Unexpected discoveries of some such kind as this not unnaturally popularize the theory already mentioned, that such a being as a woman without vanity does not exist--that, no matter how securely the weakness may lie hidden from observation, it does somewhere or other exist, and some day will out. But we are inclined, notwithstanding, to hold that, here and there, but happily very seldom, there are to be found women really without vanity; and most unpleasant women they seem to us, as a rule, to be. They get on tolerably well with their own s.e.x, for they are rarely pretty or affected, and they have usually certain solid, serviceable qualities which make up for not being attractive by standing wear and tear. But in their relations with men--as soon, that is, as they have secured a husband, and fascination has therefore ceased to be a matter of business, a practical question of bread-and-b.u.t.ter, to be grappled with in the spirit in which they would, if necessary, go out charing, or keep a mangle--they are painfully devoid of that eagerness to please and that readiness to be pleased which, in the present imperfect state of civilization, are among woman"s chief charms.
Even men cannot, as a rule, get on very well without these qualities; but still to please is not man"s mission in the sense in which it is generally considered to be woman"s, and probably will continue to be considered, until Dr. Mary Walkers are not the exception, but the rule.
One now and then has the misfortune to come upon a specimen of womanhood, good and solid enough perhaps, making a most exemplary and respectable wife and mother, but nevertheless dull, heavy, and unattractive to an extent that fills the wretched man who takes it in to dinner with desperation. And then to think that one ounce of vanity might have leavened this lump, and converted it, as by magic, into a pleasant, palatable, convivial compound, good everywhere, but especially good at the dinner-table! For, where vanity exists at all, it can scarcely fail to influence the natural desire of one s.e.x to please the other; and a woman must be singularly devoid of all charms, physical and mental, if she fails when she is really anxious to please. That women should be fascinating, as they sometimes are, in spite of some positively painful deformity, is a proof of what such anxiety can alone accomplish.
We must admit that we have to postulate, on behalf of the female vanity whose cause we are espousing, that it should not derive its inspiration solely from self-love. However anxious a woman may be to please, if her anxiety is on her own account, and simply to secure admiration, she must be a very Helen if her vanity continues attractive. She is lucky if it does not take the most odious of all forms, and, from always revolving round self and dwelling upon selfish considerations, degenerate into a habit of perpetual postures and stage tricks to gain applause. And this tendency naturally connects itself with the wish to please the opposite s.e.x, its success being in inverse proportion to its strength. Just as one occasionally meets with men who are perfectly unaffected and sensible fellows in men"s society, but whose whole demeanor becomes absurdly changed if any woman, though it be only the housemaid with a coal-scuttle, enters the room, so there are, more commonly, to be found women whose whole character seems to vary, as if by magic, according to the s.e.x of the person whom they find themselves with. Before their own s.e.x they are natural enough; before men they are eternally att.i.tudinizing. We should be sorry to say that this repulsive form of vanity always takes its root in excessive self-love, but still a tinge of unselfishness seems to us the best antidote against it.
It is marvellous with how much vanity, and that too of a tolerably ostentatious kind, a woman may be thoroughly agreeable even to her own s.e.x, if her eagerness to please is accompanied by genuine kindliness, or is free from excessive selfishness. It may be easy enough to see that all her little courtesies and attentions are at bottom really attributable to vanity; that, when she does a kind act, she is thinking less of its effect upon your comfort and happiness than of its effect upon your estimate of her character. She would perhaps rather you got half the advantage with her aid than the whole advantage without it. Her motive is, primarily, vanity--clearly not kindness--however amicably they may in general work together. But still it is the kindness that makes the vanity flow into pleasant, friendly forms. In a selfish woman the very same vanity would degenerate into posturing or dressing. And, odd as it may seem, and as much as it may reflect upon the common sense of poor humanity, we believe that kind acts done out of genuine, unadulterated benevolence are less appreciated by the recipient than kind acts done out of benevolence stimulated by vanity. The latter are pleasant because they spring out of the desire to please, and soothe our self-love, whereas the former appeal to our self-interest.
