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Chinese Fatherhood,
Gender and Family
Father Mission
Mario
Liong
Series Editors
Graham Allan
Keele University
United Kingdom
Lynn Jamieson
University of Edinburgh
Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Chinese Fatherhood,
Gender and Family
Father Mission
Mario Liong
Centennial College
Pok Fu Lam, Hong Kong
vii
viii Acknowledgements
ix
x Contents
Appendix 187
Bibliography 189
Index 213
1
Introduction: Chinese Fatherhood Revisited
from the fact that the income from social security was not enough to cover
the family expenses, he was worried that the stigma of being a social
security recipient would make his son feel shameful. He added that he
would definitely retire and live on welfare if he had been childless.
I was stunned. I could not imagine a father feeling responsible for
financially supporting a healthy adult son who was unwilling to work.
He even cared about his son’s feelings enough to refrain from retiring and
living on welfare. I wondered how many Chinese fathers would think the
same. I became interested in how men make sense of their father identity
and responsibility, and how their interpretations and fathering practices
are related to the notion of manhood and masculinities in the Chinese
context.
Parenthood is gendered in the contemporary Western world. Father-
hood is constructed differently from motherhood, each with different
gender roles. Women are the family’s main parent (Marshall 1991)
whereas men are part-time parents, baby entertainers, and mother’s assis-
tants (Sunderland 2000). Moreover, men do fewer house chores than
women, take a smaller share of parental leave, and work full time to a
much greater extent than their female partners (Leira 2002). The gendered
parenthood in turn marks a long-term structural inequality between
women and men (Dowd 2000). Women have to shoulder the cost of
caring work, which is not valued in society (Crittenden 2002; Ruddick
1995). Although women have become workers and even breadwinners,
they are still the primary caregivers; whereas men remain secondary parents
even though they are no longer the sole breadwinners (Doucet 2006),
because the father’s paid job is taken for granted and is often incompatible
with caregiving (Nentwich 2008).
Differentiation of parenthood based on gender is also observed in Hong
Kong. Fathers find themselves responsible for providing financially for the
family whereas mothers take care of children’s needs and daily routines
(Choi and Lee 1997; Opper 1993). Even when men help out with house
chores, they usually share those occasional, heavy, and difficult tasks, and
play with their children rather than taking care of their everyday needs (Lee
2002). Although women’s labour participation is considered a norm, they
have to put their familial duties first and ensure that family members will
not suffer from their employment; whereas men are expected to put their
1 Introduction: Chinese Fatherhood Revisited 3
jobs first, and share household tasks only if these tasks do not hinder their
jobs (Lee 2002). The ideology of the breadwinner/home-maker divide
along gender lines seems to remain strong at the household level (Chuang
and Su 2009).
With changing economic, social, and gender conditions, this traditional
notion of parenthood is being contested. The cultural ideal has it that
fathers provide the sole economic support for the family. Yet the actual
practice could not be further from the ideal. Particularly since the financial
crisis in 1997, unemployment and under-employment of men, as well as
increased education and job opportunities for women have made the
practice of the sole male breadwinner ideal rare in Hong Kong. Together
with the challenges from the women’s movement towards conventional
masculinity and male privileges, socio-cultural conditions have posed
serious challenges to the conventional fatherhood.
In view of these changing gender relations, in recent years some
non-government organizations have argued for the need to redefine father
identity by promoting the notion of “new fatherhood.” To be “new
fathers,” men should not only bring money home but are also expected
to be caring, to be leaders and protectors of the family, to be good role
models to their children, and to help develop their potential. With the
efforts of the women’s movement in the 1980s and 1990s, equality
between women and men has occupied a place in the mainstream political
agenda. Although it would be hard to find someone who explicitly claims
to disagree with the notion, gender-equal values and practices are still far
from being realized. Thus, the non-government organizations which
argued for the “new fatherhood” notion claimed that their intention was
to encourage men to work towards gender equality, as they were required
to be more caring and to share housework and childcare with their wives.
They argued that the notion responds to the claim of feminism and would
bring about positive change in spousal relations and the family; thus
women and men, children and parents, as well as society at large, would
benefit with more input from men into parenting.
4 Chinese Fatherhood, Gender and Family
Researching Fatherhood
Paternal Involvement
1997). Wheelock (1990) argues that the reason for unemployed men with
working spouses taking up more domestic work and childcare is pragmatic
consideration and does not mean that these men have changed their
gender attitudes. However, more recent studies indicate that active
involvement in children’s lives changes men’s view of themselves—they
become less self-centred and more nurturing (Plantin et al. 2003). When
men who are laid off and take care of children at home for some time go
back to the job market, they want jobs that allow them more time with
their children (Burgess 1997). Fathers in general also show a change in
attitude and are more willing to be involved with their children (Gregory
and Milner 2005).
