"Speak! or I go no further.
I need a goal, an aim. I cannot toil,
_Because the steps are here_; in their ascent,
Tell me THE END, or I sit still and weep."
_Naturliche Tochter._
We have considered the controlling influence exercised by consolidated
public opinion concerning women. We have asked from what sources this
opinion was derived. We have now to consider some individual lives which
have set it at defiance, and in that way done something towards its
reconstruction.
Mary Wollstonecraft is chiefly known in this country as the wife of
Godwin, and the author of a "Vindication of the Rights of Woman." This
book is often accused of the most irreligious and libertine tendencies;
and, for many years, her name stood in my own mind as the representative
of an unfortunate woman of genius, unbalanced in character, and only to
be remembered by the obstacles she had laid in the path of her sex. I
turned instinctively from the idea I had somehow conceived of her; nor
was it till a singular literary fact, the exponent of her individual
power, arrested my attention, that I was tempted to take up the "Rights
of Woman."
In making a rapid survey of English literature, to ascertain how many
women had made a decisive mark upon it, and how many works had been
published especially bearing upon woman's advancement, I at first
experienced a bitter disappointment. Upon approaching the year 1800,
however, I found a stream of literature rushing in, for which I could
not account. It united many rivulets of thought and life. Some volumes
were heavy and oppressive in a double sense; some were light as
pamphlets; some consisted of translations from other languages; some
were biographies; many were attempts at reconstruction on a rotten
foundation; others, an attempt at the rebuilding of society from its
very base. But these works all bore the same stamp, an impress powerful,
but healthy. It seemed as if one thought had animated all these workers
who had taken society by surprise; for the prejudice and bigotry they
must have aroused had left no corresponding trace. The prefaces
generally began, "On account of the interest lately excited," "The
public mind seeming now to be interested;" and I read very few volumes
before I discovered that the power which had aroused and interested was
no other than Mary Wollstonecraft's "Rights of Woman."
These books ranged onward from 1790, and the force of the influence was
not spent for twenty years. Among them, I recall, at this moment, Dr.
Alexander's "History of Women" in two quarto volumes; Matilda Betham's
"Biographical Dictionary," an _honest_, if not a valuable, attempt to
supply a want still felt in English literature; and Cotton's translation
of the mathematical works of Maria Agnesi. These were born of a common
mother. I read the "Vindication," therefore, with persistent care;
looking with fruitless question for the second and third volumes that
were promised. Could this be the book which had been so abused for half
a century? The American edition had been published before garbling
became the fashion; but I took pains to collate it carefully with the
English. It was all in vain. I found only a simple, determined, eloquent
plea for a proper education for women, urged on social, moral, and
religious grounds; an earnest protest against Rousseau and Dr. Gregory;
and a demand that _men_ should be subject to the same moral laws as
women. Very revolutionary this! Reprint it, under modern sponsorship,
and you would find it perhaps too heavy to read. It would only repeat
what you all know, and you would miss the fanatical spice of our later
speech. Yet this book was so much needed when it appeared, that it acted
on the under-current of English thought and life like a subsoil plough,
and brought all manner of abominations to the surface. The preface alone
contains any allusion to woman's political rights. If is dedicated to
Talleyrand, who, in publishing a pamphlet on national education, had
admitted the inconsistency of debarring women from their exercise. From
this preface, the _world_ took fright, and _we_ may judge in what manner
she intended to follow up her plea for education. Let me quote a few
passages. "I earnestly wish," she says, "to point out in what true
dignity and human happiness consist. I wish to persuade women to acquire
strength both of mind and body, and to convince them, that the soft
phrases, 'susceptibility of heart,' 'delicacy of sentiment,' and
'refinement of taste,' are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness,
and that those beings who are the objects of pity, and that kind of love
which has been termed its sister, will soon become objects of
contempt."--"An air of fashion is but a badge of slavery."--"It
follows," she says farther on, "that women should either be shut up,
like Eastern princesses, or educated in such a manner as to think and
act for themselves."--"Suppose a woman trained to obedience, married to
a sensible man, who directs her judgment, without permitting her to feel
the servility of her position. She cannot ensure the life of her
protector. He may die, and leave her at the head of a large
family."--"It is not _empire_, but _equality_, woman should contend for.
When women are sufficiently enlightened to discover their real
interests, they will be very ready to resign all those prerogatives of
love _which are not mutual_ for the calm satisfactions of friendship and
the tender confidence of habitual esteem. Before marriage, they will not
assume any insolent airs, nor afterwards abjectly submit; but,
endeavoring to act like reasonable creatures in both relations, they
will not be tumbled from a throne to a stool."
This is the character of the whole book. It contains nothing more
subversive of morality than these words. You cannot do better than read
it, and receive, as I did, a lasting lesson on the folly of prejudice.
As a work of art, it is irregular in method, and impulsive in execution;
facts not to be wondered at, since it was written and printed in the
brief space of six weeks. Dr. Channing once wrote of her: "I have lately
read Mary Wollstonecraft's posthumous works. Her letters towards the
close of the first volume are the best I ever read. They are superior to
Sterne's. I consider her the greatest woman of the age. Her 'Rights of
Woman' is a masculine performance, and ought to be studied by her sex;
the sentiments are noble and generous."
What, then, was the character of the woman? Was it as strong and
generous as the sentiments she advocated? Her life broke down some
social barriers, and, though noble and heroic when viewed from within,
looks hampered and unsatisfactory from the common stand-point. Godwin
has erected an exquisite monument to her memory, in a sketch written
soon after her decease. Mary Wollstonecraft was born near London in the
year 1759. She came into an unhappy and uncongenial home. Her father was
a passionate tyrant; her mother, compelled to submit to his caprice,
became like every other slave, a tyrant where she had the power, and
ruled her children with a rod of iron. By defending her mother from her
husband's violence, Mary early extorted some degree of affection from
the one, and respect from the other. Her father had some property, which
he seems to have squandered by frequent changes of abode; and a day
school at Beverley, in Yorkshire, gave her her principal advantages of
education. An eccentric clergyman at Hoxton, named Clare, added some
farther instruction. Under his roof, she formed an intimacy with Frances
Blood, destined to influence her whole life. This girl was remarkably
accomplished, and, at the age of eighteen, supported her father and
mother and their family of younger children. She was delicately neat and
proper in all she did; and her influence was of the greatest benefit to
Mary, who had often desired to assist her family, but was deterred by
the helpless condition of her mother. She now went as companion to a
family at Bath, but soon relinquished the position, on account of her
mother's serious illness. Mrs. Wollstonecraft was exacting and
troublesome. Mary nursed her with devoted care, but, after her death,
bade a final farewell to her father's roof. His affairs had become
wretchedly involved; and, with Fanny Blood and her two sisters, she
proceeded to open a day school. At first, she had looked upon Fanny as
her superior, but her own force of character soon found its rightful
position. The health of her friend broke down under her unnatural
burden, and Mary's devotion to her for years was beautiful to see. Her
marriage and removal to Lisbon, in a vain search for health, soon put
this devotion to the test.
At this point, Mary Wollstonecraft's reputation was unsullied. She was
an admirable manager, an efficient and successful teacher; yet, when
Fannie became seriously ill, she did not hesitate to risk her only means
of support, the prosperity of her school, to go to her. Her friend, Dr.
