The most ordinarie cause of a single life is liberty, especially in
certain self-pleasing and humorous minds, which are so sensible of
every restriction, as they wil goe neere to thinke their girdles
and garters to be bonds and shakles.--BACON.
In the Zend-Avesta, as translated by Anquetil-Duperron, there is a
discouraging sentence passed upon voluntary spinsterhood: “The damsel
who, having reached the age of eighteen, shall refuse to marry, must
remain in Hell until the earth is shattered.”
This assurance is interesting, less because of its provision for
the spinster’s future than because it takes into consideration the
possibility of her refusing to marry;--a possibility which slipped
out of men’s minds from the time of Zoroaster until our present day.
A vast deal has been written about marriage in the interval; but it
all bears the imprint of the masculine intellect, reasoning from the
masculine point of view, for the benefit of masculinity, and ignoring
in the most natural manner the woman’s side of life. The trend of
argument is mainly in one direction. While a few cynics gibe at love
and conjugal felicity, the mass of poets and philosophers unite in
extolling wedlock. Some praise its pleasures, others its duties, and
others again merely point out with Euripides that, as children cannot
be bought with gold or silver, there is no way of acquiring these
coveted possessions save by the help of women. Now and then a rare
word of sympathy is flung to the wife, as in those touching lines of
Sophocles upon the young girls sold in their “gleeful maidenhood” to
sad or shameful marriage-beds. But the important thing to be achieved
is the welfare and happiness of men. The welfare and happiness of women
are supposed--not without reason--to follow as a necessary sequence;
but this is a point which excites no very deep concern.
Catholic Christendom throughout the Middle Ages, and long afterwards,
offered one practical solution to the problem of unmated and
unprotected womanhood,--the convent. The girl robbed of all hope of
marriage by bitter stress of war or poverty, the girl who feared too
deeply the turmoil and violence of the world, found shelter in the
convent. Within its walls she was reasonably safe, and her vows lent
dignity to her maidenhood. Bride of the Church, she did not rank as
a spinster, and her position had the advantage of being accurately
defined; she was part of a recognized social and ecclesiastical system.
No one feels this more solidly than does a nun to-day, and no one
looks with more contempt upon unmarried women in the world. In her
eyes there are but two vocations,--wifehood and consecrated virginity.
She perceives that the wife and the religious are transmitters of the
world’s traditions; while the spinster is an anomaly, with no inherited
background to give repute and distinction to her rôle.
This point of view is the basis of much criticism, and has afforded
scope for the ridicule of the satirist, and for the outpourings of the
sentimentalist. A great many brutal jests have been flung at the old
maid, and floods of sickly sentiment have been wasted on her behalf.
She has been laughed at frankly as one rejected by men, and she has
been wept over as a wasted force, withering patiently under the blight
of this rejection. “Envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness”
have been ascribed to her on one side, and a host of low-spirited and
treacly virtues, on the other. The spinster of comedy is a familiar
figure. A perfectly simple and ingenuous example is the maiden aunt in
“Pickwick,” Miss Rachel Wardle, whom Mr. Tupman loves, and with whom
Mr. Jingle elopes. She is spiteful and foolish, envious of youth and
easy to dupe. She is utterly ridiculous, and a fair mark for laughter.
She is pinched, and withered, and hopelessly removed from all charm of
womanhood; and--it may be mentioned parenthetically--she is fifty years
old. We have her brother’s word for it.
There is nothing in this straightforward caricature that could, or
that should, wound anybody’s sensibilities. The fun is of a robust
order; the ridicule has no subtlety and no sting. But the old maid of
the sentimentalists, a creature stricken at heart, though maddeningly
serene and impossibly unselfish, is every bit as remote from reality,
and far less cheerful to contemplate. What can be more offensive than
the tearful plea for consideration put forward by her apologists, who,
after all, tolerate her only because, having no career of her own, she
is expected to efface herself in the interests of other people. “The
peculiar womanly virtues,” says a recent writer upon this fruitful
theme, “the power of self-sacrifice, warm sympathies, compassion,
patient endurance, represent an untold amount of suffering on the part
of the weaker sex in past ages. It is to the world’s advantage that the
fruit of such suffering be not lost.”
