The catastrophe of every play is caused always by the folly or fault of
a man; the redemption, if there be any, is by the wisdom and virtue of
a woman, and failing that, there is none. The catastrophe of King Lear
is owing to his own want of judgment, his impatient vanity, his
misunderstanding of his children; the virtue of his one true daughter
would have saved him from all the injuries of the others, unless he had
cast her away from him; as it is, she all but saves him.
Of Othello I need not trace the tale;--nor the one weakness of his so
mighty love; nor the inferiority of his perceptive intellect to that
even of the second woman character in the play, the Emilia who dies in
wild testimony against his error:--"Oh, murderous coxcomb! What should
such a fool Do with so good a wife?"
In Romeo and Juliet, the wise and brave stratagem of the wife is
brought to ruinous issue by the reckless impatience of her husband. In
Winter's Tale and in Cymbeline, the happiness and existence of two
princely households, lost through long years, and imperiled to the
death by the folly and obstinacy of the husbands, are redeemed at last
by the queenly patience and wisdom of the wives. In Measure for
Measure, the foul injustice of the judge, and the foul cowardice of the
brother, are opposed to the victorious truth and adamantine purity of a
woman. In Coriolanus, the mother's counsel, acted upon in time, would
have saved her son from all evil; his momentary forgetfulness of it is
his ruin; her prayer at last granted, saves him--not, indeed, from
death, but from the curse of living as the destroyer of his country.
And what shall I say of Julia, constant against the fickleness of a
lover who is a mere wicked child?--of Helena, against the petulance and
insult of a careless youth?--of the patience of Hero, the passion of
Beatrice, and the calmly devoted wisdom of the "unlessoned girl," who
appears among the helplessness, the blindness, and the vindictive
passions of men, as a gentle angel, bringing courage and safety by her
presence, and defeating the worst malignities of crime by what women
are fancied most to fail in,--precision and accuracy of thought.
58. Observe, further, among all the principal figures in Shakespeare's
plays, there is only one weak woman--Ophelia; and it is because she
fails Hamlet at the critical moment, and is not, and cannot in her
nature be, a guide to him when he needs her most, that all the bitter
catastrophe follows. Finally, though there are three wicked women
among the principal figures, Lady Macbeth, Regan, and Goneril, they are
felt at once to be frightful exceptions to the ordinary laws of life;
fatal in their influence also in proportion to the power for good which
they have abandoned.
Such, in broad light, is Shakespeare's testimony to the position and
character of women in human life. He represents them as infallibly
faithful and wise counselors,--incorruptibly just and pure
examples--strong always to sanctify, even when they cannot save.
59. Not as in any wise comparable in knowledge of the nature of
man,--still less in his understanding of the causes and courses of
fate,--but only as the writer who has given us the broadest view of the
conditions and modes of ordinary thought in modern society, I ask you
next to receive the witness of Walter Scott.
I put aside his merely romantic prose writings as of no value; and
though the early romantic poetry is very beautiful, its testimony is of
no weight, other than that of a boy's ideal. But his true works,
studied from Scottish life, bear a true witness; and, in the whole
range of these, there are but three men who reach the heroic
type[2]--Dandie Dinmont, Rob Roy, and Claverhouse; of these, one is a
border farmer; another a freebooter; the third a soldier in a bad
cause. And these touch the ideal of heroism only in their courage and
faith, together with a strong, but uncultivated, or mistakenly applied,
intellectual power; while his younger men are the gentlemanly
playthings of fantastic fortune, and only by aid (or accident) of that
fortune, survive, not vanquish, the trials they involuntarily sustain.
Of any disciplined, or consistent character, earnest in a purpose
wisely conceived, or dealing with forms of hostile evil, definitely
challenged, and resolutely subdued, there is no trace in his
conceptions of young men. Whereas in his imaginations of women,--in
the characters of Ellen Douglas, of Flora MacIvor, Rose Bradwardine,
Catherine Seyton, Diana Vernon, Lilias Redgauntlet, Alice Bridgenorth,
Alice Lee, and Jeanie Deans,--with endless varieties of grace,
tenderness, and intellectual power we find in all a quite infallible
and inevitable sense of dignity and justice; a fearless, instant, and
untiring self-sacrifice to even the appearance of duty, much more to
its real claims; and, finally, a patient wisdom of deeply restrained
affection, which does infinitely more than protect its objects from a
momentary error; it gradually forms, animates, and exalts the
characters of the unworthy lovers, until, at the close of the tale, we
are just able, and no more, to take patience in hearing of their
unmerited success. So that in all cases, with Scott as with
Shakespeare, it is the woman who watches over, teaches, and guides the
youth; it is never, by any chance, the youth who watches over or
educates his mistress.
60. Next, take, though more briefly, graver testimony--that of the
great Italians and Greeks. You know well the plan of Dante's great
poem--that it is a love poem to his dead lady; a song of praise for her
watch over his soul. Stooping only to pity, never to love, she yet
saves him from destruction--saves him from hell. He is going eternally
astray in despair; she comes down from heaven to his help, and
throughout the ascents of Paradise is his teacher, interpreting for him
the most difficult truths, divine and human, and leading him, with
rebuke upon rebuke, from star to star.
I do not insist upon Dante's conception; if I began I could not cease;
besides, you might think this a wild imagination of one poet's heart.
So I will rather read to you a few verses of the deliberate writing of
a knight of Pisa to his living lady, wholly characteristic of the
feeling of all the noblest men of the thirteenth, or early fourteenth
century, preserved among many other such records of knightly honor and
love, which Dante Rossetti has gathered for us from among the early
Italian poets.
"For lo! thy law is passed
That this my love should manifestly be
To serve and honor thee;
And so I do; and my delight is full,
Accepted for the servant of thy rule.
