Women at Home — Daughters, Wives, Widows, and Mothers — Comparisons — The Hospitality of Mrs. John Bull — Provincial Life.
The young girl is the heroine of English society. Free and accessible, she is more attractive as a woman, but perhaps less tempting as a future wife, than the timid and sweet young French girl.
She walks out alone, travels alone, and gives you a shake of the hand that is enough to put your shoulder-blade out of joint.
Her favourite occupations are walking and riding, and the game of lawn-tennis, which develops her form and her taste for flirtation. She carries her head erect, her shoulders square, and, as you look at the pump-handle swing of her arms, you feel that if occasion required, she would be able to defend herself and give the man, who treated her with disrespect, a sound box on the ears.
Her frank and fearless bearing is her surest protection: it is the bearing of confidence and security.
The young married woman is much more fascinating in France than in England.
The Frenchwoman gains her liberty when she marries, the Englishwoman loses hers. The latter becomes a minor for the rest of her days, from the moment she has pronounced the fatal I will. The former is, on the contrary, emancipated by these magic words.
If the Frenchwoman has her own way in the household, she has very often richly earned it. It is, unfortunately, not rare to see parents offer to their child, as a companion of her joys and sorrows, a man of forty, bald and unwieldy, who, after having run through health, fortune, and all the romance he ever had about him, is willing to bestow the rest upon her in exchange for her dot, her youth, her beauty, and her virtues. It is a fact, though a sad one, that the husband a French mother most ardently desires for her daughter, is a staid, serious man, a man of experience, a notary, for instance. The notary is quoted very high in the French matrimonial market.
It is a man of sound, ripe qualities, Madame, that you want for your daughter. Ripe! sleepy, you mean, no doubt. And your charming daughter, who has perhaps woven her little romance, built her bright castles in Spain, as she danced with some handsome young cavalier of twenty-five, accepts your choice without a murmur. He is still brisk, he is well preserved, you say to yourself: a quiet, steady man, who will have only my daughter’s happiness at heart. But, Madame, does it never occur to you that the idea of the fair young head of a girl of eighteen, pillowed beside that bald or grey one, is nothing short of revolting? When will you cease preaching to your daughters the theory that a husband is a stupid animal, created and sent into the world to buy dresses and diamonds, and that it is seldom he is in a position to acquit himself properly in this respect at the age of twenty-five? A husband of forty who places diamonds in his wife’s ears, that may be very nice; but a husband of twenty-five who lodges lovely kisses in his wife’s neck, that is much nicer still. Give your daughters liberty to make their own choice, as is done in England, and you will soon see the kind of article they prefer. Give your charming girls to fine young men who love them; and, hand in hand, they will bravely fight the battle of life, bring up numerous families of robust children to brighten your declining years, and will grow old together, always young and handsome in each other’s eyes, as on the day of their betrothal.
In England, a woman marries whom she likes. This system is not without its drawbacks. Thus the sister of a well-known titled lady has become a simple baker’s wife; and not long ago, I read in the papers that a baronet’s daughter, who had married one of her father’s grooms, sought to be separated from her husband, because he did not exactly treat her with the kindness he had always shown to his master’s horses.