the Jews of the ancient world appear to have treated women in the
majority as “Something worser than their dog, a little lower than
their horse.” Save and except those rare cases where the Jewish woman
suddenly found out her latent powers and employed them to advantage,
the Jewish man made her fetch and carry for him like a veritable beast
of burden. He yoked her to his plough with oxen,--he sold and exchanged
her with his friends as freely as any other article of commerce,--his
“base uses” of her were various, and seldom to his credit,--while, such
as they were, they only lasted so long as they satisfied his immediate
humour. When done with, she was “cast out.” The kind of “casting out”
to which she was subjected is not always explained. But it may be taken
for granted that in many instances she was either killed immediately,
or turned adrift to die of starvation and weariness. The Jews in their
Biblical days were evidently not much affected by her griefs. They were
God’s “chosen” people,--and the fact that women were the mothers of the
whole “chosen” race, appeared to call for no claim on their chivalrous
tenderness or consideration.
Looking back through the vista of time to that fabled Eden, when
she listened to the tempting of the “subtil” one, the wrongs and
injustices endured by Accursëd Eve at the hand of Coward Adam make up
a calendar of appalling, almost superhuman crime. Man has taken the
full licence allowed him by the old Genesis story (which, by the way,
was evidently invented by man himself for his own convenience). “Thy
desire shall be to thy husband and he shall rule over thee.” And among
all tribes, and in all nations he _has_ ruled with a rod of iron! The
Christian dispensation has interfered somewhat with his former reign of
tyranny, for with the birth of Christ came, to a certain extent, the
idealization and beatification of womanhood. The Greeks and Romans,
however, had a latent glimmering idea of what Woman in all her glory
should be, and of what she might possibly attain to in the future,--for
all their grandest symbols of life, such as Truth, Beauty, Justice,
Fortune, Fame, Wisdom, are always represented by their sculptors
clothed in the female form divine. It is a curious fact, that in those
early periods of civilization, when Literature and Art were just
dawning upon the world, man, though aggregating to his own Ego nearly
everything in the universe, paused before representing himself as a
figure of Justice, Mercy or Wisdom. He evidently realized his unfitness
to stand, even in marble, before the world as a symbol of moral virtue.
He therefore, with a grace which well became him in those “pagan” days,
bent the knee to all noble attributes of humanity as represented in
Woman. Her fair face, her beauteous figure, greeted him in all his
temples of worship;--as Venus and Diana she smiled upon him; as the
goddess of Fortune or Chance, she accepted his votive wreaths,--as
Fame or Victory, she gave him blessing whenever he went to war, or
returned in triumph from the field;--and all this was but the embryo
or shadowing-forth of woman’s higher future and better possibilities,
when the days of her long and cruel probation should be accomplished,
and her “curse” in part be lifted. There are signs and tokens that
this happy end is in sight. Accursëd Eve is beginning to have a good
time. And the only fear now is, lest she should overstep the mark of
her well-deserved liberty and run headlong into licence. For Eve,--with
or without curse,--is naturally impulsive and credulous; and being too
often forgetful of the little incident which occurred to her in the
matter of the Tree of Good and Evil, is still far too prone to listen
to the beguiling of “subtil” personages worse “than any beast of the
field which the Lord hath made.”
Accursëd Eve, having broken several of her old-time fetters, and
beginning to feel her feet as well as her wings, just now wants a
word in politics. As one of her cursëd daughters, I confess I wonder
that she should wish to put herself to so much unnecessary trouble,
seeing that she has the whole game in her hands. Politics are generally
hustled along by Coward Adam,--unless, by rarest chance, Brave Adam,
his twin brother, suddenly steps forth unexpectedly, when there ensues
what is called a “collapse of the Government.” In any question, small
or great, Accursëd Eve has only to offer Coward Adam the apple, and he
will eat it. Which metaphor implies that even in politics, if she only
moves him round gradually to her own views in that essentially womanly
way which, while persuading, seems not to persuade, he is bound to
yield. Personally speaking, I do not know any man who is not absolutely
under the thumb of at least one woman. And I will not believe that
there is any woman so feeble, so stupid, so lost to the power and charm
of her own individuality, as not to be able to influence quite half
a dozen men. This being the case, what does Accursëd Eve want with a
vote? If she is so unhappy, so ugly, so repulsive, so deformed in mind
and manners as to have no influence at all on any creature of the male
sex whatever, neither father, nor brother, nor uncle, nor cousin, nor
lover, nor husband, nor friend,--would the opinion of such an one be of
any consequence, or her vote of any value? I assert nothing,--I only
ask the question.
