The Feminine Absolute

To be sure, on the March day this chunky little girl of nine came into our school, we saw neither grace nor delicacy in her stocky figure with its large head, perceptible stomach, and torso unrelieved by any waist line. She revealed herself, however, the incarnation of the popular ideal of her sex in the subtle charm of her golden brown eyes, of her creamy skin, and of the pale luster of her fine, straight hair; and, above all, in the orientation of her interests, in the ladylike quality of her weaknesses and in the feminine subtlety of her strength. For four years, from the first day to the last that Joana was with us, we watched this femininity rise militantly to resist the assaults of her schoolmates upon her demure complacence. Though they rumpled her and romped with her and pelted her with snowballs, she refused, with tears and sullen passivity, to indulge in the vulgar pursuits of running, jumping and outdoor games. Though they tumbled her and rough-housed her, and, on occasion, pulled her long hair till her dainty primness was gone, she persisted in her feminine policy of stubborn non-resistance, repelling all suggestions of retaliation, such as one child's "Why don't you spit at him?" with a shocked "I don't know how." Though the boys taunted her and teased her, she continued to pilfer face powder and hair tonic, and to deliberate nightly on the respective merits of Espey's Cream and Daggett and RamsdeU's. In Joana there was no tomboy streak, no leavening masculinity. She was impregnable, irredeemable in her sheer femininity. With the girls she liked to play daintily at dolls, or rather to appear to play, for she never lost herself in an occupation, nor failed to pose for possible spectators. With the boys she did not wish to play at all. As males, they were her prospective slaves, and stirred her to arch