love, and presented to their youthful inmates fragments instead of
books, cramped and puny publications instead of the works of
master-spirits, lest the mind should be contaminated by any allusion to
that passion contained in them. The wisdom of such a proceeding is much
upon a par with that which devoted the feet to stocks and the shoulders
to backboards, in order to make them elegant, and denied them heaven's
air and active exercise through care for their health. The result, in
the one case as in the other, is disease and distortion. Nature will
assert her rights over the beings she has made; and she avenges, by the
production of deformity, all attempts to force or shackle her
operations. The golden globe could not check the expansive force of
water; equally useless is it to attempt any check on the expansive force
of mind,--it will ooze out! We ought long ago to have been convinced
that the only power allowed to us is the power of direction. If one-half
the amount of effort expanded to useless endeavours to cramp and check,
had been turned towards this channel, how different would be the
results! It is true that it is easier to check than to guide,--to fetter
than to restrain; and that to attempt to remove evil by the
first-occurring remedy is a natural impulse. But a pause should by made,
lest in applying the remedy a worse evil be not engendered. Distorted
spines and "pale consumptions," the result of the one mistake, are
trifling evils, when compared with the moral evils resulting from the
other. For if, as is affirmed, no education can be good which does not
bear upon future duties, how can that be wise which keeps love and its
temptations, maternity and its responsibilities, out of view? Who would
believe that this love, so denounced, so guarded against, so carefully
banished from the minds of young women, is the one principle on which
their future happiness may be founded or wrecked? It is sure to seek
them, (most of them, at least,) like death in the fable, to find them
unprepared,--too often to leave them wretched.
Meanwhile, these exaggerated precautions in the education of one sex
have been met by equally fatal negligence in the education of the other;
and while to girls have been denied the very thoughts of love,--even in
its noblest and purest form,--the most effeminate and corrupt
productions of the heathen writers have been unhesitatingly laid open to
boys; so that the two sexes, on whose respective notions of the passion
depends the ennobling or the degrading of their race, meet on these
terms:--the men know nothing of love but what they have imbibed from an
impure and polluted source; the women, nothing at all, or nothing but
what they have clandestinely gathered from sources almost equally
corrupt. The deterioration of any feeling must follow from such
injudicious training, more especially a feeling so susceptible as love
of assuming such differing aspects.
Let no sober-minded person be startled at the deductions hence drawn,
that it is foolish to banish all thoughts of love from the minds of the
young. Since it is certain that girls will think, though they may not
read or speak, of love; and that no early care can preserve them from
being exposed, at a later period, to its temptations, might it not be
well to use here the directing, not the repressing power? Since women
will love, might it not be as well to teach them to love wisely? Where
is the wisdom of letting the combatant go unarmed into the field, in
order to spare him the prospect of a combat? Are not women made to love,
and to be loved: and does not their future destiny too often depend upon
this passion? And yet the conventual prejudice which banishes its name
subsists still.