"Without almost, I am all rapturous,
Since thus my will was set
To serve, thou flower of joy, thine excellence;
Nor ever seems it anything could rouse
A pain or regret,
But on thee dwells mine every thought and sense;
Considering that from thee all virtues spread
As from a fountain head,--
_That in thy gift is wisdom's best avail,_
_And honor without fail;_
With whom each sovereign good dwells separate,
Fulfilling the perfection of thy state.
"Lady, since I conceived
That pleasurable aspect in my heart,
_My life has been apart_
_In shining brightness and the place of truth;_
Which till that time, good sooth,
Groped among shadows in a darken'd place,
Where many hours and days
It hardly ever had remember'd good.
But now my servitude
Is thine, and I am full of joy and rest.
A man from a wild beast
Thou madest me, since for thy love I lived."
61. You may think, perhaps, a Greek knight would have had a lower
estimate of women than this Christian lover. His spiritual subjection
to them was, indeed, not so absolute; but as regards their own personal
character, it was only because you could not have followed me so
easily, that I did not take the Greek women instead of Shakespeare's;
and instance, for chief ideal types of human beauty and faith, the
simple mother's and wife's heart of Andromache; the divine, yet
rejected wisdom of Cassandra; the playful kindness and simple
princess-life of happy Nausicaa; the housewifely calm of that of
Penelope, with its watch upon the sea; the ever patient, fearless,
hopelessly devoted piety of the sister and daughter, in Antigone; the
bowing down of Iphigenia, lamb-like and silent; and, finally, the
expectation of the resurrection, made clear to the soul of the Greeks
in the return from her grave of that Alcestis, who, to save her
husband, had passed calmly through the bitterness of death.
62. Now, I could multiply witness upon witness of this kind upon you
if I had time. I would take Chaucer, and show you why he wrote a
Legend of Good Women; but no Legend of Good Men. I would take Spenser,
and show you how all his fairy knights are sometimes deceived and
sometimes vanquished; but the soul of Una is never darkened, and the
spear of Britomart is never broken. Nay, I could go back into the
mythical teaching of the most ancient times, and show you how the great
people,--by one of whose princesses it was appointed that the Lawgiver
of all the earth should be educated, rather than by his own
kindred;--how that great Egyptian people, wisest then of nations, gave
to their Spirit of Wisdom the form of a woman; and into her hand, for a
symbol, the weaver's shuttle; and how the name and the form of that
spirit, adopted, believed, and obeyed by the Greeks, became that Athena
of the olive-helm, and cloudy shield, to faith in whom you owe, down to
this date, whatever you hold most precious in art, in literature, or in
types of national virtue.
63. But I will not wander into this distant and mythical element; I
will only ask you to give its legitimate value to the testimony of
these great poets and men of the world,--consistent, as you see it is,
on this head. I will ask you whether it can be supposed that these
men, in the main work of their lives, are amusing themselves with a
fictitious and idle view of the relations between man and woman;--nay,
worse than fictitious or idle; for a thing may be imaginary, yet
desirable, if it were possible; but this, their ideal of woman, is,
according to our common idea of the marriage relation, wholly
undesirable. The woman, we say, is not to guide, nor even to think for
herself. The man is always to be the wiser; he is to be the thinker,
the ruler, the superior in knowledge and discretion, as in power.
64. Is it not somewhat important to make up our minds on this matter?
Are all these great men mistaken, or are we? Are Shakespeare and
Aeschylus, Dante and Homer, merely dressing dolls for us; or, worse
than dolls, unnatural visions, the realization of which, were it
possible, would bring anarchy into all households and ruin into all
affections? Nay, if you could suppose this, take lastly the evidence
of facts, given by the human heart itself. In all Christian ages which
have been remarkable for their purity or progress, there has been
absolute yielding of obedient devotion, by the lover, to his mistress.
I say _obedient_;--not merely enthusiastic and worshiping in
imagination, but entirely subject, receiving from the beloved woman,
however young, not only the encouragement, the praise, and the reward
of all toil, but so far as any choice is open, or any question
difficult of decision, the _direction_ of all toil. That chivalry, to
the abuse and dishonor of which are attributable primarily whatever is
cruel in war, unjust in peace, or corrupt and ignoble in domestic
relations; and to the original purity and power of which we owe the
defense alike of faith, of law, and of love;--that chivalry, I say, in
its very first conception of honorable life, assumes the subjection of
the young knight to the command--should it even be the command in
caprice--of his lady. It assumes this, because its masters knew that
the first and necessary impulse of every truly taught and knightly
heart is this of blind service to its lady; that where that true faith
and captivity are not, all wayward and wicked passions must be; and
that in this rapturous obedience to the single love of his youth, is
the sanctification of all man's strength, and the continuance of all
his purposes. And this, not because such obedience would be safe, or
honorable, were it ever rendered to the unworthy; but because it ought
to be impossible for every noble youth--it _is_ impossible for every
one rightly trained--to love any one whose gentle counsel he cannot
trust, or whose prayerful command he can hesitate to obey.
65. I do not insist by any farther argument on this, for I think it
should commend itself at once to your knowledge of what has been and to
your feelings of what should be. You cannot think that the buckling on
of the knight's armor by his lady's hand was a mere caprice of romantic
fashion. It is the type of an eternal truth--that the soul's armor is
never well set to the heart unless a woman's hand has braced it; and it
is only when she braces it loosely that the honor of manhood fails.
Know you not those lovely lines--I would they were learned by all
youthful ladies of England.--
"Ah, wasteful woman!--she who may
On her sweet self set her own price,
Knowing he cannot choose but pay--
How has she cheapen'd Paradise!
How given for nought her priceless gift,
How spoiled the bread and spill'd the wine,
Which, spent with due, respective thrift,
Had made brutes men, and men divine!" [3]
66. Thus much, then, respecting the relations of lovers I believe you
will accept. But what we too often doubt is the fitness of the
continuance of such a relation throughout the whole of human life. We
think it right in the lover and mistress, not in the husband and wife.
