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BY MRS. SEBA SMITH.
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Coleridge has somewhere beautifully said, “the perfection of a woman’s character is to be characterless.” A sentiment of such obvious propriety would hardly seem to need a commentary, and yet no one of Coleridge’s appears to be oftener misunderstood. A characterless woman is, assuredly, any thing but an imbecile one. She must be one equal to all contingencies, whose faculties or powers are developed by circumstances, rather than by spontaneous action; and this implies the possession of all that is peculiar to her sex, but all in harmonious adjustment.
A characterless woman is often confounded with one deficient in the finest attributes of the sex, who is characterless indeed, but is so from imbecility—if the phrase do not, of itself, involve a contradiction; as if a creature, whose virtues were all negatives, could be characterless! A woman, too feeble to grasp at thought, too vapid for sentiment, too tame for mirth, too commonplace for enthusiasm, and too weak for passion, may be the ideal of those incapable of appreciating the higher characteristics of womanhood, but could never have been that of him whom Wordsworth calls the “heaven-eyed creature;” of him who conceived Christabel, and the sweet attaching Genevieve.
Such may do for the statue-like creations of Maria Edgeworth, and the thousand and one other romance writers, who expect woman to move by rule—who mistake dullness for goodness, and apathy for grace; but they awaken in ourselves no emotions of sympathy, for the human heart can respond only to human emotions, and it at once goes forth to greet its kindred impulses. Fielding’s Sophia is more lovable than Scott’s Rowena, simply because one is a live, earnest woman, and the other designed to be a very perfect one, and she turns out to be a very dull one.
Let Rebecca pass—the noble—the ideal—for, alas! human hearts are not prepared for the love of such as these; they may excite esteem, admiration, even passion, but love—the crowning boon of existence—may not be theirs. They gather not the household gods about them—they enter themselves into the holiest of holies, but they minister alone at the altar. Their fate is that of the fabled bird, whose own intensity kindled its funeral pyre. They have a mission to perform. They are created not to enjoy but to suffer; aye, to suffer that human hearts may be made wiser and holier; therefore do the pale stars keep vigil with them, and therefore is the dew all night upon their heads, and their locks wet with the drops of the morning.
A characterless woman! We feel she must be so, to be perfect as a woman. But then she must have all the susceptibilities, all the sweet impulses, all the weaknesses of her sex; she must have a woman’s thoughts, and a woman’s utterance—her simplicity, her faith—and, beneath all, there must dwell that womanly endurance—wondrous and holy in its power—reserved for the day of trial.
Weakness as often imports character as strength. Any one attribute, in excess, imports a distinctive characteristic. We talk of vain women, coquettish, masculine, sensible, dull, witty, &c., running through all the defective grades of character. Now a true woman must, as circumstances warrant, exhibit something of all this; for she is a “creature of infinite variety.”
She may have a dash of coquetry, but be no coquette—she hath pride, but may not be called proud—hath vanity, but is not vain—she suggests, rather than originates wit—wise she is, but, as Rosalind saith, “the wiser, the waywarder”—she is devout, but no devotee—she is good, but hers is not that dry, barren goodness, which ariseth from cold speculating reason, but is rather that of a beautiful instinct, that causeth her to feel that God hath done infinitely better for her than she could have done for herself. Like Desdemona, she will blush at the mention of herself, feeling she is so nicely balanced—and then, with a woman’s best and sweetest attribute, she spreadeth forth her hand for support.