The laws and customs regarding the education of girls and the
employment of women may be wrong and difficult of righting; but a more
elemental wrong, and one that lies within reach of every parent, is
the coarse, mercenary, and revolting tone of sentiment in which girls
are brought up and in which women live, entirely apart from their
technical education and employment. I refer now to the refined and
educated, as well as, and indeed more than, to the rude and
illiterate, for it is their altitude which determines the level of all
below. This tone of sentiment is such as to diminish girls'
self-respect, mar their purity, and dwarf their being. They inhale,
they imbibe, they are steeped in the idea, that the great business of
their life is marriage, and if they fail to secure that they will
become utterly bankrupt and pitiable. Naturally this idea becomes
their ruling motive; all their course is bent to its guidance; and
from this idea and this course of action spring crime, and sorrow, and
disaster, "in thick array of depth immeasurable."
In this and in many other instances you will doubtless think that I
overstate the truth. Looking into an empty bucket, you would say the
air is colorless; looking into the depths of the atmosphere, you see
that it is blue. I am not writing about a bucket, but about the
atmosphere.
Viewing the circumstances which form women, together with the women
who are formed by them, one is filled with astonishment at the
indwelling dignity and divinity of the womanly nature; and the thought
can but arise, if a flower so fair can spring from a soil so badly
tilled, what graceful and glorious growths might we not see did art
but combine with nature to produce the conditions of the highest
development! We lament heathendom, but much of our spirit is
essentially heathenish. Little girls see in their geographies pictures
of Circassian fathers selling their daughters to Turkish husbands, and
they think it very inhuman and pagan. But, little girls, your fathers
will traffic in you without scruple. Matters will not be managed in
quite so business-like a fashion, but such a pressure will be brought
to bear upon you that you will have very little more spontaneity than
the Circassian slave who looks so pitiful in the geography book. At
home you will hear yourself talked about, talked at, and talked to, in
such a manner that you will have no choice left but to marry. It is
expected and assumed. I do not mean girls who are to snatch their
unhappy fathers from exposure and disgrace by a rich and hated
marriage. Such things belong to ballads. We are dealing now with life.
I have seen girls,--respectable, well-educated, daughters of Christian
families, of families who think they believe that man's chief end is
to glorify God and enjoy him forever, who profess to make the Bible
their rule of faith and practice, to eschew the pomps and vanities of
this world, and consecrate themselves to the Lord,--who are yet
trained to think and talk of marriage in a manner utterly commercial
and frivolous. Allusions to and conversations on the subject are of
such a nature that they cannot remain unmarried without shame. They
are taught, not in direct terms at so much a lesson, like music or
German, but indirectly, and with a thoroughness which no music-master
can equal, that, if a woman is not married, it is because she is not
attractive, that to be unattractive to men is the most dismal and
dreadful misfortune, and that for an unmarried woman earth has no
honor and no happiness, but only toleration and a mitigated or
unmitigated contempt.
What is the burden of the song that is sung to girls and women? Are
they counselled to be active, self-helpful, self-reliant, alert,
ingenious, energetic, aggressive? Are they strengthened to find out a
path for themselves, and to walk in it unashamed? Are they braced and
toned up to solve for themselves the problems of life, to bear its
ills undaunted and meet its happinesses unbewildered? Go to! Such a
thing was never heard of. It is woman's rights! It is strong-minded!
It is discontented with your sphere! It is masculine! Milton and St.
Paul to the rescue!
"For contemplation he, and valor formed,
For softness she, and sweet attractive grace."
So "she" is urged to cultivate sweet attractive grace by acquainting
herself with housework, by learning to sew, and starch, and make
bread, to be economical and housewifely, and so a helpmeet to the
husband who is assumed for her. This is the true way to be attractive,
she is informed. "Men admire you in the ball-room," say the mentors
and mentoresses, "but they choose a wife from the home-circle."
