled serpent--
Eyed like a peacock, and all crimson barr'd; And full of silver moons.
Modern conditions are still more favourable than antique story for the

exhibition of this protean quality of woman, providing her with
opportunities of still more startling contrasts of transformation. Will it
not be a wonderful sight in that near future to watch that woman judge
of the Supreme Court, in the midst of some learned tangle of inter-state
argument, turn aside for a moment, in response to a plaintive cry, and,
unfastening her bodice, give the little clamourer the silver solace it
demands! What a hush will fall upon the assembled court! To think of
such a genius for jurisprudence, such a legal brain, working in
harmony--with such a bosom! So august a pillar of the law, yet so
divine a mother.
As it is, how piquant the contrast between woman inside and outside
her office hours! As you take her out to dinner, and watch her there
seated before you, a perfumed radiance, a dewy dazzling vision, an
evening star swathed in gauzy convolutions of silk and lace--can it be
the same creature who an hour or two ago sat primly with notebook and
pencil at your desk side, and took down your specification for
fireproofing that new steel-constructed building on Broadway? You,
except for your evening clothes, are not changed; but she--well, your
clients couldn't possibly recognize her. As with Browning's lover, you
are on the other side of