Here is a sparkling view of life; here is a joyous standpoint of
observation. There is generosity enough in the world to win for
the dejected, the wistful, the pathetic woman a fair share of
commiseration; provided always that she does not oppose her own
interests to the interests of those around her. But what if she
honestly prefers her own interests,--a not uncommon attitude of
mind? What if patient endurance be the very last virtue to which she
can lay claim? What if she is not in the least wistful, and never
casts longing looks at her sister-in-law’s babies, nor strains them
passionately to her heart, nor deems it a privilege to nurse her
nephews through whooping-cough and measles, nor offers herself in any
fashion as a holocaust upon other people’s domestic altars? What if,
holding her life in her two hands, and knowing it to be her only real
possession, she disposes of it in the way she feels will give her most
content, swimming smoothly in the stream of her own nature, and clearly
aware that happiness lies in the development of her individual tastes
and acquirements? Such a woman may, as Mr. Brownell says, exhibit
transparently “her native and elemental inconsistencies;” but she calls
for no commiseration, and perhaps adds a trifle to the harmonious
gayety of earth.
That she should be censured for laying claim to what is truly hers
seems unkind and irrational,--a tyranny of opinion. Marriage is a
delightful thing; but it is not, and never can be, a duty; nor is it
as a duty that men and women have hitherto zealously practised it. The
outcry against celibacy as a “great social disease” is louder than the
situation warrants. It is the echo of an older protest against the
deferring of the inevitable wedding-day; against the perverse “boggling
at every object,” which Burton found so exasperating a trait in youth,
and which La Bruyère calmly and conclusively condemns. “There is,”
says the French moralist, “a time when even the richest women ought to
marry. They cannot allow their youthful chances to escape them, without
the risk of a long repentance. The importance of their reputed wealth
seems to diminish with their beauty. A young woman, on the contrary,
has everything in her favour; and if, added to youth, she possesses
other advantages, she is so much the more desirable.”
This is the simplest possible exposition of the masculine point of
view. It is plain that nothing is farther from La Bruyère’s mind
than the possibility of a lifelong spinsterhood for even the most
procrastinating heiress. He merely points out that it would be more
reasonable in her to permit a husband to enjoy her youth and her wealth
simultaneously. The modern moralist argues with less suavity that the
rich woman who remains unmarried because she relishes the wide and
joyous activity fostered by her independence is a transgressor against
social laws. She sins through dire selfishness, and her punishment is
the loss of all that gives dignity and importance to her life. Only
a few months ago a strenuous advocate of matrimony--as if matrimony
had need of advocates--pointed out judicially in “Harper’s Magazine”
that the childless woman has nothing to show for all the strength and
skill she has put into the business of living. She may be intelligent,
stimulating, and serene. She may have seen much of the world, and have
taken its lessons to heart. She may have filled her days with useful
and agreeable occupations. Nevertheless, he considers her existence
“in the long run, a bootless sort of errand;” doubting whether she
has acquired anything that can make life more interesting to her at
thirty-five, at forty-five, at seventy. “And so much the worse for her.”
This is assuming that there _are_ no interests outside of marriage;
no emotions, ambitions, nor obligations unconnected with the
rearing of children. We are invited to believe that the great
world, filled to its brim with pleasures and pains, duties,
diversions, and responsibilities, cannot keep a woman going--even to
thirty-five--without the incentive of maternity. Accustomed as we are
to the expansive utterances of conjugal felicity, this seems a trifle
overbearing. Charles Lamb thought it hard to be asked by a newly wedded
lady how--being a bachelor--he could assume to know anything about the
breeding of oysters. To-day the expressed doubt is how--being spinsters
or bachelors--we can assume to know anything about the serious
significance of life.
It is not the rich and presumably self-indulgent woman alone who is
admonished to mend her ways and marry. The sentence extends to the
working classes, who are held to be much in fault. Even the factory
girl, toiling for her daily bread, has been made the subject of
censure as unjust as it is severe. What if she does covet the few poor
luxuries,--the neat shoes and pretty frock which represent her share of
æsthetic development? What if she does enjoy her independence, and the
power to spend as she pleases the money for which she works so hard?
These things are her inalienable rights. To limit them is tyranny. To
denounce them is injustice. We may sincerely believe that she would be
better and happier if she married; and that the bringing up of children
on the precarious earnings of a working-man would be a more legitimate
field for her intelligence and industry. But it is her privilege to
decide this point for herself; and no one is warranted in questioning
her decision. She does not owe matrimony to the world.
