Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. by Various
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Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI.
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It is you, you who combine the heart of a seraph with the head of a
cherub, who know what trouble is. You see where the shoe pinches, but
your whole soul relucts from pointing out the tender place. You see why
things go wrong, and how they might be set right; but you have a mortal
dread of being thought meddlesome and impertinent, or cold and cruel,
or restless and arrogant, if you attempt to demolish the wrong or rebel
against the custom. When you draw your bow at an abuse, people think you
are trying to bring down religion and propriety and humanity. But your
conscience will not let you see the abuse raving to and fro over the
earth without taking aim; so, either way, you are cut to the heart.
I love men. I adore women. I value their good opinion. There is much in
them to applaud and imitate. There is much in them to elicit faith and
reverence. If, only, one could see their good qualities alone, or,
seeing their vapid and vicious ones, could contemplate them with no
touch of tenderness for the owner, life might indeed be lovely. As it
is, while I am at one moment rapt in enthusiastic admiration of the
strength and grace, the power and pathos, the hidden resources, the
profound capabilities of my race, at another, I could wish, Nero-like,
that all mankind were concentrated in one person and all womankind
in another, that I might take them, after the fashion of rural
schoolmasters, and shake their heads together. Condemnation and reproach
are not in my line; but there is so much in the world that merits
condemnation and reproach and receives indifference and even reward,
there is so much acquiescence in wrong doing and wrong thinking, so much
letting things jolt along in the same rut wherein we and they were born,
without inquiring whether, lifted into another groove, they might not
run more easily, that, if one who does see the difficulty holds his
peace, the very stones will cry out. However gladly one would lie on
a bed of roses and glide silken-sailed down the stream of life, how
exquisitely painful soever it may be to say what you fear and feel may
give pain, it is only a Sybarite who sets ease above righteousness, only
a coward who misses victory through dread of defeat.
There are many false ideas afloat regarding womanly duties. I do not
design now to open anew any vulgar, worn-out, woman's-rightsy question.
Every remark that could be made on that theme has been made--but one,
and that I will take the liberty to make now in a single sentence and
close the discussion. It is this: the man who gave rubber-boots to women
did more to elevate woman than all the theorizers, male or female, that
ever were born.
But without any suspicious lunges into that dubious region which lies
outside of woman's universally acknowledged "sphere," (a blight rest
upon the word!) there is within the pale, within the boundary-line which
the most conservative never dreamed of questioning, room for a great
divergence of ideas. Now divergence of ideas does not necessarily imply
fighting at short range. People may adopt a course of conduct which
you do not approve; yet you may feel it your duty to make no open
animadversion. Circumstances may have suggested such a course to them,
or forced it upon them; and perhaps, considering all things, it is the
best they can do. But when, encouraged by your silence, they publish it
to the world, not only as relatively, but intrinsically, the best and
most desirable,--when, not content with swallowing it themselves as
medicine, they insist on ramming it down your throat as food,--it is
time to buckle on your armor and have at them.
A little book, published by the Tract Society, called "The Mother and
her Work," has been doing just this thing. It is a modest little book.
It makes no pretensions to literary or other superiority. It has much
excellent counsel, pious reflection, and comfortable suggestion. Being
a little book, it costs but little, and it will console, refresh, and
instruct weary, conscientious mothers, and so have a large circulation,
a wide influence, and do an immense amount of mischief. For the Evil One
in his senses never sends out poison labelled "POISON." He mixes it in
with great quantities of innocent and nutritive flour and sugar. He
shapes it in cunning shapes of pigs and lambs and hearts and birds and
braids. He tints it with gay hues of green and pink and rose, and puts
it in the confectioner's glass windows, where you buy--what? Poison? No,
indeed! Candy, at prices to suit the purchasers. So this good and pious
little book has such a preponderance of goodness and piety that the
poison in it will not be detected, except by chemical analysis. It
will go down sweetly, like grapes of Beulah. Nobody will suspect he
is poisoned; but just so far as it reaches and touches, the social
dyspepsia will be aggravated.
I submit a few atoms of the poison revealed by careful examination.
