In no feature of the maternal care and solicitude with which the church surrounds her daughters is the contrast with the cold neglect and indifference of Protestantism more striking, than in the treatment extended by each system to those women who remain in a state of celibacy.
The condition of such under the Protestant régime is truly pitiable, and the very title of “old maid,” with rare exceptions, entails odium and contempt more surely than moral depravity.
Hence the dread entertained by the girl in Protestant society for a single life, and the universal impression
that to be married is the first great object of her existence. Alas! that escape from the sacred but irksome duties involved in that step should too frequently be the next!
Even mothers encourage their daughters in this view of the matter, and enter into their conspiracies for securing husbands with misguided zeal. Very little reflection is devoted to the question whether the parties are suited for each other, or the mutual attachment sufficiently strong to enable them to bear jointly the numerous and inevitable trials which pertain to every state and condition of life. The attention is chiefly directed to considerations of a widely different character, relating wholly to pecuniary affairs. It is a most singular fact, in connection with this phase of our subject, that—the great desideratum once secured—the young wife too generally begins at once to regard and treat the husband whom she has been so anxious to gain as the adversary to her interests and happiness, instead of adopting the old-fashioned idea that he is her best friend. Strange as it may seem, this is a very common mistake in these days, and the source of much domestic discord and misery.
A lovely young mother—one of the fairest and most intelligent specimens of the modern American woman whom we are so happy as to know—said to us, the other day: “My boys are well provided for in any event, and, if they were not, they could fight their way in the world like others; but, I assure you, I shall bestir myself to make such provision for my girls as will secure them from being ground to powder by their husbands!”
This from a most devoted and exemplary wife, happy in a husband who dotes upon her, was sufficiently surprising.
“But,” said we, “you would not on any account have your daughters remain unmarried; and would you be willing to give them to men with whom you would not trust their money?”
“Ah!” she replied, “I should prefer to rely upon their securing respect and good treatment with plenty of their own money at command, than with an empty purse.”
We sighed as we inquired mentally if it could be that our American men were really becoming so mercenary, and, recalling the old-fashioned doctrine of perfect community of interests between husbands and wives, marvelled much whether families governed by such maxims, and homes regulated from the start upon such a footing, would more abound in the desirable elements of old-fashioned comfort than those wherein the wife ruled, as of yore—yea, and supremely, too—by the old, old fashion of love!