OF all the theories current concerning women, none is more curious than the theory that it is needful to make a theory about them. That a woman is a Domestic, a Social, or a Political creature; that she is a Goddess, or a Doll; the "Angel in the House," or a Drudge, with the suckling of fools and chronicling of small beer for her sole privileges; that she has, at all events, a "Mission," or a "Sphere," or a "Kingdom," of some sort or other, if we could be agree on what it is,--all this is taken for granted. But, as nobody ever yet sat down and constructed analogous hypotheses about the other half of the human race, we are driven to conclude, both that a woman is a more mysterious creature than a man, and also that it is the general impression that she is made of some more plastic material, which can be advantageously manipulated to fit our theory about her nature and office, whenever we have come to a conclusion as to what that nature and office may be. "Let us fix our own Ideal in the first place," seems to be the popular notion, "and then the real Woman in accordance thereto will appear in due course of time. We have nothing to do but to make round holes, and women will grow round to fill them; or square holes, and they will become square. Men grow like trees, and the most we can do is to lop or clip them. But women run in moulds, like candles, and we can make them long-threes or short-sixes, whichever we please."
Now, with some exaggeration, there must be admitted to be a good deal of truth in this view. The ideal of each successive age, as Mr. Lecky has so admirably shown, has an immense influence in forming the character of the people by whom it is adopted, and the virtues of Patriotism, Fortitude, Self-sacrifice, Courage, Charity, Chastity, and Humility, have all prevailed in greater or lesser degree, according as the recognised heroic or saintly type of the age was a Theseus or Regulus; a Cato or Aurelius; a St. Simeon or St. Bernard; a Charlemagne or St. Louis; a Howard or Fénélon. Though the typical forms of female merit have been less clear than these, yet in their case also Miriams and Deborahs, the mothers of Coriolanus and of the Gracchi, St. Monica and St. Elizabeth, have had doubtless no small share in moulding the characters of many thousands of Jewish, and Roman, and Christian matrons and maids. How much of the ordinary French-woman of to-day is the reflex of the shimmer left on the national mind by the glittering grandes dames of the Fronde, and of the age of Louis XIV. and Louis XV. (not to speak of other influences from the Dianes and La Vallières, the Pompadours and the Dubarrys), who shall say? Nay, again, how much of our domestic, religious, homely Englishwoman is the reproduction of seeds sown in the great Puritan age by Lady Hutchinson, Lady Fairfax, and Lady Rachel Russell? Even already the newer types are growing up which we may directly trace to Mrs. Fry and Florence Nightingale. To women, with their timidity and their social difficulties, such Exemplars are even of more importance than to men. They are both types with which, in their inner hearts, they sympathise and conform; and outward heralds and forerunners who clear the way for them through the jungle of prejudices, and leave palms in their pathway instead of thorns.
Nor is this all: There are instincts in us deeper than any conscious or unconscious imitation of a type. We do not take our place in the human family as adopted children, but as scions of the stock; inheriting, and not merely copying, what has distinguished the generations before us. The young foxhound which begins as soon as it can run to follow scent, the pointer puppy which stands at the sparrows it sees in the yard, obey no moral or intellectual impulse to imitate acts which they admire. They merely follow a dim inclination, the bent of their natures fixed through an ancestry, whose members have all followed foxes or pointed at birds. A beautiful instance of the instinct occurred recently in the case of a young St. Bernard dog, whose mistress guarantees the anecdote. The animal, which is of a very pure breed, was born in England last summer. When a few months old it seemed a stupid, heavy, good-natured brute, with very little of a puppy's pranks. One day, loitering about the cottage in Kent where it was out at walk, it spied a little baby seated alone in the middle of a road. Instantly the dog set off, took up the child gently by its' clothes round the waist, and carried it bodily across a neighbouring field, and some way off, up a steep grassy bank. Arrived on the top, he deposited his burden, safe as it would have been on a rock above the snows of St. Bernard; and when the terrified owner of the baby came up with the kidnapper, the poor beast was found assiduously licking the little hands and face of the child, doubtless to "restore its animation."
