"More than a thousand women is one man
Worthy to see the light of day;"
a sentiment which has prevailed ever since.
"Silence and a chaste reserve
Is woman's genuine praise, and to remain
Quiet within the house,"
proceeds Macaria, and still farther:--
"Of prosperous future could I form
One cheerful hope?
A poor forsaken virgin who would deign
To take in marriage? Who would wish for sons
From one so wretched? Better, then, to die
Than bear such undeservèd miseries!"
Here is the popular idea which curses society to-day,--no vocation
possible to woman, if she may not be a wife, and bear children: and
these are favorable specimens; they show the practical tendencies of the
very best of Euripides. The heroic portions are like Miriam's song, and
have nothing to do with us and our experiences.
In speaking of Aristophanes, I do not speak ignorantly. I know how much
students consider themselves indebted to him for details of manners and
customs, for political and social hints, for a sort of Dutch school of
pen-painting.
But if a nation's life be so very vile, if crimes that we cannot name
and do not understand be among its amusements, why permit the record to
taint the mind and inflame the imagination of youth? Why put it with our
own hands into the desks of those in no way prepared to use it? Would
you have wit and humor? Sit down with Douglas Jerrold, or to the genial
table spread by our Boston Autocrat, and you will have no relish left
for the coarse fare of the Athenian. One of the most vulgar assaults
ever made upon the movement to elevate woman in this country was made in
a respectable quarterly by a Greek scholar. It was sustained by
quotations from Aristophanes, and concluded by copious translations from
one of his liveliest plays, offered as a specimen of the "riot and
misrule" that we ambitious women were ready to inaugurate. Coarser words
still our Greek scholar might have taken from the same source to
illustrate his theory. He knew very well that the nineteenth century
would bear hints, insinuations, sneers, any thing but plain speaking. We
have limits: he observed them, and forbore. Women sometimes talk of
Aristophanes as if they had read his plays with pleasure; a thing for
which we can only account by supposing that they do not take the whole
significance of what they read,--and this is often the case with men.
But a college furnishes helps. The mysteries of the well-thumbed English
key are translated afresh into what we may call "college slang,"
illustrated oftentimes by clever if vulgar caricatures, where a few
significant lines tell in a moment what a pure mind would have pondered
years without perceiving; and if, perchance, some modest woman finds her
friend or lover at this work, society says only: "You should not have
touched the young man's book. What harm for him to amuse himself?--only
women should never find it out! Keep them pure, no matter what becomes
of men. What business had you to know the meaning of those pencil
marks?"
Even St. John does not hesitate to condemn Aristophanes.[7] "With an art
in which Shakespeare was no mean proficient," he begins, "he opens up a
more culpable source of interest in the frequent satire of vices
condemned as commonly as they are practised. He unveils the mysteries of
iniquity with a fearless and by no means an unreluctant hand. He
ventures fearlessly on themes which few before or since have touched,
despising the stern condemnation of posterity. He evidently shared in
the worst corruptions of his age, and, like many other satirists,
availed himself joyfully of the mask of satire to entertain his own
imagination with his own descriptions. No one, with the least
clear-sightedness or candor, can fail to perceive the depraved moral
character of Aristophanes. Only less filthy than Rabelais, his fancy
runs riot among the moral jakes and common sewers of the world, over
which, by consummate art and the matchless magic of his style, he
contrives unhappily to breathe a fragrance which should never be found
save where virtue is."
When I first took up my pen, knowing well that I should speak of
Margaret Fuller's beloved Greeks in a tone somewhat different from hers,
I did not know that I should have the sympathy of a single eminent
scholar.
It was with no common pleasure, therefore, that, opening her Life at
random, one day, I chanced upon these words from her own pen. She is
speaking of a class of private pupils:--
"I have always thought all that was said about the anti-religious
tendency of a classical education to be 'auld wives' tales.' But the
puzzles (of my pupils) about Virgil's notions of heaven and virtue, and
his gracefully described gods and goddesses, have led me to alter my
opinions; and I suspect, from reminiscences of my own mental history,
that, if all teachers do not think the same, it is from the want of an
intimate knowledge of their pupils' minds. I really find it difficult to
keep their _morale_ steady, and am inclined to think many of my own
sceptical sufferings are traceable to this source. I well remember what
reflections arose in my childish mind from a comparison of the Hebrew
history, where every moral obliquity is shown out with such _naïveté_,
and the Greek history, full of sparkling deeds and brilliant sayings,
and their gods and goddesses, the types of beauty and power, with the
dazzling veil of flowery language and poetical imagery cast over their
vices and failings."[8]
We may be permitted also to quote, from the competent pen of Buckle, the
following words:--
"We have only to open the Greek literature," he says, in his lecture on
"The Condition of Women," "to see with what airs of superiority, with
what serene and lofty contempt, with what mocking and biting scorn,
women were treated by that lively and ingenious people, who looked upon
them _merely as toys_."
