Woman in the Nineteenth Century Part 10

They satisfy for the present, yet arouse an infinite expectation.

The economist Theresa, the benevolent Natalia, the fair Saint, have chosen a path, but their thoughts are not narrowed to it. The functions of life to them are not ends, but suggestions.

Thus, to them, all things are important, because none is necessary.

Their different characters have fair play, and each is beautiful in its minute indications, for nothing is enforced or conventional; but everything, however slight, grows from the essential life of the being.

Mignon and Theresa wear male attire when they like, and it is graceful for them to do so, while Macaria is confined to her arm-chair behind the green curtain, and the Fair Saint could not bear a speck of dust on her robe.

All things are in their places in this little world, because all is natural and free, just as "there is room for everything out of doors."

Yet all is rounded in by natural harmony, which will always arise where Truth and Love are sought in the light of Freedom.

Goethe's book bodes an era of freedom like its own of "extraordinary, generous seeking," and new revelations. New individualities shall be developed in the actual world, which shall advance upon it as gently as the figures come out upon his canvas.

I have indicated on this point the coincidence between his hopes and those of Fourier, though his are directed by an infinitely higher and deeper knowledge of human nature. But, for our present purpose, it is sufficient to show how surely these different paths have conducted to the same end two earnest thinkers. In some other place I wish to point out similar coincidences between Goethe's model school and the plans of Fourier, which may cast light upon the page of prophecy.

Many women have observed that the time drew nigh for a better care of the s.e.x, and have thrown out hints that may be useful. Among these may be mentioned--

Miss Edgeworth, who, although restrained by the habits of her age and country, and belonging more to the eighteenth than the nineteenth century, has done excellently as far as she goes. She had a horror of sentimentalism, and of the love of notoriety, and saw how likely women, in the early stages of culture, were to aim at these. Therefore she bent her efforts to recommending domestic life. But the methods she recommends are such as will fit a character for any position to which it may be called. She taught a contempt of falsehood, no less in its most graceful, than in its meanest apparitions; the cultivation of a clear, independent judgment, and adherence to its dictates; habits of various and liberal study and employment, and a capacity for friendship. Her standard of character is the same for both s.e.xes,--Truth, honor, enlightened benevolence, and aspiration after knowledge.

Of poetry, she knows nothing, and her religion consists in honor and loyalty to obligations once a.s.sumed--in short, in "the great idea of duty which holds us upright." Her whole tendency is practical.

Mrs. Jameson is a sentimentalist, and, therefore, suits us ill in some respects, but she is full of talent, has a just and refined perception of the beautiful, and a genuine courage when she finds it necessary.

She does not appear to have thought out, thoroughly, the subject on which we are engaged, and her opinions, expressed as opinions, are sometimes inconsistent with one another. But from the refined perception of character, admirable suggestions are given in her "Women of Shakspeare," and "Loves of the Poets."

But that for which I most respect her is the decision with which she speaks on a subject which refined women are usually afraid to approach, for fear of the insult and scurrile jest they may encounter; but on which she neither can nor will restrain the indignation of a full heart. I refer to the degradation of a large portion of women into the sold and polluted slaves of men, and the daring with which the legislator and man of the world lifts his head beneath the heavens, and says, "This must be; it cannot be helped; it is a necessary accompaniment of _civilization_."

So speaks the _citizen_. Man born of Woman, the father of daughters, declares that he will and must buy the comforts and commercial advantages of his London, Vienna, Paris, New York, by conniving at the moral death, the d.a.m.nation, so far as the action of society can insure it, of thousands of women for each splendid metropolis.

O men! I speak not to you. It is true that your wickedness (for you must not deny that at least nine thousand out of the ten fall through the vanity you have systematically flattered, or the promises you have treacherously broken); yes, it is true that your wickedness is its own punishment. Your forms degraded and your eyes clouded by secret sin; natural harmony broken and fineness of perception destroyed in your mental and bodily organization; G.o.d and love shut out from your hearts by the foul visitants you have permitted there; incapable of pure marriage; incapable of pure parentage; incapable of worship; O wretched men, your sin is its own punishment! You have lost the world in losing yourselves. Who ruins another has admitted the worm to the root of his own tree, and the fuller ye fill the cup of evil, the deeper must be your own bitter draught. But I speak not to you--you need to teach and warn one another. And more than one voice rises in earnestness. And all that _women_ say to the heart that has once chosen the evil path is considered prudery, or ignorance, or perhaps a feebleness of nature which exempts from similar temptations.

But to you, women, American women, a few words may not be addressed in vain. One here and there may listen.

You know how it was in the Oriental clime, One man, if wealth permitted, had several wives and many handmaidens. The chast.i.ty and equality of genuine marriage, with "the thousand decencies that flow"

from its communion, the precious virtues that gradually may be matured within its enclosure, were unknown.

But this man did not wrong according to his light. What he did, he might publish to G.o.d and Man; it was not a wicked secret that hid in vile lurking-places and dens, like the banquets of beasts of prey.

