‘He who toils all day,
And comes home hungry, tired or cold,
And feels ’twould do him good to scold
His wife a little, let him trust
Her love, and boldly be unjust,
And not care till she cries! How prove
In any other way his love
Till soothed in mind by meat and rest?
If, after that, she’s well caress’d,
And told how good she is to bear
His humour, fortune makes it fair.
Women like men to be like men,
That is, at least, just now and then!’
The wife is here represented as rejoicing in her husband’s ill-temper, as affording her an opportunity of dispelling it by soothing arts, a practical illustration, it may be observed, of the complementary theory, the woman’s patience actually demanding a man’s sulkiness to practise upon. Contrast Mr Patmore’s ‘Jane’ with Mr Tennyson’s ‘Isabel.’
‘Eyes not down-dropt nor over-bright, but fed
With the clear-pointed flame of chastity,
Clear, without heat, undying, tended by
Pure vestal thoughts in the translucent fane
Of her still spirit; locks not wide-dispread,
Madonna-wise on either side her head;
Sweet lips whereon perpetually did reign
The summer calm of golden charity,
Were fixed shadows of thy fixed mood,
Revered Isabel, the crown and head,
The stately flower of female fortitude,
Of perfect wifehood and pure lowlihead.
‘The intuitive decision of a bright
And thorough-edged intellect to part
Error from crime; a prudence to withhold;
The laws of marriage character’d in gold
Upon the blanched tablets of her heart;
A love still burning upward, giving light
To read those laws; an accent very low
In blandishment, but a most silver flow
Of subtle-paced counsel in distress,
Right to the heart and brain, though undescried,
Winning its way with extreme gentleness
Through all the outworks of suspicious pride;
A courage to endure and to obey;
A hate of gossip parlance, and of sway,
Crown’d Isabel, through all her placid life,
The queen of marriage, a most perfect wife.’
The self-defence which Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Queen Katherine describes a different type:—
‘Heaven witness
I have been to you a true and humble wife,
At all times to your will conformable;
Ever in fear to kindle your dislike,
Yea, subject to your countenance; glad or sorry,
As I saw it incline. When was the hour
I ever contradicted your desire,
Or made it not mine too? or which of your friends
Have I not strove to love, although I knew
He were mine enemy? what friend of mine
That had to him derived your anger, did I
Continue in my liking? nay, gave notice
He was from thence discharged?’
This picture of trembling devotion, of ‘distrust qualified by fear,’ appears in a selection called ‘Beautiful Poetry,’ under the heading ‘A True Wife.’ But this kind of wife would be positively disliked by some husbands. It has been said that ‘perhaps—such is masculine nature—a wife with more knowledge, more fixity of thought, and more general mental power than one’s-self might be “a blessing in disguise.” But one who is goose enough to sympathise at random on subjects of which she knows little or nothing, because it is “feminine” to do so, is a nuisance not in disguise.... For our own part, we would just as soon have the sympathy of a chameleon as that of a woman who lives completely in particulars, and is quite destitute of power to appreciate a universal principle.’
These are but a few samples, culled almost at random from the mass of contradictory evidence to be found in English literature. Conceive a governess or schoolmistress, duly impressed with the obligation of training her pupils to be accomplished pleasers of men, and trying to fashion for them a model out of such materials! Must not the result be simply blank despair? The same conclusion might be reached by a shorter process. Men are supposed to marry the sort of women they like. But looking upon the infinite variety of wives to be met with in society, could any one generalise from them a model wife, who might serve as a pattern to educators? Would any man wish for a wife so modelled? Might it not be as well to abandon this distracting theory—to discard the shifting standard of opinion, and to fall back upon the old doctrine which teaches educators to seek in every human soul for that divine image which it is their work to call out and to develope?
The educational question depends, as we have seen, on the larger question of women’s place in the social order. Are they to be regarded, and to regard themselves, primarily as children of God, members of Christ, and heirs of the kingdom of heaven, and, secondarily, as wives, mothers, daughters, sisters? or are the family relationships to overshadow the divine and the social, and to be made the basis of a special moral code, applying to women only? According to the first view, all human duties—everything that is lovely and of good report—all moral virtues and all Christian graces are inculcated and enforced by the highest sanctions. An ascetic contempt for wifely and motherly and daughterly ties is no part of the Christian ideal. But the view which teaches women to think of family claims as embracing their whole duty—which bids them choose to serve man rather than God—sets before them a standard of obligation which, in proportion as it is exclusively adhered to, vitiates not their lives only, but those of the men on whom their influence might be of a far different sort. That such a theory is radically inconsistent with the divine order might easily be shown. That its action on society is profoundly demoralising is a lesson taught by mournful experience.
