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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A New Atmosphere, by Gail Hamilton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A New Atmosphere
+
+Author: Gail Hamilton
+
+Release Date: May 18, 2011 [EBook #36152]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A NEW ATMOSPHERE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+                           A NEW ATMOSPHERE
+
+
+                                  BY
+
+
+                            GAIL HAMILTON,
+
+           AUTHOR OF "COUNTRY LIVING AND COUNTRY THINKING,"
+                 "GALA DAYS," AND "STUMBLING-BLOCKS."
+
+
+
+                               BOSTON:
+                        FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO.
+                                1870.
+
+
+
+      Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by
+                         TICKNOR AND FIELDS,
+          in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the
+                      District of Massachusetts
+
+
+
+                           SEVENTH EDITION.
+
+
+
+                          UNIVERSITY PRESS:
+                     WELCH, BIGELOW, AND COMPANY,
+                              CAMBRIDGE.
+
+
+
+
+A NEW ATMOSPHERE.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+
+A vitiated atmosphere is fatal to healthy development. One may be ever
+so wise, learned, rich, and beautiful, but if the air he breathes is
+saturated with fever, pestilence, or any noxious vapor, nothing will
+avail him. The subtile malaria creeps into his inmost frame, looks out
+from his languid eye, settles in his sallow cheek, droops in his
+tottering step, and laughs to scorn all his learning and gold and
+grandeur. He must rid himself of the malaria, or the malaria will rid
+itself of him.
+
+There are many evils in the world, deep-seated and deleterious. I
+rejoice to see noble men and women working at the overthrow of these
+old Dagons; but the processes are many and long. Grievances are
+suffered which can be redressed only by the repeal of old and the
+enactment of new laws. Health suffers from ignorance which scientific
+discoveries, patient observation, and correct reasoning must dispel.
+Religion suffers from a narrowness and shallowness which broader and
+deeper culture must remove. Heaven send the laws, the science, and the
+culture, for these ills are indeed sore and of long continuance; but
+we need not wait upon the slow steps of law and science. Every man and
+woman can begin at this moment a renovation. Behind all law and all
+literature, the very air we breathe, the moral atmosphere not of books
+and benches only, but of kitchen and keeping-room, is impure and
+unwholesome. The interests of humanity demand a purification.
+
+What I am going to say may have been said before; but if so, the
+present condition of things shows that it has been said to too little
+purpose. I have myself glanced at it askance, but I have never looked
+it square in the face. I have spoken ships bound to my port, but not
+freighted with my cargo. Success to them all! There is sea-room for
+every keel, and use for all their treasures. I am so far from claiming
+to be original, that I rather marvel there is any necessity for my
+being at all. The truths which I design to illustrate lie so on the
+surface that I should suppose they would commend themselves to the
+most casual notice. I can account for the obscurity which seems to
+enshroud them only by supposing that the days of Eli have reached down
+to us, and that there is no open vision. Therefore the truth needs to
+be repeated and repeated, in different forms and tones, if it is to be
+made effectual to the pulling down of strongholds. I will do my part
+of the reiteration. If I can state no new truths, I will at least help
+to ring the old truths into the ears of this generation till every
+unjust judge shall moan in bitterness of soul, "Though I fear not God
+nor regard man, yet, because these women trouble me, I will avenge
+them, lest by their continual coming they weary me."
+
+In pursuance of my plan, it will be necessary for me sometimes to
+recur more than once to the same topic; but the repetition involved
+will be more apparent than real. It will be such repetition as the
+multiplication-table displays, whose first column gives you two times
+four, its third four times two, its fourth four times five, and so on
+to the end. You have the same figures, but in different combinations.
+I shall bring forward the same facts, but they will be presented under
+different lights, and will bear upon different conclusions.
+
+I shall also, without hesitation, discuss topics on which I have
+spoken at former times, but without perceiving all their relations. No
+architect would reject stones which were necessary to the symmetry of
+his building because he had previously used them for other purposes.
+
+I shall touch upon many and diverse themes; but nothing will be
+irrelevant. An atmosphere embraces the whole globe, and nothing human
+is foreign to it.
+
+One person may not succeed in dispelling all the miasms of the earth,
+but if he can only cleanse one little corner of it, if he can but send
+through the murky air one cool, bracing, healthy gale, he will do much
+better than to sit under his vine, scared by the greatness of the evil
+and the dignity of those who support it.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+
+The laws and customs regarding the education of girls and the
+employment of women may be wrong and difficult of righting; but a more
+elemental wrong, and one that lies within reach of every parent, is
+the coarse, mercenary, and revolting tone of sentiment in which girls
+are brought up and in which women live, entirely apart from their
+technical education and employment. I refer now to the refined and
+educated, as well as, and indeed more than, to the rude and
+illiterate, for it is their altitude which determines the level of all
+below. This tone of sentiment is such as to diminish girls'
+self-respect, mar their purity, and dwarf their being. They inhale,
+they imbibe, they are steeped in the idea, that the great business of
+their life is marriage, and if they fail to secure that they will
+become utterly bankrupt and pitiable. Naturally this idea becomes
+their ruling motive; all their course is bent to its guidance; and
+from this idea and this course of action spring crime, and sorrow, and
+disaster, "in thick array of depth immeasurable."
+
+In this and in many other instances you will doubtless think that I
+overstate the truth. Looking into an empty bucket, you would say the
+air is colorless; looking into the depths of the atmosphere, you see
+that it is blue. I am not writing about a bucket, but about the
+atmosphere.
+
+Viewing the circumstances which form women, together with the women
+who are formed by them, one is filled with astonishment at the
+indwelling dignity and divinity of the womanly nature; and the thought
+can but arise, if a flower so fair can spring from a soil so badly
+tilled, what graceful and glorious growths might we not see did art
+but combine with nature to produce the conditions of the highest
+development! We lament heathendom, but much of our spirit is
+essentially heathenish. Little girls see in their geographies pictures
+of Circassian fathers selling their daughters to Turkish husbands, and
+they think it very inhuman and pagan. But, little girls, your fathers
+will traffic in you without scruple. Matters will not be managed in
+quite so business-like a fashion, but such a pressure will be brought
+to bear upon you that you will have very little more spontaneity than
+the Circassian slave who looks so pitiful in the geography book. At
+home you will hear yourself talked about, talked at, and talked to, in
+such a manner that you will have no choice left but to marry. It is
+expected and assumed. I do not mean girls who are to snatch their
+unhappy fathers from exposure and disgrace by a rich and hated
+marriage. Such things belong to ballads. We are dealing now with life.
+I have seen girls,--respectable, well-educated, daughters of Christian
+families, of families who think they believe that man's chief end is
+to glorify God and enjoy him forever, who profess to make the Bible
+their rule of faith and practice, to eschew the pomps and vanities of
+this world, and consecrate themselves to the Lord,--who are yet
+trained to think and talk of marriage in a manner utterly commercial
+and frivolous. Allusions to and conversations on the subject are of
+such a nature that they cannot remain unmarried without shame. They
+are taught, not in direct terms at so much a lesson, like music or
+German, but indirectly, and with a thoroughness which no music-master
+can equal, that, if a woman is not married, it is because she is not
+attractive, that to be unattractive to men is the most dismal and
+dreadful misfortune, and that for an unmarried woman earth has no
+honor and no happiness, but only toleration and a mitigated or
+unmitigated contempt.
+
+What is the burden of the song that is sung to girls and women? Are
+they counselled to be active, self-helpful, self-reliant, alert,
+ingenious, energetic, aggressive? Are they strengthened to find out a
+path for themselves, and to walk in it unashamed? Are they braced and
+toned up to solve for themselves the problems of life, to bear its
+ills undaunted and meet its happinesses unbewildered? Go to! Such a
+thing was never heard of. It is woman's rights! It is strong-minded!
+It is discontented with your sphere! It is masculine! Milton and St.
+Paul to the rescue!
+
+    "For contemplation he, and valor formed,
+    For softness she, and sweet attractive grace."
+
+So "she" is urged to cultivate sweet attractive grace by acquainting
+herself with housework, by learning to sew, and starch, and make
+bread, to be economical and housewifely, and so a helpmeet to the
+husband who is assumed for her. This is the true way to be attractive,
+she is informed. "Men admire you in the ball-room," say the mentors
+and mentoresses, "but they choose a wife from the home-circle."
+Marriage is simply a reward of merit. Do not be extravagant, or
+careless, or bold, or rude, for so you will scare away suitors. Be
+prudent, and tidy, and simple, and gentle, and timid, and you will be
+surrounded by them, and that is heaven, and secure a husband, which is
+the heaven of heavens. A flood of stories and anecdotes deluges us
+with proof. Arthur falls in love with beautiful, romantic, poetic,
+accomplished Leonie, till she faints one day, and he rushes into her
+room for a smelling-bottle, and finds no hartshorn, but much confusion
+and dust, while plain Molly's room is neat and tidy, and overflows
+with hartshorn; whereupon he falls out of love with Leonie, in with
+Molly, and virtue and vice have their reward. Or Charles pays a
+morning visit, and is entertained sumptuously in the parlor by Anabel,
+and Arabel, and Claribel, and Isabel, in silk, while Cinderella stays
+in the kitchen in calico and linen collar. But Charles catches a
+glimpse of Cinderella behind the door, and loves and marries the
+humble, grateful girl, to the disappointment and deep disgust of her
+flounced and jewelled sisters. Or Jane at the tea-table cuts the
+cheese-rind too thick, and handsome young Leonard infers that she will
+be extravagant; Harriet pares it too thin, and that stands for
+niggardliness; but Mary hits the golden mean, and is rewarded with and
+by handsome young Leonard. Or a broomstick lies in the way, over which
+Clara, Anna, Laura, and the rest step unheeding or indifferent, and
+only Lucy picks it up and replaces it, which Harry, standing by, makes
+a note of, and Lucy is paid with the honor of being Harry's wife.
+Moral: Go you and do likewise, and verily you shall have your reward,
+or at least you stand a much better chance of having it than if you do
+differently. "Be good, and you will be married," is the essence of the
+lesson.
+
+Laying aside now all question of the dignity and delicacy of such
+proceedings, assuming for the time that it is the proper course, let
+us notice whether it is followed out to its conclusions. Not in the
+least. Having done its best to transpose the feminine raw material
+into the orthodox texture and pattern of "good wives," society lays it
+on the shelf to run its own risk of finding a purchaser. It neither
+provides husbands for the "good wives" which it has made, nor suffers
+them to go and look up husbands for themselves. If a girl is ready to
+enter service, she can enroll her name at the intelligence office. If
+she is prepared to teach, she sends to the "Committee." If she desires
+to be a saleswoman, she applies at the different shops; but your "good
+wife" candidate must wait patiently,--not the grand old theological
+"waiting in the use of means," but the Micawber waiting for something
+to turn up. She has learned the bread-making and the clear-starching;
+she is mistress of domestic economy; she is familiar with all the
+little details of puddings and preserves; she is ripe for wifehood and
+green for all else, and now she wants an arena for the exercise of her
+skill. But she would better pull her tongue out at once than say so.
+People may talk to girls at pleasure of the fair domestic realm where
+they will be queen, of the glory of such a kingdom, and the
+unsatisfying emptiness of any and every other; but no crime is more
+fatal to a girl's reputation and prospects than the suspicion of
+husband-hunting. That fate, that career, that glory, which has been
+constantly mapped out to her as the very Land of Promise, the goal of
+her ambition, the culmination of her happiness, is the one fate, the
+one career, the one glory, which she must not lift an eyelash to
+secure. Let a girl, the very same girl whom you have been pushing
+through a course of the received proper training, be supposed to set
+but so much as a feather on her hat, a smile on her lips, a tone in
+her voice, to attract the admiration which she has been constantly
+taught is the guerdon of all the virtues,--and her reputation sinks at
+once to zero. "Trying to get a husband," whether couched in the
+decorous phrase of polite society, or in the uncompromising language
+of more primitive circles, is the death-warrant of a girl's good name.
+She must sedulously prepare herself for a position to which she must
+be totally indifferent. She must learn all domestic accomplishments,
+but she must take no measures, she must exhibit no symptoms of a
+desire to secure a domestic situation. You bid her make ready the
+wedding-garments and the marriage feast, and then sit quietly waiting
+till the bridegroom cometh, her small hands folded, her meek eyelashes
+drooping, no throb of impatience or discontent or anxiety in her
+heart, no reaching out for any career at home or abroad, except a meek
+ministration in her father's house, or a mild village benevolence. But
+will Nature set aside her laws at your behest? Is it of any use for
+you to lay down your yardstick and say, "Thus far shalt thou go, and
+no farther"? Do you not see the inevitable result is a course of
+falsehood?
+
+Is this a strong statement, a libel upon the female sex? But you read
+novel after novel in which the larger number of women--all, perhaps,
+except the heroine--are represented as artful, sly, deceitful,
+managing; and generally the main object of their artifice is to secure
+a husband for themselves or for their daughters: yet you do not at
+once cry out in indignant protest against such misrepresentation. On
+the contrary, you follow the plot with lively interest, think the
+author has a very clear insight into human nature, and especially
+excels in the delineation of female character!
+
+Hear what one of your own writers says: "If all the world were paper,
+all the sea ink, all the plants and trees pens, and every man a
+writer,--yet were they not able, with all labor and cunning, to set
+down all the craft and deceits of women."
+
+If my statement is a libel, it is less a libel than statements and
+implications under which people have hitherto rested with a wonderful
+degree of equanimity. It would be marvellous if it were a libel. A
+girl receives such training that it is wellnigh impossible for her to
+be sincere. You cannot give her whole life for six or a dozen years
+one direction, and then set her face suddenly towards another quarter,
+banishing from her mind every remembrance of past lessons, and every
+thought of her portrayed future. But unless such an erasure is made,
+or seems to be made, she knows that she forfeits good opinion, and
+stands in great danger of losing the one prize which has been placed
+before her, and which she may hope, but must not be detected in
+hoping, to win. Consequently she learns to dissemble. It is her only
+resource. Duplicity passes into her blood, and she learns to conceal
+and deny what you have taught her it is improper to feel, but what you
+have also made it impossible for her not to feel. I only wonder that
+any uprightness is left among women. That there are women upon whose
+garments the smell of fire has not passed,--that there are women whose
+robes of whiteness have but a faint tinge of flame,--is not because
+the fagots have not been piled around them and the torch applied.
+
+This is one result of the famous, the infamous "good wife" doctrines.
+
+Another, less fatal but sufficiently evil and more vexatious, is the
+injury that is inflicted upon natural and healthful association. Men
+and women are not allowed to look upon each other as rational beings;
+every woman is a wife in the grub, every man is a possible husband in
+the chrysalis state. If young people enjoy each other's conversation,
+and make opportunities to secure it, there are dozens of gossips, male
+and female, who proceed to forecast "a match." Intelligent interchange
+of opinion and sentiments between a man and a woman for the mere
+delight in it, with no design upon each other's name or fortune, is a
+thing of which a large majority of civilized Americans have no
+conception. Such a commodity never had a place in their inventory. A
+man and a woman find each other agreeable, they cultivate each other's
+society, and anon, East, West, South, and North goes the report that
+they are "engaged." It is easy to see what a check this gives to an
+intercourse that would be in the highest degree beneficial to both
+sexes; beneficial, by giving to each a more accurate knowledge of the
+other, and by improving what in each is good, and diminishing what is
+bad.
+
+One of three things should be done: cease to urge a girl on to
+marriage by every terror threatened and every allurement displayed; by
+making it the reward of all her exertion, the arena of all her
+accomplishment, the condition of all her development; or take measures
+to provide her with a suitable husband, so that she shall not be left
+for an indefinite time in uncertainty and doubt, settling, perhaps, at
+length into frivolity, waste, and despair; or cease to condemn her for
+taking matters into her own hand, and furnishing herself an
+opportunity for the exercise of those powers whose cultivation you
+have strenuously urged, and for whose employment you have made no
+provision. "Get a husband!" Why should she not get a husband? What
+should you think of a boy who had been fitted by long training for the
+duties and responsibilities of a clergyman, or a lawyer, or a
+statesman, and should then make no attempt to become a clergyman, a
+lawyer, or a statesman? What would you think of a father who should
+train his son for any especial office, and should then forbid his son,
+upon pain of universal derision, to do anything to secure an induction
+into office?
+
+I am loath to linger here, but I descend into the valley of shadows to
+show that, even on your own ground, you are a wicked and slothful
+servant.
+
+Whom do I mean by "you"? I mean ninety-nine out of every hundred of
+the men who will read this, and, in a modified degree, all the women
+whom they have drilled to acquiescence in their decisions.
+
+This baleful teaching goes still further. It not only drives girls
+into deception: it drives them into uncongenial marriages. It forces
+them to degradation. It does not permit them to view marriage in its
+natural and proper light. By perpetually assuming it as their destiny,
+even before they have any knowledge either of marriage or destiny, you
+so force their inclinations that they come to prefer marrying an
+indifferent person to not marrying at all,--or even to running the
+risk of not marrying at all. Instead of letting their minds take a
+healthful turn, branching off in such directions as nature chooses,
+you dwarf them in every direction but one, and in that you stimulate.
+If society were equally divided; if for every girl there were a man
+exactly adapted to her, and the two might by your words be induced to
+meet and marry, your talk might be harmless, and possibly beneficial;
+but as the world is, at least this part of it, there is no such
+arrangement, and no remote possibility of such an arrangement. The
+material does not exist, even suppose the sagacity to discern and
+dispose of it did. The number of women is much larger than the number
+of men. In New England, at least, it is a dangerous thing for a woman
+to set her heart on marrying for a living. When, therefore, you make
+marriage indispensable, you institute an indiscriminate scramble.
+Since in theory every girl must marry, and there are few to choose
+from, she must take such as she can get, and be thankful. She would
+like this, that, or the other quality, but it will not do to dally.
+The chance of a better husband is very remote; numbers are worse off
+than she, inasmuch as they have none at all; the contingency of going
+unsupplied is not to be thought of, and accordingly she takes up with
+what comes to hand. The few who are endowed with unusual charms of
+mind or person may exercise a limited choice, but the common run of
+girls must make a common run of it. If one who is so attractive as to
+have many admirers remains long unmarried, she is abundantly
+admonished of her danger. She is duly informed that she will one day
+grow old, and will certainly not always have such opportunities as she
+now enjoys. Her attractiveness is her stock in trade, which she must
+invest while the market is brisk. Great will be her loss if she does
+not. If without special attractions, a girl's position is still more
+embarrassing. Dependent in her father's house, with no career open to
+her, no arena for her action, what is to become of her? Anything is
+better than a dependence which, her own heart tells her, is not long
+grateful to her father. He may not be unkind or miserly toward her; he
+may not--and he may, for such things are done--taunt her with her want
+of success in making a match; he may even be generous and chivalric
+towards her; but she is conscious that he is disappointed. He may not
+acknowledge it even to himself, but she knows that she is not
+fulfilling his wishes, not meeting his ideal. Her support is somewhat
+a burden, her enforced presence somewhat a shame. He rejoiced in her
+infancy, childhood, and youth, but he did not expect to have her on
+his hands all her life. He would gladly spend twice as much on her
+dowry as he gives for her allowance. She has a _sense_ of all this,
+and, rather than remain in this state of pupilage, a woman in
+character, a child in position, she marries the first man that holds
+out the golden spectre,--I meant sceptre, but perhaps the first will
+do just as well. I am speaking of the masses. I know that there are
+exceptions. In spite of circumstances, there are women so
+strong,--strong-minded if you like, but so symmetrical that you see no
+peculiar strength or sweetness, only "a perfect woman,"--so strong,
+that public opinion and private opinion, all the blare and blarney of
+lecture-room and female-school orators, all the thinly disguised
+paganism of church-worldlings, beat against them and leave them
+unmoved as Gibraltar by the summer ripples of its southern sea. You
+see them yourself, perhaps; but so beautiful, so gentle and lovely,
+that you do not discern the granite which underlies beauty and grace,
+and which alone redeems beauty and grace from the charge of gaud, and
+makes their value; and in your low Dutch dialect you "wonder she
+doesn't get married."
+
+There are fathers and mothers, though these are rarer, who joy in
+their children with a rational and Christian joy; who believe in God
+and righteousness, immortality and human destiny; whose daughters are
+polished stones, not in the palaces of earthly pride, vanity, and
+ambition, but in the temple of the living God. Such parents and such
+children are few, but they are enough to reveal possibilities. The
+higher the few can reach, the higher the many shall rise. But these
+are the strong, and the strong can take care of themselves. I have
+nothing to say for them. I speak for those who are not strong,--for
+the good and true-hearted, who feel themselves overborne by external
+pressure, and swept along into a hateful and hated vortex,--for those
+who wish to lead an upright Christian life, but who need a helping
+hand. Still more, and saddest of all, I speak for those on whom the
+blight has so long rested that they have lost the sense of
+uprightness; they feel no wrong, and aspire to nothing higher. More
+than this, I speak for those whose opening lives are yet untouched,
+for whom warning and caution may not be too late. It is these--the
+weak, the plastic, the impressible--whom your earth-born morality is
+corrupting, whose possibilities of happiness and self-respect your
+enervating woman's-sphere-ism is destroying. Women may be weak, yet
+even in weakness is strength, but you have trodden down strength. You
+trample under foot all sensibility, all delicacy, all dignity. A woman
+can preserve her integrity only so far as she repels and represses
+your miserable didactics;--by word and look, if the power be given
+her; by a silent indignation of protest, if that is her only resource.
+
+I know well, judging from past experience, that there will not be
+wanting those who will think I am depreciating and deprecating
+marriage. But it would be extremely foolish to set one's self against
+marriage, for it would be holding out a straw to dam a river. I not
+only do not hold out the straw, I do not even wish to dam the river.
+But I would prevent it from being banked up here and banked up there,
+and narrowed, twisted, and tortured, till it bursts all bounds,
+natural and acquired, and rushes wildly over the country, destroying
+villages, inundating harvests, sweeping away lives, and becoming a
+terror and a fate instead of the beneficence it was meant to be.
+
+_I_ depreciate marriage? I magnify it! It is you that depreciate, by
+debasing it. You lower it to the level of the market. You degrade it
+to a question of political and domestic economy. You look upon it as
+an arrangement. I believe it to be a sacrament. You subordinate it to
+ways and means. I see in it the type of mortal and immortal union. You
+make it but the cradle of mankind. I make it also the crown. All that
+is tender, grand, and ennobling finds there its home, its source and
+sustenance, its inspiration, and its exceeding great reward.
+
+But by as much as marriage is sacred, by so much is he a blasphemer
+who travesties it; and he thrice and four times blasphemous who leads
+others to do so. No sin is so dwelt on in the Bible with a stern,
+reiterated fixedness of divine abhorrence as the sin of Jeroboam, the
+son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin. They who barter their children
+for a string of beads, or a talent of gold, are no more pagan than
+they who, by accumulated indirections, lead them to barter themselves.
+I do not undertake the defence of all "woman's rights," but with
+whatever strength God has given me I will do battle for woman's right
+to be pure. "Caesar's wife should be above suspicion," said haughty
+Caesar, and the world applauds; but every woman is czarina by divine
+right. No wretched outcast, wandering through the darkness of the
+great city,
+
+          "With hell in her heart
+          And death in her hand,
+    Daring the doom of the unknown land,"
+
+but has lost a crown. For her who, through weakness or despair, has
+forfeited her birthright, the world has no pardon. I do not say that
+ye should pray for it to be otherwise. But a deeper sin, a tenfold
+more gross and revolting violation of God's law written on the human
+heart,--giving force to the law written erewhile on the tables of
+stone,--does she commit who, in the holy name of love, under the holy
+forms of marriage, burns incense to false gods. Where love may walk
+white-robed and stainless, brushing the morning dews from the grass,
+only to descend again in fresher and fragrant showers, pride or
+prudence or ambition can but bring the deepest profanation: roses
+spring in his pathway; behind them is the desert.
+
+Marriage contracted to subserve material ends, however innocent those
+ends may be in themselves, is legalized prostitution; as much more
+vilifying, as mischief framed by a law is more destructive than
+mischief wrought in spite of law. To such vice the world is lenient,
+scarcely recognizing it as vice; but the soul bears its marks of
+wounds forever and forever.
+
+Marriage is a result, not a cause. In God's great economy it may have
+its separate and important work; but from a human point of view, it is
+conclusion and not premise. It cannot be made the premise without
+bringing fatal and disastrous conclusions. Whatever ends nature may
+design her institution to compass, be sure nature will work out.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+
+I do not design to sketch any Utopia for woman; but there are certain
+things which can be done in this world, in this country, in this
+generation, at this moment,--simple, practical, practicable measures,
+which can be accomplished without any change in laws, without any
+palpable revolution or disruption of society, but by which women shall
+be relieved of the indignity that is constantly put upon them, even by
+the society which considers itself, and which perhaps is, the most
+civilized and chivalric in the world.
+
+First, every man who has daughters is either able to support them or
+he is not. If he is, he ought to do it in a way that shall make them
+feel as little trammelled as possible. He should so treat them, from
+first to last, that they shall feel that they are dear and pleasant to
+him, his delight and ornament. So far from wishing to be rid of them,
+he finds his balm and solace and zest of life in their society, their
+interests, and their ministrations. While he contemplates the
+contingency of their marriage, and makes what preparations such
+contingency may require, it should be well understood that he
+contemplates it only as a contingency; and that all his wishes and
+hopes will be best met by their happiness, whether it is to be
+promoted by a life away from him or with him. If they are so deficient
+in amiability, capability, or adaptability that his home cannot be
+comfortable with them in it,--that, so far from being a reason why he
+should be eager to part with them, is the strongest reason why he
+should earnestly endeavor to keep them with him. Almost without fail,
+their faults lie at his door; and it is just and right that, if any
+home is to be made miserable by them, it should be the one which has
+made them _miserific_. On the other hand, if they wish to go from his
+roof to follow paths of their own, he ought to aid and encourage them
+as far as lies in his power. It matters not that he is able and
+willing to supply their every want. He is _not_ able, if they have
+immortal wants,--wants which the parental heart and purse cannot
+satisfy,--want of activity, want of a plan, want of some work which
+shall engage their young and eager energies. However liberal, kind,
+and fond he may be, in their father's house their position must be
+subordinate, and it may well happen that they shall wish to taste the
+sweets of an independent, self-helping, self-directing life. They wish
+to feel their own hands at the helm; they wish to know what
+responsibility and foresight and planning mean. They are drawn by a
+strong, inexplicable attraction in certain directions; and as he
+values not only their happiness, but their salvation,--their love for
+him, their health of body and mind,--he shall give them ample room and
+verge enough. He shall not abate one jot or tittle of fatherly
+affection. He shall not attempt to persuade them from their
+inclination till he finds persuasion of no avail, and then in a fit of
+angry petulance bid them go, and leave them to their own destruction.
+He shall give them such aid as can be made available. He shall
+surround them with his love, if not with his care. He shall, above
+all, show them that his arms are always open to them, if through
+weakness or weariness they faint by the way. His sympathy and
+protection, and fatherly cherishing, shall be new every morning and
+fresh every evening. If they quickly tire in their new paths, they
+will come back to him with stronger love and faith. Their life abroad
+will have only endeared their happy home. The enlargement of their
+experience will have intensified their appreciation of their
+blessings. If their call was indeed from above, and their first feeble
+explorations opened for them a new world, through which they learn to
+walk with ever firmer tread, they will return from time to time to lay
+at his feet with unutterable gratitude the treasures which he enabled
+them to discover. He will know that he has contributed to the world's
+wealth, and his happy children will rise up and call him blessed.
+
+But if they do not incline to such a life, he shall not force them,
+however strongly he may be persuaded of its propriety, wisdom, and
+dignity. Because they are obliged to grow under the whole
+superincumbent weight of society, he must not be severe if they attain
+but a partial growth. With boys the preponderance of influence is
+overwhelmingly on the side of an active, positive life. With girls, it
+is against it. If a boy does not do something in the world, he must
+show cause for it; a girl must show cause if she does. Therefore, if
+the father is not able, by precept and persuasion, to induce his
+daughters to embrace an active life, he must lay it to society, and do
+the next best thing by protecting them as far as possible from the
+resultant evils of their situation; not quite all to society either,
+for, as a general thing, if his own precept and example have been
+right, his children will be right; the influence of father and mother,
+by its nearness, intensity, and continuity, very often more than
+balances the superior bulk of society's influence. Parents say things
+which they ought to mean, and which they wish to be considered to
+mean, and which they suppose they do mean, but which they are really
+the farthest in the world from meaning, and then marvel that their
+children should disregard their instructions and go wrong; but such
+instructions are but as the dust in the balance. The ideal which they
+actually, though perhaps unconsciously, hold up to their children, is
+the model upon which the children form themselves. What they are, not
+what they say, is the paramount influence. So if a father heartily
+believes in womanly work, his daughters will hardly fail to be
+woman-workers.
+
+If a father is not able to support his daughters in a manner
+compatible with comfort and refinement, he should see to it that they
+have some way opened in which they can do it, or help do it, for
+themselves, in a manner consistent with their dignity and
+self-respect. It is very rarely that a human being is born without
+possible power in some one direction. The field which is traversable
+to women is much more circumscribed than that which is traversed by
+men, yet I have somewhere read a statement that the number of
+employments in which women of the United States are actually engaged
+is, I think, greater than five hundred. If this is so, or anything
+nearly so, men surely have no need to "marry off" their daughters as
+an economical measure. Out of five hundred occupations, a woman can
+certainly choose one which, though not perhaps that which enlists her
+enthusiasm, is yet better than the debasement of herself which an
+indifferent marriage necessitates. It is better to be not wholly
+well-placed than to be wholly ill-placed. Indeed, there are many
+chances in favor of the assumption that she may find even a suitable
+employment. Literature and art are open to her on equal terms with
+men. Teaching is free to her, with the disadvantage of being
+miserably, shamefully, wickedly underpaid, both as regards the
+relative and intrinsic value of her work; but this is an arrangement
+which does not degrade her, only the men who employ her. Many
+mechanical employments she is at perfect liberty to acquire, and the
+greater delicacy of her organization gives her a solid advantage over
+her masculine competitors. In factories, in printing-offices, and in
+all manner of haberdashers' shops, she is quite at home; and this
+branch of trade she ought to monopolize, for surely a man is as much
+out of his sphere in holding up a piece of muslin at arm's length, and
+expatiating on its merits to a bevy of women, as a woman is in the
+pulpit or before the mast. Especially do private houses invite her
+over all the country. The whole land groans under inefficient domestic
+assistance; and if healthy, intelligent, well-behaved American girls
+would be willing to work in kitchens which they do not own one half as
+hard as most women work in kitchens which they do own, thousands of
+doors would fly open to them. There is a foolish pride and prejudice
+which rises up against "going out to service." But everybody in this
+world, who is not a cumberer of the ground, is out at service. If it
+is true service and well performed, one thing is as honorable as
+another. The highest plaudit mortal can hope to receive is, "Well
+done, good and faithful servant." It is the absence of moral dignity
+and character, not, as is often supposed, its presence, which causes
+this reluctance. A nobleman ennobles his work. A king among
+basket-makers is none the less a king. How women can be so enamored of
+the needle as to choose to make a pair of cotton drilling drawers,
+with buckles, button-holes, straps, and strings, for four and one
+sixth cents, or fine white cotton shirts with fine linen "bosoms" for
+sixteen cents apiece, rather than go into a handsome house in the next
+street to make the beds, and scour the knives, and iron the clothes
+for a dollar and a half a week,[1] besides board and rent, I do not
+understand. That so many are ready to brave the din of machinery, and
+the smells of a factory for ten hours a day, with only a great,
+dreary, unhomelike boarding-house to go to at night, while there are
+so very few, if any, who are willing to preside over a comfortable and
+plentiful kitchen, with at least a possibility of home comforts,
+pleasant association, and true appreciation, is equally inexplicable.
+
+        [1] This was written before the advent of high prices. At
+        present such service would command perhaps twice that sum.
+
+But enough has been said to show, that, if women have a desire, or are
+under the necessity, of getting an honest living, ways and means may
+be found; not so stimulating, not so lucrative, not so varied as might
+be desired, but honest and honorable. Girls, however, make the mistake
+of rushing pell-mell into school-houses, as if that were the only
+respectable path to independence. I heard a man the other day speaking
+about the High School of his native city. It was a good school,--he
+had nothing to say against its conduct,--it gave girls a good
+education; and yet he sometimes thought it did more harm than good.
+Every year a class was graduated, and they were all ladies and did not
+want to work, but must all teach, and there were no schools for so
+many; what could be done with them? It was an evil that seemed to be
+growing worse every year. The implied grievance was, that educated
+women were a drug in the market; and the implied remedy, that girls
+should be left more uncultivated that they might be turned to commoner
+uses. I pass over that accurate knowledge of things shown in the
+unconscious contrast between working and teaching,--over the gross
+utilitarianism implied in both grievance and redress,--simply
+remarking, that, if the excess of supply over demand would justify the
+breaking up of High Schools, the domestic education of this generation
+should be largely discontinued for the same reason, and that in fact
+there seems to be no real and adequate resource, except to manage with
+girl babies as you do with kittens, save the fifth and drown the
+rest,--to say that girls do very wrong in regarding teaching as the
+sole or the chief honorable employment. That occupation is the one for
+them to which a natural taste calls them, no matter what may be its
+rank in society. In fact, let it not be forgotten that society looks
+with a degree of disfavor on any remunerative employment for women. To
+be entirely beyond the reach of cavil, they must be consumers, and not
+producers; and since, to turn into producers will forfeit somewhat
+their caste, let them make capital out of the rural and remote adage,
+that one may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, and while they are
+about it, follow the thing that good is to them. If girls of wealth
+and standing, who also possess character and decision, would act upon
+their principles when they have them, and follow the lead of their
+tastes when their taste leads them into a milliner's shop, or a watch
+factory, or a tailor's room, they would do much more than satisfy
+their own consciences. They would do a service to their sex, and
+through their sex to the other, and so to the whole world, which would
+outweigh whatever small sacrifice it might cost them. For the world is
+so constituted that to him that hath shall be given. If he have power,
+he shall have still more. Those who are independent of the world's
+sufferance are tolerably sure to get it. Let a poor girl go to work,
+and it is nothing at all. She is obliged to do it, and society does
+not so much as turn a look upon her; but let a girl go out from her
+brown-stone five-story house, from the care and attendance of
+servants, to work for three or five hours a day, because she honestly
+believes that the accident of wealth does not relieve her from moral
+responsibility, and because, of all forms of labor practicable to her,
+that seems the one to which she is best adapted, and immediately there
+is a commotion. The brown-stone friends are shocked and scandalized,
+which is probably the best thing that could happen to them. Desperate
+cases can only be electrified back into life. But it is the first girl
+alone that will cause a shock. The second will make but a faint
+sensation. The third will be quite commonplace, and when things come
+to that pass, that if a woman wishes to do a thing she can do it, and
+that is the end of it, there is little more to be desired in that
+line.
+
+I know a young lady, the only daughter of a distinguished family, with
+abundant means at her command, with parents whose great happiness it
+is to promote hers,--a young lady who has only to fancy what a nice
+thing it must be to live in a bird's-nest on a tree-top, and
+immediately the carpenters come and build her a bower in the tallest
+tree that overlooks the sea. This young lady has a strong inclination
+to surgery, a most perverted and unwomanly taste, of course; but so
+long as it is a womanly weakness to break one's arms, perhaps it is as
+well that some woman should be unwomanly enough to set them. At any
+rate, there was the taste; nobody put it there, and something must be
+done about it. Being the sensible daughter of sensible parents, who
+looked upon tastes as hints of powers, instead of disregarding this
+hint and devoting her life to her garden, making calls, and a forced
+and feeble piano-worship,--all very nice things, but not quite
+exhaustive of immortal capacities,--she set herself down to the study
+of surgery and medicine. It was no superficial and sensational whim.
+Year after year, month after month, week after week, showed no
+abatement of enthusiasm. On the contrary, her interest grew with her
+growing knowledge. She left without regret, without any weak regrets,
+her luxurious home for the secluded and severe student's life, and by
+patient and laborious application made herself master of the science.
+I look upon her almost as an apostle, though she is very far from
+taking on apostolic airs. She quietly pursues the even tenor of her
+way as if it were the beaten track. But in doing this she does ten
+thousand times more. She opens the path for a host of feet less strong
+than hers.
+
+But one great obstacle in the way of woman's attaining strength is her
+lack of perseverance. Of the many pursuits possible to women, few are
+embraced to any great extent, because girls are said to be, and
+probably are, unwilling to bestow upon a trade or a profession the
+study and thought which are necessary to insure skill. But this is a
+result as well as a cause, and must be removed by the removal of the
+cause. Promotion and political preferment shine before a man as a
+reward for whatever eminence of character or intelligence he may
+attain. His business is a separate department, and dispenses its
+separate reward. The first of these is entirely, and the second
+partially, wanting to women. A female assistant in a high school, a
+woman of education, refinement, accomplishments, tact, and sense,
+receives six hundred dollars, and if she stays six hundred years she
+will receive no more. A male assistant, fresh from a college or a
+normal school, thoroughly unseasoned, without elegance of manners, or
+dignity of presence, or experience, teaching only temporarily, with a
+view to the pulpit, or the bar, or a professorship, receives a
+thousand dollars. His thousand is because he is a man. Her six hundred
+is because she is a woman. Her little finger may be worth more to the
+school than his whole body, but that goes for nothing. In a certain
+"college" I wot of, the "Professors" have a larger salary than the
+"Preceptresses," who perform double the amount of labor, and without
+any hope of promotion. Female assistants in a grammar school receive
+three or four hundred dollars where the male principal has ten or
+twelve hundred, and where the difference of salary bears no proportion
+to the difference of care and labor. No matter how assiduously they
+may devote themselves to their duties, nor how successful they may be
+in results, they have attained the maximum. Worse than this: since the
+increase of prices consequent upon the war, teachers' salaries have
+been increased; but where two hundred dollars have been added to the
+salary of the male principal, only twenty-five have been added to
+those of the female assistants: so that the man's salary is sixteen
+per cent higher, while the woman's is only six per cent higher. This
+is done in Massachusetts. One excuse is, that it does not cost a woman
+so much to live as it costs a man. It costs a woman just as much to
+live as it does a man. If men would be willing to practise the small
+economies that women practise, they could live at no greater expense.
+There are some things in which women have the advantage; there are
+others in which it lies with the man. A woman's calico gown does not
+cost so much as a man's broadcloth coat, but her dress, the wardrobe
+through, costs just as much as his. He can be decent on just as small
+a sum as she. Another excuse is, that men have a family to support. I
+suppose, then, that women never have families to support. No female
+teacher ever has a widowed mother or an invalid father to assist, or
+brothers and sisters to educate. No widow ever had recourse to the
+school-room to provide bread for her fatherless children. Or if such
+things ever happen, the authorities make adequate provision for it.
+The school committee, of course, before it assigns the salary inquires
+into these background facts, and acts accordingly. The rich girl has
+indeed but a small income from her teaching, but the poor girl is paid
+according to the number of people dependent upon her, and the
+unmarried man is confined to narrower fortunes.
+
+You know that such a thing is never done. The men always receive the
+high salaries and the women always receive the low salaries; no one
+ever asks who does the work or who supports the families. It is only a
+feeble excuse to hide men's selfish greed. They are the lions, and
+they take the lion's share. They _can_ give themselves plenty and
+women a pittance, and they do it, and they mean to do it, and they
+will do it. It matters not that the ten or twelve or fourteen hundred
+dollars divided among the man's family of himself, his wife, and his
+one or two or no children, gives to each, even to the little baby
+playing on the floor, as much money for support as the female teacher
+receives who devotes her whole time and strength to the school. It
+matters not that his children are growing up to be the staff of his
+declining years, while the unmarried female assistant has only her own
+self for reliance. Man is a thief and holds the bag, and if women do
+not like to teach for what they can get, so much the better. They will
+be all the more willing to become household drudges.
+
+Again, read the following paragraph from a prominent newspaper printed
+in Massachusetts.
+
+"The custom of employing ladies as clerks in the public departments at
+Washington is meeting with increased favor. It is said that, generally
+speaking, they write more correctly than the men, and as they receive
+much smaller salaries, the gain to the government is considerable."
+
+Could six lines better express the wickedness of the relations which
+exist between man and woman under the "best government in the world"?
+The shabby chivalry of "ladies"; the matter-of-fact manner in which
+not only a wrong, but an absurdity, is mentioned, as if it were as
+evident as a syllogism, and had no more to do with morality than the
+multiplication-table; and then the neat little patriotico-economical
+chuckle at the end! Women do the work better than men, and receive
+much smaller salaries. A logical sequence, and an excellent example of
+the reasoning which is brought to bear on women. Especially dignified
+and commanding is the attitude assumed for our government. The Great
+Republic, stretching its arms across a continent, vexing every land
+for its treasures, and whitening every sea with its sails, yet stoops
+over a poor woman's pocket to take toll of the few pennies which her
+labor has fairly earned. "The wise _save_ it call."
+
+But there is a lower deep than this. The very same paper that so
+naively blazoned forth its own shame, made another brilliant essay at
+about the same time. I quote the paragraph from memory, but it is
+substantially correct.
+
+"Miss Anna Dickinson demanded three [or six, or whatever it was]
+hundred dollars for two lectures delivered for the benefit of the
+Sanitary Fair in Chicago. Miss Charlotte Cushman gave eight thousand
+dollars, the entire proceeds of her theatrical tour, to the Sanitary
+Commission. Comment is unnecessary."
+
+For all that, we will have a little comment. Here is one woman in a
+million rising by the sheer force of her God-given genius above the
+miserable necessities of women. She needs not to endure or to beg. She
+is sovereign in her own right and can dictate her own terms. Men
+cannot grind her face, for she is stronger than they. What do they do?
+They hold her up to odium because they cannot extort from her the
+money which they cannot prevent her from earning. Most women they can
+prevent from earning it. Most working-women they can keep down to what
+prices they choose to pay. But here is one to whom they cannot dole
+out pennies: "with one white arm-sweep" she gathers in a golden
+harvest. But they will at least force her Pactolian stream into a
+channel of their own choosing. Not at all.
+
+    "If she will, she will, you may depend on 't;
+    If she won't, she won't, and there's an end on 't."
+
+Nothing, therefore, is left to these high-minded gentry, but to stand
+at a distance and "make faces"!
+
+Somebody assumed to excuse Miss Dickinson, by saying that she gave up
+other and far more lucrative engagements for this; but it was entirely
+a work of supererogation. Miss Dickinson needed no excuse. One might,
+indeed, think within himself that Miss Cushman has nearly closed her
+public career, and is already possessed of an independent fortune,
+while Miss Dickinson's life lies before her, and her fortune is still
+to be made. But all this is irrelevant. The whole paragraph is an
+impertinence. Why is any person to be mulcted at another's instance in
+any sum for any charity or any purpose whatever? What right has any
+newspaper to decide the direction or the amount of a citizen's
+benevolence? Had it concerned a man, it would have been impertinence;
+concerning a woman, it is something worse,--not because of her
+womanhood, but because of the injustice which is wrought upon her sex
+wherever there is the ability to be unjust.
+
+These are very small things, but they are signs of great ones.
+
+It may be inferred, therefore, that woman's indifference to excellence
+in work does not necessarily impugn either her character or calibre.
+Excellence is indeed good in itself, and desirable, without reference
+to the money it brings; yet money and promotion are a spur, and
+therefore they must be taken into the account when we are dealing with
+facts and not merely with theories.
+
+Now, then, let women, disregarding senseless and wicked customs, make
+a point of making a point of something, and then let them lay aside
+every weight which social injustice or indifference hangs upon them,
+and the consequent sin of superficiality which so easily besets them,
+and make that point perfect. No matter that they are ill-paid and held
+down, let them assert themselves; let them work so well that their
+work shall assert itself, and pay and promotion will come--to woman,
+if not to themselves--as the inevitable result.
