Accursëd Eve! Mother of the world! What higher thing does she seek? Mother of Christianity itself, she stands before us, a figure symbolic of all good, her Holy Child in her arms, her sweet, musing, prayerful face bending over it in gravely tender devotion. From her soft breast humanity springs renewed,—she represents the youth, the hope, the love of all mankind. Wronged as she has been, and as she still is, her patience never fails. Deceived, she “mends her broken shell with pearl,” and still trusts on. Her sweet credulousness is the same as ever it was;—the “subtil” one can always over-reach her through her too ready confidence in the idea that “all things work together for good.” Her “curse” is the crime of loving too well,—believing too much. Should a “subtil” one say he loves her, she honestly thinks he does. When he turns out, as often happens, to be looking after her money rather than herself, she can scarcely force her mind to realize that he is not so much hero as cad. When she has to earn her own living in any of the artistic professions, she will frequently tell all her plans, hopes and ambitions to “subtil” ones with the most engaging frankness. The “subtil” ones naturally take every advantage of her, and some of them put a stopgap on her efforts if they can.
How many times men have tried to steal away the honour of a woman’s name and fame in literature need not here be chronicled. Of how many books, bearing a woman’s name on the title-page it is said—“Her husband helped her,”—or “She got Mr. So-and-So to write the descriptive part!” “George Eliot” has often been accused of being assisted in her novels by Mr. Lewes. A little incident,—touching enough to my mind,—is related in the memoirs of Charlotte Brontë. After her marriage, and when she was expecting the birth of her child, she was reading some of the first chapters of an intended new novel to her husband,—who, as he listened, said in that peculiarly encouraging way which is common to men who have gifted women to deal with—“You seem to be repeating yourself. You must take care not to repeat yourself.” Poor little soul! She never “repeated” herself,—she just died. No one can tell how her husband’s thoughtless phrase may have teazed or perplexed her sensitive mind in a critical condition of health, and helped to hasten the fatal end.
Edward Fitzgerald’s celebrity as a scholar is not, and never will be wide enough to blot out from remembrance his brutal phrase on hearing of the death of Elizabeth Barrett Browning—
“Mrs. Browning is dead. Thank God we shall have no more Aurora Leighs!”
While, far more creditable to Algernon Charles Swinburne than his own praise of himself now unfortunately affixed to the newly collected edition of his works, is the praise he bestows on this noble woman-genius in his preface to her great poem. I quote one line of it here—
“No English contemporary poet by profession has left us work so full of living fire.”
For once, and in this particular instance, Accursëd Eve in literature has, in such a verdict, won her merited literary honours.
But as a rule honours are withheld from her, and the laurel is filched from her brows by Coward Adam ere she has time to wear it. One flagrant case is well known, of a man who having lived entirely on a woman’s literary earnings for years, went about in the clothes her pen had paid for, among the persons to whom, through her influence, he had been introduced, boasting that he assisted her to write the greater part of her books. To their shame be it said, a great many people believed him; and not till he was dead, and the woman went on writing her books as before, did they even begin to see the wrong they had done her. They would not have dared to calumniate the false boaster as they calumniated the innocent hard worker. The boaster was a man,—the worker was a woman;—therefore the dishonour of passing off literary work not one’s own, must, so they imagined, naturally belong to Accursëd Eve,—not to Coward Adam! Of their humiliation when the real truth was known, history sayeth nothing.
Yet with all the weight of her curse more or less upon her, and with all her sorrows, shattered ideals, wrecked hopes, and lost loves, Accursëd Eve is still the most beautiful, the most perfect figure in creation. Her failings, her vanities, her weaknesses, her sins, arise in the first place from love—even if afterwards, through Coward Adam’s ready encouragement, they degenerate into vice and animalism. Her first impulse in earliest youth is a desire to please Adam,—the same impulse precisely which led her to offer him the forbidden apple in the first days of their mutual acquaintance. She wishes to charm him,—to win his heart,—to endear herself to him in a thousand tender ways,—to wind herself irretrievably round his life. If she succeeds in this aim, she is invariably happy and virtuous. But if she is made to feel that she cannot hold him on whom her thoughts are centred,—if his professed love for her only proves weak and false when put to trial,—if he finds it easy to forget both sentiment and courtesy, and is quick to add insult to injury, then all the finer and more delicate emotions of her nature become warped and unstrung,—and though she endures her suffering because she must, she resents it and takes vengeance when she can. Of resentfulness against wrong and revenge for injustice, come what are called “bad women.” Yet I would humbly venture to maintain that even these “bad” were not bad in the first instance. They were born in the usual way, with the usual Eve impulse,—the desire to please, not themselves, but the opposite sex. If their instinctive efforts have been met with cruelty, oppression, neglect, desertion and sometimes the most heartless and cowardly betrayal, they can scarcely be blamed if they play the same tricks on the unloving, disloyal churls for whom they have perhaps sacrificed the best part of their lives. For innocent faith and trusting love are the best part of every woman’s life; and when these are destroyed by the brutalizing touch of some Coward Adam, the woman may well claim compensation for her soul’s murder.
Accursëd Eve! Still she loves,—to find herself fooled and cheated; still she hopes, even while hope eludes her,—still she waits, for what she may never win,—still she prays prayers that may never be answered,—still she bears and rears the men of the future, wondering perchance whether any of them will ever help to do her justice,—will ever place her where she should be, as the acknowledged queenly “help-meet” of her stronger, but less enduring partner! Beautiful, frail, trusting, loving, Accursëd Eve! She bends beneath the curse,—but the clouds are lifting!—there is light in the sky of her future dawn! And it may be that a worse malediction than the one pronounced in Eden, will fall on those who make her burden of life heavier to bear!