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CHARACTERISTICS OF WOMEN
MORAL, POETICAL, AND HISTORICAL
BY
MRS. JAMESON
_From the last London Edition_
[Illustration]
BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY The Riverside Press,
Cambridge 1889
PREFACE
TO THE NEW EDITION.
In preparing for the press a new edition of this little work, the author
has endeavored to render it more worthy of the approbation and kindly
feeling with which it has been received; she cannot better express her
sense of both than by justifying, as far as it is in her power, the
cordial and flattering tone of all the public criticisms. It is to the
great name of SHAKSPEARE, that bond of sympathy among all who speak his
language, and to the subject of the work, not to its own merits, that
she attributes the success it has met with,--success the more
delightful, because, in truth, it was from the very first, so entirely
unlooked for, as to be a matter of surprise as well as of pleasure and
gratitude.
In this edition there are many corrections, and some additions which the
author hopes may be deemed improvements. She has been induced to insert
several quotations at length, which were formerly only referred to, from
observing that however familiar they may be to the mind of the reader,
they are always recognized with pleasure--like dear domestic faces; and
if the memory fail at the moment to recall the lines or the sentiment to
which the attention is directly required, few like to interrupt the
course of thought, or undertake a journey from the sofa or garden-seat
to the library, to hunt out the volume, the play, the passage, for
themselves.
When the first edition was sent to press, the author contemplated
writing the life of Mrs. Siddons, with a reference to her art; and
deferred the complete development of the character of Lady Macbeth, till
she should be able to illustrate it by the impersonation and commentary
of that grand and gifted actress; but the task having fallen into other
hands, the analysis of the character has been almost entirely rewritten,
as at first conceived, or rather restored to its original form.
This little work, as it now stands, forms only part of a plan which the
author hopes, if life be granted her, to accomplish;--at all events,
life, while it is spared, shall be devoted to its fulfilment.
CONTENTS.
Page
INTRODUCTION 8
CHARACTERS OF INTELLECT.
Portia 53
Isabella 83
Beatrice 99
Rosalind 110
CHARACTERS OF PASSION AND IMAGINATION.
Juliet 119
Helena 153
Perdita 172
Viola 181
Ophelia 187
Miranda 207
CHARACTERS OF THE AFFECTIONS.
Hermione 219
Desdemona 240
Imogen 259
Cordelia 280
HISTORICAL CHARACTERS.
Cleopatra 302
Octavia 341
Volumnia 345
Constance of Bretagne 357
Elinor of Guienne 387
Blanche of Castile 389
Margaret of Anjou 396
Katharine of Arragon 407
Lady Macbeth 437
CHARACTERISTICS OF WOMEN.
INTRODUCTION.
_Scene--A Library._
ALDA.
You will not listen to me?
MEDON.
I do, with all the deference which befits a gentleman when a lady holds
forth on the virtues of her own sex.
He is a parricide of his mother's name,
And with an impious hand murders her fame,
That wrongs the praise of women; that dares write
Libels on saints, or with foul ink requite
The milk they lent us.
Yours was the nobler birth,
For you from man were made--man but of earth--
The son of dust!
ALDA.
What's this?
MEDON.
"Only a rhyme I learned from one I talked withal;" 'tis a quotation from
some old poet that has fixed itself in my memory--from Randolph, I
think.
ALDA.
'Tis very justly thought, and very politely quoted, and my best courtesy
is due to him and to you:--but now will you listen to me?
MEDON.
With most profound humility.
ALDA.
Nay, then! I have done, unless you will lay aside these mock airs of
gallantry, and listen to me for a moment! Is it fair to bring a
second-hand accusation against me, and not attend to my defence?
MEDON.
Well, I will be serious.
ALDA.
Do so, and let us talk like reasonable beings.
MEDON.
Then tell me, (as a reasonable woman you will not be affronted with the
question,) do you really expect that any one will read this little book
of yours?
ALDA.
I might answer, that it has been a great source of amusement and
interest to me for several months, and that so far I am content: but no
one writes a book without a hope of finding readers, and I shall find a
few. Accident first made me an authoress; and not now, nor ever, have I
written to flatter any prevailing fashion of the day for the sake of
profit, though this is done, I know, by many who have less excuse for
thus coining their brains. This little book was undertaken without a
thought of fame or money: out of the fulness of my own heart and soul
have I written it. In the pleasure it has given me, in the new and
various views of human nature it has opened to me, in the beautiful and
soothing images it has placed before me, in the exercise and improvement
of my own faculties, I have already been repaid: if praise or profit
come beside, they come as a surplus. I should be gratified and grateful,
but I have not sought for them, nor worked for them. Do you believe
this?
MEDON.
I do: in this I cannot suspect you of affectation, for the profession of
disinterestedness is uncalled for, and the contrary would be too far
countenanced by the custom of the day to be matter of reserve or
reproach. But how could you (saving the reverence due to a
lady-authoress, and speaking as one reasonable being to another) choose
such a threadbare subject?
ALDA.
What do you mean?
MEDON.
I presume you have written a book to maintain the superiority of your
sex over ours; for so I judge by the names at the heads of some of your
chapters; women fit indeed to inlay heaven with stars, but, pardon me,
very unlike those who at present walk upon this earth.
