334. Sophie and the Education of Women.—The weakest part of the Émile is that which treats of the education of woman. This is not merely because Rousseau, with his decided leaning towards the romantic, leads Émile and his companion into odd and extraordinary adventures, but it is especially because he misconceives the proper dignity of woman. Sophie, the perfect woman, has been educated only to complete the happiness of Émile. Her education is wholly relative to her destiny as a wife.
“The whole education of women should be relative to men; to please them, to be useful to them, to make themselves honored and loved by them, to educate the young, to care for the older, to advise them, to console them, to make life agreeable and sweet to them,—these are the duties of women in every age.”
“Sophie,” says Gréard, “has but virtues of the second order, virtues of conjugal education.” It has been said that marriage is a second birth for man, that he rises or falls according to the choice which he makes. For woman, according to the theory of Rousseau, it is the true advent into life. According to the expressive formula of Michelet, who, in a sentence, has given a marvellous summary of the doctrine, but in attaching to it a sense which poetizes it, “the husband creates the wife.” Sophie, up to the day of her marriage, did not exist. She had learned nothing and read nothing “except a Barême and a Télémaque which have chanced to fall into her hands.” She has been definitely admonished, “that were men sensible, every lettered girl will remain a girl.” It is Émile alone who is to instruct her, and he will instruct her and mould her into his own ideal, and in conformity to his individual interest.
While it was only in his youth that he received the first principles of the religious feeling, Sophie must be penetrated with it from infancy, in order that she may early form the habit of submission. He commands and she obeys, the first duty of the wife being meekness. If, during her youth, she has freely attended banquets, amusements, balls, the theatre, it is not so much to be initiated into the vain pleasures of the world, under the tutelage of a vigilant mother, as to belong, once married, more fully to her home and to her husband. She is nothing except as she is by his side, or as dependent on him, or as acting through him. Strange and brutal paradox, which Rousseau, it is true, corrects and repairs in detail, at every moment by the most happy and charming inconsistencies.
Sophie, briefly, is an incomplete person whom Rousseau is not careful enough to educate for herself.
In her subordinate and inferior position, the cares of the household occupy the largest place. She cuts and makes her own dresses:—
“What Sophie knows best, and what was taught her with most care, is the work of her sex. There is no needle-work which she does not know how to make.”
It is not forbidden her, but is even recommended that she introduce a certain coquetry into her employments:—
“The work she loves the best is lace-making, because there is no other that gives her a more agreeable attitude, and in which the fingers are used with more grace and deftness.”