IBRARY0/- ^. uj 1 vX-lOS-ANCElfj> _. %. cc CC CO 5 ii l Ml l : < THE CONDITION OF WOMAN IN THE UNITED STATES. THE CONDITION OF WOMAN IN THE & Crabcltcr'g "Notts. BY MADAME BLANC (TH. BENTZON). TRANSLATED BY ABBY LANGDON ALGER. BOSTON: ROBERTS BROTHERS. 1895. Copyright, 1895, BY ROBERTS BROTHERS. AU rights resen>ed. JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. Education Library CONTENTS. PAGE BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF MADAME BLANC ... 7 CHAPTER I. FIRST IMPRESSIONS. IN CHICAGO. WOMEN'S CLUBS 19 II. BOSTON 91 III. COLLEGES FOR WOMEN. CO-EDUCATION. UNIVERSITY EXTENSION 165 IV. A WOMAN'S PRISON. HOMES AND CLUBS FOR WORKING WOMEN. DOMESTIC LIFE. INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS. AGRICULTURAL INSTITUTE AT HAMPTON : NEGROES AND NEGRESSES 225 881621 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF MADAME BLANC. WELL-KNOWN though the pen-name of Th.Bentzon may be, the charming woman who has made it one of the best loved and most respected names in contemporary literature, is far less so. She dislikes every attempt at publicity, and her works appear with no stir of trumpets. Reporters have never described her person or her parlor, and the boldest interviewer has never dragged from her an opinion on any subject. Outside her immediate circle, she exists only through her work. So when I came to Paris a few years ago, I was quite ready to believe, on the faith of a few imaginary accounts, that the pseudonym Bentzon belonged to a learned Frenchman living in Ger- many, a professor at some university beyond the Rhine. A little more love of notoriety would certainly have prevented such errors. The fact is, that in Madame Blanc the woman of the world and the woman of taste came before the worker and professional writer who for some 8 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. twenty-five years has never for a single instant lost interest in her art, who has produced more than a score of novels and tales and countless criti- cisms. She could not submit to the noisy puffery common in the literature of the day; the peculiar- ities which are so many tricks to attract atten- tion, which amuse and stimulate vulgar curiosity, are contrary to her education and her nature ; she therefore voluntarily renounced that portion of commonplace popularity which depends upon these indiscreet demonstrations. It is a sacrifice for which we need not pity her, since she has been rewarded by the respect and attachment of a select circle. No one has more friends or more devoted friends. She attracts and holds them, thanks to her steady cheerfulness, her gayety, the solid and brilliant charms of her conversa- tion ; thanks also to the charm of her vigorous and robust animation, shown without display, without great expenditure, but merely by the free, regular and harmonious play of her facul- ties. ,__She produces in the highest degree the rarest impression which can be made by a modern woman, that of a being in full posses- I sion of herself, perfectly balanced and perfectly healthy. It is the very grace of strength and moderation. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 9 Like others, however, Madame Blanc has known the difficulties and the disappointments of a literary career; like others she might have hoarded up grudges had such been her humor, and if the obstacles and ill-will encountered at the outset ever left any sense of bitterness in those who conquer them by dint of persever- ance and courage. I think it was shortly before the war/ that Madame Blanc, born de Solms, be- gan to write. The name Bentzon, then assumed by her, was the family name of her mother, to which she added her own Christian name Theresa, Th. Bentzon, which some biographers have turned into the masculine name of Thomas, and others still more imaginative into Theodore. An almost cosmopolitan education, which gave her a thorough knowledge of foreign languages and literatures, opened to the young girl a varied field of study and observation. Her first read- ing was done in English, and Walter Scott's " Waverley " caused the most vivid emotion of her childhood. Later on, vast insights into life and the world dawned upon her secluded youth. Without largely mingling with it, she entered the society of the end of the Second Empire; and together with her abstract culture, this asso- ciation, brief and involuntary as it was, furnished IO BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. her with a rich harvest of facts and experiences. Nor was she without literary protectors. Her father-in-law, Count d'Aure, equerry to Napoleon III., was a friend of George Sand, whose support he won for her, and who ever after felt the most kindly and affectionate interest in her. Under these circumstances, it seems as if she had only to be seen to succeed. But and this may serve as a lesson to those who believe in the supreme power of recommendations, and