+
+I do not mean that every woman should study medicine, or apprentice
+herself to a trade. Indeed, I consider it to be a wrong state of
+society in which there is any other necessity for her doing so than
+that which arises from her own inward promptings. It is very likely
+that she can find in her father's house abundant scope for the
+exercise of every faculty. She may have a leaning to home life, and to
+no other. Because a girl remains at home, it by no means follows that
+she is accomplishing nothing. What I do mean is, that she shall not
+dawdle away her time simply because she is a girl; and that if, moved
+by her own instincts, which are from God, or impelled by
+circumstances, which are generally the fault of men, she enters the
+arena where men strive, she shall have no other disabilities than
+those which Nature lays upon her. Do not fail to note the distinction
+between choice and necessity in her adoption of a career. When a
+woman, of her own free will and delight, pursues a study or an
+occupation beyond the common female range, it is one thing. When she
+is obliged to earn her own living, and for that purpose goes out into
+the paths where men walk, it is another thing. In both cases she
+should work on equal terms with men; in the first, because the very
+strength of her purpose, overcoming the natural disinclinations of her
+sex, shows it to be of celestial origin, and therefore worthy of
+respect; in the second, because, if man fails to give to woman the
+support which is her due, the smallest step towards reparation is to
+allow her every advantage in the attempt to support herself. It is
+always a sorrowful, I think it is always an injurious thing, for a
+woman to be obliged to compete with men, that is, to earn money. She
+can do it only at the constant torture, or the constant
+sacrifice--perhaps both--of something higher than can be brought into
+the strife. But so much the more should she be freed from every
+unnecessary pain and hinderance. Moreover, evil as is the imperative
+assumption by woman of man's work, it combats a greater evil, and
+therefore also should her hands be upheld. The most persistent and
+kindly encouragement can never change, in the womanly heart, love of
+home into love of conquest and renown; but it can do much to soften
+the harshness of an uncongenial lot, and take somewhat from the
+bitterness of a cup that never can be sweet.
+
+The mere fact of a daughter's services being needed at home is no
+reason why they shall be claimed after she has become of age, either
+through years, or maturity of character, when such service is
+distasteful to her, and other service is tasteful and possible. If,
+for instance, a girl has a strong desire to be a milliner, or a
+mantua-maker, or an artist, she should not be prevented because her
+mother wants her at home to help take care of the children and do the
+work. I suppose to many this will seem unnatural and undutiful. It is
+neither the one nor the other. There are remarkable notions afloat
+concerning nature and duty. If one may judge from popular ethics, the
+duty seems to lie chiefly on one side. Lions, we are told, would
+appear to the world in a very different light if lions wrote history;
+so filial and parental relations, discussed as they always are by the
+parental part of the community, have a different bearing from what
+they would if looked at from the children's point of view. In our
+eagerness to enforce the claims which parents have on children, we
+seem sometimes ready to forget the equally stringent claims which
+children have on parents. Much is said about the gratitude which
+parental care imposes upon the child; very little about the
+responsibility which his involuntary birth imposed upon himself.
+
+Here is a daughter, an immortal being, accountable to God. Surely,
+when she has become a woman, she has a right to direct her life in the
+manner best adapted to bring out its abilities. No human being has a
+right to appropriate another human being's life,--even if they be
+mother and daughter. You say that she owes life itself to her parents.
+True, but in such a way that it confers an additional obligation on
+them to give her every opportunity to make the most of life, and not
+in such a way as to justify them in monopolizing it, nor in such a way
+as to render her accountable to them alone for its use. The person who
+gives life is under much stronger bonds than the person who receives
+life. Life is a momentous thing. It may be an eternal curse. It is
+almost certain to involve deep sorrow. Sin, disease, pain, are almost
+sure to follow in its wake. It is a Pandora's box whose best treasure
+is only a compensation. The happiest thing we know of it is, that it
+will one day come to an end: Psyche will rend off her disguises, and
+soar in her proper form. The uncertainty of the future is our solace
+against the certainty of the present. Surely, then, of all people in
+the world, those who impose this fearful burden are the very last who
+should add even a feather's weight to it, and the very first and
+foremost who should at any sacrifice of less important matters lighten
+it as far as possible. Filial unfaithfulness is a sin, but parental
+unfaithfulness is a chief of sins. The first violates relations which
+it finds. The second violates those which it makes. Almost invariably
+the second is the direct cause of the first. There may be
+extraordinary malformations: a child may be born with some organic
+incapacity for love, or gratitude, or virtue, as children are born
+blind or deaf. But, as a rule, parental love and wisdom result in
+filial love and duty growing stronger and stronger every day, and
+removing the possibility of sacrifice by making all service a
+pleasure. Because, where I knew the circumstances, I never saw an
+instance of filial misbehavior that could not be traced directly to
+parental mismanagement or neglect, I believe it is so where I do not
+know the circumstances. I am persuaded that Solomon had the spirit of
+truth when he declared, "Train up a child in the way he should go, and
+when he is old he will not depart from it." A son administers arsenic
+to his parents, and the world starts back in horror. I would not
+diminish its horror; but before you lavish all your execration on the
+son, find out whether the parents have not been administering poison,
+or suffered poison to be administered, to his mind and heart from his
+earliest infancy. Be shocked at that. I never saw or heard of a son
+born of virtuous parents, and wisely trained in the ways of virtue,
+who turned about and poisoned his parents after he had grown up. The
+eider-duck plucks the down from her own breast to warm the nest for
+her young, and I do not suppose an ungrateful or rebellious
+eider-duckling was ever heard of; but if the eider-duck plucks the
+down from the breasts of her young to line the nest for herself--what
+then?
+
+If a daughter, out of love or a "sense of duty," chooses to sacrifice
+her inclinations,--by inclinations I do not mean the mere promptings
+of self-indulgence, but the voice of her soul calling her to a work in
+life,--I say not that she does not well. I only say that her mother
+has no right to demand such a sacrifice. It is an unjust exaction. It
+is a selfish building up of comfort on the ruins of another's
+happiness, possibly of character, since few things are so apt to warp
+the tone of mind and temper as a forced performance of unsuitable
+work. Before children are old enough to choose for themselves, their
+parents must choose for them,--even then with a wary care lest they
+mistake a prompting of nature for a whim, but every restraint that is
+put upon a child for any other purpose than his own benefit is a sin
+against a soul. What duty his love does not prompt, you shall not by
+the sheer brute force of your position require. His life is in his own
+hands, put there by you, and he must make it into a vessel of honor or
+dishonor. You shall not hold back his hand from working its own
+beautiful designs, that it may putty up the cracks in your time-worn
+vessel. You make great account of the care which you took of his
+helpless infancy; but he owes no especial gratitude for that. As may
+be inferred from what I have before said, it was a debt you owed him.
+Having endowed him with life, the least you could do was to help him
+make the best of it. It would have been cruel not to do it. You have
+only made things even in doing it,--and hardly that. Besides, such
+considerations are logically useless. You may fill a child's book,
+paper, and ears with his mother's anxiety and care for him. You may
+tell him how she has watched over him and toiled for him during his
+helpless infancy, and conjure him on that account to love and obey
+her. It will be a waste of breath. You might just as well conjugate a
+Latin verb to him. He will no more form an intelligent conception of a
+mother's love and care from your most forcible description, than he
+would from _amo_, _amas_, _amat_. He is not capable of such a
+conception. A child's love is an instinct. It gradually develops into
+a sentiment which permeates his whole being. The mother's love is also
+an instinct. She nurses her child just as instinctively as a hen
+gathers her chickens under her wings. There generally is something
+more than instinct, but there is instinct. But at no stage of a
+child's life is love a matter of reasoning. If it is within him, it
+cannot be argued out; if it is not, it cannot be argued in. Never a
+person loved because he was convinced he ought to love. He loves
+because he loves, and that is all that can be said about it.
+
+I hope I shall not be considered as attempting to weaken the cords
+between parents and children. On the contrary, I wish to strengthen
+them. But I wish to strengthen them by making them of that unseen,
+spiritual substance which alone is worthy of the relation,--proof
+against every external force, and drawing more and more closely with
+every opening year,--not of that gross and palpable outward material
+which chafes and irritates, and which will snap asunder the moment
+that young vigor spreads its wings.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+
+Another truth, which seems to have been forgotten, and which needs to
+be newly revealed to this generation, is, that though manhood and
+womanhood are two distinct things, the humanity which underlies them
+is one and indivisible. We are told that God made man male and female,
+but we are first told that God made man in his own image. There is no
+distinction. Woman is made in God's image just as much as man; and it
+is just as wicked to deface that image in her as in him. It is defaced
+when her powers are crippled, and her organs enfeebled, whether it be
+by turning her toes under till they touch the heels, and then
+bandaging them so, or whether that process be enacted on her mind. If
+a boy should stand god-like erect, in native honor clad, so should a
+girl. She may not be as tall, but she may be as straight. The palm
+cannot turn into an oak, and has not the smallest desire to turn into
+an oak; but there is no reason why it should not be the best kind of a
+palm,--and in the deserts of this world a fruitful palm cheereth the
+heart of both God and man.
+
+Read, in the light of these facts, a "sonnet" and its accompanying
+comments, which I chanced to find while looking over a twelve-year-old
+number of a magazine which stands among the first in America.
+
+"The learned 'science-women' of the day, the 'deep, deep-blue
+stockings' of the time, are fairly hit off in the ensuing satirical
+sonnet:--
+
+    'I idolize the LADIES! They are fairies,
+    That spiritualize this world of ours;
+    From heavenly hot-beds most delightful flowers,
+    Or choice cream-cheeses from celestial dairies,
+    But learning, in its barbarous seminaries,
+    Gives the dear creatures many wretched hours,
+    And on their gossamer intellect sternly showers
+    SCIENCE, with all its horrid accessaries.
+    Now, seriously, the only things, I think,
+    In which young ladies should instructed be,
+    Are--stocking-mending, love, and cookery!--
+    Accomplishments that very soon will sink,
+    Since Fluxions now, and Sanscrit conversation,
+    Always form part of female education!'
+
+"Something good in the way of inculcation may be educed from this
+rather biting sonnet. If woman so far forgets her 'mission,' as it is
+common to term it now-a-days, as to choose those accomplishments whose
+only recommendation is that they are 'the vogue,' in preference to
+acquisitions which will fit her to be a better wife and mother, she
+becomes a fair subject for the shafts of the satirical censor."
+
+Leaving "gossamer intellects" to educe whatever of good in the way of
+inculcation may be found in this biting sonnet, and in the equally
+mordacious remarks of the mulierivorous commentator, let me refer to
+another paragraph in which popular opinion is crystallized. It is
+found in a book printed and published in London, and coming to me
+through several hands from the library of an English nobleman, but a
+book so atrocious in its sentiments, and so feeble in its expression,
+that I will not give the small impulse to its circulation which the
+mention of its name might impart: "In woman, weakness itself is the
+true charter of power; it is an absolute attraction, and by no means a
+defect; it is the mysterious tie between the sexes, a tie as
+irresistible as it is captivating, and begetting an influence peculiar
+to itself." This is the fancy sketch. One of our best writers has
+drawn the true portrait of such a woman: a woman "to be the idol of
+her school-boy son, to be remembered in his gray old age with a
+reverential tenderness as a glorified saint, but a woman also to drive
+that same son to desperation in actual life by her absorption in
+trifles, by her weak credulity,... by her inability to sympathize with
+his ambition, to enter into his difficulties, or to share in the
+faintest degree his aspirations."
+
+"In short," proceeds the advocate of the oak-and-vine humanity, "_all
+independence is unfeminine_; the more dependent that sex becomes, the
+more will it be cherished."
+
+Independence is unfeminine: what a pity that starvation and insanity
+are not unfeminine also! Independence is unfeminine, but what
+provision is made for dependence? Look about the world. How many men
+are there, dependence on whom would be agreeable to a sensitive woman?
+and what shall the women do who have nobody to be dependent on,--the
+women without husbands or fathers, and the women with drunken,
+thriftless, extravagant, miserly, feeble or incapable husbands or
+fathers? When every woman in the country is placed above the
+possibility of want, it will be time enough to talk about the sweets
+of dependence; but so long as women are liable, and are actually
+reduced to want, to shame, to ignominy, to starvation, and degradation
+and death, through the meanness, the misconduct, or the inability of
+their natural protectors, it will be well at least to connive at their
+efforts to help themselves. An independent woman may be a nuisance,
+but I think rather less so than an immoral woman, or an insane woman,
+or a dead woman in the bottom of a canal in Lowell, or a live woman
+making shirts for Milk Street merchants in Boston, at five cents
+apiece. O men, you who shut your eyes to the stern and awful facts of
+life, and rhapsodize over your fine-spun theories, what will you say
+when the Lord maketh inquisition for blood? In that great and terrible
+day that shall open the books of judgment, that shall wrest from the
+earth and the sea the secrets which are in them, when the dead women
+come forth from their suicidal graves, when they swarm up from under
+the river-bridges, when they pour out from the gateways of hell, will
+it seem to you then a wise and righteous thing that you branded
+independence as unfeminine?
+
+Apart from the bearings of this doctrine, one word as to its facts.
+There are two kinds of dependence,--the one of love, the other of
+necessity. Each may comprise the other, and all is well. But each may
+exist without the other, and then half is ill. The first is a delight.
+The second is a dread. The first is a delight,--but no more to woman
+than to man, for though the matters in which they are dependent
+differ, the dependence itself is mutual, and mutually dear and
+precious. Nobody need enforce it by argument. It commends itself by
+its own inherent sweetness. But the second is an evil, and only an
+evil under the sun,--a state which no man and no woman of any spirit
+will for a moment willingly endure. Dependence is a joy only where it
+is a boon; other wise it is a burning torture if there is any soul to
+feel.
+
+But masculine deprecation of feminine independence is not entirely
+owing to a tender regard for the preservation unimpaired of feminine
+loveliness. Men think if women strike out in a career of their own,
+the matter of securing and disposing of a wife may not be quite the
+easy thing it is at present.
+
+They now have things their own way. The world is all before them where
+to choose. They have only to walk leisurely on, and it is O whistle
+and I'll come to you, my lad. You think I put it too strongly: that is
+because you are looking into the bucket. I am speaking of the
+atmosphere. You have only to listen to the usual talk of usual people
+in villages and cities, and to the floating literature. You are not to
+take the intellectual in the one, nor the immortal in the other, for
+their rills spring from deeper sources, and represent the individual.
+It is the flitting, the ephemeral, the stories that Maggie Marigold
+and Kittie Katnip print in the county papers; it is the talk that Mrs.
+Smith and Mrs. Jones have about Nancy Briggs; it is the women in the
+novels who are not the heroines,--these give the best photograph of
+actual popular opinion, and these give you six women intriguing for
+one man. It is not surprising that at first sight men should think it
+a fine thing to have a whole bazaar of beauty to choose from, with the
+market so glutted that the goods will be sold at prices to suit the
+purchasers. It is not necessary to be very good or very great, to win
+the prize. There is no prize to be won. It is only pick and choose.
+But have men no misgivings? Is necessity the surest warrant of
+adaptation? Are men conscious that their assumption is, that they are
+so unattractive, and the marriage yoke so heavy, that women will not
+endure either unless they are left without any other resource? Is it
+pleasant to reflect that they cannot trust themselves to woo, but that
+girls must be reduced to the alternative of marriage or nothing? What
+pleasure can there be in a victory so easily gained? I know a man who
+says the reason why he married his wife was, because she was the only
+girl in the town whom he was not sure of beforehand. With nothing to
+do, women are as beggars by the wayside, holding up their feeble hands
+to the passer, and entreating, "We will eat our own bread and wear our
+own apparel: only let us be called by thy name to take away our
+reproach." Is this pleasant to think of? Does it flatter a man's
+self-love? Would it not be more agreeable for a husband to suppose
+that he is his wife's choice and not--Hobson's?
+
+Let boarding-school anniversary orators and Mother's Magazine editors
+trust more in nature, and make themselves easy. Providence is never at
+a loss. There is not the slightest danger that marriage will fall into
+disuse through the absorption of female interests in other directions.
+If every girl in the world were independent, full mistress of herself,
+she would not be any more disinclined to marriage than she is now. She
+would not hang upon its skirts, dragging them into the mud, with such
+a helpless, desperate death-clutch as now. She would not be at the
+mercy of every schemer, every speculator, every unprincipled,
+unscrupulous manikin, who knows no better use for angels than to wash
+the dishes. She would not be such an article of traffic, such a beast
+of burden, such a tame, spiritless, long-suffering, sly little
+sycophant, as she too often is now. There is not one woman in a
+million who would not be married, if--I borrow a phrase from the
+popular, pestilent patois, but I transfigure it with its highest
+meaning--if she could get a chance. How do I know? Just as I know that
+the stars are now shining in the sky, though it is high noon. I never
+saw a star at midday, but I know it is the nature of stars to shine in
+the sky, and of the sky to hold its stars. Genius or fool, rich or
+poor, beauty or the beast, if marriage were what it should be, what
+God meant it to be, what even with the world's present possibilities
+it might be, it would be the Elysium, the sole complete Elysium, of
+woman, yes, and of man. Greatness, glory, usefulness, happiness, await
+her otherwhere; but here alone all her powers, all her being, can find
+full play. No condition, no character even, can quite hide the gleam
+of the sacred fire; but on the household hearth it joins the warmth of
+earth to the hues of heaven. Brilliant, dazzling, vivid, a beacon and
+a blessing, her light may be, but only a happy home blends the
+prismatic rays into a soft serene whiteness, that floods the world
+with divine illumination. Without wifely and motherly love, a part of
+her nature must remain unclosed,--a spring shut up, a fountain sealed;
+but a thousand times better that it should remain unclosed than that
+it should be rudely rent open, or opened only to be defiled. A
+thousand times better that the vestal fire should burn forever on the
+inner shrine than that it should be brought out to boil the pot. But
+the pot must boil, you say, and so it must; but with oak-wood and
+shavings, not with beaten olive-oil.
+
+This it is that I denounce,--not the use, but the abuse, of sacred
+things. I want girls to be saved from sacrilege. I do not want them to
+lay open their lives to spoliation. I want every woman to fill her
+heart with hopes and plans and purposes; and if a man will marry her,
+let him be so strong as to break down all barriers, check the whole
+flood-tide of her life, and sweep it around himself. If a woman is
+worth having, she is worth winning. Jacob served seven years for
+Rachel and seven more, and they seemed unto him but a few days for the
+love he had to her. Shiver and scatter the wan, weak attachments that
+dare to call themselves _love_. Scorn for this frothy, green whey that
+stands for the wine of life! Better that girls should be pirated away
+as the rough-handed Romans won their Sabine wives, than that a man
+should have but to touch the tree with his cane as he walks through
+the orchard, and down comes the ready-ripe fruit. In Von Fink's fiery
+wooing of Lenore, I hear the right trumpet-ring: "With rifle and
+bullet I have bought your stormy heart." I would have a woman marry,
+not because it is the only thing that offers, but because a
+magnificence sweeps by, in whose glorious sun her pale stars faint and
+fade. Her soul shall be filled and fired with the heavenly radiance.
+All her dross shall be consumed, and all her gold refined. She shall
+go to her marriage-feast as Zenobia went to Rome, crowned with
+flowers, but bound with golden chains, a conquered captive, and the
+banner over her shall be love. I would have her go obedient, not to
+the requirements of a false and fatal materialism, naming itself with
+the names of morality and womanhood, but to the unerring instincts of
+her own nature. She shall not fly to the only refuge from the vacuum
+and despair of her life; but her great heart and her strong hands
+shall be wrenched from their bent by the mysterious force of an
+irresistible magnetism. When you have a character that can so command,
+a love that can so control, you have set up on earth the pillars of
+Heaven, and redemption draweth nigh.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+
+But if the pursuit of a separate and independent career should not
+disincline girls to marriage, you think it would unfit them for its
+duties; that an education, an occupation, and an interest in any other
+than a domestic direction would produce an indifferent housewife. Is
+this necessary? Is it even probable? Is there any sufficient reason
+why a woman who has trained her judgment in a medical school, shall
+not go into life, not only with no disadvantage, but with positive
+advantage from such training? If her mind have acquired power of
+observation, and her fingers skill in execution, will she not be so
+much the better prepared for the duties of her situation, whatever
+they may be? The ordering of a family is not like a trade,--a thing to
+be learned. It is multifarious and distracting. The mistress of a
+household is like the sovereign of a free empire. She does not need,
+and cannot serve, an apprenticeship. The only way to prepare her for
+its duties is to enlarge her capacity to discharge them. She needs a
+thorough education. Everything that helps to build up mind and
+body,--everything that makes her healthful, hopeful, cheerful,
+spirited, self-reliant, energetic, strong, helps her to administer her
+affairs successfully. A woman who can do one thing can do another
+thing, and she can do it all the better for having done the other one
+first; so that the pursuit of a profession, instead of incapacitating
+her for a domestic life, makes her better fitted for it. If for a
+year, or two or three, she has been studying the human system, or the
+stars, or the flowers, or the mysteries of cloak, or bonnet, or
+counter, or mint, she can turn aside at the beck of the master just as
+well as if she had been all the while frittering herself away, and she
+will also be a great deal better worth beckoning to. The entrance upon
+a "career" does not, as many seem to think and fear, prescribe
+perpetual adherence to it.
+
+A girl may have a certain end in view, and design most clearly to
+follow it, and she does follow it--God bless her! But Nature also has
+her ends, and when her unerring finger points in another quarter,
+"This is the way, walk ye in it," be sure the girl will go. Activity
+will never keep her from happiness, but it will keep her from byways
+and stumbling-blocks, from the traps which Nature never set, but which
+a sentimentalism, born of selfishness, has put in her path. And be
+doubly sure of this: if one or two or a dozen years of industry and
+resolution unfit a girl to be a wife, she would never have been a
+prize. Any intelligent girl can learn household science in six months,
+and every girl ought to have, and generally does have, at least six
+months' warning. Experience will do the rest for her, and do it well,
+if she is a girl of sense; and if not, nothing would have helped the
+matter. One of the best cooks I know started in life with only a
+cabbage for capital; and with sense and spirit, out of that solitary
+cabbage, with whose proper management she chanced to be acquainted,
+sprang pies, puddings, preserves, such as it is not well even to think
+of in war-times.
+
+So much for that portion of the objection which is put forward and has
+a just foundation. But the main part of it is under ground. In my
+opinion, the real danger lies in quite the opposite quarter from the
+one that is sought to be defended. The trouble is not that women do
+not think enough about household affairs. It is that they think too
+much. But if one might judge from the tenor of public and private
+talk, one would suppose that cooking was the chief end of woman and
+the chief solace of man. I distinguish cooking above all the other
+items of the domestic establishment, because I find it so
+distinguished before me. Four hundred volumes of papyrus, recovered
+from Herculaneum, related chiefly to music, rhetoric, and cookery. The
+god of whom Paul told the Philippians, even weeping, is worshipped
+to-day. Isaac acted after his kind when he loved Esau because he did
+eat of his venison! To know how to cook, to keep the husband in good
+humor with tempting viands, to prevent his being annoyed with burnt
+meat, soured with heavy bread, or vexed by late dinners, is the burden
+of a thousand ditties besides that of our sarcastic sonneteer. Printed
+"Advice to Marriageable Young Ladies" informs them that "a man is
+better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table, than when his
+wife talks good French." I should like to be absolute monarch of
+America long enough to enact a decree that every man who opens his
+mouth to tell girls to learn to make bread, shall live a week on putty
+and water. What! are girls then to neglect to learn to make bread? By
+no means. Nor to roast beef, nor to boil potatoes. But suppose General
+Hooker should lead out his whole army against a detachment of the
+Rebels, and, neglecting Lee and Jackson with their myrmidons, should
+expend all his ammunition and skill on a handful of the foe, would you
+not adjudge him worthy of court-martial? But the detachment ought to
+be captured. Perhaps it ought. Send out a detachment and capture it.
+But do not waste your whole strength on an awkward squad, and leave
+the main body of the enemy to ravage at will. Defeat the latter, and
+the former will disappear of themselves.
+
+Now when you bring out your drums and beat your dismal tattoo about
+learning to cook, you are doing just this; you are devoting all your
+strength to the destruction of an outwork whose fall will but very
+remotely affect the citadel. The remedy for an ignorance of cookery is
+not necessarily a knowledge of cookery. What is the reason that a man
+has cause to complain that his wife does not know how to cook? Is it
+that she devoted too much of her maiden time to teaching, preaching,
+doctoring, and dressmaking? Ten thousand to one, no. It is because she
+is ignorant or because she is silly. Treat girls sensibly. Educate
+their observation, their perception, their judgment. Give them a
+knowledge of human nature: and then be yourself so noble as to command
+their respect, and so amiable as to secure their affection, and you
+will have no trouble with heavy bread. If you insist on making women
+ignorant and silly, be sure their ignorance and silliness will crop
+out. Thrust them down in one place, and they will immediately rise in
+another. Sooner or later, you will prove the truth of Lord Burleigh's
+assurance to his son, and "find to your regret that there is nothing
+more fulsome than a she-fool."
+
+But the general direction of your counsel is wrong, even supposing the
+immediate object at which it is aimed to be right. Its tendency is to
+induce women to give more attention to cookery than they now do; and
+they already devote to it a great deal more than they ought. They do
+not cook too well, but too much. A few mixtures should be better
+arranged than now, but a great many should be left alone. Cooking is
+the chief concern of a very large number of New England wives and
+mothers. They spend the larger part of their ingenuity in devising,
+and the larger part of their strength and skill and time in preparing,
+food which is unnecessary and often hurtful. It never occurs to them
+to alter their course. They do not think of it as an unjust conjugal
+exaction, but as a Divine allotment. It is not always the one, and
+seldom if ever the other; but it is a custom. We are pre-eminently an
+eating people. Our women are cooking themselves to death, and cooking
+the nation into a materialism worse than death. Suppose you have been
+boarding or visiting for a month or two in a stranger family, and some
+one asks you if they live well, what do you understand him to mean? Is
+he inquiring if they are honorable, if they conduct their lives on
+Christian principles, if they are courteous, and self-respectful and
+self-controlled? Are they just in their dealings, disinterested in
+their motives, pure in word and work? Nothing is further from his
+thoughts. He means--and you at once understand him--Do they have
+highly-spiced and numerous meats, much cake and pie, many sauces and
+preserves? To what degradation have we descended! To live well is to
+eat rich food! Honor, integrity, refinement, culture, are all chopped
+up into mince-pie. Heart and soul are left to shift for themselves,
+and the guaranty of right and righteous living is
+
+    "A fair round belly with good capon lined."
+
+In the olden times there lived, we are told, a race of men called
+Bisclaverets, who were half man and half wolf; or, to speak more
+accurately, were half the time man and half the time wolf. Some
+indications in our own day lead us to believe that the race of the
+Bisclaverets is not wholly extinct. Some stragglers must have found
+their way from the shores of Bretagne to our Western wilds, and left a
+posterity whose name is Legion. I copy from one of the most prominent
+and liberal of our religious newspapers the following "elegant
+extract," not original in its columns, but adopted from some other
+paper, with such undoubted indorsement and commendation as an
+insertion without comment implies:--
+
+"The business man who has been at work hard all day, will enter his
+house for dinner as crabbed as a hungry bear,--crabbed because he is
+as hungry as a hungry bear. The wife understands the mood, and, while
+she says little to him, is careful not to have the dinner delayed. In
+the mean time, the children watch him cautiously, and do not tease him
+with questions. When the soup is gulped, and he leans back and wipes
+his mouth, there is an evident relaxation, and his wife ventures to
+ask for the news. When the roast beef is disposed of, she presumes
+upon gossip, and possibly upon a jest; and when, at last, the dessert
+is spread upon the table, all hands are merry, and the face of the
+husband and father, which entered the house so pinched, and savage,
+and sharp, becomes soft, and full, and beaming as the face of the
+round summer moon."
+
+Are we talking about a man or a wild beast? Is it wife or female? Are
+they children or cubs? Does he wipe his mouth or lick his chops?
+"_Ventures_ to ask the news"! "_Presumes_ upon a jest"! The whole
+picture is disgusting from beginning to end. It is the portraiture of
+sensuality and despotism. Hunger is not a sublime sensation, nor is
+eating a graceful act; but both are ordained of God, and are given us
+with that broad blank margin which almost invariably accompanies His
+gifts. Religion and culture can take up the necessity, and work so
+deftly that it shall become an adornment; and the ordinance of eating
+stand for the sunniest part of life. The grossness of the act, the
+mere animal and mechanical function of furnishing supplies, can be so
+larded with wit and wisdom, with love and good-will, with pleasant
+talk, interchange of civilities and courtesies, and all the light,
+sweet, gentle amenities of life, that a bare act becomes almost a
+rite. The rough structure is veiled into beauty with roses and lilies
+and the soft play of lights and shadows. But this paragraph portrays
+gobbling. A woman, instead of pandering to it by service and silence,
+ought to lift up her voice and repress it in its earliest stages. Make
+a man understand that he shall eat his dinner like a gentleman or he
+shall have no dinner to eat. If he will be crabbed and gulp, let him
+go down into the coal-bin and have it out alone; but do not let him
+bring his Feejeeism into the dining-room to defile the presence of his
+wife and corrupt the manners of his children.
+
+If you think the picture is overdrawn, I pray you to remember that I
+did not draw it. It is a published, and, I think, a man's sketch of
+manhood. I only take it as I find it. I do not myself think that
+materialism has attained quite that degree of repulsiveness, but it is
+too near it. Eating is not perpetrated, but the appetite is pampered.
+If a man is able to hire a cook, very well. Cooking is the cook's
+profession; she ought to attain skill, and her employer has a right to
+require it, and as great a variety and profusion of dishes as he can
+furnish material for. But if he is not able to hire a cook, and must
+depend entirely upon his wife, the case is different. Cooking is not
+her profession. It is only one of the duties incident to her station.
+It is incumbent upon her to spread a plentiful and wholesome table. It
+is culpable inefficiency to do less than this. It is palpable
+immorality to do more. No matter how fond of cooking, or how skilful
+or alert a woman may be, she has only twenty-four hours in her day,
+and two hands for her work; and one woman who has the sole care of a
+family cannot, if she has any rational and Christian idea of life, of
+personal, household, and social duties, have any more time and
+strength than is sufficient for their simple discharge. Overdoing in
+one direction must be compensated by underdoing in another. She cannot
+pamper Peter without pinching Paul. Much that you laud as a virtue I
+lament as a vice. You revel in the cakes and the pastries and the
+dainties, and boast the skill of the housewife; and indeed her marvels
+are featly wrought, sweet to the taste, and to be desired if honestly
+come by; but if there has been plunder and extortion, if it is a soul
+that flakes in the pastry, if it is a heart that is embrowned in the
+gravies; if leisure and freshness and breadth of sympathy and keen
+enjoyment have been frittered away on the fritters, and simmered away
+in the sweetmeats, and battered away in the puddings, give me, I pray
+you, a dinner of herbs. Johnny-cake was royal fare in Walden woods
+when a king prepared the banquet and presided at the board. Peacocks'
+tongues are but common meat to peacocks.
+
+The _pate de foie gras_ is a monstrous dish. A goose is kept in some
+warm, confined place that precludes any extended motion, and fed with
+fattening food, so that his liver enlarges through disease till it is
+considered fit to be made into a pie,--a luxury to epicures, but a
+horror to any healthful person. Just such a goose is many a woman,
+confined by custom and her consenting will in a warm, narrow kitchen,
+only instead of her liver it is her life which she herself makes up
+into pies; but the pastry which you find so delicious seems to me
+disease.
+
+The ancients buried in urns the ashes of their bodies: we deposit in
+urns the ashes of our souls, and pass them around at the tea-table.
+
+Women not only injure themselves by what they neglect, but injure
+others by what they perform. Such stress is laid upon the commissary
+department, that they lose discrimination, and come to think that
+dainty morsels are a panacea for all the ills of the flesh, instead of
+being the chief cause of most of them. I knew a young wife whose
+husband used to come down from his study worn and weary with much
+brain-work, his muscles flaccid, his eyes heavy, his circulation
+sluggish, and she would come up from the kitchen her face all aglow
+with eagerness and love and cooking-stove heat, her hands full of
+abominable little messes which she had been plotting against him,
+reeking with butter and sugar, and all manner of glorified
+greasiness,--I am happy to say I do not know by what name she called
+her machinations, but I call them broiled dyspepsia, toasted
+indigestions, fricasseed nightmare,--and the poor husband would nibble
+here and nibble there, sure of grim consequences, but loath to seem a
+churl by indifference, and neither give nor take satisfaction. I could
+bear his suffering with great equanimity, for there was a poetic
+justice in it, though he himself was not a sinner above others, nor
+yet so much as many. If only those men who are continually preaching
+the larder could be forced, sick or well, to swallow every combination
+which the fertile feminine brain can devise, and the nimble feminine
+fingers accomplish, I should listen to their exhortations with the
+most lively satisfaction. But even that would not atone for the female
+suffering. With what disconsolate countenance would my tender, anxious
+young wife ring the bell and send away the scarcely-diminished
+dish-lings, and wonder in her fond tortured heart what next she could
+do to smooth the wrinkled brow and light up the dull eyes, and so
+revolve perpetually in her troubled mind the mysterious question that
+loomed up mystically before us all in our Mother Goose days, "Why
+didn't Jack eat his supper?"
+
+Why? O sweet and silly little wife? Because he wanted a thorough
+shaking-up. Because mind and body were flabby from too long poring
+over his books. If you could but have performed the impossible; if you
+could but have parted with the feeble cant which you had learned from
+infancy; if you would but have driven him out alike from his study and
+your sitting-room, going with him, if such inducement became
+necessary, into the fresh air; if you would but have walked him, or
+worked him, or in some way kneaded him into firm, hard thew and sinew,
+and kept him out and active till he should have got such an appetite
+that cold brown bread and molasses would have seemed to him a dish fit
+to set before a king, you would have done him true wifely service.
+Then you might have come home and fed him with butter and sugar to
+your heart's content,--and not to the perpetual discontent and
+rebellion of his body.
+
+But among all the lectures to young wives or old wives or no wives at
+all, I never heard or read one that counselled a woman to take her
+husband out walking, or rowing, or riding, or driving, or bowling, or
+do any other sensible thing. I have dived into oceans of nonsense, but
+never found the pearl.
+
+Our New England people considers itself to have advanced much further
+in civilization than the aborigines, whose chief occupation, according
+to the histories, is hunting and fishing. But why is it barbarous to
+devote your life to procuring food, and civilized to devote your life
+to cooking it? Of the two, I think I should prefer the former. The
+Savage may not present an inviting bill of fare; but the excitement of
+the chase, the close contact with nature, the wide freedom of sea and
+sky, the grand play of all the powers, the mighty strengthening of all
+the organs, the fine culture of the senses, the health and vigor of
+every nerve and tissue, the leap and sparkle of all the springs of
+life, this, surely, would be no insignificant compensation: but a
+continual pottering over gridirons and frying-pans is good for neither
+brain nor brawn. Civilization may quick upfly and kick the beam: I
+would much rather be a good Sioux Indian than most New England
+housewives.
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+
+The much talk of fitness for marriage leads one to reflect on the
+advantages of living in the nineteenth century. With all the
+sewing-machines, washing-machines, wringing-machines, carpet-sweepers,
+cooking-ranges, and the innumerable devices by which labor is sought
+and is supposed to be saved, I do not see that there is any great
+gain. The requirements of civilized society rather more than keep
+abreast with the inventions of civilized ingenuity. Fifty years ago a
+bonnet cost twenty dollars. Now a comely bonnet can be bought for one
+dollar. But the twenty-dollar bonnet lasted ten years, and the
+one-dollar bonnet three months, so that, notwithstanding the superior
+cheapness of the material, the item bonnet costs more money than it
+used, and vastly more time and thought. A calico dress was not deemed
+unreasonable at seventy cents a yard. Lately it could be had for
+twelve and a half: but at seventy-five cents it was an heirloom, while
+at twelve and a half it stands over the wash-tub by the second year,
+and by the third goes into the rag-bag. The lively sewing-machine runs
+up a seam twenty times as swiftly as the most lively fingers: but
+there are twenty times as many seams to run up. Just as fast as skill
+"turns off" work, just so fast fashion turns it on. Nay, fashion in
+heaping up entirely outstrips ingenuity in lowering the pile of work;
+so that we do not get the benefit of our skill. The day now is no
+longer than the day of fifty years ago. The mother of five children
+seems to have no more time for educating her five children, for
+enjoying and training their opening lives, for studying their
+characters, for associating with them and acquiring their confidence,
+for planting unexpected roses in the little flower-plats of their
+years, for sitting a whole summer day with them among the beauties and
+wonders and delights of the woods, for spending a whole winter evening
+with them in games and reading, for informing her own mind and
+disciplining her own heart and strengthening and beautifying her own
+body, for cultivating the possible beneficences of society, for genial
+and growing acquaintance and sympathy with the poets, the
+philosophers, the historians, and the sages, than the mother of five
+children had fifty years ago. I suppose more women now-a-days know how
+to read and write; but do they read and write? Of the people in your
+village, your street, your sewing-society: how many do you find who
+spend as much as an hour a day in reading Milton, or Chaucer, or
+Spenser, or Tennyson, or Mrs. Browning? How many are there who are
+familiar with Hume, or Robertson, or Macaulay, or Motley, or Palfrey?
+How many have lingered with delight over the pages of Lord Bacon, or
+Jeremy Taylor, or John Stuart Mill? How many know the relation between
+a cat and a tiger, or what are the ingredients of buttermilk, or why
+yeast makes bread rise, or how the heat of the oven works, or whether
+a cloverhead has anything to do with a marrowfat pea? How many are
+interested to peer into the mysteries of the heavens above or the
+earth beneath or the waters under the earth? How many ever heard of
+the Areopigitica or the Witena-gemot, or discern any connection
+between Runnymede and Fort Sumter, or have the faintest opinion as to
+whether Runnymede is a man or a mouse? How many can tell you whether
+the Reformation was a revelation confronting a superstition or a
+fruitful branch grafted upon a barren olive-tree, or an old religion
+throwing off the layers of acquired corruption? How many understand
+the origin and bearings of Calvinism or the Nicene Creed or the
+Pauline Epistles? I speak, you see, not of things which have passed
+away leaving only a slender and hidden thread of connection, but of
+those which still touch life at many points. The great boast of the
+present day is the dissemination of knowledge: but knowledge is trash
+if it is not assimilated into wisdom. Knowledge which is simply
+plastered on to the outside of the soul and does not chemically
+combine to become part and parcel of the soul's substance, produces an
+effect little better than grotesque. Names and dates may store the
+memory; but why have the memory stored if you do not use its
+treasures? What better off am I for having a heap of isolated facts in
+my lumber-room if I have nothing for those facts to do? I may know in
+what year the battle of Hastings was fought, but unless I can locate
+that battle otherwhere than in geography and chronology, I might as
+well have committed to the charge of my memory the youthful facts of
+
+    "Onery Twoery ickery see,
+    Halibut crackibut pendalee.
+    Pin pon musket John,
+    Triddle traddlecome Twenty-one."
+
+Bricks and boards are neither shelter from wind nor shade from sun. It
+is only when all are fitly framed together into the strength and
+sweetness of spirit that they become the temple of the living God,
+whereinto Shekinah shall come. We talk about the universal circulation
+of newspapers, but sometimes it seems to me that newspapers are only
+an enormous expansion of village gossip. Now if a murder is committed
+in New York we hear of it, whereas formerly we did not know it unless
+it were committed in the next town. But such knowledge we could very
+readily dispense with. Is anything added to the worth of life by
+learning that Bridget McArthy has been fined five dollars and costs
+for breaking Ellen Maloney's windows. In the old wars, it was three
+weeks after a victory was gained before you heard of it; now you hear
+of it six months before the battle is fought, and after all it turns
+out to be no victory, but a masterpiece of strategy.[2] What I wish to
+know is this: does the constant interflow of currents really deepen
+and broaden the channel of life? Are women any stronger of will,
+firmer of purpose, broader of view, sounder of judgment, than they
+used to be? Can they front fortune with serener brow, unawed by her
+malice, unflattered by her promise, unmoved by her caprice? Are they
+any more independent of the circumstances of life, any more
+concentrated in its essence? Do they think more deeply, love more
+nobly, live more spiritually? Are they any more divorced from the lust
+of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life; any more
+wedded to whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest,
+whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever
+things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report?
+
+        [2] Heaven be praised that the course of events has blunted
+        the point of this sentence.
+
+I think we are in a transition-state. The increased facilities of
+labor are improvements, and we shall by and by reap the fruits of
+them; but we have hardly yet done so. We have lassoed our wild horse,
+but we have not harnessed him. He shows us wonderful freaks of
+strength, but he drags us quite as often as we drive him. "Sweet Puck"
+has been caught, and made to put his girdle round about the earth in
+forty minutes; in
+
+          "one night, ere glimpse of morn,
+    His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn,
+    That ten day-laborers could not end."
+
+But he is not yet tamed down into a trustworthy domestic drudge. If he
+does not actually transmute himself into a Robin Goodfellow, that
+bootless makes the breathless housewife churn, and the drink to bear
+no barm, and mislead night-wanderers, he yet annuls his work, shutting
+the eyes of the ten day-laborers so that they do not gain rest for his
+interference; his earth-girdle binds no bundle of myrrh for the
+well-beloved. Our great diffusion of knowledge has not given us
+corresponding mastery. Our knives are sharper, but we only whittle.
+Knowledge is poured abroad, but it is not absorbed. Yet the hour
+approaches. By and by, out of this wishy-washy chaos, slowly shall
+arise the coast-line of a new continent whereon the redeemed shall
+walk: meanwhile, do not let us deceive ourselves. The millennium is
+not yet come. We are scarcely beyond the multiplication-table of our
+mathematics. We are blind and blundering, and for all our skill and
+science, we stumble through life but little wiser than our fathers. We
+have the swift, clean stove-oven for the cumbrous old bake-kettle, but
+meanwhile we have lost the fireside, and have found no substitute; and
+a man's life lies not in ovens or bake-kettles, but in firesides.
+
+This truth needs to be engraven on our brains and hearts with a pen of
+iron and the point of a diamond. The soul is the king and not the
+servant of the body. Every device, every invention, every measure,
+that does not subserve the interests of the soul, is worthless. Every
+invention that may subserve those interests, but stops short of such
+subserviency, stops so far short of its goal. If the cooking-range
+only makes that mince-pie be eaten once a day instead of once a year;
+if steam-power only causes that fine wheat-bread shall take the place
+of coarse corn-bread; if sewing-machines are going to give women more
+tucks to their skirts, more flounces to their gowns, more dresses to
+their wardrobes, and not more hours to their day, we might just as
+well be without the sewing-machines and the cooking-ranges and the
+steam-power. Is a woman any better, or any better off, for having six
+gowns where her mother had three? Is she not worse off? She can wear
+but one at a time, and she is expending brain-power and heart-power,
+and lifting the incidents of life into the sphere of its essentials.
+There are women who buy dresses, and make them, and hang them up in
+their closets, there to remain till the fashion changes, and the dress
+has to be re-made without having been once worn. O terrible emptiness
+of life which this signalizes! O wanton and wicked waste of priceless
+treasures! What shall be said in the day when God maketh inquisition?
+I wage no war against the aesthetics of life; but I do protest that
+they shall be means and not ends. Let richness drape the form, and
+variety crown the board, and luxury fill the house, if so be you do
+not wrong the king, the Master. There need be no other limitation.
+Wrong to one's self involves and implies all other wrong. Nothing
+human is foreign to any man. Nothing personal is foreign to humanity.
+You cannot defraud yourself of your birthright without defrauding all
+those to whom your birthright might bring blessings. The keenest barb
+of your injustice to another pierces your own breast.