Increasingly more and more studies show that fathers can nurture. Fathers
in two-parent families are capable of developing close relationships with their
children if given the opportunity (Smith 1998). As long as they become
involved, men feel more competent as parents (Baruch and Barnett 1986).
With the absence of the mother through employment, divorce, or death,
fathers demonstrate capability and readiness to take up caregiving (Dowd
2000; Gatrell 2007; Lamb 1986; Risman 1986). Men who are primary
caregivers come from all walks of life, and relate to their children in similar
ways as the mother (Burgess 1997). So men do demonstrate “capacities to do
emotional, hands-on caring which is remarked to be significantly different to
their own fathers’ style of involvement” (Miller 2010:192).
However, there exists a class difference in paternal involvement. Since
breadwinning is the taken-for-granted backdrop of paternity among
middle-class men (Dermott 2008), even though they share the caregiving
duties equally with their wives, they still spend less time with their
children than working-class fathers, who may not hold strong values
towards equal sharing (Deutsch 1999). Middle-class fathers’ professional
work often demands them to be flexible in their work; they spend many
hours at work and enjoy large discretion to excuse them from their
paternal responsibilities because their wives can take up their tasks if
needed, thus sacrificing the time spent in the family (Ranson 2001).
Moreover, the lack of structural and policy support for equal parenting
hinders middle-class couples from considering whether the man should
stay at home to take care of children because the financial loss would be
great (Plantin et al. 2003). Working-class couples tend to earn similarly
10 Chinese Fatherhood, Gender and Family
and therefore share the familial duties more equally (Burgess 1997). For
them, who should stay at home is a matter of practical consideration, as is
who can get and keep a job (Plantin et al. 2003).
The changing gender relations in the family due to divorce, and changes in
family policy and parenting approaches have aroused an increase in father-
hood research (Gregory and Milner 2005). These research studies do not
only focus on the effects of paternal involvement but also explore father-
hood as a gendered experience and phenomenon. Inspired by women’s
studies, which aims at documenting women’s experiences that have been
neglected in the conventional disciplinary research (Auslander 1997),
men’s studies wants to do the same, by investigating masculinities and
experiences of men as gendered beings within the larger context of gender
relations. The study of fatherhood aims at revealing the diverse and
interrelated meanings between paternal masculinities and manhood itself
(Haywood and Mac an Ghaill 2003).
Even when the ideal men’s role in the family has changed, the configu-
ration of conventional masculinities continues to shape men in their parent-
ing practice. Fathers continue to carry out their paternal responsibility in a
way that connects with the dominant masculinity, which is different from
mothering. For example, fathers across the social classes engage in physical
activities with their children, emphasize fun and playfulness with infants
and younger children, and promote independence and risk-taking in older
children (Doucet 2006; Pruett 2001). By examining the structural and
discursive resources and constraints among middle-class white men in
constructing their paternal responsibilities and experiences during their
first two years of paternity, Miller (2011) found that fatherhood is still
constructed around the breadwinning role. From his interviews with men
who graduated in the 1970s from a California high school, Townsend
(2002) reveals that fathers in the USA still make sense of their paternity in
relation to employment, marriage, and home-ownership. These three aspects
of paternity make up what he proposes as the “package deal,” which is the
cultural requirement of being a qualified man. Paid work allows fathers to
1 Introduction: Chinese Fatherhood Revisited 11
children (Abbott et al. 1992). He provides for the family (Jankowiak 1992),
controls the financial resources, and makes important decisions in the family
(Chuang and Su 2009). The father is expected to be aloof and distant
whereas the mother is nurturing and supportive (Chuang and Su 2009;
Wilson 1974). Despite the ideal patrilineal family relation is one in which
“the father is affectionate, the son is dutiful” (Shek and Sun 2014:27),
traditional Chinese fathering emphasizes strict disciplining and role model-
ling and is thus considered authoritarian and affectively distant (Li and Lamb
2013). As Confucianism considers emotion as antagonistic to educational
attainment, a mother’s love and affection can spoil the children and the
father is the one to observe the mother not to spoil the children (Ho 1987).
Fathers should therefore be stern and should discourage emotional indul-
gence, meaning that they are not to show their compassion towards their
children (Jankowiak 1992). As fathers are responsible for educating and
disciplining their children, even with spanking and scolding, and are there-
fore not expected to take care of infants or young children before they can
receive instructions (Abbott et al. 1992; Ho 1989). The majority of care-
giving activities are the responsibilities of the mother; fathers keep a distance
from the day-to-day care of children (Sun and Roopnarine 1996).
Children are expected to be compliant, respectful, and filial towards their
parents, especially their fathers (Li and Lamb 2013). They should behave
themselves and bring honour to the family; though they are not rewarded for
doing so they are severely punished if they do something wrong (Chuang
et al. 2013; Shek and Sun 2014). In addition, Confucian filial piety creates
the sentiment in children that parents are great and that children should
obey and serve them, repaying their indebtedness to their parents by
providing for them in their old age (Abbott et al. 1992; Shwalb et al. 2010).