who fancy that they are unjustly misunderstood, while all barriers vanish before beginners who have good backers she had to struggle, she had disappointments to endure; and when success came, it was, as it always is, because she had worked hard and asserted her talent. Editors began to think better of this woman whom they had considered too young, too fash- ionable, and ill -prepared for labor. Illustrated papers, sporting journals, published some little things from her pen. Her most important work appeared in the "Revue Moderne," which had a small circulation, and was but little read. Still, one of her stories caught the eye of M. Bertin, editor of the "D6bats," who gave the writer a commission. The work was finished and delivered just as the war of 1870 broke out, BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. II and the scene was laid wholly in Germany. However, the " De'bats " had the courage to keep it, and to publish it in 1871. It was afterwards published in book form by Hetzel, under the name of "Divorce." M. Buloz noticed it, and opened the pages of the " Revue des Deux Mondes " to Madame Blanc. Here she published "La Vocation de Louise," which be- gan a long period of happy and fruitful produc- tion. "Une Conversion," "Une Vie Manque"e," "L' Obstacle," "Tete Folle," "D6sir6 Turpin," "La Perle," "La Grande Sauliere," "Georgette," and "Tony" appeared in rapid succession. All these stories were most favorably received by the public, and strengthened the reputation of their author. At the same time solid and brilliant sketches of English and American literature made Madame Blanc known in other countries. Now that she has gained the victory, she delights in looking back on those peaceful and busy years. Her mother, the Countess d'Aure, who lived with her, by her ceaseless care insured the quiet needful for work; she saw her son, des- tined to become a scholar and a famous explorer, grow to manhood. Everything smiled upon the stern choice which she made when she sought from her pen the dignity and security of her life. 12 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. The death of the Countess d'Aure introduced a great grief into that happily organized exis- tence. But here again Madame Blanc found com- fort in her love of work, and in the regular exercise of her art. It is since this bereavement that she has given us her fine story of " Con- stance," a strong and pathetic study of a struggle with conscientious scruples in a deli- cately moulded soul. Some have considered it as an argument against divorce; but the author objects to all homilies. Her purpose was to show the novel form imparted by recent social changes to the struggle between duty and passion, between personal instinct and a spirit of sacrifice. In a soul as noble as that of Constance Videl, the absolute that is to say, goodness very nat- urally triumphs. But if goodness be one and indivisible, if it consist solely in conforming our conduct to faith and the moral guidance which we have accepted, it is by no means true that this faith must of necessity be always the same. Different creeds entail different duties. Divorce, condemned by the Catholic Church, may be justi- fied elsewhere. Nothing therefore matters save loyalty and courage; and moral truth depends wholly on the relation established between the spiritual life and the practical life, and upon the BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 13 rigor with which it is maintained. Madame Blanc, whatever her religious ideas may be, never meant to say anything else; and we should fail to appreciate the meaning of her work, were we 'to claim for it any dogmatic character. Setting aside all mental reservations of this nature, we may note an interesting fact, a fact which bears not only on "Constance," but on all our author's novels. Madame Blanc has always been ranked with idealist writers; but her ideal- ism, which is sometimes objective and poetic, as in that delicious revery known as " La Grande Sauliere," is first and foremost subjective and moral idealism. Let me explain. She is thoroughly familiar with men and life; and in the outlines of her characters, in the development of her plots, there is much of the splendid illusionism with which George Sand, for instance, confused all positive ideas. She knows the importance of social rank and of wealth, and takes these determinations of fact into account. There are cases where her perspicacity, her quick insight are such that she becomes almost a realist. Is there not realism of the saddest and also of the most powerful kind in "Tony," the story of the aberrations of M. d'Armangon, the country gentleman given over 14 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. to drink and to the low empire of a covetous and crafty maid-servant? Jacqueline, one of Madame Blanc's latest heroines, is also full of terrible realism, with her girlish independence, her