"Mothers forget, in presence of their children, all the dangers with
which this prejudice has surrounded themselves; the illusions which
arise from that ignorance, and the weakness which springs from those
illusions. To open the minds of the young to the nature of true love, is
to arm them against the frivolous passions which usurp its name, for in
exalting the faculties of the soul, we annihilate, in a great degree,
the delusions of the senses."[110]
Examine the first choice of a young girl. Of all the qualities which
please her in a lover, there is, perhaps, not one which is valuable in a
husband. Is not this the most complete condemnation of all our systems
of education? From the fear of too much agitating the heart, we hide
from women all that is worthy of love, all the depth and dignity of that
passion when felt for a worthy object;--their eye is captivated, the
exterior pleases, the heart and mind are not known, and, after six
months union, they are surprised to find the beau ideal metamorphosed
into a fool or a coxcomb. This is the issue of what are ordinarily
called love-matches, because they are considered as such. "Cupid is
indeed often blamed for deeds in which he has no share." In the opinion
of the wise, the mischief is occasioned by the action of vivid
imaginations upon minds unprepared by previous reflection on the
subject; that is, by the entire banishment of all thoughts of love from
education. We should endeavour, then, to engrave on the soul a model of
virtue and excellence, and teach young women to regulate their
affections by an approximation to this model; the result would not be an
increased facility in giving the affections, but a greater difficulty in
so doing; for women, whose blindness and ignorance now make them the
victims of fancied perfections, would be able to make a clear-sighted
appreciation of all that is excellent, and have an invincible repugnance
to an union not founded upon that basis. Love, in the common acceptation
of the term, is a folly,--love, in its purity, its loftiness, its
unselfishness, is not only a consequence, but a proof of our moral
excellence,--the sensibility to moral beauty, the forgetfulness of self
in the admiration engendered by it, all prove its claim to be a high
moral influence; it is the triumph of the unselfish over the selfish
part of our nature.[111]
What is meant by educating young women to love wisely is simply this,
that they be taught to distinguish true love from the false spirit which
usurps its name and garb; that they be taught to abstract from it the
worldliness, vanity, and folly, with which it has been mixed up. They
should be taught that it is not to be the amusement of an idle hour; the
indulgence of a capricious and greedy vanity; the ladder, by the
assistance of which they may climb a few steps higher in the grades of
society; in short, that except it owe its origin to the noble qualities
of heart and mind, it is nothing but a contemptible weakness, to be
pitied perhaps, but not to be indulged or admired.
When the might influence of this passion is considered, the important
relations and weighty responsibilities to which it gives rise, we have
reason to be astonished at the levity with which the subject is treated
by the world at large, and the unconsciousness and indifference with
which those responsibilities are assumed. It is like the madman who
flings about firebrands and calls it sport. The remedy for this evil
must begin with the sex who have in their hands that powerful influence,
the liberty of rejection. Let them not complain that liberty of choice
is not theirs; it would only increase their responsibilities without
adding to their happiness or to their usefulness. The liberty which they
do possess is amply sufficient to insure for them the power of being
benefactors of mankind. As soon as the noble and elevated of our sex
shall refuse to unite on any but moral and intellectual grounds with the
other, so soon will a mighty regeneration begin to be effected: and this
end will, perhaps, be better served by the simple liberty of rejection
than by liberty of choice. Rejection is never inflicted without pain; it
is never received without humiliation, however unfounded, (for simply to
want the power of pleasing can be no disgrace;) but in the existence of
this conventional feeling we find the source of a deep influence. If
women would, as by one common league and covenant, agree to use this
powerful engine in defence of morals, what a change might they not
effect in the tone of society! Is it not a subject that ought to crimson
every woman's cheek with shame, that the want of moral qualifications is
generally the very last cause of rejection? If the worldly find the
wealth, and the intellectual the intelligence, which they seek in a
companion, there are few who will not shut their eyes in wilful and
convenient blindness to the want of such qualifications. It is a fatal
error which has bound up the cause of affection so intimately with
worldly considerations; and it is a growing evil. The increasing demands
of luxury in a highly civilized community operate most injuriously on
the cause of disinterested affections, and particularly so in the case
of women, who are generally precluded from maintaining or advancing
their place in society by any other schemes than matrimonial ones. I
might say something here on the cruelty of that conventional prejudice
which shackles the independence of women, by attaching the loss of
caste to almost all, nay, all, of the very few sources of pecuniary
emolument open to them. It requires great strength of principle to
disregard this prejudice; and while urged by duty to inveigh against
mercenary unions, I feel some compunction at the thoughts of the
numerous class who are in a manner forced by this prejudice into forming
them. But there are too many who have no such excuse, and to them the
remaining observations are addressed. The sacred nature of the conjugal
relation is entirely merged in the worldly aspect of it. That union
sacred, indissoluble, fraught with all that earth has to bestow of
happiness or misery, is entered upon much of the plan and principle of a
partnership account in mercantile affairs--each bringing his or her
quantum of worldly possessions--and often with even less inquiry as to
moral qualities than persons so situated would make; God's ordinances
are not to be so mocked, and such violations of his laws are severely
visited upon offenders against them. It would be laughable, if it were
not too melancholy, to see beings bound by the holiest ties, who ought
to be the sharers in the most sacred duties--united, perhaps, but in one
aim, and _that_ to secure from a world which cares not for them, a few
atoms more of external observance and attention: to this noble aim
sacrificing their own ease and comfort, and the future prospects of
those dependent on them. If half the sacrifice thus made to the
imperious demands of fashion, (and which is received with the
indifference it deserves,) were exerted in a good cause, what benefits
might it not produce?
