Honore de Balzac - "REPERTORY OF THE COMEDIE HUMAINE, PART I, A K"

Arthur B. Reeve - "The Treasure Train"

Clarence B Kelland - "Youth Challenges"

Theodore Dreiser - "Sister Carrie"

Woman in the Ninteenth Century

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




Now pass to the countries where marriage is between one and one. I
will not speak of the Pagan nations, but come to those which own the
Christian rule. We all know what that enjoins; there is a standard to
appeal to.

See, now, not the mass of the people, for we all know that it is a
proverb and a bitter jest to speak of the "down-trodden million." We
know that, down to our own time, a principle never had so fair a
chance to pervade the mass of the people, but that we must solicit its
illustration from select examples.

Take the Paladin, take the Poet. Did _they_ believe purity more
impossible to Man than to Woman? Did they wish Woman to believe that
Man was less amenable to higher motives,--that pure aspirations would
not guard him against bad passions,--that honorable employments and
temperate habits would not keep him free from slavery to the body? O
no! Love was to them a part of heaven, and they could not even wish to
receive its happiness, unless assured of being worthy of it. Its
highest happiness to them was that it made them wish to be worthy.
They courted probation. They wished not the title of knight till the
banner had been upheld in the heats of battle, amid the rout of
cowards.

I ask of you, young girls--I do not mean _you_ whose heart is
that of an old coxcomb, though your looks have not yet lost their
sunny tinge. Not of you whose whole character is tainted with vanity,
inherited or taught, who have early learned the love of coquettish
excitement, and whose eyes rove restlessly in search of a "conquest"
or a "beau;" you who are ashamed _not_ to be seen by others the
mark of the most contemptuous flattery or injurious desire. To such I
do not speak. But to thee, maiden, who, if not so fair, art yet of
that unpolluted nature which Milton saw when he dreamed of Comus and
the Paradise. Thou, child of an unprofaned wedlock, brought up amid
the teachings of the woods and fields, kept fancy-free by useful
employment and a free flight into the heaven of thought, loving to
please only those whom thou wouldst not be ashamed to love; I ask of
thee, whose cheek has not forgotten its blush nor thy heart its
lark-like hopes, if he whom thou mayest hope the Father will send
thee, as the companion of life's toils and joys, is not to thy thought
pure? Is not manliness to thy thought purity, not lawlessness? Can his
lips speak falsely? Can he do, in secret, what he could not avow to
the mother that bore him? O say, dost thou not look for a heart free,
open as thine own, all whose thoughts may be avowed, incapable of
wronging the innocent, or still further degrading the fallen--a man,
in short, in whom brute nature is entirely subject to the impulses of
his better self?

Yes! it was thus that thou didst hope; for I have many, many times
seen the image of a future life, of a destined spouse, painted on the
tablets of a virgin heart.

It might be that she was not true to these hopes. She was taken into
what is called "the world," froth and scum as it mostly is on the
social caldron. There, she saw fair Woman carried in the waltz close
to the heart of a being who appeared to her a Satyr. Being warned by a
male friend that he was in fact of that class, and not fit for such
familiar nearness to a chaste being, the advised replied that "women
should know nothing about such things." She saw one fairer given in
wedlock to a man of the same class. "Papa and mamma said that 'all men
were faulty at some time in their lives; they had a great many
temptations.' Frederick would be so happy at home; he would not want
to do wrong." She turned to the married women; they, O tenfold horror!
laughed at her supposing "men were like women." Sometimes, I say, she
was not true, and either sadly accommodated herself to "Woman's lot,"
or acquired a taste for satyr-society, like some of the Nymphs, and
all the Bacchanals of old. But to those who could not and would not
accept a mess of pottage, or a Circe cup, in lieu of their birthright,
and to these others who have yet their choice to make, I say, Courage!
I have some words of cheer for you. A man, himself of unbroken purity,
reported to me the words of a foreign artist, that "the world would
never be better till men subjected themselves to the same laws they
had imposed on women;" that artist, he added, was true to the thought.
The same was true of Canova, the same of Beethoven. "Like each other
demi-god, they kept themselves free from stain;" and Michael Angelo,
looking over here from the loneliness of his century, might meet some
eyes that need not shun his glance.

