  This momentous question has been asked, and is daily answered, in a Paris paper called La Fronde, on the staff of which all the writers are women. This is a very delicate question to ask, and I am not sure that it is particularly politic to do so on the part of women. That women take love more seriously than men is a fact which, I believe, is incontestable; but what would become of women if men were to decide in the negative and answer that love should not be taken seriously? Their only protection, their only weapon would be taken away from them. See what happens in countries, not civilized, I must quickly add, where men do not take love seriously. In these countries there is practically no difference between a woman and a slave, and even a beast of burden. The Arab, the Kaffir, the Zulu, the Soudanese, can be seen on horseback, or walking majestically with a blanket slung over his shoulder, while his womankind are following, carrying a baby on their backs, a pail of water or a cask of beer on their heads, and the rest of the burden in their hands. These primitive creatures find all this quite natural, men as well as women, and their greatest source of amusement is to see a white man carry his wife's umbrella. How they pity and scorn that poor white man! They look at him, and seem to say: 'Aren't you a man?' The more these men treat their women as inferior beings, the more highly the women think of the men, and the more respect they feel for them. And we would probably do the same if love, which we men do take seriously, did not subject, and even enslave, us to women. Indeed, this would be our right—our Divine right—and women, I repeat, are very impolitic to compel us to remind them of what happened at the beginning. We men have a Divine right to rule over women, and if we use that power given to us only with the greatest moderation, it is because we love women seriously. This love for you, ladies, is your only safeguard. See how imprudent of you it is to come and ask us if we take love seriously. Not only do we take love seriously, but I believe that there is nothing else in this world that is taken so seriously. Love is the only universally serious thing in the world. Ask scientists what they think of actors. Literature and music appear to those who cultivate them the most absolutely serious things in existence, yet men of business, whose chief object in life is money-making, shrug their shoulders, and feel ready to say, like a London Lord Mayor to his son, who wanted to devote his life to literature: 'I will be very much obliged to you if you will decide on choosing an honest and respectable calling.' What is serious to some is not to others. There is nothing in this world which is universally serious—that is to say, recognised as serious by all the civilized members of the human race, except bread and love. The mission of man is to keep it alive with bread, and we perpetuate it with love. When we have eaten and when we have loved, we have fulfilled our mission. All the rest is accessory, and only more or less serious. Poets and artists, who help make life beautiful, are not indispensable; they are not serious. Scientists, who make great discoveries, help make life more comfortable; they protect us against disease; they drug us; they cure us, but they are not indispensable—the world would go on without them; they are not serious. Only as long as there is bread and there is love will the world go on and the earth continue to be inhabited by the human race; bread and love are serious. I fear that I may have offended many people who think that they are indispensable and that their vocation is serious. Well, I am very sorry—very sorry indeed—but I cannot help it. The world was made thus, and when it was made I was not consulted. Put aside a few men and women, most of them to be found in the leisure class or among the parasites of society, for whom love is a pastime, and you will find that love is taken very seriously by men, if not quite in the same way as it is taken by women, who are more delicate and refined psychologists than men generally are. But, my dear ladies, as long as we men are only too proud and happy to fight the battle of life for you, to live for you, and, when occasion arises, sometimes die for you, please thank the progress of civilization, which has made us forget the origin of our relations toward each other; do not give us reasons for reminding you of it, and, for Heaven's sake! when we have spent years working twelve hours a day, providing you with all the comforts, and often the luxuries, of life, reared and settled in the world a large family of boys and girls, do not come and ask us if we take love seriously. You are adding insult to injury. Yes, indeed, we take love seriously, and matrimony too. |
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