ALDA.
Very unlike the fine ladies of your acquaintance, I grant you; but as to
maintaining the superiority, or speculating on the rights of
women--nonsense! why should you suspect me of such folly?--it is quite
out of date. Why should there be competition or comparison?
MEDON.
Both are ill-judged and odious; but did you ever meet with a woman of
the world, who did not abuse most heartily the whole race of men?
ALDA.
Did you ever talk with a man of the world, who did not speak with levity
or contempt of the whole human race of women?
MEDON.
Perhaps I might answer like Voltaire--"Helas ils pourraient bien avoir
raison tous deux." But do you thence infer that both are good for
nothing?
ALDA.
Thence I infer that the men of the world and the women of the world are
neither of them--good for much.
MEDON.
And you have written a book to make them better?
ALDA.
Heaven forbid! else I were only fit for the next lunatic asylum. Vanity
run mad never conceived such an impossible idea.
MEDON.
Then, in a few words, what is the subject, and what the object, of your
book?
ALDA.
I have endeavoured to illustrate the various modifications of which the
female character is susceptible, with their causes and results. My life
has been spent in observing and thinking; I have had, as you well know,
more opportunities for the first, more leisure for the last, than have
fallen to the lot of most people. What I have seen, felt, thought,
suffered, has led me to form certain opinions. It appears to me that the
condition of women in society, as at present constituted, is false in
itself, and injurious to them,--that the education of women, as at
present conducted, is founded in mistaken principles, and tends to
increase fearfully the sum of misery and error in both sexes; but I do
not choose presumptuously to fling these opinions in the face of the
world, in the form of essays on morality, and treatises on education. I
have rather chosen to illustrate certain positions by examples, and
leave my readers to deduce the moral themselves, and draw their own
inferences.
MEDON.
And why have you not chosen your examples from real life? you might
easily have done so. You have not been a mere spectator, or a mere
actor, but a lounger behind the scenes of existence--have even assisted
in preparing the puppets for the stage: you might have given us an
epitome of your experience, instead of dreaming over Shakspeare.
ALDA.
I might so, if I had chosen to become a female satirist, which I will
never be.
MEDON.
You would, at least, stand a better chance of being read.
ALDA.
I am not sure of that. The vile taste for satire and personal gossip
will not be eradicated, I suppose, while the elements of curiosity and
malice remain in human nature; but as a fashion of literature, I think
it is passing away;--at all events it is not my _forte_. Long experience
of what is called "the world," of the folly, duplicity, shallowness,
selfishness, which meet us at every turn, too soon unsettles our
youthful creed. If it only led to the knowledge of good and evil, it
were well; if it only taught us to despise the illusions and retire from
the pleasures of the world, it would be better. But it destroys our
belief--it dims our perception of all abstract truth, virtue, and
happiness; it turns life into a jest, and a very dull one too. It makes
us indifferent to beauty, and incredulous of goodness; it teaches us to
consider _self_ as the centre on which all actions turn, and to which
all motives are to be referred.
MEDON.
But this being so, we must either revolve with these earthly natures,
and round the same centre, or seek a sphere for ourselves, and dwell
apart.
ALDA.
I trust it is not necessary to do either. While we are yet young, and
the passions, powers, and feelings, in their full activity, create to us
a world within, we cannot look fairly on the world without:--all things
then are good. When first we throw ourselves forth, and meet burs and
briars on every side, which stick in our very hearts;--and fair tempting
fruits which turn to bitter ashes in the taste, then we exclaim with
impatience, all things are evil. But at length comes the calm hour,
when they who look beyond the superficies of things begin to discern
their true bearings; when the perception of evil, or sorrow, or sin,
brings also the perception of some opposite good, which awakens our
indulgence, or the knowledge of the cause which excites our pity. Thus
it is with me. I can smile,--nay, I can laugh still, to see folly,
vanity, absurdity, meanness, exposed by scornful wit, and depicted by
others in fictions light and brilliant. But these very things, when I
encounter the reality, rather make me sad than merry, and take away all
the inclination, if I had the power, to hold them up to derision.
MEDON.
Unless, by doing so, you might correct them.
ALDA.
Correct them! Show me that one human being who has been made essentially
better by satire! O no, no! there is something in human nature which
hardens itself against the lash--something in satire which excites only
the lowest and worst of our propensities. That avowal in Pope--
I must be proud to see
Men not afraid of God, afraid of me!
--has ever filled me with terror and pity--
MEDON.
From its truth perhaps?
ALDA.
From its arrogance,--for the truth is, that a vice never corrected a
vice. Pope might be proud of the terror he inspired in those who feared
no God in whom vanity was stronger than conscience: but that terror made
no individual man better; and while he indulged his own besetting sin,
he administered to the malignity of others. Your professed satirists
always send me to think upon the opposite sentiment in Shakspeare, on
"the mischievous foul sin of chiding sin." I remember once hearing a
poem of Barry Cornwall's, (he read it to me,) about a strange winged
creature that, having the lineaments of a man, yet preyed on a man, and
afterwards coming to a stream to drink, and beholding his own face
therein, and that he had made his prey of a creature like himself, pined
away with repentance. So should those do, who having made themselves
mischievous mirth out of the sins and sorrows of others, remembering
their own humanity, and seeing within themselves the same lineaments--so
should _they_ grieve and pine away, self-punished.