Now this kind of instinct is by no means to be supposed to be peculiar to the lower animals. The "set" of mind, as Professor Tyndall well calls it, whether, as he says, "impressed upon the molecules of the brain" or conveyed in any other way, is quite as much a human as an animal phenomenon. Perhaps the greater part of those qualities which we call the characteristics of race, are nothing else but the "set" of the minds of men transmitted from generation to generation; stronger and more marked when the deeds are repeated, weaker and fainter as they fall into disuse. Thus the ferocity of the Malay may be held to be the outcome of a thousand murders; the avarice of the Jew, that of as many acts of usury divided between a score of progenitors. Tyndall says, "No mother can wash or suckle her baby without having a 'set' towards washing and suckling impressed upon the molecules of her brain; and this set, according to the laws of hereditary transmission, is passed on to her daughter. Not only, therefore, does the woman at the present day suffer deflection from intellectual pursuits through her proper motherly instincts, but inherited proclivities act upon her mind, like a multiplying galvanometer, to augment indefinitely the force of the deflection. Tendency is immanent even in spinsters, to warp them from intellect to baby-love."1 Thus, if we could, by preaching our pet Ideal, or in any other way, induce one generation of women to turn to a new pursuit, we should have accomplished a step towards bending all future womanhood in the same direction. With men, in a civilized state, pursuits are so infinitely various, that the impetus which the son receives from his father is imperceptible. But women's lives are so monotonous, the possibilities of their divergence from the beaten track so soon exhausted, that the impression conveyed by a mother to her daughter is very often observable. The housewife has a house-wifely child; the woman abandoned to pleasure bequeaths to her daughter propensities so notoriously dangerous that no wise man risks his domestic happiness by marrying her.
In a certain modified sense, then, the "mould" theory has its justification. It would undoubtedly be beneficial to have some generally recognised types of female excellence. But, on the other hand, we must not fall into the absurdity of supposing that all women can be adapted to one single type, or that we can talk about "Woman" (always to be written with a capital W) as if the same characteristics were to be found in every individual species, like "the Lioness" and "the Pea-hen." They would have been very stiff corsets indeed which could have compressed Catharine of Russia into Hannah More, or George Sand into the authoress of the "Heir of Redclyffe;" or which would have turned out Mary Carpenter as a "Girl of the Period."
To analyse the minor types of feminine character consecutively would occupy larger space than the present Essay must monopolize. If we can here approximately determine the relative value of the larger genera under which the subordinate species may be classified, we shall have advanced as far as can be hoped. I purpose, therefore, in the following pages to discuss these generic types as shortly as may be. They are of two Orders.
The first Order of types or conceptions of female character are those which are based on the theory that the final cause of the existence of Woman is the service she can render to Man. They may be described as "The types of Woman, considered as an Adjective."
The second Order comprehends those conceptions which are based on the theory that Woman was created for some end proper to herself. They may be called "The types of Woman, considered as a Noun."
In the first Order we find Woman in her Physical, her Domestic, and her Social capacity: or Woman as Man's Wife and Mother; Woman as Man's House-wife; and Woman as Man's Companion, Plaything, or Idol.
In the second Order we find the two types of the woman who makes her own Happiness her end, and the woman who makes Virtue and Religion her end. The happiness-seeking theory we may call the Selfish, and the virtue-seeking the Divine theory of woman's life, since it alone recognises that God and not man is the end of existence to all His rational creatures, and that it is to His love that she, as well as man, must aspire as her eternal joy and reward.2
I shall commence by analysing the three leading types of the First Order.
The Physical theory of the purport of woman's life is common to all savages, and has been most bluntly enounced in modern Europe by the great Napoleon.