With the patrilineal system and patriarchal ideology, the father–son
relationship is more important than the spousal relationship, and sons
are regarded as more important than daughters (Chuang et al. 2013).
Therefore, fathers have high expectations of their sons and are strict with
them (Shek and Sun 2014). As a result, the affectional distance between
the father and the child is greater than that between the mother and the
child (Ho 1987). Sometimes this distant fatherhood can result in anger
and anxiety in children in later life (Jankowiak 1992).
14 Chinese Fatherhood, Gender and Family
Theoretical Framework
“Father” is never a fixed identity. Fatherhood, which refers to the cultural
construction of fathers’ rights, responsibilities, and statuses as well as
discursive criteria of good and bad fathers (Gregory and Milner 2005),
is an ongoing construction subject to questions and change. It changes
with different social situations and is influenced by structural constraints,
such as traditional values, social norms, and cultural expectations upon
fathers (Coltrane and Parke 1998; Daly 1995; Marsiglio and Cohan 2000).
Studies of fathers’ roles and involvement often see fathers from a deficit
or inadequate perspective by comparing them against the ideal mother-
hood model (Dienhart 1998). This approach neglects the construction of
masculinities in fatherhood and ignores individuals’ understanding of
their paternity. Fathers are agents in reacting to and creating their familial
contexts. They consciously evaluate their resources and situations and
18 Chinese Fatherhood, Gender and Family
deliberate appropriate strategies that match with their values and goals.
When conventional fatherhood is increasingly called into question and
familial relations are less governed by tradition but are negotiated between
individuals, fathers have to reflect upon the meaning of paternity and
adjust their practice to adapt to social change (Williams 2008). They are
reflexive upon their status at home and their fatherhood from what they
perceive from others and society (Marsiglio and Cohan 2000). Therefore,
instead of treating mothering as the standard, fatherhood has to be
analysed with reference to the conceptions of masculinity within the
particular historical and socio-cultural context (Bjornberg 1998;
Brotherson, Dollahite, and Hawkins 2005; Moxnes 1999) and individual
fathers’ agency.
Fathering practices are mixed with reflexive considerations and sponta-
neous reactions in the family context. It is important to acknowledge both
fathers’ unconscious adherence to structural demands and their reflexive
strategies to maintain or advance their social positions. Practice theories that
examine structure/agency and reflexivity are employed as the framework to
analyse the dialectical construction of fatherhood by structural ideal and
individuals’ agency.
Structure/Agency
the structures of our world and that world is alterable by human agency”
(p. 7). However, arguing for complete agency is not totally convincing.
Human beings are not totally free in their actions. Wacquant (1989), in
explaining the relationship between agency and structure, points out that
“individuals make choices . . . [but] they do not choose the principals of
these choices” (p. 45). Snow (2001) suggests acknowledging the existence
of both: on the one hand human beings are not passive actors merely
carrying out orders from the structure; on the other hand, they are not
totally free but choose their lines of action within predispositions and
structural constraints.
Social scientists have been trying to integrate the agency–structure
dichotomy and formulate theories to understand how the two interact
to produce and reproduce society. Bourdieu, for example, proposes a
praxis theory in mapping the connection and interaction between agency
and structure. He thinks that social actors do not just confront their
circumstances but make up part of the social conditions themselves. An
individual internalizes social rules, and then reproduces them by acting
according to the rules, which Bourdieu describes as “the dialectical
relationship between the objective structures and the cognitive and moti-
vating structures which they produce and which tend to reproduce them”
(Bourdieu 1977:83). In the process, the social actors are themselves
reaffirming the social structure which trains them to be those that they
are at the present time (Jenkins 2002).
Bourdieu’s theory offers an anti-essentialist approach in looking at
practice. He thinks that an actor’s practice and thought comes from the
past experiences and pre-existing social structures (Dillabough 2004).
Bourdieu coined the term habitus, which is a durable yet transposable
scheme rooted in the body that encourages people to behave according to
existing practices. It has a “generative capacity” that leads people to react in
a certain style, although the behaviours can be different in different situa-
tions (Bourdieu 1990a:13; 1990b:55; 2000). Habitus operates through the
bodily dispositions and deeply embedded emotions and thinking (Lovell
2000) and affects people in every aspect, including “ways of talking, ways of
moving, ways of making things” (Jenkins 2002:75). It is the embodiment
of objective regularities and tendencies from the past, producing practices
that contain the anticipation of continuing the regularities and tendencies
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After a time, he volunteered: “Let me give you a concrete instance.