Marriage is simply a reward of merit. Do not be extravagant, or
careless, or bold, or rude, for so you will scare away suitors. Be
prudent, and tidy, and simple, and gentle, and timid, and you will be
surrounded by them, and that is heaven, and secure a husband, which is
the heaven of heavens. A flood of stories and anecdotes deluges us
with proof. Arthur falls in love with beautiful, romantic, poetic,
accomplished Leonie, till she faints one day, and he rushes into her
room for a smelling-bottle, and finds no hartshorn, but much confusion
and dust, while plain Molly's room is neat and tidy, and overflows
with hartshorn; whereupon he falls out of love with Leonie, in with
Molly, and virtue and vice have their reward. Or Charles pays a
morning visit, and is entertained sumptuously in the parlor by Anabel,
and Arabel, and Claribel, and Isabel, in silk, while Cinderella stays
in the kitchen in calico and linen collar. But Charles catches a
glimpse of Cinderella behind the door, and loves and marries the
humble, grateful girl, to the disappointment and deep disgust of her
flounced and jewelled sisters. Or Jane at the tea-table cuts the
cheese-rind too thick, and handsome young Leonard infers that she will
be extravagant; Harriet pares it too thin, and that stands for
niggardliness; but Mary hits the golden mean, and is rewarded with and
by handsome young Leonard. Or a broomstick lies in the way, over which
Clara, Anna, Laura, and the rest step unheeding or indifferent, and
only Lucy picks it up and replaces it, which Harry, standing by, makes
a note of, and Lucy is paid with the honor of being Harry's wife.
Moral: Go you and do likewise, and verily you shall have your reward,
or at least you stand a much better chance of having it than if you do
differently. "Be good, and you will be married," is the essence of the
lesson.
Laying aside now all question of the dignity and delicacy of such
proceedings, assuming for the time that it is the proper course, let
us notice whether it is followed out to its conclusions. Not in the
least. Having done its best to transpose the feminine raw material
into the orthodox texture and pattern of "good wives," society lays it
on the shelf to run its own risk of finding a purchaser. It neither
provides husbands for the "good wives" which it has made, nor suffers
them to go and look up husbands for themselves. If a girl is ready to
enter service, she can enroll her name at the intelligence office. If
she is prepared to teach, she sends to the "Committee." If she desires
to be a saleswoman, she applies at the different shops; but your "good
wife" candidate must wait patiently,--not the grand old theological
"waiting in the use of means," but the Micawber waiting for something
to turn up. She has learned the bread-making and the clear-starching;
she is mistress of domestic economy; she is familiar with all the
little details of puddings and preserves; she is ripe for wifehood and
green for all else, and now she wants an arena for the exercise of her
skill. But she would better pull her tongue out at once than say so.
People may talk to girls at pleasure of the fair domestic realm where
they will be queen, of the glory of such a kingdom, and the
unsatisfying emptiness of any and every other; but no crime is more
fatal to a girl's reputation and prospects than the suspicion of
husband-hunting. That fate, that career, that glory, which has been
constantly mapped out to her as the very Land of Promise, the goal of
her ambition, the culmination of her happiness, is the one fate, the
one career, the one glory, which she must not lift an eyelash to
secure. Let a girl, the very same girl whom you have been pushing
through a course of the received proper training, be supposed to set
but so much as a feather on her hat, a smile on her lips, a tone in
her voice, to attract the admiration which she has been constantly
taught is the guerdon of all the virtues,--and her reputation sinks at
once to zero. "Trying to get a husband," whether couched in the
decorous phrase of polite society, or in the uncompromising language
of more primitive circles, is the death-warrant of a girl's good name.
She must sedulously prepare herself for a position to which she must
be totally indifferent. She must learn all domestic accomplishments,
but she must take no measures, she must exhibit no symptoms of a
desire to secure a domestic situation. You bid her make ready the
wedding-garments and the marriage feast, and then sit quietly waiting
till the bridegroom cometh, her small hands folded, her meek eyelashes
drooping, no throb of impatience or discontent or anxiety in her
heart, no reaching out for any career at home or abroad, except a meek
ministration in her father's house, or a mild village benevolence. But
will Nature set aside her laws at your behest? Is it of any use for
you to lay down your yardstick and say, "Thus far shalt thou go, and
no farther"? Do you not see the inevitable result is a course of
falsehood?