In private life, I am assured by men who are not so sustained and
occupied by the worship of pure beauty, that a similar consecration is
possible, is practised; that many men feel that no temptation can be
too strong for the will of man, if he invokes the aid of the Spirit
instead of seeking extenuation from the brute alliances of his nature.
In short, what the child fancies is really true, though almost the
whole world declares it a lie. Man is a child of God; and if he seeks
His guidance to keep the heart with diligence, it will be so given
that all the issues of life may be pure. Life will then be a temple.

The temple round
Spread green the pleasant ground;
The fair colonnade
Be of pure marble pillars made;
Strong to sustain the roof,
Time and tempest proof;
Yet, amidst which, the lightest breeze
Can play as it please;
The audience hall
Be free to all
Who revere
The power worshipped here,
Sole guide of youth,
Unswerving Truth.
In the inmost shrine
Stands the image divine,
Only seen
By those whose deeds have worthy been--
Priestlike clean.
Those, who initiated are,
Declare,
As the hours
Usher in varying hopes and powers;
It changes its face,
It changes its age,
Now a young, beaming grace,
Now Nestorian sage;
But, to the pure in heart,
This shape of primal art
In age is fair,
In youth seems wise,
Beyond compare,
Above surprise;
What it teaches native seems,
Its new lore our ancient dreams;
Incense rises from the ground;
Music flows around;
Firm rest the feet below, clear gaze the eyes above,
When Truth, to point the way through life, assumes the wand of Love;
But, if she cast aside the robe of green,
Winter's silver sheen,
White, pure as light,
Makes gentle shroud as worthy weed as bridal robe had been.

[Footnote: As described by the historians:--
"The temple of Juno is like what the character of Woman should be.
Columns! graceful decorums, attractive yet sheltering.
Porch! noble, inviting aspect of the life.
Kaos! receives the worshippers. See here the statue of the Divinity.
Ophistodpmos! Sanctuary where the most precious possessions were kept
safe from the hand of the spoiler and the eye of the world."]


We are now in a transition state, and but few steps have yet been
taken. From polygamy, Europe passed to the marriage _de convenance_.
This was scarcely an improvement An attempt was then made to substitute
genuine marriage (the mutual choice of souls inducing a permanent union),
as yet baffled on every side by the haste, the ignorance, or the impurity
of Man.

Where Man assumes a high principle to which he is not yet ripened, it
will happen, for a long time, that the few will be nobler than before;
the many, worse. Thus now. In the country of Sidney and Milton, the
metropolis is a den of wickedness, and a sty of sensuality; in the
country of Lady Russell, the custom of English peeresses, of selling
their daughters to the highest bidder, is made the theme and jest of
fashionable novels by unthinking children who would stare at the idea
of sending them to a Turkish slave-dealer, though the circumstances of
the bargain are there less degrading, as the will and thoughts of the
person sold are not so degraded by it, and it is not done in defiance
of an acknowledged law of right in the land and the age.

I must here add that I do not believe there ever was put upon record
more depravation of Man, and more despicable frivolity of thought and
aim in Woman; than in the novels which purport to give the picture of
English fashionable life, which are read with such favor in our
drawing-rooms, and give the tone to the manners of some circles.
Compared with the cold, hard-hearted folly there described, crime is
hopeful; for it, at least, shows some power remaining in the mental
constitution.

To return:--Attention has been awakened among men to the stains of
celibacy, and the profanations of marriage. They begin to write about
it and lecture about it. It is the tendency now to endeavor to help
the erring by showing them the physical law. This is wise and
excellent; but forget not the better half. Cold bathing and exercise
will not suffice to keep a life pure, without an inward baptism, and
noble, exhilarating employment for the thoughts and the passions.
Early marriages are desirable, but if (and the world is now so out of
joint that there are a hundred thousand chances to one against it) a
man does not early, or at all, find the person to whom he can be
united in the marriage of souls, will you give him in the marriage
_de convenance_? or, if not married, can you find no way for him
to lead a virtuous and happy life? Think of it well, ye who think
yourselves better than pagans, for many of _them_ knew this sure
way. [Footnote: The Persian sacred books, the Desatir, describe the
great and holy prince Ky Khosrou, as being "an angel, and the son of
an angel," one to whom the Supreme says, "Thou art not absent from
before me for one twinkling of an eye. I am never out of thy heart.
And I am contained in nothing but in thy heart, and in a heart like
thy heart. And I am nearer unto thee than thou art to thyself." This
prince had in his Golden Seraglio three ladies of surpassing beauty,
and all four, in this royal monastery, passed their lives, and left
the world as virgins.