That is to say, we think that a reverent and tender duty is due to one
whose affection we still doubt, and whose character we as yet do but
partially and distantly discern; and that this reverence and duty are
to be withdrawn, when the affection has become wholly and limitlessly
our own, and the character has been so sifted and tried that we fear
not to entrust it with the happiness of our lives. Do you not see how
ignoble this is, as well as how unreasonable? Do you not feel that
marriage,--when it is marriage at all,--is only the seal which marks
the vowed transition of temporary into untiring service, and of fitful
into eternal love?
67. But how, you will ask, is the idea of this guiding function of the
woman reconcilable with a true wifely subjection? Simply in that it is
a _guiding_, not a determining, function. Let me try to show you
briefly how these powers seem to be rightly distinguishable.
We are foolish, and without excuse foolish, in speaking of the
"superiority" of one sex to the other, as if they could be compared in
similar things. Each has what the other has not: each completes the
other, and is completed by the other: they are in nothing alike, and
the happiness and perfection of both depends on each asking and
receiving from the other what the other only can give.
68. Now their separate characters are briefly these: The man's power
is active, progressive, defensive. He is eminently the doer, the
creator, the discoverer, the defender. His intellect is for
speculation and invention; his energy for adventure, for war, and for
conquest, wherever war is just, wherever conquest necessary. But the
woman's power is for rule, not for battle,--and her intellect is not
for invention or creation, but for sweet ordering, arrangement, and
decision. She sees the qualities of things, their claims, and their
places. Her great function is Praise: she enters into no contest, but
infallibly judges the crown of contest. By her office, and place, she
is protected from all danger and temptation. The man, in his rough
work in open world, must encounter all peril and trial: to him,
therefore, must be the failure, the offense, the inevitable error:
often he must be wounded, or subdued; often misled; and _always_
hardened. But he guards the woman from all this; within his house, as
ruled by her, unless she herself has sought it, need enter no danger,
no temptation, no cause of error or offense. This is the true nature
of home--it is the place of Peace; the shelter, not only from all
injury, but from all terror, doubt, and division. In so far as it is
not this, it is not home: so far as the anxieties of the outer life
penetrate into it, and the inconsistently-minded, unknown, unloved, or
hostile society of the outer world is allowed by either husband or wife
to cross the threshold, it ceases to be home; it is then only a part of
that outer world which you have roofed over, and lighted fire in. But
so far as it is a sacred place, a vestal temple, a temple of the hearth
watched over by Household Gods, before whose faces none may come but
those whom they can receive with love,--so far as it is this, and roof
and fire are types only of a nobler shade and light,--shade as of the
rock in a weary land, and light as of the Pharos in the stormy sea,--so
far it vindicates the name, and fulfills the praise, of home.
And wherever a true wife comes, this home is always round her. The
stars only may be over her head; the glow-worm in the night-cold grass
may be the only fire at her foot: but home is yet wherever she is; and
for a noble woman it stretches far round her, better than ceiled with
cedar, or painted with vermilion, shedding its quiet light far, for
those who else were homeless.
69. This, then, I believe to be,--will you not admit it to be,--the
woman's true place and power? But do not you see that to fulfill this,
she must--as far as one can use such terms of a human creature--be
incapable of error? So far as she rules, all must be right, or nothing
is. She must be enduringly, incorruptibly good; instinctively,
infallibly wise--wise, not for self-development, but for
self-renunciation: wise, not that she may set herself above her
husband, but that she may never fail from his side: wise, not with the
narrowness of insolent and loveless pride, but with the passionate
gentleness of an infinitely variable, because infinitely applicable,
modesty of service--the true changefulness of woman. In that great
sense--"La donna è mobile," not "Qual piúm' al vento"; no, nor yet
"Variable as the shade, by the light quivering aspen made"; but
variable as the _light_, manifold in fair and serene division, that it
may take the color of all that it falls upon, and exalt it.
70. II.--I have been trying, thus far, to show you what should be the
place, and what the power of woman. Now, secondly, we ask, What kind
of education is to fit her for these?
And if you indeed think this is a true conception of her office and
dignity, it will not be difficult to trace the course of education
which would fit her for the one, and raise her to the other.
The first of our duties to her--no thoughtful persons now doubt
this--is to secure for her such physical training and exercise as may
confirm her health, and perfect her beauty, the highest refinement of
that beauty being unattainable without splendor of activity and of
delicate strength. To perfect her beauty, I say, and increase its
power; it cannot be too powerful, nor shed its sacred light too far:
only remember that all physical freedom is vain to produce beauty
without a corresponding freedom of heart. There are two passages of
that poet who is distinguished, it seems to me, from all others--not by
power, but by exquisite _right_ness--which point you to the source, and
describe to you, in a few syllables, the completion of womanly beauty.
I will read the introductory stanzas, but the last is the one I wish
you specially to notice:--
"Three years she grew in sun and shower,
Then Nature said, 'A lovelier flower
On earth was never sown.
This child I to myself will take;
She shall be mine, and I will make
A lady of my own.
"'Myself will to my darling be
Both law and impulse; and with me
The girl, in rock and plain,
In earth and heaven, in glade and bower,
Shall feel an overseeing power
To kindle, or restrain.
"'The floating clouds their state shall lend
To her; for her the willow bend;
Nor shall she fail to see
Even in the motions of the storm
Grace that shall mould the maiden's form
By silent sympathy.
"'And _vital feelings of delight_
Shall rear her form to stately height,
Her virgin bosom swell.
Such thoughts to Lucy I will give,
While she and I together live,
Here in this happy dell.'" [4]
"_Vital_ feelings of delight," observe. There are deadly feelings of
delight; but the natural ones are vital, necessary to very life.
And they must be feelings of delight, if they are to be vital. Do not
think you can make a girl lovely, if you do not make her happy. There
is not one restraint you put on a good girl's nature--there is not one
check you give to her instincts of affection or of effort--which will
not be indelibly written on her features, with a hardness which is all
the more painful because it takes away the brightness from the eyes of
innocence, and the charm from the brow of virtue.
