Character — Ch 11a - Companionship in Marriage
"Kindness in women, not their beauteous looks, Shall win my love."
--SHAKSPEARE.
"In the husband Wisdom, In the wife Gentleness."
--GEORGE
HERBERT.
"If God had designed woman as man's master, He would have taken her from his head; If as his slave, He would have taken her from his feet; but as He designed her for his companion and equal, He took her from his side."
--SAINT
AUGUSTINE.
--'DE CIVITATE DEI.'
"Who can find a virtuous woman?
for her price is far above rubies....
Her husband is known in the gates, and he sitteth among the elders of the land....
Strength and honour are her clothing, and she shall rejoice in time to come.
She openeth her mouth with wisdom, and in her tongue is the law of kindness.
She looketh well to the ways of her husband, and eateth not the bread of idleness.
Her children arise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her."
-- PROVERBS OF SOLOMON.
THE character of men, as of women, is powerfully influenced by their companionship in all the stages of life.
We have already spoken of the influence of the mother in forming the character of her children.
She makes the moral atmosphere in which they live, and by which their minds and souls are nourished, as their bodies are by the physical atmosphere they breathe.
And while woman is the natural cherisher of infancy and the instructor of childhood, she is also the guide and counsellor of youth, and the confidant and companion of manhood, in her various relations of mother, sister, lover, and wife.
In short, the influence of woman more or less affects, for good or for evil, the entire destinies of man.
The respective social functions and duties of men and women are clearly defined by nature.
God created man AND woman, each to do their proper work, each to fill their proper sphere.
Neither can occupy the position, nor perform the functions, of the other.
Their several vocations are perfectly distinct.
Woman exists on her own account, as man does on his, at the same time that each has intimate relations with the other.
Humanity needs both for the purposes of the race, and in every consideration of social progress both must necessarily be included.
Though companions and equals, yet, as regards the measure of their powers, they are unequal.
Man is stronger, more muscular, and of rougher fibre; woman is more delicate, sensitive, and nervous.
The one excels in power of brain, the other in qualities of heart; and though the head may rule, it is the heart that influences.
Both are alike adapted for the respective functions they have to perform in life; and to attempt to impose woman's work upon man would be quite as absurd as to attempt to impose man's work upon woman.
Men are sometimes womanlike, and women are sometimes manlike; but these are only exceptions which prove the rule.
Although man's qualities belong more to the head, and woman's more to the heart--yet it is not less necessary that man's heart should be cultivated as well as his head, and woman's head cultivated as well as her heart.
A heartless man is as much out-of-keeping in civilized society as a stupid and unintelligent woman.
The cultivation of all parts of the moral and intellectual nature is requisite to form the man or woman of healthy and well-balanced character.
Without sympathy or consideration for others, man were a poor, stunted, sordid, selfish being; and without cultivated intelligence, the most beautiful woman were little better than a well-dressed doll.
It used to be a favourite notion about woman, that her weakness and dependency upon others constituted her principal claim to admiration.
"If we were to form an image of dignity in a man," said Sir Richard Steele, "we should give him wisdom and valour, as being essential to the character of manhood.
In like manner, if you describe a right woman in a laudable sense, she should have gentle softness, tender fear, and all those parts of life which distinguish her from the other sex, with some subordination to it, but an inferiority which makes her lovely."
Thus, her weakness was to be cultivated, rather than her strength; her folly, rather than her wisdom.
She was to be a weak, fearful, tearful, characterless, inferior creature, with just sense enough to understand the soft nothings addressed to her by the "superior" sex.
She was to be educated as an ornamental appanage of man, rather as an independent intelligence--or as a wife, mother, companion, or friend.
Pope, in one of his 'Moral Essays,' asserts that "most women have no characters at all;" and again he says:-- "Ladies, like variegated tulips, show: 'Tis to their changes half their charms we owe, Fine by defect and delicately weak."
This satire characteristically occurs in the poet's 'Epistle to Martha Blount,' the housekeeper who so tyrannically ruled him; and in the same verses he spitefully girds at Lady Mary Wortley Montague, at whose feet he had thrown himself as a lover, and been contemptuously rejected.
But Pope was no judge of women, nor was he even a very wise or tolerant judge of men.
It is still too much the practice to cultivate the weakness of woman rather than her strength, and to render her attractive rather than self-reliant.
Her sensibilities are developed at the expense of her health of body as well as of mind.
She lives, moves, and has her being in the sympathy of others.
She dresses that she may attract, and is burdened with accomplishments that she may be chosen.
Weak, trembling, and dependent, she incurs the risk of becoming a living embodiment of the Italian proverb--"so good that she is good for nothing."
On the other hand, the education of young men too often errs on the side of selfishness.
While the boy is incited to trust mainly to his own efforts in pushing his way in the world, the girl is encouraged to rely almost entirely upon others.
He is educated with too exclusive reference to himself and she is educated with too exclusive reference to him.
He is taught to be self-reliant and self-dependent, while she is taught to be distrustful of herself, dependent, and self-sacrificing in all things.
Thus, the intellect of the one is cultivated at the expense of the affections, and the affections of the other at the expense of the intellect.
It is unquestionable that the highest qualities of woman are displayed in her relationship to others, through the medium of her affections.
She is the nurse whom nature has given to all humankind.
She takes charge of the helpless, and nourishes and cherishes those we love.
She is the presiding genius of the fireside, where she creates an atmosphere of serenity and contentment suitable for the nurture and growth of character in its best forms.
She is by her very constitution compassionate, gentle, patient, and self-denying.
Loving, hopeful, trustful, her eye sheds brightness everywhere.
