CHAPTER VIII
THE INFLUENCE OF SISTERS
Hitherto I have dealt exclusively with the moral training of boys and young men, but I am aware that I have left out one of the great shaping influences of a boy's life, which certainly comes next to the mother's where it exists—the influence of sisters. The childish hand that he clasps in his is the hand that unconsciously moulds him to higher ends or the reverse. For if the man is the director, the ruler, and defender, "the builder of the house" as he is called in the grand old word husband,[31] the woman is the shaping and moulding influence of life; and if God has placed her in the power of the man, both through the weakness of her frame and the strength of her affections, on the other hand He has given into her hands the keys of his being, and according as he fulfils or abuses his trust towards her, she opens or closes the door of higher life to him.[32]
I often wonder whether we women sufficiently realize this truth for ourselves or our girls. Walter Bagehot used to say in his blind, masculine way, "It's a horrid scrape to be a woman,"—a sentiment which, I fear, will find some echo in the hearts of a good many women themselves. But is it so? If to the man chiefly belongs power in all its forms, does not the woman wield as her portion that far more potent but wholly silent, and often unnoticed thing, influence? Not the storm, or the earthquake, or the strong wind, but the still, small voice: the benediction of dews and gentle rains, the mute beatitudes of still waters flowing through sun-parched lands and transforming them into "fruitful fields that the Lord hath blest"; the silent but irresistible influence of the sunlight, which in the baby palm of a little leaf becomes a golden key to unlock the secret treasures of the air and build up great oaks out of its invisible elements; the still, small voice of the moral sense, so still, so small, so powerless to enforce its dictates, but before which all the forces of the man do bow and obey, choosing death rather than disobedience—are not all these silent influences emblems of the supreme, shaping, moulding influence that is given to the woman as the "mother of all living," coming without observation, but making far more strongly than any external power for the kingdom of love and light? Truly we have a goodly heritage if only we had eyes to see it. Alas! that we should have made so little comparative use of it in these great moral questions. Alas! that we should have to acknowledge the truth and justice of the poet's words:
Ah, wasteful woman! she who may
On her sweet self set her own price,
Knowing he cannot choose but pay—
How has she cheapen'd Paradise,
How given for nought her priceless gift,
How spoiled the bread and spilt the wine,
Which, spent with due respective thrift,
Had made brutes men, and men divine!"[33]
But even here is there not place for a hopeful thought, that if women have made so little comparative use of their well-nigh irresistible influence in setting a high standard and shaping men to a diviner and less animal type, it has been, as I have already said, chiefly owing to ignorance? The whole of one of the darkest sides of life has been sedulously kept from us. Educated mothers, till lately, have been profoundly ignorant of the moral evils of schools, and have never dreamt that that young, frank, fresh-faced lad of theirs had any temptations of the kind. Their moral influence, which the poet blames them so strongly for misusing, has been largely, at least with good women, not so much a misused as an undirected force, and we know not, therefore, what that force may accomplish when a larger and truer knowledge enables it to be persistently directed to a conscious aim. This fact, at least, has been stamped into my inmost being, that men will rise to any moral standard which women choose to set them.
I ask, therefore, cannot we get our girls to help us here more than we do, without being crippled by the fear of initiating them too much in the evil of the world or destroying that unconscious virginal purity which is, even as things are, so strong and pathetic an influence for good over young men?
In the addresses that I have given to large numbers of educated girls, I used often to begin by quoting a passage from the Jewish Prayer-Book. In a general thanksgiving for the mercies of life, the men say: "We thank Thee, O Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou hast not made us a woman." One a little wonders how the poor women could join in this thanksgiving. But in one corner of the page there is a little rubric in very small print which directs, "Here shall the women say: 'We thank Thee, O Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou hast made us according unto Thy will!'" And, looking upon that bed of spring flowers before me, I used to tell them that it made me feel what a fair and gracious and beautiful thing it was to be made according unto God's will, to be made a woman.
Now, in the first place, could we not get them to realize this great truth a little more than they do, and not in their heart of hearts to wish that they were men? Could we not get them to realize a little more the divine possibilities of their womanhood, and instead of making it their ambition to figure as a weaker form of man, and become lawyers, stockbrokers, and other queer things the modern woman is striving after, to make it their ambition to become stronger and truer women?
But how is this to be done? I remember on one occasion, when I was going in the evening to address a mass meeting of working-class girls, a stout, middle-aged lady bustling up to me in a morning conference we were holding, and exclaiming: "And what are you going to say to them? What can you say to them, except to tell them to take care of themselves and keep the men at arm's length?"