Price, the Unitarian minister, and Mrs. Burgh, were annoyed at what they
considered a quixotic devotion; but they supplied her with money, and
she went. A few days closed in death an intimacy of more than ten years,
which had been, until this time, Mary's tenderest interest in life. On
her way home, her moral energy saved the lives of a French crew in a
sailing vessel which she encountered, just about to founder. Her school
had suffered by her absence; and the pressing necessities of Fanny's
family, in which she still took an interest, induced her to have
recourse to literature. The first ten pounds received from her "Thoughts
on the Education of Daughters" went to their relief. Nothing can be
sadder than to see a young girl placed as Mary Wollstonecraft now
was,--compelled to fulfil the duties of a father and mother to younger
brothers and sisters. The position is unnatural. Gratitude might be
expected, but envy is more often felt. The personal advantages sought
for their sakes, and not to be transferred except as a pecuniary profit,
she is supposed to seek for her own. Affection partly yields, and
enthusiasm does not replace it; while she is urged by necessities which
make it difficult to bear the errors and intractabilities of those she
is providing for. Still loving, and desiring to provide for her
sisters, Mary thought it better to live apart from them, and accepted a
temporary position as governess in Lord Kingsborough's family. When they
left England, she went to Bristol, and published a novel, which, founded
on her ten years of friendly devotion, took the highest rank as a work
of sentiment. The next three years were spent in her own house, in
London, in the active service of the publisher, Johnson. She translated
from French, German, and Italian, wrote several books for children, and
took a large share in the conduct of the "Analytical Review."
Her translation of Salzman's "Elements of Morality" led to an
interesting correspondence with its author, who repaid the service,
subsequently, by translating into German her "Rights of Woman." These
occupations, if they did little towards the discipline of her powers,
served to rouse her from the dejection into which the death of her
friend had plunged her. Her earnings were now devoted to her own family.
One sister she kept at Paris for two years to qualify her as a
governess; another she placed as parlor-boarder at a London school. Her
brother James she sent to Woolwich; afterward procuring for him a
position in the navy, where he soon rose to be a lieutenant. Her
favorite, Charles, she placed with a farmer for instruction; and then
fitted him out for America, where he grew wealthy on the basis she
provided. This brother must have left a large family in the State of
New York. Her brothers and sisters thus established, she attempted to
rescue a support for her father from his broken and confused fortunes.
This proving impossible, he was supported by her own labor, until his
death. The very great demands made upon her by such natural obligations
did not prevent her from assuming others. She adopted for her own the
child of a dead friend, the niece of John Hunter. Her brilliancy, her
personal beauty, her unselfish devotion, could not fail to win for her
many loving friends; and among them the French Revolution found her. The
work which first gave her her proper literary rank was her answer to
Burke's Reflections upon that movement. She wrote rapidly: her pamphlet
was the first of the many that appeared, and obtained extraordinary
success. The public applause warmed her, and her next production was her
celebrated "Vindication of the Rights of Woman." The startling energy
with which she exploded the system of gallantry, a miserable relic of
the Stuart courts, roused the popular indignation. It was hard to
reconcile the vigor of her rebuke to the tender sentiment which trembled
through the book, and also to the impression produced by Mary herself,
lovely in person, and, in the most engaging sense, feminine in her
manners. Her intimacy with the historical painter, Fuseli, followed. He
was a man of powerful genius and strong prejudices. His influence upon
Mary, if it was sometimes refreshing, could not always have been
beneficial. The reader of Haydon's Autobiography will remember this
man. A wider knowledge of the world would have protected her from his
influence: as it was, she pursued the intimacy with unsuspecting
delight; for Fuseli was a contented husband, and his wife was her
friend. She was now in her thirty-second year; she had arrived at a
period when domestic happiness of some sort becomes essential to the
strongest woman. The fullest-fruited laurel then withers before her
eyes, if it has not taken root at her own hearth. At the close of the
year 1792, Mary took refuge in Paris from the chagrin and restlessness
which began to oppress her. Her years of toil had left her sad and
lonely: she needed to rest for a little while in human affection. She
could not even write to her own satisfaction; for her morbid fatigue led
her to reproduce Fuseli's cynicism, and she dared not trust herself. She
entered the best circles of Parisian society, and became intimate with
the leaders of the Revolution. In four months after her arrival occurred
the most untoward event of her life,--her marriage to a worthless
American named Gilbert Imlay; a name rescued from oblivion only by his
temporary attachment to her. I say her _marriage_, for Imlay offered
himself in marriage, and was accepted as a husband; but, taking
advantage of a custom not unusual at Paris in those disorderly times,
Mary refused to consummate the legal forms. Mr. Imlay had no property.
Mary had a large family to support; and she neither wished to become
answerable for his debts, nor to make him responsible for hers. She
took the name of Imlay; and, expecting to follow her brother to America,
she obtained from our ambassador at Paris a certificate of American
citizenship, to serve as a temporary protection. In order that you may
comprehend the precise significance which this step had in that place
and at that time, let me remind you, that Helen Maria Williams, her
personal friend, and the ward of Dr. Rees of cyclopedic memory, was
married in the same way to a Mr. Edwards, then in Paris. She was a
well-known writer of that period; and we are still indebted to her for
some of the best hymns sung in our churches,--among them, that
well-known hymn, beginning, "While thee I seek, protecting Power." But
her husband was worthy of the trust she had reposed in him, and she
never turned a ready pen against the follies of society: so _her_
character has never stood in the public stocks.
It will be impossible to consider Mary's attachment to Imlay in any
degree rational, if we look only at her _character_, and keep out of
sight her peculiar personal _history_.
The dawdling inefficiency and brutal temper of her father had disgusted
her alike with "men of spirit" and "men of straw." In her husband, she
saw, as she thought, a certain democratic manliness; and his daring
speculations seemed to be inspired by courage and genius. The affections
which had been roused by her admiring intercourse with Fuseli kindled
gladly on this new shrine, where no social duty, nor stern sense of
personal honor, contended against her warming fancy. For the first time
in her life, she found herself happy; and happiness gave her back the
beauty of early youth. She was playful, gentle, sympathetic. Her eyes
had new brightness, her cheeks new color, and the bewitching tenderness
of her smile fascinated the very women who approached her. She had been
married eighteen months, her love braving all the trials that must have
come, when Imlay left her for London. She had expected his quick return;
but delay followed delay, and Mary passed a year with a new-born child,
learning, by slow and painful degrees, that she had trusted this man
beyond his worth. At last, he sent for her to London, where his
misconduct affected her mind to such an extent, that she twice attempted
her own life, and was rescued the second time with difficulty. As soon
as she recovered from the fever which had induced delirium, her native
strength told her what she ought to do. Imlay had business in Norway,
which required a confidential and judicious agent. She determined to
take this upon herself; and hoped, by absence and success, to regain the
affection she had lost. The man was, in no sense, worthy of her. On her
return, she tried, for the sake of their child, to remain in the same
house with him. It was not possible; and, very soon, a final separation
took place. It would have taken place long before, but that Imlay was a
man who could not wholly escape from a fascination he had once felt.