MEDON.
'Tis an old allegory, and a sad one--and but too much to the purpose.
ALDA.
I abhor the spirit of ridicule--I dread it and I despise it. I abhor it
because it is in direct contradiction to the mild and serious spirit of
Christianity; I fear it, because we find that in every state of society
in which it has prevailed as a fashion, and has given the tone to the
manners and literature, it marked the moral degradation and approaching
destruction of that society; and I despise it, because it is the usual
resource of the shallow and the base mind, and, when wielded by the
strongest hand with the purest intentions, an inefficient means of good.
The spirit of satire reversing the spirit of mercy which is twice
blessed, seems to me twice accursed;--evil in those who indulge it--evil
to those who are the objects of it.
MEDON.
"Peut-etre fallait-il que la punition des imprudens et des faibles fut
confiee a la malignite, car la pure vertu n'eut jamais ete assez
cruelle."
ALDA.
That is a woman's sentiment.
MEDON.
True--it _was_; and I have pleasure in reminding you that a female
satirist by profession is yet an anomaly in the history of our
literature, as a female schismatic is yet unknown in the history of our
religion. But to what do you attribute the number of satirical women we
meet in society?
ALDA.
Not to our nature; but to a state of society in which the levelling
spirit of _persiflage_ has been long a fashion; to the perverse
education which fosters it; to affections disappointed or unemployed,
which embitter the temper; to faculties misdirected or wasted, which
oppress and irritate the mind; to an utter ignorance of ourselves, and
the common lot of humanity, combined with quick and refined perceptions
and much superficial cultivation; to frivolous habits, which make
serious thought a burden, and serious feeling a bane if suppressed, if
betrayed, a ridicule. Women, generally speaking, are by nature too much
subjected to suffering in many forms--have too much of fancy and
sensibility, and too much of that faculty which some philosophers call
_veneration_, to be naturally satirical. I have known but one woman
eminently gifted in mind and person, who is also distinguished for
powers of satire as bold as merciless; and she is such a compound of all
that nature can give of good, and all that society can teach of evil--
MEDON.
That she reminds us of the dragon of old, which was generated between
the sunbeams from heaven and the slime of earth.
ALDA.
No such thing. Rather of the powerful and beautiful fairy Melusina, who
had every talent and every charm under heaven but once in so many hours
was fated to become a serpent. No, I return to my first position. It is
not by exposing folly and scorning fools, that we make other people
wiser, or ourselves happier. But to soften the heart by images and
examples of the kindly and generous affections--to show how the human
soul is disciplined and perfected by suffering--to prove how much of
possible good may exist in things evil and perverted--how much hope
there is for those who despair--how much comfort for those whom a
heartless world has taught to contemn both others and themselves, and so
put barriers to the hard, cold, selfish, mocking, and levelling spirit
of the day--O would I could do this!
MEDON.
On the same principle, I suppose, that they have changed the treatment
of lunatics; and whereas they used to condemn poor distempered wretches
to straw and darkness, stripes and a strait waistcoat, they now send
them to sunshine and green fields, to wander in gardens among birds and
flowers, and soothe them with soft music and kind flattering speech.
ALDA.
You laugh at me! perhaps I deserve it.
MEDON.
No, in truth; I am a little amused, but most honestly attentive: and
perhaps wish I could think more like you. But to proceed: I allow that
with this view of the case, you could not well have chosen your
illustrations from real life; but why not from history?
ALDA.
As far as history could guide me, I have taken her with me in one or two
recent publications, which all tend to the same object. Nor have I here
lost sight of her; but I have entered on a land where she alone is not
to be trusted, and may make a pleasant companion but a most fallacious
guide. To drop metaphor: history informs us that such things have been
done or have occurred; but when we come to inquire into motives and
characters, it is the most false and partial and unsatisfactory
authority we can refer to. Women are illustrious in history, not from
what they have been in themselves, but generally in proportion to the
mischief they have done or caused. Those characters best fitted to my
purpose are precisely those of which history never heard, or disdains to
speak; of those which have been handed down to us by many different
authorities under different aspects we cannot judge without prejudice;
in others there occur certain chasms which it is difficult to supply;
and hence inconsistencies we have no means of reconciling, though
doubtless they _might_ be reconciled if we knew the whole, instead of a
part.
MEDON.
But instance--instance!
ALDA.
Examples crowd upon me; but take the first that occurs. Do you remember
that Duchesse de Longueville, whose beautiful picture we were looking at
yesterday?--the heroine of the Fronde?--think of that woman--bold,
intriguing, profligate, vain, ambitious, factious!--who made men rebels
with a smile;--or if that were not enough, the lady was not scrupulous,
apparently without principle as without shame, nothing was _too_ much!