It has always interested me and it seems to prove that there is
something to what I say. It concerns a girl I know, a very homely one,
who lost her mind. At the beginning of her mental trouble her father
called me in to see what, if anything, could be done. The parents of
this girl were Catholics. He was a successful contractor and
politician, the father of three children; he provided very well for them
materially but could do little for them mentally. He was not the
intellectual but the religious type. The mother was a cheerful, good-
natured and conventional woman, and had only the welfare of her
children and her husband at heart. When I first came to know this
family—I was a young medical man then—this girl was thirteen or
fourteen, the youngest of the three children. Of these three children,
and for that matter of the entire family, I saw that this girl was
decidedly the most interesting psychically and emotionally. She was
intense and receptive, but inclined to be morbid; and for a very good
reason. She was not good-looking, not in any way attractive
physically. Worse, she had too good a mind, too keen a perception,
not to know how severe a deprivation that was likely to prove and to
resent it. As I came to know through later investigations—all the little
neglects and petty deprivations which, owing to her lack of looks and
the exceeding and of course superior charms of her sister and
brother, were throughout her infancy and youth thrust upon her. Her
mouth was not sweet—too large; her eyes unsatisfactory as to
setting, not as to wistfulness; her nose and chin were unfortunately
large, and above her left eye was a birthmark, a livid scar as large as
a penny. In addition her complexion was sallow and muddy, and she
was not possessed of a truly graceful figure; far from it. After she had
reached fifteen or sixteen, she walked, entirely by reason of mental
depression, I am sure, with a slow and sagging and moody gait;
something within, I suppose, always whispering to her that hope was
useless, that there was no good in trying, that she had been
mercilessly and irretrievably handicapped to begin with.
“On the other hand, as chance would have it, her sister and
brother had been almost especially favored by nature. Celeste Ryan
was bright, vivacious, colorful. She was possessed of a graceful
body, a beautiful face, clear, large and blue eyes, light glossy hair,
and a love for life. She could sing and dance. She was sought after
and courted by all sorts of men and boys. I myself, as a young man,
used to wish that I could interest her in myself, and often went to the
house on her account. Her brother also was smart, well-favored,
careful as to his clothes, vain, and interested in and fascinating to
girls of a certain degree of mind. He and his sister liked to dance, to
attend parties, to play and disport themselves wherever young
people were gathered.
“And for the greater part of Marguerite’s youth, or until her sister
and brother were married, this house was a centre for all the casual
and playful goings-on of youth. Girls and boys, all interested in
Celeste and her brother, came and went—girls to see the good-
looking brother, boys to flirt with and dance attendance upon the
really charming Celeste. In winter there was skating; in summer
automobiling, trips to the beach, camping even. In most of these
affairs, so long as it was humanly possible, the favorless sister was
included; but, as we all know, especially where thoughtless and
aggressive youth is concerned, such little courtesies are not always
humanly possible. Youth will be served. In the main it is too intent
upon the sorting and mating process, each for himself, to give the
slightest heed or care for another. Væ Victis.
“To make matters worse, and possibly because her several
deficiencies early acquainted her with the fact that all boys and girls
found her sister and brother so much more attractive, Marguerite
grew reticent and recessive—so much so that when I first saw her
she was already slipping about with the air of one who appeared to
feel that she was not as ingratiating and acceptable as she might be,
even though, as I saw, her mother and father sought to make her
feel that she was. Her father, a stodgy and silent man, too involved in
the absurdities of politics and religion and the difficulties of his
position to give very much attention to the intricacies and subtleties
of his children’s personalities, never did guess the real pain that was
Marguerite’s. He was a narrow and determined religionist, one who
saw in religious abstention, a guarded and reserved life, the only
keys to peace and salvation. In fact before he died an altar was built
in his house and mass was read there for his especial spiritual
benefit every morning. What he thought of the gayeties of his two
eldest children at this time I do not know, but since these were
harmless and in both cases led to happy and enduring marriages, he
had nothing to quarrel with. As for his youngest child, I doubt if he
ever sensed in any way the moods and torturous broodings that
were hers, the horrors that attend the disappointed love life. He had
not been disappointed in his love life, and was therefore not able to
understand. He was not sensitive enough to have suffered greatly if
he had been, I am sure. But his wife, a soft, pliable, affectionate,
gracious woman, early sensed that her daughter must pay heavily
for her looks, and in consequence sought in every way to woo her
into an unruffled complacence with life and herself.
