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(titlepage)
By
(printer)
LONDON:
Printed by G. BARCLAY, Castle St. Leicester Sq.
(preface)
which, in treating of a subject like the present, would be either dangerous or impossible.
In this book, therefore, many women will find simply the expression of
what they have themselves, consciously or unconsciously, oftentimes
thought; and the more deeply, perhaps, because it has never come to the
surface in words or writing. Those who do the most, often
talk--sometimes think--the least:: yet thinkers, talkers,
and doers, being in earnest, achieve their appointed end. The thinkers put
wisdom into the mouth of the speakers, and both strive together to animate
and counsel the doers. Thus all work harmoniously together; and verily
"Was never good work wrought,
Without beginning of good
thought."
In the motto which I have chosen for its title-page, lies at once
the purpose and preface of this my book. Had it not been planned and
completed, honestly, carefully, solemnly, even fearfully, with a keen sense
of all it might do, or leave undone; and did not I believe it to be in some
degree a good book, likely to effect some good, I would never have written
or published it. How much good it may do, or how little, is not mine either
to know, to speculate, or to decide.
I have written it, I hope, as humbly as conscientiously; and thus I
leave it.
single women, belonging to those supernumerary ranks, which political economists tell us, are yearly increasing, who most need thinking about.
First, in their early estate, when they have so much in their
possession--youth, bloom, and health giving them that temporary
influence over the other sex which may result, and is meant to result, in a
permanent one. Secondly, when this sovereignty is passing away, the chance
of marriage lessening, or wholly ended, or voluntarily set aside, and the
individual making up her mind to that which, respect for Grandfather Adam
and Grandmother Eve must compel us to admit, is an unnatural condition of
being.
Why this undue proportion of single women should almost always result
from over-civilisation, and whether, since society's advance
is usually indicated by the advance, morally and intellectually, of its
women--this progress, by raising women's ideal standard of the
"holy es-
tate," will not necessarily cause a decline in the very unholy estate which it is most frequently made--are questions too wide to be entered upon here. We have only to deal with facts--with a certain acknowledged state of things, perhaps incapable of remedy, but by no means incapable of amelioration.
But, granted these facts, and leaving to wiser heads the explanation of
them--if indeed there be any--it seems advisable, or at least
allowable, that any woman who has thought a good deal about the matter,
should not fear to express in word--or deed, which is
better,--any conclusions, which out of her own observation and
experience she may have arrived at. And looking around upon the middle
classes, which form the staple stock of the community, it appears to me
that the chief canker at the root of women's lives is the want of
something to do.
Herein I refer, as this chapter must be understood especially to refer,
not to those whom ill or
good fortune--query, is it not often the latter?--has forced to earn their bread; but "to young ladies," who have never been brought up to do anything. Tom, Dick, and Harry, their brothers, has each had it knocked into him from school-days that he is to do something, to be somebody. Counting-house, shop, or college, afford him a clear future on which to concentrate all his energies and aims. He has got the grand pabulum of the human soul--occupation. If any inherent want in his character, any unlucky combination of circumstances, nullifies this, what a poor creature the man becomes!--what a dawdling, moping, sitting-over-the-fire, thumb-twiddling, lazy, ill-tempered animal! And why? "Oh, poor fellow! 'tis because he has got nothing to do!"
Yet this is precisely the condition of women for a third, a half, often
the whole of their existence.
That Providence ordained it so--made men to work, and women to be
idle--is a doctrine that
few will be bold enough to assert openly. Tacitly they do, when they preach up lovely uselessness, fascinating frivolity, delicious helplessness--all those polite impertinences and poetical degradations to which the foolish, lazy, or selfish of our sex are prone to incline an ear, but which any woman of common sense must repudiate as insulting not only her womanhood but her Creator.
Equally blasphemous, and perhaps even more harmful, is the outcry about
"the equality of the sexes;" the frantic attempt to force
women, many of whom are either ignorant of or unequal for their own
duties--into the position and duties of men. A pretty state of matters
would ensue! Who that ever listened for two hours to the verbose confused
inanities of a ladies' committee, would immediately go and give his
vote for a female House of Commons? or who, on the receipt of a
lady's letter of business--I speak of the average--would
henceforth desire to have our
courts of justice stocked with matronly lawyers, and our colleges
thronged by
"Sweet girl-graduates with their golden
hair?"
As for finance, in its various branches--if you pause to consider
the extreme difficulty there always is in balancing Mrs. Smith's
housekeeping-book, or Miss Smith's quarterly allowance, I
think, my dear Paternal Smith, you need not be much afraid lest this loud
acclaim for "women's rights" should ever end in pushing
you from your stools, in counting-house, college, or elsewhere.
No; equality of the sexes is not in the nature of things. Man and woman
were made for, and not like one another. One only "right" we
have to assert in common with mankind--and that is as much in our own
hands as theirs--the right of having something to do.
That both sexes were meant to labour, one "by the sweat of his
brow," the other "in sor-
row to bring forth"--and bring up--"children"--cannot I fancy, be questioned. Nor, when the gradual changes of the civilised world, or some special destiny, chosen or compelled, have prevented that first, highest, and in earlier times almost universal lot, does this accidental fate in any way abrogate the necessity, moral, physical, and mental, for a woman to have occupation in other forms.
But how few parents ever consider this? Tom, Dick, and Harry, aforesaid,
leave school and plunge into life; "the girls" likewise finish
their education, come home, and stay at home. That is enough. Nobody thinks
it needful to waste a care upon them. Bless them, pretty dears, how sweet
they are! papa's nosegay of beauty to adorn his drawing-room.
He delights to give them all they can desire--clothes, amusements,
society; he and mamma together take every domestic care off their hands;
they have abundance of time and nothing to occupy it; plenty of
money, and little use for it; pleasure without end, but not one definite object of interest or employment; flattery and flummery enough, but no solid food whatever to satisfy mind or heart--if they happen to possess either--at the very emptiest and most craving season of both. They have literally nothing whatever to do, except to fall in love; which they accordingly do, the most of them, as fast as ever they can.
"Many think they are in love, when in fact they are only
idle"--is one of the truest sayings of that great wise bore,
Imlac, in Rasselas, and it has been proved by many a
shipwrecked life, of girls especially. This "falling in love"
being usually a mere delusion of fancy, and not the real thing at all, the
object is generally unattainable or unworthy. Papa is displeased, mamma
somewhat shocked and scandalised; it is a "foolish affair," and
no matrimonial results ensue. There only ensues--what?
A long, dreary season, of pain, real or ima-
ginary, yet not the less real because it is imaginary; of anger and mortification, of impotent struggle--against unjust parents, the girl believes, or, if romantically inclined, against cruel destiny. Gradually this mood wears out; she learns to regard "love" as folly, and turns her whole hope and aim to--matrimony! Matrimony in the abstract; not the man, but any man--any person who will snatch her out of the dulness of her life, and give her something really to live for, something to fill up the hopeless blank of idleness into which her days are gradually sinking.
Well, the man may come, or he may not. If the latter melancholy result
occurs, the poor girl passes into her third stage of young-ladyhood,
fritters or mopes away her existence, sullenly bears it, or dashes herself
blindfold against its restrictions; is unhappy, and makes her family
unhappy; perhaps herself cruelly conscious of all this, yet unable to find
the true root of bitter-
ness in her heart: not knowing exactly what she wants, yet aware of a morbid, perpetual want of something? What is it?
Alas! the boys only have had the benefit of that well-known
juvenile apophthegm, that
"Satan finds some mischief still
For idle
hands to do:"
it has never crossed the parents' minds that the rhyme could apply to
the delicate digital extremities of the daughters.
And so their whole energies are devoted to the massacre of old Time.
They prick him to death with crochet and embroidery needles; strum him deaf
with piano and harp playing--not music; cut him up with
morning-visitors, or leave his carcass in ten-minute parcels
at every "friend's" house they can think of. Finally,
they dance him defunct at all sort of unnatural hours; and then, rejoicing
in the excellent excuse, smother him in sleep for a third of the following
day.
Thus he dies, a slow, inoffensive, perfectly natural death; and they will never recognise his murder till, on the confines of this world, or from the unknown shores of the next, the question meets them: "What have you done with Time?"--Time, the only mortal gift bestowed equally on every living soul, and, excepting the soul, the only mortal loss which is totally irretrievable.
Yet this great sin, this irredeemable loss, in many women arises from
pure ignorance. Men are taught as a matter of business to recognise the
value of time, to apportion and employ it: women rarely or never. The
most of them have no definite appreciation of the article as a tangible
divisible commodity at all. They would laugh at a mantua-maker who
cut up a dress-length into trimmings, and then expected to make out
of two yards of silk a full skirt. Yet that the same laws of proportion
should apply to time and its measurements--that you cannot dawdle away
a whole forenoon, and then attempt
to cram into the afternoon the entire business of the day--that every minute's unpunctuality constitutes a debt or a theft (lucky, indeed, if you yourself are the only party robbed or made creditor thereof!): these slight facts rarely seem to cross the feminine imagination.
It is not their fault; they have never been "accustomed to
business." They hear that with men "time is money;" but
it never strikes them that the same commodity, equally theirs, is to them
not money, perhaps, but life--life in its highest form
and noblest uses--life bestowed upon every human being, distinctly and
individually, without reference to any other being, and for which every one
of us, married or unmarried, woman as well as man, will assuredly be held
accountable before God.
My young-lady friends, of from seventeen upwards, your time, and
the use of it, is as essential to you as to any father or brother of you
all. You are accountable for it just as much as he
is. If you waste it, you waste not only your substance, but your very souls--not that which is your own, but your Maker's.
Ay, there the core of the matter lies. From the hour that honest Adam
and Eve were put into the garden, not--as I once heard some sensible
preacher observe--"not to be idle in it, but to dress it and to
keep it," the Father of all has never put one man or one woman into
this world without giving each something to do there, in it and for
it: some visible, tangible work, to be left behind them when they
die.
Young ladies, 'tis worth a grave thought--what, if called
away at eighteen, twenty, or thirty, the most of you would leave behind you
when you die? Much embroidery, doubtless; various pleasant, kindly,
illegible letters; a moderate store of good deeds; and a cart-load
of good intentions. Nothing else--save your name on a tombstone, or
lingering for a few more years in family or friendly memory. "Poor
dear
--! what a nice lively girl she was!" For any benefit accruing through you to your generation, you might as well never have lived at all.
But "what am I to do with my life?" as once asked me one
girl out of the numbers who begin to feel aware that, whether marrying or
not, each possesses an individual life, to spend, to use, or to lose. And
herein lies the momentous question.
