"The difficulties and trials of life have only just begun when a young lady fancies herself to be of sufficient importance to become the theme of animadversion. She knows little of the true importance of self-control, until she experiences the first indications of preference shown her by the other sex.
"Such indications are often manifested, whilst she to whom they are directed, is wholly unprepared to analyze her own feelings, before her opinions upon what she has seen are by any means developed; before she has even considered adequately, on what her happiness depends; before she has discernment to reject what is frivolous, or wisdom to prefer what is good. This is more especially the case in the highest and lowest classes, in which, by a strange analogy, they either rush into the marriage state whilst children, or wait until the bloom and hopes of youth have forever passed away, in order to form interested matches. The matured period of five-and-twenty to thirty, is passed by the lower classes in the single state in labor to gain subsistence; after thirty, or even forty, we often find them marrying. But the majority have sealed their own fate before the age of twenty.
"In high life, the same haste to dispose of daughters prevails as among the lowest classes. At seventeen, most of our belles of fashion expect to receive proposals. If they do not marry within a few years after their introduction, they have a mortified sense of having lost time—that the expectations of friends and of parents have not been fulfilled; that others have 'gone off' before them. The next ten years are often a period of subdued vexation, and the sweetness and contentment of the original character is impaired. About seven or eight and twenty, the views of life are sobered—the expectations chastened—a renovation takes place—women again become agreeable; their minds must in the lapse of time, even with a miserable store of observation, have improved. They then often marry—and, if the union be not a mere effort of despair, if it be based on sound and holy principles, and on good sense, there is, for both parties engaged, a great likelihood of happiness.
"But, it may be naturally contended, that there come not to all young ladies the opportunities of which I write; that indications of preference arrive not to all. I am inclined to believe that, with good temper, pleasing manners, and respectable connections, there exists, in modern society, very few young ladies who have not received under various circumstances, some marks of preference, more or less decided. Beauty and plainness are arbitrary, not positive, terms. Unless there be any actual deformity, any great infirmity, in which case I think it were cruel to pre-suppose the likelihood of such indications, there is no one, that I hardly ever met with, who has not had, on some grounds, her partizans and admirers. The plain are often particularized as elegant; tastes vary: even a sour look I have heard admired as sensible, cold manners eulogized as correct. Opinion, however it may generally verge to the correct, springs from so many sources, it is so governed by association of ideas, such trifles may guide it, that I am never surprised at the latitude given to personal encomium nor at the endless variety and incongruity of human judgment. It is well that all have a chance of being approved, admired, beloved, and it remains for them to avail themselves of those possibilities which contribute so much to happiness. For we are sympathizing beings, and a law of our nature makes us look for a return of sympathy. We are sent here to form ties, and to love, and to be loved, whether the term applies to parental, or filial, or fraternal love—or whether it respects the less sure and more fitful experiences of love, in its ordinary sense.
"I do not blame the parents who instil into their children of both sexes a desire to be married. I think those who teach the young a different lesson deceive them. Marriage, with all its chances, its infelicities, its sacrifices, is seldom so infelicitous, so uncertain, so full of sacrifice, as the single state. Life must have some objects, and those objects must be progressive. The mind is happier and healthier with such interests, even if sorrow comes along with them, than in its solitude, its desolate freedom from care, when having, as the phrase is, no troubles of the conjugal sort to disturb its tranquillity. I therefore do not censure those who desire to see their daughters happily and suitably established in life. It is the indiscreet and vulgar haste, the indelicacy, the low mercenary views, and the equally low ambition to compass a splendid match, which is blameable and revolting in the parental conduct.
"Many are, however, blessed with guides and guardians of very different characters; with parents, whose lofty natures not only reject such unworthy notions, but somewhat incline to the extreme of repelling all advances for their daughters. In either case, the conduct of a young lady may be the same. It is she who must form her own destiny in points on which none can effectually aid her. It is she who is to be the happy wife, or the wretched victim; and it is to her that these observations of admonition and of warning are addressed. Let us suppose her young, of course, attractive in appearance, of good birth, and some fortune. I here except heiresses, who, being anomalies, deserve a particular paragraph for themselves. But let us suppose that no obstacle of family or connection interferes to check the approach of a suitor.
"The eyes of her family and of her young friends are upon her, when a young lady receives the first indications of preference. She is generally ashamed of it. This is the first sentiment of a modest and ingenuous mind, and it is one indication, in my opinion, of the impropriety of early marriages. Nature seems still to wish to keep the young and blushing girl apart from that connection which entails grave and arduous duties. But Nature's voice is far less often heard than that of her adversary, expediency. I must, therefore, shape my injunctions to that which exists, not to that which we would wish to exist.
"Almost sinking under this painful sense of shame, this novel disturbance of her usual set of feelings, a young girl catches at the first reed to save herself from observation and detection. I mean detection of her perception of that which others may or may not see. She seizes upon ridicule. She pretends to laugh at one, whom sometimes her youthful romantic fancy dwells upon in a very different sense. She laughs at the foibles, supposed or real, of her admirer: she plays a dangerous game. If any of those to whom she imparts her witticisms are malevolently disposed or thoughtless, she runs a risk either of wounding the feelings of a man whom she does not like, or of losing the regard of one whom she might in time not only esteem, but love.
"Another effect of such attentions as awaken a consciousness in a young lady's mind, is the gratification of vanity, perhaps until then latent in her heart. The first preference is apt to upset the reason of its object as of him who shows it. The word vanity does not seem to imply danger. Vanity is generally considered an innocent failing; but it is innocent only as some kinds of food are to a healthy subject. On a weak, or even on an inexperienced mind, it acts, sometimes, fatally for the vain. A girl is either carried away by admiration so as to be flippant and foolish, or she is blinded by her vanity to the failings of the man who first admires her. She is intoxicated with the notion of an offer of marriage; she imagines, in her simplicity, effervesced as it is by the infusion of flattered vanity, that she has inspired such an attachment as will never be recovered, should she prove adverse to it. Many an engagement has been formed under this conviction, and fulfilled only to prove its fallacy, for the love which was supposed too strong to survive disappointment, has expired in the fruition of its hopes.
"To guard against either of these risks to happiness, a well-educated girl should endeavor, in this, to exercise her judgment. She should be sincere. She is blameable to ridicule the attentions which are meant as complimentary to her. They ought to be at least regarded with respect.