I have been thinking a good deal, and seriously, since we last met, about the subject of our conversation, which though a painful one is not to be timidly avoided. The degree of unhappiness in your little household, which ought to be one of the pleasantest of households, yet which, as you confided to me, is overshadowed by a continual misunderstanding, is, I fear, very common indeed at the present day. It is only by great forbearance, and great skill, that any household in which persons of very different degrees of culture have to live together on terms of equality, can be maintained in perfect peace; and neither the art nor the forbearance is naturally an attribute of youth. A man whose scholarly attainments were equal to your own, and whose experience of men and women was wider, could no doubt offer you counsel both wise and practical, yet I can hardly say that I should like you better if you followed it. I cannot blame you for having the natural characteristics of your years, an honest love of the best truth that you have attained to, an intolerance of inaccuracy on all subjects, a simple faith in the possibility of teaching others, even elderly ladies, when they happen to know less than yourself. All these characteristics are in themselves blameless; and yet in your case, and in thousands of other similar cases, they often bring clouds of storm and trial upon houses which, in a less rapidly progressive century than our own, might have been blessed with uninterrupted peace. The truth is, that you are in a false position relatively to your mother, and your mother is in a false position relatively to you. She expects deference, and deference is scarcely compatible with contradiction; certainly, if there be contradiction at all, it must be very rare, very careful, and very delicate. You, on the other hand, although no doubt full of respect and affection for your mother in your heart, cannot hear her authoritatively enunciating anything that you know to be erroneous, without feeling irresistibly urged to set her right. She is rather a talkative lady; she does not like to hear a conversation going forward without taking a part in it, and rather an important part, so that whatever subject is talked about in her presence, that subject she will talk about also. Even before specialists your mother has an independence of opinion, and a degree of faith in her own conclusions, which would be admirable if they were founded upon right reason and a careful study of the subject. Medical men, and even lawyers, do not intimidate her; she is convinced that she knows more about disease than the physician, and more about legal business than an old attorney. In theology no parson can approach her; but here a woman may consider herself on her own ground, as theology is the speciality of women.
All this puts you out of patience, and it is intelligible that, for a young gentleman of intellectual habits and somewhat ardent temperament like yourself, it must be at times rather trying to have an Authority at hand ever ready to settle all questions in a decisive manner. To you I have no counsel to offer but that of unconditional submission. You have the weakness to enter into arguments when to sustain them you must assume the part of a teacher. In arguing with a person already well-informed upon the subject in dispute, you may politely refer to knowledge which he already possesses, but when he does not possess the knowledge you cannot argue with him; you must first teach him, you must become didactic, and therefore odious. I remember a great scene which took place between you and your mother concerning the American War. It was brought on by a too precise answer of yours relatively to your friend B., who had emigrated to America. You mother asked to what part of America B. had emigrated, and you answered, “The Argentine Republic.” A shade of displeasure clouded your mother’s countenance, because she did not know where the Argentine Republic might be, and betrayed it by her manner. You imprudently added that it was in South America. “Yes, yes, I know very well,” she answered; “there was a great battle there during the American War. It is well your friend was not there under Jefferson Davis.” Now, permit me to observe, my estimable young friend, that this was what the French call a fine opportunity for holding your tongue, but your missed it. Fired with an enthusiasm for truth (always dangerous to the peace of families), you began to explain to the good lady that the Argentine Republic, though in South America, was not one of the Southern States of the Union. This led to a scene of which I was the embarrassed and unwilling witness. Your mother vehemently affirmed that all the Southern States had been under Jefferson Davis, that she knew the fact perfectly, that it had always been known to every one during the war, and that, consequently, as the Argentine Republic was in South America, the Argentine Republic had been under Jefferson Davis. Rapidly warming with this discussion, your mother “supposed that you would deny next that there had ever been such a thing as a war between the North and the South.” Then you, in your turn, lost temper, and you fetched an atlas for the purpose of explaining that the southern division of the continent of America was not the southern half of the United States. You were landed, as people always are landed when they prosecute an argument with the ignorant, in the thankless office of the schoolmaster. You were actually trying to give your mother a lesson in geography! She was not grateful to you for your didactic attentions. She glanced at the book as people glance at an offered dish which they dislike. She does not understand maps; the representation of places in geographical topography has never been quite clear to her. Your little geographical lecture irritated, but did not inform; it clouded the countenance, but did not illuminate the understanding. The distinction between South America and the Southern States is not easy to the non-analytic mind under any circumstances, but when amour propre is involved it becomes impossible.
I believe that the best course in discussions of this kind with ladies is simply to say once what is true, for the acquittal of your own conscience, but after that to remain silent on that topic, leaving the last word to the lady, who will probably simply re-affirm what she has already said. For example, in the discussion about the Argentine Republic, your proper course would have been to say first, firmly, that the territory in question was not a part of the seceded States and had never been in the Union, with a brief and decided geographical explanation. Your mother would not have been convinced by this, and would probably have had the last word, but the matter would have ended there. Another friend of mine, who is in a position very like your own, goes a step farther, and is determined to agree with his mother-in-law in everything. He always assents to her propositions. She is a Frenchwoman, and has been accustomed to use Algérie and Afrique as convertible terms. Somebody spoke of the Cape of Good Hope as being in Africa. “Then it belongs to France, as Africa belongs to France.” “Oui, chère mère,” he answered, in his usual formula; “vous avez raison.”
He alluded to this afterwards when we were alone together. “I was foolish enough some years since,” he said, “to argue with my belle mère and try to teach her little things from time to time, but it kept her in a state of chronic ill-humor and led to no good; it spoiled her temper, and it did not improve her mind. But since I have adopted the plan of perpetual assent we get on charmingly. Whatever she affirms I assent to at once, and all is well. My friends are in the secret, and so no contradictory truth disturbs our amiable tranquillity.”
A system of this kind spoils women completely, and makes the least contradiction intolerable to them. It is better that they should at least have the opportunity of hearing truth, though no attempt need be made to force it upon them. The position of ladies of the generation which preceded ours is in many respects a very trying one, and we do not always adequately realize it. A lady like your mother, who never really went through any intellectual discipline, who has no notion of intellectual accuracy in anything, is compelled by the irresistible feminine instinct to engage her strongest feelings in every discussion that arises. A woman can rarely detach her mind from questions of persons to apply it to questions of fact. She does not think simply, “Is that true of such a thing?” but she thinks, “Does he love me or respect me?” The facts about the Argentine Republic and the American War were probably quite indifferent to your mother; but your opposition to what she had asserted seemed to her a failure in affection, and your attempt to teach her a failure in respect. This feeling in women is far from being wholly egoistic. They refer everything to persons, but not necessarily to their own persons. Whatever you affirm as a fact, they find means of interpreting as loyalty or disloyalty to some person whom they either venerate or love, to the head of religion, or of the State, or of the family. Hence it is always dangerous to enter upon intellectual discussion of any kind with women, for you are almost certain to offend them by setting aside the sentiments of veneration, affection, love, which they have in great strength, in order to reach accuracy in matters of fact, which they neither have nor care for.