The difference between man's vocation and woman's seems
naturally to be this--one is abroad, the other at home: one
external, the other internal: one active, the other passive. He has
to go and seek out his path; hers usually lies close under her feet. Yet
each is as distinct, as honourable, as difficult; and whatever custom may
urge to the contrary--if the life is meant to be a worthy or a happy
one--each must resolutely and unshrinkingly be trod.
But--how?
A definite answer to this question is simply
impossible. So diverse are characters, tastes, capabilities, and
circumstances, that to lay down a distinct line of occupation for any six
women of one's own acquaintance, would be the merest absurdity.
"Herein the patient must minister to herself."
To few is the choice so easy, the field of duty so wide, that she need
puzzle very long over what she ought to do. Generally--and this is the
best and safest guide--she will find her work lying very near at
hand: some desultory tastes to condense into regular studies, some
faulty household quietly to remodel, some child to teach, or parent to
watch over. All these being needless or unattainable, she may extend her
service out of the home into the world, which perhaps never at any time so
much needed the help of us women. And hardly one of its charities and
duties can be done so thoroughly as by a wise and tender woman's
hand.
Here occurs another of those plain rules which are the only guidance
possible in the matter--a Bible rule,
too--"Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with
thy might." Question it not, philosophise not over
it!--do it!--only do it! Thoroughly and completely,
never satisfied with less than perfectness. Be it ever so great or so
small, from the founding of a village-school to the making of a
collar--do it "with thy might;" and never lay it aside
till it is done.
Each day's account ought to leave this balance--of something
done. Something beyond mere pleasure, one--s own or
another's--though both are good and sweet in their way. Let the
superstructure of life be enjoyment, but lets its foundation be in solid
work--daily, regular, conscientious work: in its essence and
results as distinct as any "business" of men. What they expend
for wealth and ambition, shall not we offer for duty and love--the
love of our fellow-creatures, or, far higher, the love of God?
"Labour is worship," says the proverb: also--nay,
necessarily so--labour is happiness. Only let us turn from the dreary,
colorless lives of the women, old and young, who have nothing to do, to
those of their sisters who are always busy doing something; who, believing
and accepting the universal law, that pleasure is the mere accident of our
being, and work its natural and most holy necessity, have set themselves
steadily to seek out and fulfil theirs.
These are they who are little spoken of in the world at large. I do not
include among them those whose labour should spring from an irresistible
impulse, and become an absolute vocation, or it is not worth following at
all--namely, the professional women, writers, painters, musicians, and
the like. I mean those women who lead active, intelligent, industrious
lives: lives complete in themselves, and therefore not giving half
the trouble to their friends that the idle and foolish virgins do--no,
not even
in love-affairs. If love comes to them accidentally, (or rather providentially,) and happily, so much the better!--they will not make the worse wives for having been busy maidens. But the "tender passion" is not to them the one grand necessity that it is to aimless lives; they are in no haste to wed: their time is duly filled up; and if never married, still the habitual faculty of usefulness gives them in themselves and with others that obvious value, that fixed standing in society, which will for ever prevent their being drifted away, like most old maids, down the current of the new generation, even as dead May-flies down a stream.
They have made for themselves a place in the world: the harsh,
practical, yet not ill-meaning world, where all find their level
soon or late, and where a frivolous young maid sunk into a helpless old
one, can no more expect to keep her pristine position than a last
year's leaf to flutter upon a spring bough. But an
old maid who deserves well of this same world, by her ceaseless work therein, having won her position, keeps it to the end.
Not an ill position either, or unkindly; often higher and more
honourable than that of many a mother of ten sons. In households, where
"Auntie" is the universal referee, nurse, playmate, comforter,
and counsellor: in society, where "that nice Miss
So-and-so," though neither clever, handsome, nor young, is
yet such a person as can neither be omitted nor overlooked: in
charitable works, where she is "such a practical body--always
knows exactly what to do, and how to do it:" or perhaps, in her
own house, solitary indeed, as every single woman's home must be, yet
neither dull nor unhappy in itself, and the nucleus of cheerfulness and
happiness to many another home besides.
She has not married. Under Heaven, her home, her life, her lot, are all
of her own making. Bitter or sweet they may have been--it is not
ours to meddle with them, but we can any day see their results. Wide or narrow as her circle of influence appears, she has exercised her power to the uttermost, and for good. Whether great or small her talents, she has not let one of them rust for want of use. Whatever the current of her existence may have been, and in whatever circumstances it has placed her, she has voluntarily wasted no portion of it--not a year, not a month, not a day.
Published or unpublished, this woman's life is a goodly chronicle,
the title-page of which you may read in her quiet countenance; her
manner, settled, cheerful, and at ease; her unfailing interest in all
things and all people. You will rarely find she thinks much about herself;
she has never had time for it. And this her life-chronicle, which,
out of its very fulness, has taught her that the more one does, the more
one finds to do--she will never flourish in your face, or the face of
Heaven,
as something uncommonly virtuous and extraordinary. She knows that, after all, she has simply done what it was her duty to do.
But--and when her place is vacant on earth, this will be said of
her assuredly, both here and Otherwhere--"She hath done
what she could."
This pithy axiom, of which most men know the full value, is by no means
so well appreciated by women. One of the very last things we learn, often
through a course of miserable helplessness, heart-burnings,
difficulties, contumelies, and pain, is the lesson, taught to boys from
their school-days, of self-dependence.
Its opposite, either plainly or impliedly, has been preached to us all
our lives. "An independent young lady"--"a woman who
can take care of herself"--and such-like phrases, have
become tacitly suggestive of hoydenish-
ness, coarseness, strong-mindedness, down to the lowest depth of bloomerism, cigarette-smoking, and talking slang.
And there are many good reasons, ingrained in the very tenderest core of
woman's nature, why this should be. We are "the weaker
vessel"--whether acknowledging it or not, most of us feel
this: it becomes man's duty and delight to show us honour
accordingly. And this honour, dear as it may be to him to give, is still
dearer to us to receive.
Dependence is in itself an easy and pleasant thing: dependence
upon one we love being perhaps the very sweetest thing in the world. To
resign one's self totally and contentedly into the hands of another;
to have no longer any need of asserting one's rights or one's
personality, knowing that both are as precious to that other as they ever
were to ourselves; to cease taking thought about one's self at all,
and rest safe, at ease, assured that in great things and small we
shall be guided and cherished, guarded and helped--in fact, thoroughly "taken care of"--how delicious is all this! So delicious, that it seems granted to very few of us, and to fewer still as a permanent condition of being.
Were it our ordinary lot, were every woman living to have either father,
brother, or husband, to watch over and protect her, then, indeed, the harsh
but salutary doctrine of self-dependence need never be heard of. But
it is not so. In spite of the pretty ideals of poets, the easy
taken-for-granted truths of old-fashioned educators of
female youth, this fact remains patent to any person of common sense and
experience, that in the present day, whether voluntarily or not,
one-half of our women are obliged to take care of
themselves--obliged to look solely to themselves for maintenance,
position, occupation, amusement, reputation, life.
Of course I refer to the large class for which these Thoughts are
meant--the single women;
who, while most needing the exercise of self-dependence, are usually the very last in whom it is inculcated, or even permitted. From babyhood they are given to understand that helplessness is feminine and beautiful; helpfulness--except in certain received forms of manifestation--unwomanly and ugly. The boys may do a thousand things which are "not proper for little girls."
And herein, I think, lies the great mistake at the root of most
women's education, that the law of their existence is held to be, not
Right, but Propriety; a certain received notion of womanhood, which has
descended from certain excellent great-grandmothers, admirably
suited for some sorts of their descendants, but totally ignoring the fact
that each sex is composed of individuals, differing in character almost as
much from one another as from the opposite sex. For do we not continually
find womanish men and masculine women? and some of the finest types of
character we have known among both sexes,
are they not often those who combine the qualities of both? Therefore, there must be somewhere a standard of abstract right, including manhood and womanhood, and yet superior to either. One of the first of its common laws, or common duties, is this of self-dependence.
We women are, no less than men, each of us a distinct existence. In two
out of the three great facts of our life we are certainly independent
agents, and all our life long we are accountable only, in the highest
sense, to our own souls, and the Maker of them. Is it natural, is it right
even, that we should be expected--and be ready enough, too, for it is
much the easiest way--to hang our consciences, duties, actions,
opinions, upon some one else--some individual, or some aggregate of
individuals yclept Society? Is this Society to draw up a code of
regulations as to what is proper for us to do, and what not? Which latter
is supposed to be done for us; if not done, or there happens to be no one
to do
it, is it to be left undone? Alack, most frequently, whether or not it ought to be, it is!
Every one's experience may furnish dozens of cases of poor women
suddenly thrown adrift--widows with families, orphan girls, reduced
gentlewomen--clinging helplessly to every male relative or friend they
have, year after year, sinking deeper in poverty or debt, eating the bitter
bread of charity, or compelled to bow an honest pride to the cruellest
humiliations, every one of which might have been spared them by the early
practice of self-dependence.
I once heard a lady say--a tenderly-reared and
tender-hearted woman--that if her riches made themselves wings,
as in these times riches will, she did not know anything in the world that
she could turn her hand to, to keep herself from starving. A more pitiable,
and, in some sense, humbling confession, could hardly have been made; yet
it is that not of hundreds, but of thousands, in England.
Sometimes exceptions arise: here is one:--
Two young women, well educated and refined, were left orphans, their
father dying just when his business promised to realise a handsome
provision for his family. It was essentially a man's
business--in many points of view, decidedly an unpleasant one. Of
course friends thought "the girls" must give it up, go out as
governesses, depend on relatives, or live in what genteel poverty the sale
of the good-will might allow. But the "girls" were
wiser. They argued: "If we had been boys, it would have been
all right; we should have carried on the business, and provided for our
mother and the whole family. Being women, we'll try it still. It is
nothing wrong; it is simply disagreeable. It needs common sense, activity,
diligence, and self-dependence. We have all these; and what we have
not, we will learn." So these sensible and well-educated
young women laid aside their pretty uselessness and pleasant idleness, and
set to work.
Happily, the trade was one that required no personal publicity; but they had to keep the books, manage the stock, choose and superintend fit agents--to do things difficult, not to say distasteful, to most women, and resign enjoyments that, to women of their refinement, must have cost daily self-denial. Yet they did it; they filled their father's place, sustained their delicate mother in ease and luxury, never once compromising their womanhood by their work, but rather ennobling the work by their doing of it.