It shines upon coldness and warms it, upon suffering and relieves it, upon sorrow and cheers it:-- "Her silver flow Of subtle-paced counsel in distress, Right to the heart and brain, though undescried, Winning its way with extreme gentleness Through all the outworks of suspicion's pride."
Woman has been styled "the angel of the unfortunate."
She is ready to help the weak, to raise the fallen, to comfort the suffering.
It was characteristic of woman, that she should have been the first to build and endow an hospital.
It has been said that wherever a human being is in suffering, his sighs call a woman to his side.
When Mungo Park, lonely, friendless, and famished, after being driven forth from an African village by the men, was preparing to spend the night under a tree, exposed to the rain and the wild beasts which there abounded, a poor negro woman, returning from the labours of the field, took compassion upon him, conducted him into her hut, and there gave him food, succour, and shelter.
[201] But while the most characteristic qualities of woman are displayed through her sympathies and affections, it is also necessary for her own happiness, as a self-dependent being, to develope and strengthen her character, by due self-culture, self-reliance, and self-control.
It is not desirable, even were it possible, to close the beautiful avenues of the heart.
Self-reliance of the best kind does not involve any limitation in the range of human sympathy.
But the happiness of woman, as of man, depends in a great measure upon her individual completeness of character.
And that self-dependence which springs from the due cultivation of the intellectual powers, conjoined with a proper discipline of the heart and conscience, will enable her to be more useful in life as well as happy; to dispense blessings intelligently as well as to enjoy them; and most of all those which spring from mutual dependence and social sympathy.
To maintain a high standard of purity in society, the culture of both sexes must be in harmony, and keep equal pace.
A pure womanhood must be accompanied by a pure manhood.
The same moral law applies alike to both.
It would be loosening the foundations of virtue, to countenance the notion that because of a difference in sex, man were at liberty to set morality at defiance, and to do that with impunity, which, if done by a woman, would stain her character for life.
To maintain a pure and virtuous condition of society, therefore, man as well as woman must be pure and virtuous; both alike shunning all acts impinging on the heart, character, and conscience--shunning them as poison, which, once imbibed, can never be entirely thrown out again, but mentally embitters, to a greater or less extent, the happiness of after-life.
And here we would venture to touch upon a delicate topic.
Though it is one of universal and engrossing human interest, the moralist avoids it, the educator shuns it, and parents taboo it.
It is almost considered indelicate to refer to Love as between the sexes; and young persons are left to gather their only notions of it from the impossible love-stories that fill the shelves of circulating libraries.
This strong and absorbing feeling, this BESOIN D'AIMER--which nature has for wise purposes made so strong in woman that it colours her whole life and history, though it may form but an episode in the life of man--is usually left to follow its own inclinations, and to grow up for the most part unchecked, without any guidance or direction whatever.
Although nature spurns all formal rules and directions in affairs of love, it might at all events be possible to implant in young minds such views of Character as should enable them to discriminate between the true and the false, and to accustom them to hold in esteem those qualities of moral purity and integrity, without which life is but a scene of folly and misery.
It may not be possible to teach young people to love wisely, but they may at least be guarded by parental advice against the frivolous and despicable passions which so often usurp its name.
"Love," it has been said, "in the common acceptation of the term, is folly; but love, in its purity, its loftiness, its unselfishness, is not only a consequence, but a proof, of our moral excellence.
The sensibility to moral beauty, the forgetfulness of self in the admiration engendered by it, all prove its claim to a high moral influence.
It is the triumph of the unselfish over the selfish part of our nature."
It is by means of this divine passion that the world is kept ever fresh and young.
It is the perpetual melody of humanity.
It sheds an effulgence upon youth, and throws a halo round age.
It glorifies the present by the light it casts backward, and it lightens the future by the beams it casts forward.
The love which is the outcome of esteem and admiration, has an elevating and purifying effect on the character.
It tends to emancipate one from the slavery of self.
It is altogether unsordid; itself is its only price.
It inspires gentleness, sympathy, mutual faith, and confidence.
True love also in a measure elevates the intellect.
"All love renders wise in a degree," says the poet Browning, and the most gifted minds have been the sincerest lovers.
Great souls make all affections great; they elevate and consecrate all true delights.
The sentiment even brings to light qualities before lying dormant and unsuspected.
It elevates the aspirations, expands the soul, and stimulates the mental powers.
One of the finest compliments ever paid to a woman was that of Steele, when he said of Lady Elizabeth Hastings, "that to have loved her was a liberal education."
Viewed in this light, woman is an educator in the highest sense, because, above all other educators, she educates humanly and lovingly.
It has been said that no man and no woman can be regarded as complete in their experience of life, until they have been subdued into union with the world through their affections.
As woman is not woman until she has known love, neither is man man.
Both are requisite to each other's completeness.
Plato entertained the idea that lovers each sought a likeness in the other, and that love was only the divorced half of the original human being entering into union with its counterpart.
But philosophy would here seem to be at fault, for affection quite as often springs from unlikeness as from likeness in its object.
The true union must needs be one of mind as well as of heart, and based on mutual esteem as well as mutual affection.
"No true and enduring love," says Fichte, "can exist without esteem; every other draws regret after it, and is unworthy of any noble human soul."
One cannot really love the bad, but always something that we esteem and respect as well as admire.
In short, true union must rest on qualities of character, which rule in domestic as in public life.
But there is something far more than mere respect and esteem in the union between man and wife.
The feeling on which it rests is far deeper and tenderer--such, indeed, as never exists between men or between women.
"In matters of affection," says Nathaniel Hawthorne, "there is always an impassable gulf between man and man.
They can never quite grasp each other's hands, and therefore man never derives any intimate help, any heart-sustenance, from his brother man, but from woman--his mother, his sister, or his wife."
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