Alas! we need no prophet to show that what pollutes the mind of youth
and lover, by polluting the ideal of society, must soon pollute the mind
of maiden and mistress. Is that a Christian country which permits this
style of thinking? and how many men of the world accept the stainless
virginity of Christ as the world's pattern of highest manliness?
Passing from Greece to Rome, you will see that even as we owe to Roman
law, before the time of Justinian, almost all that is obnoxious in the
English, retaining still the strange old Latin terms which were applied
to our relations in a very barbarous state of society; so we owe to the
time of Augustus, to the influence of satirists like Horace and Juvenal,
almost all the wide-spread heresies in regard to human nature: if we had
but time to look at it, we might say Calvinism among the rest.
The views of women are still lower. Cæsar and Cicero may be abstract
nullities to our young student; but what can he learn from Ovid? It is
not delicate to name the "Art of Love." In simple, honest truth, it is
the same to read the Metamorphoses. You cannot ventilate a gross man's
atmosphere; all the Betsy Trotwoods must toss their cushions on the lawn
when he leaves the room. It is the old difference between "Don Juan" and
"Childe Harold," only less. In the first, the unvarnished play of
passion may disgust you until it instructs; in the second, you have the
despairing misanthropy, the false philosophy, the devil in Gabriel's own
garment, which is always fascinating to the young, morbid with the
stimulus of growth, and which you might mistake for piety if you did not
know it was born of the lassitude left by excess.
Latin mythology was but the corruption of the older types. What was
beauty once became here undisguised coarseness or worse. The gods who
once endured sin now patronized and made money by it. These things are
not without their influence. Above all, low images, witty slang, and
sharp satire, have force beyond their own, when slowly studied out by
the help of the lexicon. The women to whom I speak know this very well.
They know that the Molière, the Dante, the Schiller, studied at school,
are never forgotten. They smile to hear men call them hard to read: for
them they glow with clear and significant meaning. Striking passages are
indelibly impressed by associations of time or place or page, which can
never be forgotten. _I would not put an end to classical study; I would
only direct attention, through such remarks, to the dangers attendant on
the present manner of study. Classical teachers should not be chosen for
their learning alone. No Lord Chesterfield should teach manners, but
some one whose daily "good morning" is precious. So no coarse,
low-minded man should interpret Greek or Roman, but some noble soul, not
indifferent to social progress, capable of discriminating, and of
letting in a little Christian light upon those pagan times._ Where men
and women are taught together, this thing settles itself; and this is a
very strong argument for institutions like Antioch and Oberlin.
Then might the period passed at the Latin school and the college become
of the greatest moral and intellectual use. Then would no graduating
students run the risk of hearing from their favorite doctor of
divinity, instead of sound scriptural exhortation, some doctrine whisked
out of Epicurus, by a clever but unconscious _leger-de-plume_.
Do not tell us, O excellent man! that you have gone through all this
training, and come out with your soul unstained. We look at you, and see
a temperament cold as ice, passions and imagination that were never at a
blood-heat since you were born, that never translated the cold paper
image into the warm deed of your conscious mental life; and you shall
not answer for us, nor for our children.
In leaving this branch of our subject to be more fitly pursued by
others, we ought to add that mental purity is not enough insisted upon
for either sex. It is only by the greatest faithfulness from the
beginning in this respect that we become capable of "touching pitch" at
a mature age, in a way to benefit either ourselves or the community. How
desirable it is to keep the young eye steadily gazing at the light till
it feels all that is lost in darkness, to keep the atmosphere serene and
holy till the necessary conflicts of life begin! For such a dayspring to
existence no price could be too high; and, if _desirable_ to all, it is
_essential_ to those who inherit degrading tendencies.
We must speak now of history. For the most part, it has been written by
men devoid of intentional injustice to the sex; but, when a man sits in
a certain light, he is penetrated by its color, as the false shades in
our omnibuses strike the fairest bloom black and blue. If the positive
knowledge and Christian candor of the nineteenth century cannot compel
Macaulay to confess that he has libelled the name of William Penn, what
may be expected of the mistakes occasioned by the ignorance, the
inadvertence, or the false theories of the past? Clearly that they also
will remain uncorrected.