71. This for the means: now note the end. Take from the same poet, in
two lines, a perfect description of womanly beauty--
"A countenance in which did meet
Sweet records, promises as sweet."
The perfect loveliness of a woman's countenance can only consist in
that majestic peace, which is founded in the memory of happy and useful
years,--full of sweet records; and from the joining of this with that
yet more majestic childishness, which is still full of change and
promise;--opening always--modest at once, and bright, with hope of
better things to be won, and to be bestowed. There is no old age where
there is still that promise.
72. Thus, then, you have first to mould her physical frame, and then,
as the strength she gains will permit you, to fill and temper her mind
with all knowledge and thoughts which tend to confirm its natural
instincts of justice, and refine its natural tact of love.
All such knowledge should be given her as may enable her to understand,
and even to aid, the work of men: and yet it should be given, not as
knowledge,--not as if it were, or could be, for her an object to know;
but only to feel, and to judge. It is of no moment, as a matter of
pride or perfectness in herself, whether she knows many languages or
one; but it is of the utmost, that she should be able to show kindness
to a stranger, and to understand the sweetness of a stranger's tongue.
It is of no moment to her own worth or dignity that she should be
acquainted with this science or that; but it is of the highest that she
should be trained in habits of accurate thought; that she should
understand the meaning, the inevitableness, and the loveliness of
natural laws; and follow at least some one path of scientific
attainment, as far as to the threshold of that bitter Valley of
Humiliation, into which only the wisest and bravest of men can descend,
owning themselves forever children, gathering pebbles on a boundless
shore. It is of little consequence how many positions of cities she
knows, or how many dates of events, or names of celebrated persons--it
is not the object of education to turn a woman into a dictionary; but
it is deeply necessary that she should be taught to enter with her
whole personality into the history she reads; to picture the passages
of it vitally in her own bright imagination; to apprehend, with her
fine instincts, the pathetic circumstances and dramatic relations,
which the historian too often only eclipses by his reasoning, and
disconnects by his arrangement: it is for her to trace the hidden
equities of divine reward, and catch sight, through the darkness, of
the fatal threads of woven fire that connect error with its
retribution. But, chiefly of all, she is to be taught to extend the
limits of her sympathy with respect to that history which is being for
her determined as the moments pass in which she draws her peaceful
breath: and to the contemporary calamity, which, were it but rightly
mourned by her, would recur no more hereafter. She is to exercise
herself in imagining what would be the effects upon her mind and
conduct, if she were daily brought into the presence of the suffering
which is not the less real because shut from her sight. She is to be
taught somewhat to understand the nothingness of the proportion which
that little world in which she lives and loves, bears to the world in
which God lives and loves;--and solemnly she is to be taught to strive
that her thoughts of piety may not be feeble in proportion to the
number they embrace, nor her prayer more languid than it is for the
momentary relief from pain of her husband or her child, when it is
uttered for the multitudes of those who have none to love them,--and
is, "for all who are desolate and oppressed."
73. Thus far, I think, I have had your concurrence; perhaps you will
not be with me in what I believe is most needful for me to say. There
is one dangerous science for women--one which they must indeed beware
how they profanely touch--that of theology. Strange, and miserably
strange, that while they are modest enough to doubt their powers, and
pause at the threshold of sciences where every step is demonstrable and
sure, they will plunge headlong, and without one thought of
incompetency, into that science in which the greatest men have
trembled, and the wisest erred. Strange, that they will complacently
and pridefully bind up whatever vice or folly there is in them,
whatever arrogance, petulance, or blind incomprehensiveness, into one
bitter bundle of consecrated myrrh. Strange, in creatures born to be
Love visible, that where they can know least, they will condemn first,
and think to recommend themselves to their Master, by scrambling up the
steps of His judgment throne, to divide it with Him. Strangest of all,
that they should think they were led by the Spirit of the Comforter
into habits of mind which have become in them the unmixed elements of
home discomfort; and that they dare to turn the Household Gods of
Christianity into ugly idols of their own;--spiritual dolls, for them
to dress according to their caprice; and from which their husbands must
turn away in grieved contempt, lest they should be shrieked at for
breaking them.
74. I believe then, with this exception, that a girl's education
should be nearly, in its course and material of study, the same as a
boy's; but quite differently directed. A woman in any rank of life,
ought to know whatever her husband is likely to know, but to know it in
a different way. His command of it should be foundational and
progressive; hers, general and accomplished for daily and helpful use.
Not but that it would often be wiser in men to learn things in a
womanly sort of way, for present use, and to seek for the discipline
and training of their mental powers in such branches of study as will
be afterwards fittest for social service; but, speaking broadly, a man
ought to know any language or science he learns, thoroughly--while a
woman ought to know the same language, or science, only so far as may
enable her to sympathize in her husband's pleasures, and in those of
his best friends.
75. Yet, observe, with exquisite accuracy as far as she reaches.
There is a wide difference between elementary knowledge and superficial
knowledge--between a firm beginning, and an infirm attempt at
compassing. A woman may always help her husband by what she knows,
however little; by what she half-knows, or mis-knows, she will only
tease him.
And indeed, if there were to be any difference between a girl's
education and a boy's, I should say that of the two the girl should be
earlier led, as her intellect ripens faster, into deep and serious
subjects: and that her range of literature should be, not more, but
less frivolous; calculated to add the qualities of patience and
seriousness to her natural poignancy of thought and quickness of wit;
and also to keep her in a lofty and pure element of thought. I enter
not now into any question of choice of books; only let us be sure that
her books are not heaped up in her lap as they fall out of the package
of the circulating library, wet with the last and lightest spray of the
fountain of folly.