The Persian people had no scepticism when the history of such a mind
was narrated.]

To you, women of America, it is more especially my business to address
myself on this subject, and my advice may be classed under three
heads:

Clear your souls from the taint of vanity.

Do not rejoice in conquests, either that your power to allure may be
seen by other women, or for the pleasure of rousing passionate
feelings that gratify your love of excitement.

It must happen, no doubt, that frank and generous women will excite
love they do not reciprocate, but, in nine cases out of ten, the woman
has, half consciously, done much to excite. In this case, she shall
not be held guiltless, either as to the unhappiness or injury of the
lover. Pure love, inspired by a worthy object, must ennoble and bless,
whether mutual or not; but that which is excited by coquettish
attraction of any grade of refinement, must cause bitterness and
doubt, as to the reality of human goodness, so soon as the flush of
passion is over. And, that you may avoid all taste for these false
pleasures,

"Steep the soul
In one pure love, and it will lost thee long."


The love of truth, the love of excellence, whether you clothe them in
the person of a special object or not, will have power to save you
from following Duessa, and lead you in the green glades where Una's
feet have trod.

It was on this one subject that a venerable champion of good, the last
representative of the spirit which sanctified the Revolution, and gave
our country such a sunlight of hope in the eyes of the nations, the
same who lately, in Boston, offered anew to the young men the pledge
taken by the young men of his day, offered, also, his counsel, on
being addressed by the principal of a girl's school, thus:--


REPLY OF MR. ADAMS.

Mr. Adams was so deeply affected by the address of Miss Foster, as to
be for some time inaudible. When heard, he spoke as follows:

"This is the first instance in which a lady has thus addressed me
personally; and I trust that all the ladies present will be able
sufficiently to enter into my feelings to know that I am more affected
by this honor than by any other I could hare received,

"You have been pleased, madam, to allude to the character of my
father, and the history of my family, and their services to the
country. It is indeed true that, from the existence of the republic as
an independent nation, my father and myself have been in the public
service of the country, almost without interruption. I came into the
world, as a person having personal responsibilities, with the
Declaration of Independence, which constituted us a nation. I was a
child at that time, and had then perhaps the greatest of blessings
that can be bestowed on man--a mother who was anxious and capable to
form her children to be what they ought to be. From that mother I
derived whatever instruction--religious especially and moral--has
pervaded a long life; I will not say perfectly, and as it ought to be;
but I will say, because it is justice only to the memory of her whom I
revere, that if, in the course of my life, there has been any
imperfection, or deviation from what she taught me, the fault is mine,
and not hers.

"With such a mother, and such other relations with the sex, of sister,
wife, and daughter, it has been the perpetual instruction of my life
to love and revere the female sex. And in order to carry that
sentiment of love and reverence to its highest degree of perfection, I
know of nothing that exists in human society better adapted to produce
that result, than institutions of the character that I have now the
honor to address.

"I have been taught, as I have said, through the course of my life, to
love and to revere the female sex; but I have been taught, also--and
that lesson has perhaps impressed itself on my mind even more
strongly, it may be, than the other--I have been taught not to flatter
them. It is not unusual, in the intercourse of Man with the other
sex--and especially for young men--to think that the way to win the
hearts of ladies is by flattery. To love and to revere the sex, is
what I think the duty of Man; _but not to flatter them;_ and this
I would say to the young ladies here--and if they, and others present,
will allow me, with all the authority which nearly four score years
may have with those who have not yet attained one score--I would say
to them what I have no doubt they say to themselves, and are taught
here, not to take the flattery of men as proof of perfection.