There are few things in this world more charming than the kindly courtesy of a pretty woman, not ungracefully conscious of her power to please, and showing courtesy because she enjoys the exercise of this power. Strictly speaking, she is acting less in your interest than in her own. Although she feels at once the pleasure of pleasing and the pleasure of doing a kindly action, the second is quite subordinate to the first, and is perhaps, more or less, sacrificed to it. Yet who is strong-minded enough to wish that the kindliness of a pretty woman should be dictated by simple benevolence, untinged by vanity? If we knew that her kindliness arose rather from a wish to benefit us than to conciliate our good opinion, it is perhaps possible that we should esteem her more, but we fear it is quite certain that we should like her less.
Before we conclude, we ought perhaps to make one more postulate on behalf of female vanity, not less important than our postulate that it should be pleasantly tinged by unselfishness. To be agreeable, it must have fair foundation. A woman may be forgiven for over-estimating her charms, but there is no forgiveness on this side of the grave for a woman who recklessly credits herself with charms that do not exist. All the lavish cheques she draws upon her male neighbor"s admiration are silently dishonored, and in half an hour after the moment they sit down to table together she is a hopeless bankrupt in his estimation, even though he may have courtesy and skill enough to conceal the collapse.
As there are few, if any, pleasanter objects than a pretty woman, gracefully conscious of her beauty, and radiantly fulfilling its legitimate end, the power of pleasing, so are there few, if any, more unpleasant objects than a vain woman, ungracefully conscious of imaginary charms, and secretly disgusting those she strives to attract.
An ugly woman who gives herself the airs of a beauty, or a silly woman who believes herself a genius, is not a spectacle upon which a man of healthy imagination and appet.i.te likes to dwell. It is perhaps only in accordance with the theory that this life is a state of trial and probation that the tastes can be explained. Happily, it is not very common. Most women know their strong from their weak points, and marshal them on the whole well in the encounter with their lawful oppressor and great enemy, man. And until they have won the victory to which Dr. Mary Walker is now leading them on, may they never lack the female vanity which makes it one of their great objects in life to please!
THE ABUSE OF MATCH-MAKING.
It is a pity that when, by some train of ill-luck, a word of respectable parentage, and well brought up, is led astray, it cannot adopt Goldsmith"s recipe and die. It has not even the more prosaic alternative of being made an honest word by marriage, and escaping the name under which it stooped to folly, and was betrayed. It drags on a dishonored life, with little or no chance of recovering its character, inflicting cruel disgrace upon the unlucky family of ideas, no matter what their own innocence and respectability, to which it happens to belong. Thus Casuistry, if not a very useful, was at least a perfectly harmless, member of society, and moved in the best circles, until in an evil hour she became too intimate with the unpopular Jesuits.
A few years ago, when high feeding and sermonizing proved too much for the virtue of garotters, and, waxing fat, they not only kicked society, but danced hornpipes in hobnailed boots upon its head and stomach, even Philanthropy, at once the most fashionable and popular word of this century, was all but compromised by Sir Joshua Jebb and Sir George Grey.
Baron Bramwell fortunately came to the rescue, and saved it from permanent loss of character. But still to this day the word is sometimes used in a sense by no means complimentary. If the battue-system continues long enough, "good sport" will become a synonym for cold-blooded clumsy butchery, and thus all sport whatsoever will be more or less discredited. The _faux pas_ of one member disgraces the whole family. A few men may be the lords of language, but the great majority are its slaves. They can no more disconnect the innocent idea from the soiled word that accompanies it than they can see a blue landscape through green gla.s.s. Let us hope that one of the first acts of Mr.
Bright"s millennial Parliament will be the establishment of a tribunal empowered to take a word when it arrives at this pitiable condition, and either in mercy knock it on the head altogether, or else formally readmit it into good society, and give it all the advantages of a fresh start.
We take an early opportunity of inviting their special attention to the much-injured word "Match-making." The practice which it describes is not only harmless, but, in the present state of society, highly useful and meritorious. Yet there can be no doubt, that there is a powerful prejudice against it. Although all women--or rather, perhaps, as Thackeray said, all good women--are at heart match-makers, there are very few who own the soft impeachment. Many repudiate it with indignation. It is on the whole about as safe to charge a lady with Fenianism as facetiously to point out a young couple in her drawing-room, whose flirtation has a suspicious businesslike look about it, and to hint that she has deliberately brought them together with a view to matrimony. It may be true that she has no selfish interest whatever in the matter. The criminal conspiracy in which she so strenuously repudiates any concern is, after all, nothing worse than the attempt to make two people whom she likes, and who she thinks will suit each other, happy for life. By any other name such an action ought, one would think, to smell sweet in the nostrils of G.o.ds and men.
