Nor can I admit that woman may with propriety be seen and heard at Public Meetings, mingling with the opposite sex. Man becomes effeminate by intermeddling with the province of woman. She also becomes coarse and masculine, when she enters his sphere. Is her nature more mild than his? Why then desecrate it, by those fierce collisions with him, which attend so many of our public discussions? How unlady-like are contention, violence, and passion. How certainly will woman sacrifice her best influence over man by consenting to stir his spirit to hostility, in ardent debate. Where are those mutual services, and friendly offices, so beautifully ordained by Providence, between the two sexes, when once they are ranged, as public competitors, in pride, zeal, envy, and jealousy, stimulating each other to the struggle for victory?
But to speak on the positive view of our subject. What is the appropriate sphere of woman? Miss Sedgwick, in her work on Self-training, has answered this question well, and to that I refer the reader. Meantime we all have, I think, an ideal of this sphere, although in the details of it we may somewhat differ. We all desire to see this portion of our race pure and pious; and we should add to these qualities gentleness, graceful manners, and a delicate, modest deportment. There are limits moreover of propriety, established in our own minds, beyond which we should be pained to see a friend of this sex ever pass. For one, I would not so contract these limits, as to repress the powers, or to do injustice to the capacities, or trench on the rights, of woman. I would encourage no Sultan spirit, nor arrogate a single claim over her, deduced from any assumed superiority of my own sex. Give her every opportunity; remove all obstacles; furnish the utmost facilities, and let God speak his will through her actions.
To this end, I would name first, what is incontestibly one part of the sphere of woman, Home. She may act in other situations, in this she must. Providence whispers to her in the cradle the divine monition, “Be a kind, obedient, dutiful daughter.” And if, to the latest moment of her life, she heed not this solemn charge, she is false, not only to her own sex, but to man and to God.
The Sister, by what other virtues can she expiate a neglect of the claims of her beautiful relation? Let her be a monitor to the younger, and receive kindly the counsels of the elder, in her paternal circle, and how does she grace a sweet portion of her appropriate sphere. Nor will I omit to say, that whether united to another by the sacred bond of marriage or not, if she be a true woman, she is instinct with those inward charms, and Christian dispositions, which qualify her for that responsible connection. Intelligence, wisdom, disinterested affection, a mind to advise, a heart rich with sympathies, and a hand to aid,—these should find in her their chosen resting-place.
And what Mother can fill the sphere ordained for her sex, if she be not a devoted parent? Possessed of this trait, no woman can fail of honor and usefulness. She who looks on her race with a maternal interest, who feels that God hath made of one blood all the children of the earth, and who lives not for herself but her neighbor, she is of the genuine female nobility. There is in her character a grandeur,—let her dwell in “Alpine solitude,”—before which the admired of all admirers, the gay butterfly, whose wings open and close with the sun of adulation, shrinks into an object of pity.
Next to home, I should cite Private Beneficence, the scenes of Charity, and the chamber of sickness, as within the sphere of woman. Let her not only minister to the needs of her own fireside, but put on the sandals of mercy, and go forth to the bed of suffering, and the dwelling of poverty.
Does she court distinction and applause? There are those who would rend the air with shouts, did she pass as a Queen, in some gilded chariot; or clap their hands at the strains of her eloquence, in crowded halls. But how few are these, compared with those who commend her, who is an angel of love in the dark hours of life. What true woman would not prefer that the statue erected to her honor should be of the delicate ivory, rather than of brass, that emblem of boldness?
She who would follow Christ, must, I am sure, take generally the sequestered path of private charity, rather than live for the public gaze, though it were that of the host of officers and members of all the benevolent societies in Christendom. Who were the women, whose charities are engraven on the eternal records of the New Testament? Private almoners, Joanna, Mary Magdalen, Susanna, and others “ministered unto their Lord of their substance,” by personal attendance.
But still farther, in the intercourse of Society, woman has duties appropriate to her sex, grave and weighty duties. I would not that she engage in a single pursuit, that shall disqualify her for this function. If she degrade herself to the rank of a painted image, decked in apparel to charm simpletons, or if she flutter in the breeze of silly speeches and simpering airs, she is a traitress to her nature. She goes out, deplorably out, of her sphere.
Nor would I that, by sun-burnt labors and field-tasks, she should bronze herself, and lose that refinement, which is a guardian to her virtue, and the anchor of her spiritual hope. A coarse woman, she who fails in all the attractions and graces of her sex, and who is a corrupter of good society, steps sadly aside from her place. While Christian gentleness, seeking to render all happy, and Christian purity, frowning on every shade of guilt, in social intercourse, are the true praise of this sex.