And then think of the same woman protecting the virtuous philosopher
Arnauld, when he was denounced and condemned; and from motives which her
worst enemies could not malign, secreting him in her house, unknown even
to her own servants--preparing his food herself, watching for his
safety, and at length saving him. Her tenderness, her patience, her
discretion, her disinterested benevolence, not only defied danger, (that
were little to a woman of her temper,) but endured a lengthened trial,
all the ennui caused by the necessity of keeping her house, continual
self-control, and the thousand small daily sacrifices which, to a vain,
dissipated, proud, impatient woman, must have been hard to bear. Now if
Shakspeare had drawn the character of the Duchesse de Longueville, he
would have shown us the same individual woman in both situations:--for
the same being, with the same faculties, and passions, and powers, it
surely was: whereas in history, we see in one case a fury of discord, a
woman without modesty or pity; and in the other an angel of
benevolence, and a worshipper of goodness; and nothing to connect the
two extremes in our fancy.
MEDON.
But these are contradictions which we meet on every page of history,
which make us giddy with doubt, or sick with belief, and are the proper
subjects of inquiry for the moralist and the philosopher.
ALDA.
I cannot say that professed moralists and philosophers did much to help
_me_ out of the dilemma; but the riddle which history presented I found
solved in the pages of Shakspeare. There the crooked appeared straight;
the inaccessible, easy; the incomprehensible, plain. All I sought, I
found there; his characters combine history and real life; they are
complete individuals, whose hearts and souls are laid open before us:
all may behold, and all judge for themselves.
MEDON.
But all will not judge alike.
ALDA.
No; and herein lies a part of their wonderful truth. We hear
Shakspeare's men and women discussed, praised and dispraised, liked,
disliked, as real human beings; and in forming our opinions of them, we
are influenced by our own characters, habits of thought, prejudices,
feelings, impulses, just as we are influenced with regard to our
acquaintances and associates.
MEDON.
But we are then as likely to misconceive and misjudge them.
ALDA.
Yes, if we had only the same imperfect means of studying them. But we
can do with them what we cannot do with real people: we can unfold the
whole character before us, stripped of all pretensions of self-love, all
disguises of manner. We can take leisure to examine, to analyze, to
correct our own impressions, to watch the rise and progress of various
passions--we can hate, love, approve, condemn, without offence to
others, without pain to ourselves.
MEDON.
In this respect they may be compared to those exquisite anatomical
preparations of wax, which those who could not without disgust and
horror dissect a real specimen, may study, and learn the mysteries of
our frame, and all the internal workings of the wondrous machine of
life.
ALDA.
And it is the safer and the better way--for us at least. But look--that
brilliant rain-drop trembling there in the sunshine suggests to me
another illustration. Passion, when we contemplate it through the
medium of imagination, is like a ray of light transmitted through a
prism; we can calmly, and with undazzled eye, study its complicate
nature, and analyze its variety of tints; but passion brought home to us
in its reality, through our own feelings and experience, is like the
same ray transmitted through a lens,--blinding, burning, consuming where
it falls.
MEDON.
Your illustration is the most poetical, I allow; but not the most just.
But tell me, is the ground you have taken sufficiently large?--is the
foundation you have chosen strong enough to bear the moral
superstructure you raise upon it? You know the prevalent idea is, that
Shakspeare's women are inferior to his men. This assertion is constantly
repeated, and has been but tamely refuted.
ALDA.
Professor Richardson?--
MEDON.
He is as dry as a stick, and his refutation not successful even as a
piece of logic. Then it is not sufficient for critics to assert this
inferiority and want of variety: they first assume the fallacy, then
argue upon it. Cibber accounts for it from the circumstance that all the
female parts in Shakspeare's time were acted by boys--there were no
women on the stage; and Mackenzie, who ought to have known better, says
that he was not so happy in his delineations of love and tenderness, as
of the other passions; because, forsooth, the majesty of his genius
could not stoop to the refinements of delicacy;--preposterous!
ALDA.
Stay! before we waste epithets of indignation, let us consider. If these
people mean that Shakspeare's women are inferior in power to his men, I
grant it at once; for in Shakspeare the male and female characters bear
precisely the same relation to each other that they do in nature and in
society--they are not equal in prominence or in power--they are
subordinate throughout. Richardson remarks, that "if situation
influences the mind, and if uniformity of conduct be frequently
occasioned by uniformity of condition, there _must_ be a greater
diversity of male than of female characters,"--which is true; add to
this our limited sphere of action, consequently of experience,--the
habits of self-control rendering the outward distinctions of character
and passion less striking and less strong--all this we see in Shakspeare
as in nature: for instance, Juliet is the most impassioned of the female
characters, but what are _her_ passions compared to those which shake
the soul of Othello?
"Even as the dew-drop on the myrtle-leaf
To the vex'd sea."
Look at Constance, frantic for the loss of her son--then look at Lear,
maddened by the ingratitude of his daughters: why it is the west wind
bowing those aspen tops that wave before our window, compared to the
tropic hurricane, when forests crash and burn, and mountains tremble to
their bases!
MEDON.
True; and Lady Macbeth, with all her soaring ambition, her vigor of
intellect, her subtlety, her courage, and her cruelty--what is she,
compared to Richard III.?
