Pardon me if I speak very warmly on this subject, because I think here lies one of the great evils of the condition of our sex and class at this time; and I feel intensely for the young spirits whose natural and whose noble aspirations are so checked and deadened and quenched through all their youth and years of energy that, when the time for emancipation comes at last, it is too late for them to make use of it. They have been dwarfed and stunted, and can never either be or do anything greatly good.
In short, the complaint we women make against men, that they persist in treating us as minors when we have attained our majority, is what daughters too often can justly make against both their fathers and mothers. They keep them in the swaddling-clothes of childhood, when they ought to set free and train every limb to its most athletic and joyous exercise. Dangers, of course, on the other side there are,—of over-emancipated and ill-advised girls who sorely need more parental guidance than they obtain; but, so far as my experience goes, these cases are few compared to those of the young women (ladies, of course, I mean, for in the lower classes such evils are unknown) whose lives are spoiled by over-restraint in innocent things. They are left free, and encouraged to plunge into the maelstrom of a fashionable season’s senseless whirl of dissipation and luxury. They are restrained from every effort at self-development or rational self-sacrifice, till, for the very want of some corrective bitter, they go and beat the hassocks in a church as a pious exercise, or perhaps finally lock themselves up in a nunnery. Small blame to them! Ritualist nunneries at present offer the most easily accessible back-door out of fine drawing-rooms into anything like a field of usefulness.
Now for sisters. That brothers and sisters should give one another in an ordinary way the first-fruits of their benevolence follows obviously from the closeness of their propinquity. Usually there has also been from childhood the blessed interchange of kindnesses which accumulate on both sides into a claim of reciprocal gratitude.
Miss Bremer remarks that “it is the general characteristic of affection to make us blind to the faults of those we love, but from this weakness fraternal love is wholly exempt.” Brothers are indeed terrible critics of their sisters, and, so far, irritating creatures. But otherwise, as we all know, they are the very joy and pride of our lives; and there is probably not one duty in our list which needs less to be insisted on to women generally than that of bestowing on their brothers not only love of benevolence, but also a large amount of love of complacency. It is usually also a truly sound moral sentiment, causing the sister to take profound interest in the religious and moral welfare of her brother, as well as in his health and happiness.
One mistake, I think, is often made by sisters, and still more often by mothers, to which attention should be called. The unselfishness of the sisters, and the fondness of the mother for her boy, and the fact that the boy is but rarely at home, all contribute to a habit of sacrificing everything to the young lad’s pleasure or profit, which has the worst effect on his character in after-life. Boys receive from women themselves in the nursery, and when they come home from school in the holidays, a regular education in selfishness. They acquire the practice of looking on girls and women as persons whose interests, education, and pleasures must always, as a matter of course, be postponed to their own. In later life, we rue—and their wives may rue—the consequences.
The duties of sisters to sisters are even more close and tender than those of sisters to brothers. I hardly know if there be any salient fault in the usual behavior of English sisters to one another which any moral system could set right. Perhaps the one quality oftenest deficient in this, and other more distant family relationships, to which we need not further refer,—uncles, aunts, cousins, and so on—is courtesy. “Too much familiarity,” as the proverb says, “breeds contempt.” The habit of treating one another without the little forms in use among other friends, and the horrid trick of speaking rudely of each other’s defects or mishaps, is the underlying source of half the alienation of relatives. If we are bound to show special benevolence to those nearest to us, why on earth do we give them pain at every turn, rub them the wrong way, and froisser their natural amour propre by unflattering remarks or unkind references? For once we can do them a real service of any kind, we can (if we live with them) hurt, or else please, them fifty times a day. The individual who thinks she performs her duty to sister or niece, or cousin, while she waits to do the exceptional services, and hourly frets and worries and humiliates her, is certainly exceedingly mistaken. Genuine benevolence—the “will to make happy”—will take a very different course.
It will not be necessary here to pursue further the subject of the duties arising from the ties of natural relationship, holy and blessed things that they are! I am persuaded that even the best and happiest of us only half-apprehend their beautiful meaning, and that we must look to the life beyond the grave to interpret for us all their significance.