76. Or even of the fountain of wit; for with respect to that sore
temptation of novel-reading, it is not the badness of a novel that we
should dread, so much as its over-wrought interest. The weakest
romance is not so stupefying as the lower forms of religious exciting
literature, and the worst romance is not so corrupting as false
history, false philosophy, or false political essays. But the best
romance becomes dangerous, if, by its excitement it renders the
ordinary course of life uninteresting, and increases the morbid thirst
for useless acquaintance with scenes in which we shall never be called
upon to act.
77. I speak therefore of good novels only; and our modern literature
is particularly rich in types of such. Well read, indeed, these books
have serious use, being nothing less than treatises on moral anatomy
and chemistry; studies of human nature in the elements of it. But I
attach little weight to this function: they are hardly ever read with
earnestness enough to permit them to fulfill it. The utmost they
usually do is to enlarge somewhat the charity of a kind reader, or the
bitterness of a malicious one; for each will gather, from the novel,
food for her own disposition. Those who are naturally proud and
envious will learn from Thackeray to despise humanity; those who are
naturally gentle, to pity it; those who are naturally shallow, to laugh
at it. So also, there might be a serviceable power in novels to bring
before us, in vividness, a human truth which we had before dimly
conceived; but the temptation to picturesqueness of statement is so
great, that often the best writers of fiction cannot resist it; and our
views are rendered so violent and one-sided, that their vitality is
rather a harm than good.
78. Without, however, venturing here on any attempt at decision of how
much novel-reading should be allowed, let me at least clearly assert
this, that whether novels, or poetry, or history be read, they should
be chosen, not for their freedom from evil, but for their possession of
good. The chance and scattered evil that may here and there haunt, or
hide itself in, a powerful book, never does any harm to a noble girl;
but the emptiness of an author oppresses her, and his amiable folly
degrades her. And if she can have access to a good library of old and
classical books, there need be no choosing at all. Keep the modern
magazine and novel out of your girl's way; turn her loose into the old
library every wet day, and let her alone. She will find what is good
for her; you cannot; for there is just this difference between the
making of a girl's character and a boy's--you may chisel a boy into
shape, as you would a rock, or hammer him into it, if he be of a better
kind, as you would a piece of bronze. But you cannot hammer a girl
into anything. She grows as a flower does,--she will wither without
sun; she will decay in her sheath, as the narcissus will, if you do not
give her air enough; she may fall, and defile her head in dust, if you
leave her without help at some moments of her life; but you cannot
fetter her; she must take her own fair form and way, if she take any,
and in mind as in body, must have always--
"Her household motions light and free
And steps of virgin liberty."
Let her loose in the library, I say, as you do a fawn in a field. It
knows the bad weeds twenty times better than you; and the good ones,
too, and will eat some bitter and prickly ones, good for it, which you
had not the slightest thought would have been so.
79. Then, in art, keep the finest models before her, and let her
practice in all accomplishments to be accurate and thorough, so as to
enable her to understand more than she accomplishes. I say the finest
models--that is to say, the truest, simplest, usefullest. Note those
epithets; they will range through all the arts. Try them in music,
where you might think them the least applicable. I say the truest,
that in which the notes most closely and faithfully express the meaning
of the words, or the character of intended emotion; again, the
simplest, that in which the meaning and melody are attained with the
fewest and most significant notes possible; and, finally, the
usefullest, that music which makes the best words most beautiful, which
enchants them in our memories each with its own glory of sound, and
which applies them closest to the heart at the moment we need them.
80. And not only in the material and in the course, but yet more
earnestly in the spirit of it, let a girl's education be as serious as
a boy's. You bring up your girls as if they were meant for sideboard
ornament, and then complain of their frivolity. Give them the same
advantages that you give their brothers--appeal to the same grand
instincts of virtue in them; teach _them_, also, that courage and truth
are the pillars of their being;--do you think that they would not
answer that appeal, brave and true as they are even now, when you know
that there is hardly a girl's school in this Christian kingdom where
the children's courage or sincerity would be thought of half so much
importance as their way of coming in at a door; and when the whole
system of society, as respects the mode of establishing them in life,
is one rotten plague of cowardice and imposture--cowardice, in not
daring to let them live, or love, except as their neighbors choose; and
imposture, in bringing, for the purpose of our own pride, the full glow
of the world's worst vanity upon a girl's eyes, at the very period when
the whole happiness of her future existence depends upon her remaining
undazzled?
81. And give them, lastly, not only noble teachings but noble
teachers. You consider somewhat, before you send your boy to school,
what kind of a man the master is;--whatsoever kind of a man he is, you
at least give him full authority over your son, and show some respect
for him yourself;--if he comes to dine with you, you do not put him at
a side table; you know, also, that at his college, your child's
immediate tutor will be under the direction of some still higher tutor,
for whom you have absolute reverence. You do not treat the Dean of
Christ Church or the Master of Trinity as your inferiors.
But what teachers do you give your girls, and what reverence do you
show to the teachers you have chosen? Is a girl likely to think her
own conduct, or her own intellect, of much importance, when you trust
the entire formation of her character, moral and intellectual, to a
person whom you let your servants treat with less respect than they do
your housekeeper (as if the soul of your child were a less charge than
jams and groceries), and whom you yourself think you confer an honor
upon by letting her sometimes sit in the drawing-room in the evening?
82. Thus, then, of literature as her help, and thus of art. There is
one more help which we cannot do without--one which, alone, has
sometimes done more than all other influences besides,--the help of
wild and fair nature. Hear this of the education of Joan of Arc:--
"The education of this poor girl was mean according to the present
standard; was ineffably grand, according to a purer philosophic
standard; and only not good for our age, because for us it would be
unattainable. . . .
"Next after her spiritual advantages, she owed most to the advantages
of her situation. The fountain of Domrémy was on the brink of a
boundless forest; and it was haunted to that degree by fairies, that
the parish priest (_curé_) was obliged to read mass there once a year,
in order to keep them in any decent bounds. . . .