Speaking personally as a woman, I have no politics, and want none. I
only want the British Empire to be first and foremost in everything,
and I tender my sincerest homage to all the men of every party who will
honestly work towards that end. These being my sentiments, I deprecate
any strong separate parliamentary attitude on the part of Accursëd Eve.
I say that she has much better, wider work to do than take part in
tow-rows with the rather undignified personages who often make somewhat
of a bear-garden of the British House of Commons. That she would prove
a good M.P. were she a man, I am quite sure; but as a woman I know she
“goes one better,” in becoming the wife of an M.P.
Accursëd Eve! Mother of the world! What higher thing does she seek?
Mother of Christianity itself, she stands before us, a figure symbolic
of all good, her Holy Child in her arms, her sweet, musing, prayerful
face bending over it in gravely tender devotion. From her soft breast
humanity springs renewed,--she represents the youth, the hope, the
love of all mankind. Wronged as she has been, and as she still is,
her patience never fails. Deceived, she “mends her broken shell with
pearl,” and still trusts on. Her sweet credulousness is the same as
ever it was;--the “subtil” one can always over-reach her through her
too ready confidence in the idea that “all things work together for
good.” Her “curse” is the crime of loving too well,--believing too
much. Should a “subtil” one say he loves her, she honestly thinks he
does. When he turns out, as often happens, to be looking after her
money rather than herself, she can scarcely force her mind to realize
that he is not so much hero as cad. When she has to earn her own living
in any of the artistic professions, she will frequently tell all her
plans, hopes and ambitions to “subtil” ones with the most engaging
frankness. The “subtil” ones naturally take every advantage of her, and
some of them put a stopgap on her efforts if they can.
How many times men have tried to steal away the honour of a woman’s
name and fame in literature need not here be chronicled. Of how many
books, bearing a woman’s name on the title-page it is said--“Her
husband helped her,”--or “She got Mr. So-and-So to write the
descriptive part!” “George Eliot” has often been accused of being
assisted in her novels by Mr. Lewes. A little incident,--touching
enough to my mind,--is related in the memoirs of Charlotte Brontë.
After her marriage, and when she was expecting the birth of her
child, she was reading some of the first chapters of an intended new
novel to her husband,--who, as he listened, said in that peculiarly
encouraging way which is common to men who have gifted women to deal
with--“You seem to be repeating yourself. You must take care not to
repeat yourself.” Poor little soul! She never “repeated” herself,--she
just died. No one can tell how her husband’s thoughtless phrase may
have teazed or perplexed her sensitive mind in a critical condition of
health, and helped to hasten the fatal end.
Edward Fitzgerald’s celebrity as a scholar is not, and never will be
wide enough to blot out from remembrance his brutal phrase on hearing
of the death of Elizabeth Barrett Browning--
“Mrs. Browning is dead. Thank God we shall have no more Aurora Leighs!”
While, far more creditable to Algernon Charles Swinburne than his own
praise of himself now unfortunately affixed to the newly collected
edition of his works, is the praise he bestows on this noble
woman-genius in his preface to her great poem. I quote one line of it
here--
“No English contemporary poet by profession has left us work so full of
living fire.”
For once, and in this particular instance, Accursëd Eve in literature
has, in such a verdict, won her merited literary honours.
But as a rule honours are withheld from her, and the laurel is filched
from her brows by Coward Adam ere she has time to wear it. One flagrant
case is well known, of a man who having lived entirely on a woman’s
literary earnings for years, went about in the clothes her pen had
paid for, among the persons to whom, through her influence, he had
been introduced, boasting that he assisted her to write the greater
part of her books. To their shame be it said, a great many people
believed him; and not till he was dead, and the woman went on writing
her books as before, did they even begin to see the wrong they had
done her. They would not have dared to calumniate the false boaster as
they calumniated the innocent hard worker. The boaster was a man,--the
worker was a woman;--therefore the dishonour of passing off literary
work not one’s own, must, so they imagined, naturally belong to
Accursëd Eve,--not to Coward Adam! Of their humiliation when the real
truth was known, history sayeth nothing.