+
+But the larger number of New England families earn their bread by the
+sweat of their brow, and must sacrifice the one or the other,--the
+soul or the body. They cannot command both luxury and life; and they
+choose--which? Look around and answer. How many houses do you know
+that have no carpets on the floors, no cushions in the chairs, no
+paper on the walls, no silks in the wardrobes, no china in the
+closets, but plenty of books in the library; a harp, a piano, a
+violin, in one corner, an easel, a box of crayons in another; an
+aquarium by the window, a camp-stool in the cupboard, a fishing-rod on
+the shelf, a portfolio on the table; where pies and fries and cakes
+and preserves and pickles and puddings seldom come; where flounces and
+velvets and feathers and embroideries are unseen, but where the walls
+are adorned with drawings from the mother's own hands, with bouquets,
+finely selected, pressed and arranged by the daughters; with cabinets
+of minerals gathered, classified, and labelled by the sons; and fresh
+flowers from the garden, cultivated and culled by the father; where
+the homely fare is seasoned with Attic salt; where wit and wisdom and
+sprightliness and fun and heart's-ease make the simple, wholesome, and
+plentiful meal a fit banquet for gods; where work is work, and not
+simply labor; where rest is change, and not simply torpidity; where
+the heart is rich in love, and the head rich in lore, and intellect
+and affection go hand in hand; where the inmates are not the creatures
+of the house, but the house is the dear handiwork of the inmates;
+where they derive no lustre from their dwelling, but shine all through
+it with such sweet, soft lights, that elegance waits upon their
+footsteps, beauty lingers upon their brows, every spot which they
+tread is enchanted ground, every room which they enter is the
+audience-chamber of a king. On the other hand, how many houses do you
+know where everything is in abundance except that which alone gives
+abundance its value? Where moss-soft carpets and heavy curtains and
+gilded cornices and silver and china and sumptuous fare make a
+glittering pageant, but work and worry and weariness, or frivolous
+pleasures and frivolous interests, empty life of all its priceless
+possessions. How many do you know where neither wealth nor worth
+reigns? Where hard, grinding, pinching toil is all that the evening
+and the morning have to give, and everything lovely to the eye and
+pleasant to the soul is crushed between the upper and the nether
+millstones? How many young couples think they could begin housekeeping
+without a carpet for the parlor floor? How many think of providing
+that parlor with a score of the rich, ripe, mellow English classics?
+But to the end of the days, the authors will be a joy and strength and
+consolation, and the carpet will be only a dusty woollen rag. No, no;
+we cannot give up our trappings. Such is the poverty of our life, and
+we may not uncover its nakedness. We must have jewels and gold to hide
+our squalor and our leanness. It is tinsel or nothing. Take away our
+fine clothes, our fine furniture, our much eating and drinking, and
+what is left? True,--what is left? Vacancy and desolation. Suppose the
+work and worry to be suddenly abrogated to the degree that the
+thousands of harassed women who toil with broom or needle or
+dish-cloth or kneading-trough from morning till night should suddenly
+find on their hands four hours every day of leisure,--leisure that
+absolutely need be filled up by no family knitting, mending, or
+oversight,--would it be a boon? In many cases I greatly fear not.
+After the first luxury of utter rest from strenuous work, I greatly
+fear that that four hours would be the dullest and dreariest part of
+the day, and its close more gladly welcomed than its commencement. But
+this only shows the need, not the impossibility, of reformation. If it
+has come to this, that we know not what to do with ourselves, shall we
+go on providing toys, or shall we turn about and straightway learn
+self-direction? Is it so that we must fill our lives with husks,
+because we have fed on them so long that we have no relish for
+nourishing food? Have we so held in abeyance our spiritual forces that
+they have lost their life? Have we so given ourselves to our grosser
+uses, that they have usurped the throne, and shall we now make no
+effort to depose them and restore the rightful lord? Shall we go on
+forming and frocking our wax dolls, and give no heed to the marble
+which it is our life-work to fashion into the image and likeness of
+God? Better Romulus and Remus, suckled by a wolf, than our puny
+nurslings of conventionality! O for men and women with blood in their
+veins, and muscles in their bodies, and brains in their skulls,--men
+and women who believe in their manhood and their womanhood! who will
+be as valiant, as aggressive, as enduring in peace as they are showing
+themselves in war, who dare stand erect, who will walk their own
+paths, who brave solitudes, who see things and not the traditions of
+things, who will blow away, with one honest breath, our shabby gew-gaw
+finery! America was founded on the rights of man: why do we set our
+affections on silks and satins? Why entangle our young limbs with the
+fetters of an old civilization, golden though they be? Never had any
+nation such opportunity as ours. Here is the race-course ready, the
+battle-ground prepared. It needs only that we be swift and strong.
+There are no morasses of old prejudice to beguile our feet, no tangle
+of old growths to retard our progress. We have no institutions to
+fight against: all our institutions fight with us. No garter, no
+ribbon, no courtly presentation, is demanded as our stamp of rank; the
+badge of each man's order is set on his brow and breast. Worth needs
+not to have flowed down through musty ages if it would receive its
+meed; every man bears his seal direct from God. Humanity is more
+accounted of than a coat of arms. We have only to be noble, and we
+belong at once to the nobility. It is ourselves alone that will fail
+if there be failure; not opportunity. It is for us to rise to the
+height of the great argument. It is only that we reverence ourselves,
+that we esteem man as of greater mark than his meat or his raiment.
+Give us full and free development. Tear away these gilded fetters, and
+let the children of God have free course to run and be glorified.
+Throw off allegiance to trifles, and with the heart believe, and with
+the mouth make confession, and with the upright life attest: There is
+no God but God.
+
+This can be done only when women and men will work together to the
+same end. It is not to be done by stripping away the restraints of
+fashion and society and leaving life bare of its proprieties.
+Deformity is not lovely by being exposed. What we are to do is to
+supplant those restraints by the gentle growths of a larger and finer
+culture; to replace meagreness with rounded beauty; to make the life
+so rich and full that all else shall seem poor in comparison; to show
+it so fair and fertile that every luxury shall seem but its natural
+outgrowth, its proper adornment; to make the soul so simply dominant
+as to give their laws to fashion and society instead of receiving laws
+from them, and so have fashion and society for its nimble servitors
+instead of being itself their creature and slave. Is it not so now?
+Who dares bend social life to his uses? Who dares run counter to its
+caprices? Who dares stand on his own dignity and defy its frown or
+sneer? But, you say, this adaptation of one's self to others is what
+Christianity requires. This self-seeking, this self-elevation, is
+directly opposed to the spirit of the Gospel, which demands that every
+one seek not his own, but the things which are another's. Not at all.
+You can in no other way benefit your generation than through your own
+heart and life. Can a stream rise higher than its fountain? Can a
+corrupt tree bring forth good fruits? The Apostle says: Let no man
+seek his own, but every man another's wealth. Does that mean that a
+farmer must not plough his own field, or plant his own corn, or hoe
+his own potatoes, but go over to till his neighbor's farm and leave
+his own fallow? But it is written, "He that provideth not for his own
+house hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel," and common
+sense need not be propped up by revelation, for it stands firmly on
+the same ground. You say a woman must not be thinking of herself, her
+own growth, and good all the time. So do I. But is she to obtain and
+exhibit self-forgetfulness by self-culture, or self-neglect? Will you
+be most likely to forget your head by thoroughly combing and brushing
+your hair every morning, or by brushing it not at all? Does not health
+consist in having your organs in such a condition that you do not know
+you have organs? A dyspeptic man is the most subjective person in the
+world. He thinks more about himself in a week than a well person does
+in a year. The true way for women and men to be thoroughly
+self-forgetful, is to be so thoroughly self-cultured, so healthy, so
+normal, so perfect, that all they have to do is their work. Themselves
+are perfectly transparent. No headaches and heartaches interpose
+between themselves and their duties. They are not forced back to
+concentrate their interest on a torpid liver, or tubercled lungs. They
+are not wasting their power by working in constant jar and clash. They
+are at full liberty to bring means to bear on ends. And just in
+proportion as sound minds have sound bodies, will people be able to
+forget themselves and do good to others.
+
+Now--the connection between some of my paragraphs may be a little
+underground, but it is always there. If you don't quite see it, you
+must jump. If I should stop to say everything, I should never get
+through. I am not sure I shall, as it is--now, such has been the
+amount of gluttony, and all manner of frivolity and materialism,
+indirectly but strenuously inculcated by literature, that we are
+arrived at a point where they are almost the strongest grappling-hooks
+between the sexes. Understand: I am not saying that dress is
+frivolity. Dress is development. A woman's dress is not her first
+duty, but it follows closely on first duty's heels. She should dress
+so as to be grateful to her husband's eye, I grant, nay, I enjoin: and
+he is under equally strong obligations to dress so as to be grateful
+to her eye. But this is scarcely a matter of expense. It need not
+cost, appreciably, more to be neat and tasteful than it does to be
+dowdy and slouching. But, I have heard women say, variety in dress is
+necessary in order that a husband may not be wearied. But does a man
+ever think of having several winter coats or summer waistcoats, so
+that his wife may not weary of him? Does she ever think of being tired
+of seeing one hat till it begins to look shabby? And if a man buys his
+clothes and wears them according to his needs,--which is quite
+right,--why shall not a woman do the same? Is there any law or gospel
+for forcing a woman to be pleasing to her husband, while the husband
+is left to do that which is right in his own eyes? Or are the visual
+organs of a man so much more exquisitely arranged than those of a
+woman, that special adaptations must be made to them, while a woman
+may see whatever happens to be _a la mode_? Or has a man's dress
+intrinsically so much more beauty and character than a woman's, that
+less pains need be taken to make it charming?
+
+But granting to variety all the importance that is claimed for it, are
+we using the lever to advantage? Suppose the gown is changed every
+day, while the face above it never varies, or varies only from one
+vapidity to another, and what is gained? If variety is the
+desideratum, why not attempt it in the direction in which variety is
+spontaneous, resultant, and always delightful? You may flit from brown
+merino to blue poplin, and from blue poplin to black alpaca, and be
+queen of all that is tiresome still. But enlarge every day the horizon
+of your heart: be tuneful on Monday with the birds; be fragrant on
+Tuesday among your roses; be thoughtful on Wednesday with the sages;
+be chemical on Thursday over your bread-trough; be prophetic on Friday
+with history; be aspiring on Saturday in spite of broom and duster; be
+liberal and catholic on Sunday: be fresh and genial and natural and
+blooming with the dews that are ready to gather on every smallest
+grass-blade of life, and a pink-sprigged muslin will be new for a
+whole season, yes, and half a dozen of them. Take example from the
+toad: swallow your dress; not precisely in the same sense, but as
+effectually. Overpower, subordinate your dress, till it shall be only
+a second cuticle, not to be distinguished from yourself, but a natural
+element of your universal harmony.
+
+What are you going to wear to church this summer? I say church,
+because I am speaking now to people whose best dress is their Sunday
+dress. I am not writing for the Newport and Niagara frequenters, who
+know no currency smaller than gold eagles. You will not have many new
+clothes because it is "war-times," but you must have a silk mantle;
+that will cost fifteen dollars. You could have bought one last summer
+for ten dollars, but silk is now higher. You will have a barege dress,
+which, with the increased price of linings and trimmings and making,
+will cost before it is ready to be worn fifteen more. Your gloves will
+be a dollar and a half, and your bonnet, whitened and newly trimmed
+with last summer's ribbon, will be three dollars or so. The whole cost
+will be about thirty-five dollars. But suppose, instead of a barege
+gown and silk shawl, you had bought a pretty gingham and had it made
+in the same way, dress and mantle alike, and had taken that for your
+summer outfit; and had substituted for your kid gloves a pair of
+Lisle-thread at sixty-two cents. The gingham will last longer than the
+barege, and will be good for more uses after it is outworn as a dress.
+It will last as long in the mantle as the shape of the mantle will be
+fashionable, and then it will make over as economically, and into a
+larger number of articles. The Lisle-thread gloves will last as long
+as the kid, and will be much better on the whole, because they will
+wash. "But I should make a figure, walking up the broad aisle in a
+gingham mantilla!" Be sure you would, and a very pretty figure too.
+For you look, in it, perfectly fresh and tidy; and because you have
+not been fagged and fretted with its great cost you will be quite
+happy and pleased, and that pleasure will beam out in your face and
+figure, and your young, elastic tread; and there is not a man in
+church who will suspect that everything is not precisely as it should
+be. Men judge in generals, not in particulars; and the few who are
+conversant with minutiae, and look beyond the facts of becomingness or
+unbecomingness into the question of texture and fabric, are such
+microscopic sort of men that you do not value their opinion one way or
+the other. You are triumphant so far as the men are concerned.
+
+The women will not let you off so easily. Mrs. Judkins will think you
+are "very odd"; but how much better to be oddly right than evenly
+wrong! Mrs. Jenkins will call it _real mean_, when you are as well
+able to dress decently as she is! But you are the very plant and
+flower of decency. Mrs. Perkins will hate to see people try to be
+different from other folks. Ah! Mrs. Perkins, when the vapor from your
+heated face goes down to-morrow meeting the vapor that comes steaming
+up from your foaming tub, will you find it any consolation for your
+heat and fatigue that you went to church yesterday and are broiling
+over your wash-tub to-day "like other folks." Meanwhile you, by your
+gingham, have saved ten dollars. Ten dollars! I am lost in amazement
+when I think of the good that may be accomplished with ten dollars!
+For ten dollars you can hire a washerwoman all summer and
+save--absolutely add to your life six hours every Monday for three
+months; look at the reading, the writing, the conversation, the
+enjoyment that can be crowded into an hour, and then multiply it by
+seventy-five, and say whether your gingham dress be not a very robe of
+royalty. And besides the good you do yourself, and the good that will
+shine from you upon all around you, you will be helping to solve the
+great problem of the age: you will be helping to give employment to
+the thousands of women who are perishing for lack of something to do,
+and dragging society down with them. You will be setting supply and
+demand face to face. If you could but induce a few of your neighbors
+to join you,--which they will be glad to do when they see how happy
+and fresh it makes you,--the employment you would furnish would
+comfortably support some destitute unmarried woman, or some childless
+widow, and go far towards providing bread and butter, perhaps shoes
+and stockings, possibly spelling-books, to a family of children. There
+are, possibly, as many women who need to do more than they are doing
+as there are who need to do less, and you will be helping to restore
+or create the desired equilibrium. Or, if you choose instead, ten
+dollars will take your rustic little ones into the city to stock and
+startle their minds with ideas from the navy-yard, the museum, the
+aquarial gardens, the picture-galleries; or it will take your civic
+little ones into the country and set them down in the midst of
+orchards and blooms and birds, and all the pure sweet influences of
+long summer days. It will give you four or five drives with your
+husband and children,--drives that involve fascinating white baskets;
+napkins spread out on the grass, hungry mouths, chattering tongues,
+and oh! such happy hearts. Or you can go to the beach and hear the
+little monkeys scream for joy and terror in the rushing, lapping,
+embracing waves, and see them roll over and over in the soft sand, and
+gather untold wealth of worthless shells and heaps of shining sand for
+back-yard gardens. For ten dollars you can buy picture-books,
+long-desired toys, flowers and flower-stands for winter, roots for
+bedding in summer, and still have enough left to give an extra lemon
+to a score of wounded soldiers in a hospital ward. You can buy
+yourself leisure to become acquainted with your children and to make
+them acquainted with the brightest phases of yourself. You can put
+into their lives such sunny memories as no after bitterness can
+efface; such sunny memories as shall wreathe you with a glory in the
+coming years when your head is laid low in the grave. O my friend, I
+can almost see the light of the celestial city shining through that
+ten dollars,--and you talk about a silk cape!
+
+Mind, I counsel no penuriousness, no mean retrenchment for
+accumulation, no domestic pillage, no mere selfish gratification. I
+suggest intelligent and high-minded economy for the purpose of liberal
+expenditure. I would take in sail where only sensualism and
+ostentation blow; but I would spread every rag of canvas to catch the
+smallest breath of an enlarged and Christian happiness. I would cease
+to pinch the angel, that the beast may wax fat. I would keep the beast
+under, that the angel may have room.
+
+Do you say that the picture is fanciful? Everything is fanciful till
+it is put in practice. Fancy is often but the foreshadow of a coming
+fact.
+
+If some such course as this is not possible, if we must inevitably and
+perpetually move on in the same rut in which we move now, then, in a
+thousand and a thousand cases, life seems to me not worth the living.
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+
+It is not simply that women are chained to a body of death. Men are
+equally victims. The world is kept back from its goal. One member
+cannot suffer without involving all the members in its suffering.
+
+Marriage, in its truest type, is love spiritualizing life; the union
+of the mightiest and subtlest forces working the noblest results.
+Marriage in its commonest manifestations is a clumsy mechanical
+contrivance. Marriage is too often mirage,--far off, in books, in
+dreams, lovely and divine; approached, it resolves itself into washing
+and ironing and cooking and nursing and house-cleaning and making and
+mending and long-suffering from New Year to Christmas and from
+Christmas on to New Year, to the great majority of all the women I
+know anything about. I do not mean simply the dull, uninteresting
+women, of whom there are really not many, but the bright and
+intellectual, capable of adorning any station, of whom there are more
+than you think, because, buried under household ruins, you scarcely
+catch a glimpse of what they long to be and what they might be. And
+they do not like it. Volumes may be written and spoken, extolling the
+tidy kitchens, the trim wives, the snowy table-cloths, and telling us
+how beautiful a woman is when doing her house-work; and a few foolish
+women will be found to accept it all and work the harder. Hundreds of
+years ago, when a person I know was inconceivably young, and found
+great delight in hanging about the kitchen during the seed-time and
+harvest of pies and preserves, to glean up the remnants of mince-meat
+and various mixtures left in the pans, a tiny relative much more acute
+than he used to practise upon his approbativeness by soliloquizing to
+himself while both their spoons were clattering around the sides of
+the tin pan with frantic rapidity, "Now Peggoty isn't going away, and
+let me have the rest. Peggoty is going to stay and eat it all up." The
+result was that Peggoty used immediately to walk off and leave his
+cormorant kinsman to the undivided booty. Just about as astute as the
+kinsman, and just about as silly as Peggoty, are the men who prepare
+and the women who suck the thin pap of our milk-and-water novels and
+newspapers. But the latter are growing fewer and fewer every day. Some
+women have a natural taste for cooking. Some women are specially
+skilled in sewing. Some women are born with a broom in their hands,
+and some find the sick-room their peculiar paradise: but I never saw
+or heard of any woman who had a natural fondness for being worked and
+worried from morning till night, hurrying from pillar to post, and
+conscious all the time that things were left in an unfinished state,
+from sheer want of time to complete them properly. Within a week, a
+woman, a model housekeeper, devoted to her family,--a woman who never
+wrote a word for print, nor ever addressed so much as a female meeting
+of any kind, a woman whose husband looks upon strong-mindedness as a
+species of leprosy, to be lamented rather than denounced, but at any
+cost kept from spreading,--has told me that, if it were not for the
+talk it would make, she would shut up her house, take her whole
+family, and go to a hotel to board from June to October, so worn and
+wearied is she with her household duties. Yet her family consists of
+only three members, and her husband is full of loving-kindness and
+consideration. Another woman, equally accomplished in all domestic
+arts and graces, and equally happy in her conjugal relations, once
+told me that she has seen from her window a carriage of friends coming
+up the road to her house, and has been forced to wipe away the tears
+before she could go to the door to greet them; so utterly disheartened
+was she at the prospect of still further weight upon her already
+overburdened shoulders. Yet she was no misanthrope, no nun. She loved
+society, and was fitted to shine in it; but the inexorable,
+unremitting labor of her household was such, that it was impossible
+for her to receive from society the solace which it ought to give and
+which it has to give. So heavily pressed the yoke, that a party of
+friends was no pleasure to look forward to, but only more cake to be
+made, more meat to be roasted, more sheets to be washed.
+
+Women are accounted the weaker sex; but there is no comparison to be
+made between the labor of the weaker and the stronger. Of fathers of
+families and mothers of families, the real wear and tear of life comes
+on the latter. If there is anxiety as to a sufficiency of support, the
+mother shares it equally with the father, and feels it none the less
+for not being able to contribute directly to the supply of the
+deficiency; forced, passive endurance of an evil is quite as difficult
+a virtue as unsuccessful struggle against it. If there is no anxiety
+in that direction, the occupations of men can scarcely give them any
+hint of the peculiar perplexing, depressing, irritating nature of a
+woman's ordinary household duties. Pamphleteers exhort women to hush
+up the discords, drive away the clouds, and have only smiles and
+sunshine for the husband coming home wearied with his day's labor.
+They would be employing themselves to much better advantage, if they
+would enjoin him to bring home smiles and sunshine for his wife. She
+is the one that pre-eminently needs strength and soothing and
+consolation. She needs a warm heart to lean on, a strong arm, and a
+steady hand to lift her out of the sloughs in which she is ready to
+sink, and set her on the high places where birds sing and flowers
+bloom and breezes blow. The husband's work may be absorbing and
+exhaustive, but a fundamental difference lies in the simple fact, that
+a man has constant and certain change of scene, and a woman has not. A
+man goes out to his work and comes in to his meals. Two or three times
+a day, sometimes all the evening, always at night and on Sunday, he is
+away from his business and his place of business. The day may be long
+or short, but there is an end to it. A woman is on the spot all the
+time, and her cares never cease. She eats and drinks, she goes out and
+comes in, she lies down and rises up, tethered to one stone. It does
+not seem to amount to much, that a man closes his shop and goes home;
+that he unyokes his oxen, ties up his cows, and sits down on the
+door-step: but let the merchant, year after year, eat and sleep in his
+counting-room, the schoolmaster in his school-room, the shoemaker over
+his lapstone, the blacksmith by his anvil, the minister in his study,
+the lawyer in his chambers, with only as frequent variations as a
+housekeeper's visiting and tea-drinkings give her, and I think he
+would presently learn that he needs not to possess powers acute enough
+to divide a hair 'twixt north and northwest side, in order to
+distinguish the difference. A distance of half a mile, or even a
+quarter of a mile, breaks off all the little cords that have been
+compressing a man's veins, and lets the blood rush through them with
+force and freedom. It is change of scene, change of persons, change of
+atmosphere, and a consequent change of a man's own self. He is made
+over new.
+
+But his wife moils on in the same place. Dark care sits behind her at
+breakfast and dinner and supper. The walls are festooned with her
+cares. The floors are covered with them as thick as the dust in the
+Interpreter's house. _He_ shakes off the dust from his feet and goes
+home: _her_ home is in the dust. What wonder that it strangles and
+suffocates her?
+
+Moreover, a man's occupation has uniformity, or rather unity. His path
+lies in one line; sometimes he has only to walk mechanically along it.
+Rather stupid, but not wearing work; for generally if he had been a
+man upon whom it would have worn he would have done something else:
+always he has power to bring everything to bear on his business. If it
+is mental labor, he has the opportunity of solitude, or only such
+association as assists. His helpers, and all with whom he is
+concerned, are mature, intelligent, trained, and often ambitious and
+self-respectful and courteous. He can set his fulcrum close to the
+weight, and all he has to do is to bear down on the lever.
+
+The wife's assistants, if she has any, are unspeakably in the rough,
+and little children make all her schemes "gang a-gley." The incautious
+slam of a door will shatter the best-laid plans, and the stubbing of a
+chubby toe sinks her morning deep into the midday. Children are to a
+man amusement, delight, juvenescence, a truthful rendering of the old
+myth, that wicked kings were wont to derive a ghoul-like strength by
+transfusion of the blood of infants. The father has them for a little
+while. He frolics with them. He rejoices over them. They are beautiful
+and charming. He is new to them, and they are new to him, and by the
+time the novelty is over it is the hour for them to go to bed. He
+feels rested and refreshed for his contact with them. They present
+strong contrasts to the world he deals with all day. Their
+transparency shines sweetly against its opacity. Even their little
+wants and vanities and bickerings are to him only interesting
+developments of human nature. His power is pleased with their
+dependence; his pride flatters itself with their future; his
+tenderness softens to their clinging; his earthliness cleaves away
+before their innocence, and he thinks his quiver can never be too full
+of them.
+
+This is the poetry, and he reads it with great delight; but there is a
+prose department, and that comes to the mother. She has had the
+cherubs all day, and she knows that the trail of the serpent is over
+them all. She sees the angel, in their souls as well as he, often
+better; but she sees too the mark of the beast on their
+forehead,--which he seldom discovers. His playthings are her
+stumbling-blocks. The constancy of her presence forbids novelty, and
+throws her upon her inventive powers for resources. All their
+weariness and fretfulness and tumbles and aches are poured into her
+lap. She has no division of labor, no concentration of forces; no five
+or ten hours devoted to housework, and two or three to her children,
+taking them into her heart to do good like a medicine. They patter
+through every hour to stay her from doing with her might any of the
+many things which her hands find to do. Nothing keeps limits;
+everything laps over. God has given her a love so inexhaustible, that,
+notwithstanding the washings and watchings, the sewing and dressing
+which children necessitate, notwithstanding the care, the check, the
+pull-back, the weariness, the heartsickness, which they occasion, the
+"little hindering things" are--my pen is not wont to be timid, but it
+shrinks from attempting to say what little ones are to a mother. But
+divine arrangement does not prevent human drawback; and looking not at
+inward solace, but outward business, it remains true that the business
+of providing for the wants of a family is not of that smooth,
+uncreaking nature to the mother that it is to the father. Let a man
+take two or three little children--two or three? Let him take one!--of
+one, two, three, or four years of age, to his shop, or stall, or
+office, and take care of him all the time for a week, and he will see
+what I mean.
+
+I do not say that a man's work may not be harder for an hour, or five
+or ten hours, more exhaustive of mental and vital power, more
+exclusive of all diversions than his wife's for the same time. It may
+or may not be; quite as often the latter as the former: but I do say
+that severe prearranged, intermittent labor wears less upon the
+temper, the nerves, and the spirits, that is, upon body and soul, than
+lighter, confused, unintermitting labor. Work that enlists the
+energies and the enthusiasm will weary, but the weariness itself is
+welcome, and brings with it a satisfaction,--the pleasant sense of
+something accomplished. The multiplicity of a woman's labors distracts
+as well as wearies, and each one is so petty that she has scarcely
+anything to look back on. Not one of them is great enough to brace and
+stimulate, and all together they form a multitudinous heap, and not a
+mountain. It is a round of endless detail; little, insignificant,
+provoking items that she gets no credit for doing, but fatal discredit
+for leaving undone. Nobody notices that things are as they should be;
+but if things are not as they should be, it were better for her that a
+millstone were hanged about her neck, &c.!
+
+In a community, you find the husbands devoted to different pursuits.
+Baker, miller, farmer, advocate, clerk,--each one has a peculiar
+calling for which he is supposed to have a special taste, fitness, or
+motive, perhaps all; but their wives have no room for choice. Whether
+they have a gift of it or not, they have the same routine of baking
+and brewing and house-cleaning. Suppose the woman does not like it?
+The supposition is not an impossible, not even an unnatural one.
+Woman's-sphere writers confound distinctions; they seem to think that
+woman was not created in the garden in native honor clad like man, but
+rather, like the turtle, with her house on her back, and that a modern
+American house and its belongings; so that if she dislikes any of the
+conclusions which such a house premises, it is as unnatural and
+unwomanly as if she should be coarse or cruel. Womanliness, in their
+vocabulary, implies fondness of and pleasure in domestic drudgery.
+Their ideal woman is enamored of wash-tubs and broom-handles and
+frying-pans. But modern housekeeping is no more woman's sphere than
+farming is man's sphere, nor so much. If you go back far enough, you
+will find that man was directly and divinely ordained to that very
+pursuit. The Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of
+Eden, _to dress it and to keep it_. His sphere was expressly marked
+out. He was to be a gardener, a farmer, a tiller of the soil. What of
+the woman? "The Lord God said, It is not good _that the man should be
+alone_: I will make him an help meet for him." What kind of help was
+meant is here implied, but is more clearly discovered further on by
+Adam's own interpretation: "The woman whom thou gavest _to be with
+me_." She was made for society, to be company for him; to talk and
+laugh and cheer and keep him from being lonesome. Not a word about
+housekeeping. Adam is concerned to put the very best face on the
+matter, and he does not say, "the woman whom thou gavest to train up
+the vines, to pare the apples, to stone the raisins, to gather the
+currants, to press the grapes, to preserve the peaches," or for any
+other purposes of an Eden household. It is simply "thou gavest _to be
+with me_." Whatever may have come in afterwards to modify the original
+arrangement, came for "the hardness of your hearts." But here, before
+the fall, is seen, in all its beauty and simplicity, the original
+plan. You have the whole "woman question" in a nutshell. Yet people
+who are fond of quoting the Bible manage to skip this. They go back to
+the curse, "thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over
+thee," and there they stop. Their nature is nature accursed, and even
+that is silent on the point of menial service: they do not go back to
+nature innocent, where it is excluded by implication. But if the Bible
+is proof on one side, it is proof on the other. If the husband is made
+to be the head of the woman, he is also made to be her serving-man.
+Nay, even the silence of the curse is more golden than the speech of
+man, for the same allotment of penalty which lays upon her the sorrow
+of conception lays upon him the sorrow of toil: so that every man
+whose wife is obliged to eat bread in the sweat of her brow is out of
+his sphere, and has failed of his "mission." He lays upon the
+shoulders of a weak woman his own burden as well as hers. And every
+man who is not a farmer is out of his sphere, and should put himself
+into it before he casts a single stone at any woman; and he is as much
+more guilty as his sphere is more accurately defined.
+
+So much for the revelation of the word; now for the revelation of
+nature.
+
+Naturally, I suppose women's tastes are not any more likely to be
+uniform than men's tastes. The narrow range of their lives has
+undoubtedly tended to keep them down towards one standard, but every
+new-born child is a new protest of nature,--a new outburst of
+individuality against monotony, so that the work is really never done,
+and never comes anywhere near being so far done as that all women, or
+the majority of women, should choose the life of a housekeeper. As far
+as my observation goes, the best women, the brightest women, the
+noblest women, are the very ones to whom it is most irksome. I do not
+mean housekeeping with well-trained servants, for that is general
+enough to admit a "brother near the throne"; but that, alas! is almost
+unknown in the world wherein _I_ have lived; and a woman who is
+satisfied with the small cares, the small economies, the small
+interests, the constant contemplation of small things which many a
+household demands, is a very small sort of woman. I make the assertion
+both as an inference and an observation. A noble discontent--not a
+peevish complaining, but an inward and spiritual protest--is a woman's
+safeguard against the deterioration which such a life threatens, and
+her proof of capacity and her note of preparation for a higher. Such a
+woman does not do her work less well, but she rises ever superior to
+her work. I know such women.
+
+You talk about the mother-instinct. The mother-instinct makes a mother
+love her children, but it does not make her love to destroy herself
+with unremitting toil for them. It makes her do it, but it does not
+make her love to do it. And because, in her great love, she will do it
+when the necessity is laid upon her,--a wicked perversion of God's
+good gift often lays the necessity upon her when God does not. The
+mother-instinct in woman corresponds to the father-instinct in man;
+and the wifely love to the husbandly love. Each is strong enough to
+bear joyfully all that God lays upon it, and patiently much that he
+does not lay and never intended to be laid. But he who counts upon
+that strength, for the purpose of abusing it, is guilty of a high
+crime against humanity. Each sex has the same uniformity in its loves,
+and would undoubtedly have the same variety in its tastes if it were
+not hindered. Men do not themselves believe so much as they profess in
+this menial gravitation. If they did, they would never lecture women
+so much about it. The very frenzy and frequency of their exhortations
+are suspicious. They join together what God has not joined. They claim
+identity where he has established diversity. Women are continually and
+publicly admonished of their household obligations, but who ever heard
+an assembly of men admonished of theirs? Yet men are as often derelict
+in furnishing provision for their families as women are lax in its
+administration. And while the husband may do his part in the way which
+seems good in his own eyes, the wife must do hers in only one way,
+whether it seem good or bad. The wise woman must tread "the old dull
+round of things" as well as the foolish woman, and then she is so
+footsore that she cannot enter upon that higher path which is open
+only to her, and shut to the foolish woman. The low necessities usurp
+the throne of the lofty possibilities. Oh! for this what tender
+consideration should she not receive! Confined to the uninteresting
+routine of domestic drudgery, while her tastes incline and her powers
+fit her for other things, no admiration is too deep, no sympathy too
+warm. The gentlest and most thoughtful attention is her smallest due.
+Let men fancy for a moment that at marriage they must give up the law,
+the pulpit, the machine-shop, the farm, in which they excel, and which
+is adequate to purse and pleasure, and turn hod-carrier or
+road-mender, and they may have a glimpse of the sacrifice which many a
+gifted woman has made. If she made it unwittingly, marrying before she
+knew her powers, or the life which marriage involves, a generous pity
+and love will smooth her path as much as may be, and press back the
+unexpected thorns. If she made it wittingly, choosing, in her strong
+love, to lay upon the altar her pleasant things, so much the more will
+a generous man constrain her to forget, in the fervor and efficacy of
+his love, the fruit which once her soul longed for. If he cannot
+prevent the sacrifice, he can cause that it shall not have been made
+in vain.
+
+Again, a man receives immediate and definite results from his work. He
+has salary or wages,--so much a day, a year, a job. He is Lord High
+Chancellor of the Exchequer and irresponsible. His wife gets no money
+for her work. She has no funds under her own control, no resources of
+which she is mistress. She must draw supplies from her husband, and
+often with much outlay of ingenuity. Some men dole out money to their
+wives as if it were a gift, a charity, something to which the latter
+have no right, but which they must receive as a favor, and for which
+they must be thankful. They act as if their wives were trying to
+plunder them. Now a man has no more right to his earnings than his
+wife has. They belong to her just as much as to him. There is a
+mischievous popular opinion that the husband is the producer and the
+wife the consumer. In point of fact, the wife is just as much a
+producer as the husband. Her part in the concern is just as important
+as his. She earns it as truly, and has just as strong a claim and just
+as much a right to it as he; if possible she has more, for she ought
+to receive some compensation for the gap that yawns between work and
+wages. It is much more satisfactory to receive the latter as a direct
+result of the former, than as a kind of alms. Many a woman does as
+much to build up her husband's prosperity as he does himself. Many a
+woman saves him from failure and disgrace. And, as a general rule, the
+fate and fortunes of the family lie in her hands as much as in his.
+What absurdity to _pay_ him his _wages_ and to _give_ her money to go
+shopping with!
+
+A woman who went around to make a collection for a small local
+charity, told me that she could not help noticing the difference
+between the married and the unmarried women. The latter took out their
+purses on the spot and gave their mite or mint without hesitation. The
+former parleyed and would see about it, gave rather uncertainly, and
+must speak to Edward before they could decide. Now it may well be that
+a woman who has only her own self to provide for can give more
+liberally than one upon whose purse come the innumerable requisitions
+of a family. The mother may be forced to make many sacrifices, and yet
+be so blessed in the making that there shall be no sacrifice. The
+pleasure shall overbalance the pain. But there is no reason why a
+married woman should hesitate, or be embarrassed, or consult Edward as
+to the expenditure of a dime or a dollar, any more than an unmarried
+one. There may be more calls on the purse, but she ought to be
+mistress of it. She ought to know her husband's circumstances well
+enough to know what she can afford to give away, and she ought to be
+as free to use her judgment as he is to use his. In any unusual
+emergency, each will wish to consult the other; but he does not think
+of asking her as to the disposal of every chance quarter of a dollar,
+neither should she think of asking him. If circumstances make it
+necessary to sail close to the wind, sail close to the wind; but let
+both be in the same boat.
+
+All this miserable and humiliating halting arises from the miserable
+and humiliating notion that the husband is the power and the wife the
+weight. It comes out, more convenient in substance, but just as
+objectionable in shape, in the wife's "allowance." The husband
+_allows_ her so much a year for her expenses. If it means simply that
+so much is set aside for that purpose, very well; only it would sound
+rather strange to say that she allows him so much to carry on his
+business. A woman does not wish to be conversant with the details of
+her husband's shop any more than he wishes to understand the details
+of her kitchen: but he desires to know enough of that to be sure of
+prompt, sufficient, and agreeable meals, and a tidy house, at a cost
+within his means. So she should know with sufficient accuracy the
+extent and sources of their income to be able to arrange her ordinary
+disbursements without constant recurrence to him. He does not take his
+dinner as a boon from her. He feels under no obligations for it. He
+does not consider himself on his good behavior out of gratitude. It is
+a regular institution, a blessing entirely common to both, and excites
+no emotion. So should her money be,--as regularly and mechanically
+supplied as the dinner, exciting no more comment and needing no more
+argument. Whether it is kept in her pocket or his may be of small
+moment; but as she does not lock up the dinner in the cupboard, and
+then stand at the door and dole it out to him by the plateful, but
+sets it on the table for him to help himself: so it is better, more
+pacific, that he should deposit the money in an equally neutral and
+accessible locality.
+
+I portray to myself the flutter which such a proposition would raise
+in many marital bosoms; would that they might be soothed. It is well
+known among farmers that hens will not eat so much if you set a
+measure of corn where they can pick whenever they choose, as they will
+if you only fling down a handful now and then, and keep them
+continually half starved. At the same time they will be in better
+condition. So, looking at the matter from the very lowest stand-point,
+a woman who has free access to the money will not be half so likely to
+lavish it as the woman who is put off with scanty and infrequent sums.
+She who knows how much there is to spend will almost invariably keep
+within the limits. If she does not know, her imagination will be very
+likely to magnify the fountain, and if but meagre supplies are
+forthcoming, she will attribute it to niggardliness, and will consider
+everything that can be got from her husband as legal plunder; and with
+under-ground pipes and above-ground trenches it shall go hard but she
+will drain him tolerably dry. Then he will inveigh against her
+extravagance, and so not only lose his money, but his temper, his
+calmness, and his complacency, all the while blaming her when the
+fault is chiefly his own. If he had but frankly acquainted her with
+the main facts; if he had but permitted her to look in and see what
+was the capacity of the reservoir, instead of leaving her to sit under
+the walls, knowing nothing of its resources but what she could learn
+from the occasional spouting of a single small pipe, he would have
+avoided all the trouble. It is so rarely that a wife will recklessly
+transcend her reasonable income, that I do not think it worth while to
+suggest any provision against the evil. It is an abnormal and sporadic
+case, to be treated physiologically rather than philosophically. The
+man has unfortunately allied himself to a mad woman, or he has found
+to his regret that there is nothing more fulsome than a she-fool.
+
+It irks me to say these things. It is almost a profanation to connect
+such cold-blooded business matters with a relation which is supposed
+to involve, and which should involve, the highest, the purest, the
+fairest traits of human life. In true marriage there is indeed no need
+of these considerations. A complete and perfect marriage breaks down
+all barriers, and fuses each separate interest into one. In such there
+is no mine and thine, but unity and identity. For perfect marriages I
+do not write; but for the imperfect, and the marriages not yet
+contracted. Let us have another standard set up, another
+starting-point established, another goal fixed, that we may run
+without weariness, and walk without faintness, and be crowned at last
+with a laurel worth the wearing. A ten years' wife once said to a
+young lady who was spending money rather freely,--money which was,
+however, her own, for which she had to depend upon no one,--"You ought
+to lay up something for yourself. You should have a little money--if
+only five hundred dollars, it will be better than nothing--in the
+bank, so that when you are married you will have something of your own
+to go to, and not have to depend entirely upon your husband. You will
+be a great deal happier to have something that you can do what you
+choose with, and not feel that you must account for every cent, and
+make it go as far as possible." But it seems to me that this is _felo
+de se_. Doubtless, people often find that they have married the wrong
+person; but it is supposed to be a mistake, and not a walking into the
+ditch with eyes open. If a girl knows, or even suspects, or entertains
+the possibility beforehand, that she is going to marry a man from whom
+it is necessary to provide for herself a pecuniary refuge, why does
+she marry him at all? If she deliberately unites herself to one who
+she believes, or even fears, will not receive her as a trust from God,
+bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, she forfeits all sympathy and
+pity, whatever may befall her. If the husband whom she is to take
+threatens to be greedy, or unsympathizing, or selfish, or stolid, her
+best defence against him is, not to put money in a bank, but to keep
+herself out of his reach. It is impossible to conceive of happiness in
+marriage, where the financial wheels do not run--I will not say
+smoothly, but evenly. The road may be rough, roundabout, and steep,
+without precluding wholesome and hearty happiness; but if one wheel
+drags while the other turns, if one goes back while the other goes
+forward, if for any reason the two do not move by parallel lines in
+the same direction, the whole carriage is bewitched, the whole journey
+is embittered, the whole object is baffled.
+
+It is marvellous to see the insensibility with which men manage these
+delicate matters. It is impossible for a man to be too scrupulous, too
+chivalrous, too refined, in his bearing towards his wife. Her
+dependence should be the strongest appeal to his manhood. The very act
+of receiving money from him puts her in a position so equivocal, that
+the utmost affection and attention should be brought into play to
+reassure her. The velvet touch of love should disguise the iron hand
+of business. A sensitive woman is fully enough alive to her relations.
+There is need that every gentle and tender courtesy should assure and
+convince her that the money which she costs is a pleasure and a
+privilege. Her delicacy, her self-respect, her confidence in his
+appreciation, are the strongest ties that can bind her to himself. Let
+them but be sundered, and he has no longer any hold on happiness, any
+safeguard against discord. Let chivalry be forgotten, let
+sensitiveness be violated, let money intrude into the domain of love,
+and the spell is broken. Your stately silver urn is become an iron
+kettle.
+
+Yet men will deliberately, in the presence of their wives, _to_ their
+wives, groan over the cost of living. They do not mean extravagant
+purchases of silk and lace and velvet, which might be a wife's fault
+or thoughtlessness, and furnish an excuse for rebuke; but the
+butcher's bill, and the grocer's bill, and the joiner's bill. Man,
+when a woman is married, do you think she loses all personal feeling?
+Do you think your glum look over the expenses of housekeeping is a
+fulfilment of your promise to love and cherish? Is it calculated to
+retain and increase her tenderness for you? Does it bring sunshine and
+lighten toil, and bless her with knightly grace? Do you not know that
+it is only a way of regretting that you married her? It is a way of
+saying that you did not count the cost. You may not present it to
+yourself in that light, but in that light you present it to her. And
+do you think it is a pleasant thing to her? You go out to your shop,
+or sit down to your newspaper, and forget all about it. She sits down
+to her sewing, or stands over her cooking-stove, and meditates upon it
+with an indescribable pain. I do not say that every kind of uneasiness
+regarding expense is or ought to be thus construed. There may be an
+uneasiness springing directly from love. A strong and great-hearted
+affection frets that it cannot minister the beauty and the comfort
+which it longs to do, or defend against the emergencies which a future
+may bring. But this uneasiness is rarely if ever mistaken. Love can
+usually find a way to soothe the sorrows of love, and a wife's hand
+can almost always smooth out the wrinkles from the brow which is
+corrugated only for her. The complaint which I mean is of quite
+another character. Women know it, if men do not;--the women who have
+suffered from it, for it is pleasant to think that there are women to
+whose experience every such sensation is entirely foreign. These very
+men who complain because it costs so much to live will lose by bad
+debts more than their wives spend. They will, by sheer negligence, by
+a selfish reluctance to present a bill to a disagreeable person, by a
+cowardly fear lest insisting on what is due should alienate a
+customer, by culpable mismanagement of business, by indorsing a note,
+or lending money, through mere want of courage to say "No," or of
+shrewdness to detect dishonesty or incapacity, lose money enough to
+foot up half a dozen bills. They will waste money in cigars, in
+oyster-suppers, in riding when walking would be better for them, in
+keeping a horse which "eats his head off," in buying luxuries which
+they would be better off without, in sending packages and luggage by
+express, rather than have the trouble of taking them themselves, in
+numberless small items of which they make no account, but of which the
+bills make great account. If one might judge from the newspapers,
+extravagance is a peculiarity of women. So far as my observation goes,
+the extravagance of women is not for a moment to be compared with the
+extravagance of men.[3] A man is perversely, persistently, and with
+malice aforethought, extravagant. He is extravagant in spite of
+admonition and remonstrance. Where his personal comfort or interest is
+concerned, he scorns a sacrifice. He laughs at the suggestion that
+such a little thing makes any difference one way or another. He has
+not even the idea of economy. He does not know what the word means. He
+does not know the thing when he sees it. Women take to it naturally. A
+certain innate sense of harmony keeps them from being wasteful. Their
+extravagance is the exception, not the rule. They are willing to incur
+self-denial. They do not scorn to take thought and trouble, and be put
+to inconvenience, for the sake of saving money. The greater animalism
+of man also comes out here in full force. If sacrifice must be, a
+woman will sacrifice her comforts before her taste. The man will let
+his tastes go, and keep his comforts, and call it good sense. A
+woman's extravagance is to some purpose. A man's to none. She buys
+many dresses, but she gives her old ones away, or cuts them over for
+the children, and works dextrously. A man buys and destroys. Look at
+the manner in which men manage the national housekeeping, and see
+whether it is men or women who are extravagant. Look at the clerkships
+in the departments, look at members of Congress browsing among
+government supplies, look at army and navy; walk through a camp: see
+the barrels of good food thrown away, see the wood wasted, see the
+tools wantonly destroyed. I think the wives of the soldiers could
+support themselves comfortably on the fragments of the soldiers'
+feasts. Nobody complains. A great nation must not look too closely
+after the pennies. A great army always makes great waste, say the
+newspapers that exhort women against extravagance, as if it were as
+much a law of nature as gravitation. Why not say housekeeping is
+always wasteful, and fall back on that as a primal law of nature also?
