| | | If any human weakness has a right to complain of the ingratitude | with which the world treats it, it is certainly vanity. It gets | through more good work, and yet comes in for more hearty | abuse, than all our other weaknesses put together. Preachers and | moralists are always having hits at it, and in that philosophical | study and scientific vivisection of character which two friends | are always so ready to practice at the expense of a third, and | which weak-minded people confound with scandal, to no foible | is the knife so pitilessly applied as to vanity. What makes this | rigor seem all the more cruel and unnatural is that vanity never | gets so little quarter as from those who ought, one would think, | to be on the best possible terms with her. She is never justified | of her children, and, like Byron's unhappy eagle, | against her. Yet it is difficult to see how the world could get on | without the weakness thus universally assailed, and what | preachers and moralists would do if they had their own way. | In the more important ~ or, we should rather say, in the larger ~~ | concerns of life vanity could perhaps be dispensed with. Where | there is much at stake, other agencies come into play to keep the | machinery | | of the world in motion, though, even as regards these, it is a | question how many great poems, great speeches, great actions, | which have profoundly influenced the destinies of mankind, | would have been lost to the world if there had been none but | great motives at work to produce them. Great motives usually | get the credit ~~ that is, when we are dealing with historical | characters, not dissecting a friend, in whose case it is necessary | to guard against our natural proneness to partiality; but little | motives often do the largest share of the work. It is proper, for | instance, and due to our own dignity and self-respect to say, that | the world owes Childe Harold to a great | poet's inspired yearning for immortality. Still, we fear, there is | room for a doubt whether the world would ever have seen Childe Harold if the great poet had not | happened to be also a morbidly vain and, in some respects, | remarkably small man. But even if we assume that the big | affairs of life may be left to big motives, and do not require such | a little motive as vanity to help them, these are, after all, few and | far between. | For one action that may safely be left to yearnings for | immortality, or ambition, or love, or something equally lofty and | grand, there are thousands which society must get done | somehow, and which it gets done pleasantly and comfortably | only because, by a charmingly convenient illusion, the vanity of | each agent makes him attach a peculiar importance to them. | There is no act so trivial, or to all appearance so unworthy of a | rational being, that the magic of | | vanity cannot throw a halo of dignity over it, and persuade the | agent that it is mainly by his exertions that society is kept | together, as Moliere's dancing-master reasoned that the secret of | good government is the secret of good dancing ~~ namely, how | to avoid false steps. And it is this genial promoter of human | happiness, this all-powerful diffuser of social harmony, this | lubricating oil without which the vast and complex machinery of | life could ever work, that man, in his ignorant ingratitude, dares | to denounce. | We should like to ask one of these thoughtless revilers of vanity | whether it has ever been his misfortune to meet a woman without | it. He would probably try to escape by declaring that a woman | without vanity is a purely imaginary being, if not a contradiction | in terms; and we admit that there is something to be said in favor | of this view. Nothing is more astonishing to the male | philosopher than the odd way in which, from some stray corner | of character where he would have least thought of looking for it, | female vanity now and then suddenly pops out upon him. He | fancied that he knew a woman well, that he had studied her | character and mastered all its strong and weak points, when, by | some accident or at some unguarded moment, he suddenly | strikes a rich, deep vein of vanity of the existence of which he | never had the remotest suspicion. He may perhaps have known | that she was not without vanity on certain points, but for these he | had discovered, or had fancied he had discovered, some sort of | reason. We do not necessarily mean, by reason, any cause that | seemed | | to justify or, on any consistent principle, to account for the fact. | As we have already remarked, it is the peculiarity of vanity that | it often flourishes most vigorously, and puts forth a plentiful | crop, where there does not seem to be even a layer of soil for it. | Both men and women are occasionally most vain of their | weakest points, perhaps by a merciful provision of nature similar | to that by which a sow always takes most kindly to the weakest | pig in the litter. Lord Chesterfield, when paternally admonishing | his son as to the proper management of women, lays down as a | general indisputable axiom that they are all, as a matter of | course, to be flattered to the top of their bent; but he adds, as a | special rule, that a very pretty or a very ugly woman should be | flattered, not about her personal charms, but about