The second question is, Do our ideas of Dress corrupt our hearts? One may almost worship at the shrine of Dress. Many are the young ladies whose thoughts rise no higher than the dress they wear and the bonnet that decks their heads. If they can be hung over with gewgaws and tinselry, if plumes shall tremble on their heads, silks shall rustle about them, and jewels shine wherever they go, to catch every eye and bewilder every passer-by, they fancy they are in the upper-ten of womanhood. Vain! The peacock, whose little heart is one beating pulse of vanity, is not half so vain as they. Giddy, trifling, empty, vapid, cold, moonshine women, whose souls can perch on a plume, and whose only ambition is to be a traveling advertisement for the men and women who traffic in what they wear, are many who flaunt in satins and glitter in diamonds. How many such there are we would not say. But I doubt not, that not a little like them are many who are otherwise women. They love Dress; love it inordinately; love it when they ought to love something worthier; and spend their time, and thoughts, and mind, and heart, and money on what they shall wear. The fashion-plate is their profoundest study. The science of dressing is the only one they care to know. The cut of a collar is a matter of sublime importance. How much of this foolish vanity there is in the world! How many otherwise good women does it spoil! And now the question with every young woman should be, How do I feel about my dress? Is it a matter too bright in my eye—a subject too important in my mind? Am I vain of my dress? Does it corrupt my heart, take my attention from virtue, from mental improvement, from the graces of a good life, from religion, from my Saviour, and my God? Do I devote thoughts to Dress that ought to be given to the great problems of duty, life, womanhood, to the development and culture of my powers of heart and mind; to science, conversation, language, and the objects of living? Why am I? Why do I live? To what end? Is there a great object in my being? Have I any thing to do in its attainments? Does my love of Dress interfere with the true objects of woman-life? This is the questioning mind which every young woman should possess. Now let me ask, Does not your love of Dress lead you from the great ends of woman-life? Are you not taken captives by the glitter of Dress? sold bond-slaves to your bonnets and shoes?
Oh, what a fearful waste of time and talent is given to the frivolity and vanity of dress! what a sacrifice of soul and body, principle and life, is made upon its altar!
What multitudes of young women waste all that is precious in life on the finified fooleries of the toilet. How the soul of womanhood is dwarfed and shriveled by such trifles, kept away from the great fields of active thought and love by the gewgaws she hangs on her bonnet! How light must be that thing which will float on the sea of passion—a bubble, a feather, a puff-ball! And yet multitudes of women float there, live there, and call it life. Poor things! Scum on the surface! But there is a truth, young women; woman was made for a higher purpose, a nobler use, a grander destiny. Her powers are rich and strong; her genius bold and daring. She may walk the fields of thought, achieve the victories of mind, spread around her the testimonials of her worth, and make herself known and felt as man's co-worker and equal in whatsoever exalts mind, embellishes life, or sanctifies humanity.
But notwithstanding Dress has fascinated so many thousands, and led them down the paths of vanity and frivolity, it is still a means of culture, an instrumentality in the hands of virtue, an evidence of civilization. It addresses itself to the taste, and affords opportunity for its improvement. Taste is an element of mind. It is the spring-source of the fine arts, of all the embellishments of life, of poetry, and all that pertains to elegant literature. It is the grand refiner of life. Whatsoever cultivates the taste, develops properly its activities, and refines and elevates its pleasures, does a good office for man. And this is just the proper office of Dress. It is true that Dress has a mission, a good one, a moral one, ay, a religious one. It is a refiner, a cultivator, a subduer of coarseness, barbarity, rudeness. Pity the soul that has no taste for Dress. The Dress of a man speaks out his soul. In other words, a man is known by his Dress; not by its richness, not by its conformity to fashion, but by its neatness, appropriateness, harmony, and the way he carries it. A clown will carry a king's dress clownishly; and a true king will carry a clown's dress kingishly. It is not the Dress that makes the man, but the man that makes the Dress.
Every state of society is manifest in its Dress. The savage is fond of gewgaws, glitter, paint, feathers, colors, mere show, with little or no reference to utility or taste. The barbarian approaches one step nearer the true standard. He exhibits a faint idea of utility and taste; he subdues and blends colors, puts ornaments into use, and varies his Dress a little to suit circumstances. The civilized man shows more taste, less ambition for glowing colors, a greater skill in making, a better idea of fitness and propriety. The enlightened man is more grave in the character of his Dress, wears less ornaments, admits none save where it combines utility and taste, is chaste, subdued, harmonious, classical in every thing that pertains to Dress. We can not yet lay full claims to an enlightened Dress. Our female Dress is a half barbaric costume—a rude mixture of ornament and utility, in which ornament greatly predominates.
Our soldier's Dress, very appropriately, retains all the elements of savagism—high colors, sharp contrasts, profuseness of ornament. This is as it should be. But every enlightened man should regret that our female Dress is not more grave, classical, chaste, subdued, and appropriate, combining taste and utility, refinement and strength. A woman in full street Dress, with her profusion of ornaments, her flounces and fly-about gewgaws, is a very poor representation of good sense, refinement, and cultured, classic taste. If our artists should carve and paint their master-pieces in such taste, we should pronounce it barbarism at once.
