From Salon Archives

French Women - La Passion

"There is so much pressure on American women to be happy. To sweep away all traces of loneliness, to forget who you are in your search for a lover or a spouse. In France young girls learn that happiness is elusive; we learn that happiness is less important than passion."

As girls we Americans sit in our field of daisies and pull off petals with, "He loves me, he loves me not, he loves me, he loves me not." Meanwhile French girls sit in their meadows with their marguerites and pull off petals with: "He loves me a little. A lot. Passionately. Madly. Not at all." Why does the little French girl innately think in nuances and increasing levels of passion while we're mired in the black-and-white of total love or utter rejection?

French women are a bundle of alluring contradictions that seem to perfectly coexist, like the unlikely mélange of sweet and sour. They're often annoyingly coy and darkly wanton. Many of them are not great beauties and yet are gorgeously compelling in the way they reconcile their imperfections. They tend to be more concerned with experiencing pleasure than with being liked and far more passionate about having a life than making a living.

In her classic "The French and Their Ways," Edith Wharton had already singled out this sophistication back in 1919. The French woman "is in nearly all respects, as different as possible from the average American woman," Wharton wrote. "Is it because she dresses better, or knows more about cooking, or is more 'coquettish,' or more 'feminine,' or more emotional, or more 'immoral'? The real reason is not nearly as flattering to our national vanity. It is simply that the French woman is more grown-up. [Wharton's italics.] Compared with the women of France the average American woman is still in kindergarten."

Excusez-moi: Did you say kindergarten? I suppose if Wharton were comparing French and American women over the long course of history, then we Americans would be the innocent toddlers. When I was a girl I used to marvel at French women in history books precisely for this reason. They led armies of querulous men. They were burned at stakes. They got their heads chopped off for being petulant little queens. They were sexy and bellicose and bare-breasted. Even the symbol of the French Republic, the fair-haired Marianne, stormed Paris with (if we take Delacroix's depiction of her as our reference) her impudent and perfectly pulpy breasts exposed. French girls grow up with this legacy of women who were utterly feminine and totally kick-ass; a legacy of bare breasts, revolutions, royal courts, sex, death, blood, guts and great hair. Meanwhile, my generation of American girls grew up with Betty Crocker, Girl Scouts and training bras -- and Julia Child was as French as it got. How unfair is that?

"We're a grown-up culture. America is a super power but historically you're barely adolescent. We were dismissing the Church because of its corruption hundreds of years ago while you Anglos were naively embracing it. History has taught us that you can't rely on dogma or doctrine. Relationships burn brightly, then die. We have our passions, our human tragedies, our loves and our losses. We have a couple of centuries of living and dying over you Americans."

Our heroine runs down the street toward an unknown future, a liberating and strangely happy glow on her face.

As long as you have the 24-hour access to Salon explore the archives.