+Because housekeeping is not always wasteful, you say. Precisely.
+Housekeeping is nearly always economically conducted, and your
+animadversions amount just to this: because women are generally
+prudent, they are to be chided for all shortcomings. But men are
+always wasteful, therefore they must be let alone. Only be universally
+bad, and you shall be as unmolested as if you were good. You say that
+it is easier to be economical in a family than in an army. Perhaps so;
+but if the soldiers, instead of being men, were women, do you for a
+moment imagine that there would be any such waste? Let all other
+circumstances be unchanged. Let all the cost come upon the government
+just as it does. Let all provisions be furnished in the same abundance
+as now, and I do not believe there would be much more waste than there
+is in average families. I do not believe you could force women at the
+point of the bayonet to such reckless prodigality as men indulge in.
+It is against their nature. It hurts them. It violates God's law,
+written in their hearts. They would also be too conscientious to do
+it. They would not consider the fact that "Uncle Sam foots the bills"
+a reason why a saw should be tossed aside on the first symptom of
+dulness, and a new one bought. They would not throw away a half loaf
+because there were plenty of whole ones, but keep it and steam it. And
+not only would there be a great deal less waste, but there would be a
+great deal better supply. If women had charge of the commissariat, I
+do not believe there would have been one half so much friction as
+there has been. Hungry regiments would not get to the end of a long
+march and find nothing to eat. Sick soldiers would not be expected to
+recover health from salt pork and muddy coffee. Experience or no
+experience, red tape or no tape, women would have managed to bring
+hungry mouths and hot soups together, and to furnish delicate food for
+delicate health. They would not only have supplied the soldiers at
+less cost to government, but the less cost would have produced a
+larger bill of fare. How did the English army fare till Florence
+Nightingale came by and knocked their granary doors open? That my
+remarks are not mere theory, or rather that my theory is founded on
+truth, is abundantly proved by a statement printed in the North
+American Review for January, 1864, long after my words were written.
+It is from an article on the Sanitary Commission.
+
+        [3] The discussions which, since this was written, have
+        arisen concerning expenditure and extravagance, in
+        connection with the women's pledge against the purchase of
+        foreign goods, only increase the strength of my position.
+        But let it be remembered, that I speak not for an emergency,
+        but for the conduct of life.
+
+"At this moment, the only region in the loyal States that is
+definitely out of the circle is Missouri. The rest of our loyal
+territory is all embraced within one ring of method and federality.
+This is chiefly due to the wonderful spirit of nationality that beats
+in the breasts of American women. They, even more than the men of the
+country, from their utter withdrawal from partisan strifes and local
+politics, have felt the assault upon the life of the nation in its
+true national import. They are infinitely less _State-ish_, and more
+national in their pride and in their sympathies. They see the war in
+its broad, impersonal outlines; and while their particular and special
+affections are keener than men's, their general humanity and tender
+sensibility for unseen and distant sufferings is stronger and more
+constant.
+
+"The women of the country, who are the actual creators, by the labor
+of their fingers, of the chief supplies and comforts needed by the
+soldiers, have been the first to understand, appreciate, and
+co-operate with the Sanitary Commission. It is due to the sagacity and
+zeal with which they have entered into the work, that the system of
+supplies, organized by the extraordinary genius of Mr. Olmstead, has
+become so broadly and nationally extended, and that, with Milwaukee,
+Chicago, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Louisville, Pittsburg, Philadelphia,
+New York, Brooklyn, New Haven, Hartford, Providence, Boston, Portland,
+and Concord for centres, there should be at least fifteen thousand
+Soldiers' Aid Societies, all under the control of women, combined and
+united in a common work,--of supplying, through the United States
+Sanitary Commission, the wants of the sick and wounded in the great
+Federal army.
+
+"The skill, zeal, business qualities, and patient and persistent
+devotion exhibited by those women who manage the truly vast operations
+of the several chief centres of supply, at Chicago, Boston, Cleveland,
+Philadelphia, Pittsburg, and New York, have unfolded a new page in the
+history of the aptitudes and capacities of women. To receive,
+acknowledge, sort, arrange, mark, repack, store, hold ready for
+shipment, procure transportation for, and send forward at sudden call,
+the many thousand boxes of hospital stores which, at the order of the
+General Secretary at Washington, have been for the past two years and
+a half forwarded at various times by the 'Women's Central' at New
+York, the Soldiers' Aid Society of Northern Ohio, at Cleveland, the
+Branches at Cincinnati and at Philadelphia, or the Northwestern Branch
+at Chicago, has required business talents of the highest order. A
+correspondence demanding infinite tact, promptness, and method has
+been carried on with their local tributaries, by the women from these
+centres, with a ceaseless ardor, to which the Commission owes a very
+large share of its success, and the nation no small part of the
+sustained usefulness and generous alacrity of its own patriotic
+impulses.
+
+"To collect funds (for the supply branches have usually raised their
+own funds from the immediate communities in which they have been
+situated) has often tasked their ingenuity to the utmost. In Chicago,
+for instance, the Branch has lately held a fair of colossal
+proportions, to which the whole Northwest was invited to send
+supplies, and to come in mass! On the 26th of October last, when it
+opened, a procession of three miles in length, composed of wagon-loads
+of supplies, and of people in various ways interested, paraded through
+the streets of Chicago; the stores being closed, and the day given up
+to patriotic sympathies. For fourteen days the fair lasted, and every
+day brought reinforcements of supplies, and of people and purchasers.
+The country people, from hundreds of miles about, sent in upon the
+railroads all the various products of their farms, mills, and hands.
+Those who had nothing else sent the poultry from their barnyards; the
+ox, or bull, or calf, from the stall; the title-deed of a few acres of
+land; so many bushels of grain, or potatoes, or onions. Loads of hay,
+even, were sent in from ten or a dozen miles out, and sold at once in
+the hay-market. On the roads entering the city were seen rickety and
+lumbering wagons, made of poles, loaded with mixed freight,--a few
+cabbages, a bundle of socks, a coop of tame ducks, a few barrels of
+turnips, a pot of butter, and a bag of beans,--with the proud and
+humane farmer driving the team, his wife behind in charge of the baby,
+while two or three little children contended with the boxes and
+barrels and bundles for room to sit or lie. Such were the evidences of
+devotion and self-sacrificing zeal the Northwestern farmers gave, as
+in their long trains of wagons they trundled into Chicago, from twenty
+and thirty miles' distance, and unloaded their contents at the doors
+of the Northwestern Fairs, for the benefit of the United States
+Sanitary Commission. The mechanics and artisans of the towns and
+cities were not behind the farmers. Each manufacturer sent his best
+piano, plough, threshing-machine, or sewing-machine. Every form of
+agricultural implement, and every product of mechanical skill, was
+represented. From the watchmaker's jewelry to horseshoes and harness;
+from lace, cloth, cotton and linen, to iron and steel; from wooden and
+waxen and earthen ware, to butter and cheese, bacon and beef;--nothing
+came amiss, and nothing failed to come, and the ordering of all this
+was in the hands of women. They fed in the restaurant, under 'the
+Fair,' at fifty cents a meal--fifteen hundred mouths a day, for a
+fortnight--from food furnished, cooked, and served by the women of
+Chicago; and so orderly and convenient, so practical and wise were the
+arrangements, that, day by day, they had just what they had ordered
+and what they counted on,--always enough, and never too much. They
+divided the houses of the town, and levied on No. 16 A Street, for
+five turkeys, on Monday; No. 37 B Street, for twelve apple-pies, on
+Tuesday; No. 49 C Street, for forty pounds of roast beef, on
+Wednesday; No. 23 D Street was to furnish so much pepper on Thursday;
+No. 33 E Street, so much salt on Friday. In short, every preparation
+was made in advance, at the least inconvenience possible to the
+people, to distribute in the most equal manner the welcome burden of
+feeding the visitors, at the fair, at the expense of the good people
+of Chicago, but for the pecuniary benefit of the Sanitary Commission.
+Hundreds of lovely young girls, in simple uniforms, took their places
+as waiters behind the vast array of tables, and everybody was as well
+served as at a first-class hotel, at a less expense to himself, and
+with a great profit to the fair. Fifty thousand dollars, it is said,
+will be the least net return of this gigantic fair to the treasury of
+the Branch at Chicago. It is universally conceded that to Mrs.
+Livermore and Mrs. Hoge, old and tried friends of the soldier and of
+the Sanitary Commission, and its ever active agents, are due the
+planning, management, and success of this truly American exploit. What
+is the value of the money thus raised, important as it is, when
+compared with the worth of the spirit manifested, the loyalty
+exhibited, the patriotism stimulated, the example set, the prodigious
+tide of national devotion put in motion! How can rebellion hope to
+succeed in the face of such demonstrations as the Northwestern Fair?
+They are bloodless battles, equal in significance and results to
+Vicksburg and Gettysburg, to New Orleans and Newbern."
+
+Men, have you read this paragraph? Please to read it again! Think of
+all your inveighing against female extravagance and incapacity, and
+read it yet again. Put on sackcloth and ashes, and read it aloud to
+your wife, to your mother, to your daughter, to your sister, to your
+grandmother, to your aunt, to your niece, to your mother-in-law, and
+all your relatives-in-law, and to every woman who suffers your
+presence, and then lay your hand on your mouth, and your mouth in the
+dust, and cry, "Woe is me! for I am undone." Inexperience? Had Mrs.
+Hoge and Mrs. Livermore any more experience in feeding fifteen hundred
+mouths a day than the quartermaster of a regiment? Have the women of
+Chicago generally devoted their lives to trafficking in tame ducks,
+loads of hay, threshing-machines, and beef and bacon? Yet you have the
+very essence of business tact in "nothing came amiss, and nothing
+failed to come"; and the very essence of economy in "always enough,
+and never too much"; and the crowning glory--write it on the posts of
+thy house, and on thy gates; teach it diligently unto thy children,
+and talk of it when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest
+by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up; bind it
+for a sign upon thine hand, and let it be as a frontlet between thine
+eyes--"the ordering of all this was in the hands of women."
+
+This ascription of female extravagance, whether made publicly in
+newspapers or privately in family conclave, is not only false and
+fatal, but it is fatal in the very innermost and vital points of life.
+What is destroyed is not an adventitious thing, but the spring of all
+satisfaction. The relations between a man and his wife decide the weal
+of his life. The whole chain of his circumstances can be no stronger
+than the link between him and her. He may be ever so rich or renowned,
+but he can bear no heavier weight of happiness than that link can
+sustain. The newspaper paragraphs do the harm of confirming individual
+men in their notions that it is the wife who incurs the unnecessary
+expense, and so divert their attention from their own duties, and urge
+them on in their evil courses to their own undoing. But a man is just
+as powerful for good as he is for evil. By as much as he can alienate
+his wife from himself by his petty financiering, by so much can he
+draw her to his heart by a gentle chivalry. Invested by the law with
+power, he has only to transmute it into love to secure a loyalty
+capable of any sacrifice. Let a wife read in her husband's face and
+bearing how grateful is her society, how precious her life, how
+sweetest of all pleasures to him is the knowledge of her pleasure; let
+her feel that she is to him something different from all earthly
+interests,--something above and beyond all other joys; let her see
+that, with her coming, money ceased to be mere current coin, that
+labor acquired a new dignity, and prudence a new charm, because they
+all might minister to her convenience or delight; let her see that she
+adjusts, harmonizes, and completes his life; that she is the central
+sun, about which all minor interests and plans revolve; and--what have
+you gained? A good housekeeper? A well-ordered household? More than
+this. An empire. Supreme dominion. You have only to be tender and
+true, and nothing can sweep away the golden mist through which,
+whatever you may be to others, you shall appear to her eyes a knight
+without fear and without reproach.
+
+Wrong opinions concerning the relations between husband and wife are
+also occasionally expressed in another and opposite manner. A wife
+comes into the possession of property. The husband, determined not to
+encroach upon her rights, leaves the disposal of the property to her.
+He insists that it shall be invested in her name. He will take no
+responsibility as to the mode of investment. This may be done from
+honorable motives. The man means to be just and blameless; and if he
+is conscious of innate weakness or wickedness, or if the marriage be
+an ill-assorted one, he may be pursuing the best course. There may
+also be outside, merely business reasons which make it the best
+course. But to do it simply from a notion of justice, is as far as
+possible from what ought to be. The man shows himself entirely at
+fault regarding the range of justice. If life were what it should be,
+the law would be right in recognizing for the woman no existence
+separate from her husband. Love is but the fulfilling of that law. The
+reason why such a law is unjust is, that life is so constant a
+violation of the higher spiritual law, that this lower one which
+embodies it works mischief. It fits the righteous theory only, not the
+wicked facts. But law is for the evil, not for the good. There is no
+enactment that a man shall possess his own property. The enactments
+are to punish those who attempt to wrest his property from him. There
+need be no enactment that a man shall be master of his wife's
+possessions; he has but to be to her a true husband, and all that she
+has is his. The law should punish him for neglect of duty and
+disregard of claims, by a forfeiture of property. If the law this day
+completely reversed the position of husband and wife, it would make no
+jot or tittle of change in their actual position, where they love each
+other as they ought. Women naturally have a distaste to business, and
+an indifference to money. Of their own motion, they would leave such
+things in the hands of men, if the instinct of self-preservation did
+not force them to interference. In addition to this generic negative
+willingness, the happy wife has a positive delight in enriching with
+every blessing the man she loves. When Aurora gave her love with all
+lavishment, and prayed Romney,
+
+    "If now you'd stoop so low to take my love,
+    And use it roughly, without stint or spare,
+    As men use common things with more behind,
+    To any mean and ordinary end,--
+    The joy would set me like a star, in heaven,
+    So high up, I should shine because of height
+    And not of virtue,"--
+
+did she make a mental reservation to herself of the money which her
+books had brought her?
+
+What the law should do, is to step in and guard woman against the
+possible disastrous consequences which may spring from the spontaneous
+self-abnegation of love. What it should not do, is to guarantee to the
+miser, the spendthrift, the tyrant, debauchee, or vampire, the things
+which _a man_ would possess of his own inalienable right. What a
+husband should do, is to show himself great enough and good enough to
+know and feel that, in love, giving and receiving wear the selfsame
+grace. What he should not do, is to talk of justice when they twain
+should be one flesh.
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+
+Woman's rank in life depends entirely on what life is. Her importance
+is decided when it is decided what service is important. If money is
+the one thing needful, and its acquisition the chief end of man, the
+wife's position is very inferior to her husband's. The greater part of
+the money is earned in his, and often spent in her department. He does
+the work that is paid for, and he belongs to the sex that is paid. She
+does the work that is not paid for, and she belongs to the sex that is
+pillaged. Men go out and gain money: wives stay at home and spend it.
+The case is against them--if that is the whole case. But if money is
+only means to an end; if happiness, intelligence, integrity, are more
+worth than gold; if a life ruled by the law of God, if the development
+of the divine in the human, if the education of every faculty, and the
+enjoyment of every power, be more lovely and more desirable than bank
+stock, then the woman walks not one whit behind the man, but side by
+side, with no unequal steps. He furnishes and she fashions the
+material from which grace and strength are wrought. Her work is in
+point of fact incomparably fairer, finer, more difficult, more
+important than his. It is not money-getting alone, or chiefly, but
+money-spending, that influences and indicates character. A man may
+work up to his knees in swamp-meadows, or breathe all day the foul air
+of a court-room; but if, when released, he turns naturally to sunshine
+and apple-orchards and womanly grace, swamp-mud and vile air have not
+polluted him. He is a clean-souled man through it all. But if a man
+find rest from his work in mere eating and drinking, if the money
+which he has earned goes to gross amusements and coarse companions, he
+shows at once the lowness of his character, however high may be his
+occupation.
+
+Those hands which have the ordering of house and home, have a large
+share in the ordering of character. The man who provides the house
+does an important part, but she who refines it into a home is the true
+artist. To whom is the palm awarded, to the painter who, from ochre
+and lead, lays on the rough canvas the lovely landscape, touched with
+a beauty borrowed from his own soul, or the huckster who sells him
+ochre, lead, and canvas, or even the successful shoddy-contractor who
+pays five thousand of his Judas Iscariot dollars, that he may hang it
+in a bad light in his dining-room till such day as he shall have the
+grace to go and hang himself? It has been said that in the highest
+departments women have never produced a masterpiece. Painting has its
+old masters, but no old mistresses. Jenny Lind may entrance the world
+from her "heaven-kissing hill," but on the mountain-tops Mendelssohn
+and Beethoven stand uncompanioned. Sappho plumed her wings, but
+plunged quickly from the Leucadian cliff, and Milton soars steadfastly
+to the sun alone. We shall see about this one day, but meanwhile life
+itself is higher than any of the arts of life, and in living no man
+has risen to loftier heights than a woman, and the mass of men are
+infinitely lower than the mass of women, and would be lower still if
+it were not for female assistance. With all the help which they
+receive from women, they are perpetually lapsing into brutality, and
+whenever they go off into a community by themselves, they go headlong
+downwards, following their natural gravitation.
+
+It is women that make men fit to live. They often confess it
+themselves without meaning anything by it. I take advantage of the
+confession; as the malignant Minister in Titan "retained the habit,
+when an open-hearted soul showed him its breaches, of marching in upon
+it through those breaches, as if he himself had made them." In toasts
+and festive speeches none can be more bland than they. With sweet and
+smiling, arch and gracious humility, they dwell upon the refining and
+elevating influence of "lovely woman," as if it were a pretty thing to
+be growling and snappish and stroked into quiescence and acquiescence
+by a soft hand,--as if a midsummer-night's dream were a
+midwinter-day's truth, and man were content to be Bottom the weaver,
+with his ass's head stuck full with musk-roses by fairy Titanias. But
+I say it not as a man gallantly towards women, nor as a woman angrily
+towards men, but as a simple statement of fact by an unconcerned
+spectator, and far more in sorrow than in anger. What is proffered as
+compliment I accept and reproduce as truth, and if men will not stand
+convicted of false dealing, let them show their faith by their works,
+and yield themselves, plastic and unresisting, to the hands that will
+mould them to fairest shapes.
+
+Over against this mistaken notion stands its opponent notion, equally
+mistaken, more extensive, circulated by men, adopted by women, and
+doing its mischievous work silently and surely. Public opinion,
+floating about in novels and periodicals, lays upon the shoulders of
+women burdens which they are not able to bear, which they were never
+intended to bear, and which ought never to be laid upon them. Before
+marriage, society agrees to make men grasp the laboring oar. They must
+choose and woo and win; while the woman's strength is to sit still.
+But after marriage the scene suddenly shifts. The wife must take the
+wooing and winning into her hands. She must make home pleasant. She
+must rear the children. She must manage society. She must incur the
+responsibility of the welfare and happiness of the family. The husband
+is on the one side a wild animal who must be managed but not
+controlled; on the other, a piece of rare china, which must be
+carefully handled and kept from all rough contact.
+
+"It is the wife who makes the home, and the home makes the man," says
+the country newspaper, in its domestic column.
+
+"If a wife would make the husband delighted with home, she must first
+make home delightful. She must first woo him there by all the arts of
+affection,--by cheerfulness, tidiness, orderliness without excess: by
+a clean-swept hearth, a bright fire, flowers upon the mantel, a
+well-set table and well-cooked food. She must be careful of imposing
+restraints upon his tastes, inclinations, movements, and render him
+free of every suspicion of domestic imprisonment. If his masculine
+tastes, as they will, draw him from home at times, to the club, to the
+lodge, or the political meeting, or elsewhere, let her second them
+with that ready cheerfulness which will prove one of the strong cords
+to draw him back to home as the centre of his earthly joys," says its
+virtuous neighbor.
+
+"I have heard women speak of their rights. If they had made the men of
+the world what God intended they should make of them, there would have
+been no need of this complaining," says the orthodox heroine in the
+orthodox novel.
+
+"What makes a man feel at home in the house?... Is it to leave him
+absolute master of his rightful position, the large liberty to go and
+come, trusting for her part religiously in the virtue and the
+sovereign power of her love,--knowing, as if she had read it out of
+Holy Writ, for her own heart has told her" (_her_ being the heroine
+aforementioned, now become the hero's wife) "that, if she shall ever
+cease to hold the love and trust which she has won, the fault, as the
+loss, is hers?"
+
+"She" (_she_ being the aforesaid orthodox heroine and orthodox
+submissive wife, now become the orthodox devoted mother),--"She had
+the consciousness that it was hers to make of this child what she
+would!"
+
+I have spoken before of the comparative work of the husband and wife,
+considered merely as labor. I refer now to the comparative moral
+weight belonging to their respective positions.
+
+All masculine and all orthodox feminine tractates on female education,
+all male lectures on female duties, all anniversary orators to female
+schools, ring the changes on the importance of educating girls to be
+good wives and mothers, with the persistency of the old song which
+shuttled back and forth some twenty times or more to tell us that
+"John Brown had a little Indian." But were the graduating class of a
+college ever exhorted to be good husbands and fathers? Are fathers
+ever admonished to teach their sons domestic virtues, to make them
+fond and faithful and good providers for the wives they may one day
+possess? But I should like to know if girls have any stronger tendency
+to become wives and mothers, than the boys have to become husbands and
+fathers? Are they any more likely to be bad wives and mothers, than
+boys are to be bad husbands and fathers? Is the number of incompetent
+wives obviously greater than the number of incompetent husbands? Is
+the number of injudicious mothers obviously greater than the number of
+injudicious fathers? And where the wife and mother is incompetent and
+injudicious, does it generally seem to be owing to too great strength
+of mind and culture of intellect, and too little domestic education,
+or is it owing to weakness of character? It is not a remote, but it
+seems to be an entirely unobserved truth, that for every wife there is
+a husband, and for every mother there is a father; and so far as my
+observation extends, domestic mismanagement and unhappiness, in an
+overwhelming majority of cases, are owing to the shortcomings of the
+husband, and not of the wife, or to the wife in an inferior and
+resultant measure. "There is blame on both sides," say the observers,
+oracularly, and this most superficial of all superficial generalizations
+is supposed to be an impartial and exhaustive summary. It is just as
+much a summary as the statement that two and two make four. Two and
+two do make four, but it is nothing to the purpose here. To say that
+there is blame on both sides, is simply saying that neither a man nor
+a woman is perfect, which nobody ever maintained. So long as humanity
+is humanity, it is not probable that one person will be entirely
+sinless and another entirely sinful; but there are, and will continue
+to be, many cases in which the blame on one side is much more heavy
+and condemning than the blame on the other. The man's blame is most
+often one of aggression, of the first provocation, of unprincipled and
+heartless behavior, of cruel disappointing and thwarting, of a giant's
+strength used giantly. The woman's is a blame of imprudence, of
+weakness, of disappointment, unwisely met and impatiently or otherwise
+ill-borne; of an inability to manage with sagacity, and so to master
+by superior moral power the wild beast that has clutched her,--a blame
+that is negative rather than positive, passive rather than active, and
+not to be compared with the other in point of heinousness. Why, then,
+do you bear down so hard on the woman's duty and leave the man to go
+his way unadmonished? If you do not enforce on college-boys the duty
+of providing for their future families, why do you enforce on
+seminary-girls the duty of directing their future families? If you do
+not educate young men to make good husbands, why should you educate
+young women to make good wives? If you do not exhort young men so to
+live and learn as to make their wives happy and train their children
+aright, why should you exhort young women to study to make their
+husbands happy and train their children aright? Because, you say, in
+the words already quoted, "It is the wife that makes the home, and the
+home makes the man." It is nothing of the sort. It is the wife and the
+husband together that make the home, and the man was already made. The
+most that wife and home in conjunction can do is to modify the man. If
+a husband be intemperate, or given over to money-getting, or
+money-saving, or money-spending,--if he be ill-tempered, indelicate,
+ignorant, obstinate, arrogant,--no wife, be she ever so prudent, wise,
+affectionate, can make the home what it ought to be. At best she can
+only mend it. Her energies are wasted. The ingenuity, the love, the
+care, that should be expended in making it happy are sacrificed in the
+attempt to make it as little unhappy as possible. With the best of
+husbands and the best of wives there are always evils enough lying in
+wait. Danger, disease, sin, are ever ready to spring upon the happy
+home, even when both the keepers stand guard at the portals; how,
+then, can you expect the wife to ward off even her own part of these,
+when you lay upon her the husband's part, and he himself is the
+greatest evil of all?
+
+And what right have men to depend upon home and wife to "make" them?
+What is a man doing all the twenty or thirty years before he is
+married, that he has not made himself? And on what grounds does he
+come to her for completion? How came she to be any more finished than
+he? or any more capable of putting the finishing touches to another?
+Are wives generally mature and experienced, while husbands are young
+and inexperienced? Have wives generally more knowledge of the world,
+and more opportunities to become self-possessed and firmly and evenly
+balanced than husbands? Or is the masculine material naturally and
+permanently more plastic than the feminine? Let us know the pretext
+upon which a full-grown man charges a delicate woman, who has had
+little if anything to do with him until he became a full-grown man,
+with the cure of his soul? If there is anything to be done in the way
+of education and reformation, one would naturally suppose that it is
+the stronger sex which should educate and reform the weaker. It would
+seem as if the sex that is looked up to and sets itself up as
+sovereign should mould the sex which looks up and recognizes it as
+sovereign. Where, in the Bible, does a man find any warrant for laying
+himself to the account of his wife? When God calls every man to
+judgment, will he be able to pass over his shortcomings to his wife?
+The first man tried it, but with very small success. "The woman whom
+thou gavest to be with me," whimpered Adam; but it was a sorry refuge
+of lies, and did not avail to stay the curse from descending heavily
+upon his head. The plea that did not avail the first man is not likely
+to avail the last, nor any man between. "If thou art wise, thou art
+wise for thyself, but if thou scornest, thou alone shalt bear it." As
+a matter of fact, neither the wife makes the husband nor the husband
+the wife, but they both influence each other. She softens him and he
+strengthens her; or if, as not unfrequently happens, her nature is the
+stronger, she communicates to him of its strength. In a true marriage,
+delicacy is imparted on the one side and vigor on the other, to
+whichever side they originally belonged. Where the union is founded
+upon truth, there is always a tendency to equilibrium, woman supplying
+the spiritual, man the material element. She raises a mortal to the
+skies; he draws an angel down.
+
+And no more than it belongs to the wife to make the home and the
+husband, does it belong to the mother to train up the children in the
+way they should go. The family is a joint-stock concern, so
+established both by nature and revelation. Where, in the Bible, do we
+find that the mother can make of her child what she will, or that God
+gave the making of the men of the world into her hand? In Holy Writ,
+the father's duties loom up as largely as the mother's, and if there
+is any difference it is not one that discriminates in his favor or in
+favor of his release from duty. Fathers and mothers in the Bible
+receive equal honor and equal deference, but the instruction and
+guidance of the children are much more definitely and repeatedly
+attributed to and inculcated upon and implied as belonging to the
+father than the mother. He is recognized as the head. At his door lies
+the responsibility. Ahaziah walked in the ways of his mother, but of
+his father also when he did evil in the sight of the Lord. It is the
+sins of the fathers, not of the mothers, that are visited upon the
+children. It was the fathers, not the mothers, who were to make known
+to the children the truth of Jehovah. It was the instruction of his
+father that Solomon commanded his son to hear, and the law of his
+mother which he commanded him not to forsake,--an arrangement which
+modern opinions seem inclined to reverse. It is the fathers who are
+pronounced to be the glory of children, not the mothers; and glory
+implies action. A father may die, and his dying prayer and his
+conscientious life, both commending his family to God, may descend
+upon them in ever-renewing blessing. Such is the promise of the Lord.
+A father may neglect his children, and the mother's care and love be
+so blessed of Heaven that they shall be burning and shining lights in
+the temple of the Most High. But this is God's uncovenanted mercy, and
+the father has no right to expect it. Yet one not seldom hears or sees
+anecdotes which imply that such neglect of children is not a crime,--a
+crime against children, against mothers, against society, against God.
+In times of financial disaster I have more than once heard of men's
+consoling themselves for the ruin of their business by playfully
+declaring that they should now go home and get acquainted with their
+children. But the non-acquaintance with children, of which many
+fathers are guilty, is not a theme to be lightly spoken of. Is it a
+small thing to give life to a soul that can never die; that, through
+unending ages, in happiness or in misery, clothed with glory or with
+shame, beautiful, strong, upright, or disfigured and deformed, must
+live on and on and on, forever and forever? Is it a small thing to
+give life to a sentient being, that must know even the experience of
+this world? That may be bowed down with guilt, remorse, wretchedness,
+bringing other souls with it to the dust, or may be upborne through a
+pure, happy, and beneficent career, bearing other souls with it to the
+skies? How dare a man look upon these helpless, hapless souls, and
+know that to him they owe their being, with all its dread
+possibilities; that upon him may fall the curse of their ruined lives,
+and--neglect them? How dare he leave them to another? To no other do
+they belong. His duty he cannot delegate. After country, which
+includes all things, his first duty is to his family. He is a father,
+and at no price can he sell his fatherhood.
+
+I see notices of Female Prayer-Meetings. The mothers of a regiment
+assemble to pray for their sons who have gone to the war. There are
+Mothers' Guides and Mothers' Assistants and Mothers' Hymn-Books. But
+where are the Fathers' Hymn-Books? Where are the Paternal
+Prayer-Meetings? When do the Fathers of Regiments assemble to pray for
+their soldier-sons? If boys need their mothers' prayers, they need
+also their fathers' prayers. Does the fervent, effectual prayer of
+righteous women avail so much that righteous men can feel they have
+nothing to do but give themselves up to their farms and their
+merchandise, to buy and to sell and to get gain? Can men wait upon the
+Lord by proxy? Shall we bring political economy into religion, and
+arrange a wise division of labor by which the wife shall serve God,
+and the husband shall serve Mammon,--the wife do the praying and the
+husband see to the marketing,--he make sure of this world and she look
+out for the next? It is a nice little arrangement, but--He that
+sitteth in the heavens shall laugh; the Lord shall have it in
+derision.
+
+But fathers must attend to their business. They must earn money to
+support the family. They must provide wherewith to keep the pot
+boiling. Certainly they must; but it requires no more time, or
+attention, or ingenuity, or vitality, or strength, or spirits, or
+endurance, no more expenditure of any of the forces of life, to go out
+and earn something to put into the pot, than it does to stay at home
+and boil it. If the mother, with her harassing cares, the never-ending
+details of her never-ending work, can find time for studying her
+maternal relations and responsibilities, and comparing her experience
+with that of others for purposes of improvement and the highest
+efficiency, and for joining in social prayer for the blessing of God
+on her efforts, the father can find time for similar study, effort,
+and prayer. If she can leave her baby, he can leave his books. If she
+can leave her kitchen, he can leave his counting-room. His bench, his
+desk, his fields, his office, are no more exacting than her nursery,
+her laundry, her work-basket. Women will go to the mothers' meeting
+who have to sit up till one o'clock in the morning to darn the little
+frock, and patch the old coat that must be worn that day; and
+sometimes they do it from stern necessity, without having the
+consolation of any mothers' meeting to go to. Let men but be as
+earnest in their purpose, as sincere in their belief, let them feel
+that the souls of their children are in their hands as keenly as
+mothers feel their responsibility, and business would straightway
+relax its claims and withdraw into the background, where it belongs.
+If a great general is come to town, if a famous regiment is to have a
+reception, if a long-looked-for statue has safely crossed the sea and
+is to be set up, if a foreign fleet lies in the harbor and is to send
+its officers on shore, if a young Prince is to pass through the city
+on his way home, men rush together in masses so dense as to endanger
+limb and life. Business is the last thing that interposes any obstacle
+to seeing and hearing that which a man determines to see and hear.
+
+Business? What is man's business? Is it to take care of that which is
+temporary or that which is permanent; that which belongs to matter, or
+that which belongs to mind; that which he shares in common with the
+beasts, or that which allies him to the angels,--nay, more, which
+constitutes in him the image and likeness of God? A man's business is
+to support his family. Certainly. He that provideth not for his own
+household hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel. I agree
+to that with all my heart. But what is he to provide? Food, raiment,
+shelter? These first, for without these is nothing; but these not
+last, for he who stops here and turns his powers into another channel
+is guilty of high crime. If his children were calves, lambs, chickens,
+he would do so much for them; because they are human beings, he must
+do somewhat more. But how many of the fathers who make business their
+plea for not watching over their children, who are away from home from
+seven in the morning till seven at night, who from year's end to
+year's end, except on Sunday and perhaps two or three festive days,
+see their children only at hurried meals, and snatch a kiss, perhaps,
+after they are in bed and asleep, who know no more about the inward
+and hourly life of their own than of their neighbor's children,--how
+many of these fathers are spending their time and talents in the sole
+business of getting food, clothes, and shelter, or even books and
+educational opportunities for their families? How many of these men
+earn just that and no more? It is not the support of families, it is
+not business, it is not necessity alone, on which they lavish
+themselves. It is their own pride or luxury or inclination. They wish
+to extend their business, to acquire wealth, or a competence, to be
+known as enterprising, public-spirited men, to be chosen on committees
+and sent to the legislature, all right, if rightly come by, but
+terribly wrong, worthless, perishable with the using, and of no
+important use, if children are to be given in barter for them.
+
+"This is all very well to talk about," you say; "but a man cannot do
+anything in this world without money, and he cannot make money unless
+he sticks to his business." Ah, my friend! so far as the best things
+of this world are concerned, you cannot do anything with money, and
+you cannot make good men and women unless you stick to your children.
+Will money give you back the little baby-soul whose tender unfolding
+had such sweetness and healing for you, but which you lost because you
+would not stop long enough to look at it in your mad world-ways? Will
+money give you the saving influence over your boy which might have
+kept him from vicious companions and vicious habits,--an influence
+which your constant interest, intercourse, and example in his boyish
+days might have established, but which seemed to you too trivial a
+thing to win you from your darling pursuit of gains? Will money make
+you the friend and confidant of your daughter, the joy of her heart,
+and the standard of her judgment, so that her ripening youth shall
+give you intimacy, interchange of thought and sentiment, and you shall
+give to her a measure to estimate the men around her, and a steady
+light that shall keep her from being beguiled by the lights that only
+lead astray? Will it give you back the children who have rushed out
+wildly or strayed indifferently from the house which you have never
+taken pains to make a home, but have been content to turn into a
+hotel, with only less of liberty? Will money make you the heart as
+well as the head of your family,--honored, revered, beloved?
+
+If your firm transacts business on a capital of a hundred thousand
+instead of half a million dollars, what is it but a little less paper,
+fewer clerks, and narrower rooms? Though your farm have but fifty
+instead of two hundred acres, there is just as much land on the earth.
+Suppose you argue before a jury only two cases to-day instead of
+three, there are a dozen young advocates who will be glad of the
+crumbs that fall from your table, and Fate will mete out her sure,
+rough-handed justice. With half the business you are doing now, could
+not you and your family be comfortably and decently fed, clothed, and
+sheltered? House, dress, and furniture might not be so fine, but
+something of more worth than they would be finer. A family's support
+does not necessarily involve sumptuous fare, purple and fine linen,
+damask and rosewood. If the choice lies between Turkey carpets, or
+even three-ply, under a child's feet, and a father's hand clasping his
+to guide his steps, what man who believes--I will not say in
+immortality, but in virtue,--what father who is not utterly unworthy
+to bear the sacred name, can for one moment waver?
+
+Every man, and especially every father, should aim to have a character
+that shall alone have weight both with his fellow-citizens and his
+children. His integrity should be so unimpeachable that his motives
+shall be unquestioned. So far as his reputation is truthful, it should
+be firmly grounded on moral virtues and moral graces, so that his word
+shall have a force quite independent of his surroundings. He should be
+strong enough to be able to live in a plain house, and wear plain
+clothes, and deny himself, not only luxuries, but comforts and
+beauties, for the sake of his children's society and improvement,
+without forfeiting the respect and esteem of his neighbors or
+inflicting any pain of mortification upon his children. You cannot do
+anything in this world without money, if money is your sole or your
+chief claim to consideration; but, in the face of ten thousand
+denials, I would still maintain that it is possible to attain a
+character and a standing that shall set money at defiance. He who
+refuses to believe this, and acts upon a contrary belief, shows not
+only a want of real inward dignity, but of a knowledge of history and
+of life. A picture of Raphael, fitly framed and hung, is a treasure to
+be prized beyond words; but with no frame at all, and hung in the
+dreary parlor of a village inn, it is worth more, and would be more
+widely sought and more highly prized than a palaceful of commonplace
+paintings. Let all the accessories be as beautiful as you can command;
+but at all events make sure of the picture. He is not a wise man who
+expends all his energies on the frame, and trusts to luck for the
+painting.
+
+Nor is it any excuse to say that you must lay up provision against the
+future. No one has any right to sacrifice the present to the future.
+You do not know that you will have any future. "The present, the
+present, is all thou hast for thy sure possessing." You may forego
+present luxuries for future needs or for future luxuries, but you may
+not forego present needs for future possibilities. If besides
+performing the duty of today you can also lay up money for to-morrow,
+it is well; but to slight a certain to-day for an uncertain to-morrow,
+is all ill. Provide, if you can, means to send your boy to college, to
+educate your daughter, to shelter your old age; yet, remember, before
+those means can be used, the boy, the girl, the man, may lie each in
+his silent grave; but though there may never be a college student, a
+ripening maiden, a gray-haired man, there is now a little boy, a
+little girl, who stand in need of their father; and a father is of
+more worth to his son than a college, of more worth to his daughter
+than many tutors. Train them in the way they should go, going yourself
+before them with a steady step, and trust God for that future against
+which you are unable to provide.
+
+And this remember: the very best provision against the future is
+investments in heart and muscle and brain. Money without them is
+worthless. They without money are still inestimable riches. If your
+son at twenty-one is alienated from his father, dissipated,
+headstrong, weak, a source of anxiety and trouble to his family, he
+will pierce your heart through with many sorrows, though you have
+hundreds of thousands of dollars laid up for him in the bank. If your
+daughter is a frivolous, woman, the silks with which your wealth
+enables you to adorn her, the society with which it may perhaps enable
+you to surround her, will only set her folly in a stronger light. But
+if your children stand on the threshold of their manhood and their
+womanhood, strong, self-poised, mailed for defence and armed for
+warfare, glad and grateful for the love that has forged each weapon
+and taught its skilful handling, no king on his throne is so blessed
+as you. They have all that they need to conquer the world. Your money
+may be a snare to your child, your wisdom never. If you lose your
+money, it is gone forever. The child whom your love is enriching with
+youthful health and promise may go before you suddenly out of the
+world, but your labor and your love are not lost. Somewhere, under a
+warmer sun than this, his earthly promise bursts into the full blossom
+and the mellow fruit of performance more beautiful than eye can see or
+heart conceive.
+
+The adequate care and guidance of the family which he has founded is a
+man's business in life. Farming, preaching, and shopkeeping are
+secondary matters, to be regulated according to the needs of the
+family. The family is not to be regulated by their requirements. And a
+family's needs are not gay clothing and rich food, but a husband and
+father. It is the great duty of his life to be acquainted with his
+children, to know their character, their tastes, their tendencies, to
+know who are their associates, and what are their associations, what
+books they read, and what books they like to read, to gratify their
+innocent desires, to lop off their excrescences and bring out their
+excellences, to know them as a good farmer knows his soil, draining
+the bogs into fertile meadows and turning the watercourses into
+channels of beauty and life. He may furnish his children opportunities
+without number, but the one thing beyond all others which he owes them
+is himself. He may provide tutors and schools; but to no tutor and no
+school can he pass over his relationship and its responsibilities. If
+he is a stranger to his children, if they are strangers to him, he
+shall be found wanting when he is weighed in the balance.
+
+Niebuhr, we are told by his biographer, "considered the training of
+his children, especially of his son, as the most imperative duty of
+his life, to which all other considerations, except that of very
+evident and important service to his country, ought to be
+subordinated. In ordinary times he placed private duties above public
+ones." Before the child was born his fatherly fondness was planning
+schemes for the future. "In case it should be a boy, I am already
+preparing myself to educate him. I should try to familiarize him very
+early with the ancient languages, by making him repeat sentences after
+me, and relating stories to him in them, in order that he might not
+have too much to learn afterwards, nor yet read too much at too early
+an age; but receive his education after the fashion of the ancients. I
+think I should know how to educate a boy, but not a girl; I should be
+in danger of making her too learned.... I would relate innumerable
+stories to the boy, as my father did to me; but by degrees mix up more
+and more of Greek and Latin in them, so that he would be forced to
+learn those languages in order to understand the stories." By and by,
+when the child is eight months old, we find him curtailing his
+literary investigations because he is "moreover, just now, too much
+occupied with Marcuccio." When "Marcuccio" is five years old his
+father writes: "We have daily proofs of Marcus's noble nature; still I
+am well aware that this affords us no guaranty, unless it be guided
+with the most watchful care.... I succeed with teaching as well as I
+could have ventured to hope.... I am reading with him Hygin's
+Mythologicum,--a book which, perhaps, it is not easy to use for this
+purpose, and which, yet, is more suited to it than any other, from the
+absence of formal periods, and the interest of the narrative. For
+German, I write fragments of the Greek mythology for him.... I give
+everything in a very free and picturesque style, so that it is as
+exciting as poetry to him; and, in fact, he reads it with such delight
+that we are often interrupted by his cries of joy. The child is quite
+devoted to me; but this educating costs me a great deal of time.
+However, I have had my share of life, and I shall consider it as a
+reward for my labors if this young life be as fully and richly
+developed as lies within my power."
+
+If Niebuhr, one of the most learned men of his time, ambassador of
+Prussia to Rome, with all the business to transact, not only of
+Prussia, but of all the petty German powers that had no minister of
+their own, engaged in minute and abstruse historical investigation
+bearing upon a work with which he was occupied and which may be said
+to have revolutionized Roman history,--if his time was not too
+valuable to bestow upon the amusement, the affection, and the
+education of a baby, where shall we find, in America, a man whose
+valuable time shall be a sufficient reason for the neglect of his
+children? It may not be necessary or desirable to copy Niebuhr's
+course with exactness. His residence in Rome devolved upon him a
+larger part of the mental education of the boy than would have been
+necessary at home. I am also inclined to think that he was too careful
+and troubled, and did not have faith enough in Nature and God. But the
+point which I wish to show is, that, in the midst of his numerous and
+important duties, he found time for his child; and if he could do so
+much, surely those who have not one tenth part of his duties and
+responsibilities, either in number or weight, can find time to do the
+far less service which devolves upon them. If they cannot, there is
+but one resource. If a man is not able to be both statesman and
+father, both merchant and father, or lawyer and father, or farmer and
+father, he ought to elect which he will be, and confine himself to his
+choice. If he is too much absorbed in scientific pursuits, or if he is
+not a sufficiently dextrous workman to be able to secure from his
+bench time enough to attend to other interests, he ought not to create
+other interests. No man has any right to assume the charge of two
+positions when he has the ability to perform the duties of but one. If
+he alone bore the evil consequences of his shortcomings, he would be
+less blameworthy, but the chief burden falls upon his children and
+upon the state. Reckless of moral obligation, mindful only of his own
+selfish impulses, the fruits of his recklessness and selfishness
+are,--not houses that tumble down upon their builders, machinery that
+cannot bear its own strain, garments that perish with the first
+using,--these are bad enough, but these are harmlessness itself
+compared with the evils which he causes. The harvest of his headlong
+wickedness is living beings who must bear their life forever. He bids
+into the world, tender little innocent souls, knowing that he cannot
+or will not stand guard over them to ward off the fierce, wild devils
+that lie in wait to rend them. Plastic to his touch, they may be
+moulded to vessels of honor or vessels of dishonor, for the promise of
+God is absolute, yea, and amen. Yet he turns aside to fritter away his
+time over newspapers, to talk politics, to buy and sell and get
+unnecessary gain, and leaves them to other hands, to chance comers, to
+all manner of warping and hardening influences, so that their
+after-lives must be one long and bitter struggle against early
+acquired deformity, or a fatal yielding and a fatal torpor whose end
+is deadly dismay.