"The mother's is a _most honorable_ calling. 'What a pity that one so
gifted should be so tied down!' remarks a superficial observer, as she
looks upon the mother of a young and increasing family. The pale, thin
face and feeble step, bespeaking the multiplied and wearying cares of
domestic life, elicit an earnest sympathy from the many, thoughtlessly
flitting across her pathway, and the remark passes from mouth to mouth,
'How I pity her! What a shame it is! She is completely worn down with so
many children.' It may be, however, that this young mother is one who
needs and asks no pity," etc.
"But the _true mother_ yields herself uncomplainingly, yea, cheerfully,
to the wholesome privation, solitude, and self-denial allotted
her.....Was she fond of travelling, of visiting the wonderful in Nature
and in Art, of mingling in new and often-varying scenes? Now she has
found 'an abiding city,' and no allurements are strong enough to tempt
her thence. Had society charms for her, and in the social circle and the
festive throng were her chief delights? Now she stays at home, and the
gorgeous saloon and brilliant assemblage give place to the nursery and
the baby. Was she devoted to literary pursuits? Now the library is
seldom visited, the cherished studies are neglected, the rattle and the
doll are substituted for the pen. Her piano is silent, while she chants
softly and sweetly the soothing lullaby. Her dress can last another
season now, and the hat--oh, she does not care, if it is not in the
latest mode, for she has a baby to look after, and has no time for
herself. Even the ride and the walk are given up, perhaps too often,
with the excuse, 'Baby-tending is exercise enough for me.' Her whole
life is reversed."
The assumption is that all this is just as it should be. The thoughtless
person may fancy that it is a pity; but it is not a pity. This is
a model mother and a model state of things. It is not simply to be
submitted to, not simply to be patiently borne; it is to be aspired to
as the noblest and holiest state.
That is the strychnine. You may counsel people to take joyfully the
spoiling of their goods, and comfort, encourage, and strengthen them by
so doing; but when you tell them that to be robbed and plundered is of
itself a priceless blessing, the highest stage of human development,
you do them harm; because, in general, falsehood is always harmful, and
because, in particular, so far as you influence them at all, you prevent
them from taking measures to stop the wrong-doing. You ought to counsel
them to bear with Christian resignation what they cannot help; but you
ought with equal fervor to counsel them to look around and see if there
are not many things which they can help, and if there are, by all means
to help them. What is inevitable comes to us from God, no matter how
many hands it passes through; but submission to unnecessary evils is
cowardice or laziness; and extolling of the evil as good is sheer
ignorance, or perversity, or servility. Even the ills that must be borne
should be borne under protest, lest patience degenerate into slavery.
Christian character is never formed by acquiescence in or apotheosis of
wrong.
The principle that underlies these extracts, and makes them ministrative
of evil, is the principle that a woman can benefit her children by
sacrificing herself. It teaches, that pale, thin faces and feeble steps
are excellent things in young mothers,--provided they are gained by
maternal duties. We infer that it is meet, right, and the bounden
duty of such to give up society, reading, riding, music, and become
indifferent to dress, cultivation, recreation, to everything, in short,
except taking care of the children. It is all just as wrong as it can
be. It is wrong morally; it is wrong socially; wrong in principle, wrong
in practice. It is a blunder as well as a crime, for it works woe. It is
a wrong means to accomplish an end; and it does not accomplish the end,
after all, but demolishes it.
On the contrary, the duty and dignity of a mother require that she
should never subordinate herself to her children. When she does so, she
does it to their manifest injury and her own. Of course, if illness or
accident demand unusual care, she does well to grow thin and pale in
bestowing unusual care. But when a mother in the ordinary routine of
life grows thin and pale, gives up riding, reading, and the amusements
and occupations of life, there is a wrong somewhere, and her children
shall reap the fruits of it. The father and mother are the head of the
family, the most comely and the most honorable part. They cannot benefit
their children by descending from their Heaven-appointed places, and
becoming perpetual and exclusive feet and hands. This is the great
fault of American mothers. They swamp themselves in a slough of
self-sacrifice. They are smothered in their own sweetness. They dash
into domesticity with an impetus and abandonment that annihilate
themselves. They sink into their families like a light in a poisonous
well, and are extinguished.
