Vanishing Roads and Other Essays | Page 8

the moon, "side unseen" of office boy or of
subway throng; you are in the presence of those "silent silver lights and
darks undreamed of" by the gross members of your board of directors.
By day--but ah! at evening under the electric lights, to the delicate
strains of the palm-shaded orchestra! Man is incapable of these
exquisite transformations. By day a gruff and hurried machine--at
evening, at best, a rapt and laconic poker player. A change with no
suggestion of the miraculous.
Do not let us for a moment imagine that because man is ceasing to
remove his hat at her entrance into crowded elevators, or because he
hustles her or allows her to hang by the straps in crowded cars, that he
is tending to forget this supernaturalism of woman. Such change in his
manners merely means his respect for her disguise, her disguise as a
business woman. By day she desires to be regarded as just that, and she
resents as untimely the recognition of her sex, her mystery, and her
marvel during business hours. Man's apparent impoliteness, therefore,

is actually a delicate modern form of chivalry. But of course his real
feelings are only respectfully masked, and, let her be in any danger or
real discomfort, or let any language be uttered unseemly for her ears,
and we know what promptly happens. Barring such accidents, man
tacitly understands that her incognito is to be respected--till the
charming moment comes when she chooses to put it aside and take at
his hands her immemorial tribute.
So, you see, she is able to go about the rough ways, taking part even in
the rough work of the world, literally bearing what the fairy tales call a
charmed life. And this, of course, gives her no small advantage in the
human conflict. So protected, she is enabled, when need arises, to take
the offensive, with a minimum of danger. Consider her recent
campaign for suffrage, for example. Does any one suppose that, had
she been anything but woman, a sacrosanct being, immune from clubs
and bullets, that she would have been allowed to carry matters with
such high victorious hand as in England--and more power to her!--she
has of late been doing. Let men attempt such tactics, and their shrift is
uncomplimentarily short. It may be said that woman enjoys this
immunity with children and curates, but, even so, it may be held that
these latter participate in a less degree in that divine nature with which
woman is so completely armoured.
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea, Whose action is no
stronger than a flower?
exclaims Shakespeare.
But there is indeed the mystery, for, though its "action is no stronger
than a flower," the power wielded by beauty in this world, and
therefore by woman as its most dynamic embodiment, is as undeniable
as it is irresistible. "Terrible as an army with banners" was no mere
figure of lovesick speech. It is as plain a truth as the properties of
radium, and belongs to the same order of marvel. Such scientific
discoveries are particularly welcome as demonstrating the power of the
finer, as contrasted with the more brutally obvious, manifestations of
force; for they thus illustrate the probable nature of those spiritual
forces whose operations we can plainly see, without being able to

account for them. A foolish phrase has it that "a woman's strength is in
her helplessness." "Helplessness" is a curious term to use for a
mysteriously concentrated or super-refined form of strength. "Whose
action is no stronger than a flower." But is the action of a flower any
less strong because it is not the action of a fist? As a motive force a
flower may be, and indeed has time and again been, stronger than a
thousand fists. And what then shall we say of the action of that flower
of flowers that is woman--that flower that not only once or twice in
history has
... launched a thousand ships And burned the topless towers of Ilium.
Woman's helplessness, forsooth! On the contrary, woman is the best
equipped fighting machine that ever went to battle. And she is this, not
from any sufferance on the part of man, not from any consideration on
his part toward her "weakness," but merely because he cannot help
himself, because nature has so made her.
No simple reasoning will account for her influence over man. It is not
an influence he allows. It is an influence he cannot resist, and it is an
influence which he cannot explain, though he may make believe to do
so. That "protection," for example, which he extends to her from the
common physical perils with which he is more muscularly constituted
to cope--why is it extended? Merely out of pity to a