Yet with all the weight of her curse more or less upon her, and with
all her sorrows, shattered ideals, wrecked hopes, and lost loves,
Accursëd Eve is still the most beautiful, the most perfect figure in
creation. Her failings, her vanities, her weaknesses, her sins, arise
in the first place from love--even if afterwards, through Coward Adam’s
ready encouragement, they degenerate into vice and animalism. Her first
impulse in earliest youth is a desire to please Adam,--the same impulse
precisely which led her to offer him the forbidden apple in the first
days of their mutual acquaintance. She wishes to charm him,--to win his
heart,--to endear herself to him in a thousand tender ways,--to wind
herself irretrievably round his life. If she succeeds in this aim, she
is invariably happy and virtuous. But if she is made to feel that she
cannot hold him on whom her thoughts are centred,--if his professed
love for her only proves weak and false when put to trial,--if he
finds it easy to forget both sentiment and courtesy, and is quick to
add insult to injury, then all the finer and more delicate emotions
of her nature become warped and unstrung,--and though she endures her
suffering because she must, she resents it and takes vengeance when she
can. Of resentfulness against wrong and revenge for injustice, come
what are called “bad women.” Yet I would humbly venture to maintain
that even these “bad” were not bad in the first instance. They were
born in the usual way, with the usual Eve impulse,--the desire to
please, not themselves, but the opposite sex. If their instinctive
efforts have been met with cruelty, oppression, neglect, desertion and
sometimes the most heartless and cowardly betrayal, they can scarcely
be blamed if they play the same tricks on the unloving, disloyal churls
for whom they have perhaps sacrificed the best part of their lives.
For innocent faith and trusting love _are_ the best part of every
woman’s life; and when these are destroyed by the brutalizing touch of
some Coward Adam, the woman may well claim compensation for her soul’s
murder.
Accursëd Eve! Still she loves,--to find herself fooled and cheated;
still she hopes, even while hope eludes her,--still she waits, for
what she may never win,--still she prays prayers that may never be
answered,--still she bears and rears the men of the future, wondering
perchance whether any of them will ever help to do her justice,--will
ever place her where she should be, as the acknowledged queenly
“help-meet” of her stronger, but less enduring partner! Beautiful,
frail, trusting, loving, Accursëd Eve! She bends beneath the
curse,--but the clouds are lifting!--there is light in the sky of
her future dawn! And it may be that a worse malediction than the one
pronounced in Eden, will fall on those who make her burden of life
heavier to bear!
“IMAGINARY” LOVE
My love
Is as the very centre of the earth
Drawing all things to it.