+
+But in popular opinion and by common usage all is thrown upon the
+mother. By all tradition she is the centre, the heart, the mainspring,
+of the household. From what newspaper, what book, what lecture, would
+you learn that fathers have anything to do at home but to go into
+their slippers and dressing-gowns, and be luxuriously fed and softly
+soothed into repose? The care and management of the children fall upon
+the mother. Who does all the fine things in the pretty nursery rhymes?
+"My mother." It is her sphere, divinely circled. All the fitnesses of
+her life point in that one direction. All men's hands are so many
+finger-posts saying, "This is the way, walk ye in it."
+
+It is the mother's sphere to take motherly care of her children. It is
+the father's sphere to take fatherly care. Neither can leave his
+duties to the other without danger. The family system is a combination
+of the solar and the binary systems. All the little bodies whirl
+around a common centre, but that centre is no solitary orb. It is two
+suns, self-luminous, revolving around each other, and neither able to
+throw upon its mate the burden of its shining.
+
+Many fathers seem to think that they have nothing to do with their
+children except to caress them and frolic with them an hour or two in
+the evening, until they are old enough to be assistants in work. But
+just as soon as there is the fatherly relation, there is the fatherly
+duty. A baby in a house is a well-spring of pleasure; but it is also a
+well-spring of care and anxiety immeasurable, of whose waters there is
+no reason why the father should not drink as deeply as the mother. The
+glory, the honor, the immortality, will shed a full light upon him,
+and he also
+
+      "With heart of thankfulness should bear
+    Of the great common burden his full share."
+
+I have seen a great deal of pleasantry played off against the
+doctrines of woman's rights in newspapers, pictorial and otherwise;
+the wife is represented as being immersed in public employments, while
+the meek, sad husband stays at home and minds the baby. I do not know
+that any important ends would be answered by an indiscriminate
+female-haranguing in the market-place; but I do know that it would be
+a great deal better for all concerned if fathers would pay more
+attention to the little ones. Womanly gentleness and tenderness, and
+long-suffering to-baby-ward reads sweetly in books, rounds graceful
+periods from melodious lips, and is the loveliest of all modes of
+levying black mail. But when you come down to matters of fact, a
+fractious child is just as likely to be quieted by its father's
+lullaby as by its mother's, if you pin the father down to lullabies.
+Men who are inclined to take care of their children never find any
+hinderance in their manhood. Male nurses for children are no less
+efficient than female nurses. It is not his sex, but his selfishness,
+that makes man's unfitness. He will not endure the tedium of soothing
+and tending his child. He knows the mother will, and he lets her do
+it. Her fitness is a good excuse for his self-indulgence. But if he is
+disposed to take the trouble, he can do it often as well as she; often
+better, for the mother's weaker and wearier nerves and greater
+sensitiveness act on the little one and increase its irritability,
+while the father's strength and calmness are a sort of soporific.
+Somebody says that a mother's arm is the strongest thing in the world.
+It upbears the child as she walks back and forth through the long
+night-hours soothing its restlessness and pain, and never tires.
+Vastly well spoken. Suppose, O smooth-tongued Seignior, you take a
+turn with the baby yourself, and see whether your arm tires. If it
+does, do not for one moment indulge in the pleasing illusion that hers
+does not. It is made of flesh and blood and bones just like yours, and
+like causes produce like effects. But what _is_ true is, that her
+unselfish mother-love is so strong that she keeps on, notwithstanding
+the ache. Go and do thou likewise. I do not say that fathers will not.
+Many do, and what man has done man may do. Leave female endurance to
+poetry, and remember that in actual life the laws of bone and muscle
+are as fixed as any other laws of natural philosophy, and that action
+is surely followed by fatigue. Walk you the floor with the baby in
+your arms, if he must be carried, at least two hours to her one,
+because your arms were stronger to begin with, and because hers have
+an added weakness from the advent of this little round-limbed Prince.
+Do not, above all things, betake yourself to a remote and silent part
+of the house and dream your pleasant dreams, while the mother loses
+her sleep and her rest by the ailing and fretful baby. But a man's
+rest must not be broken. Why not as well as a woman's? He must have a
+clear head and a firm hand to transact the next day's business. But
+what is she going to do? The cases are so innumerous as to form a very
+insignificant proportion wherein the American mother is not also cook,
+laundress, seamstress, housekeeper, and chambermaid, with sometimes
+one awkward, ignorant, inefficient Irish servant, rarely two, and not
+rarely none at all. As a matter of moral economy the care of a baby is
+enough to occupy any woman's time, and is all the care she ought to
+have. As I have before said, even under the curse, this is the
+arrangement that was made for her. Her motherhood frees her from toil;
+but man's care is heavier than God's curse, and she too often bears on
+her own head both her punishment and his. If he makes such provision
+for her that she has absolutely no other than her maternal duties, she
+can afford, perhaps, to lose her rest at night, since she can make it
+up in the daytime; and unquestionably nature has fitted babies to
+mothers more closely than to fathers; but to lay upon her, besides the
+care of her children, all manner of other cares, and then leave her
+with aching nerves and weakened frame and failing heart to worry it
+out as she may, is a culpable cruelty for which no amount of pretty
+sentiment is the smallest atonement.[4]
+
+        [4] I like sometimes to take my views out on an airing,
+        before making a final disposition of them, just to see how
+        they are received. On one such occasion, an excellent man,
+        in comfortable circumstances, expressed his very hearty
+        dissent from my opinions about woman's work. He thought
+        women had a pretty easy time of it, and appealed to his
+        wife, just then entering the room, to say what had been her
+        own experience. I wish type could convey the clear, ringing
+        decisiveness and incisiveness of the tone with which she
+        instantaneously responded "HARASSED TO DEATH!"
+
+There are so many ways where there is a will! There are so many
+opportunities for usefulness, if a man would only improve them. How
+many times does the merchant, the lawyer, the busy business man, stop
+at the street-corners, or in his own haunts, to chat with friends? How
+many hours there are in the twenty-four when a man might run down from
+his study, come in earlier from his shop, take a recess from his
+fields, and rest himself and his wife by giving the little one a ride
+in the basket-wagon, or the elegant carriage, or amusing it on the
+carpet, while tired mamma lies down for a much-needed nap, or turns
+off a greater amount of belated mending or cooking than she could do
+in four hours with baby. And what benefit would not the man himself
+receive, what gradual diminution of his selfishness in thus waiting
+upon the helplessness of this little creature. Under what bonds for
+the future and for virtue does it not lay him? Let him look down upon
+his baby with earnest eyes, and inwardly resolve to be himself a man
+pure and honorable as he wishes this boy to be; let him remember to
+bear himself toward all women as he would have all men bear themselves
+to the tiny woman in his arms.
+
+There are men who assume and act on the assumption that their days
+must be kept free from childish interlopers. They are aggrieved, their
+personal rights are infringed upon, they have a most heavy and
+undeserved yoke to bear if the children are not hustled out of their
+way,--as if children were a kind of luxury and plaything of women in
+which they may be indulged, if they will be careful to confine them to
+their own department, nor ever let them encroach on the peculiar
+domains of the lord of the manor. There are women weak enough to give
+in to this assumption, and make it a rule that the children are not to
+disturb their father. Before he comes into the house the crying baby
+must be hushed at any cost, or removed beyond his hearing. The little
+ones are not allowed to enter his study, they must not play in the
+hall near it, nor in the garden under his window, because the noise
+disturbs him. When the mood takes him, he takes them. He goes into the
+nursery and has a merry romp with them, and when he is tired of it or
+they begin to take too many liberties, he goes out again and thinks
+his children are very charming. Or possibly he never goes into the
+nursery at all,--a lack of interest which would be very unwomanly in a
+woman, but is not the the least unmanly nor absolutely unknown in a
+man. It is a great affliction to the mother, if, in consequence of a
+temporary neglect of picket-duty, he puts his head into the kitchen or
+sewing-room, to say with heroic self-control, "Carrie, the children
+are so in and out that it is impossible for me to do anything." An
+impatient upward look from his newspaper causes her a shiver of dread.
+Small table-skirmishes are put to an untimely end by mamma's hurrying
+the unlucky belligerents out of sight and sound of their outraged
+sire, and the one Medo-Persic law of the family is at all risks to
+rescue the father from every inconvenience and annoyance from the
+children. The kind, devoted woman shuts them carefully up within her
+own precincts. They may overrun her without stint. They may climb her
+chair, pull her work about, upset her basket, scratch the bureau, cut
+the sofa, run to her for healing in every little heart-ache; but no
+matter. They are kept from disturbing papa. I am amazed at the folly
+of women! Kept from disturbing papa? Rather hound them on, if there
+must be any intervention! Put the crying baby in his arms the moment
+he enters the house, and be sure to run away at once beyond his reach,
+or with true masculine ingenuity he will be sure at the end of five
+minutes to find some pretext for delivering the young orator back into
+your care. So far from carefully withholding the children from the
+paternal vicinage, at the first symptoms of exclusiveness, put a paper
+of candy and a set of drums at his door to toll the children thither.
+But this only in extreme cases. If he is ordinarily reasonable, the
+right course is to do neither, but let things take their own way.
+Except in case of illness or some unusual and pressing emergency, the
+little ones ought not to be kept from either of their lawful owners.
+The serenity of one is no more sacred than the serenity of the other.
+The father must simply take the natural consequences of his children.
+If they drift into his current, he must bear them on. He ought to
+experience their obviousness, their inconvenience, their distraction.
+It is no worse for a chubby hand to upset the inkstand on his papers,
+than for it to upset the molasses-pitcher upon the table-cloth. It is
+no worse for his experiments, his study, his reading, to be
+interrupted, than it is for his wife's sewing. He can write his
+letters, or stand behind the counter, or make shoes, with a baby in
+his arms, just as well as she can make bread and set the table with a
+baby in her arms. Let him come into actual close contact with his
+children and see what they are and what they do, and he will have far
+more just ideas of the whole subject than if he stands far off and,
+from old theories on the one side and ten minutes of clean apron and
+bright faces on the other, pronounces his euphonious generalizations.
+His children will elicit as much love and admiration and interest as
+now, together with a great deal more knowledge and a great deal less
+silly, mannish sentimentalism.
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+
+But whatever may be the opportunities and capabilities of infantine
+gymnastics, there is always one way in which fathers may indirectly,
+but very powerfully, influence their children, and that is through the
+mother. When her little children are around her, she needs above all
+earthly things the strength, support, society, and sympathy of her
+husband. It is wellnigh impossible to conceive the demand which a
+little child makes upon its mother's vitality. In Nature's plan, I
+believe, the supply is always equal to the demand. The new, fresh life
+gives back through a thousand channels all the life it draws. But if
+the mother is left alone, in such a solitude as is never found outside
+of marriage, but often and often within it; if she is left to seek in
+her baby her chief solace, unhappy is her fate. The little one
+exhausts her physical strength, and the inattentive and
+abstracted--alas! that one may not seldom say, the unkind and
+overbearing husband fails to supply her with moral strength, and her
+weary feet go on with ever-diminishing joy. All this is unnecessary.
+All this is contrary to the Divine economy. Every child ought to be a
+new spring of life, an El Dorado, fountain of immortal youth. Whether
+it shall be or not lies, if you look at it from one point, wholly with
+the husband, or if you look at it from another, wholly with the wife.
+On the one hand, each is all-powerful. On the other, each is
+powerless. But the husband has always the advantage of strength,
+out-door activities, and continual commerce with the world, and
+consequent variety. The wife, surrounded by her children, is in danger
+of giving herself up to them entirely. She will incessantly dispense
+her life without being careful to furnish herself for such demands by
+opening her soul to new accessions. Here is where her husband should
+stand by her continually to encourage and stimulate. If she is not
+strong enough to go out into the world, let him bring the world home
+to her. He should by all means see to it that her heart and soul do
+not contract. Every child, every added experience, should have the
+effect of expanding her horizon, deepening and enlarging her
+sympathies, and enabling her to gather the whole earth into her
+motherly love. Her little world ought to be a type of the great world.
+The wisdom which she gathers in the one, she ought to turn to the good
+of the other,--a good that will surely come back again in other shapes
+to her family world. So, every family should be both a missionary
+centre and the medium through which, in never-ending flow, all good
+and gracious influences shall pour. Every family should rise and fall
+with the pulse of humanity, and not be a mere knob of organic matter,
+without dependencies or connections. But the father should see to
+this. He should gently lure the mother out of her nursery into such
+broad fresh air as she needs for healthy growth. What that shall be is
+a question of character and culture. A lyceum lecture, a
+sewing-society, an evening party, a concert, a county fair, may be
+elevation, amusement, improvement to her. Or he may do her most good
+by helping her to be interested in reading, either in the current or
+in classic literature. Or, best of all, he may charm her with his own
+companionship, beguile her with pleasant drives, or walks and talks,
+keeping her heart open on the husband side, and so continually alive,
+while maintaining also the oneness which marriage in theory creates.
+It is this respect in which husbands are perhaps most generally
+deficient. They do not talk with their wives. If a neighbor is
+married, they tell of it. If a battle is fought, or a village burnt
+down, they communicate the fact; but for any interchange of thought or
+sentiment or emotion, for any conversation that is invigorating,
+inspiring, that causes a thrill or leaves a glow, how often does such
+a thing occur between husband and wife? What intellectual meeting is
+there,--what shock of electricities? When a definite domestic question
+is to be decided, the wife's judgment may be sought, and that is
+better than a solitary stumbling on, regardless of her views or
+feelings; but this sort of bread-and-butter discussion of ways and
+means is not the gentle, animated play of conversation, not that
+pleasant sparkle which enlivens the hours, that trustful confidence
+which lightens the heart, that wielding of weapons which strengthens
+the arm, that sweet, instinctive half unveiling which increases
+respect and deepens love and fills the heart with inexpressible
+tenderness. Yet there is nobody in the world with whom it is so
+important for a man to be intimately acquainted as his own wife, while
+such intimate acquaintance is the exception rather than the rule. Ever
+one sees them going on each in his own path, each with his own inner
+world of opinions and hopes and memories, one in name, miserably two
+in all else.
+
+Men often have too much confidence in their measuring-lines. They
+fancy they have fathomed a soul's depths when they have but sounded
+its shallows. They think they have circumnavigated the globe when they
+have only paddled in a cove. They trim their sails for other seas,
+leaving the priceless gems of their own undiscovered. To many a man no
+voyage of exploration would bring such rich returns as a persevering
+and affectionate search into the resources of the heart which he calls
+his own. Many and many a man would be amazed at learning that in the
+tame household drudge, in the meek, timid, apologetic recipient of his
+caprices, in the worn and fretful invalid, in the commonplace, insipid
+domestic weakling he scorns an angel unawares. Many a wife is wearied
+and neglected into moral shabbiness, who, rightly entreated, would
+have walked sister and wife of the gods. Human nature in certain
+directions is as infinite as the Divine nature, and when a man turns
+away from his wife, under the impression that he has exhausted her
+capabilities, and must seek elsewhere the sympathy and companionship
+he craves or go without it altogether, let him reflect that the
+chances are at least even that he has but exhausted himself, and that
+the soil which seems to him fallow might in other hands or with a
+wiser culture yield most plenteous harvests.
+
+There is another point which should be kept in solemn consideration.
+The deportment of children to their parents is very largely influenced
+by the deportment of parents to each other. It is of small service
+that a child be taught to repeat the formula, "Honor thy father and
+thy mother," if, by his bearing, the father continually dishonors the
+mother. The Monday courtesy has more effect than the Sunday
+commandment. Every conjugal impoliteness is a lesson in filial
+disrespect. If a son sees that his father is regardless of his
+mother's taste, does not respect her opinions, or heed her
+sensitiveness or care for her happiness; or if, on the other hand, he
+sees that she is held in ever-watchful love, he will be very likely to
+follow in the same path. There are of course exceptions. A gross and
+brutal abuse may work an opposite effect by the law of contrarieties,
+but in ordinary cases this is the ordinary course of events. In common
+Christian families a boy will appraise his mother at his father's
+valuation. If the husband takes the liberty of speaking to her
+sharply, the son when irritated will not think it worth while to
+repress his inclination to do the same. If the husband is not careful
+to pay her outward respect, let it not be supposed that his son will
+set him the example. But if the husband cherishes her with delight, if
+his behavior always assumes that the best is to be reserved for her,
+the best will be her incense from the whole family, and no son will
+any more allow himself to indulge any evil propensity in her presence
+than he would pluck out his right eye. And in the delicacy, the
+refinement, the gentleness and warmth and consecration of her presence
+all this courtesy and consideration will come back to them a
+hundred-fold in constant dews of blessing.
+
+As with habits so with principles. The mother's influence is strong,
+but the stories told of its strength are often hurtful in their
+tendency. It is not the strength of the mother's, but of the father's
+influence, that needs to be held up to prominence. By Divine
+sufferance, mothers can do much to abrogate the evil consequences of
+paternal misdoing,--but paternal misdoing is not for that any the less
+evil. If the husband laughs at his wife's temperance notions, and
+thinks wine-sipping to be elegant and harmless, his boy will sip wine
+elegantly and fancy his mother old-fashioned; and with his father's
+appetite, but without his father's strength, and with more than his
+father's temptations,--in the great city, homeless, bewildered, and
+dazzled,--he will rush on to a bitter end. If the husband thinks
+religion a thing beautiful and becoming to woman, but unnecessary to
+manly character, his son will not long go to church and to Sunday
+school when he feels in his veins the thrill of approaching manhood. I
+know a community where not a man can be found to superintend the Sabbath
+school, and a woman, noble and whole-souled, takes its charge upon
+herself. The fathers do not disbelieve in Sunday schools, or they
+would not suffer their wives and children to go. They do not believe in
+them, or they would go themselves. They are simply indifferent,--and
+indifferent in a matter so important, that indifference is guilt. Will
+the young men of that community be likely to fear God and keep his
+commandments? Will they be likely to acknowledge the claims of a
+religion which their fathers despise? If they grow up hardened,
+selfish, headstrong, unfortified against assault, will it be the fault
+of the mothers who are struggling against wind and tide, or of the
+fathers who are lazily lounging at oar and rudder?
+
+People in general are not half married. Half? If one would
+mathematically approximate the truth, he must multiply his denominator
+far beyond reach of the digits; and, what is still worse the fraction
+that is married is, in a vast majority of cases, not only the least,
+but the lowest. It is not the intellect, the spirit, the immortality,
+that is married, but that alone which is of the earth, earthy.
+
+Xenophon, in his _Memorabilia Socratis_, presents to us Ischomacus, an
+Athenian of great riches and reputation, repairing to Socrates for
+help in extricating him from domestic entanglements. In laying the
+case before the philosopher, Ischomacus informs him that he told his
+wife that his main object in marrying her was to have a person in
+whose discretion he could confide, who would take proper care of his
+servants, and expend his money with economy,--which was certainly very
+frank.
+
+But that was twenty-three hundred years ago, and people have grown
+less material and more spiritual since then. No man now would hold out
+to a woman such inducement to marriage. Certainly not. Men now wait
+till the Rubicon is passed, and then lay down their pleasant little
+programmes in the newspapers,--general principles for private
+consumption. The popular voice, speaking in your everywhere
+circulating newspaper, says: "A man gets a wife to look after his
+affairs, and to assist him in his journey through life; to educate and
+prepare their children for a proper station in life, and not to
+dissipate his property. The husband's interest should be the wife's
+care, and her greatest ambition to carry her no farther than his
+welfare or happiness, together with that of her children. This should
+be her sole aim, and the theatre of her exploits in the bosom of her
+family, where she may do as much toward making a fortune as he can in
+the counting-room or the workshop."
+
+Is this very much more commanding than the attitude of Ischomacus?
+Does Anno Domini loom with immeasurable grandeur above Anno Mundi?
+Ischomacus wanted his wife to manage his fortune. Young America wants
+his to help make one. Is it a very great stride in advance,
+considering we have been twenty-three centuries about it? This extract
+I take from a religious newspaper, and it is pagan to the heart's
+core; yes, and in these matters the Church is as pagan as the World.
+Because a man is folded in the Church, one has no more expectation of
+finding in him spiritual views concerning marriage than if he belonged
+to the World. Unmitigated selfishness, worldliness, greed, and
+evil-seeking are the roots and fruits of such a "religious" paragraph.
+Church and World are both gone aside and altogether become filthy. The
+holy sacrament is profaned alike by churchman and worldling. It is
+tossed on the spear-point of levity, it is clutched under the
+muck-rake of materialism, it is degraded and defiled till its pristine
+purity is wellnigh lost, and only a marred and defaced image rears its
+foul features from the mire. That it does not always cause disgust, is
+because the goddess is so chiefly hidden that women do not recognize
+the lineaments of the demon which has usurped her place. Miasma has
+polluted the atmosphere so long that people do not know the feeling of
+untainted air. O, it is good to speak your mind, be it only once in a
+lifetime! Now I wish I had walked softly all my days, that, with all
+the force of a rare indignation, I might just this once crush down
+that hateful, that debasing, that vile and leprous thing which flaunts
+the name of marriage, but does not even put on the white garments of
+its sanctity to hide its own shame. Leer and laugh, coarse jest,
+advice, insinuation, interpretation, and conjecture beslime the
+surface of our social life and work abomination. Nature and
+unconsciousness become impossible, and one is swallowed up in stagnant
+depths, or borne above them only with an inward, raging tempest of
+irrepressible loathing. A blessing rest upon this pen-point that
+stamps black and heavy into receptive paper the wrath which it is not
+lawful otherwise to express. Sentiments the most repulsive, the most
+insulting to womanhood and to a woman, may be coolly, carelessly,
+unconsciously tossed at you by and in society, and you must smile and
+parry with equal nonchalance. Thank Heaven for Gutenberg and Dr.
+Faustus, that whatsoever has been spoken in darkness may be heard to
+its shame in the light, and that which has been spoken in the ear may
+be proclaimed upon the house-tops with the detestation it deserves!
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+
+Stay for a moment the pressure with which--though, perhaps, all
+unknown to themselves--you force women under the yoke of marriage, and
+let us look without passion at a few palpable, commonplace facts.
+Women must marry because they need a protector. They are weak, and
+cannot safely go down life's pathway without a strong arm to lean on.
+What kind of protection do wives actually find? I once looked into an
+old-fashioned house and I saw a woman, the mother of seven sons,
+heating her oven with the boughs of trees, which she could manage only
+by resting the branching ends on the backs of chairs while the trunk
+ends were burning in the oven, and as they broke into coals the boughs
+were pushed in, till the whole was consumed. When her dinner was
+preparing, she would also take her pails and go through the hot summer
+morning a quarter of a mile to the spring for water. Was this
+"protection, freedom, tender-liking, ease." This was not in a brutal
+and quarrelsome, but in a united and Christian family; father and
+mother members of an Orthodox church in good and regular standing,
+owners of broad lands and plenty of money, the sons rather famous for
+their filial love and duty. It was not an unnatural thing, and excited
+no comment. The seven sons, all their lives, held their mother in
+affectionate remembrance, but it never occurred to them to leave the
+hay-fields in order to cut wood or fetch water.
+
+This was sixty or seventy years ago, before any of you, my young
+readers, were born.
+
+Once a rich man built a barn, and of course he had "a raising." To the
+raising came the men and women from all the country-side, as was their
+wont. For the men was a supper provided with lavish abundance. Before
+they came in, thirty women sat down to supper. Of course, when came
+the men's turn to be served, these women gave assistance at the
+tables, but all the previous cooking and arrangement had been done by
+the women of the family, without outside help. Besides the hot meat
+supper, the men were furnished with unlimited drink; cider, rum, and
+brandy were carried out to them by the pailful. An experienced
+carpenter from an adjoining village declared that he would take the
+timber in the woods, hew it and frame it, and raise it for what the
+mere festivities of raising cost. To perform one little piece of work,
+the men laid upon the shoulders of women a burden ten times heavier
+than their own, and incurred an expense which, if put upon their
+large, square, bare dwelling-house, would have given it beauties and
+conveniences, whose absence was a continual and severe drawback to the
+women's comfort. They turned the woman's work into hard labor, that
+they might turn their own into a frolic. Were those women protected?
+That was only one instance, but that was the common machinery used in
+raising barns. That, too, was long ago.
+
+Once there existed a village containing four schools, which were in
+session three months in the summer and three months in the winter. At
+the beginning and end of the terms, the "committee," of whom there
+were two in each "district," used to visit the schools attended by the
+greater part of the adult male population of the district. At the
+conclusion of this visit, one of the district committee at the
+beginning of the term, and one at the end, was always expected to
+invite the other seven committee-men and all the visiting neighbors to
+his house to dinner. The hard-working farmer's wife, or the butcher's,
+or the shoemaker's wife, with her four, five, seven, little children
+around her, and no servant, prepared her three roast turkeys, her
+three plum-puddings, and all the attendant dishes; and the ten,
+twenty, thirty stalwart farmers, butchers, shoemakers, booted and
+burly, filed into her best room, swallowed her roast turkeys and her
+plum-puddings, with no assistance from her except the most valued
+service of flitting around the table to keep their plates supplied,
+and then filed away to visit another school and swarm into another
+best room, leaving her to the bones, and the dishes, and the six
+little children. And this is man's protection. But this was the old
+times, you say. Yes, and you look back upon it with a sigh, and call
+it the "_good_ old times."
+
+Well, the times have changed. They are no longer old, but new. Have we
+changed with them? In a town I wot of, the doctors have a periodical
+meeting. They assemble in the evening by themselves in a parlor,
+discussing no one knows what, among themselves, till ten or eleven
+o'clock, when they emerge into the dining-room and have a grand set-to
+upon lobster salads, stewed oysters, ices, and all manner of frothy
+fanfaronade. A minister is going to be ordained in a country village,
+and the village families round about heap up their tables and bid in
+all comers to feasts of fat things. A conference of churches is held
+in the meeting-house, and the same newspaper paragraph that notes the
+logical sermon and the gratifying reports of revivals, notes also the
+good things which the hospitable citizens provided, and the urgency
+with which strangers were pressed to partake. One would suppose that
+the reasoning of the fastidious old Jews was suspected to have
+descended to our own day and race, and that the sons of men must
+always come eating and drinking, or people will say they have a devil.
+
+Every advance in science or skill seems to be attended by a
+corresponding advance in the claims of the cooking-range. The palate
+keeps pace with the brain. The one presents a claim for every victory
+of the other. The left hand reaches out to clutch what the right hand
+is stretched out to offer to humanity.
+
+Now you all think this is very strange,--a most remarkable way of
+looking at things, a most inhospitable and cold-blooded view to take
+of society. What! begrudge a little pains to give one's friends a
+pleasant reception! and that only once a year, or a month! It is such
+a thing as was never heard of. You have always looked upon the affair
+as one of pleasure. The houses which, you have entered opened wide to
+you their doors. You met on all sides smiles, welcome, and good cheer.
+You never for a moment dreamed or heard of such a thing as that you
+were considered a trouble, a visitation. Perhaps you were not. Very
+likely you were held in honor; but these customs are burdensome for
+all that. You must remember that by far the greater part of American
+housewives are already overborne by their ordinary domestic cares.
+This makes the whole thing wear a very different aspect from what it
+otherwise would. If a cup is half full, you can pour in a great deal
+more, and only increase the cup's worth, for to such end was it
+created; but if it is already brimmed, you cannot add even a
+teaspoonful without mischief, and if you suddenly dash in another
+cupful, you will make a sad mess of it. Now when these various
+convocations occur, the note of preparation is sounded long
+beforehand, and the wail of weariness echoes long afterwards. This is
+simply a statement of fact. I am not responsible for the fact. I did
+not create it, and I wish it were otherwise; but so long as it is a
+fact, it is much better that it should be known. The woman who
+welcomed you so warmly, entreated you so tenderly, entertained you so
+agreeably, had no sooner shut the door behind you, when you had
+started for the church, than the sunshine which radiated from your
+presence went suddenly behind a cloud of odorous steam that rose up
+from stew-pan and gridiron. While you were listening to the eloquent
+address, she was flying about to have the dishes washed and the next
+meal ready. When, after your hour's pleasant talk in the evening over
+the day's doings, you were sleeping soundly in her airy chambers, she,
+as noiselessly as possible, till eleven and twelve o'clock at night,
+was sweeping her carpets and dusting her furniture in the only time
+which she could rescue from the duties of hospitality for that
+purpose. I maintain that, however agreeable are these social
+conventions, they are bought too dearly at such a price. A great many
+women who suffer from such causes never think of complaining. They are
+hospitable from the bottom of their hearts; but however sincere their
+welcome, pies do not bake themselves. Never a cow went in at one end
+of an oven to come out at the other a nicely-browned sirloin of beef.
+Never a barrel of flour and a bowl of yeast rushed spontaneously
+together and evoked a batch of bread, nor did the hen-fever at its
+hottest height ever produce bantam or Shanghai that could lay eggs
+which would leap lightly ceiling-ward to come down an omelet. All these
+things require time and pains, and generally the time and pains of
+people who, by reason of the stern necessities of their position, have
+none of either to spare. It is not just to say that these emergencies
+come only once in a great while, and are therefore too insignificant
+to be reckoned. The same injudiciousness which crops out in a
+conference of churches this week will reappear in a town-meeting next
+week, and in a mass-meeting the week after, and a teachers'-meeting
+the week after that. The same marital ignorance and inconsiderateness
+that brings on one thing will bring on another thing, and, except in
+the few cases where money and other ample resources enable one to
+secure adequate service, the wrong side, the prose side, the hard side
+of these pleasant "occasions" comes on the wife; who, whether she meet
+it gladly, or only acquiescently, or reluctantly, is surely worn away
+by the attrition. However welcome society may be to her, she cannot
+encounter these odds with impunity, and in a majority of cases the
+odds are so heavy that she has neither time nor spirits to enjoy the
+society. All this wear and tear is unnecessary. The doctors would be
+better off to go home without their hot suppers. There is seldom, in
+cities, any necessity for feeding masses of people, because
+professional feeding-houses are always at hand, and people seldom
+congregate in the country except in summer, when each man might, with
+the smallest trouble, carry his own sandwich, and eat it on the grass,
+surrounded by his kinsfolk and acquaintance, with just as much
+hilarity as if he were sitting in a hard-cushioned high chair in a
+country-house parlor. Enjoyment would not be curtailed on the one
+side, and would be greatly promoted on the other.
+
+The Essex Institute has its Field-meetings,--its pleasant bi-weekly
+summer visits into the country, and is everywhere welcome. During the
+morning it roams over the fields, laying its inquisitive hands on
+every green and blossoming and creeping thing. The insects in the air,
+the fishes in the brook, the spiders in their webs, the butterfly on
+its stalk, feel instinctively that their hour is come, and converge
+spontaneously into their little tin sarcophagi. At noonday hosts of
+heavy baskets unlade their toothsome freight, and a merry feast is
+seasoned with Attic salt. In the afternoon, the farm-wagons come
+driving up, and the farm-horses lash their contented sides under the
+friendly trees, while city and country join in the grave or sparkling
+or instructive talk which fixes the wisdom caught in the morning
+rambles. At night, young men and maidens, old men and children, go
+their several ways homeward, just as happy as if they had left behind
+them a dozen family-mothers wearied into fretfulness and illness by
+much serving. They depend upon no one for entertainment and owe no
+tiresome formalities. Go, all manner of convocations, and do likewise.
+
+Note, if you please, that it is not feasting which is objectionable.
+Truly or falsely, eating has always been held to be the promoter and
+attendant of conviviality, the mouth opening the way at the same time
+to the palate and the brain. If men can provide feasts without laying
+burdens upon their wives, let them do it and welcome; but if the
+material part of the feast cannot be accomplished without so serious
+an increase of a wife's labor as to destroy or diminish her capacity
+for enjoying the mental part, it ought not to be attempted.
+
+You may say that women are as much to blame in this thing as men; that
+the great profusion, variety, and elaborateness of their meals are as
+much of their own motion as of men's; that they are indeed proud of
+and delight in showing their culinary resources; that they gather
+sewing-circles of their own sex without any hint, help, or wish from
+the other, and make just as great table-displays on such occasions as
+on any others that I have mentioned,--all of which may be very true.
+So the Doctor Southsides for many years maintained that slavery must
+be a good thing, because the slaves were content in it. So the
+Austrian despots point to peasants dancing on the greensward as the
+justification of their paternal government, their absolute tyranny; as
+if degradation is any less disastrous when its victims are sunk so low
+as to be unconscious of their situation,--as if, indeed, that were not
+the lowest pit of all. How came women, made as truly as man in the
+image and likeness of God, to be reduced to the level of sacrificing
+time, ease, intellectual and social good, to the low pride of sensual
+display? Is it not the fault of those whose walk and conversation have
+made the care of eating and drinking the one thing needful in a
+woman's education, the chief end of her life; who have not hesitated
+to degrade the high prerogatives of an immortal soul to the
+gratification of their own fleshly lusts; who have manoeuvred so
+adroitly that the tickling of their own palates has become a more
+important and a more influential thing than the building up of the
+temple of the Holy Ghost? Profusion and variety and elaborateness are
+of the wife's own motion; but the more profuse, varied, and elaborate
+her display, the more you praise her. The more ingenuity her feast
+displays, the more ingeniously you combine words and exhaust your
+rhetoric to express approbation and delight. Your continued and
+conjoint praise is a far stronger incentive than the clubs and thongs
+with which husbands have been sometimes wont to urge their wives to
+action, and which you recognize as force. You do not compel her, but,
+directly and indirectly, with an almost irresistible potency, for
+years and years you have enjoined it upon her, till your moral
+pressure has become as powerful as any display of physical strength
+could be. And having, in French fashion, set up a cook on the shrine
+of your worship, is it an extenuation of your offence, that women now
+vie with each other in striving to merit and attain such an
+apotheosis? Having caused your female children to pass through the
+kitchen-fire to the Moloch of your adoration, are you so illogical as
+to suppose that they will come out without any smell of fire upon
+their garments?
+
+You are not to blame for the thistle-field. You did not make the
+thistles grow. No; but you planted the seed, you watered the soil, you
+supplied all the conditions of growth; and when the Lord of the
+vineyard cometh seeking fruit, and findeth only thistles, what shall
+he do but miserably destroy those wicked men and give the vineyard
+unto others?
+
+These are only the difficult hills over which you urge women to climb
+when you urge them on to marriage. Of the levels between, of the
+plains over which lies the every-day path of the great majority of
+married women, I have spoken with sufficient distinctness in another
+connection. Whether they are the wives of inefficient or of
+enterprising men makes small difference. The overwhelming probability
+is, that your blooming bride will encounter a fate similar to that of
+the prince in the fairy-tale, who, enchanted by an ugly old witch, was
+compelled to spend his life sitting inside a great iron stove; only,
+instead of sitting comfortably inside, she will be kept in perpetual
+motion outside. Poverty or wealth, ignorance or education, in the
+husband, may affect the quality, but scarcely the quantity, of the
+wife's work. Hard, grinding, depressing toil is not the peculiar lot
+of the poor housewife. It is the "protection," the "cherishing," which
+men "well to do in the world" award their wives,--the thriving
+farmers, the butchers, the blacksmiths, who "get a good living," and
+perhaps have "money at interest." What advantageth it a woman to be
+the wife of a "rising man"? He rises by reading, by reasoning, by
+attention to his business, by intercourse with intelligent people, by
+journeys, by constant growth, and constant contact with stimulating
+circumstances; but she is tied down by the endless details of
+housekeeping and the nursery. Growth, intelligence, and rising in the
+world are not for her. His increasing business and fair political
+prospects only bring more cares to her, and bring them long before any
+permanent increase of income justifies, or can command, anything
+approximating to adequate assistance in the home department. And his
+increase of business, his widening circle of acquaintance, are sure to
+take him more away from home, to absorb more of his time and his
+thoughts, and so not only create heavier burdens, but call to other
+tasks the strength that ought to bear them. The selfsame circumstances
+which raise the man depress the woman. If he does not make especial
+effort to upbear her with himself, the result will presently be, that,
+while he rides on the crest of the wave, she is engulfed in the trough
+of the sea. There is small reason to suppose he will make the effort.
+It is the men in "comfortable circumstances," shrewd, with an eye to
+the main chance, who often sin most deeply in this respect. Their main
+chance does not include husbandly love, wifely repose. It is a part of
+their "business talent" to turn their wives to account just as they
+turn everything else. She is a partner in the concern. She is a part
+of the stock in trade. She is one of the stepping-stones to eminence
+or competence. All that she can earn or save, all the labor or
+supervision that can be wrested from her, is so, much added to the
+working capital; and so long as she does not lose her health, so long
+as she remains in good working order, they never suspect that anything
+is wrong. If she were not doing the house-work or taking care of the
+children, she would not be doing anything that would bring in money,
+or nearly so much money, as her economy and foresight save. Even if
+she does lose her health, her husband scarcely so much as thinks of
+laying the sin at his own door. It was not hard work or low spirits,
+it was rheumatism or slow fever, that brought her down. If her life
+lapses away, and she descends into the grave before she has lived out
+half her days, her sorrowing husband lays it to the account of a
+mysterious Providence, and--"the world is all before him where to
+choose."
+
+Have I drawn a cold, harsh picture? The coldness and harshness are not
+alone in the drawing. It spreads before you every day and all around
+you: a picture whose figures throb with hidden life,--a very _tableau
+vivant_. What else can be expected from our social principles? What
+kind of husbands do you look for in men who have set their affections
+on fortune or fame? What kind of husbands can a society turn out that
+publicly and shamelessly avows the preservation and increase of
+property to be the object of marriage? A people's practice is
+sometimes, but very rarely, better than its principles. If wealth or
+position be the chief goal of a man's ambition, he only acts
+consistently in harnessing his wife along with all his other powers
+and possessions to his chariot. Looking at it dispassionately, freed
+from the glamour which popular opinion throws upon our eyes, it would
+seem to be better for a woman to marry the Grand Turk, since a
+friendly bowstring might put a period to her trouble, or she might
+hope to be tied up in a sack and safely and quietly deposited in the
+Bosphorus; while in America there is no such possibility. You must
+live on to the end, come it never so tardily.
+
+And how far extends even so much protection as this,--the protection
+which consists in appropriating a woman's time and strength, and
+deteriorating both her mind and body by incessant, chiefly menial, and
+not unfrequently repulsive toil, and giving her in return--food,
+clothing, and shelter, which, if female labor were justly paid, she
+could earn by one fourth of the effort, and which is often bestowed
+with more or less reluctance and unpleasant conditioning, as a favor
+rather than a right? Look around upon all the people whose
+circumstances you know, and see if the number of families is small
+whose support depends partly upon the mother? Do you know any families
+which depend chiefly or entirely upon the mother? Do you know any,
+where the husbands are invalids, and have laid by nothing for a rainy
+day? any, where the husbands are lazy and inefficient, and perhaps
+intemperate, and neglect to provide for their families? any, where
+they have been unfortunate and lost all, and only the mother's courage
+and energy supply deficiency? any, where the husband has died
+insolvent, and the survivor struggles single-handed against the tide?
+any, where the husband's death was the lifting of an incubus, which
+removed, the family seemed at once to be prosperous and happy? Do you
+ever see a woman, with a family of children and a husband, taking the
+entire care of her household, and, besides this, earning a little
+money at knitting or sewing or washing? Judging from my own
+observation, setting aside inability from disease, where you find one
+woman who is a dead-weight upon her energetic husband, you will find
+seven men who are a dead-weight upon their energetic wives.
+
+But all this is "protection." All this is the superior sex cherishing
+the inferior; the chivalrous sex defending the helpless; the strong
+caring for the delicate; the able providing for the dependent. To all
+this you urge women when you goad them on to marriage. And you do well
+to apply your goad. You are wise in your generation, when you create
+such an overwhelming outside pressure; without it, women would not go
+down quick into the pit. Left to their own unprejudiced reason, to
+their own clear eyes and rapid and just conclusions, they would not
+choose, the greatest of all evils,--a living death. In vain is the net
+spread in the sight of any bird. If you cannot help this state of
+things, where is your logic? If you can help it, where is your
+conscience?
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+
+You will say that I have left the main element out of the calculation;
+that I have looked at marriage only in respect of its material
+combinations, in which light it appears but as a body without the
+soul; whereas, in its real wholeness it is penetrated by love which
+transforms all common scenes, persons, and duties "into something rich
+and strange." But will truth permit one to view it otherwise? Is
+marriage, as we see it practically carried out, penetrated with this
+vivifying and spiritualizing element? Love, indeed, calls nothing
+common or unclean; but, as a matter of homely fact, is there love
+enough in ordinary housekeeping to keep it sweet? The first year or
+two runs well, but how much living love survives the first olympiad?
+How much outlasts a decade? In marriages openly mercenary, we do not
+count on finding affection; where they are entered into honestly, are
+they followed by different results? If a woman marries for money, or
+station, or respectability, she may compass her ends, but if she
+marries for love, are not the odds against her? Motive affects her
+character, but scarcely her fate. Her love will be wasted on a
+thankless heart; she may consider herself fortunate if it be not
+trampled under a brutal, or perhaps only a heedless foot. Love in
+marriage! Marriage is the grave of love. Look at best for association,
+habit, support, tranquillity, freedom from outside compassion, in
+marriage, but do not look for love.
+
+On such a topic as this the truth must be felt rather than proved, yet
+authority is not wanting. So eminent and trustworthy a man as Paley,
+in his Moral and Political Philosophy, having spoken of the necessity
+that a man and wife should make mutual concession, adds: "A man and
+woman in love with each other do this insensibly; but love is neither
+general nor durable; and where that is wanting, no lessons of duty, no
+delicacy of sentiment, will go half so far with the generality of
+mankind as this one intelligible reflection, that they must each make
+the best of their bargain."
+
+This work was published in 1785. We have all studied it at school,
+under the guidance of men and women, married and single. Its positions
+have been variously, frequently, and sometimes successfully assailed.
+But I have never heard a whisper breathed or seen a line written
+impugning his statement, that love is neither general nor durable.
+This statement is not made under the influence of passion, or to
+compass any purpose, but is simply the basis of an argument,--a
+general truth, as if he should say that man is endowed with a
+conscience.
+
+In that most fascinating of biographies, the "Memoirs of Frederic
+Perthes," written by his son, and published in Edinburgh, we have a
+very charming picture of home life. Perthes, a man known throughout
+Germany, the intimate friend of her most distinguished scholars and
+statesmen, is the husband of Caroline, a woman whose character,
+indirectly but minutely and impressively portrayed in her husband's
+memoirs, seems to be without flaw. Fresh, simple, truthful, sensible,
+sympathetic, affectionate, educated, and accomplished, the qualities
+of her head and heart alike command something deeper than respect. As
+daughter, wife, mother, and woman she is equally admirable. Her
+letters to her husband and her children are as full of wisdom as of
+love. Everywhere she shines white and clear and pure as the moon, yet
+warm, beneficent, and bountiful as the sun. It is only as the wife of
+Perthes that we know her; but, magnificent as Perthes unquestionably
+was, he pales before the most beautiful, most gracious, most womanly
+woman whom he won to his heart and home. No suspicion of her own
+exceeding excellence ever seems to have dawned upon her own mind. Her
+Perthes was the object of her deep respect and her lasting love. This
+fact of itself shows that he must have been a man of extraordinary
+conjugal merit. His relations to her must have been of a very rare
+delicacy. He must have bestowed an attention and been capable of an
+appreciation far beyond the ordinary measure, or such a woman as his
+wife could not have written after several years of marriage, "The old
+song is every morning new, that, if possible, I love Perthes still
+better than the day before." If one may not find satisfaction in the
+contemplation of a marriage passed under circumstances so favoring,
+where shall he look for satisfaction? Nevertheless, listen to a story
+lightly told by her son, the biographer, the learned law-professor of
+the world-renowned Bonn,--told as the old prophets are supposed to
+have frequently uttered their prophecies, with but the most vague and
+imperfect comprehension of what it was that they were saying.