But, whatever the G.o.ds think of it, men cannot forget that the practice, whether harmless or not, goes by the objectionable name of match-making.
So the lady replies, not, perhaps, without the energy of conscious guilt, that "things of this sort are best left to themselves," and piously begs you to remember that marriages are made in Heaven, not in her drawing-room. The melancholy truth is that the gentle craft of match-making has been so vulgarized by course and clumsy professors, and its very name has in consequence been brought into such disrepute, that few respectable women have the courage openly to recognise it. They are haunted by visions of the typical match-maker who does work for fashionable novels and social satires, and who is a truly awful personage. To her alone of mortals is it given to inspire, like the Harpies, at once contempt and fear. Keen-eyed and hook-nosed, like a bird of prey, she glowers from the corner of crowded ball-rooms upon the unconscious heir, hunts him untiringly from house to house, marries him remorselessly to her eldest daughter, and then never loses sight of him till his spirit is broken, his old friends discarded, and his segar-case thrown away.
It is scarcely necessary to say that this fearful being exists only in fiction. In real life she has not only to marry her daughters, but also, like other human beings, to eat, drink, sleep, and otherwise dispose of the twenty-four hours of the day. She cannot therefore very well devote herself, from morning to night, to the one occupation of heir-hunting, with the precision of a machine, or one of Bunyan"s walking vices. But still there must be some truth even in a caricature, and a man sometimes finds a girl "thrown at his head," as the process is forcibly termed, with a coa.r.s.e-mindedness quite worthy of the typical match-maker, though also with a clumsiness which she would heartily despise.
He goes as a stranger to some place, and is astonished to find himself at once taken to the bosom and innermost confidence of people whose very name he never heard before, as if he were their oldest and most familiar friend. He is asked to dinner one day, to breakfast the next, and warmly a.s.sured that a place is always kept for him at lunch. Charmed and flattered to find his many merits so quickly discovered and thoroughly appreciated by strangers, he votes them the cleverest, most genial, most hospitable people he ever met; and everything goes on delightfully until he begins to think it odd that he should be constantly left alone with, and now and then delicately chaffed about, some _pa.s.see_, ill-favored woman, whom he no more connects with any thought of marriage than he would a female rhinoceros. And then slowly dawns upon him the cruel truth that his kind hosts have had their appreciation of his merits considerably sharpened by the fact that there is an ugly daughter or sister-in-law in the house whom they are sick to death of, whom they are always imploring "to marry or do something," and who, having for years ogled and angled for every marriageable pair of whiskers and pantoloons within ten miles, has gradually become so well known in the neighborhood that her one forlorn hope is to carry off some innocent stranger with a rush.
"_Quere peregrinum, vicinia rauca reclamat;_" and if the _peregrinus_ happens to be young and verdant, and, having just been given a good appointment, feels, with the Vicar of Wakefield, that one of the three greatest characters on earth is the father of a family, he is possibly hooked securely before he discovers his danger. He discovers it to find himself tied for life to a woman with whom he has not a sympathy in common, and for whom every day increases his disgust. And the people who have ruined his life have not even the sorry excuse that they wished to better hers. Their one thought was to get rid of her as speedily as possible, no matter to whom; and they would rather have had Bluebeard at a two-months" engagement than any other man at one of six. There is something so coa.r.s.e and revolting, so brutal, in the notion of bringing two people together into such a relation as that of marriage on purely selfish grounds, and without the slightest regard to their future happiness, that any one who has seen the snare laid for himself or his friends may well shudder at the mere sound of match-making. Mezentius was more merciful, for of the two bodies which he chained together only one had life.