After he became involved in low connections, he could never re-enter
her presence, without resuming, for the time, the sympathetic delicacy
befitting her lover. During all this time, Mary had occupied herself
with literary work. She never spoke of Imlay, and would allow no one to
blame him in her presence. Conscious of her own upright intentions, it
must have been no small mortification to find her insight and generosity
baffled. She felt that she was herself to blame for having placed an
impulsive man in a position to which he was wholly unequal. She was
everywhere received and treated as a married woman, and lost none of the
respect and affection she had well deserved. In April, 1797, she was
married to Godwin, the author of "St. Leon;" and this marriage deprived
her of two new friends, whom she held very dear. Godwin was so artless,
that he imagined his wife's social position would be improved by an
honorable marriage; but it obliged Mrs. Inchbald and Mrs. Siddons to
admit that the nature of her marriage to Imlay allowed her to take her
divorce into her own hands.
Wonderful inconsistency of society, which, having interpreted truly her
upright nature through years of desertion, now condemned her,--whether
for her first wrong step, for assuming her own divorce, or for loving a
man of undoubted probity, who could tell? A short year of undisturbed
happiness followed, when the birth of their only child--the late Mrs.
Shelley--suddenly put an end to her life.
A beautiful memorial survives her, in these words of her husband. "This
light," he says, "was lent me for a very little while, and it is now
extinguished for ever. The strength of Mary's mind lay in her intuition.
In a robust and unwavering judgment of this sort, there is a kind of
witchcraft. When it decides justly, it produces a responsive vibration
in every ingenuous mind. In this sense, my oscillation and scepticism
were often fixed by her boldness." I am very well aware how much courage
is required of any woman who shall seem to defend Mary Godwin from the
popular conception of her. I know that the woman should herself be
spotless who would attempt to rectify that conception, yet two
circumstances seem to compel explanation. In the first place, there is
no question, that if the views of woman which are now beginning to move
society originated with her scholarly, republican friend, Mrs. Catharine
Macaulay, yet the fire and eloquence of Mary's own words were needed to
give them currency. Society has been just so far as this, that it has
identified her with the subject of "Woman's Rights;" and all of us who
are carried forward by a momentum which she imparted, must desire to
understand the nature of the impulse which controls us.
In the second place, Godwin's short Life of her has been long out of
print, and has now become very rare; and I have not been able to find a
single encyclopædia or biographical dictionary which gives the facts
correctly. Turn to them, and you will find that Mary Wollstonecraft had
a criminal but fruitless attachment for Fuseli; that she formed
another, of _the same kind_, for an American, who deserted her. I brand
these statements as malicious falsehoods, carelessly repeated now that
they have been long exploded: and, as I write these statements, the
tears rush to my eyes; for where are the descendants of the brothers and
sisters whom she reared? where are the kindred of Fannie Blood and John
Hunter, whose lives her generous efforts gladdened? Nay, might not one
man of the drowning crew she forced the captain of her ship to rescue,
speak a noble word in her behalf? I have narrated her life with some
detail, for you must understand the facts upon which you pass judgment;
and these details are many of them gathered from private sources.
To understand the strength of the prejudice against Mary Wollstonecraft,
you should see that from all the autobiographies of the period her name
is excluded; as if the friends of those who had been intimate with her
while living, would not permit the association of names after death. I
have said, that, until her marriage to Godwin, she kept her place in
English society; and women of the most sensitive propriety, such as Mrs.
Siddons and Mrs. Inchbald, admitted her to their intimacy. How, then,
did such a prejudice grow up? It was probably forming in the popular
mind while she was happy in the affection of her friends; and, the
moment they found it conventionally needful to sacrifice her, the
outbreak was unrestrained. In the first place, she was an ardent
republican; a thing no less antagonistic to English feeling in her day,
than we have seen it prove in ours. In the second, she was a Unitarian;
and Unitarians were radicals in politics as well as in religion. In the
third place, being a republican, and a resident of Paris in its troubled
times, she was supposed to share the disorder of its morals; an
impression which her attempted suicides no doubt confirmed.
We shall not share in this country in any prejudice which republicanism
or Unitarianism excited. We are, I trust, ready to admit that an attempt
at suicide could only come with delirium, for which she would be as free
from responsibility as for a typhoid fever or an Asiatic cholera. What
we have to do, then, is to understand her relation to the laws of
marriage, and to see how far her second marriage can be justified. When
she met Imlay at Paris, I do not think she had ever considered the
social bearing of these laws, except so far as her mother's experience
had pained her. That experience made her willing to do what other women
about her were doing, with no bad result that she could see, to keep
herself free from pecuniary entanglement. In one way, this was prudent;
in an other way, it was extremely imprudent; and the imprudence touched
a more vital point than the prudence: but that it was never considered
criminal by wise and candid judges, that she was never compromised in
any relation up to this, the intimacies we have recorded prove. Had she
been a weak, _immoral_ woman, she would have continued to live with
Imlay for her child's sake, but availing herself of the shelter of a
connection from which she recoiled. At this moment, she wrote to her
husband, "Your reputation shall not suffer. I shall never have a
confidant. I am content with the approbation of my own mind; and, if
there be a Searcher of hearts, mine will not be rejected." And again:
"My child may have reason to blush for her mother's want of prudence;
but she shall never despise me." These are not the words of a weak or
irreligious woman. So far, then, all was well, except that society had
no efficient outlawry for the man who had deserted her. She still
occasionally met him, but bore the unexpected trial, when it came, with
dignity and sweetness. When Godwin sought her in marriage, he knew, of
course, that no legal ties bound her. Mary saw no harm in using the
liberty that remained to her. "Why could she not have remained single?"
said the world; but had the world been so just and kind to her, that we
could expect her to resist the influence of a generous and courageous
love? Had she lived in this country, and been divorced by the laws of
Indiana, society would have been silent; but the real evil would have
been the same.
"Never did there exist a woman," said her husband, "who might with less
fear expose her actions, and call upon the universe to judge them." I
believe this to be true so far as her own relations were concerned; and
I believe, that, by her second marriage, she meant to exercise a right
of protest against existing laws, which two of the most gifted children
of the nineteenth century have exercised again in our own time with
emphasis. It requires a philosophic mind to see the relation of the
individual to the state: heroic, indeed, is the spirit which, perceiving
it, braves the common expectation by a defiant life. On the other hand,
it is by no prejudice that we demand this account of each person's
private affairs. It is a demand born of an ill-defined, dimly
entertained, but still a just idea of the relations of God, the family,
and the state. I ought not to say so much, without adding that no one in
this country can adequately judge of the pressure of the marriage laws
as they still exist in England. What is resisted, is, in most instances,
what no American woman would be expected to bear; but for England, as
for this country, I rest in the confident hope that a right adjustment
of woman's relation to society will change healthfully all existing
legislation. Such legislation as that of Indiana does not seem to me an
advance, although it may have been demanded by an _advancing_ public
sentiment.
I have said this honestly, with a tender pity in my heart, to clear the
memory of a much-abused woman. Does any one ask me if I would justify
the position in which she stood? I answer, frankly, No. We do not live
to ourselves alone; and if we are ever tempted to take a step against
the moral convictions of the world, believing that we can do as we will
with our own, one would think the possibility that children may be born
to inherit the obloquy we excite, without themselves deserving it, would
be enough to deter any right-minded woman. No love or care, or abject
self-sacrifice, can reconcile a child to the stain of illegitimacy.