"But the forest of Domrémy--those were the glories of the land; for in
them abode mysterious powers and ancient secrets that towered into
tragic strength. Abbeys there were, and abbey windows,'--'like Moorish
temples of the Hindoos,' that exercised even princely power both in
Touraine and in the German Diets. These had their sweet bells that
pierced the forests for many a league at matins or vespers, and each
its own dreamy legend. Few enough, and scattered enough, were these
abbeys, so as in no degree to disturb the deep solitude of the region;
yet many enough to spread a network or awning of Christian sanctity
over what else might have seemed a heathen wilderness." [5]
Now you cannot, indeed, have here in England, woods eighteen miles deep
to the centre; but you can, perhaps, keep a fairy or two for your
children yet, if you wish to keep them. But _do_ you wish it? Suppose
you had each, at the back of your houses, a garden large enough for
your children to play in, with just as much lawn as would give them
room to run,--no more--and that you could not change your abode; but
that, if you choose, you could double your income, or quadruple it, by
digging a coal-shaft in the middle of the lawn, and turning the
flower-beds into heaps of coke. Would you do it? I hope not. I can
tell you, you would be wrong if you did, though it gave you income
sixty-fold instead of four-fold.
83. Yet this is what you are doing with all England. The whole
country is but a little garden, not more than enough for your children
to run on the lawns of, if you would let them _all_ run there. And
this little garden you will turn into furnace-ground, and fill with
heaps of cinders, if you can; and those children of yours, not you,
will suffer for it. For the fairies will not be all banished; there
are fairies of the furnace as of the wood, and their first gifts seem
to be "sharp arrows of the mighty"; but their last gifts are "coals of
juniper."
84. And yet I cannot--though there is no part of my subject that I
feel more--press this upon you; for we made so little use of the power
of nature while we had it, that we shall hardly feel what we have lost.
Just on the other side of the Mersey you have your Snowdon, and your
Menai Straits, and that mighty granite rock beyond the moors of
Anglesea, splendid in its heatherly crest, and foot planted in the deep
sea, once thought of as sacred--a divine promontory, looking westward;
the Holy Head or Headland, still not without awe when its red light
glares first through storm. These are the hills, and these the bays
and blue inlets, which, among the Greeks, would have been always loved,
always fateful in influence on the national mind. That Snowdon is your
Parnassus; but where are its Muses? That Holyhead mountain is your
Island of Aegina, but where is its Temple to Minerva?
85. Shall I read you what the Christian Minerva had achieved under the
shadow of our Parnassus, up to the year 1848?--Here is a little account
of a Welsh school, from page 261 of the report on Wales, published by
the Committee of Council on Education. This is a school close to a
town containing 5,000 persons:--
"I then called up a larger class, most of whom had recently come to the
school. Three girls repeatedly declared that they had never heard of
Christ, and two that they had never heard of God. Two out of six
thought Christ was on earth now ('they might have had a worse thought,
perhaps'); three knew nothing about the crucifixion. Four out of seven
did not know the names of the months, nor the number of days in a year.
They had no notion of addition beyond two and two, or three and three;
their minds were perfect blanks."
Oh, ye women of England! from the Princess of that Wales to the
simplest of you, do not think your own children can be brought into
their true fold of rest while these are scattered on the hills, as
sheep having no shepherd. And do not think your daughters can be
trained to the truth of their own human beauty, while the pleasant
places, which God made at once for their school-room and their
playground, lie desolate and defiled. You cannot baptize them rightly
in those inch-deep fonts of yours, unless you baptize them also in the
sweet waters which the great Lawgiver strikes forth forever from the
rocks of your native land--waters which a Pagan would have worshiped in
their purity, and you only worship with pollution. You cannot lead
your children faithfully to those narrow axe-hewn church altars of
yours, while the dark azure altars in heaven--the mountains that
sustain your island throne,--mountains on which a Pagan would have seen
the powers of heaven rest in every wreathed cloud--remain for you
without inscription; altars built, not to, but by, an Unknown God.
86. III.--Thus far, then, of the nature, thus far of the teaching, of
women, and thus of her household office, and queenliness. We come now
to our last, our widest question,--What is her queenly office with
respect to the state?
Generally we are under an impression that a man's duties are public,
and a woman's private. But this is not altogether so. A man has a
personal work or duty, relating to his own home, and a public work or
duty, which is the expansion of the other, relating to the state. So a
woman has a personal work and duty, relating to her own home, and a
public work and duty, which is also the expansion of that.
Now the man's work for his own home is, as has been said, to secure its
maintenance, progress, and defence; the woman's to secure its order,
comfort, and loveliness.
Expand both these functions. The man's duty, as a member of a
commonwealth, is to assist in the maintenance, in the advance, in the
defense of the state. The woman's duty, as a member of the
commonwealth, is to assist in the ordering, in the comforting, and in
the beautiful adornment of the state.
What the man is at his own gate, defending it, if need be, against
insult and spoil, that also, not in a less, but in a more devoted
measure, he is to be at the gate of his country, leaving his home, if
need be, even to the spoiler, to do his more incumbent work there.
And, in like manner, what the woman is to be within her gates, as the
center of order, the balm of distress, and the mirror of beauty; that
she is also to be without her gates, where order is more difficult,
distress more imminent, loveliness more rare.
And as within the human heart there is always set an instinct for all
its real duties,--an instinct which you cannot quench, but only warp
and corrupt if you withdraw it from its true purpose;--as there is the
intense instinct of love, which, rightly disciplined, maintains all the
sanctities of life, and, misdirected, undermines them; and _must_ do
either the one or the other;--so there is in the human heart an
inextinguishable instinct, the love of power, which, rightly directed,
maintains all the majesty of law and life, and, misdirected, wrecks
them.
87. Deep rooted in the innermost life of the heart of man, and of the
heart of woman, God set it there, and God keeps it there. Vainly, as
falsely, you blame or rebuke the desire of power!--For Heaven's sake,
and for Man's sake, desire it all you can. But _what_ power? That is
all the question. Power to destroy? the lion's limb, and the dragon's
breath? Not so. Power to heal, to redeem, to guide, and to guard.
