ACCURSËD EVE
When the masculine Serpent, “who was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord had made,” tempted the mother of mankind to eat of the forbidden fruit, the Voice in the Garden said to her—“I will greatly multiply thy sorrow!” It can scarcely be denied that this curse has been fulfilled. So manifold and incessant have been the sorrows of Woman since the legendary account of the creation of the world, that one cannot help thinking the whole business somewhat unfair, if,—for merely being “beguiled” by a beast of the field who was known to be more “subtil” than any other, and afterwards being “given away” by Coward Adam,—Eve and all the descendants of her sex should be compelled to suffer centuries of torture. The injustice is manifestly cruel and arbitrary,—yet it would seem to have followed poor Accursëd Eve from then till now. “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow!” And sorrow has been multiplied to such an aggravated and barbarous extent upon her unfortunate head, that in the Jewish ritual to this very day there is a part of the service wherein the men, standing in the presence of women, individually say: “Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who hast not made me a woman!” thus deliberately insulting, in their very house of worship, the sex of their mothers!
But from the earliest times, if we are to accept historical testimony, the Jews of the ancient world appear to have treated women in the majority as “Something worser than their dog, a little lower than their horse.” Save and except those rare cases where the Jewish woman suddenly found out her latent powers and employed them to advantage, the Jewish man made her fetch and carry for him like a veritable beast of burden. He yoked her to his plough with oxen,—he sold and exchanged her with his friends as freely as any other article of commerce,—his “base uses” of her were various, and seldom to his credit,—while, such as they were, they only lasted so long as they satisfied his immediate humour. When done with, she was “cast out.” The kind of “casting out” to which she was subjected is not always explained. But it may be taken for granted that in many instances she was either killed immediately, or turned adrift to die of starvation and weariness. The Jews in their Biblical days were evidently not much affected by her griefs. They were God’s “chosen” people,—and the fact that women were the mothers of the whole “chosen” race, appeared to call for no claim on their chivalrous tenderness or consideration.
Looking back through the vista of time to that fabled Eden, when she listened to the tempting of the “subtil” one, the wrongs and injustices endured by Accursëd Eve at the hand of Coward Adam make up a calendar of appalling, almost superhuman crime. Man has taken the full licence allowed him by the old Genesis story (which, by the way, was evidently invented by man himself for his own convenience). “Thy desire shall be to thy husband and he shall rule over thee.” And among all tribes, and in all nations he has ruled with a rod of iron! The Christian dispensation has interfered somewhat with his former reign of tyranny, for with the birth of Christ came, to a certain extent, the idealization and beatification of womanhood. The Greeks and Romans, however, had a latent glimmering idea of what Woman in all her glory should be, and of what she might possibly attain to in the future,—for all their grandest symbols of life, such as Truth, Beauty, Justice, Fortune, Fame, Wisdom, are always represented by their sculptors clothed in the female form divine. It is a curious fact, that in those early periods of civilization, when Literature and Art were just dawning upon the world, man, though aggregating to his own Ego nearly everything in the universe, paused before representing himself as a figure of Justice, Mercy or Wisdom. He evidently realized his unfitness to stand, even in marble, before the world as a symbol of moral virtue. He therefore, with a grace which well became him in those “pagan” days, bent the knee to all noble attributes of humanity as represented in Woman. Her fair face, her beauteous figure, greeted him in all his temples of worship;—as Venus and Diana she smiled upon him; as the goddess of Fortune or Chance, she accepted his votive wreaths,—as Fame or Victory, she gave him blessing whenever he went to war, or returned in triumph from the field;—and all this was but the embryo or shadowing-forth of woman’s higher future and better possibilities, when the days of her long and cruel probation should be accomplished, and her “curse” in part be lifted. There are signs and tokens that this happy end is in sight. Accursëd Eve is beginning to have a good time. And the only fear now is, lest she should overstep the mark of her well-deserved liberty and run headlong into licence. For Eve,—with or without curse,—is naturally impulsive and credulous; and being too often forgetful of the little incident which occurred to her in the matter of the Tree of Good and Evil, is still far too prone to listen to the beguiling of “subtil” personages worse “than any beast of the field which the Lord hath made.”