One hears much complaint of the direction and character of female
education. It is dolefully affirmed that young ladies learn how to sing
operas, but not how to keep house,--that they can conjugate Greek verbs,
but cannot make bread,--that they are good for pretty toying, but not
for homely using. Doubtless there is foundation for this remark, or it
would never have been made. But I have been in the East, and the West,
and the North, and the South; I know that I have seen the best society,
and I am sure I have seen very bad, if not the worst; and I never met a
woman whose superior education, whose piano, whose pencil, whose German,
or French, or any school-accomplishments, or even whose novels, clashed
with her domestic duties. I have read of them in books; I did hear of
one once; but I never met one,--not one. I have seen women, through love
of gossip, through indolence, through sheer famine of mental _pabulum_,
leave undone things that ought to be done,--rush to the assembly,
the lecture-room, the sewing-circle, or vegetate in squalid, shabby,
unwholesome homes; but I never saw education run to ruin. So it seems to
me that we are needlessly alarmed in that direction.
But I have seen scores and scores of women leave school, leave their
piano and drawing and fancy-work, and all manner of pretty and pleasant
things, and marry and bury themselves. You hear of them about six times
in ten years, and there is a baby each time. They crawl out of the
farther end of the ten years, sallow and wrinkled and lank,--teeth gone,
hair gone, roses gone, plumpness gone,--freshness, and vivacity, and
sparkle, everything that is dewy, and springing, and spontaneous, gone,
gone, gone forever. This our Tract-Society book puts very prettily. "She
wraps herself in the robes of infantile simplicity, and, burying
her womanly nature in the tomb of childhood, patiently awaits the
sure-coming resurrection in the form of a noble, high-minded,
world-stirring son, or a virtuous, lovely daughter. The nursery is the
mother's chrysalis. Let her abide for a little season, and she shall
emerge triumphantly, with ethereal wings and a happy flight."
But the nursery has no business to be the mother's chrysalis. God never
intended her to wind herself up into a cocoon. If He had, He would have
made her a caterpillar. She has no right to bury her womanly nature in
the tomb of childhood. It will surely be required at her hands. It was
given her to sun itself in the broad, bright day, to root itself fast
and firm in the earth, to spread itself wide to the sky, that her
children in their infancy and youth and maturity, that her husband in
his strength and his weakness, that her kinsfolk and neighbors and the
poor of the land, the halt and the blind and all Christ's little ones,
may sit under its shadow with great delight. No woman has a right to
sacrifice her own soul to problematical, high-minded, world-stirring
sons, and virtuous, lovely daughters. To be the mother of such, one
might perhaps pour out one's life in draughts so copious that the
fountain should run dry; but world-stirring people are extremely rare.
One in a century is a liberal allowance. The overwhelming probabilities
are, that her sons will be lawyers and shoemakers and farmers and
commission-merchants, her daughters nice, "smart," pretty girls,
all good, honest, kind-hearted, commonplace people, not at all
world-stirring, not at all the people one would glory to merge one's
self in. If the mother is not satisfied with this, if she wants them
otherwise, she must be otherwise. The surest way to have high-minded
children is to be high-minded yourself. A man cannot burrow in his
counting-room for ten or twenty of the best years of his life, and come
out as much of a man and as little of a mole as he went in. But the
twenty years should have ministered to his manhood, instead of trampling
on it. Still less can a woman bury herself in her nursery, and come out
without harm. But the years should have done her great good. This world
is not made for a tomb, but a garden. You are to be a seed, not a death.
Plant yourself, and you will sprout. Bury yourself, and you can only
decay. For a dead opportunity there is no resurrection. The only
enjoyment, the only use to be attained in this world, must be attained
on the wing. Each day brings its own happiness, its own benefit; but it
has none to spare. What escapes to-day is escaped forever. To-morrow has
no overflow to atone for the lost yesterdays.
Few things are more painful to look upon than the self-renunciation,
the self-abnegation of mothers,--painful both for its testimony and its
prophecy. Its testimony is of over-care, over-work, over-weariness, the
abuse of capacities that were bestowed for most sacred uses, an utter
waste of most pure and life-giving waters. Its prophecy is of early
decline and decadence, forfeiture of position and power, and worst,
perhaps, of all, irreparable loss and grievous wrong to the children for
whom all is sacrificed.