"What does the Lord thy God require of thee?"--"To do justly, love
mercy, and walk humbly." It is not walking humbly to set up our own
conception of fitness against the accumulated experience of mankind.
Still farther: It is of very little importance what others may think of
us, when we are acting conscientiously; but what we think of others, our
own mood of mind towards God and man,--that is of the very greatest.
The influence of the "Vindication of the Rights of Woman" was greatly
aided by the efforts of Mr. Day, and of Maria Edgeworth, whose literary
career began about the time of its publication. Following closely upon
these, and so nearly parallel in effort, and equal in varied ability,
that we hardly know in what order to name them, are Lady Morgan, Harriet
Martineau, and Mrs. Jameson. Sydney Morgan, sitting alone at the age of
fourscore in her tiny house at Dublin, filled like a museum with the
accumulation of her years of travel, projecting the publication of her
last work, was lately, like Mrs. Somerville at Florence, a pensioner of
Queen Victoria. But, from the hour of her first appearance as the author
of the "Wild Irish Girl," she has exercised a generous womanly
influence. Under the disguise of novels, books of travel, and the like,
she has published an immense number of volumes, filled with information
which may be a little too crowded for convenience, but always accurate,
always original, and, for the most part, received from historic sources,
in personal intercourse. Her warm hatred of tyranny made friends for
her, wherever she went. When a young girl, she took up the cause of her
own country with a vehemence which won the liberal party, and made her
fashionable before she was approved. "The wild Irish girl" and her harp
were essential to the success of every entertainment; and invitations
lay two or three deep for every evening. She entered society with
beauty, wit, and prestige. She might have done what she would. She chose
to remain faithful to unpopular opinions. After her marriage to Sir
Charles Morgan, they went, for economical reasons, to the Continent,
where they eventually spent many years. In France, Lafayette, Ségur,
Dénon, and L'Aguisseau were her intimate friends; and in the _salon_ of
the Princess de Salm she was always a welcome guest. In Germany,
Flanders, and Italy, not only the liberal youth, but the learned eld,
crowded her apartments, gave her minute information, and became devoted
cicerones. The friendship of cardinals and princes did not dim her
natural democracy of view; and her last words were as true to liberty as
her first. Her works on France and Italy were proscribed in both
countries; yet "Young France" and "Young Italy" contrived to obtain and
read them. She came into fashion in Paris whenever the Bourbons went
out; and, when she dined with Rothschild, his famous cook acknowledged
her friendship for the people in autographs of spun sugar! "We shall
meet at the breakfast of the Austrian ambassador," said a Parisian fop,
as he made his bow. "Not we," she laughed in answer: "it would be as
much as his place is worth to ask me." Wherever she went, and whatever
she did, her ears were always open to a woman's name; and, with the most
loyal interest, she gathered up every thing relating to their lives,
their influence, and their disabilities. What she was told as gossip,
was retained, studied out, and digested, before, with the piquancy of a
French woman and the warmth of an Irish, it was given to the world. The
first two volumes of her "History of Woman" do not touch a period of
universal interest; but, had she been able to complete the work, it
would have exhausted the subject. In the Béguine, she says: "Women
meddle with politics as well as tent-stitch, and, like Madame de
Maintenon, bring their work-bags to the Privy Council, and direct the
affairs of Europe while they trace patterns for footstools. The
influence of woman will ever be exercised directly or indirectly in all
good or evil. It is a part of the scheme of nature. Give her, then, such
light as she is capable of receiving. Educate her, whatever her station,
for taking her part in society. Her ignorance has often made her
interference fatal; her knowledge, never." The cordial sympathy of her
husband has made Lady Morgan's life beautiful. His legal knowledge and
antiquarian taste added their own charm to whatever she undertook.
How great and worthy is the literary position of Harriet Martineau, we
all know. Its retro-actionary influence in favor of the ability and
freedom of her sex is what we are to indicate here. For whatever
immediate purpose she writes, her words bear indirectly on the widest
womanly emancipation. May this remark stimulate your curiosity, and keep
you on the alert for pregnant sentences! Such sentences tell more of the
progress of human thought than some of us suspect: they indicate its
natural, habitual poise. "Women especially," she writes, "should be
allowed the free use of whatever strength their Maker has seen fit to
give them. It is essential to the virtue of society, that they should be
allowed the freest moral action, unfettered by ignorance, and
unintimidated by authority; for it is an unquestioned and unquestionable
fact, that, if women were not weak, men would not be wicked, and that,
if women were bravely pure, there would be an end of the dastardly
tyranny of licentiousness." This passage will have all the more power
over observant readers, because it occurs unexpectedly, and marks the
opportunity seized to speak a necessary if unwelcome truth.
What noble service Mrs. Jameson rendered in the field of art or letters
did not leave her indifferent to the interests of her sex. She was
placed in circumstances to make her see quickly and feel deeply all
that relates to womanly position and development. An early martyr to the
prejudices of society; married, I think at sixteen, to a man far beyond
her own rank in life, who left her at the altar,--she bore the title of
wife, and led the life of a celibate: but her first word for her sex was
as strong and true as her last, while her own path lay between lines of
living fire. Only lately did we hear of her as a lecturer and reformer;
but, nearly thirty years ago, we might have cut from her pages the
following words: "We are told openly by moralists and politicians, that
it is for the general good of society, nay, an absolute necessity, that
one-fifth part of the female sex should be condemned as the legitimate
prey of the other, predoomed to die in reprobation in the streets, in
hospitals, that the virtue of the rest may be preserved, and the pride
and the passions of men both satisfied. But I have a bitter pleasure in
thinking, that this most base and cruel conventional law is avenged upon
those who made and uphold it; that here the sacrifice of a certain
number of one sex to the permitted license of the other is no general
good, but a general curse, a very ulcer in the bosom of society." Can
you guess how brave and pure a woman was needed to write those words?
All the indirect tendency of her works is in keeping with them; and we
recognize the same voice, as she said in a later lecture:--
"When female nurses were to be sent to the Crimea, there was to be met
the mockery of the light-minded, the atrocious innuendoes of the
dissolute, the sneers of the ignorant, and the scepticism of the cold. I
have seen men who deem it quite a natural and proper thing that
women--_some women_ at least--should lead the life of a courtesan, put
on a look of offended propriety at the idea of a woman nursing a sick
soldier. I have seen men--ay, and women too--who deem it a matter of
course that our streets should be haunted by contagious vice, disgusted
at the idea of women turning apothecaries and _hôpitalières_. And, worse
than all, I have heard men--and women too--who acknowledge the gospel of
Christ, who call themselves by his name, who believe in his mission of
mercy, disputing about the exact shade of orthodoxy in a woman who had
offered up every faculty of her being at the feet of the Redeemer."[10]
Remember that these words were spoken where they belonged, in the very
heart of Belgravia, to the very people who deserved them, and respect
the brave purity which compelled lips as well as pen to utterance. It
would scarce be honest not to say, in this connection, that Mrs. Jameson
took some pains, so long as she lived, to separate herself from the
American Woman's-Rights party--a party, it may be, only represented to
her by the vulgar pretension of travelling Bloomers. Some of us take
comfort in remembering how much more easily the misrepresentations of
the press, or the intrusions of unfit subjects on womanly discussion,
will float across the wide Atlantic, than our weightier works. When she
said, in the same breath, concerning a decree of the French Consulate,
"I confess, I should like to see a decree of _our_ Parliament beginning
with a recognition that women do exist as a part of the community, whose
responsibilities are to be acknowledged, and whose capabilities are to
be made available, not separately, but conjointly with those of men," we
know that she worked for us and with us, and forgive the want of
recognition in gratitude for the real service.
