Only a Girl: or, A Physician for the Soul.

by Wilhelmine von Hillern

we might say," remarked the Staatsräthin. "And certainly in our case these matters are not so widely different. What is most important cannot be entirely divided here from what is unimportant. Such little household occupations, slight, even insignificant, as they may appear, belong to the responsibilities of a woman's position. They are stitches in the web of her life. If a single one is dropped, the whole is gradually frayed!"

Ernestine shrugged her shoulders. "You are perfectly right from your point of view, Frau Staatsräthin, but your point of view is not mine. To me a woman's mission is something higher. A noble mind cannot condescend to occupy itself with such cares, which are--forgive me the expression--always more or less sordid."

The Staatsräthin frowned slightly, but she did not interrupt Ernestine, who continued: "It is hard enough that so much of the brute cleaves to us that we must eat and drink to keep our physical mechanism in order; thus, in the process of development, we never attain any higher degree of perfection. We ought to take pride in developing ourselves as fully as possible, in contending against every animal appetite instead of making a formal study how best to pamper it. We ought to blush for our frail, indigent physical nature, instead of making an idol of it and regarding her who sacrifices to it most freely as the loftiest illustration of feminine virtue."

"That all sounds very fine," said the Staatsräthin, "but it is, nevertheless, a deplorable mistake. With the capacity for pleasure the Creator has bestowed upon us the right to enjoy. We ought only to see to it that our pleasures are true and noble. It is false shame that would repudiate what we cannot live without, and it sounds strangely contradictory from the lips of a natural philosopher like yourself. Before whom would you blush? Before your fellow-beings? Certainly not, for they all share your mortal infirmities. And, since you do not believe in a God, where does there exist for you any supernatural ideal, any bodiless spirit, subject to do change nor desire of change, before whom you can be ashamed of being a mortal?"

"In myself,--in my own imagination."

"Yes, yes, this is the usual jargon. Because you deny your God, and still feel the need of Him, you exalt yourself into a divinity, and are humiliated at the idea of your imprisonment within a mortal frame!"

"Oh, no, I am not so vain and arrogant. There is, if I may thus express it, a refinement of mind that is shocked by the coarse demands of material nature. And I should be afraid of degrading myself in my own eyes if, in satisfying these demands, I used the time and ability that might be employed for higher purposes."

"You speak as if by the responsibilities of a woman I meant devotion solely to creature comforts. I understand by these something more than eating and drinking. Order and cleanliness, for example, are among the necessities of our life, especially for fine natures, for they belong to the domain of the beautiful, and must be the special concern of the female head of a household, whatever may be the number of her servants. To be sure, there are women who are so busy with brooms and dusters that we might almost think them neat from their love of dirt. But I am not speaking of such extreme cases. The superintendence of servants, if you have them, the distribution of labour, the purchase of clothing, with its hundred various branches, and, finally, the direction and care of children, are all necessities of existence, duties to which no woman, even the wealthiest, can refuse to attend. Least of all should they be left to the husband. I consider it one of our most sacred duties to relieve him from all material cares, that he may be free to work for the benefit of mankind. Thus we assist him, modestly though it be, in the great work, by enabling him to keep himself free and fit for his labours."

"I frankly acknowledge that I am incapable of such modesty. I cannot be satisfied with an excellence that I must share with every housekeeper. I am conscious of the ability to assist directly in the cause of human progress. Why should I waste it in labour wholly possible to mediocrity?"

"You depreciate this labour because you do not know it. Rightly conceived and executed, it may prove of the greatest significance. For the more cultivated and intellectual a woman is, the more capable is she of appreciating the importance of the task assigned to man, and the necessity of lightening it as much as she can by due care of his physical and mental welfare. And with this thought ever in her mind, the meanest employment, the most menial occupation, becomes a labour of love. And even the most careful housewife can find time, if she is so disposed, to educate herself still further, and so to form and exercise her talents as to make them the delight of her husband's hours of leisure. That is what I understand, my dear, to be a wife in the truest sense." She suddenly took Ernestine's hand and drew her towards her. "And thus,--why should I not speak frankly?--thus I would have the woman to whom I am to be a mother."