Power of the scepter and shield; the power of the royal hand that heals
in touching,--that binds the fiend and looses the captive; the throne
that is founded on the rock of Justice, and descended from only by
steps of mercy. Will you not covet such power as this, and seek such
throne as this, and be no more housewives, but queens?
88. It is now long since the women of England arrogated, universally,
a title which once belonged to nobility only, and, having once been in
the habit of accepting the simple title of gentlewoman, as
correspondent to that of gentleman, insisted on the privilege of
assuming the title of "Lady," [6] which properly corresponds only to
the title of "Lord."
I do not blame them for this; but only for their narrow motive in this.
I would have them desire and claim the title of Lady, provided they
claim, not merely the title, but the office and duty signified by it.
Lady means "bread-giver" or "loaf-giver," and Lord means "maintainer of
laws," and both titles have reference, not to the law which is
maintained in the house, nor to the bread which is given to the
household, but to law maintained for the multitude, and to bread broken
among the multitude. So that a Lord has legal claim only to his title
in so far as he is the maintainer of the justice of the Lord of Lords;
and a Lady has legal claim to her title only so far as she communicates
that help to the poor representatives of her Master, which women once,
ministering to Him of their substance, were permitted to extend to that
Master Himself; and when she is known, as He Himself once was, in
breaking of bread.
89. And this beneficent and legal dominion, this power of the Dominus,
or House-Lord, and of the Domina, or House-Lady, is great and
venerable, not in the number of those through whom it has lineally
descended, but in the number of those whom it grasps within its sway;
it is always regarded with reverent worship wherever its dynasty is
founded on its duty, and its ambition co-relative with its beneficence.
Your fancy is pleased with the thought of being noble ladies, with a
train of vassals. Be it so: you cannot be too noble, and your train
cannot be too great; but see to it that your train is of vassals whom
you serve and feed, not merely of slaves who serve and feed _you_; and
that the multitude which obeys you is of those whom you have comforted,
not oppressed,--whom you have redeemed, not led into captivity.
90. And this, which is true of the lower or household dominion, is
equally true of the queenly dominion;--that highest dignity is opened
to you, if you will also accept that highest duty. Rex et Regina--Roi
et Reine--"_Right_-doers"; they differ but from the Lady and Lord, in
that their power is supreme over the mind as over the person--that they
not only feed and clothe, but direct and teach. And whether
consciously or not, you must be, in many a heart, enthroned: there is
no putting by that crown; queens you must always be; queens to your
lovers; queens to your husbands and your sons; queens of higher mystery
to the world beyond, which bows itself, and will forever bow, before
the myrtle crown, and the stainless scepter, of womanhood. But, alas!
you are too often idle and careless queens, grasping at majesty in the
least things, while you abdicate it in the greatest; and leaving
misrule and violence to work their will among men, in defiance of the
power, which, holding straight in gift from the Prince of all Peace,
the wicked among you betray, and the good forget.
91. "Prince of Peace." Note that name. When kings rule in that name,
and nobles, and the judges of the earth, they also, in their narrow
place, and mortal measure, receive the power of it. There are no other
rulers than they: other rule than theirs is but _mis_rule; they who
govern verily "Dei gratia" are all princes, yes, or princesses, of
peace. There is not a war in the world, no, nor an injustice, but you
women are answerable for it; not in that you have provoked, but in that
you have not hindered. Men, by their nature, are prone to fight; they
will fight for any cause, or for none. It is for you to choose their
cause for them, and to forbid them when there is no cause. There is no
suffering, no injustice, no misery in the earth, but the guilt of it
lies with you. Men can bear the sight of it, but you should not be
able to bear it. Men may tread it down without sympathy in their own
struggle; but men are feeble in sympathy, and contracted in hope; it is
you only who can feel the depths of pain; and conceive the way of its
healing. Instead of trying to do this, you turn away from it; you shut
yourselves within your park walls and garden gates; and you are content
to know that there is beyond them a whole world in wilderness--a world
of secrets which you dare not penetrate; and of suffering which you
dare not conceive.
92. I tell you that this is to me quite the most amazing among the
phenomena of humanity. I am surprised at no depths to which, when once
warped from its honor, that humanity can be degraded. I do not wonder
at the miser's death, with his hands, as they relax, dropping gold. I
do not wonder at the sensualist's life, with the shroud wrapped about
his feet. I do not wonder at the single-handed murder of a single
victim, done by the assassin in the darkness of the railway, or
reed-shadow of the marsh. I do not even wonder at the myriad-handed
murder of multitudes, done boastfully in the daylight, by the frenzy of
nations, and the immeasurable, unimaginable guilt, heaped up from hell
to heaven, of their priests and kings. But this is wonderful to
me--oh, how wonderful!--to see the tender and delicate woman among you,
with her child at her breast, and a power, if she would wield it, over
it, and over its father, purer than the air of heaven, and stronger
than the seas of earth--nay a magnitude of blessing which her husband
would not part with for all that earth itself, though it were made of
one entire and perfect chrysolite:--to see her abdicate this majesty to
play at precedence with her next-door neighbor! This is wonderful--oh,
wonderful!--to see her, with every innocent feeling fresh within her,
go out in the morning into her garden to play with the fringes of its
guarded flowers, and lift their heads when they are drooping, with her
happy smile upon her face, and no cloud upon her brow, because there is
a little wall around her place of peace: and yet she knows, in her
heart, if she would only look for its knowledge, that, outside of that
little rose-covered wall, the wild grass, to the horizon, is torn up by
the agony of men, and beat level by the drift of their life blood.
