One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

George Meredith
She left Victor uncomfortably rufed: and how? for she had
none of the physical charms appealing peculiarly to the man
who was taken with grandeur of shape. She belonged rather
to the description physically distasteful to him.
It is a critical comment on a civilization carelessly distilled
from the jealous East, when visits of fair women to City offices
can have this effect. If the sexes are separated for an
hour, the place where one is excluded or not common to see,
becomes inflammable to that appearing spark. He does outrage
to a bona Dea: she to the monasticism of the Court of
Law: and he and she awaken unhallowed emotions. Supposing,
however, that western men were to de-orientalize their
gleeful notions of her, and dis-Turk themselves by inviting
the woman’s voluble tongue to sisterly occupation there in
the midst of the pleading Court, as in the domestic circle:
very soon would her eyes be harmless: unless directed upon
us with intent.
That is the burning core of the great Question, our Armageddon
in Morality: Is she moral? Does she mean to be harmless?
Is she not untamable Old Nature? And when once on
an equal footing with her lordly half, would not the spangled
beauty, in a turn, like the realistic transformation-trick of a
pantomime, show herself to be that wanton old thing—the
empress of disorderliness? You have to recollect, as the Conservative
acutely suggests, that her timidities, at present urging
her to support Establishments, pertain to her state of
dependence. The party views of Conservatism are, must be,
founded, we should remember, on an intimate acquaintance
with her in the situations where she is almost unrestrictedly
free and her laughter rings to confirm the sentences of classical
authors and Eastern sages. Conservatives know what they
are about when they refuse to fling the last lattice of an ancient
harem open to air and sun-the brutal dispersers of
mystery, which would despoil an ankle of its flying wink.
Victor’s opinions were those of the entrenched majority;
objecting to the occult power of women, as we have the
women now, while legislating to maintain them so; and forbidding
a step to a desperately wicked female world lest the
step should be to wickeder. His opinions were in the background,
rarely stirred; but the lady had brought them forward;
and he fretted at his restlessness, vexed that it should
be due to the intrusion of the sex instead of to the charms of
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