Is this a strong statement, a libel upon the female sex? But you read
novel after novel in which the larger number of women--all, perhaps,
except the heroine--are represented as artful, sly, deceitful,
managing; and generally the main object of their artifice is to secure
a husband for themselves or for their daughters: yet you do not at
once cry out in indignant protest against such misrepresentation. On
the contrary, you follow the plot with lively interest, think the
author has a very clear insight into human nature, and especially
excels in the delineation of female character!
Hear what one of your own writers says: "If all the world were paper,
all the sea ink, all the plants and trees pens, and every man a
writer,--yet were they not able, with all labor and cunning, to set
down all the craft and deceits of women."
If my statement is a libel, it is less a libel than statements and
implications under which people have hitherto rested with a wonderful
degree of equanimity. It would be marvellous if it were a libel. A
girl receives such training that it is wellnigh impossible for her to
be sincere. You cannot give her whole life for six or a dozen years
one direction, and then set her face suddenly towards another quarter,
banishing from her mind every remembrance of past lessons, and every
thought of her portrayed future. But unless such an erasure is made,
or seems to be made, she knows that she forfeits good opinion, and
stands in great danger of losing the one prize which has been placed
before her, and which she may hope, but must not be detected in
hoping, to win. Consequently she learns to dissemble. It is her only
resource. Duplicity passes into her blood, and she learns to conceal
and deny what you have taught her it is improper to feel, but what you
have also made it impossible for her not to feel. I only wonder that
any uprightness is left among women. That there are women upon whose
garments the smell of fire has not passed,--that there are women whose
robes of whiteness have but a faint tinge of flame,--is not because
the fagots have not been piled around them and the torch applied.
This is one result of the famous, the infamous "good wife" doctrines.
Another, less fatal but sufficiently evil and more vexatious, is the
injury that is inflicted upon natural and healthful association. Men
and women are not allowed to look upon each other as rational beings;
every woman is a wife in the grub, every man is a possible husband in
the chrysalis state. If young people enjoy each other's conversation,
and make opportunities to secure it, there are dozens of gossips, male
and female, who proceed to forecast "a match." Intelligent interchange
of opinion and sentiments between a man and a woman for the mere
delight in it, with no design upon each other's name or fortune, is a
thing of which a large majority of civilized Americans have no
conception. Such a commodity never had a place in their inventory. A
man and a woman find each other agreeable, they cultivate each other's
society, and anon, East, West, South, and North goes the report that
they are "engaged." It is easy to see what a check this gives to an
intercourse that would be in the highest degree beneficial to both
sexes; beneficial, by giving to each a more accurate knowledge of the
other, and by improving what in each is good, and diminishing what is
bad.
One of three things should be done: cease to urge a girl on to
marriage by every terror threatened and every allurement displayed; by
making it the reward of all her exertion, the arena of all her
accomplishment, the condition of all her development; or take measures
to provide her with a suitable husband, so that she shall not be left
for an indefinite time in uncertainty and doubt, settling, perhaps, at
length into frivolity, waste, and despair; or cease to condemn her for
taking matters into her own hand, and furnishing herself an
opportunity for the exercise of those powers whose cultivation you
have strenuously urged, and for whose employment you have made no
provision. "Get a husband!" Why should she not get a husband? What
should you think of a boy who had been fitted by long training for the
duties and responsibilities of a clergyman, or a lawyer, or a
statesman, and should then make no attempt to become a clergyman, a
lawyer, or a statesman? What would you think of a father who should
train his son for any especial office, and should then forbid his son,
upon pain of universal derision, to do anything to secure an induction
into office?
I am loath to linger here, but I descend into the valley of shadows to
show that, even on your own ground, you are a wicked and slothful
servant.