Another case--different, and yet alike. A young girl, an elder
sister, had to receive for step-mother a woman who ought never to
have been any honest man's wife. Not waiting to be turned out of her
father's house, she did a most daring and "improper"
thing--she left it, taking with her the brothers and sisters, whom by
this means only she believed she could save from harm. She settled them in
a London lodging, and worked for them as a daily governess. "Heaven
helps those who help themselves." From that day this girl never was dependent upon any human being; while during a long life she has helped and protected more than I could count--pupils and pupils' children, friends and their children, besides brothers and sisters-in-law, nephews and nieces, down to the slenderest tie of blood, or even mere strangers. And yet she has never been anything but a poor governess, always independent, always able to assist others--because she never was and never will be indebted to any one, except for love while she lives, and for a grave when she dies. May she long possess the one and want the other!
And herein is answered the
"cui bono?" of
self-dependence, that its advantages end not with the original
possessor. In this much-suffering world, a woman who can take care
of herself can always take care of other people. She not only ceases to be
an unprotected female, a nuisance and a drag upon society, but her
working-
value therein is doubled and trebled, and society respects her accordingly. Even her kindly male friends, no longer afraid that when the charm to their vanity of "being of use to a lady" has died out, they shall be saddled with a perpetual claimant for all manner of advice and assistance; the first not always followed, and the second often accepted without gratitude--even they yield an involuntary consideration to a lady who gives them no more trouble than she can avoid, and is always capable of thinking and acting for herself, so far as the natural restrictions and decorums of her sex allow. True, these have their limits, which it would be folly, if not worse, for her to attempt to pass; but a certain fine instinct, which, we flatter ourselves, is native to us women, will generally indicate the division between brave self-reliance and bold assumption.
Perhaps the line is most easily drawn, as in most difficulties, at that
point where duty ends
and pleasure begins. Thus, we should respect one who, on a mission of mercy or necessity, went through the lowest portions of St. Giles' or the Gallowgate; we should be rather disgusted if she did it for mere amusement or bravado. All honour to the poor sempstress or governess who traverses London streets alone, at all hours of day or night, unguarded except by her own modesty; but the strong-minded female who would venture on a solitary expedition to investigate the humours of Cremorne Gardens or Greenwich Fair, though perfectly "respectable," would be an exceedingly condemnable sort of personage. There are many things at which, as mere pleasures, a woman has a right to hesitate; there is no single duty, whether or not it lies in the ordinary line of her sex, from which she ought to shrink, if it be plainly set before her.
Those who are the strongest advocates for the passive character of our
sex, its claims, proprieties, and restrictions, are, I have often
noticed, if the most sensitive, not always the justest or most generous. I have seen ladies, no longer either young or pretty, shocked at the idea of traversing a street's length at night, yet never hesitate at being "fetched" by some female servant, who was both young and pretty, and to whom the danger of the expedition, or of the late return alone, was by far the greater of the two. I have known anxious mothers, who would not for worlds be guilty of the indecorum of sending their daughters unchaperoned to the theatre or a ball--and very right, too!--yet send out some other woman's young daughter, at eleven P.M., to the stand for a cab, or to the public-house for a supply of beer. It never strikes them that the doctrine of female dependence extends beyond themselves, whom it suits so easily, and to whom it saves so much trouble; that either every woman, be she servant or mistress, sempstress or fine lady, should receive the "protection" suitable to her degree; or that
each ought to be educated into equal self-dependence. Let us, at least, hold the balance of justice even, nor allow an over-consideration for the delicacy of one woman to trench on the rights, conveniences, and honest feelings of another.
We must help ourselves. In this curious phase of social
history, when marriage is apparently ceasing to become the common lot, and
a happy marriage the most uncommon lot of all, we must educate our maidens
into what is far better than any blind clamor for ill-defined
"rights "--into what ought always to be the foundation of
rights--duties. And there is one, the silent practice of which will
secure to them almost every right they can fairly need--the duty of
self-dependence. Not after any Amazonian fashion; no mutilating of
fair womanhood in order to assume the unnatural armour of men; but simply
by the full exercise of every faculty, physical, moral, and intellectual,
with which Heaven has endowed us all, severally and col
lectively, in different degrees; allowing no one to rust or to lie idle, merely because their owner is a woman. And, above all, let us lay the foundation of all real womanliness by teaching our gifts from their cradle that the priceless pearl of decorous beauty, chastity of mind as well as body, exists in themselves alone; that a single-hearted and pure-minded woman may go through the world, like Spenser's Una, suffering, indeed, but never defenceless; foot-sore and smirched, but never tainted; exposed, doubtless, to many trials, yet never either degraded or humiliated, unless by her own acts she humiliates herself.
For heaven's sake--for the sake of "womanhede,"
the most heavenly thing next angelhood, (as men tell us when they are
courting us, and which it depends upon ourselves to make them believe in
all their lives)--young girls, trust yourselves; rely on yourselves!
Be assured that no outward circumstances will harm you while you keep the
jewel of purity in your bosom,
and are ever ready with the steadfast, clean right hand, of which, till you use it, you never know the strength, though it be only a woman's hand.
Fear not the world: it is often juster to us than we are to
ourselves. If in its harsh jostlings the "weaker goes to the
wall"--as so many allege is sure to happen to a woman--you
will almost always find that this is not merely because of her sex, but
from some inherent qualities in herself, which, existing either in woman or
man, would produce just the same result, pitiful and blameable, but usually
more pitiful than blameable. The world is hard enough, for
two-thirds of it are struggling for the dear life--"each
for self, and de'il tak the hindmost;" but it has a rough sense
of moral justice after all. And whosoever denies that, spite of all
hindrances from individual wickedness, the right shall not
ultimately prevail, impugns not alone human justice, but the justice of
God.
The age of chivalry, with all its benefits and harmfulness, is gone by,
for us women. We cannot now have men for our knights-errant,
expending blood and life for our sake, while we have nothing to do but sit
idle on balconies, and drop flowers on half-dead victors at tilt and
tourney. Nor, on the other hand, are we dressed-up dolls, pretty
playthings, to be fought and scrambled for--petted, caressed, or flung
out of window, as our several lords and masters may please. Life is much
more equally divided between us and them. We are neither goddesses nor
slaves; they are neither heroes nor semi-demons: we just plod
on together, men and women alike, on the same road, where daily experience
illustrates Hudibras's keen truth, that
"The value of a thing
Is just as much as it will
bring."
And our value is--exactly what we choose to make it.
Perhaps at no age since Eve's were women rated so exclusively at
their own personal worth, apart from poetic flattery or tyrannical
depreciation; at no time in the world's history judged so entirely by
their individual merits, and respected according to the respect which they
earned for themselves. And shall we value ourselves so meanly as to
consider this unjust? Shall we not rather accept our position, difficult
indeed, and requiring from us more than the world ever required before, but
from its very difficulty rendered the more honourable?
Let us not be afraid of men; for that, I suppose, lies at the root of
all these amiable hesitations. "Gentlemen don't like such and
such things." "Gentlemen fancy so and so unfeminine." My
dear little foolish cowards, do you think a man--a good
man, in any relation of life, ever loves a woman the more for reverencing
her the less? or likes her better for
transferring all her burdens to his shoulders, and pinning her conscience to his sleeve? Or, even supposing he did like it, is a woman's divinity to be man--or God?
And here, piercing to the Foundation of all truth-I think we may
find the truth concerning self-dependence, which is only real and
only valuable when its root is not in self at all; when its strength is
drawn not from man, but from that Higher and Diviner Source whence every
individual soul proceeds, and to which alone it is accountable. As soon as
any woman, old or young, once feels that, not as a vague
sentimental belief, but as a tangible, practical law of life, all weakness
ends, all doubt departs: she recognises the glory, honour, and beauty
of her existence; she is no longer afraid of its pains; she desires not to
shift one atom of its responsibilities to another. She is content to take
it just as it is, from the hands of the All-Father; her only care
being so to fulfil it, that while the world
at large may recognise and profit by her self-dependence, she herself, knowing that the utmost strength lies in the deepest humility, recognises, solely and above all, her dependence upon God.
A question more easily asked than answered; and the numerous replies to
which, now current in book, pamphlet, newspaper, and review, suggesting
everything possible and impossible, from compulsory wifehood in Australia
to voluntary watchmaking at home, do at present rather confuse the matter
than otherwise. No doubt, out of these "many words," which
"darken speech," some plain word or two will one day take shape
in action, so as to evolve a practical good. In the meantime, it does no harm to have the muddy pond stirred up a little; any disturbance is better than stagnation.
These Thoughts--however desultory and unsatisfactory, seeing the
great need there is for deeds rather than words--are those of a
"working" woman, who has been such all her life, having
opportunities of comparing the experience of other working women with her
own: she, therefore, at least escapes the folly of talking of what
she knows nothing about.
Female professions, as distinct from what may be termed female
handicrafts, which merit separate classification and discussion, may, I
think, be thus divided: the instruction of youth; painting or art;
literature; and the vocation of public entertainment--including
actresses, singers, musicians, and the like.
The first of these, being a calling universally wanted, and the easiest
in which to win, at all
events, daily bread, is the great chasm into which the helpless and penniless of our sex generally plunge; and this indiscriminate Quintus Curtiusism, so far from filling up the gulf, widens it every hour. It must be so, while young women of all classes and all degrees of capability rush into governessing, as many young men enter the church,--because they think it a "respectable" profession to get on in, and are fit for nothing else. Thus the most important of ours, and the highest of all men's vocations, are both degraded--in so far as they can be degraded--by the unworthiness and incompetency of their professors.
If, in the most solemn sense, not one woman in five thousand is fit to
be a mother, we may safely say that not two out of that number are fit to
be governesses. Consider all that the office implies: very many of a
mother's duties, with the addition of considerable mental
attainments, firmness of character, good sense, good temper,
good breeding; patience, gentleness, loving-kindness. In short, every quality that goes to make a perfect woman, is required of her who presumes to undertake the education of one single little child.
Does any one pause to reflect what a "little child" is? Not
sentimentally, as a creature to be philosophised upon, painted and
poetised; nor selfishly, as a kissable, scoldable,
sugar-plum-feedable plaything; but as a human soul and body,
to be moulded, instructed, and influenced, in order that it in its turn may
mould, instruct, and influence unborn generations. And yet, in face of
this awful responsibility, wherein each deed and word of hers may bear
fruit, good or ill, to indefinite ages, does nearly every educated
gentlewoman thrown upon her own resources, nearly every
half-educated "young person" who wishes by that means to
step out of her own sphere into the one above it, enter upon the vocation
of a governess.
Whether it really is her vocation, she never stops to think; and yet,
perhaps, in no calling is a personal bias more indispensable. For
knowledge, and the power of imparting it intelligibly, are two distinct and
often opposite qualities; the best student by no means necessarily makes
the best teacher: nay, when both faculties are combined, they are
sometimes neutralised by some fault of disposition, such as want of temper
or of will. And allowing all these, granting every possible intellectual
and practical competency, there remains still doubtful the moral influence,
which, according to the source from which it springs, may ennoble or
corrupt a child for life.