Mrs. Gaskell has perhaps done more than any woman of this century, not
confessedly devoted to our cause, to elevate the condition of her sex,
and disseminate liberal ideas as to their needs and culture. The first
part of her career was one of those brilliant successes which startle us
into surprise and admiration. It was checked midway by the publication
of her life of Charlotte Bronté, the best and noblest of her works.
Checked, because condemned in that instance without a hearing, she could
never afterwards feel the elastic pleasure which was natural to her in
composing and printing; and, for three long years afterwards, never
touched her pen. I would not allude to this subject, if every notice of
her, since her death, had not done so; repeating the old censure, as a
matter of course. Here in America, we exculpate her. The public was
wrong, in the first place, inasmuch as it has come to demand biography
before biography is possible. The publisher was wrong, in the second;
for he ought to have known, and could easily have ascertained, how plain
a statement the English law would permit. The public was still further
wrong, when it attributed misapprehension and carelessness to a woman
whom it very well knew to be incapable of either. I, for one, shall
never forgive nor forget the officious censure given by one who must
have known that the legal apology tendered, in Mrs. Gaskell's absence,
to protect her pecuniary interests, had the unfortunate effect to put
her in a position where explanation and self-defence were alike
impossible. Mrs. Gaskell had deserved the steady confidence of the
public.
I have kept till the last the name of Fredrika Bremer, whose good
fortune it was to secure lasting benefits to her sex. God sent to her
early years dark trials and privations. Her father's tyrannical hand
crushed all power and loveliness out of her life. At first, she rebelled
against her sufferings; but, when he died in her girlhood, she was able
to see that they lent strength to her efforts for her sex. It was the
rumor of what we are doing in this country for women that first drew her
hither. It is not the fashion for Miss Bremer's friends fully to
recognize her position in this respect. I owe my own convictions on the
subject of suffrage to the reflections she awakened. When I told her
that my mind was undecided on this point, she showed her disappointment
so plainly, that I was forced to reconsider the whole subject. Miss
Bremer did not hurry her work: she had a serene confidence that she
should be permitted to finish what she had begun. She secured popularity
by her cheerful humor, her genuine feeling, her true appreciation of
men, and her insight into the conditions of family happiness, before she
made any direct appeal against existing laws. Those who will read her
novels thoughtfully, however, will see that she was, from the first,
intent upon making such an effort possible. From the beginning, she
pleaded for the social independence of wives; asked for them a separate
purse; showed that woman could not even give her love freely, until she
was independent of him to whom she owed it. To a just state of society,
to noble family relations, entire freedom is essential.
Under her influence, females had been admitted to the Musical Academy.
The directors of the Industrial School at Stockholm had attempted to
form a class, and Professor Quarnstromm had opened his classes at the
Academy of Fine Arts to women. Cheered by her sympathy, a female surgeon
had sustained herself in Stockholm; and Bishop Argardh indorsed the
darkest picture she had ever drawn, when he pleaded with the state to
establish a girls'-school. It was at this juncture that Miss Bremer
published "Hertha." This book was a direct blow aimed at the laws of
Sweden concerning women. By this time, she had herself become, in
Sweden, what we might fitly call a "crowned head." She was everywhere
treated with distinction; and her sudden appearance in any place was
greeted with the enthusiasm usually shown by such nations only to their
princes. She said of her new book, "I have poured into it more of my
heart and life than into any thing which I have ever written;" and
verily she had her reward. She was at Rome, two years after,--in
1858,--when the glad news reached her, that King Oscar, at the opening
of the Diet, had proposed a bill entitling women to hold independent
property at the age of twenty-five. All Sweden had read the book which
moved the heart of the king; and the assembled representatives rent the
air with their acclamations.
In the following spring, the old University town of Upsala, where her
friend Bergfalk occupies a chair, granted the _right of suffrage_ to
fifty women owning real estate, and to thirty-one doing business on
their own account. The representative whom their votes went to elect was
to sit in the House of Burgesses. Miss Bremer was not ashamed to shed
happy tears when this news reached her. If she had ever reproached
Providence with the bitter sorrow of her early years, she was penitent
and grateful now. Then was fulfilled the prophecy which she had uttered,
as she left our shores, "The nation which was first among Scandinavians
to liberate its slaves, shall also be the first to emancipate its
women."
This is not the place to unfold the delicate sheaths of meaning with
which flower-like Robert Browning invests his thought; but the man who
wrote the "Blot on the Scutcheon," and the exquisite sketch of "Pippa
Passes," has done such justice to the sex, and so far helped the cause
of right feeling and right thinking in respect to some of the most
delicate problems that concern it, that we are compelled to speak of him
gratefully. His marriage, too, is still fragrant; a full-fruited flower
of promise to the world, which makes us see the best things possible,
and believe that the time is coming when man and woman will not seldom
stand before the altar as equal and individual, yet sacredly one. To
Elizabeth Browning, to whom was given in her life that place of
pre-eminence among women which Shakespere must always hold among men,
we owe grateful thanks, for the scholarly achievement, the conscientious
study, the womanly zeal, which distinguished all her work. When theology
sometimes wrestled with poetry in her speech, we translated it into a
freer tongue, and thanked her all the same. In "Aurora Leigh" she
stabbed every conventional falsity to the heart, and held the ear
tenaciously till she had delivered all her oracle.
"I read a score of books on womanhood,
To prove, if women do not think at all,
They may teach thinking,--books demonstrating
Their right of comprehending husband's talk,
When not too deep, and even of answering."
"I perceive
The headache is too noble for my sex:
You think the heartache would sound decenter."
"Such praise
As men give women, when they judge a book,
Not as mere _work_, but as mere _woman's work_,
Expressing the comparative respect,
Which means the absolute scorn."
The woman who wrote these words counsels us from her grave; and, taught
by her, we do not hesitate to say,--
"Deal with us nobly, women though we be,
And honor us with truth, if not with praise."
Yet these were all to a certain extent indirect influences. Can I utter
without trembling the two names which sit upon the thrones of female
power in the Old World and the New? I mean Charlotte Bronté and Margaret
Fuller. I wish I could confer a proper emphasis upon my words, when I
say that the publication of "Jane Eyre" formed the chief era in the
literature of women since that literature began. Into it was compressed
all the feeling and experience of a very remarkable life,--feeling and
experience entertained without the smallest sense of responsibility to
the conventional world. The life of the author touched the restrictions
of society, as the spheral curves touch the tangents which square them,
so slightly as never to impair its wonderful individuality. Who would
not seek a wife like Jane Eyre? Who does not rejoice in the smallest
detail of that sparkling and varied courtship? Think of those words of
Rochester, when, holding her with the grasp of a madman, he says, "Never
was any thing at once so frail and so indomitable. A mere reed she feels
in my hand. I could bend her with my finger and thumb. And what good
would it do, if I bent, if I uptore, if I crushed her? Consider that
eye; consider the wild, resolute, free thing looking out of it, defying
me with more than courage,--with a stern triumph. Whatever I do with its
cage, I cannot get at it, the savage beautiful creature! If I tear, if I
rend the slight prison, my outrage will only set the captive free.
