From the Revue des Deux Mondes. Translated for the Living Age. January 21st, 1899.

DURING the Middle Ages woman had no personal identity whatever. She existed merely as the member of a family, where it was her place to administer the household and perpetuate the race. She was married when scarcely more than a child, and soon learned to look upon her husband as a master possessed of unlimited power, including the right to beat her, and who often had a heavy hand. Her children were taken from her at an early age; and neither as a young girl nor as a matron had she any life in the sense in which we understand the word to-day.

  Did she realize the emptiness of her lot and repine at it? Probably not; for ennui is one of the maladies of a sophisticated period; nor is it likely that she indulged in many dreams; for it is we who people with our own melancholy yearnings those castles of the olden time, where the pressure of practical duties was severe enough to exclude chimeras. Did she suffer? Our worst sufferings are the residue of vanished hopes and disappointed fancies; and if—as we must suppose, she was occasionally very unhappy, at least she did not complain of being misunderstood. She was extremely busy. She had to rise with the dawn, oversee the pages and the maids, regulate the household expenditure for town or country; and she passed a large part of her time at church. She was married to a coarse husband, but, being little more ethereal than he, she did not consider herself a martyr on that account. She did not mind deceiving her lord, being as susceptible as another to the pleasures of sense; but there was no malice in her little diversions, and she was not vain of her conquests. Her place in society was distinctly that of an inferior. Certain poems and romances were beginning to inculcate reverence for women, but all this was mere poetry and romance. The epic, whether heroic or familiar, the chanson de geste and the fabliau all alike betray the prevailing sentiment—that of the subordination of women. We detect it even in those writers of the sixteenth century whose views are broadest. We should have no doubt about Rabelais’s estimate of woman, even if he had not expressed himself clearly upon this point. “When I say woman, I allude to a sex so fragile, so variable, so inconstant and imperfect, that Nature seems to me (speaking with all due reverence), to have departed somewhat from her usual good sense when she made the feminine creature. I have pondered this point hundreds and hundreds of times, and can come to no other conclusion than this: that Nature, in devising woman, had regard to the social delectation of man, and the propagation of the species, rather than to the perfection of muliebrity in the individual.” Montaigne is quite of the same mind, though he takes pains to express himself a little less crudely. He does not think that “our women should be maintained in idleness by the sweat of our toil”; but, on the other hand, while Mlle. de Montaigne keeps the accounts, oversees the farm and directs the masons, he moralizes, perorates, travels, and amuses himself generally; not merely without a shadow of compunction, but in the full assurance that he is neither exceeding the privileges of his sex, nor transgressing its rights. The bourgeois of Molière conceive the rôle of woman after an identical fashion; and a good many of the bourgeois of our own day agree with Molière’s. It is a matter of tradition.

  The ideas which were destined to modify, for a time, the condition of woman, had their origin in Italy, being, in fact, an essential part of the spirit of the Renaissance. One of these was the notion of the rights of the individual, who had been, up to that period, absorbed in the community, whether civil, religious, or domestic, but who now began to be restive under the yoke and boldly to claim his independence. Men wanted to be themselves; to be distinguished from others; fully and freely to develop their own proper faculties and fulfill their own separate destinies. Each one of us has his own special worth, a treasure of latent energy which it behooves us to render active. This is what “virtue” means. Let the virtue which is within us burn so bright that it will leave a luminous memory behind us in the minds of men. Everywhere there woke the same impassioned desire for personal renown. Another leading motive was the revival of antique ideas concerning the worship of beauty. For centuries, under the Christian dispensation, man had been preoccupied by an ideal of abstinence and sacrifice. He had looked upon life with distrust, and warily shunned the snare of its seductions. Now he went forth to meet it, in confidence and joy. “Everything,” says Tasso, in his “Dialogue on Virtue,” “everything assists virtue to the attainment of true happiness;—riches, honors, offices, armies, and all those emoluments which enable virtue to act with greater freedom and splendor. Virtue can make subservient to her ends armor and steeds, rich furnishings, paintings and statues, all the fine armaments of prosperity, no less than the joys of friendship and of brilliant society;—she finds her account in them all.” Why, indeed, should we refuse to hear that call to happiness, that stifled cry which breaks from the entire creation? Has not God himself adorned nature with manifold charms? And if he has also made us susceptible to them, is not this a sign of his will? Let us, then, cease to be our own executioners, living like paupers amid the wealth so profusely lavished to beguile our short journey across the hospitable earth! Let us unseal the sources of delight, and restore equilibrium among those forces of nature, no one of which is to be despised! Let us put ourselves to school once more, with the Greeks, and re-learn from their teachings and example the secret of a truly harmonious activity.

