The Eternal Masculine

CLARA FRANCES MCINTYRE, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH, UNIVERSITY OF WYOMING, LARAMIE, WYOMING.

NE gets a little tired-if one is a woman-of hearing about the Eternal Feminine. May one be pardoned, in a moment of irritation, for referring to certain points of view as "eternally masculine"?

I am not by nature an ardent suffragette, or suffragist, or even an ardent feminist. But I have read with considerable interest, and even more amusement, Mr. Doyle's article on "The Phi Beta Kappa Tempest,"* in which he uses many turns and twists of ingenuity to prove that women have not done what they have seemed to do.

I was not even aware, myself, of the disturbance in Phi Beta Kappa circles. Like most other feminine members, apparently, I have been content to take what recognition was accorded me, and not to concern myself very much about the general policy of the society. For if women are coming into it in such overwhelming numbers, they surely might have something to say about the suggested sex limitations. I agree with Mr. Doyle that any such limitation would be illogical and absurd. But I do not think the whole matter is quite such a tempest in a teapot as he makes out. I believe it points to conditions in our modern college education which he has overlooked.

Before advancing my own notion, however, I should like to comment briefly on some of his arguments.

He begins by calling biology to his aid, and declaring that men are more dynamic than women, and therefore less interested in book education, which is a static activity. This may be true, but Phi Beta Kappa, as I understand it, was founded by men who

In Education for October, 1920, page 86.

were interested in scholarship, and scholarship to them implied mental attainment. If the society wishes to change its standards and to be made up of those who possess the most native mentality, they should choose their members by administering psychological tests, instead of judging them by what they have accomplished during a college course.

In the sociological field, also, Mr. Doyle finds support. "In the field of college and university work," he says, "academic honors are about the only ones that are open to women, or at least the only ones that make any universal appeal to them." And again, "While women are working with a focused attention on one field, that of scholarship, men are working with an attention which is dispersed over several fields."

In the university with which I am best acquainted, men and women alike are engaged in so many activities that those of us who belonged to a less "clubbable" college generation find our heads swimming with the effort to keep them straight. Glee club, orchestra, literary clubs, dramatic clubs, Greek letter fraternities, student council, there are so many meetings that there are not nights enough in the week to accommodate them all,-to say nothing of the accompaniment of purely social affairs, such as dances, fraternity receptions, and the like. The only activity in which the women of this institution do not engage as completely as the men is the intercollegiate athletic contest, and it is, of course, only a comparatively small proportion of the men students that is included in these contests.

Under the head of "social aggressiveness" Mr. Doyle maintains that men go to more shows than women, and to more athletic events. This seems to be a mere statement, without supporting evidence. He says that "men visit one another more." In answer to this, I am inclined to ask him-of course it is merely a rhetorical question-if he has ever lived in a girls' dormitory. I have. Further comment I will not make. The cream of his argument in this section, however, is found in the statement that "men 'squander' more time in association with women than women do with men." It may be possible to figure this out by mathematical quibbling,

but it sounds dangerously like another vain attempt to prove that two and two do not make four.

Next there comes, of course, the time-worn controversy, the question of charm. We all remember Maggie's declaration, in What Every Woman Knows, "If you have it, you don't need to have anything else; and if you don't have it, it doesn't much matter what else you have." Far be it from any feminine creature to pronounce herself on such a subject. Personally, I have always thought that charm, like the rain, fell upon the just and the unjust, on the learned and the stupid, without discrimination. In reference to the statement that Phi Beta Kappa women have less demand on their time by men than do the women students who are less mentally inclined, I will merely make one remark—which, I am quite aware, is of no value as proof. Last year, out of seven students who were charter members of a senior honor society here, three were girls. All were among the most popular girls in the university, and one had been engaged through most of her college course. This, I once more admit, proves nothing; it only brings to my mind the ancient saying about straws and the wind.

