The Woman Who Dared Part 18

"O, you're so quick, so clever, all you men!

And women are so dull and credulous, So easily duped, when left to go alone!

What you would prove is, that my daring step, In being first to make a declaration, Was needless, since priority in love Was yours, and your intention would have brought The same result about without my seeking.

Know then, the money was not yours until I'd got the news of my recovered fortune; From me the money came, and only me; And all that story of a Judd, turned deacon, Grown penitent and making rest.i.tution, Was a mere myth, invented by your father, Lest you might hesitate to take the money.

Now if I had not sought you as I did, And if I had not put you to the test, And if I had not learnt your secret grief, We might have lived till we were gray and bent Before a step of yours had brought us nearer."

"Outflanked! I own it, and I give it up!"

Cried Charles, all flus.h.i.+ng with astonishment: "But how I'll rate that ancient fisherman, My graceless father, for deceiving me!

See him stand there, as if with conscience void, Throwing the line for innocent, fat trout!

With that grave face, saying the money came From Judd,--from Deacon Judd! I'll deacon him!"

"What! you regret it, do you, Master Charles?

The crooked ways that brought you where you are You would make straight, and have the past undone?

To think that by a woman you've been wooed, To think that by a woman you've been won, Is thought too humbling and too scandalous; Is an indignity too hard to bear!

Oh! well, sir, well; do as you please; the child Goes with its mother, though; remember that."

And here the infant threw its eyelids back, Revealing orbs, blue as the shadows cast On Saranac's blue by overhanging woods.

Said Lothian, s.n.a.t.c.hing up the smiling wonder, And handing it, with kisses, to the mother: "Take all your woman's rights; even this, the best: Are we not each the richer by the sharing Of such a gift? I'll not regret your daring."

NOTES.

PAGE 11.

"_Oh! lacking love and best experience._"

An extreme Materialism here comes to the support of a grim theology. In his "Physiology and Pathology of the Mind," Dr. Maudsley says: "To talk about the purity and innocence of a child's mind is a part of that poetical idealism and willing hypocrisy by which man ignores realities and delights to walk in a vain show." Such sweeping generalizations do not inspire confidence in the writer's prudence. Christ was nearer the truth when he said, concerning little children,--"Of such is the kingdom of heaven."

PAGE 64.

"_Few honorable outlooks for support, Excepting marriage._"

Referring to the fact that in Ma.s.sachusetts, during the ten years from 1859 to 1869, the increase of crime among women has been much greater than among men, Miss Catherine Beecher remarks: "But turning from these (the criminal cla.s.s) to the daughters of the most wealthy cla.s.s, those who have generous and devoted aspirations also feel that for them, too, there is no opening, no promotion, no career, except that of marriage,--_and for this they are trained to feel that it is disgraceful to seek. They have nothing to do but wait to be sought. Trained to believe marriage their highest boon, they are disgraced for seeking it, and must affect indifference._

"Meantime to do anything to earn their own independence is what father and brothers would deem a disgrace to themselves and their family. For women of high position to work for their livelihood, in most cases custom decrees as disgraceful. And then, if cast down by poverty, they have been trained to nothing that would earn a support, or, if by chance they have some resource, all avenues for its employment are thronged with needy applicants."

This is but a very mild statement of the social fictions under which woman is now suffering in mind, body, and estate; but it is valuable as coming from a witness who hopes that some less radical remedy than female suffrage will be found for existing evils. If the remedy lies with woman herself, as all admit, how can we expect her to act efficiently until she is a modifying force in legislation?

PAGE 65.

"_Unions, no priest, no church can sanctify._"

"The most absurd notions," says J. A. St. John, "have prevailed on the subject of matrimony. Marriage, it is said, is a divine inst.i.tution, therefore marriages are made in heaven; but the consequence does not at all follow; the meaning of the former proposition simply being that G.o.d originally ordained that men and women should be united in wedlock; but that he determined what particular men and women should be united, every day's experience proves to be false. It is admitted on all hands that marriage is intended to confer happiness on those who wed. Now, if it be found that marriage does not confer happiness on them, it is an undoubted proof that they ought not to have been united, and that the sooner they separate the better; but from accepting this doctrine some persons are deterred by misrepresentations of scripture, others by views of policy, and others again by an entire indifference to human happiness. They regard men and women as mere animals, and, provided they have children, and rear them, nothing more."

"It is incredible," says Milton, "how cold, how dull, and far from all fellow-feeling we are, _without the spur of self-concernment_!"

PAGE 72.

"_Behold the world's ideal of a wife!_"

"All women," says John Stuart Mill, "are brought up from their very earliest years in the belief that their ideal character is the very opposite to that of man; not self-will and self-government by self-control, but submission and yielding to the control of others....

What is now called the nature of women is an eminently artificial thing,--the result of forced repression in some directions, unnatural stimulation in others."

The cowardice that is looked upon as disgraceful in a man is regarded by many as rather honorable than otherwise in a woman. False notions, inherited from chivalrous times, and growing out of the state of subjection in which woman has been bred, have generated this inconsistency. The truth is that courage is honorable to both s.e.xes; to a Grace Darling and an Ida Lewis, a Madame Roland and a Florence Nightingale, as well as to a Bayard and a Shaw, a Napoleon and a Farragut.

