Unknown - "The World English Bible (WEB): 2 Timothy"

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Sir Walter Scott - "Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott"

Thomas Carlyle - "History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 9"

Woman in the Ninteenth Century

M >> Margaret Fuller Ossoli >> Woman in the Ninteenth Century




"Lead me; mine the glorious fate,
To o'erturn the Phrygian state."


After the sublime flow of lyric heroism, she suddenly sinks back into
the tenderer feeling of her dreadful fate.

"O my country, where these eyes
Opened on Pelasgic skies!
O ye virgins, once my pride,
In Mycenae who abide!

CHORUS.

Why of Perseus, name the town,
Which Cyclopean ramparts crown?

IPHIGENIA

Me you reared a beam of light,
Freely now I sink in night."


_Freely_; as the messenger afterwards recounts it.

* * * * *

"Imperial Agamemnon, when he saw
His daughter, as a victim to the grave,
Advancing, groaned, and, bursting into tears,
Turned from the sight his head, before his eyes,
Holding his robe. The virgin near him stood,
And thus addressed him: 'Father, I to thee
Am present; for my country, and for all
The land of Greece, I freely give myself
A victim: to the altar let them lead me,
Since such the oracle. If aught on me
Depends, be happy, and obtain the prize
Of glorious conquest, and revisit safe
Your country. Of the Grecians, for this cause,
Let no one touch me; with intrepid spirit
Silent will I present my neck.' She spoke,
And all that heard revered the noble soul
And virtue of the virgin."


How quickly had the fair bud bloomed up into its perfection! Had she
lived a thousand years, she could not have surpassed this. Goethe's
Iphigenia, the mature Woman, with its myriad delicate traits, never
surpasses, scarcely equals, what we know of her in Euripides.

Can I appreciate this work in a translation? I think so, impossible as
it may seem to one who can enjoy the thousand melodies, and words in
exactly the right place, and cadence of the original. They say you can
see the Apollo Belvidere in a plaster cast, and I cannot doubt it, so
great the benefit conferred on my mind by a transcript thus imperfect.
And so with these translations from the Greek. I can divine the
original through this veil, as I can see the movements of a spirited
horse by those of his coarse grasscloth muffler. Besides, every
translator who feels his subject is inspired, and the divine Aura
informs even his stammering lips.

Iphigenia is more like one of the women Shakspeare loved than the
others; she is a tender virgin, ennobled and strengthened by sentiment
more than intellect; what they call a Woman _par excellence_.

Macaria is more like one of Massinger's women. She advances boldly,
though with the decorum of her sex and nation:

"_Macaria_. Impute not boldness to me that I come
Before you, strangers; this my first request
I urge; for silence and a chaste reserve
Is Woman's genuine praise, and to remain
Quiet within the house. But I come forth,
Hearing thy lamentations, Iolaus;
Though charged with no commission, yet perhaps
I may be useful." * *


Her speech when she offers herself as the victim is reasonable, as one
might speak to-day. She counts the cost all through. Iphigenia is too
timid and delicate to dwell upon the loss of earthly bliss and the due
experience of life, even as much as Jephtha'a daughter did; but
Macaria is explicit, as well befits the daughter of Hercules.

"Should _these_ die, myself
Preserved, of prosperous future could I form
One cheerful hope?
A poor forsaken virgin who would deign
To take in marriage? Who would wish for sons
From one so wretched? Better then to die,
Than bear such undeserved miseries;
One less illustrious this might more beseem.

* * * * *

I have a soul that unreluctantly
Presents itself, and I proclaim aloud
That for my brothers and myself I die.
I am not fond of life, but think I gain
An honorable prize to die with glory."


Still nobler when Iolaus proposes rather that she shall draw lots with
her sisters.

"By _lot_ I will not die, for to such death
No thanks are due, or glory--name it not.
If you accept me, if my offered life
Be grateful to you, willingly I give it
For these; but by constraint I will not die."


Very fine are her parting advice and injunctions to them all:

"Farewell! revered old man, farewell! and teach
These youths in all things to be wise, like thee,
Naught will avail them more."


Macaria has the clear Minerva eye; Antigone's is deeper and more
capable of emotion, but calm; Iphigenia's glistening, gleaming with
angel truth, or dewy as a hidden violet.

I am sorry that Tennyson, who spoke with such fitness of all the
others in his "Dream of fair Women," has not of Iphigenia. Of her
alone he has not made a fit picture, but only of the circumstances of
the sacrifice. He can never have taken to heart this work of
Euripides, yet he was so worthy to feel it. Of Jephtha's daughter he
has spoken as he would of Iphigenia, both in her beautiful song, and
when

"I heard Him, for He spake, and grief became
A solemn scorn of Ills.

It comforts me in this one thought to dwell--
That I subdued me to my father's will;
Because the kiss he gave me, ere I fell,
Sweetens the spirit still.

Moreover it is written, that my race
Hewed Ammon, hip and thigh, from Arroer
Or Arnon unto Minneth. Here her face
Glowed as I looked on her.

She looked her lips; she left me where I stood;
'Glory to God,' she sang, and past afar,
Thridding the sombre boskage of the woods,
Toward the morning-star."


In the "Trojan dames" there are fine touches of nature with regard to
Cassandra. Hecuba shows that mixture of shame and reverence that prose
kindred always do, towards the inspired child, the poet, the elected
sufferer for the race.

When the herald announces that she is chosen to be the mistress of
Agamemnon, Hecuba answers indignant, and betraying the involuntary
pride and faith she felt in this daughter.

