THE SINNER THAT REPENTETH.
The cause of Hester's degradation was one which always has, and one
fears always will, people our streets with those unhappy women, whom
the law refuses either to acknowledge or to suppress--refuses either
to protect or to punish: a lasting stigma upon our civilization!
When Sir Chetsom Chetsom was killed, she had to look about her for
means of subsistence; and at first imagined that literature would be
an ample field.
Thanks to the diffusion of knowledge, and to the increasing taste for
reading, it is now very possible for man or woman to earn a decent
and honourable livelihood by the pen; but if possible, it is not
easy, and is always, with the best of talents, eminently precarious.
For a woman still more so than for a man. Above all, the woman must
have good friends, must be "respectable," and fortunate.
Hester had no good friends; she had many acquaintances, but no one
who interested himself in her success, no one, at any rate, who both
could and would assist her. Moreover, she was not "respectable;" and
what was the consequence? dissolute editors were afraid of her
contributions "on the score of morals."
To be brief, Hester struggled in vain to get employment; and in great
danger of starving, she determined to go back to Walton. Her father
consented to receive his unhappy child, and promised that "bye-gones
should be bye-gones."
She had better have taken a situation as servant of all-work in a
lodginghouse, than have returned to her home after what had occurred.
She found her father, indeed, glad enough to receive her, and willing
enough to forgive the past, on condition of not absolutely
_forgetting_ it: from time to time he could not refrain from
"throwing it in her teeth," when he was at a loss for an argument or
an invective.
This is always the case when a fallen daughter returns home, or when
she commits the one unpardonable fault, and stays at home: her
parents, her brothers, and sisters--oh! especially the sisters--never
forget that fault. It is held over her head _in terrorem_. It is an
ever-present warning and illustration. Bridling up in _their_
unshaken chastity--too often unshaken because untempted--the sisters
make her feel in a hundred ways, that her fault is unpardoned and
unpardonable. Exasperated by this incessant and unjust retribution
for a fault which the girl feels deserves more pity, she is at last
driven from home and takes refuge in the streets, because her
virtuous family cannot forget!
It has been often remarked that women are more pitiless towards each
other, on that very point where common sympathy should make them most
tolerant; and little do they know the extent of the mischief their
intolerance creates.
Hester had not to suffer from the sneers and allusions of chaste and
offended sisters, but she had to endure worse--the sneers and slights
of the whole offended town. The reader remembers how Walton was
scandalized at her flirtation, how shocked at her flight; let him
then imagine the howl of outraged purity which saluted her repentant
return! She, indeed, come back to a town she had disgraced! She to
show herself amongst the daughters of respectable people! She to be
allowed to wallow in corruption, and then as soon as she found that
course led to no good, to return again to her home as if nothing had
occurred! The minx!
Mrs. Ruddles hoped her husband would take notice of it from the
pulpit: such an example as it was to other girls!
Mrs. Spedley expected to see many imitations of such conduct; it was
such a premium on vice!
The post-mistress hoped she was as charitable as most people, but she
knew what was due to herself, and as long as that creature remained
in Walton, she, the post-mistress, could not think of purchasing
anything at her father's shop.
Nor, for that matter, could Mrs. Spedley.
Mrs. Ruddles had never for an instant thought of such a thing. It
would be a positive encouragement. Mrs. Ruddles herself had
daughters. She knew something, she thought, of what constituted a
well-regulated mind. She had no fears for her Arabella, Mary, and
Martha Jane; but Mrs. Ruddles knew the ill effects of example.
When Hester appeared in the street, all the women instantly crossed
to the other side. If she went into a shop to make a purchase, the
shop immediately became empty. Women avoided her as if she were a
walking pestilence.
_En revanche_ the men ogled her with effrontery, and even middle-aged
rotundities with large families, gave themselves killing airs when in
her presence.