There is still another class of women whose spinsterhood is hardly a
matter of choice, yet whose independence has aroused especial criticism
and denunciation. A few years ago there appeared in “Macmillan’s
Magazine” a well-written article on the educated, unmarried, and
self-supporting women, who, in London alone, fill countless clerical,
official, and academic positions. It was pointed out that these
toilers, debarred by poverty from agreeable social conditions,
lead lives of cheerful and honourable frugality, preserving their
self-respect, seeking help and commiseration from none, enjoying their
scanty pleasures with intelligence, and doing their share of work with
eager and anxious precision. Surely if any creatures on God’s earth
merit some esteem, these spinsters may be held in deference. Yet the
writer of the article unhesitatingly, though not unkindly, summed up
the case against them. No woman with a sensitive conscience, he avowed,
can be happy on such terms. “She more than suspects she is in danger of
serious moral deterioration.... She is aware that her mode of life is
essentially selfish, and therefore stands condemned.”
In the name of Heaven, why? Would her mode of life be less selfish if
she asked a support from a married brother, or a wealthy aunt? Is it
necessary to her moral well-being that she should pass her days in
polite servitude? Apparently it is; for hardly had the “Macmillan”
article appeared, when a more strenuous critic in the “Spectator”
took its writer severely to task, not for his censorship, but for his
leniency. The “Spectator” declared in round terms that the woman who
devotes herself to the difficult problem of her own support “lives a
more or less unnatural life of self-dependence;--the degree of the
unnaturalness depending on the degree of her self-dependence, and the
completeness of the disappearance of that religious devoutness which
prevents loneliness from degenerating into self-dependence.”
Shades of Addison and Steele pardon this cumbrous sentence! That
self-dependence might degenerate into loneliness we can understand; but
how or why should loneliness degenerate into self-dependence, and what
has either loneliness or self-dependence to do with the “disappearance
of religious devoutness”? Is religion also a perquisite of family life?
May we not be devout in solitude? “Be able to be alone,” counsels
Sir Thomas Browne, whose piety was of a most satisfying order. It is
not profane to plan or to advance an individual career. We do not
insult Providence by endeavouring to provide for ourselves. And if the
restlessness of modern life impels women of independent fortune to
enter congenial fields of work, the freedom to do this thing is their
birthright and prerogative. We can no more sweep back the rising tide
of interests and ambitions than we can sweep back the waves of the
Atlantic. A hundred years ago, marriage was for an intelligent woman a
necessary entrance into life, a legitimate method of carrying out her
ideas and her aims. To-day she tries to carry them out, whether she be
married or not. Perhaps some awkwardness of self-assertion disfigures
that “polished moderation” which is her highest grace; but the frank
resoluteness of her attitude is more agreeable to contemplate than
sad passivity and endurance. Mr. John Stuart Mill said that a woman’s
inheritance of “subjection”--he never minced words--induced, on the
one hand, a capacity for self-sacrifice, and, on the other, a habit
of pusillanimity. Both characteristics have been modified by changing
circumstances. But with more courage and less self-immolation has
come a happier outlook upon life, and an energy which is not always
misplaced. Mariana no longer waits tearfully in the Moated Grange. She
leaves it as quickly as possible for some more healthful habitation,
and a more engaging pursuit.
There is one English author who has defended with delicacy that
sagacious self-respect which, even in his time, preserved a woman now
and then from the blunder of an unequal and unbecoming marriage. De
Quincey, extolling the art of letter-writing, pays this curious bit of
homage to his most valued correspondents:--
“Three out of four letters in the mail-bag will be written by that
class of women who have the most leisure, and the most interest in
a correspondence by the post; and who combine more intelligence,
cultivation, and thoughtfulness than any other class in Europe. They
are the unmarried women over twenty-five, who, from mere dignity of
character, have renounced all prospects of conjugal and parental life,
rather than descend into habits unsuitable to their birth. Women
capable of such sacrifices, and marked by such strength of mind, may be
expected to think with deep feeling, and to express themselves (unless
when they have been too much biassed by bookish connections) with
natural grace.”
This is something very different from the “All for Love, and the World
well lost,” flaunted by novelists and poets; very different from the
well-worn “Quand on n’a pas ce qu’on aime, il faut aimer ce qu’on a,”
which has married generations of women. But in the philosophy of life,
the power to estimate and to balance scores heavily for success. It is
not an easy thing to be happy. It takes all the brains, and all the
soul, and all the goodness we possess. We may fail of our happiness,
strive we ever so bravely; but we are less likely to fail if we measure
with judgment our chances and our capabilities. To glorify spinsterhood
is as ridiculous as to decry it. Intelligent women marry or remain
single, because in married or in single life they see their way more
clearly to content. They do not, in either case, quarrel with fate
which has modelled them for, and fitted them into, one groove rather
than another; but follow, consciously or unconsciously, the noble maxim
of Marcus Aurelius: “Love that only which the gods send thee, and which
is spun with the thread of thy destiny.”