It is naturally still worse with the hearts of those tender creatures who with their fingers crush a harmless gnat sunning itself at the window, or purposely tread upon a little worm or beetle crawling over their path. It is well to keep oneself at a good distance from them. Likewise from all those who wear conspicuous dresses; the clothing of a true lady should never attract attention, either by being too striking or too plain.
Women do rightly, on the whole, when they act with warmth and feeling; they are rarely fitted for a merely intellectual companionship, and those who are, are not very lovable, as a rule, and have no inward peace. Even a very clever woman brings unqualified happiness only to a man at least as clever, and she is herself never happy if she has the constant feeling that she far surpasses the man. Ardent feminine natures are a great happiness for him who understands how to enjoy their companionship without blame; otherwise they are like a fire that diffuses light and warmth indeed, but may consume their own house and the houses of others. Very quiet women, on the other hand, easily grow to be somewhat insipid.
What women value most in men is power, whose complete absence they never pardon. Therefore adorers like poor Brackenburg, in Goethe’s “Egmont,” never get their deserts from them; they actually think more of the men who slight them or treat them badly than they do of men who are weak.
Most unhappy are the feelings of a noble woman when, through her own bad choice, or through the folly of her relations, she has fallen to a weakling who seeks compensation for his unmanliness in the outer world by a constant and petty mastery in the house. Dante would have had to invent yet another special punishment for these house-tyrants, against whom it is just the best women that are defenceless, and who may be governed only by a woman of strong egotism.
With this, we have come to the question of marriage. The best relationship with women not already in the family is marriage, and it is one of the chief causes of the deterioration of our age that (and in large measure on account of the pleasure-seeking and the false education of the women themselves) marriage is made difficult to a large proportion of educated men, so that they do not marry at all, or do not marry at the right age. Indeed, among the “civilized” nations, it has actually resulted in the circumstance, unfavorable for the position of women, that they are no longer valued for their own sake, but only for what they “bring along” with them.
Who in fact could wish to torment himself with cares his life long, just to support a vain creature fond of dress and pleasure, while he might, with the same means, procure a far pleasanter mode of life? This is the word pretty generally current now among the younger lords of creation, who have none too much of the spirit of sacrifice.
It is often rather doubtful whether marriage always deserves to be called a “divine” institution under present-day conditions, when the husband very commonly seeks in this way a betterment of his financial situation, or, if he belongs to the less “cultured” classes, seeks a slave to do his work without pay, while the parents of the wife wish to secure, in marriage, a life-insurance policy for their daughter, however wretched a one it may prove to be, and the daughter herself, in the momentary triumph of this social promotion, forgets the sad ensuing loss of her rights. It is one of the saddest yet commonest tragedies to see a fine, highly educated girl in the almost unlimited power of a mediocre young man, solely because many mothers still regard it as a kind of shame to keep their daughters unmarried.
We can understand why most women are glad to marry, because it is only in a good marriage that they have the opportunity of independently unfolding all the powers that lie within them. But that the selfish ones, who know how to put themselves at the right time upon a proper footing of defence, have often a better lot than the good wives, who lavish a vast amount of love, fidelity, self-sacrifice, thought, and vitality upon a questionable man of whom they have made for themselves an incorrect picture in their fancy—this is one of life’s most melancholy experiences, and one that might most make us doubt God’s justice. A woman, therefore, should never marry entirely below her station, never marry a man who is morally not entirely above suspicion, or is pettily egotistic, or is not a man of thoroughly good disposition; nor, as a rule, should she marry out of her country and nationality. But for men who are seriously struggling upward, an alliance with a high-minded woman from the better ranks of life is the method best of all suited to get quickly forward.
It will always be disputed whether it is better, in a good marriage, to seek and to find ardent love, or quiet esteem and friendship. I would decide for the latter, as a general rule; but—he who does not know the former knows not what life is.
The true and unselfish companionship of a man with a worthy woman of his home circle—wife, mother, sister, daughter, and not least, grandmother and granddaughter—undoubtedly belongs to the highest, the tenderest, the purest joys of this life, and brings out qualities in him that otherwise would always lie fallow. A marriage is not by a long way always to be called a stroke of good fortune, but an old bachelor, too, is never the man that could and should be made of him.