God gives to the mother supremacy in her family. It belongs to her to
maintain it. This cannot be done without exertion. The temptation to
come down from her throne and become a mere hewer of wood, and drawer of
water is very strong. It is so much easier to work with the hands than
with the head. One can chop sticks all day serenely unperplexed. But to
administer a government demands observation and knowledge and judgment
and resolution and inexhaustible patience. Yet, however uneasy lies the
head that wears the crown of womanhood, that crown cannot be bartered
away for any baser wreath without infinite harm. In both cases there
must be sacrifice; but in the one case it is unto death, in the other
unto life. If the mother stands on high ground, she brings her children
up to her own level; if she sinks, they sink with her.
To maintain her rank, no exertion is too great, no means too small.
Dress is one of the most obvious things to a child. If the mother wears
cheap or shabby or ill-assorted clothes, while the children's are fine
and harmonious, it is impossible that they should not receive the
impression that they are of more consequence than their mother.
Therefore, for her children's sake, if not for her own, the mother
should always be well-dressed. Her baby, so far as it is concerned in
the matter, instead of being an excuse for a faded bonnet, should be an
inducement for a fresh one. It is not a question of riches or poverty;
it is a thing of relations. It is simply that the mother's dress--her
morning and evening and street and church dress--should be quite as good
as, and if there is any difference, better than her child's. It is of no
manner of consequence how a child is clad, provided only its health be
not injured, its taste corrupted, or its self-respect wounded. Children
look prettier in the cheapest and simplest materials than in the richest
and most elaborate. But how common is it to see the children gayly
caparisoned in silk and feathers and flounces, while the mother is
enveloped in an atmosphere of cottony fadiness! One would take the child
to be mistress and the mother a servant. "But," the mother says, "I
do not care for dress, and Caroline does. She, poor child, would be
mortified not to be dressed like the other children." Then do you teach
her better. Plant in her mind a higher standard of self-respect. Don't
tell her you cannot afford to do for her thus and thus; that will
scatter premature thorns along her path; but say that you do not approve
of it; it is proper for her to dress in such and such a way. And be so
nobly and grandly a woman that she shall have faith in you.
It is essential also that the mother have sense, intelligence,
comprehension.
As much as she can add of education and accomplishments will increase
her stock in trade. Her reading and riding and music, instead of being
neglected for her children's sake, should for their sake be scrupulously
cultivated. Of the two things, it is a thousand times better that they
should be attended by a nurserymaid in their infancy than by a feeble,
timid, inefficient matron in their youth. The mother can oversee half
a dozen children with a nurse; but she needs all her strength, all
her mind, her own eyes, and ears, and quick perceptions, and delicate
intuition, and calm self-possession, when her sturdy boys and wild young
girls are leaping and bounding and careering into their lusty life. All
manner of novel temptations beset them,--perils by night and perils by
day,--perils in the house and by the way. Their fierce and hungry young
souls, rioting in awakening consciousness, ravening for pleasure, strong
and tumultuous, snatch eagerly at every bait. They want then a mother
able to curb, and guide, and rule them; and only a mother who commands
their respect can do this. Let them see her sought for her social
worth,--let them see that she is familiar with all the conditions
of their life,--that her vision is at once broader and keener than
theirs,--that her feet have travelled along the paths they are just
beginning to explore,--that she knows all the phases alike of their
strength and their weakness,--and her influence over them is unbounded.
Let them see her uncertain, uncomfortable, hesitating, fearful without
discrimination, leaning where she ought to support, interfering without
power of suggesting, counselling, but not controlling, with no presence,
no bearing, no experience, no prestige, and they will carry matters with
a high hand. They will overrule her decisions, and their love will not
be unmingled with contempt. It will be strong enough to prick them when
they have done wrong, but not strong enough to keep them from doing
wrong.