The Domestic theory is almost universally accepted by the civilized world, and is notably favoured by the English nation.
The Social theory is capable of vast variation, and commends itself to many earnest friends of women. Its most elaborate development, however, is to be found in the writings of Auguste Comte, and to these we shall give careful consideration.
The theory about woman which we have called the Physical, is simply this: That the whole meaning and reason of her existence is, that she may form a link in the chain of generations, and fulfil the functions of wife to one man and mother to another. Her moral nature is a sort of superfluity according to this view, and her intellectual powers a positive hindrance. How such things came to be given her is unexplained. Her affections alone are useful, but the simpler ones of the mother-beast and bird would probably be more convenient. In a word, everything which enables a woman to attract conjugal love, and to become the parent of a numerous and healthful progeny, must be reckoned as constituting her proper endowment. Everything which distracts her attention or turns her faculties in other directions than these, must be treated as mischievous, and as detracting from her merits. The woman who has given birth to a son has fulfilled her "mission." The celibate woman,--be she holy as St. Theresa, useful as Miss Nightingale, gifted as Miss Cornwallis,--has entirely missed it.
This doctrine, of course, belongs properly to ages of barbarism, when the material always took precedence of the spiritual; and the first ambition of patriarchs and prophets was to have sons who should "speak with their enemies in the gate." It exists now, as regards women, only among the coarse and carnal-minded of both sexes, and Napoleon's brutal statement of it is but an instance of the judicial blindness to all nobler truths which falls on souls of such colossal selfishness. But it would be well if the whole train of thought concerning women which properly links itself to this base theory were wholly exploded, and that in no system of French or English education for young girls could a trace of such a conception of female life and its objects be found.
We may happily dismiss this disagreeable subject with a short remark. It is a sort of impiety against human nature ever to speak or think of it in its merely material and brutal part, without reference to its higher attributes. To admit that Woman has affections, a moral nature, a religious sentiment, an immortal soul, and yet to treat her for a moment as a mere animal link in the chain of life, is monstrous; I had almost said, blasphemous. If her existence be of no value in itself, then no man's existence is of value; for a moral nature, a religious sentiment, and an immortal soul are the highest things a man can have, and the woman has them as well as he. If the links be valueless, then the chain is valueless too; and the history of Humanity is but a long procession of spectres for whose existence no reason can be assigned.
Let it be added, that the same persons who treat womanhood as if all its purpose were exhausted in the bringing of children into the world, are precisely those who fail most completely to understand the true sacredness and dignity of wifehood and motherhood; and to whom it most rarely happens to exclaim, with poor Margaret Fuller, "I am the parent of an immortal soul! God be merciful to me, a sinner!"
The second theory we have to consider is the Domestic, or that of Woman as a Housewife. Very beautiful and true, but also very ugly and dull, are the ideas all confounded under this same head, and current side by side amongst us. That the Home is woman's proper kingdom; that all that pertains to its order, comfort, and grace falls under her natural charge, and can by no means be transferred to a man; that a woman's life without such a domestic side must always be looked on as incomplete, or at best exceptional: all this is very true. On the other hand, that, in the lower ranks, the cooking of dinners and mending of clothes; and in the wealthier class, amateur music and drawing, the art of ordering dinner, and the still sublimer art of receiving company, form the be-all and end-all of woman, is, assuredly, stupidly false.
A man can build or buy for himself a House, a Mansion, a Castle, a Palace; but it takes a woman to make a Home. The unhomelikeness of the abodes of the richest single men, or of women in whom the feminine element is lacking, is pitiable. The nest may be constructed, so far as the sticks go, by the male bird, but only the hen can line it with moss and down. The more womanly a woman is, the more she is sure to throw her personality over her home, and transform it, from a mere eating and sleeping place, or an upholsterer's show-room, into a sort of outermost garment of her soul; harmonized with all her nature, as her robe and the flower in her hair are harmonized with her bodily beauty. The arrangement of her rooms, the light and shade, warmth and coolness, sweet odours, and soft or rich colours, are not like the devices of a well-trained servant or tradesman. They are the expression of the character of the woman, as her touch on the instrument or her step in the dance is an expression of it; grave and dignified, or gay and playful; social or studious; calm or energetic. A woman whose home does not bear to her this relation of nest to bird, calyx to flower, shell to mollusk, is in one or other imperfect condition. She is either not really mistress of her home; or, being so, she is herself deficient in the womanly power of thoroughly imposing her personality upon her belongings.