Those women were not lost, not polluted in their own eyes, nor those of others. If they were not in a state of knowledge and virtue, they were at least in one of comparative innocence.

You know how it was with the natives of this continent. A chief had many wives, whom he maintained and who did his household work; those women were but servants, still they enjoyed the respect of others and their own. They lived together, in peace. They knew that a sin against what was in their nation esteemed virtue, would be as strictly punished in Man as in Woman.

Now pa.s.s to the countries where marriage is between one and one. I will not speak of the Pagan nations, but come to those which own the Christian rule. We all know what that enjoins; there is a standard to appeal to.

See, now, not the ma.s.s of the people, for we all know that it is a proverb and a bitter jest to speak of the "down-trodden million." We know that, down to our own time, a principle never had so fair a chance to pervade the ma.s.s of the people, but that we must solicit its ill.u.s.tration from select examples.

Take the Paladin, take the Poet. Did _they_ believe purity more impossible to Man than to Woman? Did they wish Woman to believe that Man was less amenable to higher motives,--that pure aspirations would not guard him against bad pa.s.sions,--that honorable employments and temperate habits would not keep him free from slavery to the body? O no! Love was to them a part of heaven, and they could not even wish to receive its happiness, unless a.s.sured of being worthy of it. Its highest happiness to them was that it made them wish to be worthy.

They courted probation. They wished not the t.i.tle of knight till the banner had been upheld in the heats of battle, amid the rout of cowards.

I ask of you, young girls--I do not mean _you_ whose heart is that of an old c.o.xcomb, though your looks have not yet lost their sunny tinge. Not of you whose whole character is tainted with vanity, inherited or taught, who have early learned the love of coquettish excitement, and whose eyes rove restlessly in search of a "conquest"

or a "beau;" you who are ashamed _not_ to be seen by others the mark of the most contemptuous flattery or injurious desire. To such I do not speak. But to thee, maiden, who, if not so fair, art yet of that unpolluted nature which Milton saw when he dreamed of Comus and the Paradise. Thou, child of an unprofaned wedlock, brought up amid the teachings of the woods and fields, kept fancy-free by useful employment and a free flight into the heaven of thought, loving to please only those whom thou wouldst not be ashamed to love; I ask of thee, whose cheek has not forgotten its blush nor thy heart its lark-like hopes, if he whom thou mayest hope the Father will send thee, as the companion of life's toils and joys, is not to thy thought pure? Is not manliness to thy thought purity, not lawlessness? Can his lips speak falsely? Can he do, in secret, what he could not avow to the mother that bore him? O say, dost thou not look for a heart free, open as thine own, all whose thoughts may be avowed, incapable of wronging the innocent, or still further degrading the fallen--a man, in short, in whom brute nature is entirely subject to the impulses of his better self?

Yes! it was thus that thou didst hope; for I have many, many times seen the image of a future life, of a destined spouse, painted on the tablets of a virgin heart.

It might be that she was not true to these hopes. She was taken into what is called "the world," froth and sc.u.m as it mostly is on the social caldron. There, she saw fair Woman carried in the waltz close to the heart of a being who appeared to her a Satyr. Being warned by a male friend that he was in fact of that cla.s.s, and not fit for such familiar nearness to a chaste being, the advised replied that "women should know nothing about such things." She saw one fairer given in wedlock to a man of the same cla.s.s. "Papa and mamma said that 'all men were faulty at some time in their lives; they had a great many temptations.' Frederick would be so happy at home; he would not want to do wrong." She turned to the married women; they, O tenfold horror!

laughed at her supposing "men were like women." Sometimes, I say, she was not true, and either sadly accommodated herself to "Woman's lot,"

or acquired a taste for satyr-society, like some of the Nymphs, and all the Baccha.n.a.ls of old. But to those who could not and would not accept a mess of pottage, or a Circe cup, in lieu of their birthright, and to these others who have yet their choice to make, I say, Courage!

I have some words of cheer for you. A man, himself of unbroken purity, reported to me the words of a foreign artist, that "the world would never be better till men subjected themselves to the same laws they had imposed on women;" that artist, he added, was true to the thought.

The same was true of Canova, the same of Beethoven. "Like each other demi-G.o.d, they kept themselves free from stain;" and Michael Angelo, looking over here from the loneliness of his century, might meet some eyes that need not shun his glance.

In private life, I am a.s.sured by men who are not so sustained and occupied by the worship of pure beauty, that a similar consecration is possible, is practised; that many men feel that no temptation can be too strong for the will of man, if he invokes the aid of the Spirit instead of seeking extenuation from the brute alliances of his nature.

In short, what the child fancies is really true, though almost the whole world declares it a lie. Man is a child of G.o.d; and if he seeks His guidance to keep the heart with diligence, it will be so given that all the issues of life may be pure. Life will then be a temple.

The temple round Spread green the pleasant ground; The fair colonnade Be of pure marble pillars made; Strong to sustain the roof, Time and tempest proof; Yet, amidst which, the lightest breeze Can play as it please; The audience hall Be free to all Who revere The power worshipped here, Sole guide of youth, Unswerving Truth.