All these are facts so trite and so patent, that one would almost feel
it superfluous to state them, did we not see how utterly they are ignored
day by day by even sensible people; how parents go on lavishing expense on
their house, dress, and entertainments--everything but the edu-
cation of their children; sending their boys to cheap boarding-schools, and engaging for their daughters governesses at 20l. a year, or daily tuition at sixpence an hour; and how, as a natural result, thousands of incapable girls, and ill-informed, unscrupulous women, go on professing to teach everything under the sun, adding lie upon lie, and meanness upon meanness--often through no voluntary wickedness, but sheer helplessness, because they must either do that or starve!
Yet, all the while we expect our rising generation to turn out
perfection; instead of which we find it--what?
I do solemnly aver, having seen more than one generation of young girls
grow up into womanhood--that the fairest and best specimens of our sex
that I have ever known have been among those who have never gone to school,
or scarcely ever had a regular governess.
Surely such a fact as this--I put it to general
experience, whether it is not a fact?--indicates some great flaw in the carrying out of this large branch of women's work. How is it to be remedied? I believe, like all reformations, it must begin at the root--with the governesses themselves.
Unless a woman has a decided pleasure and facility in teaching, an
honest knowledge of everything she professes to impart, a liking for
children, and above all, a strong moral sense of her responsibility towards
them, for her to attempt to enrol herself in the scholastic order is
absolute profanation. Better turn shopwoman, needlewoman,
lady's-maid--even become a decent housemaid, and learn
how to sweep the floor, than belie her own soul, and peril many other
souls, by entering upon what is, or ought to be, a female
"ministry," unconsecrated for, and incapable of the work.
"But," say they, "work we must have. Competition is so
great, that if we did not
profess to do everything, it would be supposed we could do nothing: and so we should starve."
Yet, what is competition? A number of people attempting to do what most
of them can only half do, and some cannot do at all--thereby
"cutting one another's throats," as the saying is, so
long as their incapacity is concealed; when it is found out, starving.
There may be exceptions from exceeding misfortune and the like--but
in the long run, I believe it will be found that few women, really
competent to what they undertake, be it small or great, starve for want of
work to do. So, in this case, no influence is so deeply felt in a house,
or so anxiously retained, if only from self-interest, as the
influence of a good governess over the children; among the innumerable
throng of teachers, there is nothing more difficult to find--or more
valuable when found, to judge by the high terms asked and obtained by many
professors--than a lady
who can teach only a single thing, solidly, conscientiously, and well.
In this, as in most social questions, where to theorise is easy and to
practise very difficult, it will often be found that the silent undermining
of an evil is safer than the loud outcry against it. If every governess, so
far as her power extends, would strive to elevate the character of her
profession by elevating its members, many of the unquestionable wrongs and
miseries of governess-ship would gradually right themselves. A
higher standard of capability would weed out much cumbersome mediocrity;
and, competition lessened, the value of labour would rise. I say "the
value of labour," because, when we women do work, we must learn to
rate ourselves at no ideal and picturesque value, but simply as
labourers--fair and honest competitors in the field of
the world; and our wares as mere merchandise, where money's worth
alone brings money, or has any right to expect it.
This applies equally to the two next professions, art and literature. I
put art first, as being the most difficult--perhaps, in its highest
form, almost impossible to women. There are many reasons for this; in the
course of education necessary for a painter, in the not unnatural
repugnance that is felt to women's drawing from "the
life," attending anatomical dissections, and so on--all which
studies are indispensable to one who would plumb the depths and scale the
heights of the most arduous of the liberal arts. Whether any woman will
ever do this, remains yet to be proved. Meantime, many lower and yet
honourable positions are open to female handlers of the brush.
But in literature we own no such boundaries; there we meet men on level
ground--and, shall I say it?--we do often beat them in their own
field. We are acute and accurate historians, clear explanators of science,
especially successful in imaginative works, and within the last year
Aurora Leigh, has proved that we can write as great a poem as any man among them all. Any publisher's list, any handful of weekly or monthly periodicals, can testify to our power of entering boldly on the literary profession, and pursuing it wholly, self-devotedly, and self-reliantly, thwarted by no hardships, and content with no height short of the highest.
So much for the best of us--women work will float down the ages,
safe and sure; there is no need to speak of it or them. But there is
another secondary class among us, neither "geniuses" nor
ordinary women--aspiring to both destinies, and usually achieving
neither: of these it is necessary to say a word.
In any profession, there is nothing, short of being absolutely evil,
which is so injurious, so fatal, as mediocrity. To the amateur who writes
"sweetly" or paints "prettily," her work is mere
recreation; and though it may be less
improving for the mind to do small things on your own account, than to be satisfied with appreciating the greater doings of other people, still, it is harmless enough, if it stops there. But all who leave domestic criticism to plunge into the open arena of art--I use the word in its widest sense--must abide by art's severest canons. One of these is, that every person who paints a common-place picture, or writes a mediocre book, contributes temporarily--happily, only temporarily--to lower the standard of public taste, fills unworthily some better competitor's place, and without achieving any private good, does a positive wrong to the community at large.
One is often tempted to believe, in the great influx of small talents
which now deluges us, that if half the books written, and pictures painted,
were made into one great bonfire, it would be their shortest, easiest, and
safest way of illuminating the world.
Therefore, let men do as they will--and truly they are often ten
times vainer and more ambitious than we!--but I would advise every
woman to examine herself and judge herself, morally and intellectually, by
the sharpest tests of criticism, before she attempts art or literature,
either for abstract fame or as a means of livelihood. Let her take to
heart, humbly, the telling truth, that
"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread,"
and be satisfied that the smallest perfect achievement is nobler than the
grandest failure. But having, after mature deliberation, chosen her
calling, and conscientiously believing it is her calling--that in
which she shall do most good, and best carry out the aim of her
existence--let her fulfill to the last iota its solemn
requirements.
These entail more, much more, than flighty young genius or
easily-satisfied mediocrity ever
dreams of; labour incessant, courage inexhaustible, sustained under difficulties, misfortunes, and rebuffs of every conceivable kind--added thereto, not unfrequently, the temperament to which these things come hardest. Le génie c'est la patience; and though there is a truth beyond it--since all the patience in the world will not serve as a substitute for genius,--still, never was a truer saying than this of old Buffon's. Especially as applied to women, when engaged in a profession which demands of them, no less than from men, the fervent application, and sometimes the total devotion of a lifetime.
For, high as the calling is, it is not always, in the human sense, a
happy on; it often results in, if it does not spring from, great
sacrifices; and is full of a thousand misconstructions, annoyances, and
temptations. Nay, since ambition is a quality far oftener deficient in us
than in the other sex, its very successes are less sweet to women than to
men. Many a "celebrated
authoress" or "exquisite paintress" must have felt the
heart-truth in Aurora Leigh:
"I might have been a common women, now,
And happier, less
known and less left alone,
Perhaps a better woman after
all--
With chubby children hanging around my neck,
To keep
me low and wise. Ah me! the vines
That bear such fruit are proud to
stoop with it--
The palm stands upright in a realm of
sand."
And, setting aside both these opposite poles of the female character and
lot, it remains yet doubtful whether the maiden-aunt who goes from
house to house, perpetually busy and useful--the maiden
house-mother, who keeps together an orphan family, having all the
cares, and only half the joys of maternity or
mistress-ship--even the active, bustling "old
maid," determined on setting everybody to rights, and having a finger
in every pie that needs her, and a few that don't--I question
whether each of these women has not a more natural, and therefore,
probably, a happier existence, than any
"woman of genius" that ever enlightened the world.
But happiness is not the first not the only thing on earth. Whosoever
has entered upon this vocation in the right spirit, let her keep to it,
neither afraid not ashamed. The days of blue-stockings are
over: it is a notable fact, that the best housekeepers, the neatest
needlewomen, the most discreet managers of their own and others'
affairs, are ladies whose names the world cons over in library lists and
exhibition catalogues. I could give them now--except that the world
has no possible business with them, except to read their books and look at
their pictures. It must imply something deficient in the women themselves,
if the rude curiosity of this said well-meaning but often
impertinent public is ever allowed to break in upon that dearest right of
every woman--the inviolable sanctity of her home.
Without--in those books and by these pictures
--let it always be a fair fight, and no quarter. To exact consideration merely on account of her sex, is in any woman the poorest cowardice. She has entered the neutral realm of pure intellect--has donned brain-armour, and must carry on with lawful, consecrated weapons a combat, of which the least reward in her eyes, in which she never can freeze up or burn out either the woman-tears or woman-smiles, will be that public acknowledgment called Fame.
This fame, as gained in art or literature, is certainly of a purer and
safer kind than that which falls to the lot of the female
artiste.
Most people will grant that no great gift is given to be hid under a
bushel; that a Sarah Siddons, a Rachel, or a Jenny Lind, being created, was
certainly not created for nothing. There seems no reason why a great
actress or vocalist should not exercise her talents to the utmost for the
world's benefit, and her own; nor that any genius, boiling and
bursting up to find ex-
pression, should be pent down, cruelly and dangerously, because it refuses to run in the ordinary channel of feminine development. But the last profession of the four which I have enumerated as the only paths at present open to women, is the one which is the most full of perils and difficulties, on account of the personality involved in its exercise.
We may paint scores of pictures, write shelvesful of books--the
errant children of our brain may be familiar half over the known world, and
yet we ourselves sit as quiet by our chimney-corner, live a life as
simple and peaceful as any happy "common woman" of them all.
But with the artiste it is
very different; she needs to be constantly before the public, not only
mentally, but physically: the general eye becomes familiar, not
merely with her genius, but her corporeality; and every comment of
admiration or blame awarded to her, is necessarily an immediate personal
criticism. This of itself
is a position contrary to the instinctive something--call it reticence, modesty, shyness, what you will--which is inherent in every one of Eve's daughters. Any young girl, standing before a large party in her first tableau vivant--any singing-pupil at a public examination--any boy-lover of some adorable actress, at the moment when he first thinks of that goddess as his wife, will understand what I mean.
But that is by no means the chief objection; for the feeling of personal
shyness dies out, and in the true
artiste becomes altogether
merged in the love and inspiration of her art--the inexplicable
fascination of which turns the many-eyed gazing mass into a mere
"public," of whose individuality the performer is no more
conscious that was the Pythoness of her curled and scented Greek audience,
when she felt on her tripod the afflatus of the unconquerable, inevitable
god. The saddest phase of artiste-life--which is, doubtless,
the natural result of this constant
appearance before the public eye, this incessant struggle for the public's personal verdict--is its intense involuntary egotism.