While women are thus content to sacrifice delicacy, affection,
principle, to the desire of worldly establishment or aggrandizement, how
is the regeneration of society to be expected from them? Formerly, too,
this spirit was confined to the old, hackneyed in the ways of the world,
and who, having worn out the trifling affections which they ever had,
would subject those of their children to the maxims of worldly prudence.
This we learn from fiction and the drama, where the worldly wisdom of
age is always represented as opposed to the generous but imprudent
passions of youth. But now, in these our better and more enlightened
days, those mercenary maxims which were odious even in age, are found in
the mouths of the young and the fair,--or at least, if not in their
mouths, in their actions. To sacrifice affection to interest is a
praiseworthy thing. It is fearful to hear the withering sneer with which
that folly, love, is spoken of by young and innocent lips--a sneer of
conscious superiority, too! It is a superiority not to be envied, and
which makes them objects of greater pity than those whom they affect to
despise. There is no subject so sacred that it has not a side open to
ridicule, and all the most pure and noble attributes of our nature may
be converted into subjects for a jest, by minds in which no lofty idea
can find an echo. All notions of unworldly and unselfish attachment are
branded with the name of romantic follies, unworthy of sensible persons;
and the idealities of love, like all other idealities, are fast
disappearing beneath the leaden mantle of expediency.
The reform must begin here, as in all great moral questions, with the
arbiters of morals--those from whom morals take their tone--women. That
we have no right to expect it to begin with the other sex, may be
proved even by a vulgar aphorism. It is often triumphantly said, that "a
man may marry when he will--a woman must marry when she can." How keen a
satire upon both sexes is couched in this homely proverb! and how long
will they consent not only patiently to acquiesce in its truth, but to
prove it by their actions? That women may be able thus to reform
society, it is of importance that conscience be educated on this subject
as on every other; educated, too, before the tinsel of false romance
deceive the eye, or the frost of worldly-mindedness congeal the heart of
youth. It seems to me that this object would best be effected, not by
avoiding the subject of love, but by treating it, when it arises, with
seriousness and simplicity, as a feeling which the young may one day be
called upon to excite and to return, but which can have no existence in
the lofty in soul and pure in heart, except when called forth by
corresponding qualities in another. Such training as this would be a far
more effectual preventive of foolish passions, than cramping the
intellect in narrow ignorance, and excluding all knowledge of what life
is--in order to prepare people for entering upon it: a plan about as
wise in itself, and as successful as to results, as the bolts, bars, and
duennas of a Spanish play. Outward, substituted for inward, restraints
are sure to act upon man mentally, as actual bonds do physically; he
only wants to get free from them. Noble and virtuous principles in the
heart will not fail to direct the conduct aright, and it is to transfer
these things from matters of decorum or expediency, to matters of
conscience, that we should use our most earnest endeavours. Above all,
it is incumbent upon those who have the training of the young--of women
especially--so to imbue their souls with lofty and conscientious
principles of action, that they may be alike unwilling to deceive, or
liable to be deceived; that they may not be led as fools or as victims
into those responsible relations, for the consequences of which, (how
momentous!) to themselves, to others, and to society at large, they are
answerable to a God of infinite wisdom and justice.
