Give Her a Pattern

This is a strange title for a strange article, in which the singular English writer (D. H. Lawrence) tears the borrowed masks from the faces of women, so that beneath them a glaring and grave truth is revealed, the sum of which is that woman has never for a single day lived her natural life, and has never lived her true self at all.

The article was published in 1928, but twenty-nine years do not work miracles in changing social phenomena. Does that mean, then, that women, alas, still go about with carnival faces, and that the chance for them to appear as women of sound femininity has never presented itself, except rarely?

In any case, this is not an apologetic preface for translating the article; it is delightful and deserves to be read, and deserves that we pause before it in no hurried pause.

The real troubles of women lie in their being compelled to carry out all manner of experiments to adapt themselves to men's theories of them. The woman of natural appearance is no more than one who has succeeded in being what a man wanted her to be; and if hysteria mounts her, that is only because she does not know what she ought to be — which patterns to follow, which feminine design, drawn for her by a man, she is to fill in.

For just as the world is full of men, it is naturally full of men's theories about how women ought to be.

Men strive toward the type, and it is the type, not the individual, that determines the model theory of woman.

The grasping Romans laid down the theory of the woman as "mistress of the house," which suited to perfection their appetite for possession. Caesar's wife must be above suspicion; so she had to be above it, regardless of how far Caesar sank beneath it...

After them, (many) men devised the theory of "the harlot woman," and so it was that women flung themselves upon the pattern.

Then Dante appeared with his "pure and chaste" Beatrice, and her ideal held sway across the centuries. The age of the Renaissance came with the theory of the "cultured, learned" woman, and the gentle hum of belles-lettres ran through poetry and prose.

Dickens invented the character of the "child-wife," and hosts of child-wives appeared. Dickens also had a hand in creating another virtuous Beatrice — but one fit for marriage!.. namely Agnes. And George Eliot imitated his pattern and made it fast.

Then appeared the patterns of the "noble woman," the "pure consort," the "self-sacrificing mother" — and it lived on the stage until its death.

Our poor mothers were of this type; and so we men, who feared our mothers, were swept by a reaction toward the child-wife. And we were not inventive, so our conditions for her went no further than that she should have a boyish appearance.. Yes, that is the direction: young men fear the personality of the real woman. There are, of course, other theories and patterns; capable men draw up the designs of the patterns of capable women — doctors plan out nurses, businessmen plan out secretaries, and so on through the rest of the professions.

And you could, if you wished, arrive at the notion of honor for women as men plan it out — despite the obscurity of the operation!

Then there is the eternal secret pattern: "the woman-harlot!"

Scores of women live this pattern because men want them to live it.

Thus do circumstances and fates play with woman's destinies — not because she is a creature without a mind. No: she possesses it as man does; the only difference is that she asks for a pattern to follow. This is woman's cry — unless she has already chosen the pattern in her childhood and goes about declaring that she will be nothing but herself, and so no man's theory has any influence over her.

The real tragedy does not lie in women's asking for a pattern for their femininity, nor yet in men's giving them these generous patterns of the sort of child-wives, girls with boyish faces, skilled secretaries, noble pious women, sacrificing mothers, wives who bear children with virgin coldness, harlots who accept degradation as a favor to men... and other such ready-made patterns that deprive woman of being a complete human being. And man is prepared to accept woman as a lie — whether she be an angel, a devil, a baby-face, a machine, a bosom, a womb, a servant, an encyclopedic authority — anything except a human being, a real, feminine human being.

It is natural, too, that women love to live the strange, magical patterns. And the best of them, of course, is the one as far removed from the familiar and the ordinary as can be.

Yes, these are not the roots of the tragedy. The absurdity in Beatrice, Dante's pattern, has its source in her inhumanity, for it was imposed upon her to remain a pure virgin while he enjoyed a home and children. And yet this is not the worst of the matter; for the woman, if after long struggle she succeeds in adapting herself to the pattern, the man will hate her for it.

With marriage the patterns are shattered. If a certain man marries a certain pattern, he will begin to weary of the pattern and go madly searching for other patterns — noble Agnes, pure Beatrice, the child-wife, and so forth. Whatever the pattern, and however well the woman succeeds in putting it on, the man will demand another. And this is the tragedy of modern marriage.

The modern woman is no fool, but the modern man is a fool — that is the simplest statement of the problem. He becomes entangled in his own designs simply because he does not know how he wants her to be. We see how quickly the patterns change and succeed one another, and that is nothing but a reaction to men's hysteria in designing patterns. Women are not fools, but they must have patterns; they perceive the folly of men, and they do not respect the pattern either — yet they accept it, for otherwise they would lose their field of existence.

Yes, women are not fools; they too have their logic, though it differs from the logic of men. Theirs is the logic of emotion; men's is the logic of reason, and the two logics are opposed. Yet women's emotional logic is no less real and frank than men's rational logic; it merely works in a different direction.

Woman, in truth, never loses her emotional logic. She may spend her life living according to a certain pattern, and then, in the end, the terrible logic of emotion rises up in her and sets about smashing the pattern, if it has lacked emotional fulfillment. This is the partial explanation of the astonishing changes that come over women: they may long live a pure Beatrice, or a child-wife,

and suddenly the pure, meek Beatrice becomes a snarling lioness. The pattern has failed emotionally!!

As for the silly men, they agree upon the logic of reason — or so it is supposed.. and then they behave toward women in a manner more unreasonable than the logic of women themselves. They spend a lifetime training one woman according to a certain pattern, and when one of them marries her, after she has reached the stage of perfection, he casts her aside for something else. So beware, young lady, of the young men who love you; for they, once they attain you, look toward another. As soon as a man marries a girl belonging to the pattern of boyish nature, he begins at once to search for noble Agnes with her purity and her pride, or for the ideal mother with her broad, consoling bosom, or for the capable business woman, or the scowling harlot, or — and this is the strangest thing of all — for one who is a mixture of all of this.

This is the logic of reason; and so men, in the eyes of women, are fools who do not know what they want and do not forever want what they get. They ask for a cream cake that shall at the same time be meat and eggs and pudding. Yes, fools.. if only the fates had not bound women to them. For the truth of life lies in the necessity of woman's adapting herself to the pattern. And she — woman — gives the best of herself to a man who offers the fitting pattern.

But when ready-made patterns flood the markets, what can woman give man other than the trivial side of her emotions? What can a woman give a man who wants her face to look like a boy's face? And what can she reflect but the behavior of an idiot? And since women are not fools and cannot be deceived for long, the woman will provide him with nothing but a "scratch" of long fingernails that makes the man cry out, appealing to his mother like a child. And then he sets about changing the pattern!

Yes, men are fools. If they have any purpose at all in women, then let them give them the idea of sound, sober femininity — not these silly, clumsy patterns!!