Unhappily, as we all know, not only the inevitable vicissitudes of human affairs, but the special regulations of our social state, render home-making on the part of women a process continually interrupted. The domestic life and the passionate love of home are preached to a girl, even ad nauseam, as her special sphere and particular virtue; but in the ordinary career of every woman there are no less than three homes, to each of which she is called on in succession to transfer the most intransferable of sentiments. The home of childhood, with all its dear associations, she quits for the house of her husband; and when she has made this thoroughly her own, when every room in it has been identified with her joys and griefs, and her love seems to pervade it from end to end, she is called on, as a matter of course, in the sad hour of her widowhood, to go forth contentedly, as if the place had been only lent to her for her honeymoon; and to spend her old age in some unaccustomed abode, which no beloved memory hallows for her, and which in her failing strength she will never bring into harmony with her tastes. Yet with all these drawbacks, the instincts of women, the hereditary "set" of their minds towards home-making, is, at all events in our Anglo-Saxon race, of overpowering force. The true Englishwoman sets about making one home after another, as the bee whose comb is disturbed makes a fresh cell. Nine times out of ten she seeks and finds the way to do good on earth, more than in any other manner, by making for her family a dwelling whose atmosphere is full of peace and love, of order and beauty. The children who grow up in such a home come into the busy scene of later life "trailing clouds of glory," as if they descended from a better sphere; not as if they rose out of a pit of evil passions and disorder.
But when we have said everything that can be said of the beauty of the domestic life and its fitness for women, have we therefore proved that Martha of Bethany is the only patron-saint towards whom the sex can look as an exemplar? Nay, but in my humble judgment, no woman can be truly domestic who is only domestic. No woman can thoroughly order her house, make the wheels of daily life turn without creaking and grinding, adorn her rooms, nay, even design her table, without being a great deal else beside a housekeeper, a housemaid, and a cook. It is not by rolling three, or a dozen, servants into a mistress that a "lady of the house" can be manufactured. The habits of reason, the habits of mental order, the chastened and refined love of beauty, above all, that dignified kind of loving care which is never intrusive, never fussy, but yet ever present, calm, bright, and sweet; all this does not come without a culture which mere domesticity can never attain. The right punishment for those men who denounce schemes for the "Higher Education of Women," and ordain that women should only learn to cook and sew and nurse babies, should be to spend the whole term of their natural lives in such homes as are made by the female incapables formed on such principles. Existence with one of these fidgety, servant-abusing women, is like the toil of an Arab beside his water-wheel. The stupid machine creaks and grinds and jolts and clatters, and all the time carries up to the sky and down to the depths only a bucketful of mud.
But if the exclusive worship of St. Martha by wives thus defeats its own end, what is to be said for it among a whole family of grown-up daughters? Truly here lies a chapter of English life which had need to be carefully read by him who is inclined to talk as if all English interiors offered idyllic pictures of peace and joy. Paterfamilias at his office all day, and reading his newspaper all the evening; Materfamilias fuming about her servants; the young brothers all driven away to seek some less tiresome spot, and four or five hapless young women, from twenty to forty, without professions or pursuits, or freedom of time or money, and with only a few miserable make-believe accomplishments of pseudo-music, pseudo-art, pseudo-reading, to "improve the shining hours;"--truly it is a hateful sight! Only two things could be much worse for them, namely, being bronzed and lacquered into Girls of the Period, or deluded into the withering precincts wherein Starrs and Saurins are shrivelled from women into nuns.