her mental | powers. It is only in the case of a moderately good-looking | woman that the former should be singled out for praise. A very | pretty woman takes her beauty as a matter of course, and would | rather be flattered about the possession of some advantage to | which her claim is not so clear, while a very ugly woman | distrusts the sincerity of flattery about her person. | It is not without the profoundest diffidence that we venture to | dispute the opinion of such an authority on such a subject as | Lord Chesterfield, but still we think that no woman is so hideous | that she may not, if her vanity happens to take this turn, be told | with perfect safety that she is a beauty. Her vanity is, indeed, not | so likely to take this turn as it would be if she were really pretty. | She will probably plume | | herself upon her abilities or accomplishments, and therefore | Chesterfield's excellent fatherly advice was, on the whole, | tolerably safe. But still, if any hereditary bias or unlucky | accident: ~~ such, for instance, as that of being brought up | among people with whom brains are nothing, and beauty | everything ~~ does give an ugly woman's vanity an impulse in | the direction of good looks, no excess of hideousness makes it | unsafe to extol her beauty. On the contrary, she is more likely to | be imposed upon than a moderately good-looking woman, from | her greater eagerness to clutch at every straw that may help to | keep up the darling delusion. No philosopher is, accordingly, | surprised at finding that a woman is vain where he can discover | not the slightest rational foundation even for female vanity. | But it certainly is surprising, now and then, to find how long the | most intense female vanity will lie, in some out-of-the way | corner of character, hidden from the eye. Perhaps we ought to | say, the male eye, for women seem to discover each other's weak | points by a power of intuition that amounts almost to instinct. | But man is amazed to find that a woman whose vanity he | believed himself to have tracked into all its channels has it, after | all, most strongly in some channel of which he previously knew | nothing. He has perhaps considered her a sensible matter-of-fact | woman, vain perhaps, though not unpardonably, of her capacity | for business and knowledge of the world, but singularly free | from the not uncommon female tendency to believe that every | man who sees her is in | | love with her; and he unexpectedly discovers that she has for | years considered herself the object of a desperate passion on the | part of the parish rector, a prosaic middle-aged gentleman of | ample waistcoat and large family, and is a little uneasy about | being left alone in the same room with the butler. | Unexpected discoveries of some such kind as this not | unnaturally popularize the theory already mentioned, that such a | being as a woman without vanity does not exist ~~ that, no | matter how securely the weakness may lie hidden from | observation, it does somewhere or other exist, and some day will | out. But we are inclined, notwithstanding, to hold that, here and | there, but happily very seldom, there are to be found women | really without vanity; and most unpleasant women they seem to | us, as a rule, to be. They get on tolerably well with their own | sex, for they are rarely pretty or affected, and they have usually | certain solid, serviceable qualities which make up for not being | attractive by standing wear and tear. But in their relations with | men ~~ as soon, that is, as they have secured a husband, and | fascination has therefore ceased to be a matter of business, a | practical question of bread-and-butter, to be grappled with in the | spirit in which they would, if necessary, go out charging, or keep | a mangle ~~ they are painfully devoid of that eagerness to please | and that readiness to be pleased which, in the preset imperfect | state of civilization, are among woman's chief charms. | Even men cannot, as a rule, get on very well without these | qualities; but still to please is not man's | | mission in the sense in which it is generally considered to be | woman's, and probably will continue to be considered, until Dr. | Mary Walkers are not the exception, but the rule. One now and | then has the misfortune to come upon a specimen of | womanhood, good and solid enough perhaps, making a most | exemplary and respectable wife and mother, but nevertheless | dull, heavy, and unattractive to an extent that fills the wretched | man who takes it in to dinner with desperation. And then to | think that one ounce of vanity might have leavened this lump, | and converted it, as by magic, into a pleasant, palatable, | convivial compound, good everywhere, but especially good at | the dinner-table! For, where vanity exists at all, it can scarcely | fail to influence the natural desire of one sex to please the other; | and a woman must be singularly devoid of all charms, physical | and mental, if she fails when she is really anxious to please. | That women should be fascinating, as they sometimes are, in | spite of some positively painful deformity, is a proof of what | such anxiety can alone accomplish. | We must admit that we have to postulate, on behalf of the female | vanity whose cause we are espousing, that it should not derive its | inspiration