--_Troilus and Cressida._
There is perhaps no emotion more elevating or more deceptive than that
sudden uplifting of the heart and yearning of the senses which may be
called “imaginary” Love. It resembles the stirring of the sap in the
roots of flowers, thrilling the very ground with hints and promises of
spring,--it is the unspeakable outcoming of human emotion and sympathy
too great to be contained within itself,--the tremulous desire,--half
vague and wholly innocent,--of the human soul for its mate. The lower
grades of passion have not as yet ruffled the quivering white wings
of this divinely sweet emotion, and the being who is happy enough to
experience it in all its intensity, is, for the time, the most enviable
on earth. Youth or maiden, whichever it be, the world is a fairyland
for this chosen dreamer. Nothing appears base or mean,--God’s smile
is reflected in every ray of sunshine, and Nature offers no prospect
that is not pleasing. It is the season of glamour and grammarye,--a
look over the distant hills is sufficient to engage the mind of the
dreaming girl with brilliant fancies of gallant knights riding from
far-off countries, with their lady’s colours pinned to their breasts
“to do or die” for the sake of love and glory,--and the young boy, half
in love with a pretty face he has seen on his way home from school or
college, begins to think with all the poets, of eyes blue as skies,
of loves and doves, and hearts and darts, in happy unconsciousness
that his thoughts are not in the least original. Yet with all its
ethereal beauty and gossamer-sense of pleasure, this “imaginary”
love is often the most pathetic experience we have or ever shall
have in life. It is answerable for numberless griefs,--for bitter
disillusions,--occasionally, too, for broken hearts. It glitters
before us, a brilliant chimera, during our very young days,--and on
our entrance into society it vanishes, leaving us to pursue it through
many phases of existence, and always in vain. The poet is perhaps
the happiest of all who join in this persistent chase after the
impossible,--for he frequently continues to imagine “imaginary” love
with ecstasy and fervour to the very end of his days. Next in order
comes the musician, who in the composition of a melancholy nocturne
or tender ballad, or in the still greater work of a romantic opera,
imagines “imaginary” love in strains of perfect sound, which waken
in the hearts of his hearers all the old feverish longings, all the
dear youthful dreams, all the delicious romances which accompanied the
lovely white-winged Sentiment in days past and dead for ever. Strange
to say, it often happens that the musician, while thus appeasing his
own insatiable thirst for “imaginary” love, is frequently aware that
he is arousing it in others; and could he probe to the very fibres of
his thinking soul, he would confess to a certain keen satisfaction in
the fact of his being able to revivify the old restless yearning of a
pain which is sweeter to the lonely soul than pleasure.
Now this expression of the “lonely soul” is used advisedly, because,
in sad truth, every human soul is lonely. Lonely at birth,--still more
lonely at death. During its progress through life it gathers around
it what it can in the way of crumbs of love, grains of affection,
taking them tenderly and with tears of gratefulness. But it is always
conscious of solitude,--an awful yet Divine solitude over which the
Infinite broods, watchful yet silent. Why it is brought into conscious
being, to live within a material frame and there perform certain duties
and labours, and from thence depart again, it cannot tell. All is a
mystery,--a strange Necessity, in which it cannot truly recognize
its part or place. Yet it is,--and one of the strongest proofs of
its separate identity from the body is this “imaginary” love for
which it yearns, and which it never obtains. “Imaginary” love is not
earthly,--neither is it heavenly,--it is something between both, a
vague and inchoate feeling, which, though incapable of being reduced
to any sort of reason or logic, is the foundation of perhaps all the
greatest art, music and poetry in the world. If we had to do merely
with men as they are, and women as they are, Art would perish utterly
from the face of the earth. It is because we make for ourselves
“ideal” men, “ideal” women, and endow these fair creations with the
sentiment of “imaginary” love, that we still are able to communicate
with the gods. Not yet have we lowered ourselves to the level of the
beasts,--nor shall we do so, though things sometimes seem tending that
way. Realism and Atheism have darkened the world, as they darken it
now, long before the present time, and as defacements on the grandeur
of the Universe they have not been permitted to remain. Nor will they
be permitted now,--the reaction will, and must inevitably set in. The
repulsive materialism of Zola, and others of his school,--the loose
theories of the “smart” set, and the moral degradation of those who
have no greater God than self,--these things are the merest ephemera,
destined to leave no more mark on human history than the trail of a
slug on one leaf of an oak. The Ideal must always be triumphant,--the
soul can only hope to make way by climbing towards it. Thus it is with
“imaginary” Love,--it must hold fast to its ideal, or be content to
perish on the plane of sensual passion, which exhausts itself rapidly,
and once dead, is dead for ever and aye.
With all its folly, sweetness, piteousness and pathos, “imaginary” love
is the keynote of Art,--its fool-musings take shape in exquisite verse,
in tales of romance and adventure, in pictures that bring the nations
together to stand and marvel, in music that makes the strong man weep.
It is the most supersensual of all delicate sensations,--as fine as a
hair, as easily destroyed as a gnat’s wing!--a rough touch will wound
it,--a coarse word will kill it,--the sneer of the Realist shuts it in
a coffin of lead and sinks it fathoms deep in the waters of despair.
Strange and cruel as the fact may seem, Marriage appears to put an end
to it altogether.
