Characteristics of Women Part 4

Or turn politicians to vary the excitement--How I hate political women!

ALDA.

Why do you hate them?

MEDON.

Because they are mischievous.

ALDA.

But why are they mischievous?

MEDON.

Why!--why are they mischievous? Nay, ask them, or ask the father of all mischief, who has not a more efficient instrument to further his designs in this world, than a woman run mad with politics. The number of political intriguing women of this time, whose boudoirs and drawing-rooms are the _foyers_ of party-spirit, is another trait of resemblance between the state of society now, and that which existed at Paris before the revolution.

ALDA.

And do you think, like some interesting young lady in Miss Edgeworth's tales, that "women have nothing to do with politics?" Do you mean to say that women are not capable of comprehending the principles of legislation, or of feeling an interest in the government and welfare of their country, or of perceiving and sympathizing in the progress of great events?--That they cannot feel patriotism? Believe me, when we do feel it, our patriotism, like our courage and our love, has a purer source than with you; for a man's patriotism has always some tinge of egotism, while a woman's patriotism is generally a sentiment, and of the n.o.blest kind.

MEDON.

I agree in all this; and all this does not mitigate my horror of political women in general, who are, I repeat it, both mischievous and absurd. If you could but hear the reasoning in these feminine coteries!--but you never talk politics.

ALDA.

Indeed I do, when I can get any one to listen to me; but I prefer listening. As for the evil you complain of, impute it to that imperfect education which at once cultivates and enslaves the intellect, and loads the memory, while it fetters the judgment. Women, however well read in history, never generalize in politics; never argue on any broad or general principle; never reason from a consideration of past events, their causes and consequences. But they are always political through their affections, their prejudices, their personal _liaisons_, their hopes, their fears.

MEDON.

If it were no worse, I could stand it; for that is at least feminine.

ALDA.

But most mischievous. For hence it is that we make such blind partisans, such violent party women, and such wretched politicians. I never heard a woman _talk_ politics, as it is termed, that I could not discern at once the motive, the affection, the secret bias which swayed her opinions and inspired her arguments. If it appeared to the Grecian sage so "difficult for a man not to love himself, nor the things that belong to him, but justice only?"--how much more for woman!

MEDON.

Then you think that a better education, based on truer moral principles, would render women more reasonable politicians, or at least give them some right to meddle with politics?

ALDA.

It would cease in that case to be _meddling_, as you term it, for it would be legitimized. It is easy to sneer at political and mathematical ladies, and quote Lord Byron--but O leave those angry common-places to others!--they do not come well from you. Do not force me to remind you, that women have achieved enough to silence them forever,[4] and how often must that truism be repeated, that it is not a woman's attainments which make her amiable or unamiable, estimable or the contrary, but her qualities? A time is coming, perhaps, when the education of women will be considered, with a view to their future destination as the mothers and nurses of legislators and statesmen, and the cultivation of their powers of reflection and moral feelings supersede the exciting drudgery by which they are now crammed with knowledge and accomplishments.

MEDON.

Well--till that blessed period arrives, I wish you would leave us the province of politics to ourselves. I see here you have treated of a very different cla.s.s of beings, "_women in whom the affections and the moral sentiments predominate_." Are there many such, think you, in the world?

ALDA.

Yes, many such; the development of affection and sentiment is more quiet and un.o.btrusive than that of pa.s.sion and intellect, and less observed; it is more common, too, therefore less remarked; but in women it generally gives the prevailing tone to the character, except where vanity has been made the ruling motive.

MEDON.

Except! I admire your exception! You make in this case the rule the exception. Look round the world.

ALDA.

You are not one of those with whom that common phrase "the world"

signifies the circle, whatever and wherever that may be, which limits our individual experience--as a child considers the visible horizon as the bounds which shut in the mighty universe. Believe me, it is a sorry, vulgar kind of wisdom, if it be wisdom--a shallow and confined philosophy, if it be philosophy--which resolves all human motives and impulses into egotism in one s.e.x, and vanity in the other. Such may be the way of _the world_, as it is called--the result of a very artificial and corrupt state of society, but such is not general nature, nor female nature. Would you see the kindly, self-sacrificing affections developed under their most honest but least poetical guise--displayed without any mixture of vanity, and unchecked in the display by any fear of being thought vain?--you will see it, not among the prosperous, the high-born, the educated, "far, far removed from want, and grief, and fear," but among the poor, the miserable, the perverted--among those habitually exposed to all influences that harden and deprave.

MEDON.

I believe it--nay, I know it; but how should _you_ know it, or anything of the strange places of refuge which truth and nature have found in the two extremes of society?

ALDA.

