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Page 72
Meanwhile, these exaggerated precautions in the education of one sex
have been met by equally fatal negligence in the education of the other;
and while to girls have been denied the very thoughts of love,--even in
its noblest and purest form,--the most effeminate and corrupt
productions of the heathen writers have been unhesitatingly laid open to
boys; so that the two sexes, on whose respective notions of the passion
depends the ennobling or the degrading of their race, meet on these
terms:--the men know nothing of love but what they have imbibed from an
impure and polluted source; the women, nothing at all, or nothing but
what they have clandestinely gathered from sources almost equally
corrupt. The deterioration of any feeling must follow from such
injudicious training, more especially a feeling so susceptible as love
of assuming such differing aspects.
Let no sober-minded person be startled at the deductions hence drawn,
that it is foolish to banish all thoughts of love from the minds of the
young. Since it is certain that girls will think, though they may not
read or speak, of love; and that no early care can preserve them from
being exposed, at a later period, to its temptations, might it not be
well to use here the directing, not the repressing power? Since women
will love, might it not be as well to teach them to love wisely? Where
is the wisdom of letting the combatant go unarmed into the field, in
order to spare him the prospect of a combat? Are not women made to love,
and to be loved: and does not their future destiny too often depend upon
this passion? And yet the conventual prejudice which banishes its name
subsists still.
"Mothers forget, in presence of their children, all the dangers with
which this prejudice has surrounded themselves; the illusions which
arise from that ignorance, and the weakness which springs from those
illusions. To open the minds of the young to the nature of true love, is
to arm them against the frivolous passions which usurp its name, for in
exalting the faculties of the soul, we annihilate, in a great degree,
the delusions of the senses."[110]
Examine the first choice of a young girl. Of all the qualities which
please her in a lover, there is, perhaps, not one which is valuable in a
husband. Is not this the most complete condemnation of all our systems
of education? From the fear of too much agitating the heart, we hide
from women all that is worthy of love, all the depth and dignity of that
passion when felt for a worthy object;--their eye is captivated, the
exterior pleases, the heart and mind are not known, and, after six
months union, they are surprised to find the beau ideal metamorphosed
into a fool or a coxcomb. This is the issue of what are ordinarily
called love-matches, because they are considered as such. "Cupid is
indeed often blamed for deeds in which he has no share." In the opinion
of the wise, the mischief is occasioned by the action of vivid
imaginations upon minds unprepared by previous reflection on the
subject; that is, by the entire banishment of all thoughts of love from
education. We should endeavour, then, to engrave on the soul a model of
virtue and excellence, and teach young women to regulate their
affections by an approximation to this model; the result would not be an
increased facility in giving the affections, but a greater difficulty in
so doing; for women, whose blindness and ignorance now make them the
victims of fancied perfections, would be able to make a clear-sighted
appreciation of all that is excellent, and have an invincible repugnance
to an union not founded upon that basis. Love, in the common acceptation
of the term, is a folly,--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 be a high
moral influence; it is the triumph of the unselfish over the selfish
part of our nature.[111]
What is meant by educating young women to love wisely is simply this,
that they be taught to distinguish true love from the false spirit which
usurps its name and garb; that they be taught to abstract from it the
worldliness, vanity, and folly, with which it has been mixed up. They
should be taught that it is not to be the amusement of an idle hour; the
indulgence of a capricious and greedy vanity; the ladder, by the
assistance of which they may climb a few steps higher in the grades of
society; in short, that except it owe its origin to the noble qualities
of heart and mind, it is nothing but a contemptible weakness, to be
pitied perhaps, but not to be indulged or admired.
When the might influence of this passion is considered, the important
relations and weighty responsibilities to which it gives rise, we have
reason to be astonished at the levity with which the subject is treated
by the world at large, and the unconsciousness and indifference with
which those responsibilities are assumed. It is like the madman who
flings about firebrands and calls it sport. The remedy for this evil
must begin with the sex who have in their hands that powerful influence,
the liberty of rejection. Let them not complain that liberty of choice
is not theirs; it would only increase their responsibilities without
adding to their happiness or to their usefulness. The liberty which they
do possess is amply sufficient to insure for them the power of being
benefactors of mankind. As soon as the noble and elevated of our sex
shall refuse to unite on any but moral and intellectual grounds with the
other, so soon will a mighty regeneration begin to be effected: and this
end will, perhaps, be better served by the simple liberty of rejection
than by liberty of choice. Rejection is never inflicted without pain; it
is never received without humiliation, however unfounded, (for simply to
want the power of pleasing can be no disgrace;) but in the existence of
this conventional feeling we find the source of a deep influence. If
women would, as by one common league and covenant, agree to use this
powerful engine in defence of morals, what a change might they not
effect in the tone of society! Is it not a subject that ought to crimson
every woman's cheek with shame, that the want of moral qualifications is
generally the very last cause of rejection? If the worldly find the
wealth, and the intellectual the intelligence, which they seek in a
companion, there are few who will not shut their eyes in wilful and
convenient blindness to the want of such qualifications. It is a fatal
error which has bound up the cause of affection so intimately with
worldly considerations; and it is a growing evil. The increasing demands
of luxury in a highly civilized community operate most injuriously on
the cause of disinterested affections, and particularly so in the case
of women, who are generally precluded from maintaining or advancing
their place in society by any other schemes than matrimonial ones. I
might say something here on the cruelty of that conventional prejudice
which shackles the independence of women, by attaching the loss of
caste to almost all, nay, all, of the very few sources of pecuniary
emolument open to them. It requires great strength of principle to
disregard this prejudice; and while urged by duty to inveigh against
mercenary unions, I feel some compunction at the thoughts of the
numerous class who are in a manner forced by this prejudice into forming
them. But there are too many who have no such excuse, and to them the
remaining observations are addressed. The sacred nature of the conjugal
relation is entirely merged in the worldly aspect of it. That union
sacred, indissoluble, fraught with all that earth has to bestow of
happiness or misery, is entered upon much of the plan and principle of a
partnership account in mercantile affairs--each bringing his or her
quantum of worldly possessions--and often with even less inquiry as to
moral qualities than persons so situated would make; God's ordinances
are not to be so mocked, and such violations of his laws are severely
visited upon offenders against them. It would be laughable, if it were
not too melancholy, to see beings bound by the holiest ties, who ought
to be the sharers in the most sacred duties--united, perhaps, but in one
aim, and _that_ to secure from a world which cares not for them, a few
atoms more of external observance and attention: to this noble aim
sacrificing their own ease and comfort, and the future prospects of
those dependent on them. If half the sacrifice thus made to the
imperious demands of fashion, (and which is received with the
indifference it deserves,) were exerted in a good cause, what benefits
might it not produce?
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