Conqueror I might be of the house; but the inmate would escape to
heaven, before I could call myself possessor of its clay dwelling-place.
And it is you, spirit, with will and energy and virtue and purity, that
I want, not alone your brittle frame."
And from what literature, of ancient or modern growth, shall we match
Jane's answer, when passion presses, crying, "Who in the world cares for
you? or who will be injured by what _you_ do?"
"_I_ care for _myself_," is the indomitable reply: "the more solitary,
the more friendless, the more unsustained, I am, the more I will respect
myself. I will keep the law given by God, sanctioned by man. I will hold
by the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad, as I am
now. Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no
temptation. They are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise
in mutiny against their rigor. Stringent are they? Inviolate they shall
be. If, at my individual convenience, I might break them, what would be
their worth? They have a worth, so I have always believed; and, if I
cannot believe it now, it is because I am insane, with my veins running
fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count. Pre-conceived
opinions, foregone determinations, are all I have at this hour to stand
by. _There_ I plant my foot!"
Other women have been brave and pure, but this woman was an Abdiel.
Never had she faltered in her life, never encountered a sham but to
crush it. We did not know what freedom meant, till we had this book. Its
advent was an era, not merely in the literature, but in the life, of
woman. Its welcome, so profound, so stirring, betrayed the secrets of
womanly nature. Do you remember how you sat and discussed this book, far
into the night?--how you wondered whether man or woman wrote it?--how
the women it enfranchised _looked_ their scorn when you suggested the
first possibility?--how your temper and feeling, and sense of justice,
were roused by it? All this was because a life resolute and free poured
itself out between those covers. A woman delicate, cleanly, quaint,
secured the polished purity of every page. Will you start, if I ask you
who ever stated the Woman's-Rights' argument with the serene force of
the little lace-mender in the "Professor"? Do you not envy her and her
husband the happy English home secured by their united labors? Ah! when
she gave us later that exquisite miniature of her sister Emily which she
called "Shirley," that noble bit of Rubens color which she named
"Villette," the same flood of womanly thought and feeling poured through
the prayer,--_the same flood_, though we no longer started as when we
first heard society's signal gun, and saw her whole fleet hoist the flag
of distress. Women ought to buy that old stone house upon the hillside,
set in among the tombs, and framed in purple heather. The lives which
began and ended there have hedged it in with laurels. Read this life and
these works, and learn what fortunes hang upon a noble living. Read
them, that you may learn how to cheer the world with what is natural and
dignified, to do your Master's work, regardless of narrow criticism or
still disdain. The host of imitators who stand about Charlotte Bronté's
still-open grave are the best tribute to the power that went out from
her,--a power tempered by the sweetest personal graces, by a
housekeeping delicate and pure and tasteful, which never lets us dream
of Jane in her school at Morton, of Shirley in her peach-room parlor, of
the lace-mender at the professor's desk, or Lucy Snowe in the first
class of Paul Emanuel, as otherwise than brilliant in cleanliness and
order. I turn reluctantly from a life so well known, and now, thank God,
beginning to be so well understood.
I do not treat of Margaret Fuller as a literary power; for, whatever may
be her rank in this respect, she does not exert a tithe of the influence
in this way, which attaches to the idea of her as a person, to _herself_
as the centre of the radiant and shining group of women who were known
as "Margaret's friends."
Her "Woman in the Nineteenth Century" is a scholarly, refined, and noble
plea for the freedom of her sex. In point of ability, no book can be
named with it, if we except that of Madame d'Héricourt. It has an
advantage over that of Mary Wollstonecraft, in being, so far as the
author could make it, a _complete_ statement; but it is written so much
more from the stand-point of thought and feeling, that it has had a far
more limited influence. There is not a word in the "Vindication" which
the most simple might not read as he ran, and, reading, understand; but
much of the "Nineteenth Century" depends upon a critical scholarship,
and an evasive delicacy of sentiment and thought, which elude the common
grasp. Precious passages have become axioms. "Let her be a sea-captain,
if she will," has a power in both hemispheres; for it has been justified
to learned and simple, by Captain Betsy, of the Scotch schooner,
"Cleotus," and the sweet and noble woman who so lately carried an
American ship round Cape Horn. The life of Margaret Fuller is in
everybody's hands; but not even Boston _women_ appreciate her personal
influence. Who _else_ could be expected to understand it? Her very
existence was a stimulus to endeavor; and hundreds of women become
practical "Exaltadas," because they saw the position she was permitted
to hold. "I always know a Boston woman," said a rough German miner to
me, beyond Lake Huron: "she always has Margaret Fuller's stamp upon
her;" and I felt that his words were true. We have missed her sadly
since she was taken from us. Ever memorable will be the "Life and
Writings," which revive our memories better than they satisfy our
demands. "It will be seen," she once wrote, "that my youth was not
unfriended, since those great minds came to me in kindness." We have not
been unfriended either, since she was permitted to come to us. If I were
to characterize her in two words, it would be as "Truth-teller and
Truth-compeller." She not only spoke what she thought, in her own way,
let it be abrupt or gentle, but she compelled us to do the same. There
was something in her presence which tore away all disguises: even
unconscious pretension could not bear it. We were soon made to feel
whether we had any right to our own thoughts. "What I especially admired
in her," says Dr. Hedge, "was her intellectual sincerity. Her judgments
took no bribe from her sex or sphere, nor from custom nor tradition nor
caprice. She valued truth supremely, both for herself and others. The
question with her was, not what _should_ be believed, nor what _ought_
to be true, but what is true. Her 'yes' and 'no' were never
conventional; and she often amazed people by a cool and unsuspected
dissent from the commonplaces of popular acceptation."
"Truth-teller and Truth-compeller,"--the words seem to fall like the
shadow of Omnipotence, a noble fillet for a woman's forehead. What a
noble _character_ that must have been, which inspired the remark made
after her marriage:--
"Her life, since she went abroad, is wholly unknown to me; but I have an
unshaken trust, that what Margaret did she can defend." An "unshaken
trust,"--such words are a challenge to all noble living. In great and
small matters, we are told, she was a woman of her word, and so gave
those who conversed with her the unspeakable comfort which flows from
plaindealing. "I walk over burning ploughshares, and they sear my feet,
yet nothing but truth will do," she says; and again, in a letter to a
friend: "My own entire sincerity in every passage of life gives me a
right to expect that I shall be met by no unmeaning phrases or
attentions."
I enlarge upon this trait of character, for I think it Margaret's due.
Everybody here knows her reputation as a scholar: few know her character
as a woman. In beautiful keeping with this trait was her letter to Miss
Martineau, after the publication of her book upon this country.
"When Jouffroy writes his lectures," she says, "I am not conversant with
all his topics; but I can appreciate his lucid style and admirable
method. When Webster speaks on the currency, I do not understand the
subject; but I do understand his mode of treating it, and can see what a
blaze of light flows from his torch. When Harriet Martineau writes about
America, I often cannot test that rashness and inaccuracy of which I
hear so much; but I can feel that they exist. A want of soundness and
patient investigation is found throughout the book; and I cannot be
happy in it, because it is not worthy of my friend.