No one can have seen anything of theatrical or musical circles without
noticing this--the incessant recurrence to "my
part," "my song," "what the public
think of me." In the hand-to-hand struggle
for the capricious public's favour, this sad selfishness is
apparently inevitable. "Each for himself" seems implanted in
masculine nature, for its own preservation; but when it comes to
"each for herself"--when you see the fairest
Shakespeare turn red or pale at the mention of a rival
impersonator--when Miss This cannot be asked to a party for fear of
meeting Madame That, or if they do meet, through all their smiling civility
you perceive their backs are up, like two strange cats meeting at a
parlour-door--I say, this is the most lamentable of all
results, not absolutely vicious, which the world, and the necessity of
working in it, effect on women.
And for this reason the profession of public entertainment, in all its
graduation, from the inspired
tragédienne to the poor
chorus-singer, is, above any profession I know, to be marked with a
spiritual Humane Society's pole,
"Dangerous." Not after the vulgar notion: we
have among us too many chaste, matronly actresses, and charming
maiden-vocalists, to enter now in the old question about the
"respectability" of the stage; but on account of the great
danger to temperament, character, and mode of thought, to which such
a life peculiarly exposes its followers.
But if a woman has chosen it--I repeat in this as in any
other--let her not forego it; for in every occupation the
worthiness, like the "readiness," "is all." Never
let her be moulded by her calling, but mould her calling to herself; being,
as every woman ought to be, the woman first, the
artiste afterwards. And,
doubtless, so are many; doubtless one could find, not only
among the higher ranks of this profession, where genius itself acts as a purifying and refining fire, but in its lower degrees, many who, under the glare of the footlights and the din of popular applause, have kept their freshness and singleness of character unfaded to the end. Ay, even among poor ballet-dancers, capering with set rouged smiles and laden hearts--coarse screaming concert-singers, doing sham pathos at a guinea a-night--flaunting actresses-of-all-work, firmly believing themselves the best Juliet or Lady Macbeth extant, and yet condescending to take ever so small a part--even the big-headed "princess" of an Easter extravaganza, for the sake of old parents, or the fiddler-husband and the sickly babies at home. No doubt, many of them live--let us rather say, endure--a life as pure, as patient, as self-denying, as that of hundreds of timid, daintily protected girls, and would-be correct matrons, who shrink in safe privacy from the very
thought of these. But Heaven counts and cares for all.
Therefore, in this perilous road, double honour be unto those who walk
upright, double pity unto those who fall!
Conning over again this desultory chapter, it seems to me it all comes
to neither more nor less than this: that since a woman, by choosing a
definite profession, must necessarily quit the kindly shelter and safe
negativeness of a private life, and assume a substantive position, it is
her duty not hastily to decide, and before deciding, in every way to count
the cost. But having chosen, let her fulfil her lot. Let there be no
hesitations, no regrets, no compromises--they are at once cowardly and
vain. She may have missed or foregone much;--I repeat, our natural and
happiest life is when we lose ourselves in the exquisite absorption of
home, the delicious retirement of dependent love; but what she has, she
has, and nothing can ever take it from her. Nor
is it, after all, a small thing for any woman--be she governess, painter, author, or artiste--to feel that, higher or lower, according to her degree, she ranks among that crowned band who, whether or not they are the happy ones, are elected to the heaven-given honour of being the Workers of the world.
to be useful,--I determined to say my say. It matters little when, or how, or by how many, truth is spoken, if only it be truth.
Taking up the question of female handicrafts, in contradistinction to
female professions, the first thing that strikes one is the largeness of
the subject, and how very little one practically knows about it. Of
necessity, it has not much to say for itself; it lives by its fingers
rather than its brains; it cannot put its life into print. Sometimes a poet
does this for it, and thrills millions with a Song of the
Shirt; or a novelist presents us with some imaginary
portrait--some Lettice Arnold, Susan Hopley,
or Ruth, idealised more or less, it may be, yet sufficiently
true to nature to give us a passing interest in our shop-girls,
sempstresses, and maid-servants, abstractedly, as a class. But of
the individuals, of their modes of existence, feeling, and thought--of
their sorrows and pleasures, accomplishments and defects--we
"ladies" of the middle and upper ranks, especially those
who reside in great towns, know essentially nothing.
The whole working class is a silent class; and this division of it being
a degree above the cottage visitations of the ladies Bountiful, or the
legislation of Ten-Hours'-Bill Committees in an
enlightened British Parliament, is the most silent of all. Yet it includes
so many grades--from the West-end milliner, who dresses in silk
every day, and is almost (often quite) a "lady," down to the
wretched lodging-house "slavey," who seems to be less a
woman than a mere working animal--that, viewing it, one shrinks back
in awe of its vastness. What an enormous influence it must unconsciously
exercise on society, this dumb multitude, which, behind counters, in
work-rooms, garrets, and bazaars, or in service at fashionable,
respectable, or barely decent houses, goes toiling, toiling on, from
morning till night--often from night till morning--at anything
and everything, just for daily bread and honesty!
Now, Society recognises this fact--gets up early-closing
movements, makes eloquent speeches in lawn sleeves or peers'
broadcloth at Hanover Square Rooms, or writes a letter to the
Times, enlarging on the virtue of ordering
court-dresses in time, so that one portion of Queen Victoria's
female subjects may not be hurried into disease or death, or worse, in
order that another portion may shine out brilliant and beautiful at Her
Majesty's balls and drawing-rooms. All this is good; but it is
only a drop in the bucket--a little oil cast on the top of the stream.
The great tide of struggle and suffering flows on just the same; the
surface may be slightly troubled, but the undercurrent seems to be in a
state which it is impossible to change.
Did I say "impossible?" No; I do not believe there is
anything under heaven to which we have a right to apply that word.
Apparently, one of the chief elements of wrong in the class which I have
distinguished
as handicraftswomen, is the great and invidious distinction drawn between it and that of professional women. Many may repudiate this in theory; yet, practically, I ask lady-mothers whether they would not rather take for daughter-in-law the poorest governess, the most penniless dependent, than a "person in business"--milliner, dress-maker, shop-woman, &c.? As for a domestic servant--a cook, or even a lady's-maid--I am afraid a young man's choice of such an one for his wife, would ruin him for ever in the eyes of Society.
Society--begging her pardon!--is often a great fool. Why
should it be less creditable to make good dresses than bad books? In what
is it better to be at night a singing servant to an applauding or
capriciously contemptuous public, than to wait on the said public in the
day-time from behind the counter of shop or bazaar? I confess, I
cannot see the mighty difference; when the question, as must be distinctly
under-
stood, concerns not personal merit or endowments, but external calling.
And here comes in the old warfare, which began worthily enough, in the
respect due to mind over matter, head-work over hand-work,
but has deteriorated by custom into a ridiculous and contemptible
tyranny--the battle between professions and trades. I shall not enter
into it here. Happily, men are now slowly waking up--women more slowly
still--to a perception of the truth, that honour is an intrinsic and
not extrinsic possession; that one means of livelihood is not of itself one
whit more "respectable" than another; that credit or discredit
can attach in no degree to the work done, but to the manner of doing it,
and to the individual who does it.
But, on the other hand, any class that, as a class, lacks honour, has
usually, some time or other, fallen short in desert of it. Thus, among
handicraftswomen, who bear to professional women the same relation as
tradesmen to gentlemen,
one often finds great self-assertion and equivalent want of self-respect, painful servility or pitiable impertinence--in short, many of those faults which arise in a transition state of partial education, and accidental semi-refinement. Also, since a certain amount of both refinement and education is necessary to create a standard of moral conscientiousness, this order of women is much more deficient than the one above it in that stern, steady up-rightness which constitutes what we call elevation of character. Through the want of pride in their calling, and laxity or slovenliness of principle in pursuing it, they are at war with the class above them; which justly complains of those unconquerable faults and deficiencies that make patience the only virtue it can practise towards its inferiors.
How amend this lamentable state of things? How lessen the infinite
wrongs, errors, and sufferings of this mass of womanhood, out of which are
glutted our churchyards, hospitals, prisons,
penitentiaries; from which, more than from any other section of society, is
taken that pest and anguish of our streets, the
"Eighty thousand women in one smile,
Who only smile at
night beneath the gas."
Many writers of both sexes are now striving to answer this question; and
many others, working more by their lives than their pens, are practically
trying to solve the problem. All honour and success attend both workers and
writers! Each in their vocation will spur on society to bestir itself, and,
by the combination of popular feeling, to achieve in some large from a
solid social good.
But in these Thoughts I would fain address individuals. I want to speak,
not to society at large, for as we well know, "everybody's
business" is often "nobody's business," but to each
woman separately, appealing to her in her personal character as employer or
employed.
And, first, as employer.
I am afraid it is from some natural deficiency in the constitution of
our sex that it is so difficult to teach us justice. It certainly was a
mistake to make that admirable virtue a female; and even then the
allegorist seems to have found it necessary to bandage her eyes. No;
kindliness, unselfishness, charity, come to us by nature: but I wish
I could see more of my sisters learning and practising what is far more
difficult and far less attractive--common justice, especially towards
one another.
In dealing with men, there is little fear but that they will take care
of themselves. That "first law of nature,"
self-preservation, is--doubtless, for wise
purposes--imprinted pretty strongly on the mind of the male sex. It is
in transactions between women and women that the difficulty lies.
Therein--I put the question to the aggregate conscience of us
all--is it not, openly or secretly, our chief aim to get the largest
possible amount of labour for the smallest possible price?
We do not mean any harm; we are only acting for the best--for our
own benefit, and that of those nearest to us; and yet we are committing an
act of injustice, the result of which fills slopsellers's doors with
starving sempstresses, and causes unlimited competition among incompetent
milliners and dressmakers, while skilled labour in all these branches is
lamentably scarce and extravagantly dear. Of course! so long as one
continually hears ladies say: "Oh, I got such and such a thing
almost for half-price--such a bargain!" or:
"Do you know I have found out such a cheap dressmaker!" May I
suggest to these the common-sense law of political economy, that
neither labour nor material can possible be got
"cheaply"--that is, below its average acknowledged cost,
without somebody's being cheated? Consequently, these
devotees to cheapness, when not victims--which they frequently are in
the long run--are very little better than genteel swindlers.
There is another lesser consideration, and yet not small either. Labour,
unfairly remunerated, of necessity deteriorates in quality, and thereby
lowers the standard of appreciation. Every time I pay a low price for an
ill-fitting gown or an ugly tawdry bonnet--cheapness is usually
tawdry--I am wronging not merely myself, but my
employée, by
encouraging careless work and bad taste, and by thus going in direct
opposition to a rule from whence springs so much that is eclectic and
beautiful in the female character, that "whatever is worth doing at
all is worth doing well." If, on the contrary, I knowingly pay below
its value for really good work, I am, as aforesaid, neither more nor less
than a dishonest appropriator of other people's property--a
swindler--a thief.