Whom do I mean by "you"? I mean ninety-nine out of every hundred of
the men who will read this, and, in a modified degree, all the women
whom they have drilled to acquiescence in their decisions.
This baleful teaching goes still further. It not only drives girls
into deception: it drives them into uncongenial marriages. It forces
them to degradation. It does not permit them to view marriage in its
natural and proper light. By perpetually assuming it as their destiny,
even before they have any knowledge either of marriage or destiny, you
so force their inclinations that they come to prefer marrying an
indifferent person to not marrying at all,--or even to running the
risk of not marrying at all. Instead of letting their minds take a
healthful turn, branching off in such directions as nature chooses,
you dwarf them in every direction but one, and in that you stimulate.
If society were equally divided; if for every girl there were a man
exactly adapted to her, and the two might by your words be induced to
meet and marry, your talk might be harmless, and possibly beneficial;
but as the world is, at least this part of it, there is no such
arrangement, and no remote possibility of such an arrangement. The
material does not exist, even suppose the sagacity to discern and
dispose of it did. The number of women is much larger than the number
of men. In New England, at least, it is a dangerous thing for a woman
to set her heart on marrying for a living. When, therefore, you make
marriage indispensable, you institute an indiscriminate scramble.
Since in theory every girl must marry, and there are few to choose
from, she must take such as she can get, and be thankful. She would
like this, that, or the other quality, but it will not do to dally.
The chance of a better husband is very remote; numbers are worse off
than she, inasmuch as they have none at all; the contingency of going
unsupplied is not to be thought of, and accordingly she takes up with
what comes to hand. The few who are endowed with unusual charms of
mind or person may exercise a limited choice, but the common run of
girls must make a common run of it. If one who is so attractive as to
have many admirers remains long unmarried, she is abundantly
admonished of her danger. She is duly informed that she will one day
grow old, and will certainly not always have such opportunities as she
now enjoys. Her attractiveness is her stock in trade, which she must
invest while the market is brisk. Great will be her loss if she does
not. If without special attractions, a girl's position is still more
embarrassing. Dependent in her father's house, with no career open to
her, no arena for her action, what is to become of her? Anything is
better than a dependence which, her own heart tells her, is not long
grateful to her father. He may not be unkind or miserly toward her; he
may not--and he may, for such things are done--taunt her with her want
of success in making a match; he may even be generous and chivalric
towards her; but she is conscious that he is disappointed. He may not
acknowledge it even to himself, but she knows that she is not
fulfilling his wishes, not meeting his ideal. Her support is somewhat
a burden, her enforced presence somewhat a shame. He rejoiced in her
infancy, childhood, and youth, but he did not expect to have her on
his hands all her life. He would gladly spend twice as much on her
dowry as he gives for her allowance. She has a _sense_ of all this,
and, rather than remain in this state of pupilage, a woman in
character, a child in position, she marries the first man that holds
out the golden spectre,--I meant sceptre, but perhaps the first will
do just as well. I am speaking of the masses. I know that there are
exceptions. In spite of circumstances, there are women so
strong,--strong-minded if you like, but so symmetrical that you see no
peculiar strength or sweetness, only "a perfect woman,"--so strong,
that public opinion and private opinion, all the blare and blarney of
lecture-room and female-school orators, all the thinly disguised
paganism of church-worldlings, beat against them and leave them
unmoved as Gibraltar by the summer ripples of its southern sea. You
see them yourself, perhaps; but so beautiful, so gentle and lovely,
that you do not discern the granite which underlies beauty and grace,
and which alone redeems beauty and grace from the charge of gaud, and
makes their value; and in your low Dutch dialect you "wonder she
doesn't get married."
