Letters to Young Women

LETTER V.

THE CLAIMS OF LOVE AND LUCRE.

Maidens, like moths, are ever caught by glare,
And Mammon wins his way where Seraphs might despair.

Byron.

YOU calculate when you are married to be married to the man you love, and no other; yet there are a good many chances that you will be influenced in your choice by other considerations. But you should never think of marrying a man simply because you love him. You may love a man who has personal habits that will make you miserable. You may love a man so lazy or so inefficient that your whole life will be necessarily a continued struggle with poverty. You may love a man who has no adaptation to you — who is surly and stupid and unresponsive; who can give no satisfactory return of your affection, and who will repulse every demonstration of your fondness. You may love a man who is supremely selfish, When you become bound for life to a man, he should be one who can make you happier than you would be alone. There are doubtless some instances of a love so noble and so self-sacrificing that it will welcome poverty and want, with the object of its desire, as being far better than riches without it. I will not quarrel with this. I only say that, generally, competence (I do not mean wealth) is necessary to that degree of comfort without which love fails of its sweetest exercises and most grateful rewards. Love for a man is only one reason why you should marry him. There may be a round dozen of reasons why you should not. A woman’s heart is a very queer thing, on the whole. It falls in love in the most unaccountable way, with the most unaccountable men. It is a hard thing to reason with, and a much harder thing to reason about, yet there are some things which may be said to those whose judgment is not yet blinded by a passion that contemns reason. You should marry a man to whom you will be willing to bend, or one whom you know you can manage without his knowledge, or with his consent. The instances are very rare in which two strong wills can harmonize in close companionship. They must both be governed by principle, and be mutually forbearing from principle. I have seen noble instances of this, but not often. The law of nature is that the wife shall bend to the husband — that her will shall, at last, be subject ; yet there are instances of true affection between man and woman when subjection on the part of the man becomes the law of nature, the woman’s judgment being the best, and her will the strongest. In these cases, the female mind possesses masculine characteristics and the male mind feminine characteristics; and it is just as proper that her mind should govern in these instances as that the male mind should govern in others. But there is something unnatural in this, after all — or something, I should say, out of the common order of things.

If a woman sincerely believe that there is no man to whose will she can gladly subordinate her own, let her seek out a feminine man, and make suit for his hand. A noted female vocalist, whom all of us love, had the credit of doing this. He gave up even his religion for her, though that may not have cost him much. I presume that she governs him, and I have yet to learn that the union is not thoroughly a happy one. After all, if the lady were a graceful subject of a kingly intellect, I cannot help thinking that she would be in a more natural position, and one in which she would be happier than she is now.

You are placed in a position of peculiar temptation. You have ambitions to be something more than pretty, accomplished, and loved — at least, some of you have. You want a career. As a woman, you see that you cannot have one, save through a matrimonial connexion. You wish to do something — to be something — to be mistress of an establishment, or to be associated with one who has the public eye, or the public consideration. It is thus that wealth and position come to you with very great temptations. A man of wealth or a man of power offers you his hand, and, unless he is absolutely repulsive, he will generally get it. You will try to love him, or learn to love him, or think you love him; or perhaps you will take a mercenary or a worldly view of the whole thing, and marry him for what of wealth and position he can bring you. Now all this marrying for money, or for position, or for any other consideration, when genuine love is absent, is essential prostitution. I know of no difference between selling one’s self for a lifetime, and that sale of the soul and body which is made in the house of her whose steps take hold on hell. If you find yourself willing to give up yourself to a man in a life-long connexion for the house he gives you, for the silks and furs with which he clothes you, for the society into which he introduces you, for the position with which he endows you, then, whether you know it or not, you become the sister of the drab whom you so inconsistently spurn from your side. In fact, the motives that have made her what she is may be white by the side of yours. Marrying for love may seem to be a very silly thing to a woman of the world; but marrying without love, for a consideration, is wicked. “Love in a cottage” is laughed at by very “judicious people,” but it is a very sweet thing by the side of indifference in a palace. I know of nothing more disgusting in all the world than that mercenary tie which, under the name of marriage, binds a woman to the bosom of one who bought her with his money.

I know what the world says about this matter, and I very heartily despise the world for it. When I ask the world if Jane has “made out well” by her union, and am told that she has done finely, and married a man worth a hundred thousand dollars, I am tempted to be profane. When I ask the world how Kate has settled, and am informed, as the essential portion of the reply, that her husband is “an excellent provider,” I am tempted to spit in its face. The conventional idea of a happy and proper matrimonial connexion is so mean and so arbitrary, that it is no wonder that unsophisticated girls sacrifice themselves, I pity them from the bottom of my heart. They cannot have even the reputation of marrying well unless they allow base motives to enter into their calculations. They learn early to aim at wealth or position as primary and supremely desirable things. A brilliant match, in the eyes of the world, atones for low morals, uncongenial tastes, and luke-warm hearts.