Accursëd Eve, having broken several of her old-time fetters, and beginning to feel her feet as well as her wings, just now wants a word in politics. As one of her cursëd daughters, I confess I wonder that she should wish to put herself to so much unnecessary trouble, seeing that she has the whole game in her hands. Politics are generally hustled along by Coward Adam,—unless, by rarest chance, Brave Adam, his twin brother, suddenly steps forth unexpectedly, when there ensues what is called a “collapse of the Government.” In any question, small or great, Accursëd Eve has only to offer Coward Adam the apple, and he will eat it. Which metaphor implies that even in politics, if she only moves him round gradually to her own views in that essentially womanly way which, while persuading, seems not to persuade, he is bound to yield. Personally speaking, I do not know any man who is not absolutely under the thumb of at least one woman. And I will not believe that there is any woman so feeble, so stupid, so lost to the power and charm of her own individuality, as not to be able to influence quite half a dozen men. This being the case, what does Accursëd Eve want with a vote? If she is so unhappy, so ugly, so repulsive, so deformed in mind and manners as to have no influence at all on any creature of the male sex whatever, neither father, nor brother, nor uncle, nor cousin, nor lover, nor husband, nor friend,—would the opinion of such an one be of any consequence, or her vote of any value? I assert nothing,—I only ask the question.
Speaking personally as a woman, I have no politics, and want none. I only want the British Empire to be first and foremost in everything, and I tender my sincerest homage to all the men of every party who will honestly work towards that end. These being my sentiments, I deprecate any strong separate parliamentary attitude on the part of Accursëd Eve. I say that she has much better, wider work to do than take part in tow-rows with the rather undignified personages who often make somewhat of a bear-garden of the British House of Commons. That she would prove a good M.P. were she a man, I am quite sure; but as a woman I know she “goes one better,” in becoming the wife of an M.P.
Accursëd Eve! Mother of the world! What higher thing does she seek? Mother of Christianity itself, she stands before us, a figure symbolic of all good, her Holy Child in her arms, her sweet, musing, prayerful face bending over it in gravely tender devotion. From her soft breast humanity springs renewed,—she represents the youth, the hope, the love of all mankind. Wronged as she has been, and as she still is, her patience never fails. Deceived, she “mends her broken shell with pearl,” and still trusts on. Her sweet credulousness is the same as ever it was;—the “subtil” one can always over-reach her through her too ready confidence in the idea that “all things work together for good.” Her “curse” is the crime of loving too well,—believing too much. Should a “subtil” one say he loves her, she honestly thinks he does. When he turns out, as often happens, to be looking after her money rather than herself, she can scarcely force her mind to realize that he is not so much hero as cad. When she has to earn her own living in any of the artistic professions, she will frequently tell all her plans, hopes and ambitions to “subtil” ones with the most engaging frankness. The “subtil” ones naturally take every advantage of her, and some of them put a stopgap on her efforts if they can.
How many times men have tried to steal away the honour of a woman’s name and fame in literature need not here be chronicled. Of how many books, bearing a woman’s name on the title-page it is said—“Her husband helped her,”—or “She got Mr. So-and-So to write the descriptive part!” “George Eliot” has often been accused of being assisted in her novels by Mr. Lewes. A little incident,—touching enough to my mind,—is related in the memoirs of Charlotte Brontë. After her marriage, and when she was expecting the birth of her child, she was reading some of the first chapters of an intended new novel to her husband,—who, as he listened, said in that peculiarly encouraging way which is common to men who have gifted women to deal with—“You seem to be repeating yourself. You must take care not to repeat yourself.” Poor little soul! She never “repeated” herself,—she just died. No one can tell how her husband’s thoughtless phrase may have teazed or perplexed her sensitive mind in a critical condition of health, and helped to hasten the fatal end.