If men start with the idea that woman is an inferior being, incapable of
wide interests, and created for their pleasure alone; if they enact laws
and establish customs to sustain these views; if, for the most part,
they shut her into hareems, consider her so dangerous that she may not
walk the streets without a veil,--they will write history in accordance
with such views, and, whatever may be the facts, they will be
interpreted to suit them. They will dwell upon the lives which their
theories explain: they will touch lightly or ignore those that puzzle
them. We shall hear a great deal of Cleopatra and Messalina, of the
mother of Nero and of Lucretia Borgia, of Catharine de Medicis and Marie
Stuart, of the beautiful Gabrielle and Ninon de L'Enclos. They will tell
us of bloody Mary, and that royal coquette, Elizabeth; and possibly of
some saints and martyrs, not too grand in stature to wear the
strait-jacket of their theories.
If they think that purity is required of woman alone, and all license
permitted to man, they will value female chastity for the service it
does poetry and the state, but never maidenhood devoted to noble uses
and conscious of an immortal destiny.
Hypatia of Alexandria, noble and queenly, so queenly that those who did
not understand, dared not libel her,--Hypatia, a woman of intellect so
keen and grasping, that she would have been eminent in the nineteenth
century, and may be met in the circles of some future sphere, erect and
calm, by the side of our own Margaret Fuller,--she, who died a stainless
virgin, torn in pieces by dogs, because she tried to shelter some
wretched Jews from Christian wrath, and could even hold her
Neo-Platonism a holier thing than that disgraced Christianity,--what do
we know of her? Only the little which the letters of Synesius preserve,
only the testimony borne by a few Christians, fathers of the Church
_now_, but outlawed _then_ by the popular grossness! Yet, a pure and
fragrant waif from the dark ocean of that past, her name was permitted
to float down to us, till Kingsley caught it, and, with the
unscrupulousness of the advocate, _stained_ it to serve his purpose.[9]
It would have been no matter, had not genius set its seal on the work,
and so made it doubtful whether history has any Hypatia left. We must
not fail to utter constant protest against such unfairness; and to
assert again and again, that not a single weakness or folly attributed
to Hypatia by the novelist--neither the worship of Venus Anadyomene nor
the prospective marriage with the Roman governor, neither the
superstitious fears, the ominous self-conceit, nor the half conscious
personal ambition--is in the least sustained by the facts of history.
She was pure and stainless: let us see to it that such memories are
rescued.
And there is still another name, deeply wronged by the prejudice and
party spirit of the past, which it is quite possible to redeem: I mean
that of Aspasia. For many centuries, the very sound of it suggested an
image of all womanly grace and genius, devoid of womanly virtue; the
insight of a seer, the eloquence of an orator, but the voluptuousness of
a courtesan. Very lately, the manly justice of Thirlwall and Grote, and
the exquisite taste and imagination of Walter Savage Landor, have
striven to repair the wrong. Her reputation fell a victim to the gross
puns of Aristophanes, himself the hired mouth-piece of a political party
that hated her, and whose misrepresentations were so contemptible in the
eyes of Pericles, that he would not interfere to prevent them.
Would you have the history of that immortal marriage written truly?
Imagine the Greek ruler married, for some years, to a woman of the
noblest Athenian blood, already the mother of two children, but one who,
if irreproachable in conduct, was utterly incapable of taking in the
scope of his plans, or sharing his lofty, adventurous thought. After
years of weariness passed in her society, with no rest for his heart and
no inspiration for his genius, there came to Athens a woman and a
foreigner, in whom he found his peer,--a woman who gathered round her
in a moment all that there was of free and noble in that world of
poetry, statesmanship, and art. She was from the islands of the
Archipelago, and, like the women of her country, walked the streets with
her face unveiled.
Hardly had she come, before Socrates and Plato, and Anaxagoras the pure
old man, became her frequent guests, and honored her with the name of
friend. In such a society, Pericles saw that his own soul would grow; so
sustained, he should be more for Athens and himself. He was no Christian
to deny himself for the sake of that unhappy wife and children,--a wife
whose discontent had already infected the state. The gods he knew--Zeus
and Eros--smiled on the step he took. What if the laws of Athens forbade
a legal marriage with a foreigner? Pericles was Athens; and what he
respected, all men must honor. Aspasia had, so far as we know, a free
maiden heart; and Pericles shows us in what light he regarded her, by
divorcing his wife to consolidate their union, and subsequently forcing
the courts to legitimate her child. Had he omitted these proofs of his
own sincerity and her honor, not a voice would have been raised against
either. What need to take these steps, if she were the woman
Aristophanes would have us see?
This divorce created or strengthened the political opposition to
Pericles. This opposition was headed by his two sons and their forsaken
mother, joined by the pure Athenian blood to which theirs was akin, and
gained all its strength and popularity from the wit and falsehood of
Aristophanes and the players.
