Observe indeed the varying age at which paternal and maternal instincts
manifest themselves. A woman's passion for her child generally awakes at
birth, and there are many cases where an unfortunate girl, intending to
murder her child, as soon as it is born discovers that she loves it. On
the other hand, a great many men are indifferent to their children in
infancy and are drawn to them only as they develop intellectual quality.
This is just the time when woman drifts from them. Qualified by
civilized custom, the attitude of woman toward her child is very much
that of the cat toward her kitten; as soon as the kitten is a few weeks
old, the mother neglects it. A few months later she will not know it.
Her part is played. So it is not uncommon to find a woman who has been
enthralled by her baby giving it over entirely to hired help: the baby
is growing intellectualized; it needs her no more except as a kindly but
calm critic. And frequently at that time the father begins to
intervene, to control the education, to prepare for the future. Whether
in the mental field this means much more than the difference in
temperament between red hair and black hair (if that means anything), I
do not know; but it is singular that so often the mother should drift
away from her child just at the moment when the father thinks of
teaching it to ride and shoot and tell the truth. Possibly by that time
her critical work is done.
Indicative of the influence of the emotions is the peculiar
intensification of love in moments of crisis, such as war, revolution,
or accident. Men do not escape this any more than women: the German
atrocities, for instance, largely proceed from extreme excitement. But
men have but slender bonds to break, being nearly all ready to take
their pleasure where they can, while women are more fastidious. Woman
needs a more highly charged atmosphere, the whips of fear or grief, the
intoxication of glory. When these are given her, her emotions more
readily break down her reserves; and it is not remarkable that in times
of war there should be an increase in illegitimate births as well as an
increase in marriages. Woman's intellect under those pressures gives
way. A number of the marriages contracted by British soldiers about to
leave for the front are simple manifestations of hysteria.
As for caprice, it has long been regarded as woman's privilege, part of
her charm. Man was the hunter, and his prey must run. Only he is annoyed
when it runs too fast. He is ever asking woman to charm him by
elusiveness and then complaining because she eludes him. There is hardly
a man who would not to-day echo Sir Walter Scott's familiar lines,--
"O Woman! in our hours of ease
Uncertain, coy, and hard to please,
And variable as the shade
By the light quivering aspen made."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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