Women who have devoted themselves for religious purposes to celibacy
have in all ages and countries of the world received honor, but those
upon whom celibacy has been forced, either through the influence of
untoward circumstances, or as a consequence of some want or folly in
themselves, have been objects of most unmerited contempt and dislike.
Unmerited, because it may be broadly asserted that until the last
generation no woman in secular and social life remained unmarried from
desire or from conviction. She was the victim of some natural
disadvantage, or some unhappy circumstance beyond her control, and
therefore entitled to sympathy, but not to contempt.
Of course, there are many lovely girls who appear to have every
advantage for matrimony, and who yet drift into spinsterhood. The
majority of this class have probably been imprudent and over-stayed
their market. They have dallied with their chances too long. Suddenly
they are aware that their beauty is fading. They notice that the
suitable marriageable men who hung around them in their youth have
gone away, and that their places are filled with mere callow youths.
Then they realize their mistakes, and are sorry they have thought
being "an awfully silly little thing" and "having a good time" the end
of their existence. Heart-aches and disappointments enough follow for
their punishment; for they soon divine that when women cease to have
men for lovers, and are attended by school-boys, they have written
themselves down already as old maids.
Closely allied to these victims of folly or thoughtlessness are the
women who remain unmarried because of their excessive vanity--or
natural cruelty. "My dear, I was cruel thirty years ago, and no one
has asked me since." This confession from an aunt to her niece, though
taken from a play, is true enough to tell the real story of many an
old maid. Their vanity made them cruel, and their cruelty condemned
them to a lonely, loveless life. Close observation, however, among the
unmarried women of any one's acquaintance will reveal the fact that it
is not from the ranks of silly or cruel women that the majority of old
maids come. Men do not, as a rule, dislike silly women; and by a wise
provision of nature, they are rather fond of marrying pretty, helpless
creatures who cannot help themselves. Neither are cruel women
universally unpopular. Some lovers like to be snubbed, and would not
value a wife they had not to seek upon their knees. There are,
therefore, always chances for the silly and cruel women.
It is the weak, colorless women, who have privately strong prejudices,
and publicly no assertion of any kind, that have, even in youth, few
opportunities. They either lack the power to love strongly or they
lack the power to express their feelings. They have not the courage to
take any decided step. They long for advances, and when they are made,
recoil from them. They are constitutionally so timid that they fear
any step or any condition which is a positive and final change. If
marriage had some reservations and uncertainties, some loopholes
through which they could drag themselves as a final resort, they would
be more sure of their own wishes. These are the Misses Feeble-minds,
who cast the reproach upon feminine celibacy.
They feel that in some way they have been misunderstood and wronged,
and they come finally to regard all other women as their enemies. They
worry and fret themselves continually, and the worry and fret sharpen
alike their features and their temper. Then their condition is
precisely the one most conducive to complaining and spiteful
gossiping; and they fall, in their weakness and longing for sympathy,
to that level. Thus to the whole class is given a reputation for
malevolent railing which does not by any means belong to it. In fact,
married women are generally more venomous than old maids. The words of
married women have greater weight, and they do more harm; for they can
make suggestions and accusations which an old maid could not make
with any propriety. An old maid's gossip is generally without
intentional malice; she has nothing to do, and she wants to make
herself agreeable; while married women, having plenty else to do,
must, as a general thing, talk scandal from pure ill-nature.
There is a large majority of old maids who are to be sincerely
respected, and from whose numbers men with sense and intelligence may
choose noble wives. They are the pretty, pure, sensible women who have
been too modest, and too womanly, to push and scramble in the social
ranks. They have dwelt in their own homes, and among their own people,
and no one has sought them out. They have seen their youth pass away,
and all their innocent desires fade, and they have suffered what few
can understand before they reached that calm which no thought of a
lover troubles. Sweet faded flowers! How tenderly we ought to regard
these gentle victims of those modest household virtues which all men
profess to admire, but which few seem desirous to transplant into
their own homes.
Another class, somewhat kindred to this, is composed of women who have
never found their ideal, and have never allowed themselves to invent
for any other man those qualities which would elevate him to their
standard. And these women, again, are closely allied to those who
remain unmarried because they do not, and will not, conform to
conventionalities and social rules. They are clever and odd, and
likely to remain odd, especially if they refuse to men--as they are
most likely to do--that step or two in advance which is the only way
to reconcile them to witty or intellectual women.