The clumsy match-maker is a scarcely less dangerous, though a far more respectable, enemy to the gentle craft than the coa.r.s.e one. She makes it ridiculous, while the latter makes it odious, and it is ridicule that kills. She is, perhaps, a well-meaning woman, who would be sorry to marry two people unless she thought them suited to each other; but the moment she has made up her mind that they ought to marry, she sets to work with a vigor which, unless she has a very young man to deal with, is almost sure to spoil her plans. This would not be surprising in a silly woman; but it is odd that the more energetic, and, in some respects, the more able a woman is, the more likely sometimes she is to fall into this error.
A woman may be the life and soul of a dozen societies, write admirable letters, get half her male relatives into Government offices, and yet be the laughing-stock of the neighborhood for the absurd way in which she goes husband-hunting for her daughters. The very energy and ability which fit her for other pursuits disqualify her for match-making. She is too impatient and too fond of action to adopt the purely pa.s.sive expectant att.i.tude, the masterly inactivity, which is here the great secret of success. She is always feeling that something should be said or done to help on the business, and prematurely scares the shy or suspicious bird. Many a promising love-affair has been nipped in the bud simply because the too eager mother has drawn public attention to it before it was robust enough to face publicity, by throwing the two lovers conspicuously together, or by some unguarded remark.
When one thinks of all that a man has to go through in the course of a love-affair--especially in a small society where everybody knows everybody--of all the chaffing and grinning, and significant interchange of glances when he picks up the daughter"s fan, or hands the mother to her carriage, or laughs convulsively at the old jokes of the father, one is almost inclined to wonder how a Briton, of the average British stiffness and shyness, ever gets married at all. The explanation probably is, that he falls in love before he exactly knows what he is about, and, once in love, is of course gloriously blind and deaf to all obstacles between him and the adored one. But to subject a man to this trying ordeal, as the too eager match-maker does, before he is sufficiently in love to be proof against it, is like sending him into a snow-storm without a great-coat.
The romantic match-maker is, in her way, as mischievous as the coa.r.s.e or the clumsy one. She is usually a good sort of woman, but with decidedly more heart than head. She gets her notions of political economy from Mr.
d.i.c.kens" novels, and holds that, whenever two nice young people of opposite s.e.xes like each other, it is their business then and there to marry. If Providence cannot always, like Mr. d.i.c.kens, provide a rich aunt or uncle, it at least never sends mouths without hands to feed them. Let every good citizen help the young people to marry as fast as they can, and let there be lots of chubby cheeks and lots of Sunday plum-pudding to fill them. There is no arguing with a woman of this kind, and she is perhaps the most dangerous of all match-makers, inasmuch as she is usually herself a warm-hearted pleasant woman, and there is a courage and disinterestedness about her views very captivating to young heads. There is no safety but in flight. Even a bachelor of fair prudence and knowledge of the world is not safe in her hands. We mean on the a.s.sumption that he is not in a position to marry.
If he is "an eligible," he cannot, of course, be considered safe anywhere. But otherwise he knows that match-makers of the unromantic worldly type will be only too glad to leave him alone.
And having, perhaps, been accustomed on this account to feel that he may flirt in moderation with impunity, as a man with whom marriage is altogether out of the question, he is quite unprepared for the new and startling unconventional view which the romantic match-maker takes of him. He is horrified to find that, ignoring the usual considerations as to the length of his purse, she has discovered that he and the pretty girl with whom he danced three consecutive dances last night must have been made expressly for each other, and that she has somehow contrived, by the exercise of that freemasonry in love-affairs which is peculiar to women, to put the same ridiculous notion into the young lady"s head. In fact, he suddenly finds to his astonishment that he must either propose--which is out of the question--or be considered a cold-blooded trifler with female hearts. And so he has nothing to do but pack up his portmanteau and beat an ignominious retreat, with an uncomfortable consciousness that his amiable hostess and pretty partner have a very poor opinion of him.