“But how little the arts of man can do toward making up for the
niggardliness of nature! I am certain that always, from her earliest
years, this ugly girl loved her considerate mother and was grateful to
her; but she was a girl of insight, if not hard practical sense or
fortitude, and loved life too much to be content with the love of her
mother only. She realized all too keenly the crass, if accidental,
injustice which had been done her by nature and was unhappy,
terribly so. To be sure, she tried to interest herself in books, the
theatre, going about with a homely girl or two like herself. But before
her ever must have been the spectacle of the happiness of others,
their dreams and their fulfilments. Indeed, for the greater part of
these years, and for several years after, until both her sister and
brother had married and gone away, she was very much alone, and,
as I reasoned it out afterwards, imagining and dreaming about all the
things she would like to be and do. But without any power to compel
them. Finally she took to reading persistently, to attending theatres,
lectures and what not—to establish some contact, I presume, with
the gay life scenes she saw about her. But I fancy that these were
not of much help, for life may not be lived by proxy. And besides, her
father, if not her mother, resented a too liberal thought life. He
believed that his faith and its teachings were the only proper solution
to life.
“One of the things that interested me in connection with this case
—and this I gathered as chief medical counsel of the family between
Marguerite’s fifteenth and twenty-fifth year—was that because of the
lack of beauty that so tortured her in her youth she had come to take
refuge in books, and then, because of these, the facts which they
revealed in regard to a mere worthwhile life than she could have, to
draw away from all religion as worthless, or at least not very
important as a relief from pain. And yet there must have been many
things in these books which tortured her quite as much as reality, for
she selected, as her father once told me afterward—not her mother,
who could read little or nothing—only such books as she should not
read; books, I presume, that painted life as she wished it to be for
herself. They were by Anatole France, George Moore, de
Maupassant and Dostoyevsky. Also she went to plays her father
disapproved of and brooded in libraries. And she followed, as she
herself explained to me, one lecturer and another, one personality
and another, more, I am sure, because by this method she hoped to
contact, although she never seemed to, men who were interesting to
her, than because she was interested in the things they themselves
set forth.
“In connection with all this I can tell you of only one love incident
which befell her. Somewhere around the time when she was twenty-
one or -two she came in contact with a young teacher, himself not
very attractive or promising and whose prospects, as her father saw
them, were not very much. But since she was not pretty and rather
lonely and he seemed to find companionship, and mayhap solace in
her, no great objection was made to him. In fact as time went on, and
she and the teacher became more and more intimate, both she and
her parents assumed that in the course of time they would most
certainly marry. For instance, at the end of his school-teaching year
here in New York, and although he left the city he kept up a long
correspondence with her. In addition, he spent at least some of his
vacation near New York, at times returning and going about with her
and seeming to feel that she was of some value to him in some way.
“How much of this was due to the fact that she was provided with
spending money of her own and could take him here and there, to
places to which he could not possibly have afforded to go alone I
cannot say. None the less, it was assumed, because of their
companionship and the fact that she would have some money of her
own after marriage, that he would propose. But he did not. Instead,
he came year after year, visited about with her, took up her time, as
the family saw it (her worthless time!), and then departed for his
duties elsewhere as free as when he had come. Finally this having
irritated if not infuriated the several members of her family, they took
her to task about it, saying that she was a fool for trifling with him.
But she, although perhaps depressed by all this, was still not willing
to give him up; he was her one hope. Her explanation to the family
was that because he was poor he was too proud to marry until he
had established himself. Thus several more years came and went,
and he returned or wrote, but still he did not propose. And then of a
sudden he stopped writing entirely for a time, and still later on wrote
that he had fallen in love and was about to be married.
“This blow appeared to be the crowning one in her life. For in the
face of the opposition, and to a certain degree contempt, of her
father, who was a practical and fairly successful man, she had
devoted herself to this man who was neither successful nor very
attractive for almost seven years. And then after so long a period, in
which apparently he had used her to make life a little easier for
himself, even he had walked away and left her for another. She fell
to brooding more and more to herself, reading not so much now, as I
personally know, as just thinking. She walked a great deal, as her
father told me, and then later began to interest herself, or so she
pretended, in a course of history and philosophy at one of the great
universities of the city. But as suddenly, thereafter, she appeared to
swing between exaggerated periods of study or play or lecture-
listening and a form of recessive despair, under the influence of
which she retired to her room and stayed there for days, wishing
neither to see nor hear from any one—not even to eat. On the other
hand again, she turned abruptly to shopping, dressmaking and the
niceties which concerned her personal appearance; although even in
this latter phase there were times when she did nothing at all,
seemed to relax toward her old listlessness and sense of
inconsequence and remained in her room to brood.
“About this time, as I was told afterwards, her mother died and, her
sister and brother having married, she was left in charge of the
house and of her father. It was soon evident that she had no
particular qualifications for or interest in housekeeping, and a maiden
sister of her father came to look after things. This did not necessarily
darken the scene, but it did not seem to lighten it any. She liked this
aunt well enough, although they had very little in common mentally.
Marguerite went on as before. Parallel with all this, however, had run
certain things which I have forgotten to mention. Her father had been
growing more and more narrowly religious. As a matter of fact he
had never had any sympathy for the shrewd mental development
toward which her lack of beauty had driven her. Before she was
twenty-three as I have already explained, her father had noted that
she was indifferent to her church duties. She had to be urged to go
to mass on Sunday, to confession and communion once a month.