Follow the story as it goes, and see Aspasia, at last, summoned before
the Areopagus. What are the charges against her? The very same that were
preferred against her friends, Socrates and Anaxagoras. "She walks the
streets unveiled, she sits at the table with men, she does not believe
in the Greek gods, she talks about one sole Creator, she has original
ideas about the motions of the sun and moon; _therefore_ her society
corrupts youth." Not a word about vice of any sort. Is it for abandoned
women that the best men of any age are willing to entreat before a
senate? The tears which Pericles shed then for Aspasia glitter like gems
on the historic page.
When the plague came, his first thought was for her safety; and, after
his death, her name shares the retirement of her widowed life. There was
a rumor that she afterward married a rich grazier, whom she raised to
eminence in the state. Not unlikely that such a rumor might grow in the
minds of those who had not forgotten the great men _she_ made, when they
saw the success of Lysicles; but other authors assert that his wife was
the Aspasia who was also known as a midwife in Athens.
It is a noble picture, it seems to me; and when we consider the
prejudice of a Christian age and country, the mob that a Bloomer skirt
will attract in our own cities, we need not wonder that slander followed
an unveiled face in Athens.
What do we know of the women of the age of Augustus?--of the galaxy that
spanned the sky of Louis XIV.?
Do you remember, as you read of those crowds of worthless women, what
sort of public opinion educated them,--what sort of public opinion such
histories tend to form? Do you ever ask any questions concerning the men
of the same eras,--how they employed their time, and what part they took
in those games of wanton folly? It is time that some one should: and I
cannot help directing your attention to the significant fact, that while
the word "mistress," applied to a woman, serves at once to mark her out
for reprobation, there is no corresponding term, which, applied to man,
produces the same effect; and this because the interests of the state
are still paramount to the interests of the soul itself.
In speaking of the court of Charles II., Dr. William Alexander says, in
1799: "Its _tone_ ruined all women: they were either adored as angels,
or degraded to brute beasts. The satirists, who immediately arose,
despised what they had themselves created, and gave the character to
every line that has since been written concerning women," down to the
verses of Churchill, and that often-quoted, well-remembered line of
Pope, with which we need not soil our lips.
We may quote here a criticism upon the "Cinq-Mars" of Alfred de Vigny,
taken from Lady Morgan's "France." You will find it especially
interesting, because it bears on what has been suggested of the
influence of history, and may be compared with a portion of one of
Margaret Fuller's letters, in which she criticises the same work, and
makes, in her own way, parallel reflections.
"I dipped also," says Lady Morgan, "into the 'Cinq-Mars' of Alfred de
Vigny, a charming production. It gives the best course of practical
politics, in its exposition of the miseries and vices incidental to the
institutions of the middle ages. Behold Richelieu and Louis XIII. in the
plenitude of their bad passions and unquestioned power, when--
'Torture interrogates and Pain replies.'
Behold, too, their victims,--Urbain, Grandier, De Thou, Cinq-Mars, and
the long, heart-rending list of worth, genius, and innocence immolated.
With such pictures in the hands of the youth of France, it is impossible
they should retrograde. How different from the works of Louis XV.'s
days, when the Marivaux, Crebillons, and Le Clos wrote for the especial
corruption of that society from whose profligacy they borrowed their
characters, incidents, and morals! Men would not now dare to name, in
the presence of virtuous women, works which were once in the hands of
every female of rank in France,--works which, like the novels of
Richardson, had the seduction of innocence for their story, and witty
libertinism and triumphant villany for their principal features.
"With such a literature, it was almost a miracle that one virtuous woman
or one honest man was left in the country to create that revolution
which was to purify its pestiferous atmosphere. Admirable for its
genius, this work is still more so for its honesty."
In the praise given to this new literature is implied the censure passed
upon the old. Of direct educational literature, we may say, that all
writers, from Rousseau to Gregory, Fordyce, and the very latest in our
own country, have exercised an enervating influence over public opinion,
and helped to form the popular estimate of female ability. Rousseau's
influence is still powerful. Let me quote from his "Emilius:"
"Researches into abstract and speculative truths, the principles and
axioms of science,--in short, every thing which tends to generalize
ideas,--is out of the province of woman. All her ideas should be
directed to the _study of men_. As to works of genius, they are beyond
her capacity. She has not precision enough to succeed in accurate
science; and physical knowledge belongs to those who are most active and
most _inquisitive_."