ALDA.
I will tell you what she is--she is a woman. Place Lady Macbeth in
comparison with Richard III., and you see at once the essential
distinction between masculine and feminine ambition--though both in
extreme, and overleaping all restraints of conscience or mercy. Richard
says of himself, that he has "neither pity, love, nor fear:" Lady
Macbeth is susceptible of all three. You smile! but that remains to be
proved. The reason that Shakspeare's wicked women have such a singular
hold upon our fancy, is from the consistent preservation of the feminine
character, which renders them more terrible, because more credible and
intelligible--not like those monstrous caricatures we meet with in
history--
MEDON.
In history?--this is new!
ALDA.
Yes! I repeat, in history, where certain isolated facts and actions are
recorded, without any relation to causes, or motives, or connecting
feelings and pictures exhibited, from which the considerate mind turns
in disgust, and the feeling heart has no relief but in positive, and I
may add, reasonable incredulity. I have lately seen one of Correggio's
finest pictures, in which the three Furies are represented, not as
ghastly deformed hags, with talons and torches, and snaky hair, but as
young women, with fine luxuriant forms and regular features, and a
single serpent wreathing the tresses like a bandeau--but _such_
countenances!--such a hideous expression of malice, cunning, and
cruelty!--and the effect is beyond conception appalling. Leonardo da
Vinci worked upon the same grand principle of art in his Medusa--
Where it is less the horror than the grace
Which turns the gazer's spirit into stone--
* * * *
'Tis the melodious tints of beauty thrown
Athwart the hue of guilt and glare of pain,
That humanize and harmonize the strain.
And Shakspeare, who understood all truth, worked out his conceptions on
the same principle, having said himself, that "proper deformity shows
not in the fiend so horrid as in women." Hence it is that whether he
portrayed the wickedness founded in perverted power, as in Lady Macbeth;
or the wickedness founded in weakness, as in Gertrude, Lady Anne, or
Cressida, he is the more fearfully impressive, because we cannot claim
for ourselves an exemption from the same nature, before which, in its
corrupted state, we tremble with horror or shrink with disgust.
MEDON.
Do you remember that some of the commentators of Shakspeare have thought
it incumbent on their gallantry to express their utter contempt for the
scene between Richard and Lady Anne, as a monstrous and incredible libel
on your sex?
ALDA.
They might have spared themselves the trouble. Lady Anne is just one of
those women whom we see walking in crowds through the drawing-rooms of
the world--the puppets of habit, the fools of fortune, without any
particular inclination for vice, or any steady principle of virtue;
whose actions are inspired by vanity, not affection, and regulated by
opinion, not by conscience: who are good while there is no temptation to
be otherwise, and ready victims of the first soliciting to evil. In the
case of Lady Anne, we are startled by the situation: not three months a
widow, and following to the sepulchre the remains of a husband and a
father, she is met and wooed and won by the very man who murdered them.
In such a case it required perhaps either Richard or the arch-fiend
himself to tempt her successfully; but in a less critical moment, a far
less subtle and audacious seducer would have sufficed. Cressida is
another modification of vanity, weakness, and falsehood, drawn in
stronger colors. The world contains many Lady Annes and Cressidas,
polished and refined externally, whom chance and vanity keep right, whom
chance and vanity lead wrong, just as it may happen. When we read in
history of the enormities of certain women, perfect scarecrows and
ogresses, we can safely, like the Pharisee in Scripture, hug ourselves
in our secure virtue, and thank God that we are not as others are--but
the wicked women in Shakspeare are portrayed with such perfect
consistency and truth, that they leave us no such resource--they
frighten us into reflection--they make us believe and tremble. On the
other hand, his amiable women are touched with such exquisite
simplicity--they have so little external pretensions--and are so unlike
the usual heroines of tragedy and romance, that they delight us more
"than all the nonsense of the beau-ideal!" We are flattered by the
perception of our own nature in the midst of so many charms and virtues:
not only are they what we could wish to be, or ought to be, but what we
persuade ourselves we might be, or would be, under a different and a
happier state of things, and, perhaps, some time or other _may_ be. They
are not stuck up, like the cardinal virtues, all in a row, for us to
admire and wonder at--they are not mere poetical abstractions--nor (as
they have been termed) mere abstractions of the affections,--
But common clay ta'en from the common earth.
Moulded by God, and tempered by the tears
Of angels, to the perfect form of--_woman_.
MEDON.
Beautiful lines!--Where are they?
ALDA.
I quote from memory, and I am afraid inaccurately, from a poem of Alfred
Tennyson's.
MEDON.
Well, between argument, and sentiment, and logic, and poetry, you are
making out a very plausible case. I think with you that, in the
instances you have mentioned, (as Lady Macbeth and Richard, Juliet, and
Othello, and others,) the want of comparative power is only an
additional excellence; but to go to an opposite extreme of delineation,
we must allow that there is not one of Shakspeare's women that, as a
dramatic character, can be compared to Falstaff.
ALDA.
