But it is the exceeding beauty of the person and the elegance of the dress that make her conspicuous; and it is that conspicuousness which constitutes the ground of censure.
But fortunately The Belle of the Opera did not make herself beautiful. Those elegant proportions, those enticing charms, are the gift of Him who made human beings in his own image; and let it be confessed that half the elegance of the dress is attributable to the elegance of the form which it covers, and the exquisite beauty which it is not intended to conceal.
Beauty is a gift—a gift of God—like all personal or mental endowments, dangerous, it is confessed—but, like all, to be used for personal gratification and the promotion of social advantage.
If it is conceded to be a means of mental melioration to dwell among the beauties of artistic skill and lofty architectural efforts, then surely it must be still more advantageous to be reared within the influence of living charms; “to grow familiar day by day” with features and forms that constitute models for the representation of angels, and to pass onward through life with the sense of seeing constantly improved and gratified with objects of exquisite beauty exquisitely clothed. This is viewing The Belle of the Opera with an artist’s eye.
“But,” the moralist will say, “the high office of woman is vacated by such a sacrifice to display, and such a devotion of time to amusement. That The Belle of the Opera can never be The Bonne of the Nursery, and therefore woman is out of her place when out of such an exercise of her faculties as shall minister directly to domestic advantage.”
We take issue with the moralist on this question of the direct application of female faculties; and we do this because we feel that the narrow bigotry of the unenlightened, which leads them to condemn the elegant enjoyments of life, and to ground their condemnation on the demand which is constant upon human beings, “to do good and to communicate,” is founded on a want of a full appreciation of female powers, and a mistake as to what constitutes these, and their means of usefulness.
There will be no space for a discussion of the measure of female duties, though it is intended to enter upon such a discussion hereafter; but we may say that however extensive or however limited they may be, their discharge will be more or less effectual and complete, as she is qualified by the elegance of education, the improvement of her mind, the cultivation and adaptation of her faculties, to impart to others the graces of life, and to fix them by constant example.
Virtue is embraced for its charms—it is not admired for deformity or its negligence of mind; it has its attractions and its means of compensation, as much as has vice—but they are not always as obvious. The young must be made to trust in the results of a virtuous course; they must have their faith fixed by the graces of parental, of maternal precept and example—and this good cannot be hoped for if the mother is incapable of attracting, if she has not the means of charming—if, indeed, she cannot show that what constitute the pleasures of life (pleasures which in excess become crimes) are, while properly enjoyed, wholesome and advantageous, and at the same time can show the line of demarcation between their uses and their abuses. She must know what are the true accomplishments of life—she must understand the influence of refinement and cultivation on the mind—and she must bring herself to apply all these. She must know the difference, too, between the uses and the abuses of cultivated talents, and she must learn to discriminate.
She who would deny to the young the cultivation of talents, musical, literary or artistic, is like the beings who would pile up the snows of winter, that the accumulated heap might prevent the budding and the blossoming of spring; while she who would force the mind of her child to an unnatural development of merely ornamental faculties, is like one who would concentrate the rays of the sun through a burning-glass, in order to accelerate the growth of a delicate plant.
What we mean to assert is the obvious fact, that the female, the mother, cannot discharge the high responsibilities of her sex, without many of those acquisitions which are condemned as worthless in themselves, and perhaps the condemnation is in some measure correct; that is, the acquisition separately considered may be rather injurious than beneficial.