There are fathers and mothers, though these are rarer, who joy in
their children with a rational and Christian joy; who believe in God
and righteousness, immortality and human destiny; whose daughters are
polished stones, not in the palaces of earthly pride, vanity, and
ambition, but in the temple of the living God. Such parents and such
children are few, but they are enough to reveal possibilities. The
higher the few can reach, the higher the many shall rise. But these
are the strong, and the strong can take care of themselves. I have
nothing to say for them. I speak for those who are not strong,--for
the good and true-hearted, who feel themselves overborne by external
pressure, and swept along into a hateful and hated vortex,--for those
who wish to lead an upright Christian life, but who need a helping
hand. Still more, and saddest of all, I speak for those on whom the
blight has so long rested that they have lost the sense of
uprightness; they feel no wrong, and aspire to nothing higher. More
than this, I speak for those whose opening lives are yet untouched,
for whom warning and caution may not be too late. It is these--the
weak, the plastic, the impressible--whom your earth-born morality is
corrupting, whose possibilities of happiness and self-respect your
enervating woman's-sphere-ism is destroying. Women may be weak, yet
even in weakness is strength, but you have trodden down strength. You
trample under foot all sensibility, all delicacy, all dignity. A woman
can preserve her integrity only so far as she repels and represses
your miserable didactics;--by word and look, if the power be given
her; by a silent indignation of protest, if that is her only resource.
I know well, judging from past experience, that there will not be
wanting those who will think I am depreciating and deprecating
marriage. But it would be extremely foolish to set one's self against
marriage, for it would be holding out a straw to dam a river. I not
only do not hold out the straw, I do not even wish to dam the river.
But I would prevent it from being banked up here and banked up there,
and narrowed, twisted, and tortured, till it bursts all bounds,
natural and acquired, and rushes wildly over the country, destroying
villages, inundating harvests, sweeping away lives, and becoming a
terror and a fate instead of the beneficence it was meant to be.
_I_ depreciate marriage? I magnify it! It is you that depreciate, by
debasing it. You lower it to the level of the market. You degrade it
to a question of political and domestic economy. You look upon it as
an arrangement. I believe it to be a sacrament. You subordinate it to
ways and means. I see in it the type of mortal and immortal union. You
make it but the cradle of mankind. I make it also the crown. All that
is tender, grand, and ennobling finds there its home, its source and
sustenance, its inspiration, and its exceeding great reward.
But by as much as marriage is sacred, by so much is he a blasphemer
who travesties it; and he thrice and four times blasphemous who leads
others to do so. No sin is so dwelt on in the Bible with a stern,
reiterated fixedness of divine abhorrence as the sin of Jeroboam, the
son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin. They who barter their children
for a string of beads, or a talent of gold, are no more pagan than
they who, by accumulated indirections, lead them to barter themselves.
I do not undertake the defence of all "woman's rights," but with
whatever strength God has given me I will do battle for woman's right
to be pure. "Caesar's wife should be above suspicion," said haughty
Caesar, and the world applauds; but every woman is czarina by divine
right. No wretched outcast, wandering through the darkness of the
great city,
"With hell in her heart
And death in her hand,
Daring the doom of the unknown land,"
but has lost a crown. For her who, through weakness or despair, has
forfeited her birthright, the world has no pardon. I do not say that
ye should pray for it to be otherwise. But a deeper sin, a tenfold
more gross and revolting violation of God's law written on the human
heart,--giving force to the law written erewhile on the tables of
stone,--does she commit who, in the holy name of love, under the holy
forms of marriage, burns incense to false gods. Where love may walk
white-robed and stainless, brushing the morning dews from the grass,
only to descend again in fresher and fragrant showers, pride or
prudence or ambition can but bring the deepest profanation: roses
spring in his pathway; behind them is the desert.
Marriage contracted to subserve material ends, however innocent those
ends may be in themselves, is legalized prostitution; as much more
vilifying, as mischief framed by a law is more destructive than
mischief wrought in spite of law. To such vice the world is lenient,
scarcely recognizing it as vice; but the soul bears its marks of
wounds forever and forever.
Marriage is a result, not a cause. In God's great economy it may have
its separate and important work; but from a human point of view, it is
conclusion and not premise. It cannot be made the premise without
bringing fatal and disastrous conclusions. Whatever ends nature may
design her institution to compass, be sure nature will work out.