"I am now, however, I fear, assuming too much of a character that does
not exactly belong to me. I therefore conclude, by assuring you,
madam, that your reception of me has affected me, as you perceive,
more than I can express in words; and that I shall offer my best
prayers, till my latest hour, to the Creator of us all, that this
institution especially, and all others of a similar kind, designed to
form the female mind to wisdom and virtue, may prosper to the end of
time."

It will be interesting to add here the character of Mr. Adams' mother,
as drawn by her husband, the first John Adams, in a family letter
[Footnote: Journal and Correspondence of Miss Adams, vol. i., p. 246.]
written just before his death.

"I have reserved for the last the life of Lady Russell. This I have
not yet read, because I read it more than forty years ago. On this
hangs a tale which you ought to know and communicate it to your
children. I bought the Life and Letters of Lady Russell in the year
1775, and sent it to your grandmother, with an express intent and
desire that she should consider it a mirror in which to contemplate
herself; for, at that time, I thought it extremely probable, from the
daring and dangerous career I was determined to run, that she would
one day find herself in the situation of Lady Russell, her husband
without a head. This lady was more beautiful than Lady Russell, had a
brighter genius, more information, a more refined taste, and, at
least, her equal in the virtues of the heart; equal fortitude and
firmness of character, equal resignation to the will of Heaven, equal
in all the virtues and graces of the Christian life. Like Lady
Russell, she never, by word or look, discouraged me from running all
hazards for the salvation of my country's liberties; she was willing
to share with me, and that her children should share with us both, in
all the dangerous consequences we had to hazard."

Will a woman who loves flattery or an aimless excitement, who wastes
the flower of her mind on transitory sentiments, ever be loved with a
love like that, when fifty years' trial have entitled to the
privileges of "the golden marriage?"

Such was the love of the iron-handed warrior for her, not his
hand-maid, but his help-meet:

"Whom God loves, to him gives he such a wife."

I find the whole of what I want in this relation, in the two epithets
by which Milton makes Adam address _his_ wife.

In the intercourse of every day he begins:

"Daughter of God and man, _accomplished_ Eve."
[Footnote: See Appendix H.]


In a moment of stronger feeling,

"Daughter of God and man, IMMORTAL Eve."


What majesty in the cadence of the line; what dignity, what reverence
in the attitude both of giver and receiver!

The woman who permits, in her life, the alloy of vanity; the woman who
lives upon flattery, coarse or fine, shall never be thus addressed,
She is _not_ immortal so far as her will is concerned, and every
woman who does so creates miasma, whose spread is indefinite. The hand
which casts into the waters of life a stone of offence knows not how
far the circles thus caused may spread their agitations.

A little while since I was at one of the most fashionable places of
public resort. I saw there many women, dressed without regard to the
season or the demands of the place, in apery, or, as it looked, in
mockery, of European fashions. I saw their eyes restlessly courting
attention. I saw the way in which it was paid; the style of devotion,
almost an open sneer, which it pleased those ladies to receive from
men whose expression marked their own low position in the moral and
intellectual world. Those women went to their pillows with their heads
full of folly, their hearts of jealousy, or gratified vanity; those
men, with the low opinion they already entertained of Woman confirmed.
These were American _ladies;_ that is, they were of that class
who have wealth and leisure to make full use of the day, and confer
benefits on others. They were of that class whom the possession of
external advantages makes of pernicious example to many, if these
advantages be misused.

Soon after, I met a circle of women, stamped by society as among the
most degraded of their sex. "How," it was asked of them, "did you come
here?" for by the society that I saw in the former place they were
shut up in a prison. The causes were not difficult to trace: love of
dress, love of flattery, love of excitement. They had not dresses like
the other ladies, so they stole them; they could not pay for flattery
by distinctions, and the dower of a worldly marriage, so they paid by
the profanation of their persons. In excitement, more and more madly
sought from day to day, they drowned the voice of conscience.

Now I ask you, my sisters, if the women at the fashionable house be
not answerable for those women being in the prison?