Domesticity then as a theory of woman's life fails in this: that by placing the secondary end of existence (namely, the making of those around us happy) before the first end (namely, the living to God, and goodness), even the object sought for is lost. The husband and father and sons who are to be made happy at home, are not made happy there. The woman, by being nothing but a domestic being, has failed to be truly domestic. She has lost the power of ministering to the higher wants of those nearest to her, by over-devotion to the ministry of their lower necessities. To be truly the "Angel in the House," she must have kept, and ofttimes used, the wings which should lift her above the house, and all things in it.
Thirdly, the theory of Woman as a Social being is, as I have said, capable of many variations. The gifted woman who knows how to make her home a centre of intellectual and kindly intercourse; the artist, the woman of letters, the female philanthropist; all these have their place, and at one time or another, and in different coteries, stand forward as the admired types of woman in her Social capacity. In all of them there is right and reason, viewing the salon-keeping, or art, or literature, or philanthropy, as phases of life in its human aspect: the secondary purpose of existence wrought out as best may suit the woman's circumstances and abilities. In all there is wrong and error, if regarded as the ultimate ends of the existence of a human soul.
But regard for the limits of this Essay forces me to pass over these imperfectly defined theories of woman's social life, to the highly elaborate and very singular system which Comte has originated from the same basis. It demands our attentive study, both from its great peculiarity, and also because, although it is impossible to suppose that Positivism will ever supersede Religion properly so called, yet its action upon the thought of the age, albeit indirect, is already considerable, and may possibly become very extensive. I shall define Comte's conception of woman's office and duty as much as possible in his own words:
"Positivism encourages, on intellectual as well as moral grounds, full and systematic expression of the feeling of Veneration for women in public as well as in private life, collectively as well as individually.... Born to love and to be loved, relieved from the burdens of practical life, free in the sacred retirement of their homes, the women of the West will receive from Positivists (hereafter) the tribute of deep and sincere admiration which their life inspires. They will feel no difficulty in accepting their position as spontaneous priestesses of Humanity; they will feel no longer the rivalry of a vindictive Deity..... In a word, man will in those days kneel to woman, and to woman alone."3
"When the Mission of Woman is better understood, she will be regarded by man as the most perfect impersonation of Humanity. Prayer would be of little value unless the mind could form a clear conception of its object. The worship of woman satisfies this condition. True, the ultimate object of Positivist prayer is Humanity. But some of its best moral effects could hardly be realized if it were at once and exclusively directed to an object so difficult to conceive clearly. It is possible that women, with their stronger sympathies, may be able to reach this stage without intermediate steps; Men certainly would not be able to do so. The worship of Woman, begun in private and afterwards publicly celebrated, is necessary in man's case to prepare him for any effectual worship of Humanity. No one can be so unhappy as not to be able to find some woman worthy of his peculiar love, whether wife or mother; some one who in his solitary prayer may be present to him as a fixed object of devotion. Nor will such devotion cease at death."4
"The subject of the worship of Woman by Man raises a question of much delicacy; how to satisfy analogous feelings of devotion in the other sex?....But my sex renders me incompetent to enter further into the secret wants of a woman's heart. Theory indicates a blank, but does not enable me to fill it."5