Nothing gives a young girl such vantage-ground in society and in life as
a mother,--a sensible, amiable, brilliant, and commanding woman. Under
the shelter of such a mother's wing, the neophyte is safe. This mother
will attract to herself the wittiest and the wisest. The young girl can
see society in its best phases, without being herself drawn out into
its glare. She forms her own style on the purest models. She gains
confidence, without losing modesty. Familiar with wisdom, she will not
be dazed by folly. Having the opportunity to make observations before
she begins to be observed, she does not become the prey of the weak and
the wicked. Her taste is strengthened and refined, her standard elevates
itself, her judgment acquires a firm basis. But cast upon her own
resources, her own blank inexperience, at her first entrance into the
world, with nothing to stand between her and what is openly vapid and
covertly vicious, with no clear eye to detect for her the false and
distinguish the true, no strong, firm, judicious hand to guide tenderly
and undeviatingly, to repress without irritating and encourage without
emboldening, what wonder that the peach-bloom loses its delicacy,
deepening into _rouge_ or hardening into brass, and the happy young life
is stranded on a cruel shore?
Hence it follows that our social gatherings consist, to so lamentable
an extent, of pert youngsters or faded oldsters. Thence come those
abominable "young people's parties," where a score or two or three of
boys and girls meet and manage after their own hearts. Thence it happens
that conversation seems to be taking its place among the Lost Arts, and
the smallest of small talk reigns in its stead. Society, instead of
giving its tone to the children, takes it from them, and since it cannot
be juvenile, becomes insipid, and because it is too old to prattle,
jabbers. Talkers are everywhere, but where are the men that say things?
Where are the people that can be listened to and quoted? Where are the
flinty people whose contact strikes fire? Where are the electric people
who thrill a whole circle with sudden vitality? Where are the strong
people who hedge themselves around with their individuality, and will be
roused by no prince's kiss, but taken only by storm, yet, once captured,
are sweeter than the dews of Hymettus? Where are the seers, the
prophets, the Magi, who shall unfold for us the secrets of the sky and
the seas, and the mystery of human hearts?
Yet fathers and mothers not only acquiesce in this state of things,
they approve of it. They foster it. They are forward to annihilate
themselves. They are careful to let their darlings go out alone, lest
they be a restraint upon them,--as if that were not what parents were
made for. If they were what they ought to be, the restraint would be
not only wholesome, but impalpable. The relation between parents and
children should be such that pleasure shall not be quite perfect, unless
shared by both. Parents ought to take such a tender, proud, intellectual
interest in the pursuits and amusements of their children that the
children shall feel the glory of the victory dimmed, unless their
parents are there to witness it. If the presence of a sensible mother is
felt as a restraint, it shows conclusively that restraint is needed.
A woman also needs self-cultivation, both physical and mental, in order
to self-respect. Undoubtedly Diogenes glorified himself in his tub. But
people in general, and women in universal, except the geniuses,--need
the pomp of circumstance. A slouchy garb is both effect and cause of
a slouchy mind. A woman who lets go her hold upon dress, literature,
music, amusement, will almost inevitably slide down into a bog of muggy
moral indolence. She will lose her spirit; and when the spirit is
gone out of a woman, there is not much left of her. When she cheapens
herself, she diminishes her value. Especially when the evanescent charms
of mere youth are gone, when the responsibilities of life have left
their mark upon her, is it indispensable that she attend to all the
fitnesses of externals, and strengthen and polish all her mental
and social qualities. By this I do not mean that women should allow
themselves to lose their beauty as they increase in years. Men grow
handsomer as they grow older. There is no reason, there ought to be no
reason, why women should not. They will have a different kind of beauty,
but it will be just as truly beauty and more impressive and attractive
than the beauty of sixteen. It is absurd to suppose that God has made
women so that their glory passes away in half a dozen years. It is
absurd to suppose that thought and feeling and passion and purpose,
all holy instincts and impulses, can chisel away on a woman's face for
thirty, forty, fifty years, and leave that face at the end worse than
they found it. They found it a negative,--mere skin and bone, blood and
muscle and fat. They can but leave their mark upon it, and the mark of
good is good. Pity does not have the same finger-touch as revenge. Love
does not hold the same brush as hatred. Sympathy and gratitude and
benevolence have a different sign-manual from cruelty and carelessness
and deceit. All these busy little sprites draw their fine lines, lay
on their fine colors; the face lights up under their tiny hands; the
prisoned soul shines clearer and clearer through, and there is the
consecration and the poet's dream.
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