As to position in the world of souls, we may suppose the women of the
prison stood fairest, both because they had misused less light, and
because loneliness and sorrow had brought some of them to feel the
need of better life, nearer truth and good. This was no merit in them,
being an effect of circumstance, but it was hopeful. But you, my
friends (and some of you I have already met), consecrate yourselves
without waiting for reproof, in free love and unbroken energy, to win
and to diffuse a better life. Offer beauty, talents, riches, on the
altar; thus shall you keep spotless your own hearts, and be visibly or
invisibly the angels to others.

I would urge upon those women who have not yet considered this
subject, to do so. Do not forget the unfortunates who dare not cross
your guarded way. If it do not suit you to act with those who have
organized measures of reform, then hold not yourself excused from
acting in private. Seek out these degraded women, give them tender
sympathy, counsel, employment. Take the place of mothers, such as
might have saved them originally.

If you can do little for those already under the ban of the
world,--and the best-considered efforts have often failed, from a want
of strength in those unhappy ones to bear up against the sting of
shame and the prejudices of the world, which makes them seek oblivion
again in their old excitements,--you will at least leave a sense of
love and justice in their hearts, that will prevent their becoming
utterly embittered and corrupt. And you may learn the means of
prevention for those yet uninjured. These will be found in a diffusion
of mental culture, simple tastes, best taught by your example, a
genuine self-respect, and, above all, what the influence of Man tends
to hide from Woman, the love and fear of a divine, in preference to a
human tribunal.

But suppose you save many who would have lost their bodily innocence
(for as to mental, the loss of that is incalculably more general),
through mere vanity and folly; there still remain many, the prey and
spoil of the brute passions of Man; for the stories frequent in our
newspapers outshame antiquity, and vie with the horrors of war.

As to this, it must be considered that, as the vanity and proneness to
seduction of the imprisoned women represented a general degradation in
their sex; so do these acts a still more general and worse in the
male. Where so many are weak, it is natural there should be many lost;
where legislators admit that ten thousand prostitutes are a fair
proportion to one city, and husbands tell their wives that it is folly
to expect chastity from men, it is inevitable that there should be
many monsters of vice.

I must in this place mention, with respect and gratitude, the conduct
of Mrs. Child in the case of Amelia Norman. The action and speech of
this lady was of straightforward nobleness, undeterred by custom or
cavil from duty toward an injured sister. She showed the case and the
arguments the counsel against the prisoner had the assurance to use in
their true light to the public. She put the case on the only ground of
religion and equity. She was successful in arresting the attention of
many who had before shrugged their shoulders, and let sin pass as
necessarily a part of the company of men. They begin to ask whether
virtue is not possible, perhaps necessary, to Man as well as to Woman.
They begin to fear that the perdition of a woman must involve that of
a man. This is a crisis. The results of this case will be important.

In this connection I must mention Eugene Sue, the French novelist,
several of whose works have been lately translated among us, as having
the true spirit of reform as to women. Like every other French writer,
he is still tainted with the transmissions of the old _regime_.
Still, falsehood may be permitted for the sake of advancing truth,
evil as the way to good. Even George Sand, who would trample on every
graceful decorum, and every human law, for the sake of a sincere life,
does not see that she violates it by making her heroines able to tell
falsehoods in a good cause. These French writers need ever to be
confronted by the clear perception of the English and German mind,
that the only good man, consequently the only good reformer, is he

"Who bases good on good alone, and owes
To virtue every triumph that he knows."


Still, Sue has the heart of a reformer, and especially towards women;
he sees what they need, and what causes are injuring them. From the
histories of Fleur de Marie and La Louve, from the lovely and
independent character of Rigolette, from the distortion given to
Matilda's mind, by the present views of marriage, and from the truly
noble and immortal character of the "hump-backed Sempstress" in the
"Wandering Jew," may be gathered much that shall elucidate doubt and
direct inquiry on this subject. In reform, as in philosophy, the
French are the interpreters to the civilized world. Their own
attainments are not great, but they make clear the post, and break
down barriers to the future.

Observe that the good man of Sue is as pure as Sir Charles Grandison.

Apropos to Sir Charles. Women are accustomed to be told by men that
the reform is to come _from them_. "You," say the men, "must
frown upon vice; you must decline the attentions of the corrupt; you
must not submit to the will of your husband when it seems to you
unworthy, but give the laws in marriage, and redeem it from its
present sensual and mental pollutions."

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