Such being, according to M. Comte, the proper office of Woman, namely, as a sort of concrete Image of Humanity at large, suited to receive by proxy the worship due to that extremely vague and indeterminate deity, it follows that the lives and pursuits of these idols of flesh are to be regulated like those of Dalai Lamas, with a view to their service in the religion of Positivism. A woman driven by want to hard work of hand or head; a woman emulating man in the fields of political, or literary, or artistic, or commercial ambition, would ill serve to excite those religious emotions which have hitherto among mankind lifted themselves up (so far as poor human weakness and ignorance permitted) to the real unseen Ineffable Holiness above, and which M. Comte fondly conceived could be quite readily transferred without loss of fervour to his ideal of Humanity. In any case, he knew that men will never worship that which is on their own level, and whose weaknesses and limitations are exposed to their eyes. The idol of clay, if it is to be adored at all, must be lifted up and out of the jostling crowd, and placed in a niche where judiciously managed shadows may be thrown over it. The Lama must live shrouded in the recesses of his palace, not sit on the judgment-seat, nor mix in the throng of his worshippers. Accordingly, Positivism, having allotted to woman the position of Vice-goddess, proceeds logically to make her like all other idols, an image of Repose. "If women were to occupy themselves in the ordinary pursuits of men, they would be subject to competition, and, by rivalry, the affection of the sexes would be corrupted. Leaving all such subversive dreams," Positivism affirms the principle that man should provide for woman: "Each individual should consider himself bound to maintain the woman he has chosen for his partner. Women who are without husband or parents should have their maintenance guaranteed by society; and this not merely from compassion for their dependent position, but with the view of enabling them to render public service of the greatest moral value."6 "Effectually to perform their Mission, they must abstain altogether from the practical pursuits of the stronger sex."7 "Active life is injurious to delicacy of feeling," and power and wealth are ruinous to women. "From instances among the upper classes where wealth gives them independence, and sometimes, unfortunately, even power, we see but too clearly what the consequences would be."8
The only mode, according to M. Comte, in which women can safely participate in public life, will be by presiding over the great institution of the "Positivist Salon," where society will "entirely lose its old aristocratic character, and where women will promote active and friendly intercourse among all classes." In all other respects women will be (apparently) kept in entire idleness. They will be "removed from all industrial occupations, even those which might seem best suited to them." They will be "more rigidly excluded from royalty, and from every kind of political authority;" they will be "free in the sacred retirement of their homes;" and when they die, they will receive "from the organs of public opinion" the solemn promise to be buried with their husbands--an assurance regarding which M. Comte triumphantly remarks, "Such are the consolations which Positivist sympathy can give! They leave no cause to regret the visionary hopes held out by Christianity."9
Differing from M. Comte as to the proportionate comfort of lying,--two heaps of silent dust,--beside those whom we have loved, or dwelling with their glorified spirits in the holier life we look for beyond the grave; it is but natural to differ from him also in his estimate of what constitutes a happy and worthy existence for woman upon earth. While he has been exalting woman into an Idol, it seems to me he has utterly forgotten the effect on a human being of the double mischief of deprivation of wholesome work, and of such artificial, not to say blasphemous, elevation. What does history tell us of the character of saints and Stylites, and Lamas, and Kings adored as gods in their lifetime? Is the process of being worshipped, or canonized, or even honoured as silly women commonly honour their clergymen, a healthy one for the soul of the idol? Is it one to which the very strongest character can be safely subjected without liability to the development of insufferable pride and egotism? Not to speak of the essential evil of Positivism, the thrusting aside of that ONE who alone is worthy of the adoring love of His creatures, and who alone can make their prayers for light and strength something else than a self-acting spiritual heating apparatus--not to speak, I say, of the immeasurable, unutterable loss, in the Comtist system, of a GOD, there is in it the additional absurdity of substituting for Him creatures who by that substitution are almost inevitably deteriorated, and rendered unworthy of even their natural human share of honour and esteem. Can imagination conceive the vagaries of vanity and folly which would be developed among a nation of goddesses? The remedy for such a state of things would be found, I am assured, in the very speedy dethronement of the idols so preposterously set up for worship. Women would share the fate of Chinese Josses and Italian images of saints; and be beaten by their disappointed adorers, when found to lack the powers so idly credited to them. The last state of that sex would be considerably worse than the first, before M. Comte undertook to rehabilitate it.