men- tal passion for a mature man, most truly and most carefully drawn. The constituent element, there- fore, of Madame Blanc's idealism is not the nature of her observation, which is always calm and sen- sible, often bold; it is the firm control which she holds over the desires and passions impelling her heroes and heroines, the supremacy of the moral law, the invincible faith which we feel that she has in the higher destiny which all of us must needs work out, whatever the conditions of this material life may be, by the practice of virtue and the cultivation of the will, and conse- quently the healthy conscience shown by almost all these characters, at least of those who play the chief parts in her works. They are usually very varied, very real; they are most natural, neither too good nor too bad, but endowed with a great power of emotion, of prompt action, something both decided and mobile; their intensity of life and desire would render them very prone to err; they are able to sin as well as to do right. If they almost always avoid sin, it is therefore be- * cause they have faith and purpose, because an BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 15 essential and permanent element governs the fan- tasies pf their instinct and their visions. And their conscience partakes of the vivacity, the nobility, of their character; clear and decided, it has prompt and decisive reactions. Lucienne d'Armanc.on, who reaches the verge of crime be- fore she finds repentance and regeneration in her very sin itself, in the intoxication of the crime which she was about to commit, is but a sort of synthesis of Madame Blanc's characters. Not one is passive, not one accepts his fate; they always react. They therefore produce a consol- atory effect, in spite of their misfortunes or their faults. We feel that they possess a valor, a rec- titude of feeling, which will cause them to con- quer everything. They are never languid, or op- pressed. The last thing to be found in her work bright, kindly, and healthy as the mind which conceived it is melancholy or nostalgia. Great simplicity and great vigor of action re- sult, in Madame Blanc's tales, from this strong moral constitution of her characters. As soon as her characters are settled, her story must be finished; indeed, these determined, free and yet well-disciplined creatures seem to move alone. And what makes them peculiarly interesting from this point of view is the fact that most of them 16 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. are very young. Now, in France extreme youth, especially extreme feminine youth, does no.t exist, has scarcely any history. Look at the young girls in French plays, all alike in dress and in conversation, with the same melancholy smile, the same speeches, the same airs of a wounded dove. Nothing personal, nothing distinctive, nothing that betrays individuality. The young French girl is naturally so cast into the shade that her timidity becomes a necessary ornament, as it were the outward sign of her moral qual- ities; the racial instinct of the French always leads them back to innocent simplicity -as an ideal, and they cannot help believing in the virtue of ignorance and credulity. Here again Madame Blanc's cosmopolitan education shows itself. Before the day of Gyp, who has gone too far in her reaction, and whose Paulettes and Chiffons are really too emancipated and too free with their tongues, she created various living and natural figures of young girls, who are at the same time amiable and admirable. They have the graces of their sex and age; and they are also human beings, who accept their share of the struggles of fate, or are making ready for them. Perhaps they lack that first flower, that bloom of inno- cence, which pleases a certain dilettanteism; but BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. I/ it is questionable whether we are not mistaken in denying an entire class of beings the instinct and prescience of life; whether instead of crea- tions which we wish to make ideally pure, we are not fashioning empty puppets; whether we are not clothing selfish and sometimes morbid fan- cies in the rosy garb of artless maidens. I have already said that Madame Blanc's sketches of English and American literature have won her a brilliant reputation and many friends across the Channel and the Atlantic. She has several times visited England; and lately, friendly entreaties, and a desire to see with her own eyes a people whom she had long studied through their writings, led her to undertake a voyage to the United States. She spent several months there, and was everywhere received with open arms. The enlightened public of American cities greeted her with enthusiasm. She has brought back countless impressions and notes of her travels. She views her vast subject from a special point of view, and her work bears the modest title, "The Condition of Women in the United