It is rather hard, however, that these and other abuses, which we have not s.p.a.ce to enumerate, of the great art of match-making should bring the art itself into odium and contempt. In all of them there is a violation of some one or more of what we take to be its three chief canons. First, the objects to be experimented upon should be pecuniarily in a position to marry. Secondly, care should be taken that they seem on the whole not unlikely to suit each other. Thirdly, the artist should be content, like a photographer, to bring the objects together, and leave the rest of the work mainly to nature. We confess that we feel painfully the unscientific vagueness of this last axiom, since so much turns upon the way in which the objects are brought together. But, as we only undertook to treat of the abuse of match-making, the reader must consider these maxims for its proper use to be thrown into the bargain _gratis_, and not therefore to be scrutinized severely. Some other day, if we can muster up courage enough for so delicate and arduous a task, we may perhaps attempt to show that, in the present state of society, the art of match-making deserves and requires cultivation, and how, in our humble opinion, this cultivation should be carried on.
FEMININE INFLUENCE.
All English ladies who are warmly devoted to the great cause of feminine authority have got their eyes just now upon the Empress of the French.
It is understood in English domestic circles that the Empress has decided to go to Rome, and that the Emperor has decided on her staying at home, and the interest of the situation is generally thought to be intense. The ocean race between the yachts was nothing to it. Every woman of spirit has been betting heavily this Christmas upon the Empress, and praying mentally for the defeat of the Emperor, and every new telegram that bears upon the subject of the difficult controversy is scanned by hundreds of dovelike eyes every morning with indescribable eagerness.
M. Reuter, who is a man probably, if he is not a joint-stock company, is believed not to be altogether an impartial historian; and it is felt in many drawing-rooms that what is wanted on this occasion, at the telegraph offices, is a sound and resolute Madame Reuter, to correct the deviations of M. Reuter"s compa.s.s. In default of all trustworthy telegraphic intelligence, Englishwomen are compelled to fall back on their vivid imagination, and to construct a picture of what is happening from the depths of their own moral consciousness. And several things their moral consciousness tells them are clear and certain. The first is, that the Empress Eugenie is an injured and interesting victim.
She has made a vow, under the very touching circ.u.mstances of measles in the Imperial nursery, to pay a visit to the Pope; and Cabinet Ministers like M. Lavalette, who throw suspicion on the binding nature of such a holy maternal obligation, are worse than "S. G. O." In the second place, she has set her heart upon going. Even if a vow were not binding, this is. It is mere nonsense to say that her pilgrimage would interfere with politics. A woman"s fine tact is often of considerable use in politics, and the sight of the Prince Imperial in his mother"s arms might exercise the most beneficial influence on the Pope"s mind.
Pio Nono has held out hitherto in the most inexplicable manner against the Prince Imperial"s photograph, but he never could resist a sight of the original. And, thirdly, if a wife and a mother may not have her own way about going to see the Head of her own Church, when is she ever to have her way at all, and where is the line to be drawn? The next downward step in a husband"s declension will be to prevent her from frequenting all religious exercises, or, still worse, from selecting her own b.a.l.l.s and evening parties. This is what English ladies feel, and feel keenly. It is some consolation to them to learn that, if the Empress Eugenie is discomfited, she will not have been discomfited without a struggle. Of course there will be no evening reception on the New Year at the Tuileries. No lady with a proper sense of what was due to her own dignity would receive under such circ.u.mstances. But till the most authentic news arrive, it will still be possible to hope and to believe that victory will eventually, and in spite of all appearances, declare itself upon the side of right and of propriety, and that her Majesty will not be interfered with merely to satisfy the idle caprices of a Foreign Office.
The question of the proper limits of feminine influence is one which such universal enthusiasm forces naturally on one"s notice. Not even the most rigid cynic can deny that women ought to have some influence on the mind and judgment of the opposite s.e.x, and the only difficulty is to know how far that influence ought to go. Every one will be ready to concede that sound reasoning is worth hearing, whether it comes from a woman or a man; and that, so far as a lady argues well, she has as much claim on our attention as Diotima had on the attention of Socrates.
This, however, is not precisely the point which is so difficult to settle. The problem is to know how much influence a woman ought to have when she does not argue well; and further, what are the matters on which her opinion, whether it be based on argument or instinct, is of value.
One of the most important subjects on which women have some, and always want to have a great deal of power, is religion. This is one part of the supposed mission of the Empress upon which feminine observers look with especial sympathy, and on which experienced masculine observers, on the other hand, look with some awe. The correspondents of the daily papers, whose pleasure and privilege it is to be able to instruct us in all the secrets of high life, have given us recently to understand that, for some time back, Her Majesty has been hard at work on the Emperor"s soul.