+
+"With her lively fancy, and a heart ever seeking sympathy, she felt it
+to be hard that Perthes, laden with cares, business, and interests of
+all kinds, could devote so little time to her and the children. 'My
+hope becomes every day less that Perthes will be able to make any such
+arrangement of his time as will leave a few quiet hours for me and the
+children. There is nothing that I can do but to love him, and to bear
+him ever in my heart, till it shall please God to bring us together to
+some region where we shall no longer need house or housekeeping, and
+where there are neither bills to be paid nor books to be kept. Perthes
+feels it a heavy trial, but he keeps up his spirits, and for this I
+thank God.' To these and kindred feelings which she had long cherished
+in her heart Caroline now gave expression in letters which she wrote
+to Perthes during his absence. After eighteen years of trial and
+vicissitude, her affection for her husband had retained all its
+youthful freshness; life and love had not become merely habitual, they
+remained fresh and spontaneous as in the bride. She always gave free
+utterance to her feelings, in a manner at once unrestrained and
+characteristic, and felt deeply when Perthes, as a husband, addressed
+her otherwise than he had done as a bridegroom. During Perthes's
+detention for some weeks in Leipsic, this state of feeling found
+expression on both sides, half in jest and half in earnest. 'You
+indeed renounced all sensibility for this year, because of your many
+occupations,' wrote Caroline a few days after her husband's departure;
+'but I, for my part, when I write to you, cannot do so without deep
+feeling; for the thought of you excites all the sensibility of which
+my heart is capable. Not a line have I yet received. Tell me, is it
+not rather hard that you did not write me from Brunswick? At least I
+thought so, and felt very much that your companion G. should have
+written to his newly-married wife, and you not to me. It is the first
+time you have ever gone on a journey without writing to me from your
+first resting-place. I have been reading over your earlier letter to
+find satisfaction to myself, in some measure at least, but it has been
+a mixed pleasure. Last year, at Blankenese, you promised me many happy
+hours of mutual companionship. I have not yet had them; and yet you
+owe many such to me,--yes, you do indeed.' Perthes answered: 'You
+write, telling me that I have renounced all sensibility for this year.
+This is not true, my dearest heart; it is quite otherwise. I think
+that, after so many years of mutual interchange of feeling and of
+thought, and when people understand each other thoroughly, there is an
+end of all those little tendernesses of expression, which represent a
+relationship that is still piquant because new. Be content with me,
+dear child, we understand each other. I did not write to you from
+Brunswick, because we passed through quickly. Moreover, it is not fair
+to compare me with my companion, the bridegroom; youth has its
+features, and so also has middle age. It would be absurd, indeed, were
+I now to be looking by moonlight under the trees and among the clouds
+for young maidens, as I did twenty years ago, or were to imagine young
+ladies to be angels. Nor would it become _you_ any better if you were
+to be dancing a gallopade, or clambering up trees in fits of love
+enthusiasm. We should not find fault with our having grown older; only
+be satisfied, give God the praise, and exercise patience and
+forbearance with me.'"
+
+Can anything be more natural than Caroline's gentle remonstrance? Can
+anything be more hopeless than Perthes's shuffling reply? Lonely wife,
+languishing for a draught of the olden tenderness, and with nothing to
+medicine her weariness but the information that it had all come to an
+end; reaching out for a little of the love that was her life, and met
+by the assertion that climbing trees was not becoming to a woman of
+her age! It is good to know that she replied with spirit, though still
+with no diminution of her immeasurable love. "Your last letter is
+indeed a strange one. I must again say, that my affection knows
+neither youth nor age, and is eternal. I can detect no change, except
+that I now _know_ what formerly I only hoped and believed. I never
+took you for an angel, nor do I now take you for the reverse; neither
+did I ever beguile you by assuming an angel's form or angelic manners.
+I never danced the gallopade, or climbed trees, and am now exactly
+what I was then, only rather older; and you must take me as I am, my
+Perthes;--in one word, love me, and tell me so sometimes, and that is
+all I want."
+
+Men, you to whose keeping a woman's heart is intrusted, can you hear
+that simple prayer,--"Love me, and tell me so sometimes, and that is
+all I want"?
+
+Perthes, shamed out of his worldliness into at least an attempt at
+sympathy, replies: "Your answer was just what it ought to have been;
+only don't forget that my inward love for you is as eternal as yours
+is for me; but I have so many things to think of."
+
+Undoubtedly, after all his evasion, the truth came out at last,--"I
+have so many things to think of." It was the best excuse he could
+offer, and it is a great pity he had not brought it forward in the
+beginning. He had suffered the cares of this world and the
+deceitfulness of business to choke his love; but it would have been
+far more honorable to himself and far more comfortable to his wife to
+confess it frankly, than to affirm his indifference and neglect to be
+the natural course of events. A love overgrown with weeds may be
+revived, but for a love lost by natural decay there is no
+resurrection. "I did not write to you from Brunswick, because we
+passed through quickly." Did he pass through any more quickly than his
+companion G., who found time to write to his newly-married wife? "We
+understand each other thoroughly, and therefore there is an end of all
+those little tendernesses of expression"; but there was no end of them
+on Caroline's part. Her understanding was not less thorough than his,
+yet her love craved expression. "My inward love for you is as eternal
+as yours for me"; yet just before he had been pleading his increasing
+years as an excuse for his diminishing tenderness, while Caroline's
+stanch heart declared, "My affection knows neither youth nor age, and
+is eternal. I can detect no change, except that I now _know_ what
+formerly I only hoped and believed." Shortly afterwards, while
+spending a summer at Wandsbeck for her health, almost daily letters
+were exchanged between herself and her husband. "While those of
+Perthes were devoted to warnings and entreaties to take care of her
+health, (a cheap substitute for affection which Perthes was not alone
+in employing,) the few lines in which Caroline was wont to reply were
+full of expressions of love, and of sorrow on account of their
+necessary separation. 'I am seated in the garden,' she writes, 'and
+all my merry little birds are around me. I let the sun shine upon me,
+to make me well if he can. God grant it! if it only be so far as to
+enable me to discharge my duties to my family.'--'I hope, my dear
+Perthes, that you will again have pleasure in me; the waters seem
+really to do me good. Come to-morrow, only not too late. My very soul
+longs for you.'--'You shall be thanked for the delightful hours that I
+enjoyed with you yesterday,' she writes, after a short visit to
+Hamburg, 'and for the sight of your dear, kind face, as I got out of
+the carriage.'--'I only live where you are with me. Send Matthias to
+me, if it does not interfere with his lessons: if I cannot have the
+father, I must put up with the son.'--'The children enjoy their
+freedom, and are my joy and delight.... But you, dear old father! you,
+too, are my joy and delight. Let me have a little letter; I cannot
+help longing for one, and will read it, when I get it, ten times
+over.'--'It is eighteen years to-day since I wrote you the last letter
+before our marriage, and sent you my first request about the little
+black cross. I have asked for many things in the eighteen years that
+have passed since then, dear Perthes, and what shall I ask to-day? You
+can tell, for you know me well, and know that I have never said an
+untrue word to you. Only you cannot quite know my indescribable
+affection, for it is infinite. Perthes, my heart is full of joy and
+sadness,--would that you were here! This day eighteen years ago I did
+not long for you more fervently or more ardently than now. I thank God
+continually for everything. I am and remain yours in time, and, though
+I know not how, for eternity, too! Be in a very good humor, when you
+come to-morrow. Affection is certainly the greatest wonder in heaven
+or on earth, and the only thing that I can represent to myself as
+insatiable throughout eternity.'"
+
+Do these extracts indicate that many years of mutual interchange of
+feeling and thought had put an end to little tendernesses of
+expression? Does his love seem as eternal as hers? It is true that he
+falls back upon "inward" love; but we only know saints in their
+bodies. Inward love that denies outward manifestation may satisfy men,
+but it will never pass current with women. Little children, who have
+been idle during their study-hour, will often excuse their failures by
+declaring that they "know, but cannot think." No teacher, however, is
+imposed on. A scholar that does not know his lesson well enough to
+recite it, does not know it at all. A love that does not, in one way
+or another, express itself sufficiently to satisfy the object of its
+love, is not love. To satisfy the _object_ of its love, I say, for
+love can never satisfy itself. It was not love that Perthes's letter
+contained, but an apology for its absence.
+
+What men love is the comforts of the married state, not the person who
+provides them,--wifely duties rather than the wife. A man enjoys his
+home. He likes the cheery fireside, the dressing-gown and slippers,
+the bright tea-urn and the brighter eyes behind it. He likes to see
+boys and girls growing up around him, bearing his name and inheriting
+his qualities. He likes to have his clothes laid ready to his hand,
+stockings in their integrity, buttons firm in their places, meals
+pleasant, prompt, yet frugal. He likes a servant such as money cannot
+hire;--attentive, affectionate, spontaneous, devoted, and trustworthy.
+He likes very much the greatest comfort for the smallest outlay, and
+certainly he likes to be loved. His love runs in the current of his
+likings, and is speedily indistinguishable from them; but does he love
+the woman who is his wife? Would he say to her, as poor Tom sadly
+pleaded in "A Half-Life and Half a Life,"--"But I love you true and if
+you can only fancy me, I'll work so hard that you'll be able to keep a
+hired girl and have all your time for reading and going about the
+woods, as you like to do"? Would he say, as Von Fink said to
+Lenore,--"You will have no need to make my shirts, and if you don't
+like account-keeping, why let it alone"? Listen, for it is good to
+know that a man has lived and written who did not look for his
+domestic happiness entirely in a bread-pan and a work-basket. "Just as
+you are, Lenore,--resolute, bold, a little passionate devil,--just so
+will I have you remain. We have been companions in arms, and so we
+shall continue to be.... Were you not my heart's desire, were you a
+man, I should like to have you for my life's companion; so, Lenore,
+you will be to me not only a beloved wife, but a courageous friend,
+the confidante of all my plans, my best and truest comrade."
+
+Lenore shook her head; "I ought to be your housewife," sighed she (the
+new love not yet having quite purged out the old leaven).
+
+Fink--(but no matter what Fink did. We are concerned now only with
+what he said.) "Be content, sweetheart," said he, tenderly, "and make
+up your mind to it. We have been together in a fire strong enough to
+bring love to maturity, and we know each other thoroughly. Between
+ourselves, we shall have many a storm in our house. I am no easy-going
+companion, at least for a woman, and you will very soon find that will
+of yours again, the loss of which you are now lamenting. Be at rest,
+darling, you shall be as headstrong as of yore; you need not distress
+yourself on that account; so you may prepare for a few storms, but for
+hearty love and merry life as well." Would your latter-day lover sign
+such articles of agreement on his marriage-day?
+
+Of course he would not. The shirts and the account-keeping are what he
+marries for, and it would be a manifest absurdity to annul the
+conclusion of the whole matter. It is not a question what women _like_
+to do; they must bake and brew and make and mend, whether they like it
+or not. Men do not marry for the purpose of making women happy, but to
+make themselves happy. A girl looks forward in her marriage to what
+she will do for her husband's happiness. A man, to what he will enjoy
+through his wife's ministrations. "He needs a wife," say the good
+women who were born and bred in these opinions and do not suspect
+their grossness.
+
+"It is a grand good match; I don't know anybody that needs a wife more
+than he," said one of these at a little gathering, speaking of a
+recent marriage.
+
+"Why?" innocently questioned another woman, who was supposed to have
+somewhat peculiar views concerning these things.
+
+"O, you never want anybody to marry!" burst out a chorus of
+voices,--which was surely a very broad inference from one narrow
+monosyllable.
+
+"But why does he need a wife?" persisted the questioner.
+
+"For sympathy and companionship," triumphantly replied the first
+woman, knowing that to such motives her interlocutor could take no
+exception. But a third woman, not knowing that anything lay behind
+these questions and answers, and feeling that the original position
+was but feebly maintained by such unsubstantial things as sympathy and
+companionship, being also a near neighbor of the person in question,
+and acquainted with the facts, proceeded to strengthen the case by
+adding, "Well, he was all alone, and he wa'n't very well, and he was
+taken sick one night and couldn't get anybody to take care of him."
+
+"But why not hire a nurse?"
+
+"Well he did, and she was very good; but she wouldn't do his washing."
+
+Only wait long enough, and you are tolerably sure to get the truth at
+last. It was not sympathy and companionship, after all, that the man
+wanted: it was his washing!
+
+You see a most unconscious, but irrefragable testimony concerning the
+relations which are deemed proper between a man and his wife in the
+very common use of the phrase, "kind husband." It is often employed in
+praise of the living and in eulogy of the dead. Compared with a cruel
+husband, I suppose a kind husband is the more tolerable; but compared
+with a true husband, there is no such thing as a kind husband. You are
+kind to animals, to beggars, to the beetle that you step out of your
+path to avoid treading on. One may be kind to people who have no
+claims upon him, but he is not kind to his wife. He does not stand
+towards her in any relation that makes kindness possible. He can no
+more be kind to his wife than he can be to himself. His wife is not
+his inferior, to be condescended to, but his treasure to be cherished,
+his friend to be loved, his adviser to be deferred to. It is an insult
+to a woman for her husband to assume, or for his biographer to assume
+for him, that he _could_ be kind to her. Did you ever hear a woman
+praised for being kind to her husband? Did you ever hear an obituary
+declare a woman to be a dutiful daughter, a kind wife, a faithful
+mother? You may be sure the phrase is never used by any one who has a
+just idea of what marriage ought to be.
+
+If love cannot outlast a few years of life, it is idle to lament that
+it is so surely quenched by death. Absence cannot be blamed for
+dissipating a love that has been already conquered by presence.
+Nevertheless, in the alacrity with which one is off with the old love
+and on with the new may be read the shallowness, the flimsiness, the
+earthliness, of that which passes for the deepest, the most lasting,
+and the most divine. Weary feet, aching brow, and disappointed heart
+are at rest; or a vigorous young life is smitten before its heyday was
+clouded; or the ripened sheaf is garnered at the harvest-time; but no
+proprieties, no shock of premature loss, nor the "late remorse of
+love," avails to make the impression indelible. The dead past may bury
+its dead out of sight; the resurrection may adjust its own
+perplexities; but in this world there must be good cheer. The funeral
+baked meats shall coldly furnish forth the marriage-table. _La Reine
+est morte: Vive la Reine!_ And when the loving wife is gone away from
+the heart that entertained its angel unawares, people will tell you
+with a sober face how "beautifully he bears it!" "perfectly resigned!"
+"Christian calmness!" "kiss the rod!" It were to be wished he did not
+bear it quite so beautifully. When a wife is prematurely torn from her
+home, the only proper attitude for her husband is to sit in sackcloth
+and ashes. It is fit that he should be stricken to the dust. It is not
+becoming for him to indulge in pious reflections. Ill-timed
+resignation is a breach of morals. He is not to be supposed capable of
+a lasting fidelity, but he may be expected to be temporarily stunned
+by the blow. It would be more decorous for him to follow the example
+of the powerful and wealthy king in the fairy-tale, who, having lost
+his wife, was so inconsolable that he shut himself up for eight entire
+days in a little room, where he spent his time chiefly in knocking his
+head against the wall!
+
+It is pitiful to see a strong man tottering into a wrong path from
+sheer lack of strength to walk in the right one, which yet he does not
+lack clear vision to see. But the spectacle may be profitable for
+doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in
+righteousness. Perhaps no more faithful and graphic presentation of
+the diplomacy that is employed in compassing a second marriage can be
+given than is found in the proceedings of Perthes. When, after
+twenty-four years of married life, his wife, the mother of his ten
+children, left him, he repaired to Gotha and lived three years in the
+family of a married daughter. In an early stage of his bereavement he
+writes of his loneliness, and mentions, but almost with repugnance,
+certainly with no apparent intention of entering it, or any intimation
+of a possibility of receiving joy from it, "a new wedlock."
+Nevertheless, the thought is there. His daughter's sister-in-law, a
+widow of thirty years, and mother of four children, lives next door.
+Presently comes down his mother-in-law to pay a visit. "She was much
+concerned about Perthes's situation, and one day, while they were
+walking in the orangery, expressed herself openly to him. She told him
+that he was no more a master of his own house, that soon his younger
+children would be leaving him, and that his strong health gave promise
+of a long life yet to come; that for him solitude was not good, that
+he could not bear it, and consequently that he ought not to put off
+choosing a companion for the remainder of his life." All of which of
+course came to him with the freshness of entire novelty. But
+immediately we find that at these words "the thought of Charlotte shot
+like lightning through his soul." So it seems that he had already
+outstripped his mother-in-law. She dealt, only in generals, but he had
+advanced to particulars. However, "he made no reply, but he had a hard
+battle to fight with himself from that time forth. In September he
+communicated to his mother-in-law the _pros_ and _cons_ which agitated
+him so much, but without giving her to understand that it was no
+longer the subject of marriage in general, but of one marriage in
+particular, which now disquieted him. After stating the outward and
+inward circumstances, which made a second marriage advisable in his
+case, he goes on to say: 'I am quite certain that Caroline foresaw,
+from her knowledge of my character and temperament, a second marriage
+for me, and I am equally certain that no new union could ever disturb
+my spirit's abiding union with her. [It is to be hoped that Charlotte
+was duly made acquainted with this fact.] My inner life is filled with
+her memory, and will be so till my latest day; but I must own that
+this is possible only while I incorporate in thought her happy soul,
+and think of her as a human being, still sharing my earthly existence,
+still taking interest in all I do; and I cannot disguise from myself,
+while viewing her under this aspect, that my dear Caroline would
+prefer my living on alone, satisfied with her memory. Again, there can
+be no doubt that Holy Scripture, although permitting a second
+marriage, does so on account of the hardness of our hearts. The civil
+law contains no prohibition either, and yet there has always existed a
+social prejudice against such a marriage, and youth, whose ideal is
+always fresh and fair, and women who are always young in soul, look
+with secret disgust upon it. I know, too, that my remaining alone
+would be, not only with reference to others, but in itself, the
+worthier course; but, on the other hand, I know it would be so in
+reality only if this worthiness were not assumed for the purpose of
+appearing in a false light to myself, to other men, and perhaps even
+before God, or for the purpose of cloaking selfishness under the guise
+of fidelity to the departed.' It was not, however, by answering this
+question, nor by reflecting upon the lawfulness of second marriages in
+general, that Perthes's irresolution was subdued, but by an increasing
+attachment to the lady whose character had attracted him."
+
+Very honorable appears Perthes here, in that he argues the case
+against himself with fulness and frankness, revealing to himself
+without disguise the weakness under which he finally falls, and
+conscious all the while that it is a weakness. He does not attempt to
+hide the fact that Caroline would have preferred to live alone in his
+memory, and he falls back on his only defensible ground,--the hardness
+of his heart. Confession is forgiveness. Let him pass on to the new
+bride, and the second family of eleven children that will spring up
+around them.
+
+But there are men, and women too,--there are always women enough to
+echo men's opinions,--who assume that the spirit of the departed will
+be delighted in her heavenly abode to know that the husband decides
+not to spend his life in solitude. Some women indeed show the last
+infirmity of noble minds by _recommending_ their husbands to take a
+second wife, although it seems a pity to waste one's last breath in
+bestowing advice which is so entirely superfluous. If a man will
+marry, let him marry, but let no patient Griselda "gin the hous to
+dight" for the "newe lady." If a man will marry, let him marry, but
+let him not offer the world an apology for the act. The apology is
+itself an accusation; a dishonor to both wives instead of one. He
+knows his own motives and emotions. If they are upright and
+sufficient, it is no matter what people say about him; he and the
+other person immediately concerned should be so self-satisfied as to
+be indifferent to outside comment. If they are not upright and
+sufficient, attempting to make them appear so is an additional
+offence.
+
+I have said on this subject more than I intended. I meant only to
+state a fact clearly enough to use it. The rest "whistled itself."
+Practically, I do not know that I have any quarrel with any marriage
+that is real, whether it come after the first or fiftieth attempt.
+Judging from general observation, I should suppose that most people
+might marry half a dozen times, and not be completely married then.
+
+If, as Perthes seems to have thought, all this is the natural course
+of events, why do you make all womanly honor and happiness converge in
+the one focus of marriage, unless like a Mussulman you believe that on
+such condition alone can women aspire to immortality? But even then it
+would be a hard bargain. Immortality is dearly bought at the price of
+immorality. When all other arguments fail, and you would mount to your
+sublimest heights of moral elevation, you assure a woman that, no
+matter how lofty her life may be, nor how deep her satisfaction may
+seem, if she fails of marriage she fails of the highest development,
+the deepest experience, the greatest benefit. You tell her that she
+misses somewhat which Heaven itself cannot supply. But, on the other
+hand, you have previously shown that marriage is but a temporary
+arrangement, an entirely mundane affair. Love belongs as completely to
+this world as houses and barns,--is in fact rather supplementary to
+them,--especially to the house. It is of the body, and not of the
+spirit; for the spirit lives forever, but when the body dies, love
+dies also. There are no claims beyond the grave. Nay, it does not
+reach to the grave. The delight, the spontaneity, the satisfaction,
+the keenness, all die out before the person dies. The pulp shrivels,
+and only a wrinkled skin of habit remains. But a woman is immortal.
+Can a mortal love satisfy an immortal heart? Is it possible that an
+undying soul must find its strongest development in a dying love? Does
+a creature of the skies incur an irreparable loss, miss an
+irreclaimable jewel, suffer an incurable wound, when it loses, or
+misses, or suffers _anything_ which is but of the earth earthy? Can
+anything finite be indispensable to an infinite life?
+
+Again, if this accession of toil, and this diminution and decay of
+perceptible love, and this falling back on inward love, is the natural
+course of events, why not say so in the beginning? If inward love be
+satisfactory at one time, why not at another, as well before marriage
+as after? Why, when a man has once made and received affidavit of
+love, should he not be content, and neither proffer nor demand
+manifestations? Let men be satisfied with inward love during
+courtship, and the honeymoon, if inward love is so all-sufficient. Not
+in the least. Men are not one tenth part so capable of inward love as
+women,--I mean of an inward love without outward expression. Their
+inward love becomes outward love almost as soon as it becomes love at
+all. They are ten times more tumultuous, more demonstrative, more
+_phenomenal_, than women. They are as impatient as children, and more
+unreasonable. They cannot, or they will not, brook delay, suspense,
+refusal. Women accept all these drawbacks as a part of the programme,
+and with "the endurance that outwearies wrong," while men fiercely, if
+vainly, kick against the pricks and talk about _inward love_!
+
+And if the true object of marriage be to help accumulate or frugally
+to manage a fortune, to cook dinners, and act as a sewing-machine,
+"warranted not to ravel," say that frankly also in the beginning. Tell
+women plainly what you want of them. Do not lure them into your
+service under false pretences. Do not wait till they are irrevocably
+fastened to you, and then lay on them the burdens of labor and take
+away the supports of love, and lecture them into acquiescence through
+the newspapers. While there is yet left to them a freedom of choice,
+make them fully acquainted with the circumstances of the case, that
+they may be able to choose intelligently. When one does not expect
+much, one is not disappointed at receiving little. One is not chilled
+at heart by snow in winter. It is walking over sunny Southern lands,
+and finding frosts when you looked for flowers, that freezes the
+fountains of life. If you do not overwhelm a woman with your
+protestations, if you do not lure her to your heart by presenting
+yourself to her and praying her to be to you friend, comrade, and
+lover, when what you really want is cook, laundress, and housekeeper,
+she will at least know what is before her. But do not swear to her
+eternal fidelity, knowing that, as soon as you thoroughly understand
+each other, there will be an end of all little tendernesses of
+expression. Do not span her with a rainbow, and spread diamond-dust
+beneath her feet, knowing all the while that a very little time will
+bring for the one but a cold, penetrating rain, and will change the
+other into coarse, sharp pebbles that shall bruise her tender feet.
+Change the formula of your marriage vows, and instead of promising to
+love, honor, and cherish till death you do part, promise to do it only
+till you understand her thoroughly, and then to make the best of the
+bargain!
+
+If we were forced to believe that these right-hand fallings-off and
+left-hand defections were indeed the legitimate workings of the human
+heart, the natural history of mankind, then should we be forced to
+believe that this world is a stupendous failure, and the sooner it is
+burned up the better. We should be forced to believe in the thorough
+degradation and destructibility of both mind and matter. For the
+essence of value is durability. A soap-bubble is as beautiful as a
+pearl and as brilliant as a diamond; for what is called practical
+service, for warmth, or shelter, or sustenance, one is quite as good
+as another. What makes their different worth is, that the soap-bubble
+yields up its lovely life to the first molecule that sails through the
+air to solicit it, while the gems outlast a thousand years. But if
+life is a soap-bubble, and not a pearl, shall a woman sell all that
+she has and buy it? What advantageth the possession of a happiness
+which melts in the grasp,--which is satisfactory only for the short
+time that it is novel? Who would care to enter a path of roses,
+knowing that a few steps will take him into a vast and barren desert,
+whence escape is impossible? If this is real life, let us rather pitch
+our tents in fairy-land; for then, when the Prince is at last restored
+to his true manly form and his rightful throne, and united to the
+beautiful, constant Princess, we invariably find, not only that their
+happiness was quite inexpressible, but it lasted to the end of their
+lives.
+
+If we are to believe such propositions, we might as well call
+ourselves infidels, and have done with it. To deny the existence of
+love takes away no more hope from humanity than to deny the
+immortality of love. It is no worse to take away life from the soul
+than to give it a life which is but a protracted death. To make a
+distinction between earthly and heavenly love hardly affects the case.
+The direction of love is not love. All love is heavenly,--"bright
+effluence of bright essence increate." If a man gives himself to the
+pursuit of unworthy objects, or to the indulgence of unhallowed
+pleasures, a pure name need not be dragged down into the mire that his
+error may have a seemly christening. If that is love which fades out
+long before its object; if, when its object disappears behind the veil
+love rightly returns to earth, then are we of all creatures most
+miserable; for we abnegate a future. We thought it had been he which
+should have redeemed Israel; but thou shalt return unto the ground,
+for out of it wast thou taken. Dust art thou, O love, and unto dust
+shalt thou return.
+
+Nay, let us have falsehood rather than truth, if this be truth. But
+this cannot be truth. Love sets up his ladder on the earth, but the
+top of it reaches unto heaven, and if the eye be clear and the heart
+pure, the angels of God shall be seen ascending and descending on it.
+The fashion of this world passeth away,
+
+    "But love strikes one hour,--LOVE."
+
+Hear a woman's voice mingling now with angels' voices,--the voice of a
+woman whose pathway to the skies was a line of light shining still
+more and more unto the perfect day.
+
+      "I classed, appraising once,
+    Earth's lamentable sounds: the welladay,
+      The jarring yea and nay,
+    The fall of kisses on unanswering clay,
+    The sobbed farewell, the welcome mournfuller
+      But all did leaven the air
+    With a less bitter leaven of sure despair
+      Than these words,--'I loved ONCE.'
+
+    "And who saith, 'I loved ONCE'?
+    Not angels, whose clear eyes love, love foresee,
+      Love through eternity,
+    Who by To Love do apprehend To Be.
+    Not God, called LOVE, his noble crown-name, casting
+      A light too broad for blasting!
+    The great God, changing not from everlasting,
+      Saith never, 'I loved ONCE.'
+
+    "Nor ever the 'Loved ONCE'
+    Dost THOU say, Victim-Christ, misprised friend!
+      The cross and curse may rend;
+    But, having loved, Thou lovest to the end!
+    It is man's saying,--man's. Too weak to move
+      One sphered star above,
+    Man desecrates the eternal God-word Love
+      With his No More and Once.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "Say never, ye loved ONCE!
+    God is too near above, the grave below,
+      And all our moments go
+    Too quickly past our souls, for saying so.
+    The mysteries of life and death avenge
+      Affections light of range:
+    There comes no change to justify that change,
+      Whatever comes,--loved ONCE!"
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+
+Men, by reason of their hardness of heart, gravitate towards the
+material theory, and women, by reason of their softness of heart,
+lower to the same level. Men defy heaven and earth to compass
+self-indulgence, and women defy the divine law written in their hearts
+rather than thwart men. Instead of setting their faces like a flint
+against this tendency, they accept it, excuse it, try to think it
+inevitable, a matter of organization, and make the best of it. They
+will counsel young girls not to reckon upon receiving as much love as
+they give! Fatal advice! Disastrous generalization! Yet neither
+unnatural nor unkind, for it is the fruit of a sad and wide
+experience. They would gladly spare fresh souls the apples of Sodom,
+whose fair seeming bewrayed themselves; but they should teach them to
+avoid disappointment, not by counting upon bitterness, but by
+rejecting apples of Sodom altogether, and receiving only such fruit as
+cheers the heart of God as well as man. Why shall not women receive
+as much love as they give? Is man less capable of loving than woman?
+Where in nature or in revelation is the warrant for such an
+hypothesis? When He commands, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with
+all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with
+all thy strength," is he not speaking to men as well as women? and are
+a man's heart, soul, mind, and strength less than a woman's? Are not
+husbands commanded to love their wives even as Christ loved the
+Church? and did he love the Church less than the Church loved him? Is
+not every man commanded in particular to love his wife even as
+himself,--to love his wife as his own body? and is a man's love to
+himself, his love to his own body, a feeble and untrustworthy
+sentiment? You find in the Bible no letting a man off from his duties
+of love; no letting him down. Old-fashioned as it is, written for a
+state of society far different from ours, often brought forward to
+prop up old wrongs and bluff off newly-found rights, the Bible is
+still the very storehouse of reforms. It contains the germs not only
+of spiritual life, but of spiritual living. Glows on its pages the
+morning-red which has scarcely yet gilded the world.
+
+Women must not expect to receive as much love as they give! It is
+inviting men to esteem lightly what should be a priceless possession.
+It is not waiting for them to drag down the banner to the dust; it is
+making haste to trail it for them with malice aforethought. Men now
+are not too constant, too devoted to the higher aims of life; but let
+constancy and devotion not be expected of them, and in what
+seven-league boots will they stride down the broad road! It is doing
+them but left-handed service thus to throw the door open to weakness
+and wavering concerning higher interests, and a blind devotion to the
+god of this world. To assume that their tone may be low, is to lower
+their tone. Men are less good than they would be if goodness were
+demanded of them. The current is turbid and unwholesome, because it is
+not strictly required to be pure and clear. The way for women to be
+truly serviceable to men, is to be themselves exacting.
+
+"Exacting"? What word is that? An exacting woman? An exacting wife?
+"Hail! Horrors, hail!" The unlovely being has existed, and within the
+memory of men still living, but it has always been looked upon as a
+monster,
+
+    "Whom none could love, whom none could thank,
+    Creation's blot, creation's blank!"
+
+We have fallen on evil times indeed if such a being is to be held up
+for approval and imitation.
+
+But the character of exaction depends somewhat on the nature of the
+thing exacted. To exact from a man that to which you have a right, and
+which it is his own truest interest to bestow, is neither unchristian
+nor unamiable. One may and should grant large room for the play of
+tastes; for differences of organization, opinion, habit, education;
+but a catholicity which admits to its presence anything that defileth
+is no fruit of that tree whose leaves are for the healing of the
+nations. The gardener who is tolerant of weeds and not untender
+towards misshapen, or dwarfed, or otherwise imperfect flowers will
+have but a sorry show for the eyes of the master. Such latitude is a
+source of deterioration. It is the kindness which kills. Each sex
+should be to the other an incitement to lofty aims. Each should stand
+on its own mountain-height and call to the other through clear, bright
+air; but such sufferance only draws both down into the damp,
+unwholesome valley-lands where lurk fever and pestilence. A woman
+cannot with impunity open her doors to unworthy guests. There may be
+bowing and smiling, and never-ending smooth speech, but in the end,
+and long before the end, they shall draw their swords against the
+beauty of her wisdom and shall defile her brightness. A man may go all
+lengths in pursuit of his own selfish comfort, but he does not the
+less respect those who hold themselves above it, and if women, who
+should be pure and purifying, mar the spotlessness of a divine
+sanctity and lessen the claims of an imperial dignity, thinking
+thereby to be meeter for profane approach, they work a work whose evil
+strikes its roots into the inmost life of society. From mistaken
+kindness woman may weave a narrow garland, but there is lost a glory
+from the hand that bears and the brow that wears it. If the queen is
+content to spend her life in the kitchen over bread and honey, and if
+she is satisfied that the king spend his in the parlor counting out
+his money, neither king nor queen will receive that homage or command
+that allegiance which is the rightful royal prerogative.
+
+There is a foolish subservience, an ostentatious and superficial
+chivalry, an undignified and slavish deference to whims which silly
+women demand and sillier men grant. Yet even this is not so much the
+fault of the weak women as of the strong men, who surround women with
+the atmosphere which naturally creates such weakness. But women have a
+right, and it is their duty to expect, to claim, to exact if you
+please, a constancy, spirituality, devotion, as great as their own.
+Where God makes no distinction of sex in his demands upon mankind, His
+creatures should not make distinctions. "Men are different from
+women," is the conclusion of the whole matter at female
+debating-societies, and the all-sufficient excuse for every
+short-coming or over-coming; but the Apostles and Prophets find
+therein no warrant for a violation of moral law, no guaranty for
+immunity from punishment, no escape from the obligations to unselfish
+and righteous living. Nowhere does the Saviour of the world proclaim
+to men a liberty in selfishness or sin. His kingdom will never come,
+nor his will be done on earth as it is done in heaven, so long as men
+are permitted to take out indulgences. If they do it ignorantly, not
+knowing the true character and claims of womanhood, nor consequently
+of manhood, they should be taught. If they think a wife's chief duty
+is to economize her husband's fortunes, or to minister to his physical
+comforts, they should be speedily freed from the illusion. If they
+suppose knowledge to be ill-adapted to the female constitution, and
+harmless only when administered homoeopathically, they should be
+quietly undeceived. If they have been so trained that marriage is to
+them but unholy ground whereon is found no place for modesty,
+chastity, delicacy, reverence, how shall they ever unlearn the bad
+lesson but through pure womanly teaching?
+
+But women fear to take this attitude. There are many indeed who have
+become so demoralized that they do not know there is any such attitude
+to take; but there are others who do see it, and shrink from assuming
+it. Women whose courage and fortitude are indescribable, who will
+brave pain and fatigue and all definite physical obstacles in their
+path, will bow down their heads like a bulrush with fear of that
+indefinable thing which may be called social disapprobation. Through
+cowardice, they are traitors to their own sex, and impediments to the
+other. One cannot find it in his heart to blame them harshly. The
+weakness has so many palliations, it is so natural a growth of their
+wickedly arranged circumstances, as to disarm rebuke and move scarcely
+more than pity; but it is none the less a fact, lamentable and
+disastrous. Women who know and lament the erroneous notions and the
+guilty actions of men concerning woman, and the culpable relations of
+men to women, will endeavor to hold back the opinions of a woman when
+they go against the current. They will admit the force of all her
+objections, the justice of every remonstrance, but will assure her
+that opposition will be of no avail. She will accomplish nothing,
+but--and here lies the real bugbear--but she will make men almost
+afraid of her!
+
+I would that men were not only almost, but altogether afraid of every
+woman! I would that men should hold woman in such knightly fear that
+they should never dare to approach her, matron or maid, save with
+clean hands and a pure heart; never dare to lift up their souls to
+vanity nor swear deceitfully; never dare to insult her presence with
+words of flattery, insincerity, coarseness, sensuality, mercenary
+self-seeking, or any other form of dishonor. I would that woman were
+herself so noble and wise, her approbation so unquestionably the
+reward of merit, that a man should not dare to think ignobly lest his
+ignoble thought flower into word or act before her eyes; should not
+wish to think ignobly, since it removed him to such a distance from
+her, and wrought in him so sad an unlikeness to her; should not be
+able to think ignobly, being interpenetrated with the celestial
+fragrance which is her native air. I would have the heathen
+cloud-divinity which inwraps her with a factitious light, only to hide
+her real features from mortal gaze, torn utterly away, that men may
+see in her the fullest presentation possible to earth of the god-like
+in humanity. So powerfully does the Most High stand ready to work in
+her to will and to do of his good pleasure, that she may be to man a
+living revelation, Emanuel, God with us.
+
+We ought to stand in awe of one another. We do not sufficiently
+respect personality. Every soul comes fresh from the creative hand and
+bears its own divine stamp. We should not go thoughtlessly into its
+presence. We should not wantonly violate its holiness. Even the body
+is fearfully and wonderfully made, and well may be, for it is the
+temple of the Holy Ghost; but if the temple is sacred, how much more
+that holy thing which the temple enshrines,--the unseen,
+incomprehensible, infinite soul, the essential spirit, the holy ghost.
+Who that cherishes the divine visitant in his own heart but must be
+amazed at the reckless irreverence with which we assail each other. It
+is not the smile, the chance word, the pleasant or even the hostile
+rencounter in the outer courts; it is that we do not respect each
+other's silences. We do not scruple to pry into the arcana. The
+hermit's sanctuary may lie in the huntsman's track, but he will have
+his pleasure though hermit and sanctuary were in the third heaven. We
+do not accept what is given with gladness and singleness of heart; we
+stretch out wanton hands to pull aside the curtain and reveal to the
+garish day what should be suffered to repose in the twilight of inner
+chambers.
+
+When the prudent adviser, the practical man or woman, counsels, "Do
+not demand so much from your friends,--they won't stand it,"--am I to
+infer that friendship is a mercenary matter, a thing of compromise and
+barter? Shall I fence in my acts, words, thoughts, that I may secure
+something whose sole value, whose sole existence, indeed, lies in its
+spontaneity? Shall I haggle for incense? Am I loved for what I do,
+what I say, what I think, and not for what I am? Why, this is not
+love. I am myself, first of all, not Launcelot nor another. He who
+loves me can but wish me to be this in fullest measure. I will live my
+life. I will go whithersoever the spirit leads. He who loves me will
+rejoice in this and give me all furtherance. I demand all things--in
+you. I demand nothing--from you. "Will not stand it"? If you can hate
+me, hate me. If you can refrain from loving, love not. I can dispense
+with your regard, but there is something indispensable. You shall love
+me because you cannot help it, or you shall love me not at all. If I
+cannot compel affection in the teeth of all conflicting opinion, I
+renounce it altogether. If the aroma of character is not strong enough
+to overpower with its sweetness all unfragrant exhalations of opinion,
+it is a matter of but small account.
+
+If two people should design simply to club together, to take their
+meals at the same table and dwell under the same roof, it would be a
+thing to be carefully considered; but when the question is, not of
+association alone, but of absolute oneness, not of similarity of
+tastes or habits, but of an inmost and all-prevailing sympathy, it
+becomes us to be wary. Mere mechanical junction is easy of
+accomplishment, but a chemical combination demands fine analysis and
+the most careful adjustment. It needs not that a globe of fire should
+come raging through the skies to set our world ablaze; a very slight
+change in the atmosphere which embraces it, a little less of one
+ingredient, a little more of another, and the earth and the works that
+are therein shall be burned up. Yet the delicacy of matter is but a
+faint type of the delicacy of mind. He who would pass within the veil
+to commune with the soul between the cherubim must assume holy
+garments. If the trouble seem to him too great, let him be content to
+tarry without. Uzzah put forth an incautious hand and touched the ark
+of God unbidden, and the anger of the Lord was kindled against him,
+and there he died by the ark of God. Now, as then, if any man defile
+the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is
+holy, which temple ye are.
+
+Yet the general opinion seems to be that human beings are made by
+machinery like Waltham watches, and will fit perfectly when brought
+together at random, as the different parts taken indiscriminately from
+a heap of similar parts will fit and form a watch. Juxtaposition is
+the only necessary preliminary to harmony. On the contrary, it is true
+not only of prodigies, but of every member of the race that nature
+made him and then broke the mould. Every person is a prodigy. So
+great, so radical, so out-spreading, are the differences between
+individuals, that the wonder is, not that they quarrel so much, but
+that they are ever peaceful when brought together. The wonder is that
+so many fierce antagonisms can be soothed even into an outward quiet.
+Looking at it as mechanism, seeing how diverse, aggressive, and
+impatient are the qualities of man, and how peculiarly are his
+circumstances adapted to foster his peculiarities, one would say that
+the only security was in solitude. Indeed, young people are very apt
+to think so. They combine in an ideal all the charms which attract,
+and exclude from it all the disagreeable traits which repel them, and
+see reality fall so far short of their imaginary standard that they
+fully believe they shall never find the true Prince. And they never
+would, but for an inward, inexplicable suffusion of the Divine
+essence, whose source and action lie beyond knowledge or control,
+which works without instigation, but is all-powerful to create or
+annihilate. This, however, which is the sole explanation of the
+phenomenon, which is the sole conciliator between opposing forces, is
+generally left out of view. People scarcely seem to be conscious that
+there is any phenomenon. They philosophize sagaciously upon the
+singular skill which swings unnumbered worlds in space, and spins them
+on in never-ending cycle, yet marks out their paths so wisely that
+world sweeps clear of world and never a collision crushes one to ruin.
+But full as the universe is of stars, the nearest are hundreds of
+thousands of miles apart; while the intellectual, nervous worlds that
+are set going on the surface of our earth are close together. Half a
+dozen of them are placed as it were shoulder to shoulder. Their zigzag
+orbits intersect each other a hundred times a day. Is it any wonder
+that there is hard abrasion, that surfaces are seamed and furrowed,
+and that sometimes a crash startles us? Is not the wonder rather that
+crashes are not the order of the day, that the seams are seams and not
+cracks through the whole crust, and that the largest result of
+abrasion is smoothness and evenness and polish?
+
+Yet, utterly unmindful of the fitness of things, people will wonder
+why a man and a woman who are thrown occasionally together do
+not--what? Attack each other in an outburst of impatience at stupidity
+and cross-purposes? Not at all, but "strike up a match." That is, put
+themselves into relations which shall turn an association whose
+redeeming feature is that it is casual and under control into an
+association that is constant and irrevocable! Masculine backwardness
+is not perhaps considered remarkable, as indeed there is very little
+of it to be remarked, but the utmost surprise is expressed on those
+rare occasions in which women are supposed to have declined a
+"desirable offer." That a woman should not avail herself of an
+opportunity to become the wife of a man who is well-educated,
+well-mannered, "well-off," seems to be an inexplicable fact. He is her
+equal in fortune, position, character. Commentators "cannot see any
+reason why she should not marry him." But is there any reason why she
+should marry him? The burden of proof lies upon motion, not rest; upon
+him who changes, not upon him who retains a position. All these things
+which are called inducements are no more than so many sticks and
+stones; you might just as well repeat the a b c, and call that
+inducement. The matters which bear on such conclusions are of an
+entirely different nature. Your "inducements" may come in by and by,
+when the main point is settled, to modify outward acts, but till the
+Divine Spirit moves, they are without form and void.
+
+Nor are well-wishers always so careful as to take the man himself into
+the account. If surroundings are favorable, if to a by-stander there
+seems to be a sort of house-and-barn adaptation, it is enough. House
+and barn should at once join roof and become one edifice. It is of no
+importance that this holds stalls for horned oxen, and that
+entertainment for angels; that the one is informed with spiritual life
+and the other filled with hay: hay and heaven are all one to many
+eyes. "Why does she not marry him?" Why? Simply because there is not
+enough of him, or what there is is not of the right stuff. If he were
+twenty instead of one, she might dare promise to honor him, might dare
+hope to respect him. If he had just twenty times as much of _being_,
+or if his amplitude could be converted into fineness, he might meet
+her on equal ground; but being only one and such a one, she is in an
+overwhelming majority, and it is not republican that majorities should
+yield to minorities. He may be, as you say, "just as good as she," but
+not good for her.