Humiliating as the confession may be, it must be owned that, on the
whole, men are less prone to this petty vice that we are. You rarely find a
gentleman beating down his tailor, cheapening his
hosier, or haggling with his groom over a few shillings of wages. Either his wider experience has enlarged his mind, or he has less time for bargaining, or he will not take the trouble. It is among us, alas! that you see most instances of "stinginess"--not the noble economy which can and does lessen its personal wants to the narrowest rational limit, but the mean parsimony which tries to satisfy them below cost-price, and consequently always at somebody else's expense rather than its own. Against this crying sin--none the less a sin because often masked as a virtue, and even corrupted from an original virtue--it becomes our bounden duty, as women, to protest with all our power. More especially, because it is a temptation peculiar to ourselves; engendered by many a cruel domestic narrowness, many a grinding struggle to "make ends meet," of which the sharpness always falls to the woman's lot, to a degree that men, in their grand picturesque pride and reckless indifference
to expense, can rarely either feel or appreciate.
I do not here advance the argument, usually enforced by experience, that
cheapness always comes dearest in the end, and that only a wealthy person
can afford to make "bargains;" because I wish to open the
question--and leave it--on the far higher ground of moral
justice. The celebrated sentiment of Benjamin Franklin, "Honesty is
the best policy," appears rather a mean and unchristian mode of
inculcating the said virtue.
Another injustice, less patent, but equally harmful, is constantly
committed by ladies--namely, the conducting of business relations in
an unbusiness-like manner. Carelessness, irregularity, or delay in
giving orders; needless absorption of time, which is money; and, above
all, want of explicitness and decision, are faults which no one dare
complain of in a customer, but yet which result in the more cruel wrong.
Perhaps the first quality in an employer is to know her own mind; the second, to be able to state it clearly, so as to avoid the possibility of mistake; and no error caused by a blunder or irresolution on her part should ever be visited upon the person employed.
There is one injustice which I hardly need refer to, so nearly does it
approach to actual dishonesty. Any lady who wilfully postpones payment
beyond a reasonable time, or in any careless way prefers her convenience to
her duty, her pleasure to her sense of right--who for one single day
keeps one single person waiting for a debt which at all lies within her
power to discharge--is a creature so far below the level of true
womanhood that I would rather not speak of her.
And now, as to the class of the employed. It resolves itself into so
many branches that I shall attempt only to generalise, nor refer to
distinctive occupations, which are dividing, subdividing, and extending
from year to year. The world is slowly
discovering that women are capable of far more crafts than was supposed, if only they are properly educated for them: that, here and abroad, they are good accountants, shopkeepers, drapers' assistants, telegraph clerks, watch-makers: and doubtless would be better, if the ordinary training which almost every young man has a chance of getting, and which in any case he is supposed to have, were thought equally indispensable to young women. And well, indeed, if it were so: for there is no possible condition of life where business habits are not of the greatest value to any woman.
I have heard the outcry raised, that this educating of one sex to do the
work and press into the place of the other lessens the value of labour, and
so depreciates the chances of matrimony, to the manifest injury of both.
Charming theory! which pays us the double-edged compliment of being
so evidently afraid of our competitive powers, and so complacently
satisfied, that the
sole purpose and use of our existence is to be married!
But Nature, wiser than such theorists, contradicts them without any
argument of ours. She has sufficiently limited our physique to prevent our
being very fatal rivals in manual labour; she has given us instincts that
will rarely make us prefer masculine occupations to sweeping the hearth and
rocking the cradle--when such duties are possible. And if it were not
so, would the case be any better? There is a certain amount of work to be
done, and somebody must do it: a certain community to be fed, and it
must be fed somehow. Would it benefit the male portion thereof to have all
the burden on their own shoulders? Would it raise the value of their labour
to depreciate ours? or advantage them to keep us, forcibly, in idleness,
ignorance, and incapacity? I trow not. Rather let each sex have a fair
chance: let women, and single women above all, be taught to do all
they can, and do
it as well as they can. Little fear that there will not remain a sufficiently wide field open to competent men, and only men, in every handicraft: little fear that the natural métier of most women will not always be the cherished labours of the fireside.
One trade in all its branches, domestic or otherwise, is likely to
remain principally our own--the use of the needle.
Who amongst us has not a great reverence for that little dainty tool;
such a wonderful brightener and consoler; our weapon of defence against
slothfulness, weariness, and sad thoughts; our thrifty helper in poverty,
our pleasant friend at all times? From the first
"cobbled-up" doll's frock--the first neat
stitching for mother, or hemming of father's
pocket-handkerchief--the first bit of sewing shyly done for
some one who is to own the hand and all its duties--most of all, the
first strange, delicious fairy work, sewed at diligently, in solemn faith
and tender love, for
the tiny creature as yet unknown and unseen--truly, no one but ourselves can tell what the needle is to us women.
With all due respect for brains, I think women cannot be too early
taught to respect likewise their own ten fingers.
It is a grand thing to be a good needlewoman, even in what is called in
England "plain sewing," and in Scotland, a "white
seam;" and any one who ever tried to make a dress knows well enough
that skill, patience, and ingenuity, nay, a certain kind of genius, is
necessary to achieve any good result. Of all artificers, the poor
dressmaker is the last who ought to be grudged good payment. Instead of
depreciating, we should rather try to inspire her with a sincere following
of her art as an art--even a pleasant pride in it.
"The labour we delight in physics pain;"
and it may be doubted whether any branch of labour can be worthily pursued
unless the labourer
take an interest in it beyond the mere hire. I know a dressmaker who evidently feels personally aggrieved when you decline to yield to her taste in costume; who never spares pains or patience to adorn her customers to the very best of her skill; and who, by her serious and simple belief in her own business, would half persuade you that the destinies of the whole civilised world hung on the noble but neglected art of mantua-making. One cannot but respect that woman!
Much has been said concerning justice from the employed, and as much
might be said in behalf of the opposite side. For a person to undertake
more work than she can finish, to break her promises, tell white lies, be
wasteful, unpunctual, is to be scarcely less dishonest to her employer than
if she directly robbed her. The want of conscientiousness, which is only
too general among the lower order of shopkeepers and people in business,
does more to brand upon trade the old stigma which the
present generation is wisely endeavoring to efface, and to blacken and broaden the line, now fast vanishing, between tradesfolk and gentlefolk--more, tenfold, than all the narrow-minded pride of the most prejudiced aristocracy.
I should like to see working women--handicraftswomen--take up
their pride, and wield it with sense and courage; I should
like to see them educating themselves, for education is the grand motive
power in the advancement of all classes. I do not allude to mere
book-learning, but that combination of mental, moral, and manual
attainments, the mere desire for and appreciation of which give a higher
tone to the whole being. And there are few conditions of life, whether it
be passed at the counter or over the needle, in the work-room or at
the home, where an intelligent young woman has not some opportunity of
gaining information; little enough it may be--from a book snatched up
at rare intervals, a print-shop window glanced at, as she passes
along the street
--a silent observation and imitation of whatever seems most pleasant and refined in those of their superiors with whom she may be thrown into contact. However small her progress may be, yet if she have a genuine wish for mental improvement, the true thirst after what is good and beautiful--the good being always the beautiful--for its own sake, there is little fear but that she will gradually attain her end.
There is one class which, from its daily and hourly familiarity with
that above it, has perhaps more opportunities than any for this gradual
self-cultivation--I mean the class of domestic servants; but
these, though belonging to the ranks of women who live by
hand-labour, form a body in so many points distinct, that they must
form the subject of a separate chapter.
Cannot some one suggest a slight amendment on the usual cry of elevating
the working classes--whether it be not possible to arouse in them the
desire to elevate themselves? Every growth of
nature begins less in the external force applied than the vital principle asserting itself within. It is the undercurrent that helps to break up the ice; the sap, as well as the sunshine, that brings out the green leaves of spring. I doubt if any class can be successfully elevated unless it has indicated the power to raise itself; and the first thing to make it worthy of respect is, to teach it to respect itself.
"In all labour there is profit"--ay, and honour too,
if the toilers could but recognise it; if the large talk now current about
the "dignity of labour" could only be reduced to practice; if,
to begin at the beginning, we could but each persuade the handful of young
persons immediately around us and under our influence, that to make an
elegant dress or pretty bonnet-- nay, even to cook a good dinner, or
take pride in a neatly kept house, is a right creditable, womanly thing in
itself, quite distinct from the profit accruing from it. Also, since hope
is the
mainspring of excellence, as well as of happiness, in any calling, let it be impressed on every one that her future advancement lies, spiritually as well as literally, in her own hands.
Seldom, with the commonest chance to start with, will a real good worker
fail to find employment; seldomer still, with diligence, industry,
civility, and punctuality, will a person of even moderate skill lack
customers. Worth of any kind is rare enough in the world for most people to
be thankful to get it--and keep it, too. In these days, the chief
difficulty seems to consist, not in the acknowledgment of merit, but the
finding of any merit that is worth acknowledging--above all, any merit
that has the sense and consistency to acknowledge and have faith in itself,
and to trust in its own power of upholding itself afloat in the very
stormiest billows of the tempestuous world; assured with worthy old Milton,
that
"If virtue feeble were
Heaven itself would stoop
to her."
But I am pulled down from this Utopia of female handicrafts by the
distant half-smothered laughter of my two maid-servants,
going cheerily to their bed through the silent house; and by the
recollection that I myself must be up early, as my new sempstress is coming
to-morrow. Well, she shall be kindly treated, have plenty of food
and drink, light and fire; and though I shall be stern and remorseless as
fate respecting the quality of her work, I shall give her plenty of time to
do it in. No more will be expected from her than her capabilities seem to
allow and her word promised; still, there will be no bating an inch of
that: it would be unfair both to herself and me. In fact, the very
reason I took her was from her honest look and downright
sayings:--"Ma'am, if you can't wait, or know
anybody better, don't employ me; but, ma'am, when I say
I'll come, I always do."--(P.S. She didn't!!)
Honest woman! If she turns out fairly, so
much the better for us both, in the future, as to gowns and crown-pieces. If she does not, I shall at least enjoy the satisfaction of having done unto her as, in her place, I would like others to do unto me--which simple axiom expresses and includes all I have been writing on this subject.
A faithful servant--next best blessing, and next rarest, after a
faithful friend!--who among us has not had, or wanted, such a one?
Some inestimable follower of the family, who has known all the family
changes, sorrows, and joys; is always at hand to look after the petty
necessities and indescribably small nothings which, in the aggregate, make
up the sum of one's daily comfort; whom one can trust in
sight and out of sight--call upon for help in season and out of season; rely on in absence, or sickness, or trouble, to "keep the house going," and upon whom one can at all times, and under all circumstances, depend for that conscientious fidelity of service which money can never purchase, nor repay.