I would gladly pursue this theme, and trace the office of Dress in all its operations as a reforming and refining agent, and show how to improve our tastes, correct our judgments, and utilize and at the same time beautify our dresses. But time will not permit. I will only say in addition, that the love of Dress, when properly used, is noble; when abused, is evil; when wisely directed, it combines utility and beauty; when abused, it possesses neither.
But the idea which I am most anxious to impress upon the minds of young women, is the symbolic use of Dress, is the fact that they have minds to dress as well as bodies. Our outward Dress should be symbolic of an inward Dress. While we toil to robe in beauty these perishing bodies, we should labor more industriously to adorn those immortal qualities which shall wear their adornments when a new heaven and a new earth shall succeed to those that now are. This is the point at which young women err more than elsewhere. They labor to dress the body, and sadly neglect the soul. O what a fearful dearth of soul-dress, of mental adornment, of interior beauty there is among young women! Scarcely can one in ten of them speak their mother-tongue correctly, converse intelligibly ten minutes upon any subject of common interest, write a simple business or friendly letter correctly, or comprehend the simplest natural sciences. What do they know of mechanics, science, literature, government, theology, history, reform—the great questions that stir the world of mind? How little, how little! There are some noble exceptions to this remark, I know. But we must not disguise the fact, that there is a fearful want of mental culture among young woman. They give forty thoughts to dressing their bodies to one for their minds; they spend forty dollars for bonnets, shoes, and clothes to one for books, instruction, and improvement; they give forty hours to toilet to one to solid study and serious reflection; they put forty adornments upon their persons to one upon their minds. How sad the thought! Compare a well-dressed body with a well-dressed mind. Compare a taste for dress with a taste for knowledge, culture, virtue, and piety. Dress up an ignorant young woman in the "height of fashion;" put on plumes and flowers, diamonds and gewgaws; paint her face and girt up her waist, and I ask you if this side of a painted feathered savage you can find any thing more unpleasant to behold. And yet just such young women we meet by the hundred every day on the street and in all our public places. It is awful to think of. Why is it so? It is only because woman is regarded as a doll to be dressed—a plaything to be petted—a house ornament to exhibit—a thing to be used and kept from crying with a sugar-plum show.
She must learn that she has a great soul, a great mission, a great duty, and a great power, before she will break away from the bonds of the toilet and be herself. Woman by nature is no more a toilet puppet than man. Her mental and moral duties are equal to his. Her powers of mind and heart are equal to his. Her field of labor it is wide as his. Her time is as precious as his. It is as important that her soul should grow as his. She has as much need of knowledge, wisdom, courage, strength of mind and purpose, as much need of all the powers and beauties of a cultured soul, as he. Why should she not adorn her mind, develop her powers, live to a high purpose, act well a noble part, do and be according to her capacity? Let young women elevate their aims; give less time to the toilet, more to study, duty, and active employment; regard themselves as something more than dolls, as something intelligent, useful, to be improved, to grow wise and great. Let them dress their minds in wisdom, adorn their hearts with virtue, clothe their souls with strength, with the majesty of noble purposes and high resolutions, and they will soon be something more than automatons on which the milliner and mantua-maker hang their wares.
I have written plainly rather than flatteringly, and I have done so because I believe the time has fully come when woman should be a woman, and not a mere gaudy appendage to man; when her soul should wake up from its long lethargy and put on the habiliments of wisdom and usefulness; when she should live to a grander purpose than she has done, and should make her power felt more sensibly in the morality and religion, business and bosom, of the world. I am not a disregarder of the beauties and proprieties of Dress. On the contrary, I admire appropriate Dress. It speaks out the man or woman. But I would have everybody feel that the man makes the Dress. Almost any thing looks well on a noble woman. The plainest Dress becomes agreeable when worn by a person of grand purpose and good-doing life. Real life when unadorned is most adorned. Noble womanhood is always beautiful. The world always has and always will admire it. The richest Dress is always worn on the soul. The adornments that will not perish, and that all men most admire, shine from the heart through this life. God has made it our highest, holiest duty to dress the soul he has given us. It is wicked to waste it in frivolity. It is a beautiful, undying, precious thing. If every young woman would think of her soul when she looks in the glass, would hear the cry of her naked mind when she dallies away her precious hours at her toilet, would listen to the sad moaning of her hollow heart, as it wails through her idle, useless life, something would be done for the elevation of womanhood. I hope I address those who appreciate my words and my feelings. Above almost every thing else do I desire woman's elevation in the moral and intellectual scale of life. You may not see the mental or moral nakedness of the mass of our young women as I do; you may not hear the pleading voice of religion as I do; but I trust you do see your need of higher purposes in life, and more active usefulness; I trust you do see that you have souls to dress and hearts to adorn, and will attend to this, your highest duty.