THE SPHERE OF WOMAN’S INFLUENCE
“The fact of this influence
being proved, it is of the utmost importance that
it be impressed upon the mind of women, and that they
be enlightened as to its true nature and extent.”
The task is as difficult as it is
important, for it demands some exercise of sober judgment
to view it with requisite impartiality; it requires,
too, some courage to encounter the charge of inconsistency
which a faithful discharge of it entails. For
it is an apparent inconsistency to recommend
at the same time expansion of views and contraction
of operation; to awaken the sense of power, and to
require that the exercise of it be limited; to apply
at once the spur and the rein. That intellect
is to be invigorated only to enlighten conscience that
conscience is to be enlightened only to act on details that
accomplishments and graces are to be cultivated only,
or chiefly, to adorn obscurity; a list
of somewhat paradoxical propositions indeed, and hard
to be received; yet, upon their favourable reception
depends, in my opinion, the usefulness of our influence,
the destinies of our race; and it is my intention
to direct all my observations to this point.
It is astonishing and humiliating
to perceive how frequently human wisdom, especially
argumentative wisdom, is at fault as to results, while
accident, prejudices, or common sense seem to light
upon truths which reason feels after without finding.
It appears as though à priori reasoning, human
nature being the subject, is like a skilful piece
of mechanism, carefully and scientifically put together,
but which some perverse and occult trifle will not
permit to act. This is eminently true of many
questions regarding education, and precisely the state
of the argument concerning the position and duties
of women. The facts of moral and intellectual
equality being established, it seems somewhat irrational
to condemn women to obscurity and detail for their
field of exertion, while men usurp the extended one
of public usefulness. And a good case may be
made out on this very point. Yet the conclusions
are false and pernicious, and the prejudices which
we now smile at as obsolete are truths of nature’s
own imparting, only wanting the agency of comprehensive
intelligence to make them valuable, by adapting them
to the present state of society. For, as one atom
of falsehood in first principles nullifies a whole
theory, so one principle, fundamentally true, suffices
to obviate many minor errors. This fundamentally
true principle, I am prepared to show, exists in the
established opinions concerning the true sphere of
women, and that, whether originally dictated by reason,
or derived from a sort of intuition, they are right,
and for this cause: the one quality on which
woman’s value and influence depend is the renunciation
of self; and the old prejudices respecting her inculcated
self-renunciation. Educated in obscurity, trained
to consider the fulfilment of domestic duties as the
aim and end of her existence, there was little to feed
the appetite for fame, or the indulgence of self-idolatry.
Now, here the principle fundamentally bears upon the
very qualities most desirable to be cultivated, and
those most desirable to be avoided. A return to
the practical part of the system is by no means to
be recommended, for, with increasing intellectual
advantages, it is not to be supposed that the perfection
of the conjugal character is to consult a husband’s
palate and submit to his ill-humour or
of the maternal, to administer in due alternation
the sponge and the rod. All that is contended
for is, that the fundamental principle is right “that
women were to live for others;” and, therefore,
all that we have to do is to carry out this fundamentally
right principle into wider application. It may
easily be done, if the cultivation of intellectual
powers be carried on with the same views and motives
as were formerly the knowledge of domestic duties,
for the benefit of immediate relations, and for the
fulfilment of appointed duties. If society at
large be benefited by such cultivation, so much the
better; but it ought to be no part of the training
of women to consider, with any personal views, what
effect they shall produce in or on society at large.
The greatest benefit which they can confer upon society
is to be what they ought to be in all their domestic
relations; that is, to be what they ought to be, in
all the comprehensiveness of the term, as adapted
to the present state of society. Let no woman
fancy that she can, by any exertion or services, compensate
for the neglect of her own peculiar duties as such.
It is by no means my intention to assert that women
should be passive and indifferent spectators of the
great political questions which affect the well-being
of community; neither can I repeat the old adage, that
“women have nothing to do with politics.”
They have, and ought to have much to do with politics.
But in what way? It has been maintained that
their public participation in them would be fatal to
the best interests of society. How, then, are
women to interfere in politics? As moral agents;
as representatives of the moral principle; as champions
of the right in preference to the expedient; by their
endeavours to instil into their relatives of the other
sex the uncompromising sense of duty and self-devotion,
which ought to be their ruling principles!
The immense influence which women possess will be
most beneficial, if allowed to flow in its natural
channels, viz. domestic ones, because
it is of the utmost importance to the existence of
influence, that purity of motive be unquestioned.
It is by no means affirmed that women’s political
feelings are always guided by the abstract principles
of right and wrong; but they are surely more likely
to be so, if they themselves are restrained from the
public expression of them. Participation in scenes
of popular emotion has a natural tendency to warp conscience
and overcome charity. Now, conscience and charity
(or love) are the very essence of woman’s beneficial
influence; therefore every thing tending to blunt
the one and sour the other is sedulously to be avoided
by her. It is of the utmost importance to men
to feel, in consulting a wife, a mother, or a sister,
that they are appealing from their passions
and prejudices, and not to them, as imbodied
in a second self: nothing tends to give opinions
such weight as the certainty that the utterer of them
is free from all petty or personal motives. The
beneficial influence of woman is nullified if once
her motives, or her personal character, come to be
the subject of attack; and this fact alone ought to
induce her patiently to acquiesce in the plan of seclusion
from public affairs.
It supposes, indeed, some magnanimity
in the possessors of great powers and widely extended
influence, to be willing to exercise them with silent,
unostentatious vigilance. There must be a deeper
principle than usually lies at the root of female
education, to induce women to acquiesce in the plan,
which, assigning to them the responsibility, has denied
them the éclat of being reformers of society.
Yet it is, probably, exactly in proportion to their
reception of this truth, and their adoption of it
into their hearts, that they will fulfil their own
high and lofty mission; precisely because the manifestation
of such a spirit is the one thing needful for the
regeneration of society. It is from her being
the depository and disseminator of such a spirit, that
woman’s influence is principally derived.
It appears to be for this end that Providence has
so lavishly endowed her with moral qualities, and,
above all, with that of love, the antagonist
spirit of selfish worldliness, that spirit which,
as it is vanquished or victorious, bears with it the
moral destinies of the world! Now, it is proverbially
as well as scripturally true, that love “seeketh
not its own” interest, but the good of others,
and finds its highest honour, its highest happiness,
in so doing. This is precisely the spirit which
can never be too much cultivated by women, because
it is the spirit by which their highest triumphs are
to be achieved: it is they who are called upon
to show forth its beauty, and to prove its power;
every thing in their education should tend to develop
self-devotion and self-renunciation. How far
existing systems contribute to this object, it must
be our next step to inquire.