solely from self-love. However anxious a woman | may be to please, if their anxiety is on her own account, and | simply to secure admiration, she must be a very Helen if her | vanity continues attractive. She is luck if it does not take the | most odious of all forms, and, from always revolving round self | and dwelling upon selfish considerations, degenerate into a habit | of perpetual | | postures and stage tricks to gain applause. And this tendency | naturally connects itself with the wish to please the opposite sex, | its success being in inverse proportion to its strength. Just as one | occasionally meets with men who are perfectly unaffected and | sensible fellows in men's society, but whose whole demeanor | becomes absurdly changed if any woman, though it be only the | housemaid with a coal-scuttle, enters the room, so there are, | more commonly, to be found women whose whole character | seems to vary, as if by magic, according to the sex of the person | whom they find themselves with. Before their own sex they are | natural enough; before men they are eternally attitudinizing. We | should be sorry to say that this repulsive form of vanity always | takes its root in excessive self-love, but still a tinge of | unselfishness seems to us the best antidote against it. | It is marvelous with how much vanity, and that too of a tolerably | ostentatious kind, a woman may be thoroughly agreeable even to | her own sex, if her eagerness to please is accompanied by | genuine kindliness, or is free from excessive selfishness. It may | be easy enough to see that all her little courtesies and attentions | are at bottom really attributable to vanity; that, when she does a | kind act, she is thinking less of its effect upon your comfort and | happiness than of its effect upon your comfort and happiness | than of its effect upon your estimate of her character. She would | perhaps rather you got half the advantage with her aid than the | whole advantage without it. Her motive is, primarily, vanity ~~ | clearly not kindness ~~ however amicably they may in general | work together. | | But still it is the kindness that makes the vanity flow into | pleasant, friendly forms. In a selfish woman the very same | vanity would degenerate into posturing or dressing. And, odd as | it may seem, and as much as it may reflect upon the common | sense of poor humanity, we believe that kind acts done out of | genuine, unadulterated benevolence are less appreciated by the | recipient than kind acts done out of benevolence stimulated by | vanity. The latter are pleasant because they spring out of the | desire to please, and soothe our self-love, whereas the former | appeal to our self-interest. | There are few things in this world more charming than the kindly | courtesy of a pretty woman, not ungracefully conscious of her | power to please, and showing courtesy because she enjoys the | exercise of this power. Strictly speaking, she is acting less in | your interest than in her own. Although she feels at once the | pleasure of pleasing and the pleasure of doing a kindly action, | the second is quite subordinate to the first, and is perhaps, more | or less, sacrificed to it. Yet who is strong-minded enough to | wish that the kindliness of a pretty woman should be dictated by | simple benevolence, untinged by vanity? If we knew that her | kindliness arose rather from a wish to benefit us than to | conciliate our good opinion, it is perhaps possible that we should | esteem her more, but we fear it is quite certain that we should | like her less. | Before we conclude, we ought perhaps to make one more | postulate on behalf of female vanity, not less important than our | postulate that it should be pleasantly | | tinged by unselfishness. To be agreeable, it must have fair | foundation. A woman may be forgiven for over-estimating her | charms, but there is no forgiveness on this side of the grave for a | woman who recklessly credits herself with charms that do not | exist. All the lavish cheques she draws upon her male neighbor's | admiration are silently dishonored, and in half an hour the | moment they sit down to table together she is a hopeless | bankrupt in his estimation, even though he may have courtesy | and skill enough to conceal the collapse. | As there are few, if any, pleasanter objects than a pretty woman, | gracefully conscious of her beauty, and radiantly fulfilling its | legitimate end, the power of pleasing, so are there few, if any, | more unpleasant objects than a vain woman, ungracefully | conscious of imaginary charms, and secretly disgusting those she | strives to attract. An ugly woman who gives herself the airs of a | beauty, or a silly woman who believes herself a genius, is not a | spectacle upon which a man of healthy imagination and appetite | likes to dwell. It is perhaps only in accordance with the theory | that this life is a state of trial and probation that the tastes can be | explained. Happily, it is not very common. Most women know | their strong from their weak points, and marshal them on the | whole well in the encounter with their lawful oppressor and great | enemy, man. And until they have won the victory to which Dr. | Mary Walker is now leading them on, may they never lack the | female vanity which makes it one of their great objects in life to | please!