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, "nurses the pinion that impels the steel" 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 Molière'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 never 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 a 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 charing, or keep a mangle--they are painfully devoid of that eagerness to please and that readiness to be pleased which, in the present 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 her anxiety is on her own account, and simply to secure admiration, she must be a very Helen if her vanity continues attractive. She is lucky 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 marvellous 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 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 after 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!
[The end]
E. Lynn Linton's essay: Word For Female Vanity