PAPAL WOMAN.
The wonderful instinct which has always guided the Papacy in distinguishing between forces that it may safely oppose and forces before which it must surrender, has just received a startling illustration in a scene reported to have taken place at the Vatican a few days ago. Rome may refuse all compromise with Italy, but even Rome shrinks from encountering the hostility of woman. The Brief of October last sounded, indeed, marvellously like a declaration of war; even in a Pope it argued no little resolution to denounce the "license of the female toilet," the "fantastic character of woman's head-dress," and the "scandalous indecency" of woman's attire. More worldly critics would hardly have ventured to describe a piquant chignon or a suggestive boddice as "a propaganda of the devil;" it will be long, at any rate, before censors of this class will meet with the reward of a deputation and a testimonial from the fair objects of their criticism.
St. Peter, however, we are adroitly reminded, after his miraculous delivery from prison by an angel, found an asylum among women; and, fresh from his troubles with the red-shirts of Monte Rotondo, the successor of St. Peter seems to have found himself wonderfully at home among the flounces that thronged the other day to his public audience at the Vatican. A hundred ladies—the presence amongst whom of a number of English Catholics gives us a national interest in the scene—came forward to express their gratitude for the censures of the Papal Briefs, and the adhesion of their sex to the orthodox doctrines of the toilet. The speech in which one of the fair deputation expressed the sentiments of her fellows has been unfortunately suppressed, but the letter of Pope Pius to the Bishop of Orleans explains the secret of this dramatic reconciliation, and the terms of the Concordat which has been arranged between Woman and the Papacy.
A common danger has driven the two Powers to this fresh alliance. If Garabaldi threatens the supremacy of the Holy See, the educational reforms of M. Duruy menace the domestic tyranny of woman. Woman sees herself in peril of deposition at home by the same spirit of democratic and intellectual equality which would drive the Pope from the Vatican. In presence of such a peril, mutual concession becomes easy, and the fair votaries pardon all references to their "propaganda of the devil" in consideration of a Papal assault on the "cynical writers who are desirous of attacking woman."
The motive of the Papacy, in opposing a system of education which emancipates woman from the intellectual control of the priesthood and plunges her into the midst of the doubts and questionings of sceptical man, is of course plain enough. We feel no particular surprise when the attendance of girls at the public classes of a Professor is denounced as tending to "despoil woman of her native modesty, to drag her before the public, to turn her from domestic life and duties, to puff her up with vain and false science." It is the adhesion of woman to this view of the case which puzzles us a little at first. We recall her aspirations after a higher training, and her bitter contempt for the unhappy censors who venture to remind her of certain primary truths respecting puddings and pies.
But the same problem meets us in other halls than those of the Vatican. Everywhere woman poses herself as a social martyr, as the victim of conventional bonds, as reduced to intellectual torpor by the refusal of intellectual facilities and intellectual distinctions, as excluded by sheer masculine tyranny from the larger sphere of thought and action which the world presents, as chained, like Prometheus, to the rock of home by necessity and force. It is only when some amiable enthusiast is taken in by all this admirable acting, and ventures to propose a plan for her deliverance, that one finds how wonderfully contented, after all, woman is with her bonds and her prison-house.
The philosopher who comes forward with his pet theory of the enfranchisement of woman, who recognizes the necessity for loosening the matrimonial tie, for securing to woman her property and its responsibilities, for levelling all educational differences and abolishing all social distinctions between the sexes, only finds himself snubbed for his pains. He is calmly assured that home is the sphere of woman, and the care of a family the first of woman's duties; the domestic martyr of yesterday proves from Proverbs and the Princess that marriage is the completion of woman, and that her office is but to wed the "noble music" of her feminine nature to the "noble words" of the nature of her spouse.
In a word, woman knows her own business a great deal better than her friends. She does not believe in the intellectual equality which she is always preaching about, and when M. Duruy offers it, a shriek of horror goes up from half the mothers of France. What she does believe is that, in seeking the educational Will-o'-the-Wisp, she may lose the solid pudding of domestic supremacy, and domestic supremacy is worth all the sciences in the world. Her position, as the Vatican suggests, is a religious, not an intellectual one, and her policy lies in an alliance with the priesthood, whose position is one with her own. So woman makes her submission to the Papacy, and the Pope snubs M. Duruy.