FOOTNOTES:
[110] Aimé Martin.
[111] It is Coleridge who speaks of the "unselfishness of love," in one
of the volumes of his "Remains."
LITERARY CAPABILITIES OF WOMEN.
BY LORD JEFFREY.
Women, we fear, cannot do every thing; nor every thing they attempt. But
what they can do, they do, for the most part, excellently--and much more
frequently with an absolute and perfect success, than the aspirants of
our rougher and ambitious sex. They cannot, we think, represent
naturally the fierce and sullen passions of men--nor their coarser
vices--nor even scenes of actual business or contention--nor the mixed
motives, and strong and faulty characters, by which affairs of moment
are usually conducted on the great theatre of the world. For much of
this they are disqualified by the delicacy of their training and habits,
and the still more disabling delicacy which pervades their conceptions
and feelings; and from much they are excluded by their necessary
inexperience of the realities they might wish to describe--by their
substantial and incurable ignorance of business--of the way in which
serious affairs are actually managed--and the true nature of the agents
and impulses that give movement and direction to the stronger currents
of ordinary life. Perhaps they are also incapable of long moral or
political investigations, where many complex and indeterminate elements
are to be taken into account, and a variety of opposite probabilities to
be weighed before coming to a conclusion. They are generally too
impatient to get at the ultimate results, to go well through with such
discussions; and either stop short at some imperfect view of the truth,
or turn aside to repose in the shade of some plausible error. This,
however, we are persuaded, arises entirely from their being seldom set
on such tedious tasks. Their proper and natural business is the
practical regulation of private life, in all its bearings, affections,
and concerns; and the questions with which they have to deal in that
most important department, though often of the utmost difficulty and
nicety, involve, for the most part, but few elements; and may generally
be better described as delicate than intricate;--requiring for their
solution rather a quick tact and fine perception, than a patient or
laborious examination. For the same reason, they rarely succeed in long
works, even on subjects the best suited to their genius; their natural
training rendering them equally averse to long doubt and long labour.
For all other intellectual efforts, however, either of the understanding
or the fancy, and requiring a thorough knowledge either of man's
strength or his weakness, we apprehend them to be, in all respects, as
well qualified as their perceptions of grace, propriety, ridicule--their
power of detecting artifice, hypocrisy, and affectation--the force and
promptitude of their sympathy, and their capacity of noble and devoted
attachment, and of the efforts and sacrifices it may require, they are,
beyond all doubt, our superiors.
Their business being, as we have said, with actual or social life, and
the colours it receives from the conduct and dispositions of
individuals, they unconsciously acquire, at a very early age, the
finest perception of character and manners, and are almost as soon
instinctively schooled in the deep and more dangerous learning of
feeling and emotion; while the very minuteness with which they make and
meditate on these interesting observations, and the finer shades and
variations of sentiment which are thus treasured and recorded, train
their whole faculties to a nicety and precision of operation, which
often discloses itself to advantage in their application to studies of a
different character. When women, accordingly, have turned their
minds--as they have done but too seldom--to the exposition or
arrangement of any branch of knowledge, they have commonly exhibited, we
think, a more beautiful accuracy, and a more uniform and complete
justness of thinking, than their less discriminating brethren. There is
a finish and completeness, in short, about every thing they put out of
their hands, which indicates not only an inherent taste for elegance and
neatness, but a habit of nice observation, and singular exactness of
judgement.