"I have thought it right to say all this to you, since I feel it. I have
shrunk from the effort, for I fear that I must lose you. If your heart
turn from me, I shall still love you; and I could no more have been
happy in your friendship, if I had not spoken out."
What a noble pattern in that letter for us all! The electric power of
her womanhood, which claimed the inmost being of every one with whom she
came in contact, I can best express in the words of Emerson:--
"She had found out her own secret by early comparison, and knew what
power to draw confidence, what necessity to lead in every circle,
belonged of right to her. She had drawn to her every superior young man
or woman she had ever met; and whole romances of life and love had been
confided, counselled, thought, and lived through, in her cognizance and
sympathy. She extorted the secret of life which cannot be told without
setting heart and mind in a glow, and thus she had the best of those she
saw. She lived in a superior circle; for people suppressed all their
commonplaces in her presence. Her mood applied itself to the mood of her
companion, point to point, in the most limber, sinuous, vital way, and
drew out the most extraordinary narratives."
When we remember this wealth of sympathy and appreciation, is it not sad
to hear her say, no one ever gave such invitation to her mind as to
tempt her to a full confession?--that she felt a power to enrich her
thought with such wealth and variety of embellishment as would no doubt
be tedious to such as she conversed with?
A bitter reproach to us women, certainly. What better _could_ we do than
listen, while she embellished her thought with all wealth and variety
possible? And I quote the saying, because hers are not the only noble
lips which have a right to repeat it. Could we but be patient listeners!
In that way, we might educate powers of expression, and become possessed
of wealth of which we have very little idea. What does such a saying
record,--her egotism or our selfishness, her insatiable demand or our
bankruptcy? We may well confess to mortification when we read; but it is
not felt for _her_. Very beautiful is the conception of this Memoir of
Margaret, this triune testimony of independent minds. We should be more
grateful for the analytical skill shown in Emerson's contribution, did
it not bear witness to _power_, rather than _appreciation_. We see,
though he could not, what Margaret missed in her friend. She could not
exempt the finest thinker she knew from the customary tribute; but he
could not pay her in current coin,--only in some native ore, which it
cost her much to make available at need. Some time may _women_ write the
lives of women! Why not warm thy scalpel, O philosopher! out of regard
to what was once tender, quivering, human flesh? Rumor and prejudice
carried the news of Margaret's faults far enough while she was living:
what we need now is to send on the same wave the most abundant and
satisfying proof of her goodness and genius. When great men speak of
her, they should speak grandly, and find for what vulgar natures _must_
misconceive, the noble and generous interpretation. I do not mean that
SHE would have shrunk from the boldest statement of the truth. It was in
her to invite it. "She could say," says Emerson, "as if she were stating
a scientific fact, in enumerating the merits of somebody, _he
appreciates me_;" and he refers this saying to the "mountainous _me_" of
hereditary organization, italicizing the offending monosyllable. But, in
Margaret's mind, the emphasis lay quite as often on the word
_appreciates_; and the statement was of a psychological fact, a
superiority to vulgar prejudice, which laid some claim to her generous
estimate in return. Ah! when those we love are gone for ever, their
faults drop away, like the garment, which was of the earth, earthy; but
to great and noble words, to heroic and womanly living, God has given a
power of blessing far beyond the grave. We lost her at a moment when we
could ill bear it,--when, instructed by the noble sympathies of Mazzini,
softened by her own sweet and tender ministrations in Italian hospitals,
revealed at length in loving beauty by a wife's and mother's experience,
she might have come home the woman she had often made us dream of. We
see the shadow of it all in that little picture which once hung on the
walls of the Boston Athenæum; and, God willing, we shall yet encounter
the glad reality beyond the reach of tempests, beyond the need of wreck,
lifted into true deserving of so great a privilege on the broad ocean of
an Infinite Love!
Florence Nightingale is no exception in the history of her sex, only a
consummate flower of its daily bloom. Ever since the commencement of the
Christian era, whole armies of women have devoted themselves, not for a
few years only, like Florence Nightingale, but for their whole lives
long, to the same painful duties,--women who organized their bands with
an efficiency and thoroughness, felt to this very day, and which made
them the competent instructors of Florence Nightingale in the Crimea.
The holiest vocation fails to instruct the unprepared mind. The soil of
the nineteenth century is fallow; but in the year 385 a saintly woman
traversed those same Crimean shores. Of her it was written:--
"She was marvellous debonaire and piteous to them that were sicke and
comforted them, and served them right humbly, and gave them largely to
eat, such as they asked; but to herself she was hard in her sickness and
scarce, for she refused to eat flesh, how well she gave it to others,
and also to drink wine. She was oft by them that were sicke, and she
laid the pillows aright and in point, and she rubbed their feet, and
boiled water to wash them; and it seemed to her that the less she did to
the sicke in service, so much the less service did she to God, and
deserved the less mercy; therefore she was to them piteous, and nothing
to herself."
The Church canonized this woman, who carried her own substance to the
work in which the British Government sustained Florence Nightingale so
many centuries later; but the public mind was not prepared, so the
world has never rung to the name of Santa Paula.
Florence Nightingale's most heroic service lay in breaking open the
storehouses at Scutari. It may have cost her very little, but at that
moment the force of accumulated character made itself felt. An
everlasting reproach to all cowards of circumlocution offices, the duty
not a single commissioned officer had courage to assume has gently
crowned the woman with the woven suffrages of the world.
The name of Mary Patton has with us also a true educational power. There
was no obstacle nor vulgar prejudice which this heroic girl was not
called to combat. Not twenty years old, with two little children
clinging to her skirts, and the great primal sorrow of her sex
overshadowing her afresh, with her husband bereft of reason, and neither
nurse nor physician at hand, she kept the ship's reckoning, overpowered
a mutinous mate, and carried her vessel triumphantly in to the destined
port.
The author of "John Halifax" has so laid us under obligation by work
faithfully done, that it seems worth while to indicate the
inconsistencies which warp her "Thoughts about Women."
She speaks of the "Woman's-Rights movement" in this country, as if it
were a movement to _force_ women into a certain position, instead of an
effort to set them _free_, to the end that they may ascertain whether
they have any capacity for it. She sneers at letters and account-books
kept by women; and we read her words in a country where women are widely
and creditably established as book-keepers, and where they hold classes
to instruct others in accounts! She tells us that more than one-half of
English women are obliged to provide for themselves; and gives a noble
example of two young women, who, on their father's death, continued to
carry on a disagreeable business, to keep books, manage stock, and
control agents. They sustained a delicate mother in ease, and never once
compromised their womanhood. What became of the womanly unfitness for
letters and accounts in that case? She speaks of the contemptible and
unwomanly habit of beating down, and says that men are less prone to it
than women. Who keeps the purse-strings of a family? Who condemn women
to the practical ignorance which makes them too uncertain of values to
turn at once from a manifest overcharge?
But, sadder still, this woman brings against her sex the two grave
charges of common falsehood and disloyalty in friendship. We may pity
her for a social experience which seems to her to justify the statement;
but let us never repeat the libel. Let Margaret Fuller answer it, not
only by a life of radiant truth, but by the words in which she speaks of
the honor of which young hearts are capable, and the secret of her own
young life voluntarily kept by forty girls.