No; because any thing like Falstaff in the form of woman--any such
compound of wit, sensuality, and selfishness, unchecked by the moral
sentiments and the affections, and touched with the same vigorous
painting, would be a gross and monstrous caricature. If it could exist
in nature, we might find it in Shakspeare; but a moment's reflection
shows us that it would be essentially an impossible combination of
faculties in a female.
MEDON.
It strikes me, however, that his humorous women are feebly drawn, in
comparison with some of the female wits of other writers.
ALDA.
Because his women of wit and humor are not introduced for the sole
purpose of saying brilliant things, and displaying the wit of the
author; they are, as I will show you, real, natural women, in whom _wit_
is only a particular and occasional modification of intellect. They are
all, in the first place, affectionate, thinking beings, and moral
agents; and _then_ witty, as if by accident, or as the Duchesse de
Chaulnes said of herself, "par la grace de Dieu." As to humor, it is
carried as far as possible in Mrs. Quickly; in the termagant Catherine;
in Maria, in "Twelfth Night;" in Juliet's nurse; in Mrs. Ford and Mrs.
Page. What can exceed in humorous naivete, Mrs. Quickly's upbraiding
Falstaff, and her concluding appeal--"Didst thou not kiss me, and bid me
fetch thee thirty shillings?" Is it not exquisite--irresistible? Mrs.
Ford and Mrs. Page are both "merry wives," but how perfectly
discriminated! Mrs. Ford has the most good nature--Mrs. Page is the
cleverer of the two, and has more sharpness in her tongue, more mischief
in her mirth. In all these instances I allow that the humor is more or
less vulgar; but a humorous woman, whether in high or low life has
always a tinge of vulgarity.
MEDON.
I should like to see that word _vulgar_ properly defined, and its
meaning limited--at present it is the most arbitrary word in the
language.
ALDA.
Yes, like the word romantic, it is a convenient "exploding word," and in
its general application signifies nothing more than "see how much finer
I am than other people!"[1] but in literature and character I shall
adhere to the definition of Madame de Stael, who uses the word _vulgar_
as the reverse of _poetical_. Vulgarity (as I wish to apply the word) is
the _negative_ in all things. In literature, it is the total absence of
elevation and depth in the ideas, and of elegance and delicacy in the
expression of them. In character, it is the absence of truth,
sensibility, and reflection. The vulgar in manner, is the result of
vulgarity of character; it is grossness, hardness, or affectation.--If
you would see how Shakspeare has discriminated, not only different
degrees, but different kinds of plebeian vulgarity in women, you have
only to compare the nurse in Romeo and Juliet with Mrs. Quickly. On the
whole, if there are people who, taking the strong and essential
distinction of sex into consideration, still maintain that Shakspeare's
female characters are not, in truth, in variety, in power, equal to his
men, I think I shall prove the contrary.
MEDON.
I observe that you have divided your illustrations into classes; but
shades of character so melt into each other, and the various faculties
and powers are so blended and balanced, that all classification must be
arbitrary. I am at a loss to conceive where you have drawn the line;
here, at the head of your first chapter, I find "Characters of
Intellect"--do you call Portia intellectual, and Hermione and Constance
not so?
ALDA.
I know that Schlegel has said that it is impossible to arrange
Shakspeare's characters in classes: yet some classification was
necessary for my purpose. I have therefore divided them into characters
in which intellect and wit predominate; characters in which fancy and
passion predominate; and characters in which the moral sentiments and
affections predominate. The historical characters I have considered
apart, as requiring a different mode of illustration. Portia I regard as
a perfect model of an intellectual woman, in whom wit is tempered by
sensibility, and fancy regulated by strong reflection. It is objected to
her, to Beatrice, and others of Shakspeare's women, that the display of
intellect is tinged with a coarseness of manner belonging to the age in
which he wrote. To remark that the conversation and letters of
high-bred and virtuous women of that time were more bold and frank in
expression than any part of the dialogue appropriated to Beatrice and
Rosalind, may excuse it to our judgment, but does not reconcile it to
our taste. Much has been said, and more might be said on this
subject--but I would rather not discuss it. It is a mere difference of
manner which is to be regretted, but has nothing to do with the essence
of the character.
MEDON.
I think you have done well in avoiding the topic altogether; but between
ourselves, do you really think that the refinement of manner, the
censorious, hypocritical, verbal scrupulosity, which is carried so far
in this "picked age" of ours, is a true sign of superior refinement of
taste, and purity of morals? Is it not rather a whiting of the
sepulchre? I will not even allude to individual instances whom we both
know, but does it not remind you, on the whole, of the tone of French
manners previous to the revolution--that "decence," which Horace Walpole
so admired,[2] veiling the moral degradation, the inconceivable
profligacy of the higher classes?--Stay--I have not yet done--not to
you, but _for_ you, I will add thus much;--our modern idea of delicacy
apparently attaches more importance to words than to things--to manners
than to morals. You will hear people inveigh against the improprieties
of Shakspeare, with Don Juan, or one of those infernal French novels--I
beg your pardon--lying on their toilet table. Lady Florence is shocked
at the sallies of Beatrice, and Beatrice would certainly stand aghast to
see Lady Florence dressed for Almack's; so you see that in both cases
the fashion makes the indecorum. Let her ladyship new model her gowns!
