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115 Nationals and foreigners alike unanimously praise the exceptional virtues of the Mexican woman. We no longer live in the good times when mana fell from heaven to feed the chosen peoples or when the waves of the ocean formed barriers to the passage of their enemies. Thus, we should analyze the natural causes that make our women one of the most appreciable and appreciated moral types in the contemporary female world, instead of seeing her predilections as miraculous. In any country, there are three classes of women: servile, feminist, and feminine . The servile woman is she who is born and lives only for material labor, pleasure, and maternity—an almost zoological sphere of action imposed on her by the environment. For the feminist woman, pleasure is more sporting than passionate, a peripheral activity and not fundamental. Her characteristics and tendencies are masculine, the home a place of rest and subsistence and a cabinet of work. This type of woman originated and propagated herself profusely in the great centers of population as the logical fruit of that social environment . The feminine woman—a denomination that is somewhat redundant but that is opportune because of its expressive power—is the intermediate woman, equally distanced from the two previous types. This is the ideal woman, generally preferred because she constitutes the primordial factor in the material and intellectual well-being of the individual and the species. Social science treatises say that the status of woman corresponds to the state of civilization of her country. The more uncultured a people is, the greater the level of servitude; and whilst its culture advances, servitude disappears 25 Our Women 116 O u r W o m e n in equal proportion. According to that sociological conclusion, nearly all Mexican women should be considered servile women, since illiterates constitute 80 percent of our population, and people who would seem uncultured from the European perspective equal 95 percent or more. Nevertheless, this is not the case among us. Although it is true that we have a large number of servile women, they exist in a lesser proportion than would be expected from our apparent lack of culture. Contrary to these expectations, feminine women form a sum that is incomparably greater than that which theoretically corresponds to us, according to the statistics regarding illiteracy and un-culture. Also, the number of truly feminist Mexican women does not correspond in numerical proportion to the population of high culture that inhabits our great urban centers. Her presence is sporadic, exotic, and her numbers infinitesimal. In summary, there are among us fewer servile and feminist women and more feminine women than should exist, given the cultural state that is attributed to our country. To what can we attribute this contradiction of sociological laws that seems to be verified in other countries and societies? We think that there are two motives. First, it is unjustified that the label of uncultured be applied to Mexico for the sole reason that its civilization is not of the same type as that of the European countries or the United States of North America. This logic is similar to the saying of religious fanatics, “He who is not with my religion is in Hell.” Culture is relative, like all else that is humanly known. It should seem antiquated for us to qualify peoples as cultured or uncultured, since we cannot give an absolute value to the term “culture” or “civilization.” Second, the social heritage of the Mexican woman is unique. The contemporary Mexican woman derives her way of being, character, inclinations, and nature from the two women from which she has descended: the Spanish and the indigenous. Had Mexico been conquered by Spain 500 years before it was, the feminine future of our country would have been influenced by enslaved women, by the females without personality that were produced by the dark medieval times. Happily, America surged from the mysteries of the oceans when the last manifestations of the Middle Ages were being extirpated and the glorious times of the Renaissance had begun. These were times when woman, after God, was the supreme symbol of all that was adorable, that was good, that was beautiful. This was the time when the Lauras and the Beatrixes were born into sentimental life, when “For the King and for my Lady” was an obligatory motto for well-born gentlemen. It was this European woman, already dignified by chivalry and civilization, that came to Mexico. Moreover, she was the [3...

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