States." But in the United States woman is everything; while man confines himself t( material tasks, trades and makes money, she represents the intellectual and artistic element, 1 8 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. is at the head of all moral and charitable work. To take her as the objective point, therefore, is really to study the central point around which everything revolves. To be convinced of this, we have only to read what she says of the Woman's Building at the Chicago Fair, and above all her description of Hull House, a sort of phalanstery founded by Miss Addams in a suburb of the city, where the outcasts of fate find shelter, food, in- struction, and amusement. Madame de Stael had a similar dream of asocial order, where man was to keep the hard work for himself; while woman, free at last to cultivate her intellect and her soul, might become a sort of fairy distributor of goodness and beauty. She did not expect to see her splendid dream so quickly realized, and she would have watched its realization with passionate interest. Perhaps there are still some shadows to the picture; but Madame Blanc is too- womanly, too merciful to her sex, thus far unprepared for the perfection of public virtues, not to throw a veil over them. It is for her to show us these manifestations of feminine personality and intel- ligence from their attractive side; and we can readily excuse her from showing us the faults. MARIO BERTAUX. THE CONDITION OF WOMAN IN THE UNITED STATES. A TRAVELLER'S NOTES. I. FIRST IMPRESSIONS. IN CHICAGO. WOMEN'S CLUBS. MUCH has been written in regard to woman in the United States. M. de Varigny has al- ready shown us the source of her influence, in a series of studies in the "Revue des Deux Mondes. " 1 In these studies he goes back to the time when the heroic exiles who came over in the " Mayflower " helped their fathers and their husbands to build the primitive cabin destined to serve alike as church and school. The equals of man, from the first, they became his superiors so it seems by intellectual culture and 1 March 15, May 15, September i, 1889. 20 THE CONDITION OF WOMAN refinement. While the head of the family devotes himself wholly to business, they personify at his side or far from him, for the household is often divided elegance, pleasure, and luxury. We know these American women through meeting them in Paris, and we see them at the first glance in New York. Possibly, all women of fashion, whose idle existence is spent in great capitals, watering-places, winter resorts, and gay seashore hotels, are all cut out much after the same pat- tern. Without any real originality, each of them represents that cosmopolitan society which has no native land. Their essentially artificial type has figured to excess in novels and plays; we have no desire to recur to it. But side by side with millionnaires and professional beauties, in America as elsewhere, there is a far more numerous class, concerning which much less has been said, a class corresponding to the better part of the French middle classes. If you tell me that there are no classes in the great republic, I can but reply that this is a mistake. Besides the brutal distinctions established by the greater or less amount of dollars, we soon discover an in- finity of degrees created by birth, surroundings, and education. To know America thoroughly it is not enough to gaze at this or that wandering IN THE UNITED STATES. 21 star: we must frequent the best society of Bos- ton, New York, and Philadelphia; we must visit the Southern States so sorely tried by war; we must penetrate the remote farms of the West ; in short, we must study woman in the far-distant corners of that continent made up (not to men- tion the territories) of forty-four States, not one of which is so small as Switzerland, and some of which are much larger than France. To form a final judgment without making this preliminary inquiry, is almost as absurd as to hold all Euro- pean women in light esteem. Americans of North, South, West, and East have nothing in common but certain traits which they owe to their common school education and their familiar acquaintance with liberty. It struck me that the best way to mark the differences would be to set down accurately the notes taken from day to day during a journey of several months' duration, a woman's notes about everything that relates to the condition of women. The moment is favorable, since the important question of extending the right of suffrage to a sex which already possess so many privileges is just now more than ever the subject of debate before the legislatures of the Union. As we all know, women have for sometime been allowed to 22 THE CONDITION OF WOMAN vote in Wyoming; in 1889 they obtained the right of municipal suffrage in Kansas; so also, I believe, in Colorado; in half the other States they cast their ballots in all matters pertaining to schools and