Think you, if Laura had been Petrarch’s wife
He would have written sonnets to her all his life?
inquires Byron. He certainly would not. The “imaginary” love of
Petrarch was the source of his poetic inspiration; if he had ever
dragged it down to the level of the commonplace Actual, he would have
killed his Muse. In a similar way the love of Dante for Beatrice was
of the “imaginary” quality. Those who read the “Vita Nuova” will
scarcely fail to see how the great poet hugs his love-fancies and
feeds himself with delicious extravagances in the way of idealized
and sublimated soul-passion. He dissects every fine hair of a stray
emotion, and writes a sonnet on every passing heart-beat. Dante’s wife
never became so transfigured in her husband’s love. Why? Alas, who can
say! No reason can be given save that perchance “familiarity breeds
contempt,” and that the Unattainable seems always more beautiful than
the Attained. The delight of possession would appear to be as brief as
the flowering of a rose. Lovers are in haste to wed,--but when the knot
is once irrevocably tied, in nine cases out of ten they wish it could
be untied again. They no longer imagine “imaginary” love! The glamour
is gone. Illusions are all over. The woman is no longer the removed,
the fair, the chaste, the unreachable,--the man ceases to be the proud,
the strong hero endowed with the attributes of the gods. “Imaginary”
love then resolves itself into one of two things,--a firm, every-day,
close and tender _friendship_, or else a sick disappointment, often
ending in utter disgust. But the divine emotion of “imaginary” love
has died,--the Soul is no longer enamoured of its Ideal--and the
delicate psychic passion which inspires the poet, the painter, the
musician, turns at once to fresh objects of admiration and pursuit. For
it is never exhausted,--unlike any purely earthly sense it knows no
satiety. Deceived in one direction, it dies in another. Dissatisfied
with worldly things, it extends its longing heavenwards,--there at
least it shall find what it seeks,--not now, but hereafter! Age does
not blunt this fine emotion, for, as may often be remarked with some
beautiful souls in the decline of bodily life, the resigning of earthly
enjoyments gives them no pain,--and the sweet placidity of expectation,
rather than the dull apathy of regret, is their chief characteristic.
“Imaginary” love still beckons them on;--what has not been found Here
will be found There!
Happy, and always to be envied, are those who treasure this aerial
sentiment of the spiritual brain! It is the dearest possession of
every true artist. In every thought, in every creative work or plan,
“imaginary” love goes before, pointing out wonders unseen by less
enlightened eyes,--hiding things unsightly, disclosing things lovely,
and making the world fair to the mind in all seasons, whether of storm
or calm. Intensifying every enjoyment, adding a double thrill to the
notes of a sweet song, lending an extra glow to the sunshine, an added
radiance to the witchery of the moonlight, a more varied and exquisite
colouring to the trees and flowers, a charm to every book, a delight
to every new scene, “imaginary” love, a very sprite of enchantment,
helps us to believe persistently in good, when those who love not at
all, neither in reality nor in idealization, are drowning in the black
waters of suicidal despair.
So it is well for us--those who can--to imagine “imaginary” love! We
shall never grasp the Dream in this world--nevertheless let us fly
after it as though it were a Reality! Its path is one of sweetness more
than pain,--its ways are devious, yet even in sadness still entrancing.
Better than rank, better than wealth is this talisman, which with a
touch brings us into close communication with the Higher worlds. Let
us “imagine” our friends are true; let us “imagine” we are loved for
our own sakes alone,--let us “imagine,” as we welcome our acquaintances
into our homes, that their smiles and greetings are sincere--let us
imagine “imaginary” love as the poets do,--a passion tender, strong
and changeless--and pursue it always, even if the objects, which for a
moment its passing wings have brushed, crumble into dust beneath that
touch of fire! So shall our lives retain the charm of constant Youth
and Hope,--so shall the world seem always beautiful to us,--so shall
the Unimaginable glory of the future Real-in-Love shine nearer every
day in our faithful, fond pursuit of its flying Shadow!
THE ADVANCE OF WOMAN
Follow Light and do the Right--for man can half control his doom--
Till you find the deathless Angel seated in the vacant tomb!
--TENNYSON, _Locksley Hall, Sixty Years After_.