Now, if you must make calculations, let me help you. Make genuine affection the first thing. This is absolutely indispensable. It takes precedence of everything else. You are not at liberty to consider anything before this. A union based upon anything else, is, as I have already told you, essential prostitution. It is against nature — against God’s most wise and benevolent intentions. You can make no union with a man, not based — on this, that will give you happiness. Friendship alone will not do. Esteem alone will not do. The idea of giving yourself to a man simply because you esteem him, and respect him, is disgusting. The union of the current of your life with that of a man is the great event of your history, and if this be not through those natural affinities, sympathies, and partialities — that passion of your soul which heaven intended should be called into exercise by manhood — then is it only a conventional union, and no union in fact. Love, then, I say, is the essential thing, and yet love, as I have said before, is only one thing. There may be in the man who excites the holiest and strongest passion of your nature many things which, if you value peace — if you value your own purity, even — should lead you to pluck that passion from your breast, and turn your back upon its object, that God’s light may rest upon your brow, even if sorrow make darkness in your heart.

It is hard to examine character, and profit by the study, after the heart has become the seat of an absorbing passion; but it is indispensably necessary to do it sometimes. It is far better that the passion be excited by the influence of character, disposition, and bearing, but when study becomes necessary, it should be entered upon conscientiously; for the second requisite for a happy union is sound character. A woman possessing the best elements of womanhood cannot be happy with a man who has not a sound character. He may have a good disposition, he may be intelligent, he may have wealth and honor, but if his character be weak or faulty, she has no reliance; and she must ultimately lose her respect for him. When respect is gone, she may love, she may pity, she may forgive, but she cannot be happy. Disposition comes in for consideration in the third place, and worldly circumstances in the fourth, or perhaps still lower in the scale. I might speak of another thing, requisite to happiness in the highest degree, but I will not, now and here,

In the consideration of worldly circumstances, be wise. Remember that if your lover be intelligent, healthy, the master of a business or a profession, he stands many more chances to die in the possession of wealth or competence than he would if rich now, and without a settled business and settled purposes. I have watched the results of many matches, and I have seen ten which started with a fortune to be acquired, turn out well in a worldly point of view, where I have seen one result happily, starting with the fortune made. If a young man is honorable, intelligent, industrious, and manly in every respect, and you love him, marry him. There is no power under heaven that has a moral right to stand between you and your happiness. Many a poor girl who married for money now pines in poverty, and covets the position of girls whose wiser choice she once contemned.

I speak in this way for two reasons. The first is, that it is not only your right but your duty to consider whether a life of certain poverty will be compensated by a life of association with the man you love. The second is, that when you take this matter into consideration you should make your judgment upon a sound basis. Wealth in hand, without business habits, business tastes, and business interests, is the most unreliable thing in the world. It may even spoil a good lover, and in time transform him into a loafer or a sot. On the contrary, good business habits, good character, enterprise, ambition — all these combined — are almost, sure to secure competence and success. If you would rely on anything, rely on these, for they are the only reliable things. Misfortune may deal harshly with these, but that is the business of Providence.

I fancy one reply that may be made to all this wise talk. Women practically have comparatively little choice in the matter. They grow up from the cradle with the idea that it is a horrible thing to live and die an old maid. That, in the minds of half the girls, is the most terrible thing in all the world. They can abide anything better than that. So they feel a kind of obligation to jump at the first offer, they are so much afraid they shall never have another. Let them remember that a mismated match is much worse than an unmated life. I believe that marriage is the true condition, and that no man or woman can fully enjoy life unmarried; but I know they will be more unhappy if they are badly matched than if not matched at all. But women have more choice than they think, and would have still more than they do, if their intercourse with young men were placed upon the basis indicated in my last letter.

Most young women study the character of men but little, because they have but little opportunity. They see comparatively few, and, through the character of their intercourse, know them very incompletely. It is a sin and a shame that young women enjoy such inferior opportunities of learning the character of young men, — of weighing, comparing, and judging them. It is a shame that they have no more opportunities for a choice. My own wife very fortunately got an excellent husband, but it is something for which she is to be grateful to an overruling Providence, for her own knowledge had very little to do with it. I could have cheated her beyond all account. I tell you, men want studying for some years, before you find them out, and it becomes you to run fewer risks than the most of your sex run in this business. It is a good deal of a step — this getting married, and I am very anxious that you shall know a great many men, that you shall get the one you love, that he shall be worthy of you, and that you shall be happy all the days of your life.