+
+These views appear in the (perhaps apocryphal) stories occasionally
+told of renowned personages. A poor man or an obscure man proposes to
+a young woman whose father is rich, and he is refused. The poor and
+obscure man becomes presently a great banker, a governor, president of
+a college, or recovers lost counties, or dukedoms in Europe. I have
+even heard the story repeated of the Emperor of the French and a New
+York young woman. Moral: Is not the woman sorry now that she did not
+marry the poor man? Probably not. Certainly not if she belongs to the
+true type. What have all these changes to do with the matter? Is he
+any more comfortable to live with because he is a governor? Is he any
+more adapted to her because he is a duke? It is barely possible that
+she was mistaken; but if she were, she is probably ignorant of it
+herself. His present state does not indicate a mistake. Only a close
+companionship would be likely to discover it. The qualities which make
+domestic content are not usually revealed by ever so brilliant public
+success. If they originally existed, they are little likely to have
+been developed. As business affairs are usually conducted, they are
+more likely to drown out home happiness than to create it. But all
+this is irrelevant. Nothing is really meant to which this is an
+answer. It is only the manifestation of a blindness to what
+constitutes attraction. The man has discovered outside advantages, and
+it is assumed that that is enough. She of course refused him because
+she had not sagacity enough to discern the shadow of his coming
+greatness. It does not seem to be suspected that she could have
+refused him because he did not suit her! What difference does it make
+whether a man is a clown or a king, if you do not like him? Is a great
+judge necessarily an agreeable person to think of? Is a world-renowned
+financier necessarily the person who will have most power to draw out
+what is good and gracious in a woman? Girls naturally give their
+loyalty to men, not to crowns, or ermine. The lovely Florina was as
+fond of King Charming, when he came to her in the shape of a Bluebird,
+as when he appeared at court in royal majesty. Wicked outside opinion,
+it is true, warps their judgment in a very great degree, and destroys
+their freedom; but of their own nature, in their inmost hearts, they
+are true; and when they have independence enough to manifest their
+truth in these palpable acts, they may be safely set down as true.
+They acted from sincerity and dignity, not from mercenary
+short-sightedness. They acted from the most simple and natural causes,
+and what have they to regret? It is much better to be the wife of an
+honest and respectable American citizen than to be Empress of the
+French,--even looking at it in a solely worldly point of view. When we
+add to this that one loves the American citizen, and does not love the
+French Emperor, the case may as well be ruled out of court at once.
+There is no ground for any further proceedings.
+
+Men and women act upon these views too much, as well in regulating as
+in establishing a home. They recognize and make liberal allowance for
+palpable, outspoken wants, yet are unmindful or contemptuous of others
+equally important, but less on the surface, and less sharply defined.
+A man who would incur self-reproach and the contempt of his neighbors
+by allowing his wife to suffer from lack of bread in his house, will
+not suspect so much as a slight dereliction of duty in allowing her to
+suffer from lack of beauty there. A woman who is never weary of
+meeting the demands upon her husband's palate, who will have the joint
+cooked exactly to his liking, and the dinner prompt to his
+convenience, would scout the thought of leaving her morning's
+occupation to give him her company in a two hours' drive. People will
+devote their lives uncomplainingly to meeting each other's wants, but
+will neutralize all their efforts and sacrifice happiness hand over
+hand by neglecting or disregarding each other's tastes. They will
+spend all their money in thatching the roof, but will do just nothing
+at all to keep the fire alive on the hearth. There are very few indeed
+who are not able to do both. Of course if people lavish their whole
+strength on gross matters, they have none left for the finer; but it
+is not often that gross matters _need_ the whole strength. A careful
+observation and just views would be able, as a general thing without
+detriment, to wrest many an hour from vain, vulgar, useless, or
+harmful pursuits, to bestow it upon adornments and amenities that do
+not perish with the using. And if a man or a woman is so deteriorated
+as to prefer the indulgence of a coarse or frivolous appetite, or the
+inordinate indulgence of a merely natural appetite, to the
+gratification and cultivation of refined and elevated tastes,--the
+more's the pity!
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+
+I marvel that men who lay so little stress on the heart, by reason of
+the great stress they lay upon the intellect, should use their
+intellects to so little purpose in matters so important, and which
+come so closely home to their business and bosoms as those we have
+been discussing. I marvel that, while they see facts so distinctly,
+they have so little skill to trace out causes. Many instances have
+been given to show how far more unreasonable, intense, malignant,
+vulgar, and venomous is the hatred of their country shown and felt by
+Southern women than that evinced by Southern men. It is very commonly
+said that they have done more than the men to keep alive the
+rebellion. The coarseness and impropriety of their behavior have been
+relatively far greater than that of the men. Has any one ever
+suggested that the narrowness, the utter insufficiency of their
+education, the state of almost absolute pupilage bedizened over with a
+gaudy tinsel of tilt and tournament chivalry in which they have been
+kept, absolutely incapacitating them for broad views, rational
+thinking, or even a refined self-possession in emergencies, had
+anything to do with it? In a newspaper published under the auspices of
+one of our Sanitary Fairs, a contributor says: "I never saw a nurse
+from any hospital, but I asked her the question if the ladies there
+worked without jealousy or unkind feeling toward each other? _and I
+have not found the first one who could answer 'yes' to that
+question_.... I know a gentleman (a noble one, too) who urged his
+daughter _not_ to go to the hospitals, 'because,' said he, 'you will
+surely get into a muss: it cannot be helped; women cannot be together
+without it." Is it indeed an arrangement of Divine Providence, that
+women cannot act together without so much bickering, jealousy, petty
+domineering, small envies, and venomous quarrels, as to make it
+undesirable that they should act together at all? Is magnanimity
+impossible to women? Are they incapable of exercising it towards each
+other? Or may it not be that their lives have generally so little
+breadth, they are so universally absorbed in limited interests, their
+"sphere" has been so rigidly circumscribed to their own families, that
+when they are set in wider circles, they are like spoiled children? In
+the troubles that arise in female conventions and combinations, I do
+not see any inherent deficiency of female organization, but every sign
+of very serious deficiencies in female education.
+
+Men make merry over the unwillingness of women to acknowledge their
+increasing years; over the artifices to which they resort for the
+purpose of hiding the encroachments of time; but the reluctance and
+the deception are the direct harvest of men's own sowing. It is men,
+and nobody else, who are chiefly to blame for the weakness and the
+meanness. They have decreed what shall be coin and what counters, and
+women do but acknowledge their image and superscription. Exceptions
+are not innumerous, but I think every one will confess, upon a
+moment's reflection, that in the general apportionment the heroines of
+literature are the lovely and delightful young women, and the hatred,
+envy, malice, and all uncharitableness are allotted to the old. Hetty
+Sorrels are not very common, nor Mrs. Bennetts very uncommon. Why
+should not women dread to be thought old, when age is tainted and
+taunted? Why should they not fight off its approaches, when it is
+indissolubly connected with repulsive traits? Women see themselves
+prized and petted, not chiefly for those qualities which age improves,
+but for those which it destroys or impairs. And as women are made by
+nature to set a high value upon the good opinions of men, and are
+warped by a vicious education into setting almost the sole value of
+life upon them, they logically cling with the utmost tenacity to that
+youth which is their main security for regard. "Youth and beauty" are
+the twin deities of song and story. "Youth and beauty" are supposed to
+unlock the doors of fate. It is no matter that in real life fact may
+not comport with the statements of fiction. No matter that in real
+life the strongest power carries the day, whether it be youthful or
+aged, fair or frightful. The events of real life have but small radii,
+but the ripples of romance circle out over the whole sea of
+civilization, and wave succeeds wave till the impression becomes
+wellnigh continuous.
+
+(One can hardly suppress a smile, by the way, at the absurdity which
+this coupling sometimes presupposes. A man will think to swell your
+horror of rebel barbarities by asserting that they spared neither
+youth nor beauty, as if you like to be shot any better because you are
+old and ugly!)
+
+So with tight-lacing and the new attachment of a _chiropodist_ to
+fashionable families. Most men, it is true, harangue against the
+former; but if masculine sentiment were really set against
+tight-lacing and its results, do you think girls would long make their
+dressing-maids sit up waiting their return from balls, lest an
+unpractised hand should not unloose the lacings by those short and
+easy stages which are necessary to prevent the shock of nature's too
+sudden rebound? Or if you plead "not guilty" to this count, do you
+believe that girls who have been liberally educated, taught to turn
+their eyes to large prospects, large duties, and large hopes, could be
+induced so to put themselves to the torture? Was a right-minded and
+right-hearted loving and beloved wife, an intelligent and judicious
+Christian mother, a wise and kindly woman, ever known voluntarily to
+assume a strait-waistcoat? If girls were trained as every living soul
+should be trained, would it be necessary to have a "professor" go the
+rounds of fine houses in the morning to undo the injuries inflicted by
+tight shoes on the previous evening? If a girl were sagaciously
+managed, would she not have too much discrimination to suppose that,
+when a poet sings of
+
+    "Her feet beneath her petticoat
+    Like little mice,"
+
+she is expected to reduce her feet to the dimensions of mice, or that,
+when he announces
+
+    "That which her slender waist confined
+    Shall now my joyful temples bind,"
+
+she is thinking of a slenderness produced by lashing herself to the
+bedpost? Be sure a woman will never cramp her body in that way, until
+society has cramped her soul and mind to still more unnatural
+distortion. Lay the axe unto the root of the tree, if you wish to
+accomplish anything; do not merely stand off and throw pebbles at the
+fruit.
+
+Society is unsparing in its censure of the girl who boasts of her
+"offers." There are few things which men will not sooner forgive than
+the revelation of their own rejected proposals. Bayard Taylor makes
+Hannah Thurston recoil in disgust at Seth Wattles's hesitating
+suggestion: "You,--you won't say anything about this?" "What do you
+take me for?" exclaims immaculate womanhood. Why then is a girl's life
+made to consist in the abundance of her suitors? It is stamped a shame
+for a woman not to receive an offer, and then it is stamped a shame
+for her to take away her reproach by revealing that she has received
+one. Surely, she is in evil case!
+
+I do not profess any overweening admiration for those qualities of
+character which induce the exultant publication of such personal
+items; but I do say that men have no right to complain. The natural
+results of their own course would not be any more than accomplished,
+if "offers" were published in the newspapers along with the deaths and
+marriages.
+
+If you really wish women to be magnanimous, catholic, you must grant
+to them the conditions of becoming so. Just so long as their souls are
+cabined, cribbed, and confined, whether in a palace or in a hovel,
+with only such fresh air as a narrow crevice or casement may afford,
+they will have but a stunted and unsymmetrical development. You cannot
+systematically and deliberately dwarf or repress nine faculties, and
+wickedly stimulate one, and that a subordinate one, and then have as
+the result a perfect woman. You may force Nature, but she will have
+her revenges. He that offendeth in one point, is guilty of all. The
+blow that you aim at the head, not only makes the whole head sick, but
+the whole heart faint. When you have brought women to the point of
+writing such babble as,
+
+    "We poor women, feeble-natured,
+      Large of heart, in wisdom small,
+    Who the world's incessant battle
+      Cannot understand at all," &c., &c, &c.,
+
+do you think you have laid the foundation for solid character? Lay
+aside your alternate weakness and severity, your silly coddling and
+your equally silly cautioning, and permit a woman to be a human being.
+Let the free winds have free access to her, bringing the fragrance of
+June and the frostiness of December. Fling wide open all the portals,
+that the sacred soul may go in and out as God decreed. Let every power
+which God has bestowed have free course to run and be glorified, and
+you shall truly find before long that the pleasure of the Lord shall
+prosper in the hands of women.
+
+If the weakness and ignorance and frivolity of which I have spoken be
+natural, as it is insisted, if the heaven-born instincts of women do,
+as you in effect asseverate, lead women to devote themselves
+exclusively to all manner of materialism and pettinesses, and to be
+content with what sustenance they can find in the crumbs of love that
+fall from their husbands' tables; if it is unnatural and unwomanly, as
+you say it is, to have other inclinations and aspirations, and to
+experience any personal or social discontent,--why do you say so much
+to urge them to such devotion and content? People are not largely
+given to doing unnatural things. They do not need incentives,
+strenuous persuasion, labored and reiterated arguments, to induce them
+to do what their hearts by creation incline them to do; nor do they
+need to be held back by main force from that to which they have no
+natural leaning. Nobody builds a dam to make water run down hill. No
+tunnelling nor blasting of rocks is necessary to lure rivers to the
+ocean. No urging and coaxing must be resorted to before the
+parent-robins build a nest and gather food for their young. But the
+instincts of women are as strong, the nature of women is as marked, as
+those of birds, and there is no need of your counselling them to walk
+in the paths which God has appointed for their feet. No. You do not
+really believe what you are saying. You feel, if you do not know,--you
+have a dim, instinctive sense that the life which you appoint to women
+is not their natural life. It crushes and deforms their nature
+continually, and continually Nature bursts out in violent resistance,
+and continually with shriek and din and clamor you strive to frighten
+her back into her narrow torture-house, with a success all too great.
+
+There seems to lurk in the masculine breast an unmanly fear lest the
+development of the female mind should be fatal to the superiority of
+the male mind. But a superiority which must prolong its existence by
+the enforcement of ignorance is of a very ignoble sort. If, to
+preserve his relative position, man must, by persuasion or by law,
+forbid to women opportunities for education and a field for action,
+together with moral support in obtaining the one and contesting in the
+other, he pays to the female mind a greater compliment, and heaps upon
+his own character a greater reproach, than the highest female
+attainments could do. He shows that he dares not risk a fair trial. If
+she cannot rival him, the sooner she makes the attempt, and incurs the
+failure, the sooner will she revert to her old position, and the
+sooner will peace be restored. The very discouragement by which man
+surrounds her shows that he does not believe in the original and
+inherent necessity of her present position. If this counsel be of
+women merely, it will come to naught of itself. You need not bring up
+so much rhetoric against it. But if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow
+it; lest haply ye be found even to fight against God.
+
+There is another fear, equally honest, but more honorable, or rather
+less dishonorable. There is a belief, apparently, that the womanly
+character somehow needs the restraints of existing customs. It is
+feared that a sudden rush of science to the female brain would produce
+asphyxia in the female heart. It is feared that the study of
+philosophy, the higher mathematics, and the ancient languages would
+unsex women,--would destroy the gentleness, the tenderness, the
+softness, the yieldingness, the sweet and endearing qualities which
+traditionally belong to them. They would lose all the graces of their
+sex, and become, say men, as one of us.
+
+From such a fate, good Lord! deliver us. I agree most heartily with
+men in the opinion, that no calamity could be more fatal to woman than
+a growing likeness to men; but no cloud so big as the smallest baby's
+smallest finger-nail portends it. Healthy development never can
+produce unhealthy results. Nature is never at war with herself. The
+good and wise and all-powerful Creator never created a faculty to be
+destroyed, a faculty whose utmost cultivation, if harmonious and not
+discordant, should be injurious. He made all things beautiful and
+beneficial in their proper places. It is only arbitrary contraction
+and expansion that produce mischief. It is the neglect of one thing
+and the undue prominence given to another that destroys symmetry and
+causes disaster.
+
+There has been so little experiment made in female education, that we
+must reason somewhat abstractly; yet we are not left, even in this
+early stage, without witnesses.
+
+On the 26th of May, 1863, died Mrs. O. W. Hitchcock, wife of one of
+the Presidents of Amherst College. A writer, who professes to have
+known her well, gives the following account of her:--
+
+"Born in Amherst, March 8th, 1796, fitted for college and accomplished
+alike in the fine arts and the exact sciences in an age when the
+standard of female education was comparatively low, associated with
+Dr. Hitchcock, then unknown to the public, in the instruction of
+Deerfield Academy, and there the instrument of her future husband's
+conversion, _filling_ to the full the office of a pastor's wife for
+five years, in Conway, Massachusetts, and for the rest of her long
+life sharing all her husband's labors, sorrows, joys, and honors,
+while at the same time she was the centre of every private, social,
+charitable, and public movement of which it was suitable for a lady to
+be the centre, she passed away from us by a death as serenely
+beautiful as the evening on which she died, May 26, 1863, at the age
+of sixty-seven, leaving a vacancy not only in the home and the hearts
+of her bereaved husband and afflicted children, but in the community
+and the wide circle of her acquaintance, which can be filled by none
+but Him who comforted the mourning family at Bethany. If strangers
+would form some idea of what Mrs. Hitchcock was, especially as a _help
+meet_ for her honored husband, and if friends would refresh their
+memory of a truly 'virtuous woman,' let them read, as it were over her
+still open grave, the dedication, by Dr. Hitchcock, of his 'Religion
+and Geology' to his 'beloved wife.' Never did husband pay to wife a
+higher or _juster_ tribute of respect and affection.
+
+"The following is the dedication referred to. It was written in
+1851:--
+
+    "'_To my beloved Wife._ Both gratitude and affection prompt me
+    to dedicate these Lectures to you. To your kindness and
+    self-denying labors I have been mainly indebted for the
+    ability and leisure to give any successful attention to
+    scientific pursuits. Early should I have sunk under the
+    pressure of feeble health, nervous despondency, poverty, and
+    blighted hopes, had not your sympathies and cheering counsels
+    sustained me. And during the last thirty years of professional
+    labors, how little could I have done in the cause of science,
+    had you not, in a great measure, relieved me of the cares of a
+    numerous family! Furthermore, while I have described
+    scientific facts with the pen only, how much more vividly have
+    they been portrayed by your pencil! And it is peculiarly
+    appropriate that your name should be associated with mine in
+    any literary effort where the theme is geology; since your
+    artistic skill has done more than my voice to render that
+    science attractive to the young men whom I have instructed. I
+    love especially to connect your name with an effort to defend
+    and illustrate that religion which I am sure is dearer to you
+    than everything else. I know that you would forbid this public
+    allusion to your labors and sacrifices, did I not send it
+    forth to the world before it meets your eye. But I am
+    unwilling to lose this opportunity of bearing a testimony
+    which both justice and affection urge me to give. In a world
+    where much is said of female deception and inconstancy, I
+    desire to testify that one man at least has placed implicit
+    confidence in woman, and has not been disappointed. Through
+    many checkered scenes have we passed together, both on the
+    land and the sea, at home and in foreign countries; and now
+    the voyage of life is almost ended. The ties of earthly
+    affection, which have so long united us in uninterrupted
+    harmony and happiness, will soon be sundered. But there are
+    ties which death cannot break; and we indulge the hope that by
+    them we shall be linked together and to the throne of God
+    through eternal ages. In life and in death I abide
+
+                                      "'Your affectionate husband,
+                                             "'EDWARD HITCHCOCK.'"
+
+Note here everything, but specially two things
+
+1. Mrs. Hitchcock was fitted for college, accomplished in the fine
+arts and the exact sciences, sympathized in her husband's tastes and
+understood his pursuits so thoroughly as to be able to render him
+essential assistance in his professional duties.
+
+2. Note the use and connections of the word _kindness_. She relieved
+him of the cares of a numerous family, and so gave him leisure for his
+scientific researches. Does that invalidate what I have before said
+regarding paternal duties? On the contrary, it strengthens my words.
+Dr. Hitchcock, in the fulness of his beautiful fame, in the ripeness
+of his years, confirms the truth of my principles. He knew--the
+great-hearted gentleman, the beloved disciple--that these cares
+belonged to him by right, and that it was of grace and not of law that
+his wife assumed them. So impressed is he with her kindness, so filled
+with gratitude is his magnanimous heart, that he even ventures to run
+the risk of wounding her delicacy by offering thanks in this public
+manner; shielding her, however, from every breath of offence by
+skilfully declaring her freedom from all participation in the
+publicity. _He_ uses the word kindness properly. It was a kindness,
+indeed, for her to step out of her own sphere and assume the burdens
+of his; but her husband's love was her impelling motive, and his
+gratitude her exceeding great reward. Not strictly her duty, it became
+undoubtedly her delight. For love is lavish. Love counts no sacrifice,
+knows of none. For a husband who loved and recognized her, a wife
+would bear Atlas on her shoulders. Only when it is coldly reckoned
+upon as a right, coldly received as a due, does service become
+servitude.
+
+Read now the dedication of that royal book "On Liberty," by John
+Stuart Mill, "one of the most powerful and original thinkers of the
+nineteenth century," a man of culture so thorough that his has been
+said to be the most cultivated mind of the age:--
+
+"To the beloved and deplored memory of her who was the inspirer, and
+in part the author, of all that is best in my writings,--the friend
+and wife whose exalted sense of truth and right was my strongest
+incitement, and whose approbation was my chief reward,--I dedicate
+this volume. Like all that I have written for many years, it belongs
+as much to her as to me; but the work as it stands has had, in a very
+insufficient degree, the inestimable advantage of her revision; some
+of the most important portions having been reserved for a more careful
+re-examination, which they are now never destined to receive. Were I
+but capable of interpreting to the world one half the great thoughts
+and noble feelings which are buried in her grave, I should be the
+medium of a greater benefit to it than is ever likely to arise from
+anything that I can write, unprompted and unassisted by her all but
+unrivalled wisdom."
+
+Elizabeth Barrett Browning, we are told by encyclopedists, was
+educated in a masculine range of studies, and with a masculine
+strictness of intellectual discipline. The poets and philosophers of
+Greece were the companions of her mind. In imaginative power and
+originality of intellectual construction she is said to be entitled to
+the very first place among the later English poets. She had considered
+carefully, and was capable of treating wisely, the deepest social
+problems which have engaged the attention of the most sagacious and
+practical minds. Society in the aggregate, and the self-consciousness
+of the solitary individual, were held in her grasp with equal ease,
+and observed with equal accuracy. She had a statesman's comprehension
+of the social and political problems which perplex the well-wishers of
+Italy, and discussed them with the spirit of a statesman. This is not
+my pronunciamento nor my language, but those of Hon. George S.
+Hillard.
+
+With a word fitly spoken this eminently strong-minded woman drew to
+her side a poet of poets, and he in turn drew her to his heart.
+
+When ten years of marriage had made him so well acquainted with his
+wife as to give weight to his testimony, he wrote, at the close of a
+volume of poems called "Men and Women," "One word more,"--surely the
+seemliest word that ever poet uttered. He sang of the one sonnet that
+Rafael wrote, of the one picture that Dante painted,--
+
+    "Once, and only once, and for one only,
+    (Ah, the prize!) to find his love a language
+    Fit and fair and simple and sufficient,"--
+
+and somewhat sadly adds:--
+
+    "I shall never, in the years remaining,
+    Paint you pictures, no, nor carve you statues,
+    Make you music that should all-express me;
+    So it seems: I stand on my attainment.
+    This of verse alone, one life allows me;
+    Other heights in other lives, God willing--
+    All the gifts from all the heights, your own, Love.
+
+    "Yet a semblance of resource avails us--
+    Shade so finely touched, love's sense must seize it.
+    Take these lines, look lovingly and nearly,
+    Lines I write the first time and the last time.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    He who writes may write for once, as I do.
+
+    "Love, you saw me gather men and women,
+    Live or dead or fashioned by my fancy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    I am mine and yours,--the rest be all men's.
+
+    Let me speak this once in my true person,
+
+    Though the fruit of speech be just this sentence,--
+    Pray you, look on these my men and women,
+    Take and keep my fifty poems finished;
+    Where my heart lies, let my brain lie also!
+    Poor the speech; be how I speak, for all things.
+
+    "Not but that you know me! Lo, the moon's self!
+    Here in London, yonder late in Florence.
+    Still we find her face, the thrice-transfigured.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    What, there's nothing in the moon noteworthy?
+    Nay--for if that moon could love a mortal,
+    Use, to charm him (so to fit a fancy)
+    All her magic ('t is the old sweet mythos)
+    She would turn a new side to her mortal,
+    Side unseen of herdsman, huntsman, steersman,--
+    Blank to Zoroaster on his terrace,
+    Blind to Galileo on his turret,
+    Dumb to Homer, dumb to Keats--him, even!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures
+    Boasts two soul-sides,--one to face the world with,
+    One to show a woman when he loves her.
+
+    "This I say of me, but think of you, Love!
+    This to you,--yourself my moon of poets!
+    Ah, but that's the world's side,--there's the wonder,--
+    Thus they see you, praise you, think they know you.
+    There, in turn I stand with them and praise you,
+    Out of my own self, I dare to phrase it,
+    But the best is when I glide from out them,
+    Cross a step or two of dubious twilight,
+    Come out on the other side, the novel
+    Silent silver lights and darks undreamed of,
+    When I hush and bless myself with silence.
+
+    "O, their Rafael of the dear Madonnas,
+    O, their Dante of the dread Inferno,
+    Wrote one song--and in my brain I sing it,
+    Drew one angel--borne, see, on my bosom!"
+
+Have you read it a hundred times before? Are you not grateful to me
+for giving you an excuse to begin on the second hundred?
+
+O women, since the heavens have been opened to reveal these points of
+light, and you can infer somewhat the radiance which may wrap you
+about with ineffable glory, will you be satisfied again with the
+beggarly elements of a sordid world? Seeing on what heights a woman
+may stand, will you lower to the level graded by generations of silly,
+selfish, sensual male minds? Is it really worth while? If it is not a
+good bargain to lose your own soul that you may gain the whole world,
+what must it be to lose your soul and gain only a few stereotyped
+phrases? If every other man that ever lived preached a crusade for
+"stocking-mending, love, and cookery," and only these three whom I
+have mentioned bore a different banner, would it not still be better
+to shape your course by theirs? Is it not better to be worthy of the
+respect and reverence of thinkers, than to receive the serenade of
+sounding brass? Is it not better to heed the one true voice crying in
+the wilderness, than to join in the uproar of the idolatrous mob that
+shouts, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians!" When I lose faith in human
+destiny, and am almost ready to say, "Who shall show us any good?" I
+remember these utterances,--so lofty that one may say, not as the
+fulsome courtiers of old time cried, but reverently and duly, "It is
+the voice of God, and not of men,"--I recall these utterances, the
+first so heartsome and overflowing that there is no thought for
+niceties of phrase, but only one eager desire to pay an undemanded
+tribute, only a warm, imperative urgency of expression; the second
+inexpressibly mournful, but with such calm majesty of pain as an
+ancient sculptor might have wrought into passionless marble, or a
+Roman Senator folded beneath his mantle;--in the first, a man looking
+from his happy earthly home, forward and upward to a happier home in
+heaven; in the second, one gazing hopelessly from his waste places
+down into darkness and the grave;--the first believing, "Because I
+live ye shall live also"; the second sadly querying, "Man goeth to the
+grave, and where is he?"--the first become as a little child through
+faith; the second only as a pagan sage by reason;--the third heaping
+up with ever unwearied and ever more delighted hand the brightest gems
+of learning and fancy to adorn a beloved brow;--all turning at the
+summit of their renown, at the point of their grandest achievement, to
+do honor to a woman, the first two vindicating the intellect of
+wifeliness, the last the wifeliness of intellect; all breathing a
+magnanimity in whose presence no smallness can be so much as
+named;--and I say there is more strength and courage to be gained,
+more hope for the future and more faith in humanity to be gathered,
+from such a glimpse than from the contemplation of five--what?
+hundred? thousand? millions?--of ordinary marriages.
+
+But to return to the question at issue,--Are these exceptional cases?
+It is man's own work if they are. Just as the elevation of one negro
+from slavery to supremacy, from stupidity to intelligence, is an
+indisputable proof that the elevation of the whole race is possible,
+so the case of one such woman as those I have mentioned settles the
+question for the whole sex. All may not attain the same heights, but
+this shows that intellectuality is open to them without destroying
+spirituality. Education, it seems, can do just as much for woman as
+for men. As careful mental training makes a man large-minded, it makes
+a woman large-minded. If it does not make a man narrow-souled and
+shallow-hearted, it will not make a woman so. If it does not unfit a
+man for manly duties, it will not unfit a woman for womanly duties. If
+ignorance and petty interests and limited views make a man trivial,
+obstinate, prejudiced, why is it not the same things which make a
+woman so? It is not necessary to determine whether there is an
+essential difference between the masculine and feminine brain or
+nature. All the difference, both in quantity and quality, which any
+one demands, may be granted without affecting this question of mental
+culture. No matter whether it be strong or weak, large or small,
+educate what mind there is to its highest capacity. If there is no
+difference, it is so much gained. If there is a difference, each mind
+will select from the material furnished that which is suitable for its
+own sustenance. Violet and apple-tree grow side by side. If the soil
+is poor they are both meagre; if the soil is rich, they both flourish.
+From the same tract one gathers his golden and mellow fruit, the other
+her glowing purple richness. You may put a covering over the violet
+and stunt it into a pale, puny, sickly thing, or you may cultivate it
+to an imperial beauty. But it will be a violet still. The utmost
+cultivation will not turn it into an apple-tree. Every plant may have
+a different taste and a different need from every other plant, but
+they all want the earth. The tiny draughts of the slender anemone are
+not to be compared with the rivers of sap that bear to the royal oak
+its centuries; but oak and anemone each demands all the juice it can
+quaff, and earth and sea and sky are alike laid under tribute to fill
+the fairy drinking-cup of the one, as well as the huge wassail-bowl of
+the other.
+
+So with mind. The philosopher, the poet, the theologian, the chemist,
+quarry in the same mine, and each brings up thence the treasure that
+his soul loves. The same cloud sweeps over the farmer to refresh his
+thirsty lands, over the philosopher to confirm his theories, over the
+painter to tempt his pencil. The principle of selection that obtains
+in the lower ranks of Nature will not fail us in her higher walks.
+
+It is because law, logic, science, philosophy, have been so almost
+exclusively in the hands of men, that they have accomplished such
+puerile results. With all their beauty and power, they have left our
+common life so poor, and vapid, and vicious, because only half their
+lesson has been learned. But they bear a message from the Most High,
+and when woman shall be permitted to lend her listening ear and bring
+to the interpretation her finer sense, we shall have good tidings of
+great joy which shall be to all people.
+
+But what is to become of masculine domination and feminine submission?
+O faithless and perverse generation! Do you indeed believe that it is
+"natural" for woman to trust and for man to be trusted,--for man to
+guide and woman to be guided,--for man to rule and woman to be ruled?
+In whose hand, then, lies the power to change Nature? Is she so weak
+that a little more or less of this or that, administered by one of her
+creatures, can alter all her arrangements? The granite of this round
+world lies underneath, and the alluvium settles on the surface. Do you
+suppose that anything and everything you can do in the way of
+cultivation will have power to upheave the granite from its hidden
+depths and send down the alluvium to discharge its underground duties?
+What bands hold in their place the oxygen and nitrogen? Who says to
+the silex and the phosphorus, "Thus far shalt thou go, and no
+farther"? And do you think that, if you cannot change the quantities
+of these simple elements, whose processes are patent to the eye, you
+can change the qualities of the most complex thing in the whole world,
+which works behind an impenetrable veil? If you cannot add one cubit
+to a woman's stature, nor make one hair of her head white or black, do
+you think you can add or subtract one feature from her mind? Cease
+with high-sounding praise to extol the womanly nature, while
+practically you deny that there is any. Bring your deeds up to your
+words. Believe that God did not give to bird and brake and flower a
+stability of character which he denied to half the human race. Believe
+that a woman may be a woman still, though careful culture make the
+wilderness blossom like the rose,--and not only a woman, but as much
+more and better a woman as the garden is more and better than the
+wilderness. The distinctions of sex are innate and eternal. They
+create their own barriers, which cannot be overleaped.
+
+Do you think that, in the examples which I have given,--and perhaps in
+others which your own observation may have furnished you,--there was
+any unusual lack of harmony or adjustment? Do you judge, from the
+testimony of their husbands, that Mrs. Hitchcock, or Mrs. Mill, or
+Mrs. Browning were any more overbearing, any more greedy of authority,
+any more ambitious of outside power, any more unlovely and
+unattractive, than the silliest Mrs. Maplesap, who never knew any
+"sterner duty than to give caresses"? He must have used his eyes to
+little purpose who has failed to see that, in a symmetrical womanhood,
+every member keeps pace with every other. If one member suffers, all
+the members suffer. Power is not local, but all-embracing. Weakness
+does not coexist with strength. A silly, shallow woman cannot love
+deeply, cannot live commandingly. I believe that a woman of
+intellectual strength has a corresponding affectional strength. An
+evil education may have so warped her that she seems to be a power for
+evil rather than for good; but, all other things being equal, the
+sounder the judgment the deeper the love. The clear head and the
+strong heart go together. A woman who can assist her husband in
+geology, or revise his metaphysics, or criticise his poetry, is much
+more likely to hold him in wifely love and honor, is much more likely
+to enliven his joy and medicine his weariness, than she who can only
+clutch at the hem of his robe. Her love is intelligent, comprehensive,
+firmly founded, and not to be lightly disturbed. Weakness may possess
+itself of the outworks, but is easily dislodged. Strength goes within
+and takes possession.
+
+All the unloveliness and unwisdom which may have characterized the
+"woman's movement," and of which men seem to stand in perpetual dread,
+are but the natural consequence of their own misdoing. It was a
+reaction against their wrong. Did women demand ungracefully? It was
+because their entreaty had been scorned and their grace slighted.
+Never,--I would risk my life on the assertion,--never did any number
+of women leave a home to clamor in public for social rights unless
+impelled by the sting of social wrongs, either in their own person or
+in the persons of those dear to them. Every unwomanliness had its rise
+in a previous unmanliness.
+
+In a vile, nameless book to which I have before referred, I find
+quoted the story of a rajah who was in the habit of asking, "Who is
+she?" whenever a calamity was related to him, however severe or
+however trivial. His attendants reported to him one morning that a
+laborer had fallen from a ladder when working at his palace, and had
+broken his neck. "Who is she?" demanded the rajah. "A man, no woman,
+great prince," was the reply. "Who is she?" repeated the rajah, with
+increased anger. In vain did the attendants assert the manhood of the
+laborer. "Bring me instant intelligence what woman caused this
+accident, or woe upon your heads!" exclaimed the prince. In an hour
+the active attendants returned, and, prostrating themselves, cried
+out, "O wise and powerful prince, as the ill-fated laborer was working
+on the scaffold, he was attracted by the beauty of one of your
+highness's damsels, and, gazing on her, lost his balance and fell to
+the ground." "You hear now," said the prince, "no accident can happen
+without a woman being, _in some way_, an instrument."
+
+One might, perhaps, be pardoned for asking whether entire reliance can
+be placed on testimony which is dictated beforehand on penalty of
+losing one's head; but the anecdote indicates about the usual quantity
+of sense and sagacity which is popularly brought to bear on the "woman
+question," and we will let it pass. I have quoted the story because,
+by changing the feminine for the masculine noun and pronoun, it so
+admirably expresses my own views. As I look around upon the world, and
+see the sin, the sorrow, the suffering, it seems to me that, so far as
+it can be traced to human agency, man is at the bottom of every evil
+under the sun. As the husband is, the wife is. The nursery rhyme gives
+the whole history of man and woman in a nutshell:--
+
+    "Jack and Gill
+      Went up the hill
+    To draw a pail of water;
+      Jack fell down
+      And broke his crown,
+    And Gill came tumbling after."
+
+Men have a way of falling back on Eve's transgression, as if that were
+a sufficient excuse for all short- or wrong-coming. Milton glosses
+over Adam's part in the transgression, and even gives his sin a rather
+magnanimous air,--which is very different from that which Adam's
+character wears in Genesis,--while all the blame is laid on "the woman
+whom thou gavest to be with me." But before pronouncing judgment, I
+should like to hear Eve's version of the story. Moses has given his,
+and Milton his,--the first doubtless conveying as much truth as he was
+able to be the medium of, the second expressing all the paganism of
+his sex and his generation, mingled with the gall of his own private
+bitterness; but we have never a word from Eve. That is, we have man's
+side represented. But Eve will awake one day, and then, and not till
+then, we shall know the whole. Meanwhile, it is well for men to go
+back to the beginning of creation to find woman the guilty party. If
+they stop anywhere short of it, they will be forced to shift the
+burden to their own shoulders. A woman may have been originally one
+step in advance of man in evil-doing, but he very soon caught up with
+her, and has never since suffered himself to labor under a similar
+disadvantage. I cannot think of a single folly, weakness, or vice in
+women which men have not either planted or fostered; and generally
+they have done both. But they do not see the link between cause and
+effect, and they fail to direct their denunciation to the proper
+quarter.
+
+It only needs to trust nature! Learn that women crave to pay homage as
+strongly as men crave to receive it. The higher women rise the more
+eagerly will they turn to somewhat higher. It cannot be sweeter for a
+man to be looked up to than it is for a woman to look up to him. Never
+can you raise women to such an altitude that they will find their
+pride and pleasure in looking down. Women want men to be masters quite
+as much as men themselves wish it; but they want them first to be
+worthy of it. Women never rebel against the authority of goodness, of
+superiority, but against the tyranny of obstinacy, ignorance,
+heartlessness. The supremacy which a husband holds by virtue of his
+character is a wife's boon and blessing, and she suns herself in it
+and is filled with an unspeakable content. It is the supremacy of mere
+position, the supremacy of inferiority, that galls and irritates; that
+breaks out in conventions and resolutions and remonstrances, in
+suicide and insanity and crime. "The women now-a-days are playing the
+devil all round," I heard a man say not long ago, in speaking of a
+woman hitherto respectable, who had left husband and children and
+eloped with some unknown adventurer. And I said in my heart, "I am
+glad of it. Men have been playing the devil single-handed long enough,
+I am glad women are taking it up. _Similia similibus curantur_."
+Things must, to be sure, be in a very dreadful condition to require
+such "heroic treatment," but things are in a very dreadful condition,
+and if men will not amend them out of love of justice and right and
+purity, I do not see any other way than that they must be forced to do
+it out of a selfish regard to their own household comfort. Let my
+people go, that they may serve me, was the word of the Lord to
+Pharaoh, but Pharaoh hardened his heart and would not let the people
+go. Not until there was no longer in Egypt a house in which there was
+not one dead did the required emancipation come. Then with a great cry
+of horror and dread were the children of Israel sent out as the Lord
+their God commanded. Let my people go, that they may serve me, seems
+the Lord to have been saying these many years to the taskmasters of
+America; but who is the Lord, the taskmasters have cried, that we
+should obey his voice to let Israel go? We know not the Lord, neither
+will we let Israel go. Now on summer fields red with blood, through
+the terrible voice of the cannonade bearing its summons of death, we
+are learning in anguish and tears who is the Lord; and if men choose
+not to do justly and love mercy and walk softly with women, it is
+according to analogy that women shall become to them the scourge of
+God. The very charities, the tendernesses, the blessing and beneficent
+qualities against which they have sinned shall become thongs to lash
+and scorpions to sting,--and all the people shall say amen!
+
+I am so far from being surprised when women occasionally run away from
+their husbands, that I rather marvel that there is not a hegira of
+women; that our streets and lanes are not choked up with fugitives. I
+do not believe in women's leaving their husbands to live with other
+men; it is infamy and it is folly: but I do believe most profoundly in
+women's leaving their husbands. It may be their right and their duty.
+I think there is not the smallest danger in the state's putting all
+possible power of this nature into the hands of women; because a
+woman's nature is such that she will never exercise this power till
+she has borne to the utmost, cruelty, malignity, or indifference; and,
+in point of morality, indifference is just as good ground for
+separation as cruelty. Love is the sole morality of marriage, and a
+marriage to which love has never come, or from which it has departed,
+is immorality, and a woman cannot continue in it without continually
+incurring stain. I do not think she has a right to marry again; not
+even a legal divorce justifies a second marriage; but she has a right
+to withdraw from the man who imbrutes her. If the law does not justify
+such action, she is right in taking the matter into her own hands.
+There is no power on earth that can make a woman live with a man, if
+she chooses not to live with him, and has a will strong enough to bear
+out her choice; and when she finds that she ministers only to his
+selfishness, when she discovers that her marriage is no marriage at
+all, but an alliance offensive to all delicacy and opposed to all
+improvement, she is not only justified in discontinuing it, but she is
+not justified in continuing it. The position which a woman occupies in
+such a connection is fairer in the eyes of the law, but morally it is
+no less objectionable than if the marriage ceremony had never taken
+place. A prayer and a promise cannot turn pollution into purity.
+
+Is this a movement towards violating the sanctity of marriage? It is
+rather causing that marriage shall not with its sanctity protect sin.
+When a slaver, freighted with wretchedness, unfurls from its masthead
+the Stars and Stripes, that it may avoid capture, does it thereby free
+itself from guilt, or does it desecrate our flag? Who honors his
+country, he who permits the slave-ship to go on her horrible way
+protected by the sacred name she has dared to invoke, or he who scorns
+to suffer those folds to sanction crime, tears down the flag from its
+disgracing eminence, unlooses the bands of the oppressor and bids the
+oppressed go free?
+
+But are there not inconstant, weak women, who would take advantage of
+such power, and for any fancied slight or foolish whim desert a good
+home and a good husband? Well, what then? If a silly woman will of her
+own motion go away and live by herself, I think she pursues a wise
+course and deserves well of the Republic. I do not believe her good
+husband will complain. On the contrary, he would doubtless adopt a
+part at least of the Napoleonic principle, and build a bridge of gold
+for his fleeing spouse. Such power will never make silly women, though
+it may possibly render them more conspicuous, and that will be a
+benefit. The more vividly a wrong is seen and felt, the more likely is
+it to be removed. The remedy for the mischief which Lord Burleigh's
+she-fool may do is, not to bind her to your hearth, but to keep her
+away from it altogether; and better than a remedy, the preventive is,
+so to treat women that they shall not be fools. If the ways of male
+transgressors against women can be made so hard that they shall, in
+very self-defence, set to and mend them--Heaven be praised!
+
+But what of the Bible? Is not the permanency of the marriage
+connection inculcated there? No more than I inculcate it. I certainly
+do not see it enforced in any such manner as to weaken my position.
+Its permanency is assumed rather than enjoined; but a basis of
+essential oneness is also assumed, which is the sufficient, the true,
+and the only true and sufficient basis. "Therefore," says Adam, "shall
+a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife:
+and they shall be one flesh." But if, instead of cleaving to his wife,
+a man cleaves away from his wife, and instead of being one flesh, the
+twain become twain,--I do not see that Adam has anything to say on the
+subject. I suppose Eve looked so lovely to him, and he was so delighted
+to have her, that it never occurred to him to make any provision
+against the contingency of his abusing her. I have not made any
+especial research, but I do not remember anything in the precepts or
+examples of the Bible that enjoins the continuance of association in
+spite of everything. In principle it is presumed to be perpetual, but
+in practice the Bible makes certain exceptions to perpetuity,--lays
+down rules indeed for separation. "What God hath joined together let
+not man put asunder," says our Saviour, which surely does not mean
+that what greed or lust or ambition has joined together woman may not
+put asunder. When a young man and a maiden, drawn towards each other
+by their God-given instincts, have become one by love, no mere outside
+incompatibility of wealth or rank, or any such thing, should forbid
+them to become one by marriage. For what God hath joined together let
+not man put asunder. But the God who would not permit an ox and an ass
+to be yoked together to the same plough, never, surely, joined in holy
+wedlock a brute and an angel; and if the angel struggles to escape
+from the unequal yoke-fellow to whom the powers of evil have coupled
+her, who dare thrust her back under the yoke with a "Thus saith the
+Lord"? Christ himself does not pronounce against the putting away of
+wife or husband, but against the putting away of one and marrying
+another. St. Paul's words regarding the Christian and the idolater can
+hardly be applied in our society, but so far as they can be applied
+they confirm my views. "Let not the wife depart from her husband," he
+says, and immediately adds, "_but and if she depart, let her remain
+unmarried_, or be reconciled to her husband." Precisely. For no
+trivial cause should the wife give her husband over to be the prey of
+his own wicked passions; but if he is so bad, if he so degrades her
+life that she must depart, let her remain unmarried.
+
+It may be said that the interests of children would be compromised by
+this mode of procedure. But the interests of children are already
+fatally compromised. The interests of children are never at variance
+with those of their parents. If it is for the interest of the mother
+to leave her husband, it is not for the interest of her children that
+she should stay with him. Whatever mortification or disgrace might
+come to a few children would not be the greatest harm that could
+happen to them, and in the end all children would be the gainers.
+
+    "I hold that man the worst of public foes
+    Who, either for his own or children's sake,
+    To save his blood from scandal, lets the wife
+    Whom he knows false abide and rule the house."
