The Clergyman's Wife and Other Sketches/Bashfulness

by Anna Cora Mowatt

BASHFULNESS.

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ow often bashfulness passes for humility—for a painful want of self-appreciation—for a modest undervaluation of one's own merits! Yet the self-consciousness which gives rise to bashfulness almost always springs from sensitive self-esteem, a latent love of approbation, a nervous dread that others will not rate us as highly as we prize ourselves!

What is it but self-consciousness which prevents a bashful person from entering a room without fancying that all eyes are turned upon him? What is it but self-consciousness which makes him fearfully certain of attracting attention if he ventures to move? What is it but self-consciousness which impresses him with the conviction that all ears are quickened to listen to the unmeaning words that hesitatingly fall from his lips? What is it but self-consciousness which causes him to commit any number of awkward blunders while he is speculating on the judgment that will be passed upon his most insignificant actions?

People are bashful because they cannot ignore their own personality, cannot put self aside, and act as though neither others nor they themselves were thinking of their individual existence.

Bashful persons never behave naturally, because they are never unconscious of their own deportment. They never shine in conversation, because they are haunted by the fear that they cannot do justice in language to the ideas which are struggling for utterance. They never appear to advantage, because they are tortured by the instinctive knowledge that in spite of being very sensible, sober-minded individuals, they are always hovering upon the borders of the ridiculous. If you laugh with them, they imagine that you laugh at them. If you sympathize with them, you cause them mortification. If you forbear to notice them, you wound them by your supposed indifference. They have a morbid horror of publicity, and yet they constantly become conspicuous, simply by never forgetting themselves.

Goldsmith, in his portrait of Charles Marlow, illustrates a species of bashfulness, which only exists in the presence of equals and superiors, and degenerates into positive insolence and unbridled freedom when thrown in contact with inferiors. Here self-consciousness is the moving principle again. Charles Marlow was frightened into the most absurd exhibitions of bashfulness by the dread of making an unfavorable impression upon those whose opinion he valued; but, being totally indifferent to the appreciation of a hotel keeper, or a bar maid, before them, the bashful youth, who could not lift his eyes to the face of a lady, and had not courage to address a few civil sentences to her respected father, was transformed into a very monster of egotism, arrogance, and impertinence.

When we use the word bashfulness, we do not mean to confound the term with genuine diffidence, self-distrust, modesty; nor do we allude to the charming timidity which flings a roseate veil over the conscious cheek of youth. The shamefacedness of bashfulness is not diffidence or self-distrust, for it does not distrust its own intrinsic worth, it only distrusts that others will fully recognize that worth. It is not modesty or humility, for it does not humbly estimate itself, it is only fearful of the undervaluing estimation of others.

True modesty is retiring, shrinking, humble, but it is at the same time self-possessed, composed, unconspicuous. A modest man does not commit the blunders of his bashful brother, because he is not confused by failing efforts to seem what he is not. He does not conceive himself to be a brilliant person, or desire others to believe so, and does not comport himself as though brilliancy were expected of him. He does not fancy that he is of sufficient consequence to be remarked or remarkable. He goes on his way, if observed, unconscious of observation; if neglected, indifferent to neglect. He does not think of himself at all and consequently does not imagine that others are thinking of him. If his hidden merits are accidentally discovered, the blush that suffuses his cheek is not one of painful bashfulness, but of startled humility and pleasant surprise. His manner evinces that he neither demands nor expects consideration, and consequently it has a conciliating tendency, inclining the world, so niggardly to those who claim their rights, to give modest worth its fullest due.

Let the bashful man contrast his experiences with those of the truly modest man, and he cannot close his eyes to the great truth that the secret cause of his social discomfort is a torturing self-consciousness, and that the cure lies in ceasing to speculate upon what others are thinking of him—in ceasing to think of himself at all.