  The Middle Ages has cowered under the sway of Aristotle. Modern Italy appealed from Aristotle to Plato. From the close of the fifteenth century onward, we can see the theory of neoplatonism taking shape. Plato taught that ideas—that is to say, the eternal types of visible things, constitute the only true reality. The soul, entangled in matter, can discern appearances only; but in proportion as it casts off its material bonds, it ascends toward the ideas themselves, beholds them in all their beauty, and springs to embrace them in a transport of love. Hence through metamorphoses unsuspected by the Ancients, arose the doctrine of the two loves; the love of the senses which is by nature coarse and base, and goes out only to base things; and that of the soul, which is noble and ethereal, which is, in a word, true love. This true love comes from God, and leads us back to him, but it is woman who inspires it. Thus Bembo, in a celebrated passage: “That earthly beauty which enkindles love is but an influx of the Divine beauty which irradiates all creation. Over sweet, regular, and harmonious features, it plays like light. It adorns the countenance; its glamor attracts the eye and penetrates the soul, thrilling, enthralling, giving birth to desire. Love, then, is really born of a beam of the divine beauty, transmitted through the medium of a woman’s face. But the senses, alas! will have their word. We forget that the source of beauty is other than corporeal. We make haste to gratify mere appetite, and so arrive by a short road at satiety, weariness,—sometimes even at aversion.”

  Nothing could have amazed Plato more than to be told that he was preparing the way for the “regiment” of woman. It was the last thing probably that he intended. But doctrines become transmuted by their passage through the ages. They meet and get mixed with others, and take on the most unexpected hues. Dante impregnated the souls of men with his peculiar mysticism; Petrarch preached the cult of woman, and confounded religion with love. The sentiment of chivalry flamed wildly up before it disappeared in a final blaze of glory, to which the universal popularity of the pastoral lay, and the immense vogue, in all Europe, of such poems as “Amadis of Gaul” bear sufficient witness. The average French mind, ever prone to simplicity and good sense, revolted against the vague doctrines of neoplatonism and its double-distilled refinements; but Margaret of Navarre undertook to introduce them among ourselves, and she it is who in the nineteenth novel of the “Heptameron” supplies us with the following definition: “Perfect lovers are those who ever demand in the object of their love a certain perfection of beauty, grace, and goodness. They tend always toward virtue, and have hearts so brave and true that they would die sooner than decline upon aught that is repugnant to honor and conscience. The sole end and aim of our creation is a return to the Supreme Good; and even while imprisoned in the body we are striving thitherward. But the senses are our enforced medium of communication, and these are clogged and obscured by the sin of our first parents,” etc., etc. Here we have Platonism joining hands with Catholicism, and such were the elements which woman, ever prone to seize upon any advantage, was about to make subservient to her own glorification at Rome, at Florence, in the courts of Orbino and Ferrara, no less than at those of Francis I. and Henry II. in France. Society felt the working of a novel power.

  For woman, it will be observed, no longer admits that she is called to humility and self-sacrifice. She, too, is an individual, and has the right to develop her ego. She takes her place beside man, as his equal, and her destiny is not to be confounded with his. Henceforth she has her own rôle, and that rôle consists in extracting from all things whatever essence of beauty they may contain; in the spiritualization of matter and the introduction of art into life.

  To begin with,—life must be suitably adorned. The massive castle, built to sustain the assault of hostile armies, is transformed, illuminated, enlivened, by all the caprices of fancy. Nature is called in to aid the artist; and beautiful sites, and the graces of park or garden enhance the effect of elegant architecture. Sculptors, painters, and goldsmiths vie with one another in decking the luxurious dwelling of the new era with the products of their taste and skill; while the statue of goddesses and the portraits of nymphs, in all their dazzling perfection of form, cause woman to be confronted on every hand by her own idealized image. The hieratical stiffness of the old-fashioned chair has given place to all manner of curious and complicated furnishings; and clothes, formerly arranged with a view to the concealment of bodily charms, are now worn with a special view to their display. Golden tresses are uncovered, the neck is bared, the female figure becomes tall and supple. Long meals composed of heavy viands give place to gay banquets graced by conversation and music. Life resolves itself into a succession of festivals, which are no longer mere brilliant episodes, but the natural and the consummate form of contemporary existence. All these beautiful things constitute a fitting frame for the beauty of woman; or perhaps it is her beauty which is reflected in them, and so makes them fair. For there is endless discussion about the theory of beauty—which is so elusive the moment one tries to grasp and define it. It is no paradox to describe a landscape, a work of art, or life itself as beautiful, when the landscape, the work, the life, is transfigured for us by the presence of a woman!

  High mental culture having been pronounced the greatest good,—that which most enhances the value of life, women were resolved to compass it. It is not enough to say that the women of the Renaissance were accomplished; they were learned. In Italy they received precisely the same education as the men. Boys and girls studied the same things. Had not Bembo himself said, in so many words: “A little girl ought by all means to learn Latin. It puts the finishing touch upon her charms.” No one dreamed of questioning this, and accordingly maidens of exalted birth were early set to study the classics. Mary Stuart wrote Latin at twelve, Margaret of Navarre knew Greek enough to read Plato. Queen Elizabeth at fourteen translated a work of Margaret’s own, entitled the “Mirror of the Sinful Soul.” The passion for knowledge was at that time universal; but the women of the Renaissance differed from the men of that period, and also, perhaps, from the women of ours, in that they did not learn everything indiscriminately, and for the mere pleasure of learning; they neglected everything which did not appeal to their imagination or their sensibilities. They neglected science and reveled in literature and music. Or rather, from the moment that women began to read, their favorite books were those which spoke to them of themselves. Philosophy subtilizes the question of love, and hence women are philosophers. In the poem, the novel, the romance, love is still the paramount theme; and hence these are the forms of literature that always flourish when feminine influence is in the ascendant….

