indolent or ostentatious subscriptions to Governesses’ Institutions, but by earnest personal effort, some remarks may be permitted on the objectionable peculiarities of the social system whence it has arisen. For, after making all reasonable allowance for contingencies beyond man’s control, for the scanty incomes of many of the middle class, and the frequent difficulty of adequately providing for a family, yet, that the death of the parent should so often entail utter destitution on the delicate daughters, argues error in the social system much more than in the individual.
Such is the artificiality of our society, and the tyrannous pressure of public opinion, that, on pain of ostracism and ruinous loss of social position, a gentleman is enforced to conform to the habits of his immediate circle, and to regulate his expenditure by an arbitrary standard rather than by his own taste or means. Though neither needing nor admiring the fripperies of Vanity Fair, he must exchange his peace and comfort for them, in the struggle for decorous appearances. The calm enjoyments of home must be sacrificed to a society neither loved nor esteemed; his family must practise painful economies that he may give ostentatious entertainments, which Mrs. Grundy accepts to spy out accidental deficiencies or to institute envious comparisons, and whence Smith, Brown, and Robinson retire to inveigh against the extravagance and exaggerate the liabilities of their host. Did they not involve such present suffering and ultimate evil, how laughable would be the petty economies, meannesses, trickeries, and obliquities of genteel life, simulating affluence, and sillily endeavouring to deceive the sharp-sighted world that will not be deceived! However averse he may once have been, yet, insensibly ceding to example and other influences, Paterfamilias ends in approving a system from which he is too weak to disenthral himself, speaks with dignity of his duty to society, inculcates that duty on those around him, and, though occasionally, when called on to pay for flimsy millinery and gew-gaws, he vents a sarcasm on feminine vanity, yet he feels a secret pride in the beauty and fashion of his family, and firmly resolves that it shall not be eclipsed. Thus he satisfies his personal vanity and, dying unexpectedly—as most men die—leaves his destitute daughters to the barren and insulting pity of those who had always foreseen such an issue.
Had Paterfamilias given to his daughters the education that would have qualified them for domestic life, or the solitary struggle with the world, his improvidence and deference to usage would partially have been atoned. But, indifferent to the development of the latent beauty and power of their hearts or intellects, he has been solicitous only about appearances and artificial refinement, preferring that, like courtesans, they should attract insolent admiration rather than manly esteem. Their youth has been occupied in frivolous acquirements of no practical value: without reference to their respective tastes or capacities, all have pursued the same silly routine, and attained to a certain mechanical skill in music or drawing, a superficial knowledge of continental tongues—the key to treasures whereof they seldom avail themselves—and some aptitude at embroidery, Berlin-wool, and such like aids to ingenious indolence. To the homely pursuits of their grandmothers, the chief object of which was the comfort and happiness of home, they are scornfully indifferent.
Nurtured in conventionalities, concealments, simulations, and meretricious arts, and taught to esteem a wealthy marriage the object of her existence, it is surprising that the English maiden preserves her loving heart and ingenuous nature; and, considering her inexperience and ignorance of the harsh realities of life, that, when married, she should so earnestly devote herself to her new duties, and struggle with such sweet patience against difficulties hitherto unknown, is an evidence of the angelic element in woman’s nature that demands our tenderest admiration.
But the middle class is specially distinguished by its undue proportion of unmarried women, and this celibacy involves consequences unknown elsewhere. As it seldom originates in lack of means in the instances occurring in the aristocracy or the labouring classes, so neither does it necessarily entail impoverishment or loneliness, and a life without sympathy. It is otherwise with the middle class. Sons may shift for themselves—they have muscle and energy—but what becomes of unmarried daughters, thrown on their own resources? Miss Parkes informs us.
As all possible contingencies and conditions of life are susceptible of calculation, statistics may be called in to aid our inquiry. From these it appears that, in England and Wales, of those between the ages of twenty and forty, 41 per cent, of the women are spinsters, while 30 per cent, of the men are bachelors, showing a remarkable preponderance of celibacy among the fair sex. No returns show the distribution of this sisterhood among the different classes of society, but the personal experience of each will suffice to indicate it. From the returns available, the probabilities of marriage of a maiden at twenty are slightly superior to those of a bachelor, and incomparably greater than those of a widow of the same age:—but, with the lapse of years, these ratios change; the probabilities of marriage at thirty-five being, for a bachelor, one to twenty-seven; for a spinster, one to thirty-five; and for a widow, one to five—the attractions of the widow standing to those of the spinster in the surprising relation of five to one—or, perchance, that number mystically representing her comparative readiness to matrimony. Thus the chance of finding happiness and a home diminishes with years.
The growing disposition to celibacy among young men of this class, though in some measure attributable to a selfish and luxurious cynicism, is chiefly due to the irrational expenditure consequent on marriage, and the unattractiveness of prospective association with women so unlikely from their artificial habits to yield domestic happiness. If this celibacy frequently defeats the economical considerations deciding to it (as it should), and ends in much immorality and unhappiness among men, how immeasurably evil must be its influence on the other sex; and what a violation of natural law must that social organisation be which so harshly represses the affections,