Edward Fitzgerald’s celebrity as a scholar is not, and never will be wide enough to blot out from remembrance his brutal phrase on hearing of the death of Elizabeth Barrett Browning—
“Mrs. Browning is dead. Thank God we shall have no more Aurora Leighs!”
While, far more creditable to Algernon Charles Swinburne than his own praise of himself now unfortunately affixed to the newly collected edition of his works, is the praise he bestows on this noble woman-genius in his preface to her great poem. I quote one line of it here—
“No English contemporary poet by profession has left us work so full of living fire.”
For once, and in this particular instance, Accursëd Eve in literature has, in such a verdict, won her merited literary honours.
But as a rule honours are withheld from her, and the laurel is filched from her brows by Coward Adam ere she has time to wear it. One flagrant case is well known, of a man who having lived entirely on a woman’s literary earnings for years, went about in the clothes her pen had paid for, among the persons to whom, through her influence, he had been introduced, boasting that he assisted her to write the greater part of her books. To their shame be it said, a great many people believed him; and not till he was dead, and the woman went on writing her books as before, did they even begin to see the wrong they had done her. They would not have dared to calumniate the false boaster as they calumniated the innocent hard worker. The boaster was a man,—the worker was a woman;—therefore the dishonour of passing off literary work not one’s own, must, so they imagined, naturally belong to Accursëd Eve,—not to Coward Adam! Of their humiliation when the real truth was known, history sayeth nothing.
Yet with all the weight of her curse more or less upon her, and with all her sorrows, shattered ideals, wrecked hopes, and lost loves, Accursëd Eve is still the most beautiful, the most perfect figure in creation. Her failings, her vanities, her weaknesses, her sins, arise in the first place from love—even if afterwards, through Coward Adam’s ready encouragement, they degenerate into vice and animalism. Her first impulse in earliest youth is a desire to please Adam,—the same impulse precisely which led her to offer him the forbidden apple in the first days of their mutual acquaintance. She wishes to charm him,—to win his heart,—to endear herself to him in a thousand tender ways,—to wind herself irretrievably round his life. If she succeeds in this aim, she is invariably happy and virtuous. But if she is made to feel that she cannot hold him on whom her thoughts are centred,—if his professed love for her only proves weak and false when put to trial,—if he finds it easy to forget both sentiment and courtesy, and is quick to add insult to injury, then all the finer and more delicate emotions of her nature become warped and unstrung,—and though she endures her suffering because she must, she resents it and takes vengeance when she can. Of resentfulness against wrong and revenge for injustice, come what are called “bad women.” Yet I would humbly venture to maintain that even these “bad” were not bad in the first instance. They were born in the usual way, with the usual Eve impulse,—the desire to please, not themselves, but the opposite sex. If their instinctive efforts have been met with cruelty, oppression, neglect, desertion and sometimes the most heartless and cowardly betrayal, they can scarcely be blamed if they play the same tricks on the unloving, disloyal churls for whom they have perhaps sacrificed the best part of their lives. For innocent faith and trusting love are the best part of every woman’s life; and when these are destroyed by the brutalizing touch of some Coward Adam, the woman may well claim compensation for her soul’s murder.
Accursëd Eve! Still she loves,—to find herself fooled and cheated; still she hopes, even while hope eludes her,—still she waits, for what she may never win,—still she prays prayers that may never be answered,—still she bears and rears the men of the future, wondering perchance whether any of them will ever help to do her justice,—will ever place her where she should be, as the acknowledged queenly “help-meet” of her stronger, but less enduring partner! Beautiful, frail, trusting, loving, Accursëd Eve! She bends beneath the curse,—but the clouds are lifting!—there is light in the sky of her future dawn! And it may be that a worse malediction than the one pronounced in Eden, will fall on those who make her burden of life heavier to bear!