  Spirituality and sensuality flourished side by side without mutual inconvenience. The instances are numerous and striking of intellectual attachments as ardent and more lasting than any mere loves of the flesh. Vittoria Colonna is equally renowned for the passions which she inspired and the purity which she preserved. Michael Angelo fell in love, at fifty, with Marchesa di Pescara, who was then thirty-six,—and whom he never even saw until twelve years later. He loved her neither for her beauty nor for her mental gifts, but simply,—because he loved her. His passion found expression in glowing sonnets and enthusiastic letters, which the timorous great man wrote and rewrote, and did not dare to send. He asks nothing of the woman he worships. He simply devotes his life to her. She dies; and not even the inviolable chastity of death will permit him to touch her forehead with his lips. Young Lescum, terribly wounded at the battle of Paria, has himself carried to the house of “his lady and guardian angel,” and dies happy in her arms. The love of Marot for Margaret of Navarre is of the same nature, or even, perhaps, a little less corporeal and more intellectual. Purity is a constant characteristic of the love inspired by princesses. We can hardly reckon Diane de Poitiers among the Platonic mistresses of men. And yet, when we behold a prince and king of France, like Henry II., sincerely and faithfully devoted to a woman twenty years older than himself, where shall we look for a more satisfactory explanation of the “case” than is to be found in those romantic ideas which were derived, in the first instance from books, but gradually imposed themselves upon real life.

  This love, purified of all material taint, and appealing only to the soul, has never been in spite of the instances which we have named without caring to discuss them,—of very frequent occurrence, even in aristocratic circles. But it offers incomparable opportunities for conversation, since the least Platonic of men must needs borrow the vocabulary of Platonism when they make love in a drawing-room. We are, therefore, assisting at the birth of conversation. A new type has been evolved. Castiglione studies it, in a treatise which becomes famous; and manuals of polite behavior multiply. The person who was then called courtier would now be called a man of the world. To be skilled in all athletic exercises, especially in such as develop grace rather than strength of body, to know a little of everything, and not too much of anything, to be able to talk agreeably upon any subject, to be refined in language, reserved in manner, and gracious to all, both men and women—is not this the whole duty of the worldling? It is universally acknowledged that conversation flourishes only so long as there is a woman of wit and taste to direct it. In those lettered courts, to which rank alone no longer gave access, but where writers and artists were made welcome and gathered in a group about some royal lady, the power to converse became the earnest of a brilliant career, for social relations had already developed into an art.

  Such was the seductive exterior of the “feminism” of the Renaissance. It was exclusively aristocratic, never going beyond the narrow court circle. Within these restricted limits, it certainly seems, at the first glance, as though the women had gained their cause and succeeded in their attempt to purify sentiment and soften the brutality of manners. But the truth, unhappily, is that there never was a period more utterly perverted and corrupt than this same sixteenth century, and that, too, in the very circles where the women were conducting their crusade….

  The sixteenth century began with an outburst of sensualism, and ended in an outburst of violence, during which feminism went to utter shipwreck. The women could not, of course, have foreseen the religious wars; nor was it their fault that their fragile empire was submerged in blood. Yet the rough manner in which the men regained possession of the world’s stage is not without its lesson. The arquebus had an eloquence of its own, after so much philosophism and dilettanteism and æstheticism. It had been lustily asserted that life ought, above all things, to be joyous; that nature is good, and we have but to yield ourselves to her attractions; and a certain number of distinguished and emancipated spirits had repaired to the Abbey of Thelema and erected themselves into an order under the rule of their own good pleasure. Events undertook to give them their answer; proving beyond a peradventure that human nature is savage at bottom, and that beauty is indeed “vain” to bridle its instincts.

  The fact is that the principle on which the feminism of the Renaissance rested is fundamentally false. The women of that era wrought only for themselves, and their end and aim was the gratification of their own vanity. They reveled in the general concert of praise, and in the incense burned upon their altars by crowds of adorers. They were flattered when men made believe that they were ready to die for them, and to bless the hand that dealt the fatal blow. All their nice insight did not enable them to detect the essential element of falsity in homage of this description. In their energetic revolt from the time-honored teachings of religion, they declared the age to be ripe, and the moment come, for proclaiming an era for enjoyment. They did not know that to seek pleasure systematically is the surest way to miss it. What madness indeed to regard happiness as the object of life! Since the life of man upon this earth began, who has ever attained it? And if it has escaped the most resolute search, eluded the most passionate pursuit, is not the reason plain—that happiness does not exist? It is only an intellectual conception, an illusion of our own sensibility, and the most chimerical of all. Those who have taken this chimera for the guide of their conduct have paid for their blunder by going furthest astray. They sought to attain happiness by loading life with the adornments of external elegance, only to find themselves fooled by appearances;—the dupes of the merely accessory. The frame was gorgeous, but it was empty.