The Pocketless Sex

THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB.

There is a difference between truth and fact. Knowledge that lies dormant in the mind may be truth to us, but it becomes fact only when it comes into active consciousness. This has been exemplified to me lately in Jack’s attitude toward the subject of women’s pockets. He must long have known that there was no such thing (generally speaking), but it has just become fact to him. I suppose I may have been asking him oftener than usual to carry my purse for me, or perhaps, being without that “pineal gland of the body social,” as Carlyle defines it, to furnish car fare on those occasions when he sees me home by putting me on the car (attaining the same destination himself — ultimately — via the Club). But however that may be, he has been going out of his way lately to make facetious remarks on Fate’s partiality in the matter of pockets. He seems to regard it somewhat in the light of a joke, which is not at all the way in which it presents itself to me. As a factor in the progress of evolution, pockets should undoubtedly rank second to man’s prehensile power. The latter, acquired first, enabled him to grasp objects; the former, to retain them. That a man’s habiliments should now inclose and conceal twenty-five pockets is certainly an achievement in evolutionary advance not to be lightly regarded; but a dark side to this otherwise brilliant record is Destiny’s singular discrimination against women. To some minds the fact that a man has twenty-five receptacles for his detachable accessories, while a woman has none at all, might seem a significant indication that she was intended to have no separate possessions of her own; to others, that man was designed to carry hers as well as his own, bearing to her the very useful relationship of portmanteau. These two views would naturally fall into place on opposite sides of the Woman Suffrage question, which we have ever with us, and it is a matter of some surprise to me that they have not already been advanced. No less is it a matter of surprise that the gentlemen who from time to time furnish us with scientific proof of woman’s inferiority, have not given her lack of pockets a foremost place in the line of argument. It undoubtedly handicaps her in the struggle for existence, particularly public existence. How, for instance, could she become a politician without putting her hands in her pockets ? or a philanthropist ? or even “one of our leading citizens”?

If there be those who regard women’s pocketless estate as arbitrary and not irremediable, why have not the Women’s Rights associations taken the case in hand, and turned their energies upon a wrong so fundamental and obvious ? Great things from little things do spring, and there is every reason to suppose that if women were once endowed with pockets, all things would shortly be added unto them.

I once so regarded it myself, but experience led me to the opposite view. For a brief period I aspired to have a pocket — one pocket — of my own. I know a woman who has one. It is not her only claim to merit and distinction. She has won honors general and particular, given good service to public causes, and is entitled to initials after her name. How far the pocket is a cause and how far an effect, I have often pondered. To see her go forth in the conscious possession of both pocketbook and handkerchief, while her hands still remained free for whatever uses God intended them, was to me a deeply instructive and inspiring sight. I long wished to learn the secret of that pocket, by what stratagem, persuasion, or compulsion she broke through this most inexorable feminine law, and acquired a convenience so simple and rational.

Made bold at length by consciousness of an impending new gown, I ventured to approach her on the subject.

“Yes, is n’t it nice ?” she said, patting it affectionately and with pardonable pride. “ How do I get it ? Why, I say to the person who takes the measurement, ‘and we’ll have the pocket here.' She, of course, returns an incredulous, sometimes contemptuous stare. ‘About so far down,’ I go on firmly, ‘and please give instructions to have it good and deep.’ Then I pass on to the other points, so as to avoid explanation or argument. At the first fitting it is much the same. At the second I remark to the fitter, — it’s generally a different one, you know, — ‘The place for the pocket was marked here. It is n’t in yet, I see. Perhaps it had better be a shade higher up.’ ‘Pocket!’she gasps. ‘ A good deep one,’ I add again with assurance, ignoring her evident consternation. Generally I see dismay creep into her face at this point, and I know the case is won. ‘Oh, Mrs. Blank,’ she laments, ‘it will spoil the set. There can’t be any style to a skirt with a pocket into it. I never heard of such a thing. It’ll pull it all out of shape, and’— That is the place to smile upon her blandly, thank her, and take your departure.”

I sighed after my friend had gone. I saw how far-reaching a matter that pocket was. Its origin lay in character, in the subtle power of suggestion, in the training and habit of years. I lacked the nerve, the smiling firmness, the invincible confidence that carries victory in its wake. Heredity and environment were both against me. I gave it up. Success and pockets are no accidental matter.