+
+True. For "man" put "woman," and for "wife" "husband," and it will be
+no less true. Of one thing be sure. The interests of children need not
+block the wheels of legislation. The mother will take them into as
+earnest consideration as any assembly of men. If they are not safe in
+her hands, they will not be safe in any hands.
+
+Furthermore notice, the chief stress of Scriptural prohibition is laid
+on men. The rules and restraints are for men. Very little injunction
+is given to women. The Inspirer of the Bible knew the souls which he
+had made, and for the hardness of men's hearts hedged them about with
+restrictions, and for the softness of women's hearts left them chiefly
+to their own sweet will. The great Creator knew that women would never
+be largely addicted to leaving their husbands for trifling causes, nor
+indeed are serious causes often sufficient to produce such results.
+The rack and wheel and thumb-screw of married life are generally less
+powerful than the patience of the wifely heart. But his Maker knew,
+too, the inconstant nature of man, and bound him with the strictest
+charges. I am entirely willing to abide by the Bible. Let the state
+abide by it too, and give to women the legal power to save themselves.
+There is no danger that they will abuse it. They will even use it only
+to correct the most fatal abuse.
+
+But what, then, becomes of the marriage vows? Shall all their
+solemnity vanish as a thread of tow when it toucheth the fire? No; but
+I would have the marriage vows themselves vanish. They are heathenish.
+They are a relic of barbarism. I have never studied into their origin,
+but there is internal evidence that women had neither part nor lot in
+framing them. The whole matter is one of those masculinities with
+which society has been saddled for generations,--one of the bungling
+makeshifts to which men resort when they are left to themselves, and
+have but a vague notion of what it is that they want, and no notion at
+all of how they are to get it. Look at it a moment. Here is the whole
+world lying before man, waiting for him to enter in and take
+possession. Woman desires nothing so much as that he should be monarch
+of all he surveys. She acknowledges him to be in his own right, she
+implores him to be by his own act, king. The greatest blessing that
+can fall upon her is his coronation. It is only when the king is come
+to his own that woman can enter into her lawful inheritance. So long
+as he keeps his crown in abeyance, so long as he tramples his
+prerogatives under foot, she too misses the purple and the throne.
+What does he do? Instead of wearing his dignities, and discharging his
+duties, he goes clad in rags, he dwells with beggars, he deals in
+baubles, and depends for allegiance upon a word! With all his power
+depending solely upon himself, with love and life awaiting only his
+worthiness, with a devotion that knows no measure standing ready and
+eager to bless him, all the dew of youth, all the faith of innocence,
+all the boundless trust of tenderness, all the grace and charm and
+resource of an infinitely daring and enduring affection,--he turns
+away from it all and claims the coarseness of a promise! He does not
+see the invincible strength of that subtile, impalpable bond which God
+has ordained, but trusts his fate to a clumsy yet flimsy cord which
+himself has woven, which his eyes can see and his hands handle, and in
+which therefore he can believe, no matter though it parts at the first
+strain.
+
+Does it? Did a person ever change his course out of respect to his
+marriage vows? I do not mean his marriage or the marriage ceremony,
+but simply the promises: to love, honor, and cherish on the one side;
+to love, honor, and obey on the other. Did a man's promise ever fetter
+his tongue from uttering the harsh word? Did a woman's promise ever
+induce her to heed her husband's wishes? I trow not. The honor and
+love which a husband or wife do not spontaneously render, they will
+seldom render for a vow. If the vital spark of heavenly flame remains,
+the promise is of no use. If it is gone out, the promise is of no
+power. A solemn declaration of facts, a solemn assertion, calling upon
+God and man for witness, would, it seems to me, be equally efficient,
+and much more moral, than the present form of promise. Power over the
+future is not given to any of us, but we can all bear witness of the
+present. The history of this war goes to show that oaths of any sort
+are of but little use,--mere wisps of straw when the current sets
+against them,--and that Christ meant what he said when he said, "Swear
+not at all." But, however the case may stand regarding facts, there
+can be but one opinion regarding feelings. To swear to preserve an
+emotion or an affection is to assume a burden which neither our
+fathers nor we are able to bear. And to take an oath which one has no
+power to keep, has a tendency to weaken in men's minds the obligation
+of oaths. If there must be swearing, we should act on Paley's hint,
+and promise to love as long as possible, and then to make the best of
+the bargain.
+
+That part of the marriage contract which relates to obedience deserves
+a separate attention. What is meant by a wife's obedience? Shall an
+adult person of ordinary intelligence forego the use of her own
+judgment and adopt the conclusions of another person's? Is that what
+is meant?
+
+To the law and to the testimony again. In the beginning nothing is
+said of obedience or lordship. There is no subordination of man to
+woman or woman to man. They are simply one flesh. God created man in
+his own image; male and female created he them. And God blessed
+_them_, and said unto _them_, have dominion, &c. Eve was to have
+dominion precisely like Adam, so far as we can see. But in the fall
+she forfeited it, and the curse came: "Thy desire shall be to thy
+husband, and he shall rule over thee." When the king was shorn of his
+power, the queen was dethroned. That settles the question, does it
+not? Not at all. God so loved the world, that, when the fulness of the
+time was come, he sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the
+law, to redeem them that were under the law. Christ hath redeemed us
+from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us. So then,
+brethren, we are not children of bondwomen, but of free women!
+
+If you do not believe the Bible, the curse is of no account. If you do
+believe the Bible, the curse is taken away. Now then where are you?
+
+But St. Paul is brought in here with great effect by the defenders of
+the old _regime_. St. Paul, living under the new dispensation, became
+its exponent, reduced it to a system, and must be considered authority
+regarding its meaning and design. The curse had been as completely
+taken away then as now, yet he says: "Wives, submit yourselves unto
+your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of
+the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church.... Therefore as
+the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own
+husbands in everything." Can anything be stronger or more explicit?
+Nothing. But if you take St. Paul, take the whole of him. Accepting
+for wives the injunction of submission, accept it also for yourselves;
+for in the preceding verses he says, "Be filled with the spirit,
+_submitting yourselves one to another_ in the fear of God." The same
+word is used to indicate the relations proper between husband and wife
+and between friend and friend. If, then, according to St. Paul, the
+wife must absolutely obey her husband, her husband must just as
+absolutely obey his wife, and both must obey their next-door neighbor.
+
+Observe also the manner of the control and the submission,--"as unto
+the Lord." The husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the
+head of the church. The wife is to be subject to the husband, as the
+church is subject to Christ. Why, this is just what I want. Not a wife
+in Christendom but would rejoice to recognize her husband to be her
+head as Christ is the head of the church. Only let husbands follow
+their model, and there would be no more question of obedience. Quote
+St. Paul against me? St. Paul is my standard-bearer! If you had only
+obeyed St. Paul, I should not be fighting at all. The world would go
+on so smoothly and lovingly that I should never be required to stir up
+its impure mind by way of remembrance, but should be occupied in
+writing the loveliest little idyls that ever were thought of. It is
+the flagrant disregard and violation of Paul's teachings that brings
+me unto you with a rod instead of in love and the spirit of meekness.
+I want no higher standard than was set up by Paul.
+
+Men reason very well so long as they confine their reasoning to pure
+mathematics, but when they attempt to apply their logic to practical
+life, they are at fault. They find it difficult to make allowance for
+friction. They do not observe, and they do not know what to do with
+their observations when they have made them. Consequently, though
+their arguments look very well, they do not stand the test of
+experiment. Nothing can be more charming than this implicit trust
+which men so love and laud, this unhesitating submission of the fond
+wife,--the "God is thy law, thou mine" of Milton (which most men
+evidently believe is to be found in all the Four Gospels and most of
+the Epistles). Yet its only practical justification would be the
+infallibility of men. But in actual life men are not infallible. They
+are just as likely to be wrong as women. The only obedience
+practicable or desirable is the adoption of the wisest course after
+consultation. Practically, there is seldom much trouble about this
+matter; but there is none the less for all the theories and all the
+vows of obedience. Yet we have it from good authority, that it is
+better not to vow than to vow and not pay.
+
+When I see the strenuousness with which man has ever enjoined upon
+woman respect for his position and submission to his will, the
+persistence with which he has maintained his superiority and her
+subordination, the compensatory and unreasonable, inconsequent homage
+which he awards to those who acquiesce in his claims, I seem to be
+reading a new version of an old story. Man takes woman up into an
+exceeding high mountain, and shows her what seems to her dazzled eyes
+all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them, and says unto
+her, "All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and
+worship me." But as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall
+be,--"Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou
+serve." For many generations the world has reaped a bitter harvest
+from worshipping and serving the creature more than the Creator. Eve's
+desire was to the man, and he ruled over her consequently, and she
+brought forth a murderer. The virgin-mother rejoiced primarily in God,
+and that Holy Thing which was born of her was called the Son of God.
+For six thousand years the works of the flesh have been manifest,
+which are these: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness,
+idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife,
+seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and
+such like. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace,
+long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.
+
+When women begin to talk of right, men begin to talk of courtesy. They
+are very willing that women should be angels, but they are not willing
+that they should be naturally-developed women. They like to pay
+compliments, but they like not to award dues. One great article of
+their belief is, that
+
+      "A woman ripens like a peach,
+    In the cheeks chiefly,"
+
+and the rod perpetually held over any deeper ripening is the not
+always unspoken threat of a forfeiture of masculine deference. From
+those who want what they have not shall be taken away that which they
+have. Very well, take it away. No thoughtful woman desires any homage
+that can be given or withheld at pleasure. The only reverence, the
+only respect, which has any value, is that which springs from the
+depths of the heart spontaneously. If the politeness which men show to
+women, and for which American men are famous, does not spring from
+their own sense of fitness, if it is a kind of barter, a reward of
+merit, let us dispense with it altogether. Sometimes I almost fear
+that it is so. Sometimes I am half inclined to believe that men are
+kind and courteous chiefly to those who are independent of them. In a
+railroad-car, not long since, I saw a woman, hard-featured,
+coarse-complexioned, ignorant, rude, and boisterous, engaged in an
+altercation with the conductor regarding her fare. The dozen men in
+the vicinity leaned forward or looked around with intent eyes,
+and--must I say, smiling? no--grinning faces, and saluted each fresh
+outburst of violence with laughter. Could a true courtesy have found
+amusement, or anything but pain, in such an exhibition? The woman was
+most unwomanly, but she was a woman. That should be enough, on your
+principles. She was a human being. That is enough, on mine.
+
+In "Our Old Home," Hawthorne--O the late sorrow of that beloved
+name!--has most tenderly told the story of Delia Bacon. When her book
+was published, we are informed, "it fell with a dead thump at the feet
+of the public, and has never been picked up. A few persons turned over
+one or two of the leaves, as it lay there, and essayed to kick the
+volume deeper into the mud.... From the scholars and critics in her
+own country, indeed, Miss Bacon might have looked for a worthier
+appreciation." But, "If any American ever wrote a word in her behalf,
+Miss Bacon never knew it, nor did I. Our journalists at once
+republished some of the most brutal vituperations of the English
+press, thus pelting their poor countrywoman with stolen mud, without
+even waiting to know whether the ignominy was deserved. And they never
+have known it to this day, nor ever will."
+
+Is this courtesy? Is this the lofty manhood which women are to bow
+down and worship? To such as these is it that women are to say, "What
+thou bid'st, unargued I obey"? Men may promise all the kingdoms of the
+earth and the glory of them, and women may make never so persistent
+efforts to bow down and enter into possession; but the worship will
+never be heartsome, nor the title ever secure. Never will the human
+mind, whether of man or woman, rest in that which is not excellent. So
+long as men are unworthy of fealty, they may forever grasp, but they
+cannot retain it. Their empire will be turbulent and their claim
+disputed. They will have a secure hold on woman's respect only so far
+as character commands it. Feudalism was better than barbarism, and the
+nineteenth is an advance on the fifteenth century. But the inmost germ
+of chivalry has not yet flowered into perfect blossom. By the
+restiveness of woman under the tutelage of man may he measure his own
+short-comings. It is not necessary that men should be renowned, but
+they should be great. Fame is a matter of gifts, but character is
+always at command. Not every man can be a philosopher, poet, or
+president, but every man can be gentle, reverent, unselfish, upright,
+magnanimous, pure. In field and wood and prairie, standing behind the
+counter, bending over lapstone or anvil, day-book, ledger, or graver,
+a man may fashion himself on the true heroic model, and so
+
+    "Move onward, leading up the golden year;
+    For unto him who works, and feels he works,
+    The same grand year is ever at the doors."
+
+In that grand year courtesy shall be recognized as the growth of the
+soul and not of circumstance. A man shall bear himself towards a
+woman, not according to what she is, but to what himself is. He shall
+dispense the kindnesses of travel, assembly, and all manner of
+association, not only to the good and the gentle, but also to the
+froward; and he will do it, not because he thinks it best or right,
+but because he cannot do otherwise, without working inward violence
+upon himself. If a woman show herself rude or unthinking, or if in any
+way she transgresses the laws of taste, propriety, or morality, he
+shall not, therefore, consider himself at liberty to utter coarse
+jests or coarse rebuke, to cast free looks, or disport himself with
+laughter. It shall not be possible for him to do so; but he shall
+rather feel in his own heart the thrill and in his own blood the
+tingle of degradation, and gravely and sadly will he
+
+    "Pay the reverence of old days
+      To her dead fame;
+    Walk backward with averted gaze,
+      And hide the shame."
+
+Nor shall his deference be confined to woman, but man to man shall do
+that which is seemly. For all poverty, loneliness, helplessness,
+repulsiveness, and every form of weakness and misfortune, especially
+for those worst misfortunes that come from one's own imprudence or
+misdoing, he shall have sympathy and help. Then, indeed, "shall all
+men's good be each man's rule." Then between man and woman shall be no
+mine and thine, but Maud Muller's dream shall be fulfilled, and joy is
+duty and love is law.
+
+Much of our classification of qualities into masculine and feminine,
+all assignment of superiority or inferiority to one or other of the
+sexes, seems to me to be founded on a false conception.[5] No virtue,
+scarcely a quality, is the prerogative of man or woman, but manly and
+womanly together make the perfect being. A man who has not in his soul
+the essence of womanhood, is an unmanly man. A woman who has not the
+essence of manhood, is an unwomanly woman. It is woman in
+man,--gentleness, guilelessness, truth, permeating strength and valor,
+that gives to man his charm: it is man in woman,--courage, firmness,
+fibre, underlying grace and beauty, that give to woman her
+fascination. A brutal man, a weak woman, is as fatally defective as a
+coward or an Amazon. God made man in his own image; God made man male
+and female. God, then, is in himself type of both male and female, and
+only in proportion as all men are womanly and all women manly, does
+each become susceptible of the love and worthy of the respect of the
+other. Neither is the man superior to the woman, nor the woman to the
+man, but they twain are one flesh.
+
+        [5] This paragraph was written with a partial reference to
+        Mrs. Farnham's "Woman and her Era," of which book I had at
+        the time but a very general notion, derived from one or two
+        newspaper notices. Since then the appearance of an unclean
+        criticism in the "Publishers' Circular" induced me to
+        suspect that the book must embody some unusual excellence,
+        or it could not have forced a fallen soul thus to foam out
+        its own shame. From such a brief glance as I have been able
+        to give to "Woman and her Era," while these pages are going
+        through the press, I infer that, a little hidden from common
+        eyes under a somewhat appalling mass of metaphysical and
+        other learning, are collected a greater number of valuable,
+        timely truths than I have met in any other book on this
+        topic. Not agreeing to all her opinions, one can but rejoice
+        in the sagacity which most of them display, and in the good
+        temper and just spirit which characterize all.
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+
+Doubtless there are many men who will say: To what purpose is all
+this? What new development has arisen to necessitate a new outcry?
+The world is getting on very well. People marry and are given in
+marriage; buy, sell, and get gain. There is a good deal of wickedness
+and suffering, but less of both than formerly, and both are evidently
+diminishing. Earth is not heaven, and in the world we shall always
+have tribulation, men and women both, but neither men nor women make
+any particular complaint, and on the whole it may reasonably be
+inferred that they are getting on comfortably. Pray let well enough
+alone.
+
+But your well enough cannot be let alone, because it is not well
+enough. Nothing is well enough so long as it can be bettered. The
+world is not getting on comfortably, however comfortable you may be.
+Mounted in your car of Juggernaut, you may find the prospect pleasing,
+the motion exhilarating, and the journey agreeable, but your _Io
+triumphe_ has but a discordant twang to those whom you are so
+pleasantly crushing under your chariot-wheels. Your vision is not
+trustworthy. Through I know not what process a judicial blindness
+seems to come upon people, so that those ways seem good whose end is
+death. True, the world is advancing, but with a motion which, compared
+with that which it might attain, is retrogression. Whose fiat has
+decreed, "Thus fast shalt thou go, and no faster"? Why is it that we
+only creep, when we might run and not be weary, might mount up with
+wings as eagles? Why do we dwell, with toil and tears, in the Valley
+of the Shadow of Death, when the voice from heaven centuries ago bade
+us come up higher? We have for our inheritance the elements of all
+things good and great and to be desired; but we lack the clear vision
+and the cunning hand to construct from them the Paradise that every
+family might be, in spite of the sin that despoiled the first; so we
+continue to dwell without Paradise, and very far off. Men and women
+are at variance with themselves and with one another. Power and
+passion run to waste. Positions are inverted, relations confused, and
+light obscured. The sanctuary of the Lord is built up with untempered
+mortar, and jewels of gold are degraded to a swine's snout.
+
+Underneath all wars and convulsions, underneath all forms of
+government and all social institutions, it seems to me that the
+relations between man and woman are the granite formation upon which
+the whole world rests. Society will be elevated only just so fast and
+so far as these relations become what God intended them to be.
+Monarchies, republics, democracies, may have their benefits and their
+partisans, but the family is the foundation of country. I said "it
+seems to me" so. I have been charged with being sometimes too positive
+in my opinions. It may have been a youthful fault, but I long since
+corrected it. I should now suggest rather than affirm the equality
+between the angles of a triangle and two right angles. I am open to
+conviction on the subject of the multiplication-table; but on this
+point my feet are fixed, and, as my Puritan ancestors were wont to
+sing, somewhat nasally perhaps, but with hand on sword,--
+
+    "Let mountains from their seats be hurled
+      Down to the deep, and buried there,
+    Convulsions shake the solid world,
+      My faith shall never yield to fear."
+
+All other influences are fitful and fragmentary: the home influence
+alone is steady and sufficient, and the home influence depends upon
+the relations between father and mother. Unless there is on both sides
+respect first, and then love, such love as brings an all-embracing
+sympathy, and so an outer and inner harmony,--harmony between life and
+its laws and harmony between heart and heart,--the child's head will
+be pillowed upon discord, his cradle will be rocked by restlessness,
+and his character can hardly fail to be unsymmetrical. We have all
+seen the wickedness of man, that it is great in the earth; but why
+should it not be, when he is conceived in sin and shapen in iniquity;
+when his plastic soul is moulded amid jarring elements, and the voices
+that fall upon his infant ear--voices that should be modulated only to
+tenderness and love, and all the sweet and endearing qualities--are
+sharpened by coldness, embittered by disappointment, shrill through
+unremitting toil and rough with sordid ambitions? I only wonder that
+children bred up in such uncongenial homes come to be so much men and
+women as they are. No outbreak of treachery or turpitude astonishes
+me, when I remember the discordant circumstances into the midst of
+which the baby-soul was born. The only astonishment is, that every
+soul tends so strongly towards its original type as to have even an
+outer seeming of virtue. I wonder that, when the twig is so ruthlessly
+and persistently bent, the tree should reach up ever so crookedly
+towards heaven. Kind Nature takes her poor warped little ones, and
+with gentle, imperceptible hand touches them to a grace and softness
+which we have no right to expect, but to never that divine grace, that
+ineffable sweetness, of which the human soul is capable, and to which
+in its highest moods it ever yearns. O, if this one truth could be
+imprinted upon this age,--the one truth that the regeneration of the
+world is to come through love,--what hope could one not see for the
+future! God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, and
+henceforth there is no more offering for sin. It only remains for us
+to enter into the holiest by this new and living way which he hath
+consecrated for us. The offering of Divine love is complete. Let human
+love come in to do its part, and the human soul shall be sanctified
+from its birth. When clamor and wrath and evil-speaking and
+evil-feeling are banished from the household hearth, murder and
+plunder and lust will fly from the public ways. When the child is the
+child of mutual love and trust and reverence and wisdom, he will never
+belie his parentage.
+
+We give to the dead their honors,--meet homage for the dust that
+shrined a soul. All passion is hushed, all pettiness vanishes in the
+presence of the dread mystery. But there is a mystery more dread, a
+mystery to which death is but as the sunshine for clearness,--the only
+sunshine which lights up its hidden labyrinths. It is the inexplicable
+secret of life. Fear not before the power which kills the body, but is
+not able to kill the soul. Stand in awe before that Power which can
+evoke both soul and body from nothingness into everlasting life. Death
+does but mark the accomplishment of one stage in a journey, with whose
+inception we had nothing to do. It is but a necessary change of
+carriage at some relay-house,--an involuntary and inevitable event in
+which we are but interested spectators or passive participants. But
+whether the Spirit shall set out on its journey at all, and what shall
+be the manner of its going, what its sustenance by the way, and what
+the light upon its path,--these are matters for concern; for these
+involve the weightiest responsibilities which man can bear. To fashion
+an infinite soul and send it forth upon an infinite career,--infinite
+susceptibilities laid open to the touch of infinite sorrow,--oh! to
+him who has ever faced the facts of being,--not death, not death, but
+this irrevocable gift of life, is the one solemnity, the awful
+sacrament!
+
+You will say that you believe all this now, but you do not believe it.
+You agree to it in a certain sentimental Pickwickian sense, but you do
+not hold it as a living truth. You will assent to all that is said of
+the importance of the family, and then go straightway and give your
+chief time, thought, ingenuity, to your farms and your merchandise.
+What men really believe in is making money, not making true men and
+women. They believe that the greatness of a nation consists in its much
+land and gold and machinery and ability to browbeat another nation,
+not in the incorruptibility of its citizens. Wealth and fame, purple
+and fine linen and sumptuous fare, brute force of intellect, position,
+and power, one or another or all forms of self-indulgence,--these, not
+purity, love, content, aspiration, and hearty good-will, they take to
+constitute blessedness. What a man gives his life to, what he will
+attend to with his own eyes and mind, and will not trust to any other
+person, that he believes in. Any amount of fulsome adulation may be
+poured out upon the womanly in nature, but one particle of true
+reverence, one single award of rightful freedom, is worth it all.
+Surely, if you could but see how the land is as the garden of Eden
+before you, and around you a desolate wilderness, you would suffer
+yourselves to be charmed into its ways of pleasantness and its paths
+of peace. You do not know the beautiful capacities which this earth,
+this very sin-stained, death-struck earth, bears in its redeemed
+bosom. Where sin abounds to sorrow, grace may much more abound to
+peace. Through the wonder of the Divine redemption there is possible
+for us a new heaven and a new earth, wherein righteousness shall
+dwell, and always and everywhere righteousness and peace kiss each
+other. You sing the praises of woman, but you do not begin to dream of
+the loveliness, the blessedness, the beneficence of which she is
+capable. You extol her in song and story, but with your life you will
+not suffer women to be womanly. You are so evil, and you decree so
+much evil, that, alas! a woman wakes to conscious life, and is not
+free to follow the bent of her nature; she must expend all her
+energies in clearing a breathing-space. O, you do a fearful wrong in
+this, and you endure a fearful wrong. For do you think the work is for
+woman alone? Do you think there is any such thing as a "woman
+question" that is not also a man question? Do you not know, that
+
+    "Laws of changeless justice bind
+      Oppressor with oppressed,
+    And, close as sin and suffering joined,
+      We march to fate abreast"?
+
+The first shock of penalty for transgression falls upon woman, but
+sure and swift as the lightning it passes on to man. Every measure
+that keeps woman down keeps man down. Every jot taken from woman's joy
+is so much taken from man. All his wrong-thinking and wrong-doing that
+bears so heavily upon her bears down upon himself with equal weight.
+Action and reaction are not only inevitable, but constant. Every small
+or great improvement in woman's condition elevates society, and
+society is only men and women. If men persist in alternate or in
+combined scorn and flattery, and will not do justly, the sorrow as
+well as the shame is theirs, and both are instantaneous.
+
+We are told of the Persian bird Juftak, which has only one wing. On
+the wingless side the male has a hook and the female a ring, and when
+fastened together, and only when fastened together, can they fly. The
+human race is that Persian, bird, the Juftak. When man and woman
+unite, they may soar skyward, scorners of the ground, but so long as
+man refuses God's help proffered in woman, he and she must alike grub
+on the earth. If he will have her minister only to the wants of his
+lower nature, his higher nature as well as hers shall be forever
+pinioned.
+
+You may possibly suspect that I have sometimes insinuated a greater
+moral obliquity on the part of man than on that of woman; and, indeed,
+I believe you are right. But the greater obliquity which I attribute
+to him is the result of his training, not an attribute of his nature.
+I once held the contrary opinion, but it is not tenable. Man is made
+in the image of God, and one part of God cannot be better than
+another. If men were not capable of being nobler than their ordinary
+life exhibits them, I should think this war an especial providence of
+God in other respects than are usually mentioned. But look at the
+developments which this very war has made. Is fortitude in pain, as
+many have asserted, a womanly attribute? But what fortitude under pain
+has been shown by our soldiers on the battle-field and in hospital!
+Torn with ghastly wounds, tortured with thirst, weak from loss of
+blood and lack of food, untended and unconsoled; or wasting away in
+the crowded hospital week after week and month after month, longing
+for home while dying for country; or scarred, maimed, and disabled for
+life; yet uttering no word of complaint, breathing no murmur of
+impatience, making a sport of pain, grateful for every word and touch
+and look and thought of tenderness, when a nation's tenderness is
+their just due, and glad all through that they have been able to fight
+for the beloved land,--is fortitude indeed only a womanly virtue? Or
+is it that gentleness and self-sacrifice are pure womanly, as is so
+often maintained? Look through the same battle-fields and hospitals;
+see men waiting upon men with the indescribable gentleness of
+compassion and pure sympathy; see them risking life to save a wounded
+comrade; see them passing day and night from cot to cot, to bathe the
+fevered brow, to moisten the parched lip, to soothe the restless mind,
+to receive the last message of love, and speed the parting soul. See
+the wounded man bidding the surgeon pass him by to heal the sorer
+hurts of his neighbor, or putting the canteen from his own lips to the
+paler lips beside him, till you shall take every soldier to be a
+Sidney. Rough men they may be or polished, rudely or delicately
+nurtured, trained to every accomplishment or only born into the world,
+but everywhere you shall look on such high heroic gentleness and
+thoughtfulness and patience and self-abnegation as make the courage of
+onset seem in comparison but a low, brute virtue. O blood-red blossoms
+of war, with your heart of fire, deeper than glow and crimson you
+unfold the white lilies of Christ!
+
+Who shall show us any good that cannot be predicated of the nature
+which, stunted and twisted from the beginning, can yet bring forth
+such heavenly fruit? If God can work in man so to will and to do, is
+it for woman to stand aside and say, "I am holier than thou"?
+
+But though the exigencies of war make more obvious the fine
+possibilities of men, it does not need a continent in deadly strife to
+indicate their existence. There are sacred hours in every life when
+that which is of the earth is held in abeyance and celestial
+influences reign. No man, perhaps, has ever lived who has not had his
+better moments,--moments when the spirit of God moved upon the turbid
+waters of his soul and brought light out of darkness and beauty from
+chaos: silent moments it may be, and solitary, or hallowed with a
+companionship dearer even than solitude; moments when helplessness,
+loveliness, innocence, or suffering thrilled him to the depths with
+pity and tenderness, with indignation or with adoration. Have you
+never seen the sweetest ties existing between father and daughter, or
+brother and younger sister, when the wife has been removed by death,
+or, through some fatal fault, is no mother to her child? What love,
+what devotion, what watchful care, what sympathy, what strength of
+attachment! The little unmothered daughter calls out all the
+motherhood in the great, brawny man, and they walk hand in hand, blest
+with a great content. "'Tis the old sweet mythos,"--the infant
+nourished at the father's breast.
+
+Every-day occurrences reveal in men traits of disinterestedness,
+consideration, all Christian virtues and graces. My heart misgives me
+when I think of it all,--their loving-kindness, their forbearance,
+their unstinted service, their integrity; and of the not sufficiently
+unfrequent instances in which women, by fretfulness, folly, or
+selfishness, irritate and alienate the noble heart which they ought to
+prize above rubies. I have not hitherto made a single irrelevant
+remark, and I will therefore indulge in the luxury of one now. It is
+this: Considering how few good husbands there are in the world, and
+how many good women there are who would have been to them a crown of
+glory and a royal diadem, had the coronation but been effected, but
+who, instead, are losing all their pure gems down the dark, unfathomed
+caves of some bad man's heart,--considering this, I account that woman
+to whom has been allotted a good husband, and who can do no better
+than spoil him and his happiness by her own misbehavior, guilty, if
+not of the unpardonable sin, at least of the unpardonable stupidity.
+If it were relevant, I could easily make out a long list of charges
+against women, and of excellences to be set down to the credit of men.
+But women have been stoned to death, or at least to coma, with charges
+already; and when you would extricate a wagon from a slough, you put
+your shoulder first and heaviest to the wheel that is deepest in the
+mud,--especially if the other wheel would hardly be in at all, unless
+this one had pulled it in! I can understand and have great
+consideration towards those men who, gentle, faithful, and true
+themselves, possibly disheartened by long companionship with a
+capricious, tyrannical woman, should fail to acquiesce with any
+heartiness in the truth of the views which I have advanced. Their
+experience is of long-suffering men and long-afflicting women, and
+they can hardly be expected to entertain with enthusiasm a statement
+which has perhaps no bearing upon their position. Still, when facts
+meet facts, the argument is always on the side of the heaviest
+battalions. It is the rule that generalizes, exceptions only modify.
+
+There is another circumstance which makes strongly against any
+assertion of man's necessary moral inferiority to woman. The manly
+ideal is often one to which no woman takes exception. In poetry and
+romance, men, as well as women, paint heroes; and I hold that no one
+can project from his imagination a better character than he is himself
+capable of attaining. He can be all that he can portray. The stream
+through his pen can rise no higher than the fountain in his heart, and
+out of the heart are the issues of life which he may keep as pure and
+clear as poesy. It was no woman's hand which limned the grand, sad
+face of that "good king," who
+
+      "Was first of all the kings who drew
+    The knighthood-errant of this realm and all
+    The realms together under me, their Head,
+    In that fair order of my Table Round,
+    A glorious company, the flower of men,
+    To serve as model for the mighty world,
+    And be the fair beginning of a time.
+    I made them lay their hands in mine and swear
+    To reverence the King, as if he were
+    Their conscience, and their conscience as their King,
+    To break the heathen and uphold the Christ,
+    To ride abroad redressing human wrongs,
+    To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it,
+    To lead sweet lives in purest chastity,
+    To love one maiden only, cleave to her,
+    And worship her by years of noble deeds,
+    Until they won her; for indeed I knew
+    Of no more subtle master under heaven
+    Than is the maiden passion for a maid,
+    Not only to keep down the base in man,
+    But teach high thought, and amiable words
+    And courtliness, and the desire of fame,
+    And love of truth, and all that makes a man."
+
+Another fact must also be allowed. Individual men are often better
+than their principles. Men who will, in cold blood, avow sentiments
+really atrocious, will, in the presence of a commanding female
+influence, straighten up to its requirements and carry themselves
+tolerably well; but with their lips they will all the while deny the
+power which their lives obey. Many a man who rails at strong-minded
+women, female education, and petticoat government, who professes to
+believe only in stocking-mending, love, and cookery, will be utterly,
+though unconsciously, plastic to the hand of a truly strong-minded,
+educated, and controlling woman. He does not know it; power in its
+highest action works ever imperceptibly. Nevertheless, it is there,
+and he follows it. His wrong opinions help to strengthen the citadel
+of evil, but himself is less bad than he seems. This ought to be
+remembered when inquisition is made.
+
+It would be easy to multiply evidence, but it is not necessary. Enough
+has been produced to show that men have evinced the highest not only
+of those qualities which belong to their own sex, but those which are
+usually considered the prerogative of the other. And what men have
+done man may do. Life can be as lovely as its best moods. _In vino
+veritas_, said Roman philosophy, and builded better than it knew. In
+the wine of love is the truth of life. As pure, as thoughtful, as
+disinterested, as helpful, as manly as is the lover can the husband
+be. What the poet sings, that the man should live. A race that has
+attained a temporary exaltation can attain a permanent exaltation. If
+one man has bent to the stern decree of duty, knowing
+
+      "All
+    Life needs for life is possible to will,"
+
+all men can compass self-control. I am filled with indignation when I
+see the low standard accepted for man's due measurement. Well may he
+exclaim, in sad, despairing reproach,--
+
+      "Men have burnt my house,
+    Maligned my motives,--but not one, I swear,
+    Has wronged my soul as this Aurora has,"
+
+or this Romney or Sir Blaise, who forbids me access to the holy place,
+denies me power to lead a saintly life. Why, it is because men can be
+good that we reproach them. It is because we do see in them hints of
+dormant excellences that we consider it worth while to keep them in a
+state of agitation. If they must be as bad as their badnesses, there
+is only one verdict: He is joined to idols; let him alone. But,
+beloved, I am persuaded better things of you, and things that
+accompany salvation, though I thus speak. What has been is of no fatal
+import. What has been only shows the track of error; now we may follow
+the footsteps of truth. The old world is a world masculinized; a world
+of rugged, brawny, male muscularity, but slightly and partially
+softened by feminine touch. Man was satisfied that woman in the
+beginning should be taken out of him, and he has ever since been
+trying to grope his way alone,--with what success ages of blunder and
+blood bear terrible witness. Now, seeing that his _defeminization_ has
+failed, let him compass the spiritual restoration of her who was
+physically separated from him, that the twain may become one perfect
+being, and reassume supreme dominion. The power lies ready to his
+hand. Eve was never wholly torn away. Deep within every heart lies the
+slumbering Princess still. A hundred years and many another hundred
+have gone by, and round her palace-wall, round her star-broidered
+coverlet, her gold-fringed pillow, and her jet-black hair, the hedge
+has woven its ivies and woodbine, thorns and mistletoes. Burr and
+brake and brier, close-matted, seem to refuse approach, and even to
+deny existence, but ever and anon above their surly barricade gleams
+in some evening sun the topmost palace spires, and we know that the
+fated Fairy Prince shall come, and, guided by the magic music in his
+heart, shall find that quiet chamber; reverently, on bended knee,
+shall touch the tranced lips, and--lo! thought and time are born
+again, and it is a new world which was the old.
+
+Men, notwithstanding their high privilege, remain in their low
+estate,--partly because they are not enlightened out of it. They do
+evil, not knowing what they do. Like all despots, they have dealt more
+in adulation than in truth. They have heard from women the voice of
+flattery, the cry of entreaty, the wail of helpless pain, the impotent
+watchword of insurrection; but they have had small opportunity to
+benefit by the careful analysis of character, the accurate delineation
+and just rebuke of faults, and the calm, judicious, affectionate
+counsel which comes from a wise and faithful friend--like me! Women
+may stand before them, sweet, trusting creatures, "just as high as
+their hearts," to be schooled into devotion and amiable submission.
+They may float demi-goddesses in some incomprehensible ether above the
+clouds, and receive incense and adoration. But for the ministering
+angel to turn into an accusing angel, for the lectured to rise and lay
+down the law to lecturers, is a thing which was never dreamt of in
+Horatio's philosophy.
+
+                    "A man
+    May call a white-browed girl Dian,
+    But likes not to be turned upon
+    And nicknamed young Endymion."
+
+Nor, indeed, is it any more grateful to Dian than to Endymion. To
+confront man on his throne with the stern, dispassionate charge, "Thou
+art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art, that judgest; for wherein
+thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; and thinkest thou this,
+O man, that thou shalt escape the judgment of God?" seems to woman so
+formidable a thing, that very few have had the courage to attempt it.
+Many are so overborne with toil, disappointment, and faintness, that
+they have no heart for it. It is easier to suffer than to attempt
+remedy. They feel, in the lowest depths of their consciousness,
+
+    "What all their weeping will not let them say,
+    And yet what women cannot say at all
+    But weeping bitterly."
+
+But they remain silent, and the case goes by default. There is,
+besides, a dread of personal consequences. Popular judgment is very
+much given to attributing general statements to private experience. If
+a woman is married, her adverse opinions are likely to be charged with
+implying conjugal discontent. If she is not married, they spring from
+failure and envy, and, shrinking from such opprobrium, the few women
+who see talk the matter over among themselves, and that is the end of
+it. There is also a natural reluctance to suggest that which men
+should do or be spontaneously, and there is a deeper reluctance,
+instinctive, indefinite, inexplicable.
+
+The result is, that men go on in sin, seemingly unconscious that it is
+sin. They have been pursuing one course all their life, meeting
+obstacles, enduring fatigue, losing patience, but incapable of
+perceiving that they are in the wrong path until the fact is pointed
+out to them. They do not even understand the nomenclature of the
+science of right living. Speak of cherishing a departed friend, and
+they will descant on the absurdity of going about moaning and weeping
+all your days. They attach no meaning to life-long tenderness but
+life-long namby-pambyism, something excusable in youth and "courting,"
+but savoring strongly of weakness of character after the honeymoon has
+waned. Put before them the general allegation of selfishness,
+indifference, cruelty, and they will deny it with vehemence. Of
+course. Without such denial they could have no excuse. Moral ignorance
+alone saves them from utter condemnation. If they sinned
+wittingly,--if they said, "Yes, I am cold and hard and hateful to my
+wife, neglectful of my children, I give grudgingly money barely
+sufficient for the necessities of life, or I provide for my wife every
+luxury, but have no sympathy or companionship for her,"--if men said
+or could say this, even to themselves, they would be--not men, but
+demons. They are not demons, but men, capable of generosity, devotion,
+and self-sacrifice. If they knew that they were cruel, outrageous,
+intolerable in their most intimate relations, they would at once cease
+to be so, and begin to become everything that could be desired. More
+than this, I have so great faith in the noble possibilities of men, I
+believe they have so strong an inward bias towards holiness, that they
+will welcome the friendly hand which sets their iniquities before
+them. They will hear the sad story with amazement, and say one to
+another: "Who can understand his errors? A brutish man knoweth not;
+neither doth a fool understand this. We have sinned with our fathers,
+we have committed iniquity, we have done wickedly. So foolish was I
+and ignorant; I was as a beast. But now I will behave myself wisely in
+a perfect way. I will walk within my house with a perfect heart." And,
+when men shall have grown good, there will be no further complaint of
+women. To Lavater's list of impossible good women, Blake, the "mad
+painter," appends, "Let the men do their duty, and the women will be
+such wonders: the female life lives from the life of the male." There
+are exceptions, but in the mass women are not independent of received
+opinions, nor strong enough to front prejudice and mould society, or
+where they cannot mould it, to guide their own lives in its very
+spite. Therefore opinion needs to be right, prejudice removed, and
+society renovated; and men must do it. Women are generally said to
+make society. It is not so. Men make women, and men and women together
+make society. Men are the rocky stratum, women the soil which covers
+it. Men determine the outline, the level, the general character; women
+give the curves, the bloom, the grace. Rear your hills and lay your
+valleys, and the land shall speedily flow with milk and honey; but if
+you will upheave mountains and spread deserts, you may expect scant
+herbage on the one and but scattered oases on the other.
+
+I cannot, of course, pronounce that it is absolutely impossible for
+woman to attain a truer life without man's co-operation. The Most High
+ruleth in the kingdom of men and giveth it to whomsoever he will. What
+revolution may await us in the future no one knows. Fired by what
+impulse woman may throw off the stupor which has enthralled her so
+long, array herself in her beautiful garments and mount upward to the
+heavenly heights, whose air alone her spirit pants to breathe, whose
+paths alone her feet are framed to tread, I do not know. Yet blessed
+as is that day, come when and how it will, I would it were ushered in
+by a peaceful dawn. Better that woman should take her place alone,
+moved by an ineffable disdain, than that she should remain forever in
+her low estate. Better still that man and woman should go together, he
+bringing his sturdy strength to shorten, she lending her manifold
+grace to lighten, the path that leads up thither; and both, following
+the still, small voice of love, shall find no roughness, shall feel no
+grief, shall fear no evil, but shall walk softly till the end come,
+and shall rest in the peace of the beloved.
+
+
+
+
+L'ENVOI.
+
+
+O sweet my friend, hastening with happy steps to your marriage-morn, O
+my poet, singing under your hawthorn-tree the song that never can grow
+old, am I then a bird of evil omen? Does it thunder towards the left
+as I pass by? Be not so credulous. I take no lustre from the
+golden-bright day that lies half-hidden under the mild haze of
+September: but I would that fair day's light should shine as the
+brightness of the firmament for ever and ever. I breathe no blight
+upon the hawthorn, no discord to the song; but I would the bloom of
+the one and the melody of the other might never die away. Dream, O
+maiden! your pleasant dreams; sing, O poet! your happy songs; but
+while the flush of the sunrise is yet ruddy on your brows, think it
+not strange that I leave your sweet light and go down to them who are
+sitting in the region and shadow of death.
+
+Have _I_ written this book? It is but the voice of a thousand aching
+hearts. Ten thousand dreary lives are wrought into its pages. It is
+the sorrow of just such hearts as yours, the disappointment of just
+such hopes, that have found a record here. The gloom that gathers on
+these leaves is gloom that hangs over paths just as fair as yours in
+their glad beginning. I feast my eyes on the beautiful temple of your
+promise, and I pray that you may go no more out of it forever; but I
+cannot forget that all my life I have seen highway and byway strewn
+with the fragments of temples which in their majesty of completeness
+must have been just as marvellous as yours. And being fully persuaded
+in my own mind that there is a way whereby the wondrous edifice may be
+made as enduring as it is brilliant, shall I not proclaim it
+throughout all the land, unto all the inhabitants thereof, that the
+trumpet of the jubilee may sound? You shall not make the darkness your
+pavilion, because the world is hung with gloom; but neither shall you
+reckon it offence, if I cannot wholly rejoice in your light for
+thinking of the great multitudes who are sitting in a darkness which
+may be felt. To-day is lost, but it is not too late for the morrow.
+Wasted life can never be restored;--
+
+    "Though every summer green the plain,
+    This harvest cannot bloom again."
+
+Only beyond the grave can a new life spring into beauty, and the death
+of this be swallowed up in victory. But for the lives that have not
+yet been lavished, for the "poor little maidens" of great-hearted Dr.
+Luther, for gentle Magdalenchen, fiery young Lenore, merry Beatrice,
+skipping along their separate paths, each to her unknown womanhood, or
+walking already through its shadowy ways,--how earnestly for them do
+we covet the best gift! But if they fail of this, shall not one show
+them how to live worthily without it? Shall not one bid them see how
+poor and false and mean is everything which offers itself instead; how
+sad were the exchange of an ideal good for a base reality; how fatal
+the disaster when the sacred torch pales before a grosser flame? So
+through these summer days, my little maid, when all sweet summer
+sounds but echo to you the music of one low voice, add to the happy
+thought within your heart this happiest thought of all: There shall
+come a day when the same sky that bends in blessing above your head
+shall bend,--no cloud to darken, but only to adorn, no fogs to hide,
+but only mist-wreaths to deck its blue,--soft, serene, and beautiful,
+above an earth purified by the same love which makes to you all things
+pure. Through that new atmosphere, my poet, the tuneful voices of your
+song shall go, wakening all the woods to melody, summoning shy
+response from the ever-charmed hills, ringing out over the listening
+waters, giving and gathering sweetness wherever a human heart throbs;
+till earth, all a-quiver with the harmony, shall lift from the dust
+her long-neglected lyre, sweep once more to her place among the stars,
+and raise again her happy voice in the unforgotten music of the
+spheres.
+
+
+
+
+Cambridge: Stereotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A New Atmosphere, by Gail Hamilton
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