Those who pretend to be best acquainted with the order of nature and the mysterious designs of Providence assure us with confidence that all this is as it should be; that woman is not meant to grow and flourish singly, but to hang on man, and to depend on him, like the vine upon the elm. If we remember right, M. Comte entertains opinions which really come to pretty much the same thing. Woman is to be maintained in ease and luxury by the rougher male animal, it being her duty in return to keep his spiritual nature up to the mark, to quicken and to purify his affections, to be a sort of drawing-room religion in the middle of every-day life, to serve as an object of devotion to the religious Comtist, and to lead him through love of herself up to the love of humanity in the abstract.
One difficulty presented by this matrimonial view of woman's destiny is to know what, under the present conditions in which society finds itself placed, is to become of plain girls. Their mission is a subject which no philosopher as yet has adequately handled. If marriage is the object of all feminine endeavors and ambitions, it certainly seems rather hard that Providence should have condemned plain girls to start in the race at such an obvious disadvantage. Even under M. Comte's system, which provides for almost everything, and which, in its far-sightedness and thoughtfulness for our good, appears almost more benevolent than Providence, it would seem as if hardly sufficient provision had been made for them.
It must be difficult for any one except a really advanced Comtist to give himself up to the worship of a thoroughly plain girl. Filial instinct might enable us to worship her as a mother, but even the noblest desire to serve humanity would scarcely be enough to keep a husband or a lover up to his daily devotions in the case of a plain girl with sandy hair and a freckled complexion. The boldest effort to rectify the inequalities of the position of plain girls has been made of late years by a courageous school of female writers of fiction. Everything has been done that could be done to persuade mankind that plain girls are in reality by far the most attractive of the lot. The clever authoress of "Jane Eyre" nearly succeeded in the forlorn attempt for a few years; and plain girls, with volumes of intellect speaking through their deep eyes and from their massive foreheads, seemed for a while, on paper at least, to be carrying everything before them.
The only difficulty was to get the male sex to follow out in practice what they so completely admired in Miss Bronté's three-volume novels. Unhappily, the male sex, being very imperfect and frail, could not be brought to do it. They recognized the beauty of the conception about plain girls, they were very glad to see them married off in scores to heroic village doctors, and they quite admitted that occasional young noblemen might be represented in fiction as becoming violently attached to young creatures with inky fingers and remarkable minds.
But no real change was brought about in ordinary life. Man, sinful man, read with pleasure about the triumphs of the sandy-haired girls, but still kept on dancing with and proposing to the pretty ones. And at last authoresses were driven back on the old standard of beauty. At present, in the productions both of masculine and feminine workmanship, the former view of plain girls has been resumed. They are allowed, if thoroughly excellent in other ways, to pair off with country curates and with devoted missionaries; but the prizes of fiction, as well as the prizes of reality, fall to the lot of their fairer and more fortunate sisters.
Champions of plain girls are not, however, wanting who boldly take the difficulty by the horns, and deny in toto the fact that in matrimony and love the race is usually to the beautiful. Look about you, they tell us, in the world, and you will as often as not find beauties fading on their stalks, and plain girls marrying on every side of them. And no doubt plain girls do marry very frequently. Nobody, for instance, with half an eye can fail to be familiar with the phenomenon, in his own circle, of astonishingly ugly married women. It does not, however, follow that plain girls are not terribly weighted in the race.
There are several reasons why women who rely on their beauty remain unmarried at the last, but the reason that their beauty gives them no advantage is certainly not one. The first reason perhaps is that beauties are inclined to be fastidious and capricious. They have no notion of following the advice of Mrs. Hannah More, and being contented with the first good, sensible, Christian lover who falls in their way; and they run, in consequence, no slight risk of overstaying their market. They go in for a more splendid sort of matrimonial success, and think they can afford to play the more daring game.
Plain girls are providentially preserved from these temptations. At the close of a well-spent life they can conscientiously look back on a career in which no reasonable opportunity was neglected, and say that they have not broken many hearts, or been sinfully and distractingly particular. And there is the further consideration to be remembered in the case of plain girls, that fortune and rank are nearly as valuable articles as beauty, and lead to a fair number of matrimonial alliances. The system of Providence is full of kindly compensations, and it is a proof of the universal benevolence we see about us that so many heiresses should be plain. Plain girls have a right to be cheered and comforted by the thought. It teaches them the happy lesson that beauty, as compared with a settled income, is skin-deep and valueless; and that what man looks for in the companion of his life is not so much a bright cheek or a blue eye, as a substantial and useful amount of this world's wealth.
Plain girls again expect less, and are prepared to accept less, in a lover. Everybody knows the sort of useful, admirable, practical man who sets himself to marry a plain girl. He is not a man of great rank, great promise, or great expectations. Had it been otherwise, he might possibly have flown at higher game, and set his heart on marrying female loveliness rather than homely excellence. His choice, if it is nothing else, is an index of a contented and modest disposition. He is not vain enough to compete in the great race for beauties. What he looks for is some one who will be the mother of his children, who will order his servants duly, and keep his household bills; and whose good sense will teach her to recognise the sterling qualities of her husband, and not object to his dining daily in his slippers. This is the sort of partner that plain girls may rationally hope to secure, and who can say that they ought not to be cheerful and happy in their lot? For a character of this undeniable sobriety there is indeed a positive advantage in a plain girl as a wife. It should never be forgotten that the man who marries a plain girl never need be jealous. He is in the Arcadian and fortunate condition of a lover who has no rivals. A sensible unambitious nature will recognize in this a solid benefit. Plain girls rarely turn into frisky matrons, and this fact renders them peculiarly adapted to be the wives of dull and steady mediocrity.
Lest it should be supposed that the above calculation of what plain girls may do leaves some of their power and success still unaccounted for, it is quite right and proper to add that the story of plain girls, if it were carefully written, would contain many instances, not merely of moderate good fortunes, but of splendid and exceptional triumph. Like prima donnas, opera-dancers, and lovely milliners, plain girls have been known to make extraordinary hits, and to awaken illustrious passions. Somebody ought to take up the subject in a book, and tell us how they did it.