And this, what domestic servants ought to be, might be, they
are--alas, how seldom!
Looking round on the various households we know, I fear we shall find
that this relation of master (or mistress) and servant--a relation so
necessary, as to have been instituted from the foundation of the world, and
since so hallowed by both biblical and secular chronicles, as to be, next
to ties of blood and friendship, the most sacred bond that can exist
between man and man--is, on the whole, as badly fulfilled as any under
the sun.
Whose fault is this?--the superior's, who, in the march of
intellect and education around
him, losing somewhat the distinction of mere rank, yet tries to enforce it by instituting external distinctions impossible toe maintained between himself and his dependants?--or the inferior's, who, sufficiently advanced to detect the weaknesses of the class above him, though not to sure his own, abjures the blind reverence and obedience of ancient times, without attaining to the higher spirit of this our day--when the law of servitude has been remodelled, elevated, and consecrated by Christianity itself, in the person of its Divine Founder? "He that is greatest among you, let him be your servant."
This recognition of the sanctity of service, through the total and
sublime equality on which, in one sense, are thus placed the server and the
served, seems the point whereon all minor points ought to turn, and which,
in the solemn responsibility it imposes on both parties, ought never to be
absent from the mind of either;
yet it is usually one of the very last things likely to enter there.
To tell Mrs. Jones--who yesterday engaged her cook Betty for
fourteen pounds a-year, having beaten her down from fourteen guineas
by a compromise about the beer; and who, after various squabbles, finally
turned out pretty Susan, the housemaid, into the ghastly Vanity-fair
of London, for gossiping on area steps with divers
"followers"--or the honourable Mrs. Browne Browne, who
keeps Victorine sitting up till daylight just to undo her mistress's
gown, and last week threatened, through she did not dare, to dismiss the
fine upper-nurse, because, during the brief minute or two after
dessert, when Master Baby appeared, mamma, who rarely sees him at any other
time, and never meddles with his education, physical or moral, was shocked
to hear from his rosy lips a "naughty word"--to say to
these "ladies" that the "women" they employ are of
the same feminine
flesh and blood, would of course meet nominal assent. But to attempt to get them to carry that truth out practically--to own that they and their servants are of like passions and feelings, capable of similar elevation or deterioration of character, and amenable to the same moral laws--in fact, all "sisters" together, accountable both to themselves and to the other sex for the influence they mutually exercise over one another, would, I fear, be held simply ridiculous. "Sisters" indeed! Certainly not, under any circumstances--except when Death, the greatest Leveller, having permanently interposed, we may safely, over a few spadefuls of earth, venture to acknowledge "our dear sister here departed."
I have gone up and down the world a good deal, yet I have scarcely found
one household, rich or poor, hard or benevolent, Christian or worldly,
aristocratic or democratic, which, however correct in outward practice,
could be brought to own as a guiding principle as this, which is
apparently the New-Testament principle with regard to service and servants.
This by no means implies or commands equality; of all shams, there
is none so vain as the assertion of that which does not, and cannot exist
in this world, and which the highest religious and social legislation never
supposes possible.
For instance, my cook prepares and sends up dinner. From long practice,
she does it a hundred times better than I could do; nay, even takes a
pleasure and pride in it, for which I am truly thankful, and sincerely
indebted to her, too: for a good cook is a household blessing, and no
small contributor to health, temper, and enjoyment. Accordingly, I treat
her with a certain respectful awe. But I do not invite her to eat her own
dinner, or mingle in the society which to me is its most piquant sauce. She
was not born to it, not brought up for it. Good old soul! she would gape at
the finest bon-mot,
and doze over the most intellectual conversation. She is better left in peace by her kitchen-fire.
Also, though it is a real pleasure to me to watch my neat
parlor-maid in and out of the drawing-room, to see by her
bright intelligent face that she understands much of whatever talk is going
on, and may learn something by it too sometimes; still, I should never
think of asking her to take a seat among the guests. Poor little lass! she
would be as unhappy and out of place here as I should be in the noisy
Christmas party below-stairs, of which she is the very centre of
attraction, getting more compliments and mistletoe-kisses than I
ever got, or wished for, in my whole lifetime. And, by the same rule,
though I like to see her prettily dressed, and never scruple to tell her
when she sets my teeth on edge by a blue bow on a green-cotton gown,
I do not deem it necessary, when she helps me on with my silk one, to
condole
her over the said cotton, or to offer her the use of the toilet and my chaperonage at the conversazione to which I am going, where, in the scores I meet, there may be scarcely any face more pleasant, more kindly, or more necessary to me than her own.
Nevertheless, each is in her station. Providence fixed both where they
are; and while they there remain, unless either individual is qualified to
change, neither has the smallest right to overstep the barrier between
them; recognised, perhaps, better tacitly than openly by either, but never
by any ridiculous assumption of equality denied or set aside. Yet one
meeting-point there is--far below, or above, all external
barriers--the common womanhood in which all share. If anything were to
happen to my little maid--if I caught her crying over
"father's" letter, or running in, laughing and rosy,
after shutting the back gate on--somebody, I am afraid my heart would
warm to her just as much as, though
I never left my card at Buckingham Palace, it is prone to do to a certain Lady there, who takes early walks, and goes rides with her little children--apparently a better woman, wife, and mother than nine-tenths of her subjects. Is it not here, then, that true equality lies--in this recognition of a common nature; to the divinely-appointed law of which all external practice is to be referred? Would that both mistresses and servants could be brought to recognise this equality--not as a mere sentimental theory, but as a practical fact, the foundation and starting-point of all relations between them!
It concerns maids just as much as mistresses; and to them I wish to
speak, in the earnest hope that every household which reads this book will
do what is a practice, useful and excellent in itself, with all family
books,--send it down of quiet evenings, Sundays and holidays, to be
read in the kitchen, when the work
is done. For, work being done, no mental improvement that is compatible with the duties of his or her calling ought to be forbidden any human being.
I should like, first, to impress upon all women-servants how very
much society depends on them for its well-being, physical and moral.
And this, with no fear of thereby increasing their
self-conceit: it is not responsibility, but the want or loss
of it, which degrades character. To feel that you can or might be
something, is often the first step towards becoming it; and it is safest,
on the whole, to treat people as better than they are, if, perchance,
conscience may shame them into being what they are believed, than to check
all hope, paralyse all aspiration, and irritate them, by the slow pressure
of contemptuous incredulity, into becoming actually as bad as they are
supposed to be. Thus, if the young women to whom has fallen the lot of
domestic service, of making homes comfort-
able, and especially of taking care of children, could once be make to feel their own importance as a class--their infinite means of usefulness--I think it would stimulate them into a far higher feeling of self-respect and true respectability, and make them of double value to the community at large.
What do you "go to service" for?--Wages, of
course: the object being how much money you can earn, and how easy a
place you can get for it. Character is likewise indispensable to you; so
you seek out good families, and keep in them for a certain length of time.
Meanwhile, the most energetic and sensible among you try to learn as much
as lies in your way--but only as a means of bettering yourselves.
"To better yourself," is usually held a satisfactory reason for
quitting the most satisfactory place and the kindest of mistresses.
On the whole, the bond between you and "missis," is a mere
bargain--a matter of pounds,
shillings, and pence; you do just as much as she exacts, or as you consider your wages justify her in expecting from you--not a particle more. As to rights, privileges, and perquisites, it is not unfrequently either a daily battle or a sort of armed treaty between kitchen and parlour. The latter takes no interest in the former, except to see that you do your work and keep your place; while you on your part, except for gossip or curiosity, are comfortably indifferent to "the family." You leave or stay just as it suits them, or yourself, get through a prescribed round of work, are tolerably well-behaved, civil, honest--at least in great matters--and tell no lies, or only as many white ones as will answer your purposes. And so you go on, passing from "place" to "place," resting nowhere, responsible nowhere; sometimes marrying, and dropping into a totally different sphere, but oftener still continuing in the same course from year to year, laying by little enough, either in wages
or attachment; yet doing very well, in your own sense of the term, till sickness or old age overtakes you, and then--where are you?
I have read somewhere that in our hospitals and lunatic asylums there
is, next to governesses, no class so numerous as that of female domestic
servants.
Remember, I am referring not to the lower degrees, but to the
respectable among you--those who can always command decent wages and
good situations, so long as they are capable of taking them. Of the meaner
class, ignorant, stupid, drifted from household to household, from pure
incapacity to do or to learn anything, or expelled disgracefully thence for
want of (poor wretches! were they ever taught it?) a sense of the common
moral necessities of society, which objects to the open breach of at least
the sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth commandments--of these unhappy
dregs of your sisterhood, I cannot now venture to speak. I speak of those,
born
of respectable parents, starting in service with good prospects, able, generally, to read and write, and gifted with sufficient education and intelligence to make them a blessing to themselves and all about them, if their intelligence were not so often degraded into mere "sharpness," for want of that quality--rare in all classes, but rarest in yours--moral conscientiousness.
Why is it that, especially in large towns, a "clever"
servant is almost sure to turn out badly? Why do mistresses complain that,
while one can get a decent servant, a good-natured servant, a
servant who "does her work pretty well, with plenty of looking
after," a conscientious servant is with difficulty, if at all, to be
found?
By conscientious, I mean one who does her duty--that is, the
general business of her calling--not merely for wages or a character,
or even for the higher motive of "pleasing missis," but for the
highest of all motives--because it
is her duty. Because, to cook a dinner, with care and without waste; to keep a house clean and orderly in every corner, seen or not seen; to be scrupulously honest and truthful, in the smallest as in the greatest things; to abstain from pert answers in the parlour, squabbles in the kitchen, and ill-natured tittle-tattle about her fellow-servants or the family--concern not merely her position as a servant, but her conduct and character as a human being, accountable to God as much as the greatest woman that ever was born.
"Oh, that's fine talking!" you may say; "but
what can I do? what can be expected of
me--only a poor servant?"
Only a poor servant! Only a person whom a whole household
is obliged to trust, more or less, with its comfort, order, property,
respectability, peace, health--I was going to add, life; who, in times
of sickness or trouble, knows more of its secrets than nearest
acquaintance; who
is aware of all its domestic weakness, faults, and vexations; to whom the "skeleton" said to be in every house must necessarily be a thing guessed at, if not only too familiar; on whom master, mistress, children, or friend, must be daily dependent for numerous small comforts and attentions, scarcely known, perhaps, until they are missed. Only a poor servant! Why, no living creature has more opportunity of doing good or evil, and becoming to others either a blessing or a curse, than a "poor servant!"