The stupid ignorance of men! I declare the older I grow the more
amazed I am at the dull, purblind, inexcusable ignorance in which
one-half of the human race seems destined to remain with respect to
the other half, in spite of all experience. To meet with a man who
has not some gross prejudice, founded on the most blundering
misconception with regard to the nature of women, and on that point,
too, which one would imagine they would best understand, is really
one of the rarest occurrences. The vast majority of men never seem
to escape from the ideas they form about women at school; and no
contradiction in the shape of experience seems to suggest to them
that those ideas are essentially false. To hear men--and men of the
world too--talk about women, is to hear the strangest absurdities and
platitudes you can listen to on any subject; to be let into the
secret of their conduct towards women, is only to see the ludicrous
results to which such erroneous opinions lead them.
It is a tempting subject, but I am not going to pursue this diatribe.
I have an illustration to give instead.
Hester Mason having committed a _faux pas_, was instantly, and from
that very cause, looked upon by all the men, young and old, as a
woman "to be had for the asking." In their simplicity, they could
admit of no gradations between a Lucretia and Messalina. If a woman
were not as chaste as ice, she must necessarily be utterly abandoned.
If one man had succeeded in overcoming her scruples, of course
another might. The dolts!
Perhaps it is owing to our prudery, which keeps so strict a
surveillance over every word and act, that the smallest licence seems
to imply the extremity of licentiousness!
The school-boy notion of the facility of women was at the bottom of
their minds, and with beautiful simplicity some of the "knowing dogs"
commenced the attack upon Hester's virtue, without even thinking it
necessary to adopt a semblance of respect and attachment.
Certainly Hester was not a woman, under any circumstances, to have
admitted the addresses of these men; but now, the undisguised
insolence and fatuity of their approaches not only made her cheek
burn with shame, but made her heart sick with disgust.
With scorn and withering sarcasms she discomfited them one after the
other. The contemptible fools instantly joined the chorus of the
women; and with good proof that at any rate, she was not altogether
abandoned, they were unanimous in their execration of her infamy.
If women were not purer, stronger, and honester than the dull and
coarse imaginations of most men depict them, what a world this would
be! what children would these women bring forth!
Those men who have known women, known how great their influence for
good and for evil, known what a well of feeling, of pure, spontaneous
nature, untarnished by contact with the world, there lies hidden in a
woman's breast; those who have known how this nature has moulded
their own minds, refined its coarseness, giving beauty to its
strength, will exclaim with me: what a world would this be were women
what men generally suppose them!
Here is Hester Mason, certainly not a good specimen of her sex: vain,
capricious, wilful, sensual, perverted by sounding sophisms
respecting the rights of women, and the injustice of the marriage
laws; she acts up to her opinions, and throws herself away upon a
rich and titled noodle for the sake of furthering her ambitious
projects; she finds out her mistake, returns home repentant, and
instantly a number of ill-conditioned, coarse-minded, coarse-mannered
men imagine she cannot hesitate to stoop to them! Believing that she
acted from unrestrained licentiousness, they interpreted one act, in
this school-boy fashion, and hoped to profit by her weakness. But
they found out their mistake; or rather never found it out, for they
attributed her refusal to viler motives than those to which they
would have attributed her consent.
The insult of their proposals struck deep into her heart--deeper far
than the scorn of her own sex; and it made her so wretched, that, at
last, it drove her once more from her home. Yes, home became
insupportable, and in a moment of desperation she fled; fled to
London, and there endeavoured to seek oblivion in the turbulent
vortex of a career which one shudders to contemplate.
Of all the tortures, of all the humiliations to which she had
submitted, none equalled that of meeting Cecil. In her strange
unhappy life there had been but one short dream, and that was her
love for Cecil; even when he had rejected her love, and humiliated
her by his rejection, she still felt towards him something of that
elevating, purifying attachment which forms a sort of serene heaven
smiling upon the most abject condition--which is, as it were, the
ideal region where the purest, brightest thoughts take refuge. And
to meet him in the streets--to appear before his eyes in the
flaunting finery of disgrace--to let him see the abyss into which she
had fallen! Poor girl! if her errors had no other expiation than
that, bitterly would she have expiated them.