How to Get Married, Although a Woman; or, The Art of Pleasing Men

by Irene W. Hartt

Let him make up his mind to marry. The world will approve of his decision. Let Mollie do the same thing. I want to see girls marry. I am always glad when I hear that one is engaged to do so. To help some to do so, I write these few chapters. There are too many old maids. There are more than there need to be.

I feel particularly sorry for the girl who has passed the line of youth and who has no admirers. Her brothers are all married, and most of her girlhood friends are absorbed in a husband and a baby. She has none, when doubtless she has it within her to make a good wife and mother. She is often restless, unsatisfied, disappointed. If she is at all weak-minded, she becomes sour as she grows older. She grows envious of all happily married women, and has a secret grudge toward men because she feels that she has been slighted by the sex generally. Many a girl who would make a good wife is soured by her failure to become one, and turns out an unpleasant member of society. All old maids are not by any means like this, however. There are many unmarried women in the world that will take up cheerfully any fate, turning their disappointment into a blessing for others.

But I fear that, after all, they go through life with a heart unsatisfied. Alone, when they look into the secret chambers of that uncomplaining heart, they see there the old longings for love.

There are unmarried women who do a great deal of good in the world. They accept their solitary lot as the will of the Heavenly Father. But is it His will? Does He give the heart longings which He will not satisfy? No. A thousand times, No. That would be tantalizing us. Too often we make mistakes in life, and then declare the consequences to be His will. It is so in failing to marry. Girls make mistakes in their conduct and remain spinsters. The fault is their own. They do not know how to attract, and so are passed by.

Plenty of girls do so well understand the art of attracting men, that they have numberless offers of marriage. I know women who could not count up on their ten fingers the men who have been in love with them: among them men who for their sakes have remained unmarried through life. I have had personal acquaintance with women who have been married three times, and could, some of them, be married again. I know other women who have never had one admirer.

I know girls who can attract men to them, and almost as soon as they are attracted, repel them. That sort of a girl never marries. She wants to do so, and acts through ignorance. I have sometimes felt like giving a girl a good shaking when I have seen her spoil her own chances. I have been dying to whisper a word of advice at times, but was too wise to do so, knowing it would not be well received. Girls know so fearfully much! The experiences of a mature woman count for nothing beside the wonderful knowledge some girls in their teens have! In the hope that some of these maidens will be willing to read what they would not hear, when it was too personal, I determined to write down what I know about being attractive to the other sex, what I know about girls’ failures, and why they fail.

Not long ago there appeared in “The Woman’s Department” of one of our daily papers a letter from a young girl, in which she confessed that she loved a young man who did not return her affection. She asked what she should do to win him. The editor could not tell her, advising her to give him up, very much as if it were a pleasure excursion the poor girl was writing about. There are times when it is necessary to give up all hope of winning a man. This, however, did not appear to have been one of them. The girl should have been told just how she could attract, then win him. Perhaps the editor did not herself know.

If a girl is thrown much in the society of a young man whose affections are not previously engaged, and if she knows how to do it, she is quite sure to make him love her. If, however, he cares for some one else, who cares for him, no true woman will in any way try to come between the two: she will rather avoid doing so. If the girl has become interested before she knows of his engagement, it is a case of misplaced affections. There I must advise giving him up. Get interested in another man, and win that one. It might be well always for a girl to find out first whether or not a man is interested in some one else. That would often save a world of trouble. A misplaced affection, when foolishly adhered to will stand in the way of a happy marriage. It is not always the man you love. Not unfrequently it is your ideal which you make a certain man fill. Often, if you are not blinded, you will see that instead of filling it, he “wobbles” around in the large space you have given him. That ideal can easily be transferred to another man. Very few hearts are so true that they love but once. They may do so in stories, but in real life we change. We rarely marry our first love, and almost always forget all about him.

After marriage it is a different thing. Then it is no ideal: it is real. The man you love is real. The love is real, and continues even after “death do you part.”

So, let no misplaced affection stand between you and marriage. Return a love if it is offered you and the man is desirable, or set yourself to win one. Do not go about sighing for a man who belongs to another girl. He never gives you a thought—they are hers. Have too much self-respect, and too high an opinion of your charms to think about him. In a few years, impossible as it may seem now, when you meet him middle-aged and a family man, you will wonder what you ever saw in him to care about. This sounds heartless, but it is true. It goes to prove that in early life before marriage it is the ideal and not the man a girl often loves. If I am mistaken in that, I am not mistaken in saying that a girl is happier married to a man for whom she cares less than she did for this ideal, than in remaining a spinster because some other girl bore off the heart she craved. To my mind a woman is happier married under almost any circumstances than single. That I know is against the teachings of to-day, and does not savor the least of woman’s rights. I believe her “rights” is to be married.