to public instruction. It now depends upon their own will to advance far beyond this point. Incautiously directed, the woman question may become as embarrassing as the immigration or the negro question; and with all possible prudence, there can be no half way measures! Let us therefore consider it at the most favorable moment. Moreover, the notes which follow, although jotted down at odd inter- vals, may still possess the merit of throwing some light on the future fate of our Old World. The New World has already borrowed many good things from us ; it gives us back in return others which contain a strange mixture of good and evil. TYPES AND ASPECTS. American society was represented in abstract on the boat which bore me from Havre to New York, causing much amazement and many errors on the part of such as were not yet familiar with it. There was a scornful and very elegant group of American Anglomaniacs, those Americans IN THE UNITED STATES. 23 whose compatriots declare that they turn up their trousers on Broadway in fine weather because it is raining in London ; servile copyists of English fashions, bearing, and manners, more or less apt efforts to assume the supercilious arrogance and systematic exclusiveness which befit the repre- sentatives of aristocracy. The women walk the deck in cloth gowns knowingly cut by the most famous tailor in London, their hands in their pockets with the free and easy air of a lady visit- ing her stables before she mounts her horse. All the young men are carefully shaven as befits New York dudes; they condemn their face to utter impassivity, affect sporting slang and a mirthless, jerky laugh, with the pronunciation of modish Englishmen who drop a letter in talking, just as the same set in France mercilessly sup- press all connectives. I think I can guess that these Americans have never done anything but spend abroad the fortune painfully acquired by their fathers in some form or other of trade : but my ignorance is enlightened. I stand in the presence of the purest of blue blood, of so-called Knickerbocker families. That large lady, for instance, who scarcely ever leaves her stateroom, figures among the Four Hundred in New York. I need say no more. 24 THE CONDITION OF WOMAN I have now the measure of the social divisions which exist in the land of equality. To cope with the insolence of newly-won wealth, one must be able to point to pre-Revolutionary ancestors, or at least to ancestors who distinguished them- selves during the Revolution. Those who can boast of a Dutch or Swedish name established in the country before the English rule, feel all the pride of a Rohan or a Montmorency; and even those who do not possess these great advantages hasten, as soon as possible, on any pretext what- soever, to draw the line as distinctly as possible between themselves and common mortals. Hence a very droll statement, such as abound in the land of humor: "Since the line absolutely must be drawn somewhere, many people draw it at their own father." Never, until I went to America, did I understand how humiliating it may be to bear the name of Smith or Jones. The great personages of our boat form a party by themselves. They seem determined to make no acquaintances. At the utmost, now and then, the men, less absolute than the other sex in the matter of prejudices, descend from their pedestal to chat with some pretty woman. Among these latter is a young girl. She cannot smile without showing alluring dimples; accordingly she smiles IN THE UNITED STATES. 2$ continually. She is dressed like a picture, in the style suited to a long voyage; she seems to find universal favor. I do not discover until we land that she is a mere shop-girl. In the South, more than one daughter of a good family, ruined by the war of secession, is forced to work for a living. This piquant brunette is from Louisiana; she earns a large salary in one of the chief shops of New Orleans. During her vacation she visited Hungary (the home of her ancestors), Germany, and France. She has read plenty of French novels. Southern shop-girls pride themselves on their literary tastes; some of them are said to write for local magazines. Miss professes a sincere worship of George Sand, despite the air of reserve assumed by some of our passengers at the sound of that name. "But," she says, wax- ing eloquent in regard to "Consuelo," "her hero- ines are too perfect; it is enough to discourage any one from trying to be virtuous." And the dimples appear at the corners of her rosy lips. Here, indeed, are great reverses cheerfully endured. Nothing can be prettier than to see the young girls walk the deck, arm in arm, escorted by ad- mirers of various ages, whom they never seem to discourage very severely, no powder to be 26 THE CONDITION OF WOMAN affected by the salt air, abundant tresses which the wind may release without danger beneath the Tam-o'-Shanter or the naval cap which are almost universally