Not if she is a mere bird of passage, flitting from roof to roof,
indifferent to everything save what she may pick up to feather her nest
with by the way. Not if she starts with the notion that
"missis" and she are to always be at war, or on the alert
against mutual encroachments, anxious only which can get the most out of
the other. Not if she takes to fawning and flattering, humouring her
mistress's weak points, and laughing at her behind her back;
betraying the
follies or misfortunes of one household into another; carrying on a regular system of double-faced hypocrisy, and fancying she is getting her revenge, and degrading her injurers, when, in fact, she more, much more, degrades herself.
These are the things which make servants despised; not because they are
servants, but because the most of them, if they assume any moral standard
at all, hold one so far below that of the class above them, that this class
learns to regard and treat them as an inferior order of beings.
"What can you expect from a servant?" said to me a lady with
whom I often used to argue the matter--a good and noble-minded
woman, too, among whose few prejudices was this, fixed and immutable,
against the whole race of domestics.
What do I expect from a servant? Why, precisely what I exact from
myself--the same honesty of word and act, the same chastity and
decency of behavior, self-government in temper and speech, and propriety of dress and manner according to our respective stations.
Therefore, in any disputed point, I, as being probably the more
educated, older, if not wiser of the two, feel bound as much as possible to
put myself in her place, to try and understand her feelings and character,
before I judge her, or legislate for her. I try in all things to set her an
example to follow, rather than abuse her for faults and failings which she
has sense enough to see I am just as liable to as she. I would rather help
her in the right way, than drive her into it, whip in hand, and take
another road myself. Reprove, I ought, and will, as often as she requires
it; but reproof is one thing, scolding another: she should never see
that I find fault merely from bad temper, or for the pleasure (?) of
scolding. Authority I must have: it is for her good as well as mine
that there should be only one mistress in the house, to whom
obedience must be implicitly rendered, and whose domestic regulations will admit of no idleness, carelessness, or irregularity; but I would scorn to use my authority unjustly, or wantonly, or unkindly, simply for the sake of asserting it. If it is worth anything in itself, she will soon learn that it is not to be disputed.
And generally, rule, order, and even fair reproof, are among the last
things that servants complain of. Selfishness, stinginess, want of
consideration for others, are much oftener the fruitful source of all kinds
of domestic rebellion, or the distrust which is worse than any open
fight--the sense of gnawing injustice, which destroys all respect and
attachment between "up-stairs" and
"down-stairs."
And yet the servant is often very unjust, too. Cook, who has only to
dress the dinner, and neither to work for it nor pay for it, turns up her
nose at missis's "meanness,"
i.e. displeasure at waste or
extravagance--cook,
who, if any
crash came, has only to look out for another place; while missis has her five children, whose little mouths must be filled, and little bodies must be clothed, and "master," whom it breaks her heart to see coming in from the City, haggard, tired, and cross--a crossness he cannot help, poor man!--or sitting down with a pitiful patience, sick and sad, almost wishing, save for her and the children, that he could lay his head on her shoulder and die! What does cook in the kitchen, fat and comfortable, know of all these things--of the agonised struggle for position and character--may, mere bread--which makes the days and nights of thousands of the professional classes one long battle for life?
Also, the pretty housemaid, who has her regular work and periodical
holiday, with her "young man" coming faithfully on Sundays,
about whom, should he turn out false, she rarely makes a fuss, but quickly
takes up with another; she being essentially practical, and mental
suf-
fering being happily out of her line. Little she guesses of all the conflicts, torments, and endurances which fall to the lot of natures whom a different cultivation, if not a finer organization, has rendered more alive to another sort of trouble--that anguish of spirit which is worse than any bodily pain. Little she knows, when she comes in singing to dust the parlour, of many a cruel scene transacted there; or of many an hour of mortal agony, bitter as death, yet sharpened by the full consciousness of youth and life, which has been spent in the pretty room, outside which she grumbles so, because "miss will keep her door locked, and it'll be dinner time afore ever a body can get the beds made."
Servants should make allowance for these things, and many more which
they neither know nor understand. They should respect not out of blind
subservience, but mere common sense, the great difference which their
narrower education and mode of thought often places between
them and "the family," in its pleasures, tastes, and necessities, and, above all, in its sufferings. This difference must exist: in the happiest homes, cares and anxieties must be for ever arising, like sea-waves, to be breasted or avoided, or dashed against and broken, as may be; and against these the servant must bear her part as well as the mistress. But it is, and ought to be, something to know how often a word or look of respectful sympathy, a quiet little attention, an unofficious observance of one's comfort in trifles, will, in times of trouble, go direct to the mistress's heart, with a soothing influence of which the servant has not the slightest idea, and which is never afterwards forgotten.
"Better is a friend that is near than a brother afar off;"
and better, many a time, is the silent kindness of some domestic, who, from
long familiarity, understands one's peculiarities, than the sympathy
of many an outside friend, who only rubs against one's angles,
sharpened by
sickness or pain and often, unintentionally, hurts more by futile comforting than by total neglect.
A word on one branch of female service, undeniably the most important of
all--the care and management of children.
I have always, from fond experience, held that child to be the happiest
who never had a nursery-maid--only a mother. But this lot is
too felicitous to fall to many, and perhaps, after all, would not be in
reality so Utopian as in idea--particularly to the mothers. So let us
grant hired nurses to be a natural necessity of civilisation.
Poor things! they certainly need consideration, for they have much to
bear. Children are charming--in the abstract; but one sometimes sees
the petted cherubs of the drawing-room the little fiends of the
nursery, exhibiting, almost before they can speak, passions which would
tempt one to believe in original sin, did
not education commence with existence. Yet whatever the mysterious law of sin may be that Adam made us liable for, it is possible to bring even infants under the dominion of that law of love--given by the Second Adam--to Whom little children came. And how? By practicing it ourselves.
Ay; making allowance for the necessary short-comings of all young
things, just entered on the experience of life, from kittens to boys, the
former being much the least troublesome of the two, I never once knew or
heard of a case of irredeemably "naughty" children, in regard
to whom parents or nurses, or both, were not originally and principally to
blame. I never saw a fretful sullen girl, who had not been made so by
selfishness and ill-humour on the part of others, or by tantalising
restrictions and compelled submission, hard enough at any age, but
especially in childhood. I never knew a revengeful boy, who had not first
had the Cain-like
spirit put into him by some taunting voice or uplifted hand--not a baby hand; teaching him that what others did he might do, and that the blow he smarted from was exactly the same sort of pain, and dealt in the same spirit, as that he delighted to inflict on nurse or brother, feeling out of his fierce little heart that this was the sole consideration left him for his half-understood but intolerable wrongs.
Does ever any man or woman remember the feeling of being
"whipped"--as a child--the fierce anger, the
insupportable ignominy, the longing for revenge, which blotted out all
thought of contrition for the fault in rebellion against the
punishment? With this recollection on their own parts, I can hardly suppose
any parents venturing to inflict it--certainly not allowing its
infliction by another, under any circumstances whatever. A
nurse-maid or domestic of any sort, once discovered to have lifted
up her hand against a child, ought to meet instant severe
rebuke, and, on a repetition of the offence, instant dismissal.
A firm will the nurse must have--which the child will obey, knowing
it must be obeyed; but it should be with her no less than with the parents,
a loving will always. I will not suppose any young woman so mean and
cowardly as to wreak her whims and tempers, or those of her mistress, on
the helpless little sinner, who, however annoying, is after all such a very
small sinner. I cannot believe she will find it so very hard to love the
said sinner, who clings about her helplessly night and day, in the total
dependence that of itself produces love. And surely, remembering her own
childhood and its events--such nothings now, of such vast moment then,
its unjust punishments, unremedied wrongs, and harshly-exacted
sacrifices--things which in their results may have affected her temper
for years, and even yet are unforgotten--she will strive as much as
possible to put herself
in her nursling's place, to look at the world from his point of view, and never, as people often do, to expect from him a degree of perfection which one rarely finds even in a grown person; above all, never to expect from him anything that she does not practise herself.
It will be seen that I hold this law of kindness as the Alpha and Omega
of education. I once asked one--in his own house a father in
everything but the name, his authority unquestioned, his least word held in
reverence, his smallest wish obeyed--"How did you ever manage to
bring up these children?" He said: "By
love."
That is the question. It is because people have so little love in them,
so little purity and truth, self-control and self-denial,
that they make such frightful errors in the bringing up of children. When I
go from home to home of the middle classes, and see the sort of rule or
misrule there, the countless evil influences, physical and spiritual,
against which children have to struggle,
I declare I often wonder that in the rising generation there should be any good men and women. And when I glance down the Times column of "Want Places," and speculate how few of these "nurses," upper and under "girls," and "nursery-maids," have the smallest knowledge of their responsibility, or care about fulfilling it, my wonder is, that the new generation should grow up to manhood and womanhood at all.
This responsibility--if the nurse ever reflects on it--how
awful it is! To think that whatever the man may become, learned and great,
worldly or wicked, he is at present only the child, courting her smile and
coming to her for kisses, or hiding from her frown and sobbing on her neck,
"I will be good, I will be good!" That, be she old or young,
clever or ignorant, ugly or pretty, she has, next to the
mother--sometimes before the mother, though that is a sad thing to
see--this all-powerful influence over him,
stronger than any he will afterwards allow or own. That it rests with herself how she uses it, whether wisely and tenderly, for the guidance and softening of his nature, or harshly and capriciously, after a fashion which may harden and brutalise him, and make him virtually disbelieve in love and goodness for the remainder of his existence.
Truly, in this hard world, which they must only too soon be thrust into,
it is more essential even for boys than girls that, in the dawn of life,
while women solely have the management of them, they should be accustomed
to this law of love--love paramount and never ceasing, clearly
discernible in the midst of restraint, reproof, and even
punishment--love that tries to be always as just as it is tender, and
never exercises one of its rights for its own pleasure and good, but for
the child's. To the nurse, unto whom it does not come by instinct, as
it does to parents, the practice of it may be difficult--very
difficult--but God forbid it should be impossible.
And what a reward there is in this, beyond any form of service--to
a woman! Respect and gratitude of parents; consideration from all in the
house; affection, fresh, full, and free, and sweet as only a child's
love can be. Trying as the nurse-maids's life is, countless as
are her vexations and pains, how many a childless wife or solitary old maid
has envied her, playing at romps for kisses, deafened with
ever-sounding rills of delicious laughter all day, and lying down at
night with a soft sleepy thing breathing at her side, or wakened of a
morning with two little arms tight round her neck, smotheringly expressing
a wealth of love that kingdoms could not buy.
And when she grows an old woman, if, as often happens to domestic
servants, she does not marry, but remains in service all her life, it must
be her own fault if nurse's position is not an exceedingly happy and
honoure