2/27/24
This chapter begins with an interesting back and forth between Stendhal and an unnamed woman that took place on the 9th of March, 1820. Stendhal starts it off with an assertion:
A girl of eighteen cannot crystallize so well as a woman of twenty-eight, and conceived desires too limited by her narrow experiences of life to be able to love passionately.
Stendhal discussed this matter with a woman whose intelligence he clearly admires greatly and who responded that the younger girl will crystallize more effectively:
Quite possibly she will create for herself an entrancing picture of some quite ordinary man. Every time she meets her lover she will enjoy, not the man as he really is, but the wonderful inner vision she has created.
Stendhal gives his rebuttal, but at the end of it, he appends this:
A point which had seemed to me quite obvious is contradicted, and convinces me more and more that a man is almost incapable of saying anything sensible about what goes on in the inmost heart of a sensitive woman.
In other words, Stendhal admits defeat here and therefore you should not accept the assertions he’s just made. This is interesting, because he continues making assertions about the heart of a sensitive woman in the paragraphs ahead. Should you take that with skepticism as well?
This paragraph sums up his thoughts:
For a man, hope depends simply on the actions of the woman he loves, and nothing is easier to interpret than these. For a woman, hope must be based on moral considerations which are extremely difficult to assess. Most men seek a proof of love which they consider dispels all doubt; women are not lucky enough to be able to find a like proof. It is one of life’s misfortunes that what brings certainty and happiness to one lover brings danger and almost humiliation to the other.
I like the final line, but I’m not sure if I buy any of this. Are the actions of women easy for men to interpret? Don’t men frequently misinterpret things women do out of routine kindness — or simply doing their job well – as evidence of something more? Or maybe Stendhal isn’t making that point, maybe he’s saying that women performing acts of kindness is enough to give men hope, whether that hope is true or false. Either way, I don’t think men do a very good job of interpreting the actions of women accurately.
As for the part about moral considerations, Stendhal elaborates on this in the next paragraph:
In love, men run the risk of suffering secret torments, while women lay themselves open to public jest.
I think there is something to this. Men are almost never judged as harshly as women in matters of romantic or sexual drama. I feel like I suffer an unusual number of secret torments, but these are almost never over consummated relationships. It’s the ones avoided that always create lasting pain.
And I also think this Stendhal line about women is true:
They have no sure means of winning public approval by revealing their real selves for a moment.
It’s a sad truth, in my opinion, that has transcended cultural changes. A man will be forgiven the senseless things he does out of passion, but a woman will be judged harshly for them.
Stendhal extrapolates from this that men are put on the offense because of this reality while women are stuck on defense. She has to make him earn it, and the higher the public stakes involved, the more difficult that challenge will be.
But this chapter leaves me wanting something more. I want Stendhal to bring back that intelligent sparring partner from the beginning to test everything he says and to lend validity to it. I appreciate that Stendhal enjoys these kinds of discussions with intelligent women — I do too — I just wish he’d share that wisdom with us a bit more.