worn. Even the old ladies have them planted on their scanty locks, although they are less becoming to them. Let us confine ourselves to the young girls. They are for the most part slender, erect, almost all tall, height being fashionable in New York society, whose edict rules, and women, as we J ' * ^^^^^U^ _., . know, always finding some way to adapt them- selves to the fashion at any cost. Some show signs of what they call "nervous prostration." They lack the robust British health, nor have they usually the regular features of the fair English girl; and although certain New England damsels reminded me of Greek statues retouched by the hand of an esthete, we must admit that in the West the mixture of races often produces types of but little distinction. The shape is seldom perfect, however smart the appearance may be; there is too much fragility, too much thinness. In an assembly of women in low-cut dresses, the French woman would surely have the advantage ; therefore she bares her shoulders more freely. But the Americans are as quick witted, and as graceful as any women in the IN THE UNITED STATES. 27 world. Those on the steamer, as a rule, talk freely with all the men, the only exception being a negro gentleman from Hayti, who stalks about in melancholy silence wearing a Greek fez embroidered in silver. But there is nothing bold or shocking in their coquetry. If, instead of being young girls, they were so many young married women, we should think their conduct quite correct; it is a mere question of the point of view. Their perpetual motion, their airy lightness, remind me of the gulls continually soaring about the blue or cloudy sky, swooping down now and then to the foam-crested waves, and again resuming their capricious flight. So too these damsels occasionally sink upon their steamer-chairs, arranged in sheltered corners well suited to conversation. The deck stewards bring up their luncheon, which they eat with a good appetite while they watch a passing vessel or the sunset. Sometimes I am struck by their lack of percep- tion in regard to culinary matters. I hear them ask for sardines and lemonade; mixtures which strike a Frenchman as incongruous are in high favor. But usually they seem to appreciate the excellent fare of the transatlantic steamers ; and it seems to me that the members of temperance 28 THE CONDITION OF WOMAN societies who vaunt their principles so loudly as soon as their foot is on their native soil, yield a point here in favor of the red and white wines which are so freely offered. " The Yankees are as great hypocrites as the English, to say the least," said one of my fellow-countrymen met by chance; "when they refuse to drink wine with virtuous excuses, they get drunk on whiskey at the bar. In reality their coarseness goes beyond everything, you'll see; they are always spitting in every direction, and they are ignorant of the most elementary use of the handkerchief! As for the famous flirt, she often goes, you may be sure, to the last extreme. In hotels and res- taurants there is always a special door for ladies. . . . Nonsense! in spite of this absurd precau- tion, friends meet on the other side again, and the devil is no loser. ..." I take leave to suggest to this well-informed gentleman that the purpose of the ladies' en- trance, which is quite a convenience, may not be merely to create an absolute separation between the two sexes. Moreover, I cannot help thinking that he must be somewhat like the traveller who wrote in his note-book, "At Tours, all the women have red hair," because one red-haired woman passed him in the street. We French have a IN THE UNITED STATES. 29 passion for conclusions and generalizations. If I were to take everything literally which this fellow tells me, I should believe that there are no more interesting establishments in America than the bar-rooms paved with dollars; that all Americans, without exception, talk through their noses; and that their daughters are ready to do anything for the sake of getting married. As for the famous nasal twang, we soon learn that it does not exist, at least to any disagreeable extent, among well-educated people; and daily experience shows us, even on the steamer, that the much accused flirt may be ingenuous enough after all. After being scandalized by the glances, the smiles behind a fan, the airs and graces of all sorts directed like a well-fed fire by one of our young fellow-passengers at a visibly enamoured gentleman, did I not discover that this guilty con- versation was nothing but an innocent game. Instead of talking of their own affairs, they were asking each other conundrums! The Sphinx took the greatest delight in tormenting her vic- tim; but the whole world might have listened and heard no harm, despite the evidence of our eyes. And, even when appearances are plainly shocking, we must beware of a frequent source of error : the most vulgar of American women is 3