The American Woman

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The American girl finds no embarrassment in going out with a young man whose family or social standing she does not know at all. All that matters to her is that she trust him and that the two be at a comparable level of education and thinking. When the young man pleases her and his invitations to go out with him multiply, she avoids going out with anyone else, and then considers herself as good as engaged to him.

It is noticeable in the United States that marriage is frequent among young people of the same age; 85 percent of American men are equal in age to their wives.

The American girl sees no necessity whatever for consulting her family on her decision to marry; rather she considers it natural that she herself should be the authority in the matter. Once my companion at the university came to announce to me, joyfully, the news of her engagement. I asked her whether her family knew the fiancé, and she shook her head no and said: "When I go home for the Christmas holidays, I shall surprise my parents with the news of my engagement. That glad tiding will be my holiday present to them!"

The American mother may well be anxious about her daughter's future, yet she rarely shows it to her. I know an American girl who was hesitating over marrying one of her companions, and when she sounded her mother on it, the mother answered: "You are past twenty, and you know your own good better than I do; so I will not give you my opinion of this young man, lest it influence your decision to marry him!"

The United States can boast that the proportion of married people among young folk of twenty to twenty-five is higher than in any European country. One of the chief reasons for this is that the material responsibilities of marriage are small. The young man is not obliged to pay half his fortune, say, as a dower for the bride, or to borrow money to buy the trousseau and jewels. The utmost the American girl requires is the engagement ring; and apart from young men who own millions, the price of the ring does not usually exceed two hundred dollars. The American young man ordinarily disdains to offer a ring bought at his father's expense, and I have often seen a girl proud of an engagement ring hardly worth a hundred dollars, when her fiancé's father, or her own, could buy her a ring worth thousands of dollars!

As for the trousseau, it is not given the importance it has in our country. In the big stores there is a special employee whose purpose is to guide the girl in

buying the clothes she needs according to her budget. Nor does the bride furnish a complete house at the start of her married life; she does so gradually, over several years. And so the two move into a small apartment.

The wife often works several years before settling in the home to raise the children. Seventy-five percent of newly married women in America work a year or more at the outset of their married life.

The girl considers her material help to her husband necessary at first, to secure the purchase of house furniture and kitchen necessities. Thus, by the time the baby is born, the house is complete in its contents — even if the greater part of the furniture is being paid for in monthly installments.

I often visited some of my newly married American friends, and sometimes there was no third chair for the table!

At supper the husband would offer me his chair and sit on a table with some books stacked on it. That day his wife apologized to me, saying frankly: "My husband still needs another year to obtain his engineering degree, and though we both work, what we earn is barely enough for the house and to finish paying his fees at the university!"

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There is no doubt that the American girl enjoys a freedom and a boldness which the Arab girl might well envy her. She is, though, less gentle and less quiet! And no doubt her material ambition and her clinging to her personal independence have cost her some of her femininity, especially the qualities of bashfulness and modesty with which the Arab girl is adorned.

American society places the girl's responsibility on her own shoulders, yet its reckoning is severe with any girl who strays in her conduct, especially in the states that are still conservative and attached to religion and its teachings.

Thus we see that the American girl, although there is no family and there are no traditions binding her, is in most cases mindful of her own good and her future, even when she is thousands of miles away from her home.

It is noticeable, too, that she is free of affectation in her behavior, frank in her speech, good-hearted, and easily trusts everyone around her.