The misapplications of young miss’s upbringing do not end here. She cannot sew to any purpose. If she deign to use a needle at all, it is to embroider a smoking-cap for a lover or a pair of slippers for papa. To sew on a button, or cut out and unite the plainest piece of male or female clothing, is not always within her powers, or at least her inclinations. Prosaic vulgar work, fit only for dressmakers and milliners! She will spend weeks and months over eighteen inches of what she is pleased to call lace, while the neighbouring seamstress is making up all her underclothing, to pay for which, papa has not too much money; but then it is genteel.
She cannot knit. A pair of worsted cuffs or a lanky cravat is something great to attain to; while a stocking, even were the charwomen less easily paid, is sure to come off the needles right-lined as any of Euclid’s parallelograms—all leg and no ankle—a suspicion of foot, but never a vestige of heel. To darn the hole that so soon appears in the loosely knitted fabric, would be a servile, reproachful task, quite staggering to the sentimental aspirations of our engaged Angelina. Yet darning and the divine art of mending will one day be to her a veritable philosopher’s stone, whose magic influences will shed beams of happiness over her household, and fortunate will she be if she have not to seek it with tears.
By the sick-bed, where she ought to be supreme, she is often worse than useless. The pillows that harden on the couch of convalescence, too rarely know her softening touch. She may be all kindness and attention—for the natural currents of her being are full to repletion of sweetness and sympathy—yet as incapable of really skilled service as an artist’s lay-figure. And, as a last touch to the sorry picture, instead of being in any way a source of comfort to the bread-winners of her family, or a lessening of the strain on their purse-strings, she is a continual cause of extra work to servants, of anxiety to her parents, of ennui to herself.
Apparently, the chief mission of the young lady to whom we address ourselves, is to entice some eligible young man into the responsibilities of wedlock. He, poor fellow, succumbs not so much to intrinsic merits, as to fine lady-like airs. He sees the polish on the surface, and takes for granted that there is good solid wear underneath. Our young miss has conquered, and quits the family roof-tree, sweetly conscious of her orange wreath of victory; but alas!—we are sorry to say it—do not her conquests too often end at the altar, unless she resolutely set herself to learn the exacting mysteries of her new sphere, and, what is far more difficult, to unlearn much that she has acquired? That she often does at this stage make a bold and firm departure from the toyish fancies of her training, and makes, from the sheer plasticity and devotion of her character, wonderful strides in the housewife’s craft, we cheerfully confess. Were it otherwise, the domestic framework of society would be in a far more disorganised condition than it happily is. But why handicap her for the most important, most arduous portion of her race in life? Why train her to be the vapid fine lady, with almost the certainty that, by so doing, you are taking the surest means of rendering her an insufficient wife and mother? And, unfortunately, not always, in fact but seldom, is she able, when she crosses her husband’s, threshold, to tear herself away from her omnivorous novel-reading, piano-playing, and all the other alleviations of confirmed idleness.
The sweets of the honeymoon and an undefined vacation beyond make no great calls on her as a helpmate and wife. If her husband’s means permit of a servant or two, the smoother the water and the plainer the sailing for the nonce; although these keen-scented critics in the kitchen will, in a very short time, detect and take the grossest advantage of their mistress’s inexperience. Besides, if we reflect that among our middle classes more marry on an income of two hundred pounds than on a higher, it becomes painfully apparent that two or three servants are the one thing our young housewife needs, but cannot possibly afford.
She is now, however, only about to begin her life-work, and if there is such a thing clearly marked out for a being on this globe, it is for woman. By birthright, she is the mother of the human race. Could she have a greater, grander field for enterprise? How admirably has nature fitted her for performing the functions of the mother and adorning the province of the wife! Hence, there devolves upon her a responsibility which no extraneous labour in more inviting fields can excuse. No philosophy, no tinkering of the constitution, no success in the misnamed higher walks of life and knowledge, will atone for the failure of the mother. Let her shine a social star of the first magnitude, let her be supreme in every intellectual circle, and then marry, as she is ever prone to do, in spite of all theories; and if she fail as a mother, she fails as a woman and as a human being. She becomes a mere rag, a tatter of nature’s cast-off clothing, spiritless, aimless, a failure in this great world of work.
As her family increases, the household shadows deepen, where all should be purity, sweetness, and light. The domestic ship may even founder through the downright, culpable incapacity of her that takes the helm. Her children never have the air of comfort and cleanliness. In their clothes, the stitch is never in time. The wilful neglect, and consequent waste, in this one matter of half-worn clothing is almost incredible. A slatternly atmosphere pervades her entire home. With the lapse of time our young wife becomes gradually untidy, dishevelled, and even dirty, in her own person; and at last sits down for good, disconsolate and overwhelmed by her unseen foe. Her husband can find no pleasure in the ‘hugger-mugger,’ as Carlyle phrases it, of his home; there is no brightness in it to cheer his hours of rest. He returns from his daily labours to a chaos, which he shuns by going elsewhere; and so the sequel of misery and neglect takes form.
As a first precaution against such a calamity, let us strip our home-life of every taint of quackery. Let us regard women’s education, like that of men, as a means to a lifelong end, never forgetting that if we unfit it for everyday practice, we render it a mere useless gem, valuable in a sense, but unset. Middle-class women will be the better educated, in every sense, the more skilled they are in the functions of the mother and the duties of the wife. Give them every chance of proving thrifty wives and good mothers, in addition to, or, where that is impossible, to the exclusion of accomplished brides. Let some part of their training as presently constituted, such as the rigours of music, and the fritterings of embroidery, give way, in part, to the essential acquirements which every woman, every mother should possess, and which no gold can buy. Give us a woman, then, natural in her studies, her training, her vocations, and her dress, and in the words of the wisest of men, who certainly had a varied experience of womankind, we shall have something ‘far more precious than rubies. She will not be afraid of the snow for her household; strength and honour will be her clothing; her husband shall have no need of spoil; he shall be known in the gates, when he sitteth among the elders; he shall praise her; and her children shall call her blessed.’