ALDA.
Well, well, leave Lady Florence--I would rather hear you defend
Shakspeare.
MEDON.
I think it is Coleridge who so finely observes that Shakspeare ever kept
the high road of human life, whereon all travel, that he did not pick
out by-paths of feeling and sentiment; in him we have no moral
highwaymen, and sentimental thieves and rat-catchers, and interesting
villains, and amiable, elegant adulteresses--_a-la-mode Germanorum_--no
delicate entanglements of situation, in which the grossest images are
presented to the mind disguised under the superficial attraction of
style and sentiment. He flattered no bad passion, disguised no vice in
the garb of virtue, trifled with with no just and generous principle. He
can make us laugh at folly, and shudder at crime, yet still preserve our
love for our fellow-beings, and our reverence for ourselves. He has a
lofty and a fearless trust in his own powers, and in the beauty and
excellence of virtue; and with his eye fixed on the lode-star of truth,
steers us triumphantly among shoals and quicksands, where with any other
pilot we had been wrecked:--for instance, who but himself would have
dared to bring into close contact two such characters as Iago and
Desdemona? Had the colors in which he has arrayed Desdemona been one
atom less transparently bright and pure, the charm had been lost; she
could not have borne the approximation: some shadow from the
overpowering blackness of _his_ character must have passed over the
sun-bright purity of _hers_. For observe that Iago's disbelief in the
virtue of Desdemona is not pretended, it is real. It arises from his
total want of faith in all virtue; he is no more capable of conceiving
goodness than she is capable of conceiving evil. To the brutish
coarseness and fiendish malignity of this man, her gentleness appears
only a contemptible weakness; her purity of affection, which saw
"Othello's visage in his mind," only a perversion of taste; her bashful
modesty, only a cloak for evil propensities; so he represents them with
all the force of language and self-conviction, and we are obliged to
listen to him. He rips her to pieces before us--he would have bedeviled
an angel! yet such is the unrivalled, though passive delicacy of the
delineation, that it can stand it unhurt, untouched! It is
wonderful!--yet natural as it is wonderful! After all, there are people
in the world, whose opinions and feelings are tainted by an habitual
acquaintance with the evil side of society, though in action and
intention they remain right; and who, without the real depravity of
heart and malignity of intention of Iago, judge as he does of the
character and productions of others.
ALDA.
Heaven bless me from such critics! yet if genius, youth, and innocence
could not escape unslurred, can I hope to do so? I pity from my soul the
persons you allude to--for to such minds there can exist few
uncontaminated sources of pleasure either in nature or in art.
MEDON.
Ay--"the perfumes of Paradise were poison to the Dives, and made them
melancholy."[3] You pity them, and they will sneer at you. But what have
we here?--"Characters of Imagination--Juliet--Viola;" are these romantic
young ladies the pillars which are to sustain your moral edifice? Are
they to serve as examples or as warnings for the youth of this
enlightened age?
ALDA.
As warnings, of course--what else?
MEDON.
Against the dangers of romance?--but where are they? "Vraiment," as B.
Constant says, "je ne vois pas qu'en fait d'enthousiasme, le feu soit a
la maison." Where are they--these disciples of poetry and romance, these
victims of disinterested devotion and believing truth, these unblown
roses--all conscience and tenderness--whom it is so necessary to guard
against too much confidence in others, and too little in
themselves--where are they?
ALDA.
Wandering in the Elysian fields, I presume, with the romantic young
gentlemen who are too generous, too zealous in defence of innocence, too
enthusiastic in their admiration of virtue, too violent in their hatred
of vice, too sincere in friendship, too faithful in love, too active and
disinterested in the cause of truth--
MEDON.
Very fair! But seriously, do you think it necessary to guard young
people, in this selfish and calculating age, against an excess of
sentiment and imagination? Do you allow no distinction between the
romance of exaggerated sentiment, and the romance of elevated thought?
Do _you_ bring cold water to quench the smouldering ashes of enthusiasm?
Methinks it is rather superfluous; and that another doctrine is needed
to withstand the heartless system of expediency which is the favorite
philosophy of the day. The warning you speak of may be gently hinted to
the few who are in danger of being misled by an excess of the generous
impulses of fancy and feeling; but need hardly, I think, be proclaimed
by sound of trumpet amid the mocks of the world. No, no; there are young
women in these days, but there is no such thing as youth--the bloom of
existence is sacrificed to a fashionable education, and where we should
find the rose-buds of the spring, we see only the fullblown, flaunting,
precocious roses of the hot-bed.
ALDA.
Blame then that _forcing_ system of education, the most pernicious, the
most mistaken, the most far-reaching in its miserable and mischievous
effects, that ever prevailed in this world. The custom which shut up
women in convents till they were married, and then launched them
innocent and ignorant on society, was bad enough; but not worse than a
system of education which inundates us with hard, clever, sophisticated
girls, trained by knowing mothers, and all-accomplished governesses,
with whom vanity and expediency take place of conscience and
affection--(in other words, of romance)--"frutto senile in sul giovenil
fiore;" with feelings and passions suppressed or contracted, not
governed by higher faculties and purer principles; with whom
opinion--the same false honor which sends men out to fight duels--stands
instead of the strength and the light of virtue within their own souls.