93. Have you ever considered what a deep under meaning there lies, or
at least may be read, if we choose, in our custom of strewing flowers
before those whom we think most happy? Do you suppose it is merely to
deceive them into the hope that happiness is always to fall thus in
showers at their feet?--that wherever they pass they will tread on the
herbs of sweet scent, and that the rough ground will be made smooth for
them by depth of roses? So surely as they believe that, they will
have, instead, to walk on bitter herbs and thorns; and the only
softness to their feet will be of snow. But it is not thus intended
they should believe; there is a better meaning in that old custom. The
path of a good woman is indeed strewn with flowers: but they rise
behind her steps not before them. "Her feet have touched the meadows,
and left the daisies rosy."
94. You think that only a lover's fancy;--false and vain! How if it
could be true? You think this also, perhaps, only a poet's fancy--
"Even the light harebell raised its head
Elastic from her airy tread."
But it is little to say of a woman, that she only does not destroy
where she passes. She should revive; the harebells should bloom, not
stoop, as she passes. You think I am rushing into wild hyperbole?
Pardon me, not a whit--I mean what I say in calm English, spoken in
resolute truth. You have heard it said--(and I believe there is more
than fancy even in that saying, but let it pass for a fanciful
one)--that flowers only flourish rightly in the garden of some one who
loves them. I know you would like that to be true; you would think it
a pleasant magic if you could flush your flowers into brighter bloom by
a kind look upon them; nay, more, if your look had the power, not only
to cheer but to guard them:--if you could bid the black blight turn
away and the knotted caterpillar spare--if you could bid the dew fall
upon them in the drought, and say to the south wind, in frost--"Come,
thou south, and breathe upon my garden, that the spices of it may flow
out." This you would think a great thing? And do you think it not a
greater thing, that all this (and how much more than this!) you _can_
do for fairer flowers than these--flowers that could bless you for
having blessed them, and will love you for having loved them;--flowers
that have thoughts like yours, and lives like yours; which, once saved,
you save forever? Is this only a little power? Far among the
moorlands and the rocks,--far in the darkness of the terrible
streets,--these feeble florets are lying, with all their fresh leaves
torn, and their stems broken--will you never go down to them, nor set
them in order in their little fragrant beds, nor fence them in their
trembling from the fierce wind? Shall morning follow morning, for you,
but not for them; and the dawn rise to watch, far away, those frantic
Dances of Death,[7] but no dawn rise to breathe upon these living banks
of wild violet, and woodbine, and rose; nor call to you, through your
casement,--call (not giving you the name of the English poet's lady,
but the name of Dante's great Matilda, who on the edge of happy Lethe,
stood wreathing flowers with flowers), saying:--
"Come into the garden, Maud,
For the black bat, night, has flown,
And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad
And the musk of the roses blown."
Will you not go down among them?--among those sweet living things,
whose new courage, sprung from the earth with the deep color of heaven
upon it, is starting up in strength of goodly spire; and whose purity,
washed from the dust, is opening, bud by bud, into the flower of
promise;--and still they turn to you and for you, "The Larkspur
listens--I hear, I hear! And the Lily whispers--I wait."
95. Did you notice that I missed two lines when I read you that first
stanza; and think that I had forgotten them? Hear them now:--
"Come into the garden, Maud,
For the black bat, night, has flown.
Come into the garden, Maud,
I am here at the gate, alone."
Who is it, think you, who stands at the gate of this sweeter garden,
alone, waiting for you? Did you ever hear, not of a Maude but a
Madeleine who went down to her garden in the dawn and found one waiting
at the gate, whom she supposed to be the gardener? Have you not sought
Him often;--sought Him in vain, all through the night;--sought Him in
vain at the gate of that old garden where the fiery sword is set? He
is never there; but at the gate of _this_ garden He is waiting
always--waiting to take your hand--ready to go down to see the fruits
of the valley, to see whether the vine has flourished, and the
pomegranate budded. There you shall see with Him the little tendrils
of the vines that His hand is guiding--there you shall see the
pomegranate springing where His hand cast the sanguine seed;--more: you
shall see the troops of the angel keepers, that, with their wings, wave
away the hungry birds from the pathsides where He has sown, and call to
each other between the vineyard rows, "Take us the foxes, the little
foxes, that spoil the vines, for our vines have tender grapes."
Oh--you queens--you queens; among the hills and happy greenwood of this
land of yours, shall the foxes have holes, and the birds of the air
have nests; and in your cities, shall the stones cry out against you,
that they are the only pillows where the Son of Man can lay His head?
[1] This lecture was given December 14, 1864, at the Town Hall,
Manchester, in aid of the St. Andrew's Schools.
[2] I ought, in order to make this assertion fully understood, to have
noted the various weaknesses which lower the ideal of other great
characters of men in the Waverley novels--the selfishness and
narrowness of thought in Redgauntlet, the weak religious enthusiasm in
Edward Glendinning, and the like; and I ought to have noticed that
there are several quite perfect characters sketched sometimes in the
backgrounds; three--let us accept joyously this courtesy to England and
her soldiers--are English officers; Colonel Gardiner, Colonel Talbot,
and Colonel Mannering.
[3] Coventry Patmore. You cannot read him too often or too carefully;
as far as I know he is the only living poet who always strengthens and
purifies; the others sometimes darken, and nearly always depress and
discourage, the imagination they deeply seize.
[4] Observe, it is "Nature" who is speaking throughout, and who says,
"While she and I together live."
[5] "Joan of Arc: in reference to M. Michelet's History of France." De
Quincey's Works, Vol. III, page 217.
[6] I wish there were a true order of chivalry instituted for our
English youth of certain ranks, in which both boy and girl should
receive, at a given age, their knighthood and ladyhood by true title;
attainable only by certain probation and trial both of character and
accomplishment; and to be forfeited, on conviction, by their peers, of
any dishonorable act. Such an institution would be entirely, and with
all noble results, possible, in a nation which loved honor. That it
would not be possible among us is not to the discredit of the scheme.
[7] See note, p. 124. [Transcriber's note: refers to one of footnote
12 or 13 in Ruskin's "Sesame" article.]