It has been so little the fashion, at any time, to encourage women to
write for publication, that it is more difficult than it should be, to
prove these truths by examples. Yet there are enough, within the reach
of a very careless and superficial glance over the open field of
literature, to enable us to explain, at least, and illustrate, if not
entirely to verify, our assertions. No _man_, we will venture to say,
could have written the Letters of Madame de Sevigné, or the Novels of
Miss Austin, or the Hymns and Early Lessons of Mrs. Barbauld, or the
Conversations of Mrs. Marcet. Those performance, too, are not only
essentially and intensely feminine; but they are, in our judgment,
decidedly more perfect than any masculine productions with which they
can be brought into comparison. They accomplish more completely all the
ends at which they aim; and are worked out with a gracefulness and
felicity of execution which excludes all idea of failure, and entirely
satisfies the expectations they may have raised. We might easily have
added to these instances. There are many parts of Miss Edgeworth's
earlier stories, and of Miss Mitford's sketches and descriptions, and
not a little of Mrs. Opie's, that exhibit the same fine and penetrating
spirit of observations, the same softness and delicacy of hand, and
unerring truth of delineation, to which we have alluded as
characterizing the purer specimens of female art. The same
distinguishing traits of woman's spirit are visible through the grief
and piety of Lady Russel, and the gayety, the spite, and the
venturesomeness of Lady Mary Wortley. We have not as yet much female
poetry; but there is a truly feminine tenderness, purity, and elegance
in the Psyche of Mrs. Tighe, and in some of the smaller pieces of Lady
Craven. On some of the works of Madame de Staël--her Corinne
especially--there is a still deeper stamp of the genius of her sex. Her
pictures of its boundless devotedness--its depth and capacity of
suffering--its high aspirations--its painful irritability, and
inextinguishable thirst for emotion, are powerful specimens of that
morbid anatomy of the heart, which no hand but that of a woman's was
fine enough to have laid open, or skilful enough to have recommended to
our sympathy and love. There is the same exquisite and inimitable
delicacy, if not the same power, in many of the happier passages of
Madame de Souza and Madame Cottin--to say nothing of the more lively and
yet melancholy records of Madame de Staël, during her long penance in
the court of the Duchesse de Maine.
We think the poetry of Mrs. Hemans a fine exemplification of Female
Poetry--and we think it has much of the perfection which we have
ventured to ascribe to the happier productions of female genius.
It may not be the best imaginable poetry, and may not indicate the very
highest or most commanding genius; but it embraces a great deal of that
which gives the very best poetry its chief power of pleasing; and would
strike us, perhaps, as more impassioned and exalted, if it were not
regulated and harmonized by the most beautiful taste. It is singularly
sweet, elegant, and tender--touching, perhaps, and contemplative, rather
than vehement and overpowering; and not only finished throughout with an
exquisite delicacy, and even severity of execution, but infused with a
purity and loftiness of feeling, and a certain sober and humble tone of
indulgence and piety, which must satisfy all judgments, and allay the
apprehensions of those who are most afraid of the passionate
exaggerations of poetry. The diction is always beautiful, harmonious,
and free--and the themes, though of great variety, uniformly treated
with a grace, originality, and judgment, which mark the same master
hand. These themes she has occasionally borrowed, with the peculiar
imagery that belongs to them, from the legends of different nations, and
the most opposite states of society; and has contrived to retain much
of what is interesting and peculiar in each of them, without adopting,
along with it, any of the revolting or extravagant excesses which may
characterize the taste or manners of the people or the age from which it
has been derived. She has transfused into her German or Scandinavian
legends the imaginative and daring tone of the originals, without the
mystical exaggerations of the one, or the painful fierceness and
coarseness of the other--she has preserved the clearness and elegance of
the French, without their coldness or affectation--and the tenderness
and simplicity of the early Italians, without their diffuseness or
languor. Though occasionally expatiating, somewhat fondly and at large,
among the sweets of her own planting, there is, on the whole, a great
condensation and brevity in most of her pieces, and, almost without
exception, a most judicious and vigorous conclusion. The great merit,
however, of her poetry, is undoubtedly in its tenderness and its
beautiful imagery. The first requires no explanation; but we must be
allowed to add a word as to the peculiar charm and character of the
latter.