Nor is the scheme of providing for women's sustenance at the public expense while forbidding them all employment, save the truly French one "de tenir Salon," at all likely to counteract the evils of idolatry among them. Idleness, which is the root of all evil for men, is not particularly suited to be the root of all virtue for women. In truth, every woman of sense knows that it is precisely the want of suitable and hopeful work which is the great bane and peril of her sex. Women like the late Lady Byron or Miss Coutts, the distribution of whose wealth is itself a labour; and women who support themselves successfully, or aid their husbands practically by real work at home, are the happiest and most morally safe of their sex. The lady who is too rich to need to do anything, and yet not rich enough to find occupation in the regulation of her property, is she who is in most danger from every kind of temptation to discontent, to grievance-mongering, gossiping, slandering, extravagance, and finally to sinful passions born out of an idle and aimless existence. Yet this is the moral condition to which Positivism would reduce every woman in the land; the indolent and the restlessly energetic alike!
After all, M. Comte, with his even exaggerated estimate of the merits of women, has but planned for them like the apostles of the Physical and the Domestic theory. He has all along been thinking, not of what is Woman's own end and aim; how she can attain to Happiness or to Virtue, and what can she then do for all her fellow-creatures? But simply, like all the rest, he has thought, "What can Woman best do for me?" His scheme would probably drive her ever farther away from the true end of her being than the Physical theory or the Domestic; while it would defeat its own purpose still more flagrantly, by bringing out every flaw in the idol's composition.
Turn we now from these theories of "Woman as an Adjective," to those which proceed on the ground that she is a Noun, and that the first end of her being must be an end proper to herself. Is that basis a truer one? Shall we be told it is much more beautiful, more elevated, more Christian, to contemplate life as only a service for others, and not a trust for ourselves? There is abundance of sentimental talk of this kind always to be heard where women are concerned, but is there reason or religion in it? Let us consider a little what we mean by our words.
Tennyson beautifully expresses the triumph of faith in trusting,
"That not a moth with vain desire
Is shrivelled in a fruitless fire,
Or but subserves another's use."
A good man's conception, then, of even a moth's existence is not satisfied with mere subservience. The old hypothesis that the beasts were made chiefly for the use of man is as completely exploded as the parallel notion that the stars exist to add to our winter nights' illumination, and to afford guidance to our ships. Even the animals most completely appropriated by us would hardly be described by any one now as "made" for our use alone. The engineer who stated before a Committee of the House of Commons that "rivers were created on purpose to feed navigable canals" was less ridiculed than would be the clergyman who should teach the farmers of his congregation that their horses were created merely that they might carry them to market, or their cats that they might destroy the mice and save their cheese.
But, if it be admitted as regards horses and cats that they were made, first, for their own enjoyment, and only secondly to serve their masters, it is, to say the least, illogical to suppose that the most stupid of human females has been called into being by the Almighty principally to the end that John or James should have the comfort of a wife; nay, even that Robert or Richard should owe their birth to her as their mother. Believing that the same woman, a million ages hence, will be a glorious spirit before the throne of God, filled with unutterable love, and light, and joy, we cannot satisfactorily trace the beginning of that eternal and seraphic existence to Mr. Smith's want of a wife for a score of years here upon earth; or to the necessity Mr. Jones was under to find somebody to cook his food and repair his clothes. If these ideas be absurd, then it follows that we are not arrogating too much in seeking elsewhere than in the interests of Man the ultimate raison d'être of Woman.
From the standpoint of independent life, having some end proper to itself, two views, as I said before, are open: the Selfish theory of a woman's life, and the Divine.