Alas for Mary Somerville, Janet Taylor, and Maria Mitchell, as well as
for the popular idea that women are a _curious_ sex! He goes on: "Woman
should have the skill to incline _us_ to do every thing which her sex
will not enable her to do of herself. She should learn to penetrate the
real sentiments of men, and should have the art to communicate those
which are most agreeable to them, without _seeming to intend it_."
This sounds somewhat barefaced; but it is the model of all the advice
which society is still giving. It is refreshing to catch the first gleam
of something better from the author of "Sandford and Merton." "If
women," says Mr. Day, "are in general feeble both in body and mind, it
arises less from nature than from education. We encourage a vicious
indolence and inactivity, which we falsely call delicacy. Instead of
hardening their minds by the severer principles of reason and
philosophy, we breed them to useless arts which terminate in vanity or
sensuality. They are taught nothing but idle postures and foolish
accomplishments." Dr. Gregory recommends dissimulation. Dr. Fordyce
advises women to increase their power by reserve and coldness! When we
hear of the educational restraints still exercised, of the innocent
amusements forbidden, the compositions which may be written, but not
read, lest the young girl might some time become the lecturer,--we
cannot but feel that the step is not so very long from that time and
country to this, and wonder at the folly which still refuses to trust
the laws of God to a natural development. It is mortifying, too, to
listen to the silly rhapsodies of Madame de Staël. "Though Rousseau has
endeavored," she says, "to prevent women from interfering in public
affairs, and acting a brilliant part in political life, yet, in speaking
of them, how much has he done it to _their satisfaction_! If he wished
to deprive them of some rights foreign to their sex, how has he for ever
asserted for them all those to which it has a claim! What signifies
it," she continues, "that his reason disputes with them for empire,
while his heart is still devotedly theirs?"
What signifies it? It signifies a great deal. It signifies all the
difference between life in a solitary seraglio, and life with God's
world for an inheritance; all the difference between being the worn-out
toy of one sensualist, and the inspiration of an unborn age; all the
difference between the butterfly and the seraph, between the imprisoned
nun and Longfellow's sweet St. Philomel. When we read these words, we
thank Margaret Fuller for the very criticism which once moved a girlish
ire. "De Staël's name," she wrote, "was not clear of offence; she could
not forget the woman in the thought. Sentimental tears often dimmed her
eagle glance." What a grateful contrast to all such sentimentalism do we
find in Margaret's own sketch of the early life of Miranda!
"This child was early led to feel herself a child of the spirit. She
took her place easily in the world of mind. A dignified sense of
self-dependence was given as all her portion, and she found it a sure
anchor. Her relations with others were fixed with equal security. With
both men and women they were noble; affectionate without passion,
intellectual without coldness. The world was free to her, and she lived
freely in it. Outward adversity came, and inward conflict; but that
self-respect had early been awakened, which must always lead at last to
an outward security and an inward peace." Here is the great difficulty
in the education of woman, to lead her to a point from which she shall
naturally develop self-respect, and learn self-help. Old prejudices
extinguish her as an individual, oblige her to renounce the inspiration
in herself, and yield to all the weaknesses and wickednesses of man.
Look at Chaucer's beau-ideal of a wife in the tale of Griselda, dwindled
now into the patient Grissel of modern story. In her a woman is
represented as perfect, because she ardently and constantly loved a
monster who gained her by guile, and brutally abused her. Put the matter
into plain English, and see if you would respect such a woman now. No:
and therefore is it somewhat sad, that, in Tennyson's new Idyll, he must
recreate this ideal in the Enid of Geraint; and that, out of four
pictures of womanly love, only one seems human and natural, and that,
the guilty love of Guinevère. The recently awakened interest in the
position of woman is flooding the country with books relating to her and
her sphere. They have, their _very titles_ have, an immense educational
influence. Let me direct your attention to one published in Boston by a
leading house last winter, and entitled "Remarkable Women of Different
Ages and Nations." Let us read the names of the thirteen women with
whose lives it seeks to entertain the public:--
Beatrice Cenci, the parricide.
Charlotte Corday, the assassin.
Joanna Southcote, the English prophetess.
Jemima Wilkinson, the American prophetess.
Madame Ursinus, the poisoner.
Madame Göttfried, the poisoner.
Mademoiselle Clairon, the actress.
Harriet Mellon, the actress.
Madame Lenormand, the fortune-teller.
Angelica Kauffman, the artist.
Mary Baker, the impostor.
Pope Joan, the pontiff.
Joan of Arc, the warrior.