Most illuminating to me was the section entitled The Relative Lure of Prizes. Here Mr. Doyle asserts that women, through their greater love of adornment, covet the Phi Beta Kappa pin. Two thoughts occur to me in this connection. I wonder if he realizes how "bepinned" the average college student nowadays is. Many a girl who sits before me in class is decorated with at least three pins-her own fraternity pin, that of the favored suitor of the moment, and that of some other society, literary or social. In fact, with some of them the thing has come to such a pass that they might well hesitate to join another society lest they resemble a walking jewelry counter. Furthermore, I would ask: Which side of humanity is it that delights in Masonic emblems, that loves to adorn itself with clanking swords and waving white plumes? Do we not notice always, when a man assumes a uniform, that there is a little change in his gait ?—it would be unkind to call it a strut. I will admit that the attitude toward the uniform has changed somewhat since the war. But it would be hard to con

vince me that devotion to insignia is confined to the feminine sex. Moreover, the type of femininity whose ruling passion is love of adornment certainly could not satisfy her longings with the simplicity of a Phi Beta Kappa key.

men.

Men Faculties and the Eternal Feminine introduces what seems to me a distinct fallacy in argument. Women who are of Phi Beta Kappa calibre, Mr. Doyle has told us, are not attractive to In this section he solemnly assures us that "the appeal to men of the eternal feminine enters to a certain extent into grades given women by classroom professors." Without commenting further on this apparent contradiction, I would merely call attention to two facts. While the proportion of women elected to Phi Beta Kappa has been increasing, the proportion of women teaching in co-educational institutions has likewise been increasing; so the "eternal feminine" would have less chance to get in its work. Also, in most Phi Beta Kappa elections in large universities, the candidates cannot be personally known to all those voting on them. Surely no man would be so prepossessed in favor of the feminine sex that he would vote for a woman just because she was a woman, without even knowing her by sight.

There is rather more in Mr. Boyle's argument that women are spurred on to work by the fact that their chance at a higher education is comparatively new. But this is much less true than it would have been a few years earlier. Twenty years ago-even ten-women were urged on by such considerations. Now, especially in our state universities, men and women are received on such absolutely equal terms that there is little of that feeling of stress and strain.

I am quite willing to admit that Mr. Doyle may be right when he says that women apply themselves more than men. At least, they apply themselves with more interest to the kind of subjects that win a Phi Beta Kappa key. And that brings me to my own view of the present Phi Beta Kappa conditions. The average 'American young man looks with indifference, if not with contempt, upon most of the subjects which the older education reverenced. The founders of Phi Beta Kappa wanted to encourage devotion to

the great things in literature and philosophy and art; their ideal was culture, somewhat after Matthew Arnold's definition of it as "sweetness and light." Art, literature, philosophy, are impractical and effeminate to most of the youths of today. A boy, talented in music and really passionately fond of it, remarked, “Oh, I wouldn't think of being a professional musician. That's all right for girls." The young men in our colleges, if they have any aspiration toward honor societies, are much more likely to turn to one whose scope is purely scientific than to one which emphasizes general culture.

There, it seems to me, is the problem, not only of Phi Beta Kappa, but of the American college itself. For if the present tendency toward the ultra-practical and the ultra-modern continues, it will soon be not only men but women as well, who will be turning their backs on Phi Beta Kappa and whatever it has to offer.

The great question is: How far is specialization going to invade the work of American universities? Is "college education" in the old sense, the sense of a general acquaintance with the great thought of the world, to become extinct? Are our brightest and most energetic young men going to choose, more and more, a technical and professional training, which will bring larger and prompter money rewards? Living conditions at the present time are certainly pushing them toward this decision. Public opinion, with its emphasis upon material values, is helping to give an extra shove.

This is what makes the real importance of the Phi Beta Kappa situation-not the old, silly contention of masculine or feminine superiority. Now that the psychologists have brought intelligence tests to such a point that some colleges are willing to use them in place of entrance examinations, it ought soon to be easy enough to classify the results, if any one is really concerned to know whether men's intelligence is superior to that of women. But the other question the question of just what college education in America is going in the future to mean-is much more difficult. How are we going to answer it?