Of course the Selfish theory, absolutely worked out, would be the conscious recognition by a woman that she took her own private Happiness for her "being's end and aim," and meant to live for it before all other objects. Actually, I presume it is very rare for any one consciously to adopt such a principle. But, without doing so to their own knowledge, many, nay, alas! perhaps a majority, do so in fact. And among those who, while repudiating Selfishness, are most profoundly selfish, are the women who loudly profess their allegiance to the Physical, or Domestic, or Social theories of woman's life. Those who are content to speak of themselves as only created to minister to the wants of their husband and children, are those oftenest to be seen sacrificing the welfare of both husband and children to their own pleasure, vanity, or ill-temper. The more basely they think of their own purpose of existence, the more meanly they are disposed to work it out.
If there be women, at once more logical and more hardened than these, who laugh in their sleeves at the notion that they exist for the sake of some man (perhaps vastly their inferior in ability), and who, with open eyes, and consciously to themselves, adopt their own Happiness as their chief end,--of course, to them more than to all the rest the false principle defeats itself. As the woman who lives only to be a Wife and Mother makes a bad wife and mother; as the woman who lives only to be Domestic, is never truly domestic; as the woman who is made a Social Idol becomes unworthy to be idolized: so the woman who seeks only her own Happiness, inevitably fails to attain Happiness. Whatever else may be uncertain concerning that mysterious thing,--felicity,--this at least is sure: to live for ourselves is to live for our own misery. Absolute Selfishness would create a hell in the midst of Paradise. The happiest of all beings is HE whose whole eternal existence is purely unselfish love.
Finally, for the Divine theory of Woman's life; the theory that she, like man, is created first and before all things to "love God and enjoy Him for ever;" to learn the rudiments of virtue in this first stage of being, and so rise upward through all the shining ranks of moral life to a holiness and joy undreamed of now: what shall we say to this theory? Shall Milton tell us that Man alone may live directly for God, and Woman only "for God in him"? I answer, that true religion can admit of no such marital priesthood; no such second-hand prayer. The founders of the Quakers, in affirming that both man and woman stand in direct and immediate relationship to the Father of Spirits, and warning us that no mortal should presume to come between them, struck for the first time a note of truth and spiritual liberty which has called forth half the life of their own sect, and which must sound through all Christendom before the right theory of woman's life be universally recognised. Let it not be said that this Divine theory will take Woman from her human duties. Precisely the contrary must be its effects; for it alone can teach those duties aright in their proper order of obligation. Just as the false theories always defeat their own ends, so the true one fulfils every good end together. The woman who lives to God in the first place, can, better than any one else, serve man in the second; or rather, live to God in the service of His creatures.10 It is she who may best rejoice to be a wife and a mother; she who may best make her home a little heaven of love and peace; she who may most nobly exert her social powers through philanthropy, politics, literature, and art. In a word, it is not till man gives up his monstrous claim to be the reason of an immortal creature's existence; and not till woman recognises the full scope of her moral rank and spiritual destiny, that the problem of "Woman's Mission" can be solved. When this has been done, the subordinate types of excellence to which in a secondary sense she may best aspire will not be hard to discover.
1 "Odds and Ends of Alpine Life," Macmillan's Magazine. [FPC] Back.
2 In a dim way, and combined with fatal errors, this Divine theory of woman's mission has underlain all female monastacism. But though the ascetics have discovered the right end, they have constantly sought it by erroneous means; even the abnegation of those natural affections which God has made to be the angel-peopled ladder to Himself. By the sect of Quakers alone has the theory hitherto been fairly recognised and rationally applied to practice. [FPC] Back.
3 "General View of Positivism," by Auguste Comte, trans. J.H. Bridges, p. 276. [FPC] Back.
10 The exceptionally domestic habits and philanthropic pursuits of the Quaker women afford a curious illustration of this truth. According to current theories, they ought to be self-sufficient, wilful women, bad daughters, and worse wives: and Quaker homes, with no supreme master to rule them, ought to be scenes of discord ending in frequent separation. The fact that they are the contrary of all this might surely make the advocates of the "woman-made-for-man" system pause intheir prophesyings of evil form female emancipation, which have thus for two hundred years been experimentally disproved. [FPC] Back.