PAGE 73.

"_That moment should the intimate relations Of marriage end, and a release be found!_"

In the United States the action of certain State legislatures, in increasing the facilities for divorce, has been a subject of alarm among persons bred under the influences of a more conservative system. It would be difficult to show as yet whether social morality is harmed or helped by the increased freedom. Nothing can be more deceptive and unsatisfactory than the statistics offered on both sides of the question. It is generally admitted, we believe, that in those countries where divorce is most difficult, the number of illegitimate births is largest, and the reputation of married women is most questionable. In the nature of things, much of the prevalent immorality being furtive and clandestine, it is impossible to estimate the extent of the evils growing out of illiberal laws in relation to matrimony. In any legislation on the subject women should have a voice.

PAGE 80.

"_Unlike the Church, I look on marriage as A civil contract, not a sacrament._"

Kenrick here refers of course to the Catholic Church, whose theory of marriage, namely, that it is a sacrament and indissoluble, when once contracted according to the forms of the Church, still influences the legislation and social prejudices of Protestant communities in respect to their own religious forms of marriage. It was not till the twelfth century, and under the auspices of Pope Innocent III., that divorce was prohibited by the civil as well as the canon law. But it is only a marriage between Catholics that is indissoluble under the Catholic system. In the case of a marriage of Protestants, the tie is not regarded as binding. A dissolution was actually granted in such a case where one of the parties turned Catholic, in 1857, by the bishop of Rio Janeiro, who p.r.o.nounced an uncanonical marriage null and void. Modern legislation in establis.h.i.+ng the validity of civil marriages aimed a severe blow at ecclesiastical privilege.

To Rome and not to the Bible we must go for all the authority we can produce for denying that marriage is simply a civil contract. The form, binding one man to one woman, had its origin outside of the Bible. Up to the time of Charlemagne in the eighth century, polygamy and concubinage were common among Christians and countenanced by the Church. Even Luther seems to have had somewhat lax, though not unscriptural, notions on the subject. When Philip, landgrave of Hesse-Ca.s.sel, wanted to take another wife, and threatened to get a dispensation from the Pope for the purpose, Luther convoked a synod, composed of six of his proselytes, who declared that marriage is merely a civil contract; that they could find no pa.s.sage in the Holy Scriptures ordaining monogamy; and they consequently signed a decree permitting Philip to take a second wife without repudiating his first.

In that reconstruction of laws, threatened by the movement in behalf of female suffrage, it is not probable that the patriarchal inst.i.tution of polygamy will be regarded otherwise than as debasing to both s.e.xes; but perhaps a greater lat.i.tude of divorce will be sought as not inconsistent with public morality. Looking at the question abstractly, and apart from all religious and social prejudice, it certainly seems the height of cruelty and absurdity to compel parties to keep up the relations of man and wife when one of them feels towards the other either a physical repugnance or a moral dislike. The impediments often raised by our courts in the way of divorce are gross relics of barbarism, and will be abolished by a higher legislative morality.

"Whoso," says Milton, "prefers either matrimony or other ordinance before the good of man and the plain exigence of charity, let him profess Papist or Protestant or what he will, he is no better than a pharisee, and understands not the gospel; whom, as a misinterpreter of Christ, I openly protest against." And, in another pa.s.sage, he rebukes those who would rest "in the mere element of the text," as favoring "the policy of the Devil to make that gracious ordinance (of marriage) become insupportable, that what with men not daring to venture upon wedlock, and what with men wearied out of it, all inordinate license might abound."

Mr. J. A. St. John, editor of the Prose Works of Milton, remarks in reference to the marriage law as it now stands in England:--

"_Having been invented and established by men, it is calculated to bear with extreme severity on women_, who are daily subjected to wrongs and hards.h.i.+ps which they would not endure, were the relief of divorce open to them. Those who take a different view descant upon the encouragement which would, they say, be given to immorality were divorce made easy.

But the contrary is the truth.

"It is in behalf of morals, and for the sake of imparting a higher tone to the feelings of society, that the present unnatural system should be abolished. Where, what Milton calls, an unconjugal mind exists, there must be unconjugal manners; and to what these lead no one need be told.

Where marriage is indissoluble, people presume upon that fact to transgress its laws, which they would not do were it legally practicable to obtain immediate redress.

"However, there is a great indisposition in mankind to innovate in legislation; and they had generally rather be miserable according to rule than free and happy on a novel principle.... Whenever it clearly appears that man and wife can no longer live together in peace and harmony, their separation would be far more beneficial to themselves and favorable to morals, than their compulsory union. Milton's notions of married life are highly flattering to women, whom he evidently contemplates as the equal companions of men."

PAGE 156.

"_Give her the suffrage._"

In one of his pamphlets in behalf of women's suffrage, Professor F. W.

Newman of England, a man of widest culture and n.o.blest sympathies, and always among the ablest and foremost in good works, remarks: "It is useless to reply that women have not political knowledge. Hitherto they have had little motive to acquire it. But how much of such knowledge have those male voters had, whom, for two hundred years past, candidates for the place of M. P. have made drunk in the tippling-houses? The arguments used against female suffrage simply show that there is nothing valid to be said. Women have, _prima facie_, the same right as men."

PAGE 160.