Hence the strange anomalies of artificial society--girls of sixteen who
are models of manner miracles of prudence, marvels of learning, who
sneer at sentiment, and laugh at the Juliets and the Imogens; and
matrons of forty, who, when the passions should be tame and wait upon
the judgment, amaze the world and put us to confusion with their doings.
MEDON.
Or turn politicians to vary the excitement--How I hate political women!
ALDA.
Why do you hate them?
MEDON.
Because they are mischievous.
ALDA.
But why are they mischievous?
MEDON.
Why!--why are they mischievous? Nay, ask them, or ask the father of all
mischief, who has not a more efficient instrument to further his designs
in this world, than a woman run mad with politics. The number of
political intriguing women of this time, whose boudoirs and
drawing-rooms are the _foyers_ of party-spirit, is another trait of
resemblance between the state of society now, and that which existed at
Paris before the revolution.
ALDA.
And do you think, like some interesting young lady in Miss Edgeworth's
tales, that "women have nothing to do with politics?" Do you mean to say
that women are not capable of comprehending the principles of
legislation, or of feeling an interest in the government and welfare of
their country, or of perceiving and sympathizing in the progress of
great events?--That they cannot feel patriotism? Believe me, when we do
feel it, our patriotism, like our courage and our love, has a purer
source than with you; for a man's patriotism has always some tinge of
egotism, while a woman's patriotism is generally a sentiment, and of the
noblest kind.
MEDON.
I agree in all this; and all this does not mitigate my horror of
political women in general, who are, I repeat it, both mischievous and
absurd. If you could but hear the reasoning in these feminine
coteries!--but you never talk politics.
ALDA.
Indeed I do, when I can get any one to listen to me; but I prefer
listening. As for the evil you complain of, impute it to that imperfect
education which at once cultivates and enslaves the intellect, and loads
the memory, while it fetters the judgment. Women, however well read in
history, never generalize in politics; never argue on any broad or
general principle; never reason from a consideration of past events,
their causes and consequences. But they are always political through
their affections, their prejudices, their personal _liaisons_, their
hopes, their fears.
MEDON.
If it were no worse, I could stand it; for that is at least feminine.
ALDA.
But most mischievous. For hence it is that we make such blind partisans,
such violent party women, and such wretched politicians. I never heard a
woman _talk_ politics, as it is termed, that I could not discern at once
the motive, the affection, the secret bias which swayed her opinions and
inspired her arguments. If it appeared to the Grecian sage so "difficult
for a man not to love himself, nor the things that belong to him, but
justice only?"--how much more for woman!
MEDON.
Then you think that a better education, based on truer moral principles,
would render women more reasonable politicians, or at least give them
some right to meddle with politics?
ALDA.
It would cease in that case to be _meddling_, as you term it, for it
would be legitimized. It is easy to sneer at political and mathematical
ladies, and quote Lord Byron--but O leave those angry common-places to
others!--they do not come well from you. Do not force me to remind you,
that women have achieved enough to silence them forever,[4] and how
often must that truism be repeated, that it is not a woman's attainments
which make her amiable or unamiable, estimable or the contrary, but her
qualities? A time is coming, perhaps, when the education of women will
be considered, with a view to their future destination as the mothers
and nurses of legislators and statesmen, and the cultivation of their
powers of reflection and moral feelings supersede the exciting drudgery
by which they are now crammed with knowledge and accomplishments.
MEDON.
Well--till that blessed period arrives, I wish you would leave us the
province of politics to ourselves. I see here you have treated of a very
different class of beings, "_women in whom the affections and the moral
sentiments predominate_." Are there many such, think you, in the world?
ALDA.
Yes, many such; the development of affection and sentiment is more quiet
and unobtrusive than that of passion and intellect, and less observed;
it is more common, too, therefore less remarked; but in women it
generally gives the prevailing tone to the character, except where
vanity has been made the ruling motive.
MEDON.
Except! I admire your exception! You make in this case the rule the
exception. Look round the world.
ALDA.
You are not one of those with whom that common phrase "the world"
signifies the circle, whatever and wherever that may be, which limits
our individual experience--as a child considers the visible horizon as
the bounds which shut in the mighty universe. Believe me, it is a sorry,
vulgar kind of wisdom, if it be wisdom--a shallow and confined
philosophy, if it be philosophy--which resolves all human motives and
impulses into egotism in one sex, and vanity in the other. Such may be
the way of _the world_, as it is called--the result of a very artificial
and corrupt state of society, but such is not general nature, nor female
nature. Would you see the kindly, self-sacrificing affections developed
under their most honest but least poetical guise--displayed without any
mixture of vanity, and unchecked in the display by any fear of being
thought vain?--you will see it, not among the prosperous, the high-born,
the educated, "far, far removed from want, and grief, and fear," but
among the poor, the miserable, the perverted--among those habitually
exposed to all influences that harden and deprave.
MEDON.
I believe it--nay, I know it; but how should _you_ know it, or anything
of the strange places of refuge which truth and nature have found in the
two extremes of society?
ALDA.