In her chapter on "Lost Women," Miss Muloch does grateful service when
she draws attention to those who choose to dwell in the very gutters of
idle gossip and filthy scandal, who soil their lips and tongues while
they take selfishly faithful care of their reputations. This word needed
to be spoken. Better for a woman, that she should be a cast-away in a
city refuge, with a mind comparatively pure, than a woman in high
society, capable of catching or uttering the vile "double entendre,"
always on the lookout for a possible vulgarism, wringing decency out of
human life as if it were only a wet napkin, and sceptical of the purity
and innocence she has not yet found in her own heart.
In estimating the influences which modify public opinion concerning
women, I am not willing to be silent concerning the popular idea of
love. It is a common thing to hear it said, with a sort of sneer, that
no _man_ ever died for love,--as if it were a quite romantic and in
nowise _dis_creditable thing that many women should!
Creditable and discreditable elements may enter into the assumed fact as
it regards man; but if he does not die for love because he more
thoroughly acknowledges his responsibility, keeping God in his right
place _above_, and his own heart and its idols in their right place
_below_, then we may drop the unwomanly sneer, and go and do likewise.
I shall have little hope for woman, till _she_ learns to feel that to
die for love is not so much a pitiful as a disgraceful thing; that it
proves of itself that God was never to her what he should have been;
that life had no aim so holy as the weak indulgence of a sentiment or a
passion, or some generous longing for some duty God did not set before
her; that all the world's work and society's ambition was hidden from
her by a desire for personal happiness, spread like a film over her
moral vision.
No better education do I claim for woman than her entire
_self-possession_, the ultimate endowment of all the promise she carries
in her nature. "The great law of culture," says Carlyle, "is, Let each
become all that he was created capable of being; expand, if possible, to
his full growth; and show himself in his own shape and stature, be they
what they may."--"The excellent woman," writes the Hindoo in Calcutta,
"is she who, if the father dies, can be father and provider to the
household."
"Who," says Count Zinzendorf in Germany,--"who but my wife could have
been alternately servant and mistress without affectation and without
pride? Who could have maintained like her, in a democratic community,
all outward and inward distinctions? Who, without a murmur, would have
met such peril? Who could have raised such sums of money, and acquitted
them on her own credit?"
To such women I think men will always offer generous help; and, even if
they did not, there are props of God's own disposing. Let woman once
reject the absurd notion that she was created for happiness, let her
constitute herself instead a creator of it, let her accept with joy the
fact that this is a working-day world; then she will no longer strive to
escape from labor, discipline, or sorrow, but will gladly hail each in
its turn as part of God's appointed teaching, a shadow crossing the
sunshine to show that it is bright. Perhaps such a life is not easy,
perhaps many feet must falter on such a path; but, indicating what I
earnestly believe to be the will and way of God for us all, I earnestly
entreat you to enter and walk therein. Some words written by John Ruskin
upon Art seem to me to have such force in this connection as to make it
justifiable to quote them.
Speaking of a painter who could only paint the fair and graceful in
landscape, he says:--
"But such work had, nevertheless, its stern limitations, and marks of
everlasting inferiority. Always soothing and pathetic, it could never be
sublime, never freely nor entrancingly beautiful; for the man's narrow
spirit could not cast itself freely into any scene. The calm
cheerfulness which shrank from the shadow of the cypress and the
distortion of the olive, could not enter into the brightness of the sky
they pierced, nor the softness of the bloom they bore. For every sorrow
that his heart turned from, he lost a consolation. For every fear which
he dared not confront, he parted with a portion of his manliness. The
unsceptred sweep of the storm-clouds, the fair freedom of glancing
shower and flickering sunbeam, sunk into sweet rectitudes and decent
formalisms; and, before eyes that refused to be dazzled or darkened, the
hours of sunset wreathed their rays unheeded, and the mists of the
Apennines spread their blue veils in vain."
Imagine these words written metaphorically of your own inner lives, and
accept the lesson they convey. Be earnest to inherit the whole of human
life. Insist on turning the golden shield, till you have, not merely the
iron lining full in view, but whatsoever Medusa's head the Divine hand
has traced thereon.
See how many women have excelled in literature and art, in philosophy
and science, within the present century. Their literary contributions
owe their popularity to intrinsic excellence: they have sought and found
the light of day, without the pompous recommendations of institutions,
or the forced encouragement of a clique. There is no limit to womanly
attainment, other than the force of womanly desire. Bihéron, destined to
become an anatomist, becomes one, whether the college of dissectors
smile or frown. Wittembach, versed alike in the mysteries of ancient
tongues and modern physics, becomes the counsellor of the wisest men of
her time, without neglecting her pantry or her needle. There is no
excuse for neglecting any home duty for the most desirable foreign
pursuit. Let buttons and shirt-bosoms have their day, the lexicon or
grammar its own also. Let the dinner-table be carefully spread; the
food, not only well cooked, but gracefully laid,--before we seek the
more precious nutriment of culture: and this, not so much because any
one has a right to say it _shall_ be so, as out of our own tender regard
to the needs of others, and a desire, through every possible
self-sacrifice, to make the common road easier, and turn recreant public
opinion to its proper vent. Let a neatness as exquisite, as womanly and
as polished as that of Charlotte Bronté, pervade not only our homes, but
consecrate our own personal appearance; then may we safely wear the
livery of schools. It may be double-dyed in indigo; yet, with this
accessory, no man will assert that it is unbecoming, no woman have need
to comfort her own ignorance by an unsisterly sneer.
If God intends woman to walk side by side with man wherever he sees fit
to go, the movement now beginning must materially develop civilization.
Finer elements will be poured into the molten metal of society; and,
when the next cast is taken, we shall see sharper edges, bolder reliefs,
and a finer lining, than we have been wont. Nor shall we miss the
gentler graces. The classical world bitterly mourned the young and
gifted lecturer, Olympia Morata; but not with the broken-hearted agony
of the husband whose strength and life she had always been. Clotilda
Tambroni was crowned, not only with the laurels of a Greek
professorship, but with modesty and every virtue.
It was the tender appreciation of the WOMEN of Bologna that erected a
stately monument to Laura Veratti.
In England, a woman writes admirable tales to endow a bishopric in a
distant land. In our country, it was a pleasant omen, that the woman who
first made literature a profession was urged to it, neither by
scholarly taste nor an eccentric ambition, but to fulfil a mother's duty
to four orphan children. Her literary career is not yet closed; and,
though not lofty in its range, has been steadily pursued, and deserves
the regard which it has won.
The names of Sedgwick, Sigourney, Kirkland, and Child suggest womanly
excellences first of all. Let us pay the debt we owe these women, by
following hopefully in the paths they have opened, till we create a
public opinion without reproach.
"If I speak untenderly,
This evening, my belovèd, pardon it;
And comprehend me, that I loved you so,
I set you on the level of my soul,
And overwashed you with the bitter brine
Of some habitual thoughts."
"Alas! long-suffering and most patient God,
Thou need'st be surelier God to bear with us,
Than even to have made us! Belovèd, let us love so well,
Our works shall still be better for our love,
And still our love be sweeter for our work!"