Companionship in Marriage : Part 1

Character
by Samuel Smiles

(Page 11 of 22)

"Kindness in women, not their beauteous looks,
Shall win my love." - SHAKSPEARE.

"In the husband Wisdom, In the wife Gentleness." - GEORGE HERBERT.

"If God had designed woman as man's master, He would have taken her from his head; If as his slave, He would have taken her from his feet; but as He designed her for his companion and equal, He took her from his side." - SAINT AUGUSTINE. - 'DE CIVITATE DEI.'

"Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies.... Her husband is known in the gates, and he sitteth among the elders of the land.... Strength and honour are her clothing, and she shall rejoice in time to come. She openeth her mouth with wisdom, and in her tongue is the law of kindness. She looketh well to the ways of her husband, and eateth not the bread of idleness. Her children arise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her." - PROVERBS OF SOLOMON.

THE character of men, as of women, is powerfully influenced by their companionship in all the stages of life. We have already spoken of the influence of the mother in forming the character of her children. She makes the moral atmosphere in which they live, and by which their minds and souls are nourished, as their bodies are by the physical atmosphere they breathe. And while woman is the natural cherisher of infancy and the instructor of childhood, she is also the guide and counsellor of youth, and the confidant and companion of manhood, in her various relations of mother, sister, lover, and wife. In short, the influence of woman more or less affects, for good or for evil, the entire destinies of man.

The respective social functions and duties of men and women are clearly defined by nature. God created man AND woman, each to do their proper work, each to fill their proper sphere. Neither can occupy the position, nor perform the functions, of the other. Their several vocations are perfectly distinct. Woman exists on her own account, as man does on his, at the same time that each has intimate relations with the other. Humanity needs both for the purposes of the race, and in every consideration of social progress both must necessarily be included.

Though companions and equals, yet, as regards the measure of their powers, they are unequal. Man is stronger, more muscular, and of rougher fibre; woman is more delicate, sensitive, and nervous. The one excels in power of brain, the other in qualities of heart; and though the head may rule, it is the heart that influences. Both are alike adapted for the respective functions they have to perform in life; and to attempt to impose woman's work upon man would be quite as absurd as to attempt to impose man's work upon woman. Men are sometimes womanlike, and women are sometimes manlike; but these are only exceptions which prove the rule.

Although man's qualities belong more to the head, and woman's more to the heart - yet it is not less necessary that man's heart should be cultivated as well as his head, and woman's head cultivated as well as her heart. A heartless man is as much out- of-keeping in civilized society as a stupid and unintelligent woman. The cultivation of all parts of the moral and intellectual nature is requisite to form the man or woman of healthy and well- balanced character. Without sympathy or consideration for others, man were a poor, stunted, sordid, selfish being; and without cultivated intelligence, the most beautiful woman were little better than a well-dressed doll.

It used to be a favourite notion about woman, that her weakness and dependency upon others constituted her principal claim to admiration. "If we were to form an image of dignity in a man," said Sir Richard Steele, "we should give him wisdom and valour, as being essential to the character of manhood. In like manner, if you describe a right woman in a laudable sense, she should have gentle softness, tender fear, and all those parts of life which distinguish her from the other sex, with some subordination to it, but an inferiority which makes her lovely." Thus, her weakness was to be cultivated, rather than her strength; her folly, rather than her wisdom. She was to be a weak, fearful, tearful, characterless, inferior creature, with just sense enough to understand the soft nothings addressed to her by the "superior" sex. She was to be educated as an ornamental appanage of man, rather as an independent intelligence - or as a wife, mother, companion, or friend.

Pope, in one of his 'Moral Essays,' asserts that "most women have no characters at all;" and again he says:-

"Ladies, like variegated tulips, show:
'Tis to their changes half their charms we owe,
Fine by defect and delicately weak."

This satire characteristically occurs in the poet's 'Epistle to Martha Blount,' the housekeeper who so tyrannically ruled him; and in the same verses he spitefully girds at Lady Mary Wortley Montague, at whose feet he had thrown himself as a lover, and been contemptuously rejected. But Pope was no judge of women, nor was he even a very wise or tolerant judge of men.

It is still too much the practice to cultivate the weakness of woman rather than her strength, and to render her attractive rather than self-reliant. Her sensibilities are developed at the expense of her health of body as well as of mind. She lives, moves, and has her being in the sympathy of others. She dresses that she may attract, and is burdened with accomplishments that she may be chosen. Weak, trembling, and dependent, she incurs the risk of becoming a living embodiment of the Italian proverb - "so good that she is good for nothing."

On the other hand, the education of young men too often errs on the side of selfishness. While the boy is incited to trust mainly to his own efforts in pushing his way in the world, the girl is encouraged to rely almost entirely upon others. He is educated with too exclusive reference to himself and she is educated with too exclusive reference to him. He is taught to be self-reliant and self-dependent, while she is taught to be distrustful of herself, dependent, and self-sacrificing in all things. Thus, the intellect of the one is cultivated at the expense of the affections, and the affections of the other at the expense of the intellect.

About the Author

Born in Haddington, Smiles was the eldest of eleven children. He left school at the age of 14 and was apprenticed to a doctor, eventually enabling him to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh. While studying and after graduating he campaigned for parliamentary reform, contributing articles to the Edinburgh Weekly Chronicle and the Leeds Times.