Look at the list! Assassins, parricides, and poisoners, fortune-tellers,
and actresses! Let us hope they will always remain _remarkable_! In this
list we have the name of one woman who never lived, and of four at least
who in this country would owe all their celebrity to the police court;
and this while history pants to be delivered of noble lives not known at
all, like the women of the House of Montefeltro, or little known, like
the pure and heroic wife of Condé, Clemence de Maillé. And by what black
art, let us ask, are such names as Beatrice, and Charlotte Corday, sweet
Joan of Arc, and dear Angelica Kauffman, a noble woman, whose happiness
was wrecked upon a fiendish jest, juggled into this list? As well might
you put Brutus who killed great Cæsar, and Lucretia of spotless fame,
and Andrea del Sarto who loved a faithless wife, into the same category.
Such association, however false, helps to educate the popular mind.
Of the power of adages, and that barbaric experience and civilization of
which they are generally the exponent, we might write volumes; but the
subject must be dismissed in this connection without a word. We must
pass on to consider the force of social instincts and prejudices which
underlie this general literature, and are as much stronger than it as
the character of a man is stronger than his intellectual quality. A
lecturer once said, "that the first prejudice which women have to
encounter is one which exists before they are born, which leads fathers
instinctively to look forward to the birth of sons, and to leave little
room in their happy or ambitious schemes for the coming of a daughter."
Not long since, a highly educated Englishman told me that this remark
smote him to the heart. "I never expected to have any thing but a son,"
he declared; "and, when my little Minnie was born, I had made no
preparation for her. I had neither a thought nor a scheme at her
service."
Fanny Wright, in some essays published thirty years ago, says, "There
are some parents who take one step in duty, and halt at the second. Our
sons," they say, "will have to exercise political rights, and fill
public offices. We must help them to whatever knowledge there is going,
and make them as sharp-witted as their neighbors. As for our daughters,
they can never be any thing; in fact, they are nothing. We give them to
their mothers, who will take them to church and dancing-school, and,
with the aid of fine clothes, fit them out for the market.
"But," she goes on to say, "let possibilities be what they will, no man
has a _right_ to calculate on them for his sons. He has only to consider
them as human beings, and insure them a full development of all the
faculties which belong to them as such. So, as respects his daughters,
he has nothing to do with the injustice of law, nor the absurdities of
society. His duty is plain,--to train them up as human beings, to seek
for them, and with them, all just knowledge. Who among _men_ contend
best with the difficulties of life and society,--the strong-minded or
the weak, the wise or the foolish? Who best control and mould opposing
circumstances,--the educated or the ignorant? What is true of them is
true of women also."
In the customs of nations, women find the most discouraging educational
influences. While with us these customs all set one way, they are easily
broken through by the untutored races, who still rely on the force of
their primal instincts. When Captain Wallis went to see the Queen of
Otaheite, a marsh which crossed the way proved a formidable obstacle to
the puny Anglo-Saxon. No sooner did the queen perceive it, than, taking
him up as if he were a meal-bag, she threw him over her shoulder, and
strode along. Nobody smiled; even Captain Wallis does not appear to have
felt mortified. These people were accustomed to the physical strength of
their queen. It would be well if civilized nations could imitate them,
far enough at least to remember, that wherever strength, whether mental
or physical, is found, _there_ it certainly belongs.
In Peru and the Formosa Isles, it is the women who choose their
husbands, and not the men who choose their wives; and, from the moment
of marriage, the man takes up his abode in his wife's family. Lord of
creation in every other respect, he still owes to her whatever social
standing and privileges he may possess. Such an exception is valueless,
save that it shows us that sex does not absolutely, of itself, determine
such customs.
The African kings are permitted to have many wives; but they respect the
chastity of women, and require it. Dr. Livingstone tells us of an
instance in which the royal succession finally lapsed upon a woman. Her
counsellors forbade her to marry a single husband, telling her that it
would create jealousies and divisions in the tribe. She must follow the
royal custom. But pure womanly nature spoke louder than the counsellors.
The poor queen renounced marriage altogether, and associated a
half-brother in the government, upon whose children she settled the
succession. Let this beautiful fact shame those coward souls who fear to
trust to the instinctive purity of the sex.
He goes on to state, in a recent letter, that he has found nothing more
remarkable, among the highly intelligent tribes of the Upper Sambesi,
than the respect universally accorded to women.
"Many of the tribes are governed by a female chief. If you demand any
thing of a man," remarks the intrepid explorer, "he replies, 'I will
talk with my wife about it.' If the woman consents, your demand is
granted. If she refuse, you will receive a negative reply. Women vote in
all the public assemblies. Among the Bushwanas and Kaffirs, the men
swear by their fathers; but among the veritable Africans, occupying the
centre of the continent, they always swear by their mother. If a young
man falls in love with a maiden of another village, he leaves his own,
and takes up his dwelling in hers. He is obliged to provide in part for
the maintenance of his mother-in-law, and to assume a respectful
attitude, a sort of semi-kneeling, in her presence. I was so much
astonished at all these marks of respect for women, that I inquired of
the Portuguese if such had always been the habit of the country. They
assured me that such had always been the case."