Also as he told me afterward, as something to be deplored, her
reading had caused her to believe that her faith was by no means
infallible, its ritual important; there were bigger and more interesting
things in life. This had caused her father not only to mistrust but to
detest the character of her reading, as well as her tendencies in
general. From having some sympathy with her at first, as did her
mother always, as the ugly duckling of the family, he had come to
have a cold and stand-offish feeling. She was, as he saw it, an
unnatural child. She did not obey him in respect to religion. He
began, as I have hinted, to look into her books, those in the English
tongue at least, and from a casual inspection came to feel that they
were not fit books for any one to read. They were irreligious,
immoral. They pictured life as it actually was, scenes and needs and
gayeties and conflicts, which, whether they existed or not, were not
supposed to exist; and most certainly they were not to be introduced
into his home, her own starved disposition to the contrary
notwithstanding. They conflicted with the natural chill and peace of
his religion and temperament. He forbade her to read such stuff, to
bring such books into his home. When he found some of them later
he burned them. He also began to urge the claims of his religion
more and more upon her.
“Reduced by this calamity and her financial dependence, which
had always remained complete, she hid her books away and read
them only outside or in the privacy of her locked room—but she read
them. The subsequent discovery by him that she was still doing this,
and his rage, caused her to think of leaving home. But she was
without training, without any place to go, really. If she should go she
would have to prepare herself for it by teaching, perhaps, and this
she now decided to take up.
“About this time she began to develop those characteristics or
aberrations which brought me into the case. As I have said, she
began to manifest a most exaggerated and extraordinary interest in
her facial appearance and physical well-being, an interest not at all
borne out rationally by her looks. Much to her father’s and his sister’s
astonishment, she began to paint and primp in front of her mirror
nearly all day long. Lip sticks, rouge, eyebrow pencils, perfumes,
rings, pins, combs, and what not else, were suddenly introduced—
very expensive and disconcerting lingerie, for one thing.
“The family had always maintained a charge account at at least
two of the larger stores of the city, and to these she had recently
repaired, as it was discovered afterwards, and indulged herself,
without a by-your-leave, in all these things. High-heeled slippers,
bright-colored silk stockings, hats, blouses, gloves, furs, to say
nothing of accentuated and even shocking street costumes, began to
arrive in bundles. Since the father was out most of the day and the
elderly aunt busy with household affairs, nothing much of all this was
noted, until later she began to adorn herself in this finery and to walk
the streets in it. And then the due bills, sixty days late; most
disturbing but not to be avoided. And so came the storm.
“The father and aunt, who had been wondering where these things
were coming from, became very active and opposed. For previous to
this, especially in the period of her greatest depression, Marguerite
had apparently dressed with no thought of anything, save a kind of
resigned willingness to remain inconspicuous, as much as to say:
‘What difference does it make. No one is interested in me.’ Now,
however, all this had gone—quite. She had supplied herself with hats
so wide and ‘fancy’ or ‘fixy,’ as her father said, that they were a
disgrace. And clothing so noticeable or ‘loud’—I forget his exact
word—that any one anywhere would be ashamed of her. There
were, as I myself saw when I was eventually called in as specialist in
the case, too many flowers, too much lace, too many rings, pins and
belts and gewgaws connected with all this, which neither he nor his
sister was ever quite able to persuade her to lay aside. And the
colors! Unless she were almost forcibly restrained, these were likely
to be terrifying, even laughter-provoking, especially to those
accustomed to think of unobtrusiveness as the first criterion of taste
—a green or red or light blue broad-trimmed hat, for instance, with
no such color of costume to harmonize with it. And, whether it
became her or not, a white or tan or green dress in summertime, or
one with too much red or too many bright colors in winter. And very
tight, worn with a dashing manner, mayhap. Even high-heeled
slippers and thin lacy dresses in bitter windy weather. And the
perfumes with which she saturated herself were, as her father said,
impossible—of a high rate of velocity, I presume.
“So arrayed, then, she would go forth, whenever she could
contrive it, to attend a theatre, a lecture, a moving picture, or to walk
the streets. And yet, strangely enough, and this was as curious a
phase of the case as any, she never appeared to wish to thrust her
personal charms, such as they were, on any one. On the contrary, as
it developed, there had generated in her the sudden hallucination
that she possessed so powerful and self-troubling a fascination for
men that she was in danger of bewildering them, enticing them
against themselves to their moral destruction, as well as bringing
untold annoyance upon herself. A single glance, one look at her
lovely face, and presto! they were enslaved. She needed but to walk,
and lo! beauty—her beauty, dazzling, searing, destroying—was
implied by every motion, gesture. No man, be he what he might,
could withstand it. He turned, he stared, he dreamed, he followed
her and sought to force his attention on her. Her father explained to
me that when he met her on the street one day he was shocked to
the point of collapse. A daughter of his so dressed, and on the street!
