Michelet deplores the state of divorce which is established between the sexes; we deplore it likewise; but our complaints do not remedy it. Men shun marriage from motives that do them no credit: they have at their pleasure the poor girls whom want places at their mercy; they shun marriage because they do not wish a real, that is, an autonomous wife at their side; for themselves, they wish liberty, for their wife, slavery.
On their side, women tend to enfranchisement, which is well for them as it is for men: they should not suffer themselves to be turned aside from their pursuit; on the other hand, as men are attracted by a costly toilette, and neglect plainly dressed women, if the latter, in the wish to please and retain them, imitate public women, whose is the fault? Is it ours, who desire to please you and to be loved by you, or yours, who can only be attracted by dress? If you loved us for our real worth, and not because our dresses and jewels please your eye, we would not ruin you.
Let us point out in a few lines the contradictions and differences that are found between Michelet's first and second works.
In both, woman is the flame of love and of the fireside religion, harmony, poetry, the guardian of the domestic hearth, a housewife whose cares are ennobled by love: civilization is due to her grace, she should be the representative of grace if not of beauty.
In both books, the household must be isolated; the wife must have no intimate friendship; mother, brothers and sisters prevent her from becoming absorbed as she ought to be in her husband. What we think of this absorption is already known; we will only say here that if the friends and relatives of the wife should be expelled, those of the husband should be none the less so; the mother and friends of the husband have more power to injure the wife than those of the wife to injure the husband; numerous sad facts prove this.
In "Love," woman is a receptive power, incapable of comprehending conscientious works; she must receive everything from her husband in the intellectual and moral point of view.
In "Woman," she is half of the couple, in the same ratio as man is capable of the most lofty speculations, and thoroughly understands administration. She gives the child the education that before all else will influence the rest of his life. "So long as woman is not the partner of labor and of action," says the author, "we are serfs, we can do nothing—she may even be the equal of man in medical science; she is a school, she is sole educatress, etc."
Very well, thus far; and doubtless Michelet would have been consistent, had he not got into his head a masculine and a feminine ideal which spoils everything; he reasoned to himself: "Man is a creator, woman a harmony whose end and destination is love;" and, consequently, he marks out for the latter a plan of education different from that by which man should be developed; the natural sciences are suited to woman, history should only be taught her to form in her a firm moral and religious faith. As love is her vocation, to each season of the life of woman should correspond an object of love; flowers, the doll, poor children, next the lover, then the husband and children, then the care of young orphans, prisoners, etc.
In "Love," the wife alone seems bound to confess to the husband. In "Woman," the obligation is mutual.
The widow, in "Love," should not marry again, in "Woman," she may espouse a friend of the husband, or still better, the one whom he may choose on his deathbed; if she is too old, she may watch over a young man; but she will do better to protect young girls, to make peace in families, to facilitate marriages, to superintend prisons, etc.