It is no matter what I have seen or known; and for the two extremes of society, I leave them to the author of Paul Clifford, and that most exquisite painter of living manners, Mrs. Gore. St. Giles's is no more _nature_ than St. James's. I wanted character in its essential truth, not mortified by particular customs, by fas.h.i.+on, by situation. I wished to ill.u.s.trate the manner in which the affections would naturally display themselves in women--whether combined with high intellect, regulated by reflection, and elevated by imagination, or existing with perverted dispositions, or purified by the moral sentiments. I found all these in Shakspeare; his delineations of women, in whom the virtuous and calm affections predominate, and triumph over shame, fear, pride, resentment, vanity, jealousy,--are particularly worthy of consideration, and perfect in their kind, because so quiet in their effect.

MEDON.

Several critics have remarked in general terms on those beautiful pictures of female friends.h.i.+p, and of the generous affection of women for each other, which we find in Shakspeare. Other writers, especially dramatic writers, have found ample food for wit and satiric delineation in the littleness of feminine spite and rivalry, in the mean spirit of compet.i.tion, the petty jealousy of superior charms, the mutual slander and mistrust, the transient leagues of folly or selfishness miscalled friends.h.i.+p--the result of an education which makes vanity the ruling principle, and of a false position in society. Shakspeare, who looked upon women with the spirit of humanity, wisdom, and deep love, has done justice to their natural good tendencies and kindly sympathies. In the friends.h.i.+p of Beatrice and Hero, of Rosalind and Celia; in the description of the girlish attachment of Helena and Hermia, he has represented truth and generous affection rising superior to all the usual sources of female rivalry and jealousy; and with such force and simplicity, and obvious self-conviction, that he absolutely forces the same conviction on us.

ALDA.

Add to these the generous feeling of Viola for her rival Olivia; of Julia for her rival Sylvia; of Helena for Diana; of the old Countess for Helena, in the same play; and even the affection of the wicked queen in Hamlet for the gentle Ophelia, which prove that Shakspeare thought--(and when did he ever think other than the truth?)--that women have by nature "virtues that are merciful," and can be just, tender, and true to their sister women, whatever wits and worldlings, and satirists and fas.h.i.+onable poets, may say or sing of us to the contrary. There is another thing which he has most deeply felt and beautifully represented--the distinction between masculine and feminine _courage_.

A man's courage is often a mere animal quality, and in its most elevated form a point of honor. But a woman's courage is always a virtue, because it is not required of us, it is not one of the means through which we seek admiration and applause; on the contrary, we are courageous through our affections and mental energies, not through our vanity or our strength. A woman's heroism is always the excess of sensibility. Do you remember Lady Fanshawe putting on a sailor's jacket, and his "blue thrum cap," and standing at her husband's side, unknown to him during a sea-fight? There she stood, all bathed in tears, but fixed to that spot.

Her husband's exclamation when he turned and discovered her--"Good G.o.d, that love should make such a change as this!" is applicable to all the acts of courage which we read or hear of in women. This is the courage of Juliet, when, after summing up all the possible consequences of her own act, till she almost maddens herself with terror, she drinks the sleeping potion; and for that pa.s.sive fort.i.tude which is founded in piety and pure strength of affection, such as the heroism of Lady Russel and Gertrude de Wart, he has given us some of the n.o.blest modifications of it in Hermione, in Cordelia, in Imogen, in Katherine of Arragon.

MEDON.

And what do you call the courage of Lady Macbeth?--

My hands are of your color, but I shame To wear a heart so white.

And again,

A little water clears us of this deed, How easy is it then!

If this is not mere masculine indifference to blood and death, mere firmness of nerve, what is it?

ALDA.

Not _that_, at least, which apparently you deem it; you will find, if you have patience to read me to the end, that I have judged Lady Macbeth very differently. Take these frightful pa.s.sages with the context--take the whole situation, and you will see that it is no such thing. A friend of mine truly observed, that if Macbeth had been a ruffian without any qualms of conscience, Lady Macbeth would have been the one to shrink and tremble; but that which quenched _him_ lent her fire. The absolute necessity for self-command, the strength of her reason, and her love for her husband, combine at this critical moment to conquer all fear but the fear of detection, leaving her the full possession of her faculties.

Recollect that the same woman who speaks with such horrible indifference of a little water clearing the blood-stain from her hand, sees in imagination that hand forever reeking, forever polluted: and when reason is no longer awake and paramount over the violated feelings of nature and womanhood, we behold her making unconscious efforts to wash out that "d.a.m.ned spot," and sighing, heart-broken, over that little hand which all the perfumes of Arabia will never sweeten more.

MEDON.