It was evidently with a vague desire to justify or excuse woman’s comparative weakness in Love that Ninon de L’Enclos wrote “Women and flowers are made to be loved for their beauty and sweetness, rather than themselves to love.” And that intelligent observer Mrs. Childs adds the weight of her feminine testimony by confessing her belief “That men more frequently marry for love than women.”
To remove all lingering doubt, consider the “overtones” of Love separately. Is woman ordinarily as absurdly or ferociously Jealous as man, or quite so Proud of her conquest? Is she so deeply absorbed in Admiration of his Personal Beauty? Is she as Gallant, and as ready for Sacrifices? or does she not rather take his devoted services for granted, and consider them rewarded by a smile or some other trifle? Indeed, the only element of Love which in woman is stronger than in man is Coyness; and Coyness, as has been shown, weakens woman’s Love in the same degree as it increases man’s.
Of course it would be unjust to attribute to the effects of Coyness all the difference between man’s and woman’s Love. Much is due to the physiologic law that emotional capacity—amorous included—depends on brain capacity (not on the “heart”); and man’s brain is more powerful than woman’s. But crude mediæval Coyness must bear a large share of the blame; and it is probable that now, having played its rôle of bringing men to terms and making them gallant and polite towards women, it will disappear gradually.
“Der Mohr hat seine Schuldigkeit gethan, Der Mohr kann gehen.”
Already, however, there is, especially in America and England, a superior class of women who, despising Coyness as crude, artificial, and silly, have adopted in its place a much more refined method of making men fall in love with them. In one word, they have substituted Flirtation for Coyness. As this statement will to many appear paradoxical, if not absurd, it is necessary first to distinguish between Flirtation and Coquetry before trying to justify it.
Flirtation and Coquetry.—These two words are so constantly confused by careless or ignorant writers that some girls are almost as much offended if accused of Flirtation as of Coquetry. It was bad enough for Winthrop to say that “A woman without coquetry is as insipid as a rose without scent, champagne without sparkle, or corned beef without mustard” (!), but there is no excuse whatever for “Ik Marvel’s” saying that “Coquetry whets the appetite; flirtation depraves it. Coquetry is the thorn that guards the rose (!), easily trimmed off when once plucked. Flirtation is like the slime on water-plants, making them hard to handle, and when caught only to be cherished in slimy waters.” No excuse, I say, because the dictionaries on our table tell us the very reverse. Flirtation, in Webster, is simply “playing at courtship,” without any cruel intentions; while Coquetry is an attempt “to attract admiration, and gain matrimonial offers, from a desire to gratify vanity, and with the intention to reject the suitor.”
That this is the correct definition is shown beyond question by the adjectives which are commonly coupled with those nouns: a “harmless Flirtation,” a “heartless Coquette.”
A Coquette seeks to fascinate for the sake of fascinating. Like a miser, she mistakes the means for the end, and feeds on one-sided passion and admiration, until one morning she wakes up and finds her beauty gone, and herself the most disappointed and unamiable of old maids. Or again, she might be compared to a bank clerk who refused his salary because he was satisfied with the tinkling of the money which he heard all day long. The Flirt, on the other hand, displays her accomplishments, her wit, and personal charms, for the sake of enlarging the facilities of Courtship, the possibilities of rational Choice.
One reason why Flirtation and Coquetry are so apt to be confounded is because the English peoples alone have the word Flirtation—naturally enough, as they alone allow their young people the blessings of Courtship and rational choice promoted by it. Foreigners, not appreciating exactly what is meant by the word, are apt to translate it as Coquetry. One Frenchman, who has lived long in England, has tried to define Flirtation for his countrymen by saying it consisted of “attentions without intentions.” This definition was widely welcomed as very clever. Clever it may be, but it is a definition of Coquetry not of Flirtation. For Flirtation never excludes possible intentions.
Flirtation versus Coyness.—Flirtation, from the feminine point of view, may be defined as the art of fascinating a man and leaving him in doubt whether he is loved or not. There is no reason why a beautiful and bright girl should not charm, i.e. flirt with, every man who interests her, and to whom she has been properly introduced. No reason why she should not dispense her sweet smiles with complete impartiality, until she has made up her mind whom she wishes to marry. In so far as Coyness simply means reserve and dignity, she will of course still be coy; but she will not run away to conceal herself in the forest, or lock the front door, or hide behind a chaperon’s back, or affect to be cynically indifferent to men, or treat the one she likes best with affected cruelty. With refined men of the period Flirting, i.e. fascinating and leaving in doubt, is quite as effective in kindling adoration to ecstasy as crude Coyness was with the coarse-fibred men of the past. Flirtation, indeed, is much more tantalising than Coyness, and therefore a complete modern substitute for it.
There is a passage in Hume’s Dissertation on the Passions which, though occurring in a different connection, strikes home the truth of the last sentence most forcibly. “Uncertainty,” he says, “has the same effect as opposition. The agitation of the thought, the quick turns which it makes from one view to another, the variety of passions which succeed each other, according to the different views: all these produce an agitation in the mind; and this agitation transfuses itself into the predominant passion. Security, on the other hand, diminishes the passions. The mind, when left to itself, immediately languishes; and in order to preserve its ardour, must be supported every moment by a new flow of passion.”
Of course to those of a girl’s admirers who are for a while left in doubt and finally “get left” altogether, female flirtation may seem a cruel pastime. But there is a sort of historic justice in this torture which, indeed, almost amounts to an excuse for Coquetry; it is a species of feminine revenge for the long centuries of slavery in which muscular man held weak woman. Besides, no man has ever died of a broken heart, except in novels. And, again, who is to blame a pretty girl for having fascinated an unsuccessful lover? A rose yields its fragrance and beauty to all who wish to admire it. If a conceited young man comes along, imagines that all its beauty is for him alone, and tries to pluck it, he has only himself to blame if he feels the thorn of disappointment.
When Lord Chesterfield wrote, “I assisted at the birth of that most significant word ‘flirtation,’ which dropped from the most beautiful mouth in the world,” he perhaps hardly realised how very significant a factor of social life Flirtation was destined to become. Mr. Galton wrote, not long ago, that without female Coyness “there would be no more call for competition among the males for the favour of the females; no more fighting for love in which the strongest male conquers; no more rival display of personal charms in which the best-looking or best-mannered prevails. The drama of courtship, with its prolonged strivings and doubtful success, would be cut quite short, and the race would degenerate through the absence of that sexual selection for which the protracted preliminaries for love-making give opportunity.” When Mr. Galton wrote this, he did not apparently realise the