COMMENT AND REVIEW
In a recent number of a leading "woman's" periodical is a disquisition on love—a girl's ideals of love, based on Elaine and the Sleeping Beauty.
This is a serious matter surely. Love being an essential preliminary to the best parenthood, and the major element of personal happiness, is a most commanding subject; and as the woman is the most important factor in both lines, her ideals are worth discussing.
We note that the author says "girl" instead of woman; but as boys and girls do have ideals they too are worth considering. What are these ideals as discussed in this worthy periodical?
We are told that the girl is often unfit to meet "the big grave questions of love itself;" and "to make sure that she has these ideals from the highest sources."
"What are these sources?" pursues this sagacious monitor; and then she offers—"fairy tales and old romance." For ideals of love—here—in America to-day—we are referred to Grimm's Marchen; to Cinderella, the Goose Girl, Beauty and the Beast, and the Sleeping Beauty! Various heroines of mythology and fiction are adduced, and the crowning type of all is Elaine, The Lily Maid of Astolat.
A careful reading of fairy tales, however worthy, does not seem to throw much light on the problems of marriage; and right marriage is what all this love and its ideals are for. Here is a matter calling for the widest knowledge, the noblest purpose, the highest principles, the most practical action; a matter concerning not only the private happiness of two persons, but the lives of several others; a matter not only of individual appeal, but of the very broadest social duty; and for its ideals we are referred to old fairy tales!
The Sleeping Beauty is a most happy instance of woman's right attitude toward love and marriage—she is to remain starkly unconscious, using absolutely no discretion; and cheerfully marry the first man that kisses her! In the fairy story he was a noble prince—but the average sleeping beauty of to-day is often waked up by the wrong man!
Sometimes she is married first, and wakes up afterward; like the lady in
Lear's limerick:
"There a an old man of Jamaica,
Who suddenly married a Quaker.
But she cried out, "O Lack!
I have married a Black!"
Which grieved that old man of Jamaica."