In the inmost shrine Stands the image divine, Only seen By those whose deeds have worthy been-- Priestlike clean.

Those, who initiated are, Declare, As the hours Usher in varying hopes and powers; It changes its face, It changes its age, Now a young, beaming grace, Now Nestorian sage; But, to the pure in heart, This shape of primal art In age is fair, In youth seems wise, Beyond compare, Above surprise; What it teaches native seems, Its new lore our ancient dreams; Incense rises from the ground; Music flows around; Firm rest the feet below, clear gaze the eyes above, When Truth, to point the way through life, a.s.sumes the wand of Love; But, if she cast aside the robe of green, Winter's silver sheen, White, pure as light, Makes gentle shroud as worthy weed as bridal robe had been.

[Footnote: As described by the historians:-- "The temple of Juno is like what the character of Woman should be.

Columns! graceful decorums, attractive yet sheltering.

Porch! n.o.ble, inviting aspect of the life.

Kaos! receives the worshippers. See here the statue of the Divinity.

Ophistodpmos! Sanctuary where the most precious possessions were kept safe from the hand of the spoiler and the eye of the world."]

We are now in a transition state, and but few steps have yet been taken. From polygamy, Europe pa.s.sed to the marriage _de convenance_.

This was scarcely an improvement An attempt was then made to subst.i.tute genuine marriage (the mutual choice of souls inducing a permanent union), as yet baffled on every side by the haste, the ignorance, or the impurity of Man.

Where Man a.s.sumes a high principle to which he is not yet ripened, it will happen, for a long time, that the few will be n.o.bler than before; the many, worse. Thus now. In the country of Sidney and Milton, the metropolis is a den of wickedness, and a sty of sensuality; in the country of Lady Russell, the custom of English peeresses, of selling their daughters to the highest bidder, is made the theme and jest of fashionable novels by unthinking children who would stare at the idea of sending them to a Turkish slave-dealer, though the circ.u.mstances of the bargain are there less degrading, as the will and thoughts of the person sold are not so degraded by it, and it is not done in defiance of an acknowledged law of right in the land and the age.

I must here add that I do not believe there ever was put upon record more depravation of Man, and more despicable frivolity of thought and aim in Woman; than in the novels which purport to give the picture of English fashionable life, which are read with such favor in our drawing-rooms, and give the tone to the manners of some circles.

Compared with the cold, hard-hearted folly there described, crime is hopeful; for it, at least, shows some power remaining in the mental const.i.tution.

To return:--Attention has been awakened among men to the stains of celibacy, and the profanations of marriage. They begin to write about it and lecture about it. It is the tendency now to endeavor to help the erring by showing them the physical law. This is wise and excellent; but forget not the better half. Cold bathing and exercise will not suffice to keep a life pure, without an inward baptism, and n.o.ble, exhilarating employment for the thoughts and the pa.s.sions.

Early marriages are desirable, but if (and the world is now so out of joint that there are a hundred thousand chances to one against it) a man does not early, or at all, find the person to whom he can be united in the marriage of souls, will you give him in the marriage _de convenance_? or, if not married, can you find no way for him to lead a virtuous and happy life? Think of it well, ye who think yourselves better than pagans, for many of _them_ knew this sure way. [Footnote: The Persian sacred books, the Desatir, describe the great and holy prince Ky Khosrou, as being "an angel, and the son of an angel," one to whom the Supreme says, "Thou art not absent from before me for one twinkling of an eye. I am never out of thy heart.

And I am contained in nothing but in thy heart, and in a heart like thy heart. And I am nearer unto thee than thou art to thyself." This prince had in his Golden Seraglio three ladies of surpa.s.sing beauty, and all four, in this royal monastery, pa.s.sed their lives, and left the world as virgins.

The Persian people had no scepticism when the history of such a mind was narrated.]

To you, women of America, it is more especially my business to address myself on this subject, and my advice may be cla.s.sed under three heads:

Clear your souls from the taint of vanity.

Do not rejoice in conquests, either that your power to allure may be seen by other women, or for the pleasure of rousing pa.s.sionate feelings that gratify your love of excitement.

It must happen, no doubt, that frank and generous women will excite love they do not reciprocate, but, in nine cases out of ten, the woman has, half consciously, done much to excite. In this case, she shall not be held guiltless, either as to the unhappiness or injury of the lover. Pure love, inspired by a worthy object, must enn.o.ble and bless, whether mutual or not; but that which is excited by coquettish attraction of any grade of refinement, must cause bitterness and doubt, as to the reality of human goodness, so soon as the flush of pa.s.sion is over. And, that you may avoid all taste for these false pleasures,

"Steep the soul In one pure love, and it will lost thee long."

The love of truth, the love of excellence, whether you clothe them in the person of a special object or not, will have power to save you from following Duessa, and lead you in the green glades where Una's feet have trod.