These varieties of unmarried women are mainly the victims of natural
peculiarities, or of circumstances they are not responsible for. But
within the last generation the condition of feminine celibacy has
greatly altered. It is a fact that women in this day, considerately,
and in the first glory of their youth, elect themselves to that
condition. Some have imbibed from high culture a high conception of
the value of life, and of what they ought to do with their lives; and
they will not waste the days of their youth in looking for a husband
in order to begin their work. Others have strong individuality, and
refuse to give up their time into another's keeping. The force of
character displayed by such resolutions naturally leads to celibacy.
No one but a very weak man would be attracted by women of such vital
purpose, and weak men would not be tolerated by such strong women.
The wise and the thoughtful may well give such voluntary old maids the
full credit of their purpose, for the generality will not believe in
resolutions so much above their own consciences and intelligence. They
will still sneer at their condition, and refuse to admit that it is of
choice. They will throw at them that wearisome old fable of the fox
and the grapes, when they might much more correctly quote Sappho's
song of the ripe apples left on the topmost branches of the
apple-trees: "Not because they were forgotten of the gatherers, but
because _they were out of their reach_."
In accord with the fresh development, we are told that the number of
unmarried women in the country is steadily on the increase. But this
increase will not be ranged among the silly, the weak, or the cruel of
the sex. It will come from that class of women whose eyes have been
opened by the spread of education and refinement; women not afraid to
work for themselves, and who indeed have thoughtfully concluded that
their own efforts and their own company will be far better for them
than the help and company of any man not perfectly in sympathy with
them, or their inferior either in moral or mental calibre. For it is
not always a duty to marry; but it is always a duty to live up to our
highest conception of what is right and noble and elevating.
But from whatever cause the women of the present and future
generations remain unmarried, they will have no need to dread the
condition, as unmarried women of the previous generations have had
good cause to do. Every year finds them more independent. They are
constantly invading fresh trades, and stepping up into more important
positions. They live in pretty chambers; they dress charmingly; they
have a bank account; they go to the opera and the theatres in their
own protection; and instead of being the humble poor relations of
married sisters and brothers, they are now their equals, their
patrons, and their honored guests. Besides which, old maids have begun
to write novels; and in them they have given us such exquisite
portraits of their order--women so rich in every womanly grace--hat we
are almost compelled to believe the unmarried women in our midst to be
the salt of the community.
At any rate, we are beginning to shift the blame and the obloquy of
the position to the old bachelors, where it rightly belongs; and this
is at least a move in the just and proper direction. For old bachelors
have no excuse whatever for their condition. If we omit the natural
and necessary exceptions, which are few enough, then pure selfishness
and cowardice must account for every other case. Their despised
old-bachelorhood is all their own fault. They have always had the
tremendous privilege of asking for what they wanted; and half the
battle was in that privilege. Men don't have wives because they don't
ask for them; and they don't ask for them because they don't want
them; and in this condition lie their shame and their degradation, and
the well-deserved scorn with which the married part of both sexes
regard them.
Men are also much more contemptible and useless in their celibacy than
are women. An old maid can generally make herself of service to some
one. If she is rich, she attaches herself to church work, or to art,
or to the children of brothers and sisters. Or she travels all over
the world, and writes a book about her adventures. If she is poor, she
works hard and saves money; and thus becomes an object of interest and
respect in her own set. Or she is nurse and helper for all that need
her help in her village, or her church, or her family. At any rate,
she never descends to such depths of ennui and selfishness as do the
old bachelors who loll about on the club sofas, or who dawdle
discontentedly at afternoon teas. An old maid may be troublesome in
church business, or particular in household affairs; but it takes an
old bachelor to quarrel with waiters and grumble every one insane
about his dinner menu. An old maid may gossip, but she will not bore
every one to death about her dyspepsia; and if she has to starve
others, we may be very certain she would never fall under that tyranny
of valets and janitors which are the "sling and arrows" of wealthy,
selfish old bachelors.
On the whole, then, the unmarried woman is becoming every year more
self-reliant, and more respectable and respected, and the unmarried
man more effeminate and contemptible. We look for a day, not far off,
when a man will have to become a member of some religious order if he
wishes a reputable excuse for his celibacy; and even in secular life
it would not be a bad idea to clothe bachelors after forty years of
age in a certain uniform. They might also after that age be advised to
have their own clubs and recreations; for their assumption of equality
with those of their sex who have done their duty as men and citizens
is a piece of presumption that married men ought to resent. Men who
marry are the honorable progenitors of the future; and their
self-denying, busy lives not only bless this generation, but prepare
for the next one. The old bachelor is merely a human figure, without
duties and without hopes. Nationally and socially, domestically and
personally, he is a spoon with nothing in it!