If women were unwise managers of money,--a statement frequently made,
but which we may safely deny,--it would be owing to the custom which
has, through long ages, put the purse in the hands of "their master;" a
custom so old, that to "husband" one's resources is a phrase which
expresses man's pecuniary responsibility, and is always equivalent to
locking one's money up. "It will be time enough," says Mrs. Kirkland,
"to expect from woman a just economy when she is permitted to
distribute a portion of the family resources. Witness those proud
subscription-lists where one reads, 'Mr. B., twenty dollars;' and, just
below, 'Mrs. B., ten dollars,'--which ten dollars Mrs. B. never saw, and
would ask for in vain to distribute for her own pleasure."
And this custom has such educational force, that very liberal men refuse
the smallest pecuniary independence to their wives to their very dying
day. "The Turk does not lock up his wife with more care than the
Christian his strong box. To that lock there is ever but one key, and
that the master carries in his pocket. The case is not altered when the
wife is about to close her weary eyes in death. She may have earned or
inherited or saved the greater part of their common property, but
without his consent she cannot bequeath a dollar." This passage reminds
us of a criticism on the marriage service attributed to Sir John
Bowring. This eccentric man considers it wicked from beginning to end.
"Look at it," he says: "'with this ring I thee wed,'--that's sorcery;
'with my body I thee worship,'--that's idolatry; 'and with all my
worldly goods I thee endow,'--that's a lie!"
It is the long customs of mankind which stand in the way of educating
women to trades and professions. These matters are mainly in woman's own
hands. One is glad to see in the English Parliament certain statements
made in this connection, and others also in a London pamphlet on the
nature of municipal government. In reply to the common argument that
women ought not to enter certain vocations, because they would
ultimately find themselves incompetent, it is stated, that, in all
delicate handicrafts, men do the same. Thus, of those who learn to make
watches and watchmakers' tools, not one-fifth continue in the trade;
and, in the decoration of that delicate ware called Bohemian glass, by
far the greater portion of apprentices give it up on account of natural
unfitness.
It is the customs of society which sustain the prejudice against
literary women. When Dr. Aikin published his "Miscellaneous Pieces," Fox
met him in the street. "I particularly admire," said the orator,
complimenting him, "your essay on Inconsistency."--"That," said
Aikin, "is my sister's."--"Ah! well, I like that on Monastic
Institutions."--"That is also hers," replied the honest man; and, in a
tumult of confusion, Fox bowed himself away. Had public feeling been
right, how gracefully he might have congratulated the brother on his
sister's ability, how gladly might that brother have seen her excel
himself! This sister was that Mrs. Barbauld who afterward did such
womanly service, that we feel tempted to forgive the early fit of
sentimentality which found vent in that rhymed nonsense, concluding,--
"Your best, your sweetest empire is to please."
The manners of men have their educational influence. The quiet
turning-aside from women when matters of business, politics, or science
are discussed; the common saying, "What have women to do with that? let
them mind their knitting, or their house affairs;" the short answer when
an interested question is asked, "You wouldn't understand it, if I told
you,"--all these depress and enervate, and, even if not _spoken_, the
spirit of them animates all social life. "Men are suspicious," wrote Dr.
Alexander in 1790, "that a rational education would open the eyes of
women, and prompt them to assert the rights of which they have always
been deprived." But education could not be withheld nor eyes closed for
ever; therefore the time has come to claim these rights. The Sorbonne is
already asked why it confers degrees upon women with one hand, while it
quietly locks Margaret Fuller out of Arago's lecture-room with the
other. Need we inquire what influence it would have upon society, if all
literature and scientific opportunities, if all societies devoted to
natural history and mathematics, if all colleges and public libraries
the world over, were thrown open to woman?
In inferior circles, where no leading minds preside, it would be as it
is now: there would be much idle prating, much foolish delay, much
inconsequent discussion; but woman is quick to recognize genius, to
listen when wisdom speaks. She chatters, to be sure, in the presence of
fools; but, when earnest men come to know the value of her enthusiasm,
they will never be willing to lose it. When the great door of the
scholarly and scientific retreat is once thrown open, you will be
surprised to see the crowd ready to enter; and, when the sexes kindle
into intellectual life together, many a woman's coals will be modestly
laid upon an honored altar, and the flames will rise all the higher
because they have been so fed.