With the assistance of the maiden sister a number of modifications
was at once brought about. All charge accounts were cancelled.
Dealers were informed that no purchases of hers would be honored
unless with the previous consent of her father. The worst of her
sartorial offenses were unobtrusively removed from her room and
burnt or given away, and plainer and more becoming things
substituted.
“But now, suddenly, there developed a new and equally interesting
stage of the case. Debarred from dressing as she would, she began
to imagine, as these two discovered, that she was being followed
and admired and addressed and annoyed by men, and that at her
very door. Eager and dangerous admirers lurked about the place. As
the maiden aunt once informed me, having wormed her way into
Marguerite’s confidence, she had been told that men ‘were wild’
about her and that go where she would, and conduct herself
however modestly and inconspicuously, still they were inflamed.
“A little later both father and sister began to notice that on leaving
the house or returning to it she would invariably pause, if going out,
to look about first; if returning, to look back as though she were
expecting to see some one outside whom she either did or did not
wish to see. Not infrequently her comings-in were accompanied by
something like flight, so great a need to escape some presumably
dangerous or at least impetuous pursuer as to cause astonishment
and even fear for her. There would be a feverish, fumbled insertion
of the key from without, after which she would fairly jump in, at the
same time looking back with a nervous, perturbed glance. Once in
she would almost invariably pause and look back as though, having
succeeded in eluding her pursuer, she was still interested to see
what he was like or what he was doing, often going to the curtained
windows of the front room to peer out. And to her then confidante,
this same aunt, she explained on several occasions that she had
‘just been followed again’ all the way from Broadway or Central Park
West or somewhere, sometimes by a most wonderful-looking
gentleman, sometimes by a most loathsome brute. He had seen her
somewhere and had pursued her to her very room. Yet, brute or
gentleman, she was always interested to look back.
“When her father and aunt first noted this manifestation they had
troubled to inquire into it, looking into the street or even going so far
as to go to the door and look for the man, but there was no one, or
perchance some passing pedestrian or neighbor who most certainly
did not answer to the description of either handsome gentleman or
brute. Then sensibly they began to gather that this was an illusion.
But by now the thing had reached a stage where they began to feel
genuine alarm. Guests of the family were accused by her of
attempting to flirt with her, of making appealing remarks to her as
they entered, and neighbors of known polarity and conventional
rigidity of presuming to waylay her and forcing her to listen to their
pleas. Thus her father and aunt became convinced that it was no
longer safe for her to be at large. The family’s reputation was at
stake; its record for freedom from insanity about to be questioned.
“In due time, therefore, I was sent for, and regardless of how much
they dreaded a confession of hallucination here the confession was
made to me. I was asked to say what if anything could be done for
her, and if nothing, what was to be done with her. After that I was
permitted to talk to Marguerite whom of course I had long known, but
not as a specialist or as one called in for advice. Rather, I was
presented to her as visiting again as of yore, having dropped in after
a considerable absence. She seemed pleased to see me, only as I
noticed on this, as on all subsequent occasions, she seemed to
wish, first, not to stay long in my presence and more interesting still,
as I soon noted, to wish to keep her face, and even her profile,
averted from me, most especially her eyes and her glances.
Anywhere, everywhere, save at me she looked, and always with the
purpose, as I could see, of averting her glances.
“After she had left the room I found that this development was new
to the family. They had not noticed it before, and then it struck me as
odd. I suspected at once that there was some connections between
this and her disappointed love life. The devastating effect of lack of
success in love in youth had been too much for her. So this averted
glance appeared to me to have something to do with that. Fearing to
disturb or frighten her, and so alienate her, I chose to say nothing but
instead came again and again in order to familiarize her with my
presence, to cause her once more to take it as a matter of course.
And to enlist her interest and sympathy, I pretended that there was a
matter of taxes and some involved property that her father was
helping me to solve.
“And in order to insure her presence I came as a rule just before
dinner, staying some little time and talking with her. To guarantee
being alone with her I had her father and his sister remain out for a
few minutes after I arrived, so as to permit me to seem to wait. And
on these occasions I invented all sorts of excuses for coming into
conversation with her. On all of these visits I noticed that she still
kept her face from me. Having discussed various things with her, I
finally observed: ‘I notice, Marguerite, that whenever I come here
now you never look at me. Don’t you like me? You used to look at
me, and now you keep your face turned away. Why is that?’
“‘Oh, of course I like you, doctor, of course,’ she replied, ‘only,’ she
paused, ‘well, I’ll tell you how it is: I don’t want to have the same
effect on you that I do on other men.’”
