Слике страница
PDF
ePub

those of a man, but their constitution is impaired, and their lives shortened.

The same rule holds good in respect of the mind. If you educate a woman like a man, or give her the work of a man to do, you injure her as a woman; and moreover, you will not make her altogether like a man; for you cannot, as a general rule, give her what is peculiar to man- the administrative power, the creative power, and the power of going to the bottom of a subject, and exhausting it. I do not deny that there may possibly be found exceptions to this rule-idiocyncracies—and if there are such, they must be treated in an exceptional manner. I am here speaking of what is the general rule. Therefore, though I would not be thought to oppose intellectual culture in woman, I should say that her mental education ought to be different from that of man. The very shape of her forehead, as contrasted with that of man, shows what that training should be. A woman's forehead is, generally speaking, smooth and well-balanced, whereas the forehead of a man is full of hills and valleys. This shows that whereas man should, in many cases, devote himself to one study, and master it, woman's education should be less profound, but more general, such as would enable her to sympathize with the occupations of man, and assist him by her better balanced judgment, and lay the foundation for the education of her children. Her knowledge of every subject should be just

enough to awaken, and not to overpower, her inner

nature.

And now, having finished this episode, I must return to what I was before saying. The remarks which I have now made (if true) will serve to show why it is that the love of woman can live more on the food of remembrance than that of man. Living, as she does, in the inner life of affection, she can continue to feed on the love of some one individual, even when the object which produced that love is removed. She does not require the stimulus of its outward bodily presence. But man does; however much his heart may be torn by the loss of one who formed the centre of his life, he feels that his occupation is not gone; the roses of life may be faded, but the business of life, and even the objects which make life worth living for, are not all removed, and these objects cannot be attained by feeding on a buried affection. Therefore, his feelings and conduct in the case of a bereavement, might be described by the following verse from Byron :

"One struggle more, and I am free

From pangs which rend my heart in twain;
One last long sigh to love and thee,

Then back to busy life again."

Indeed, much as he may try to cherish his grief for the memory of the departed, and endeavour to keep his wound open, as if he thought the healing of it were a sacrilege, a dishonour to the dead, he finds himself obliged to lock up the once-loved image in an inner

chamber of his heart. But does the memory of it really die there? Is his forgetfulness that of the heart as well as the mind? No; I deem more nobly of my sex (such of them as have hearts) than to believe this; and I think it will be found (in the case of many a man) that when the outer life is passing away, and death, that great revealer of secrets (I mean the secrets of our own hearts, for I do not hold with Tennyson that "he keeps the keys of all the creeds,")—when death casts his shadows, and also his lights, before him, and the inner life bubbles up to the surface, the once cherished image will seem again to hover round the dying man, and one of the last words he will utter will be the one loved name.

"No, that hallowed form is ne'er forgot,
Which first love traced."

But we must now return to Romeo. What I have been saying during this long digression will serve to show that his love is essentially the love of a woman; and he himself appears to have a lurking suspicion of this, when, for a moment, he awakens from his dream, and says—

"Oh, sweet Juliet, thy beauty hath

Made me effeminate,

And in my temper soften'd nature's steel."

And the Friar seems to hold a similar opinion, or, at all events, perceives some peculiar weakness in his pupil's love, when he reproves him, not, as he

66

affirms," for loving, but for doting. And again, where, on another occasion, he says

[ocr errors]

Unseemly woman in a seeming man

Or unbeseeming beast, in seeming both,"

which is the Friar's way of expressing what might be otherwise expressed by saying that (on the occasion referred to) Romeo exhibits all the weakness of a woman combined with the impatience and violence of a man. It may, indeed, be urged that some allowance should be made for a man who is in love, and that many of the follies and weaknesses of lovers are such as time or, at all events, marriage, will cure only too effectually; as Sir A. Absolute says to Julia of Falkland, "Marry him, Julia, and you'll find he'll mend surprisingly." This may be true to a certain extent. But there are some weaknesses which betoken a radical defect of character, such as time and alteration of circumstances cannot cure. That Romeo's weakness was of this sort, we may see from the fatal results which it produced, and also from the fact that it was not a weakness which is characteristic of men in his situation. If any woman believes that her lover dreams of her from morning till night as she does of him, she probably does him gross injustice. The fact is, I believe, that most men when they have once entered into a serious engagement, begin to awake from a dream, instead of falling into it. A life of future responsibility seems to cast its shadow before them; they have now somebody to live for besides themselves, and life, therefore, for

the first time, appears real and earnest. They awake to diligence, prudence, and practical ambition, and, sometimes, even to serious thoughts on religion, and thus the very strength of their love gives that love other food to feed on, besides itself.

Woman, on the other hand, when similarly circumstanced, awakens, indeed, to a sense of her responsibilities; but since in her case these responsibilities lie (as we have before pointed out) in the sphere of the affections, consequently, what is a dream to man, is no dream to her. Now Romeo, as a lover and an engaged man, acts and feels just as a woman should, and generally does, act and feel in the same position. We cannot, therefore, be surprised at the rash act by which he for ever prevents the accomplishment of his hopes. It was the act of a woman rather than of a man. Disappointments in love have often caused the death of women, through the operation of disease, if not by their own hand. Men, on the other hand, have frequently died of a broken heart, or have been led to lay violent hands on themselves, from disappointed ambition, from shame, from mortification, from ruined fortunes, or from fears of the future; but there is scarcely any instance (that I can recollect) where love, and love alone, unassisted by the operation of other causes, has led to this result. It is a remarkable fact, in accordance with this statement, that those mournful plains in the realms below, over which, hidden by myrtle groves, wandered the spirits of those who had been the victims of love, were,

« ПретходнаНастави »