"The virgin of Apollo, whom the God,
Radiant with golden looks, allowed to live.
In her pure vow of maiden chastity?
_Tal_. With love the raptured virgin smote his heart.
_Hec_. Cast from thee, O my daughter, cast away
Thy sacred wand; rend off the honored wreaths,
The splendid ornaments that grace thy brows."


But the moment Cassandra appears, singing wildly her inspired song,
Hecuba, calls her

"My _frantic_ child."

Yet how graceful she is in her tragic phrenzy, the chorus shows--

"How sweetly at thy house's ills thou smilest,
Chanting what haply thou wilt not show true!"


But if Hecuba dares not trust her highest instinct about her daughter,
still less can the vulgar mind of the herald (a man not without
tenderness of heart, but with no princely, no poetic blood) abide the
wild, prophetic mood which insults his prejudices both as to country
and decorums of the sex. Yet Agamemnon, though not a noble man, is of
large mould, and could admire this strange beauty which excited
distaste in common minds.

"_Tal_. What commands respect, and is held high
As wise, is nothing better than the mean
Of no repute; for this most potent king
Of all the Grecians, the much-honored son
Of Atreus, is enamored with his prize,
This frantic raver. I am a poor man,
Yet would I not receive her to my bed."


Cassandra answers, with a careless disdain,

"This is a busy slave."


With all the lofty decorum of manners among the ancients, how free was
their intercourse, man to man, how full the mutual understanding
between prince and "busy slave!" Not here in adversity only, but in
the pomp of power it was so. Kings were approached with ceremonious
obeisance, but not hedged round with etiquette; they could see and
know their fellows.

The Andromache here is just as lovely as that of the Iliad.

To her child whom they are about to murder, the same that was
frightened at the "glittering plume," she says,

"Dost thou weep,
My son? Hast thou a sense of thy ill fate?
Why dost thou clasp me with thy hands, why hold
My robes, and shelter thee beneath my wings,
Like a young bird? No more my Hector comes,
Returning from the tomb; he grasps no more
His glittering spear, bringing protection to thee."

* * * * *

* * "O, soft embrace,
And to thy mother dear. O, fragrant breath!
In vain I swathed thy infant limbs, in vain
I gave thee nurture at this breast, and tolled,
Wasted with care. _If ever_, now embrace,
Now clasp thy mother; throw thine arms around
My neck, and join thy cheek, thy lips to mine."


As I look up, I meet the eyes of Beatrice Cenci, Beautiful one! these
woes, even, were less than thine, yet thou seemest to understand them
all. Thy clear, melancholy gaze says, they, at least, had known
moments of bliss, and the tender relations of nature had not been
broken and polluted from the very first. Yes! the gradations of woe
are all but infinite: only good can be infinite.

Certainly the Greeks knew more of real home intercourse and more of
Woman than the Americans. It is in vain to tell me of outward
observances. The poets, the sculptors, always tell the truth. In
proportion as a nation is refined, women _must_ have an ascendency.
It is the law of nature.

Beatrice! thou wert not "fond of life," either, more than those
princesses. Thou wert able to cut it down in the full flower of
beauty, as an offering to _the best_ known to thee. Thou wert not
so happy as to die for thy country or thy brethren, but thou wert
worthy of such an occasion.

In the days of chivalry, Woman was habitually viewed more as an ideal;
but I do not know that she inspired a deeper and more home-felt
reverence than Iphigenia in the breast of Achilles, or Macarla in that
of her old guardian, Iolaus.

We may, with satisfaction, add to these notes the words to which Haydn
has adapted his magnificent music in "The Creation."

"In native worth and honor clad, with beauty, courage, strength
adorned, erect to heaven, and tall, he stands, a Man!--the lord and
king of all! The large and arched front sublime of wisdom deep
declares the seat, and in his eyes with brightness shines the soul,
the breath and image of his God. With fondness leans upon his breast
the partner for him formed,--a woman fair, and graceful spouse. Her
softly smiling virgin looks, of flowery spring the mirror, bespeak him
love, and joy and bliss."

Whoever has heard this music must have a mental standard as to what
Man and Woman should be. Such was marriage in Eden when "erect to
heaven _he_ stood;" but since, like other institutions, this must
be not only reformed, but revived, the following lines may be offered
as a picture of something intermediate,--the seed of the future
growth:--




H.

THE SACRED MARRIAGE.

And has another's life as large a scope?
It may give due fulfilment to thy hope,
And every portal to the unknown may ope.

If, near this other life, thy inmost feeling
Trembles with fateful prescience of revealing
The future Deity, time is still concealing;

If thou feel thy whole force drawn more and more
To launch that other bark on seas without a shore;
And no still secret must be kept in store;

If meannesses that dim each temporal deed,
The dull decay that mars the fleshly weed,
And flower of love that seems to fall and leave no seed--

Hide never the full presence from thy sight
Of mutual aims and tasks, ideals bright,
Which feed their roots to-day on all this seeming blight.

Twin stars that mutual circle in the heaven,
Two parts for spiritual concord given,
Twin Sabbaths that inlock the Sacred Seven;

Still looking to the centre for the cause,
Mutual light giving to draw out the powers,
And learning all the other groups by cognizance of one another's laws.

The parent love the wedded love includes;
The one permits the two their mutual moods;
The two each other know, 'mid myriad multitudes;

With child-like intellect discerning love,
And mutual action energising love,
In myriad forms affiliating love.

A world whose seasons bloom from pole to pole,
A force which knows both starting-point and goal,
A Home in Heaven,--the Union in the Soul.

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