“She paused and I stared, much interested. ‘I’m afraid I don’t quite
understand, Marguerite,’ I said.
“‘Well, you see, it’s this way,’ she went on, ‘it’s my beauty. All you
men are alike you see: you can’t stand it. You would be just the
same as the rest. You would be wanting to flirt with me, too, and it
wouldn’t be your fault, but mine. You can’t help it. I know that now.
But I don’t want you to be following me like the rest of them, and you
would be if I looked at you as I do at the others.’ She had on at the
time a large hat, which evidently she had been trying on before I
came, and now she pulled it most coquettishly low over her face and
then sidled, laughingly, out of the room.
“When I saw and heard this,” he went on, “I was deeply moved
instead of being amused as some might imagine, for I recognized
that this was an instance of one of those kindly compensations in
nature about which I have been talking, some deep inherent wish on
the part of some overruling Providence perhaps to make life more
reasonably endurable for all of us. Here was this girl, sensitive and
seeking, who had been denied everything—or, rather, the one thing
she most craved in life; love. For years she had been compelled to
sit by and see others have all the attention and pleasures, while she
had nothing—no pleasures, no lovers. And because she had been
denied them their import had been exaggerated by her; their color
and splendor intensified. She had been crucified, after a fashion,
until beauty and attention were all that her mind cried for. And then,
behold the mercy of the forces about which we are talking! They
diverted her mind in order to save her from herself. They appeared
at last to preserve her from complete immolation, or so I see it. Life
does not wish to crucify people, of that I am sure. It lives on itself—
as we see,—is “red of beak and claw” as the phrase has it—and yet,
in the deep, who knows there may be some satisfactory explanation
for that too—who can tell? At any rate, as I see it basically,
fundamentally, it is well-intentioned. Useless, pointless torture had
no real place in it; or at least so I think.” He paused and stared, as
though he had clinched his argument.
“Just the same, as you say,” I insisted, “it does live on itself, the
slaughter houses, the stockyards, the butcher shops, the germs that
live and fatten as people die. If you can get much comfort out of
these you are welcome.”
He paid no attention to me. Instead, he went on: “This is only a
theory of mine, but we know, for instance, that there is no such thing
as absolute evil, any more than there is absolute good. There is only
relative evil and relative good. What is good for or to me may be evil
to you, and vice versa, like a man who may be evil to you and good
to me.
“In the case of this girl I cannot believe that so vast a thing as life,
involving as it does, all the enormous forces and complexities, would
single out one little mite such as she deliberately and specially for
torture. On the contrary, I have faith to believe that the thing is too
wise and grand for that. But, according to my theory, the machinery
for creating things may not always run true. A spinner of plans or
fabrics wishes them to come forth perfect of course, arranges a
design and gathers all the colors and threads for a flawless result.
The machine may be well oiled. The engine perfectly geared. Every
precaution taken, and yet in the spinning here and there a thread will
snap, the strands become entangled, bits, sometimes whole
segments spoiled by one accident and another, but not intentionally.
On the other hand, there are these flaws, which come from where I
know not, of course, but are accidental, I am sure, not intended by
the spinner. At least I think so. They cause great pain. They cause
the worst disasters. Yet our great mother, Nature, the greatest
spinner of all, does what she can to right things—or so I wish to
believe. Like the spinner himself, she stops the machine, unites the
broken strands, uses all her ability to make things run smoothly once
more. It is my wish to believe that in this case, where a homely girl
could not be made into a beautiful one and youth could not be
substituted for maturity, still nature brought about what I look upon as
a beneficent illusion, a providential hallucination. Via insanity,
Marguerite attained to all the lovely things she had ever longed for.
In her unreason she had her beautiful face, her adoring cavaliers—
they turned and followed her in the streets. She was beautiful to all,
to herself, and must hide her loveliness in order to avert pain and
disaster to others. How would you explain that? As reasoned and
malicious cruelty on the part of nature. Or as a kindly intervention, a
change of heart, a wish on the part of nature or something to make
amends to her for all that she suffered, not to treat her or any of us
too brutally or too unfairly? Or just accident? How?”
He paused once more and gazed at me, as much as to say:
“Explain that, if you can.” I, in turn, stared, lost for the time being in
thoughts of this girl, for I was greatly impressed. This picture of her,
trying, in her deranged imaginings as to her beauty, to protect others
from herself, turning her face away from those who might suffer
because of her indifference, because she in her day had suffered
from the indifference of others, finding in hallucination, in her jumbled
fancies, the fulfilment of all her hopes, her dreams, was too sad. I
was too sad. I could not judge, and did not. Truly, truly, I thought, I
wish I might believe.
“Master, how may I know the Infinite, the Good, and attain to union
with it, as thou hast?” And the Master replied: “By desiring it utterly.”
XV
THE PRINCE WHO WAS A THIEF