How can we estimate sufficiently the corrupting influence of the
newspapers of the land?
We may hope your prejudices will defend woman here, and you will
acknowledge that the minds cannot be kept pure before whom their details
are set. Let us go farther, and say that they cannot be kept pure,
coming in contact as they do with minds among men that gloat over such
records. God is just, and his compensations are terrible. If you do not
spare the purity of the lowest in the land, you cannot save that of your
wife and daughter. If you will not protect the vulgar against
themselves, you cannot protect the refined against the vulgar. He is not
a pure man, who, among his fellows, thinks a thought or utters a word he
would blush to have his sister hear. She is not a pure woman, who, in
the seclusion of her chamber, or gossip with her household, omits one of
the proprieties which delicacy requires. She has no title to _our_
respect, who is not secure in _her own_. How can we reach such a
standard as this, if we invite pollution daily across our threshold, and
call it harmless because it dresses in printer's ink? It is not enough
that much of the obscenity is pure invention. The profit of the scandal
overbalances the cost of the libel. The simplest item is turned to gross
account. Even the intimation that the postmaster has placed a woman at
the ladies' window in New York has to be coupled with the insinuation
that she would have "done better at the gentlemen's." What business have
you or I with details that concern only judge and jury? What good does
it do society to quote high legal authority upon "flirtation," unless,
indeed, we learn thereby to estimate aright the corrupting power of the
first wrong step? Police reports, vulgar anecdotes, shocking accidents,
and trivial gossip a child might be ashamed to repeat, make up the mass
of our daily sheets. Happy is the editor who offers three columns of
common sense daily to his readers. When, alas! shall we have a public
willing to pay for common sense and pure reading alone?
A woman ought to turn like a flash of light from a foul page, a coarse
and vulgar word. No wit should ever tempt her to read the one, or repeat
the other; and what I say of woman, I _mean_ of man. I have not two
separate moral standards for the sexes.
Margaret Fuller speaks somewhere of certain habits of impure speech
which she had heard attributed to ladies in a New-York hotel. What
foundation that story had, we may never find; but all of us know some
women before whom we keep the coldest reserve, and with whom we would
never touch many a subject we should be willing to discuss with any
pure-minded man. Ladies! Not all the gold of Pactolus, not all the
beauty of Anadyomene, not all the wisdom of Minerva, could make such
women _ladies_! We cannot redeem the poor denizens of Five Points till
we have redeemed those of the Fifth Avenue.
Our own children must prattle oaths, if we will not hush the drunken
brawler in the streets.
NOTE.--When this lecture was first delivered, in 1858, it excited
more discussion than any "revolutionary notions" of which I have
ever been suspected. Since then, the same ideas, as applied to other
questions, have been expressed in various quarters. I think a
thorough classical education necessary to a college bred man. As far
as I have any opinions to express, they coincide with those
recently uttered by John Stuart Mill at St. Andrew's.
I wish to sustain the remarks of the text by the following
quotations:--
"Many things with the Greeks and Romans most venerable have not
merely lost their sanctity in our eyes, but present contemptible and
even ludicrous ideas to us. Hence, any allusion to them, or any
expression of the feelings connected with them, or even a reference
to the habits of thinking which those feelings have produced, must
have an operation most unpropitious."--LORD BROUGHAM.
"The fictions constituting the epic poetry of Homer, Virgil, and
their imitators, so far from being consonant with the taste and
sense of modern readers, are, on the contrary, often annoying, from
the absence of all moral or poetical justice."--"The gods who
preside in this scenic exhibition are tainted with every vice which
has since degraded their supposed subordinates of the human race.
Cruelty, revenge, deceit, hatred, unrelenting rancor, and unbridled
lust, are the qualities which call for approval in a generation
professing to feel and practise virtues of an opposite nature. An
exterminating war is undertaken for the sake of a vacillating
adulteress, and its heroes quarrel implacably about the possession
of their female slaves. Ulysses, on his return home, winds up the
'Odyssey' by a wholesale slaughter of his disorganized subjects,
hangs up a dozen censurable females in a row, and puts Melanthius to
a lingering death by gradual mutilation."--"In their social
relations, the Greeks were licentious and exquisitely depraved. In
their domestic habits, they were primitive, destitute, and
uncleanly."--DR. JACOB BIGELOW.
These words represent the re-action of Christian morality against
the abuses of classical study, to which I allude in my text. But let
the classics be taught properly, and morality will have no complaint
to make. We cannot understand the history of the world, without an
intelligent investigation of its beginnings; but we should be
carefully protected against assuming, as reasonable and proper,
either the habits and opinions or the sarcasms of an extinct
experience.