Every thoughtful woman likes to be at work on her husband"s soul. Young ladies enjoy the prospect before they are married, and no novel is so thoroughly popular among them as one in which beauty is the instrument in the hands of Providence for the conversion of unbelief. And it is partly because the Empress Eugenie is discharging this high missionary duty, that she is an object of particular admiration just at this moment. When Englishwomen hear that she is very active in favor of the Pope, and couple this news with the fact that the Emperor"s soul is uneasy, they sniff--if we may be forgiven the expression--the battle from afar. Their education in respect of theology and religious opinion is very different from that of men.
They have been brought up to believe strongly and heartily what they have been told, and they do not understand the half-sceptical way of regarding such things which is the result of larger views and more liberal education. It appears to them a terrible thing that the men they care for should be hesitating and doubtful about subjects where they themselves have been trained only to believe one view possible. And they set to work in the true temper of missionaries, with profound eagerness and energy, and narrowness of grasp. Many genuine prayers and tears are worthily spent in the effort to tether some truant husband or a son to a family theological peg, and to prevent him from roving. And, up to a certain point, men continually give in. They find it easier and more comfortable to lower their arms, and not always to be maintaining a barren controversy. They have not the slightest wish to convince their affectionate feminine disputant, to take from her the sincere and positive dogmas on which her happiness is built, and to subst.i.tute for these a phase of doubt and difficulty for which her past intellectual life has not fitted her. Accordingly, they indulge in a thousand little hypocrisies of a more or less harmless kind.
So long as women"s education continues to differ from that of men as widely as it does in England, this flexibility on the part of the latter under the influence of the former is not always amiss. It is better that the husband should be yielding than that he should hold aloof from all that interests and moves the wife, as is the case in countries where the one s.e.x may be seen professing to believe in nothing, while the other as implicitly believes in everything. It is, however, easy to conceive of cases in which this feminine influence that seems so innocent, is in reality injurious. It may perhaps be the business of the husband to take a public part in the affairs of his time. Conscience tells him that he should be sincere, uncompromising, logical, even to the point of disputing conclusions which good and pious people consider essential and important. Or he may be a religious preacher, or a religious reformer of his day, bound, in virtue of character, to maintain truth at the risk of being unpopular; or, it may be, to prosecute inquiries and reforms at the risk of shocking weaker brethren.
There are many who could tell us from their experience how terribly at such a time they have been perplexed and hampered in their duty by the affectionate ignorance, the tears, and the piety of women. Protestant clergymen in particular are sometimes taunted with their conservative tendencies, their indifference to the new lights of science, or of history, and their disinclination to embark on perilous voyages in quest of truth. Part of their conservatism arises from the fact that their practical business is generally to teach what they do know, rather than to inquire into what they do not know. Part of it comes, as we suspect, from the fact that they are married. A wife is a sort of theological drag. It serves no doubt to keep some of us from rolling too rapidly down hill. It impedes equally the progress of others over ordinarily level ground.
The importance of a social position to women is a thing which affects their influence upon men no less materially than does their religious sensibility. As a rule, they have no other means of measuring the consideration in which they are held by the world, or the success in life of those to whose fortunes they are linked, than by using a trivial and worthless social standard. Men, whose training is wider, estimate both their male and their female friends pretty fairly according to their merits. But the majority of women, from their youth up, seldom think of anybody without contrasting his or her social status with their own. Success signifies to them introduction to this or that feminine circle, admission to friendships from which they have been as yet excluded, and visiting cards of a more distinguished appearance than those which at present lie upon their table. They are unable to enjoy even the ordinary intercourse of society without an _arriere pensee_ as to their chance of landing themselves a step higher on the social ladder. From such absurdities the best and most refined women of course are free, but the ma.s.s of Englishwomen seldom meet without wondering who on earth each of the others is, and to which county family she belongs.
