The race of daughters is large, but their characteristics, vocations,
and aptitudes, are but little understood by the general public. It
is expected of them by their mothers that they should be a comfort,
by their fathers that they should be inexpensive and unlike their
brothers, and by their brothers that they should be as slaves,
submissively attached to the fraternal car of triumph. The outside
public, the mothers and fathers, that is to say, of other daughters,
look upon them vaguely, as mild and colourless beings, destitute alike
of character, of desires and of aspirations. And it must be said that
daughters themselves, before matrimony absorbs their daughterhood and
relieves them of their mothers, seem to be in the main content with
the calm and limited existence which their relations and the voice of
tradition assign to them. Most of them after they have passed through
the flashing brilliance of their first season, and the less radiant
glow of their second, are happy enough to spend the time that must
elapse ere the destined knight shall sound the trumpet of release
at the gates of the fortress, in an atmosphere of quiet domestic
usefulness. One becomes known to fame, and her friends, as being above
all others, "such a comfort to her mother." She interviews the cook,
she arranges the dinners, she devises light and favourite dishes
to blunt the edge of paternal irritability by tickling the paternal
palate, she writes out invitations, presides at the afternoon
tea-table, and, in short, takes upon herself many of those smaller
duties which are as last straws to the maternal back. Another becomes
the sworn friend and ally of her brothers, whom she assists in their
scrapes with a sympathy which is balm to the scraped soul, and with
a wisdom in counsel, which can only spring from a deep regret at not
having been herself born a boy, and capable of scrapes.
[Illustration]
But there is often in families another and an Undomestic Daughter, who
aspires to be in all things unlike the usual run of common or domestic
daughters. From an early age she will have been noted in the family
circle for romantic tendencies, which are a mockery to her Philistine
brothers, and a reproach to her commonplace sisters. She will have
elevated her father to a lofty pinnacle of imaginative and immaculate
excellence, from which a tendency to shortness of temper in matters of
domestic finance resulting in petty squabbles with her mother, and an
irresistible desire for after-dinner somnolence, will have gradually
displaced him. One after another her brothers will have been to her
Knights of the Round Table of her fancy, armed by her enthusiasm for
impossible conflicts, of which they themselves, absorbed as they
are in the examination and pocket-money struggles of boyhood, have
no conception whatever. The effort to plant the tree of romance in
an ordinary middle-class household was predestined to failure. Her
disappointments are constant and crushing. Desires and capacities
which, with careful nurture, might have come to a fair fruit, are
chilled and nipped by the frost of neglect and ridicule. Her mind
becomes warped. The work that is ready to her hand, the ordinary round
of family tasks and serviceableness, repels her. She turns from it
with distaste, and thus widens still more the gulf between herself and
her relatives. Hence she is thrown back upon herself for companionship
and comfort. She dissects, for her own bitter enjoyment, her inmost
heart. She becomes the subtle analyst of her own imaginary motives.
She calls up accusing phantoms to charge her before the bar of her
conscience, in order that she may have the qualified satisfaction of
acquitting herself, whilst returning against her relatives a verdict
of guilty on every count of the indictment. In short, she becomes
a thoroughly morbid and hysterical young woman, suspicious, and
resentful even of the sympathy which is rarely offered to her. In the
meantime, two of her younger sisters are wooed and won in the orthodox
manner by steady-going gentlemen, of good position and prospects. The
congratulations showered upon them, and the rejoicings which attend
them on their wedding days, only serve to add melancholy to the
Undomestic Daughter, who has already begun to solace herself for her
failure to attract men by the reflection that matrimony itself is a
failure, and that there are higher and worthier things in life than
the wearing of orange-blossoms, and going-away dresses. It must be
said that her parents strive with but little vigour against their
daughter's inclination. Her father having hinted at indigestion as the
cause of her unhappiness, and finding that the hint is badly received,
shrugs his inapprehensive shoulders, and ceases to notice her. Her
mother, persuaded that sanity is to be found only on the maternal side
of the family, lays the peculiarities of her daughter to the charge of
some abnormal paternal ancestor. Having thus, by implication, cleared
herself from all responsibility, she feels that she is better able to
take a detached and impartial view of errors which, seeing they are
those of her own flesh and blood, she professes herself utterly unable
to understand or to correct.
The Undomestic Daughter thus acquires the conviction that she herself
is the most miserably crushed member of a down-trodden sex. In this,
and in the agreement which she exacts from two or three melancholy
friends, she seeks a solace for her sufferings. After a time, however,
she discovers that this is insufficient. It must be said to her credit
that her energies find the outlet of a passive sorrow inadequate. She
burns to prove that one who is misunderstood and despised cannot only
find useful work to do, but can do it better than her humdrum domestic
sisters. Unfortunately, however, she overlooks the obvious and easy
duties of her home. She scans the remote corners of the world. Her
bruised spirit flutters about the bye-ways of charitable effort,
and at length she establishes herself as a visitor, a distributer
of tracts and blankets, and an instructor of factory girls. It
is unnecessary to insist that these occupations are useful and
praiseworthy in the abstract. It may be doubted, however, whether
they should be undertaken by one who has to neglect for them equally
necessary but less attractive labours.
The Undomestic Daughter, however, rejoices in the performance of work,
which, as it were, sets a seal to her wretchedness, and stamps her as
a being apart from the ruck of her sex. She now takes her meals alone,
and at her own hours. She probably breakfasts at half-past seven, and
dashes out to interview the Secretary of the Society for Improving the
Cultivation of Mustard and Cress on the Desert Patches of the Mile End
District. After this she will hasten to Lambeth, in order that mothers
residing in that teeming quarter of the town may be blessed with
mittens and mob-caps, and returning thence she devotes an hour or so
to lectures which are to make her expert in tending the ailments of
humanity. Occasionally the family arrangements are upset, in order
that she may have her dinner at an hour which will make it convenient
to her to attend the meeting of an Institute for Reading Historical
Novels to Working Girls, and her father will lose all his available
stock of good temper on finding that the moments generally devoted by
him to soup are occupied to his exclusion by the apple-tart provided
for his busy daughter. Hence come more storms and misunderstandings.
Paternal feet are put down--for a time, and neglected excellence pines
in bed-rooms.
Shortly afterwards the Undomestic Daughter discovers that nature
intended her to be a hospital nurse, and she takes advantage of a
period when her mother, being occupied in tending a younger brother
through scarlatina cannot offer a determined opposition, to wring an
unwilling consent from her father, and to leave her home in order to
carry out her plan. This phase, however, does not last many weeks, and
she is soon back once more on the parental hands. Thus the years pass
on, the monotony of neglecting her home being varied by occasional
outbursts of enthusiasm which carry her on distant expeditions in
strange company. During one of these she falls in with a lay-preacher,
who to a powerful and convincing style adds the fascination of having
been turned from an early life of undoubted dissipation. She sits at
his feet, she flatters him as only a woman can flatter a preacher, and
having eventually married him, she helps him to found a new religion
during the intervals that she can spare from the foundation of a
considerable family. Warned by her own experience, she will never
allow her daughters to be seen without their sewing or their knitting.
Her sons will all be forced to learn useful trades, and it is quite
possible that as time passes she may irritate even her husband, by
constantly holding herself up to her somewhat discontented family as a
pattern of all the domestic virtues.
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