Humorous as is the spectacle of a crowd of English ladies, each of whom is employed in eyeing the lady next her and asking who she is, and comical as the point of view appears to any one who reflects on the shortness of human life and the littleness of human character, the effect of these feminine weaknesses is one which no one can be sure of escaping. We are afraid that half of the Englishmen who are sn.o.bs are made so by Englishwomen. It is impossible for the female portion of any domestic circle to be perpetually dwelling on their own social aspirations without communicating the infection to, or even forcing it upon the male. Wives and daughters become dissatisfied with their husbands" or their fathers" friends. They want to meet and to a.s.sociate with people whom it is a social credit to know, and who in turn may help them to know somebody beyond. Every fresh acquaintance of distinction, or of fashion, is a sort of milestone, showing the ground that has been travelled over by the family in the direction of their hopes. This sort of fever is very catching. But though men often catch it, they generally catch it from the other s.e.x. And even when they are not impregnated with it themselves, the effect of feminine influence upon them is that they accept their lot with placidity, and acquiesce in the social struggle through which they are dragged.
No man in his senses can wish or hope to order the social life of his belongings according to his own sober judgment. He is compelled to allow them a free rein in the matter, and to abstain from even expressing the astonishment he inwardly feels. Perhaps the world of women is a new world to him, and he feels incapable of regulating any of its movements; or perhaps, if he is wise, he is content with the reflection that little foibles do not altogether spoil real n.o.bility of nature, and takes the bad side of a woman"s education with the good. But there are innumerable matters in respect of which he cannot withdraw himself from the feminine influence about him. By degrees he comes to sympathize with the little social disappointments of his family group, and to take pleasure in their little social triumphs, which appear to be so productive of satisfaction and enjoyment to those to whom they fall. But the effect on his character is not usually wholesome. His eye is no longer single.
Feminine influence has engrafted on his nature the defects of feminine character, without engrafting on it also its many virtues.
Women usually fail in communicating to men their self-devotion, their gentleness, their piety; all that they manage to communicate amounts to little more than a respect for the observances of religion, and a nervous sensibility to social distinctions.
While the mental development of women continues to be so little studied, it is not surprising that the intellectual influence of the s.e.x should be almost _nil_, or that such a modic.u.m of it as they possess should be exerted within a very narrow sphere. It is the fault, no doubt, of our systems of female education that the mental power of the cleverest women really comes in England to very little. In its highest form it amounts to a capacity for conversation on indifferent matters, a genius for music or some other fine art, a turn for talking about the poets of the day, and perhaps for imitating their style with ease, coupled, in exceptional cases, with a talent for guessing double acrostics. To be able to do all this, and to be charming and religious too, is the whole duty of young women.
It would be difficult possibly to fit out an English young lady with the various practical accomplishments that are of use in matrimony, and to make her at the same time an intellectual equal of the other s.e.x. But it would surely be possible to train her to understand more of the general current of the world"s ideas, even if she could not devote herself to studying them in detail. What woman has now any notion of the broad outline of history of human thought? All philosophy is a sealed book to her. It is the same with theology and politics. She has not the wildest conception, as a rule, of the grounds on which people think who think differently from herself; and all through life she is content to play the part of a partisan or a devotee with perfect equanimity.
While, however, feminine influence in intellectual subjects is, as it deserves to be, infinitesimal, in practice and in action women are proud of being recognized as useful and sound advisers. As outsiders and spectators they see a good deal of the game, have leisure to watch narrowly all that is going on about them, and a subtle instinct teaches them to tread delicately over all dangerous ground. It is curious how many enemies women make amongst themselves, and yet how many enemies they prevent men from making. They seem to have less of self-control or prudence as far as their own strong feelings and fortunes are concerned, than they have of tact and temper in managing the fortunes and enterprises of others.
There can, for example, be no doubt whatever that the parson who aims at being a bishop before he dies ought to marry early. The great strokes of policy which bring him preferment or popularity are pretty sure to have been devised in moments of happy inspiration, or perhaps during the watches of the night, by a feminine brain. Good mothers make saints and heroes, says the proverb, and beyond a doubt wise wives make bishops.
Their influence is not the less real because, unlike that of Mrs.
Proudie, it is exerted chiefly behind the scenes. It is possibly because the influence possessed by women is so intangible, depending as it does less on the reason than on the sentiment, affection, and convenience of the other s.e.x, that women are so jealous to a.s.sert and to protect it.