800 Years of Women's Letters (6 page)

How great in some parts of their conduct, how insignificant upon the whole, would men have women to be! For one example – when their love, their pride, their delicacy; in short, when all the finest feelings of humanity are insulted and put to the rack, what is expected? When a woman finds that the husband of her choice, the object of her most sincere and constant love, abandons himself to other attachments, infinitely cutting to a woman of sensibility and soul, what is expected of a creature declared weak by nature – and who is rendered weaker by education?

They expect that this poor weak creature, setting aside in a moment love, jealousy, and pride, the most powerful and universal passions interwoven in the human heart, and which even men, clothed in wisdom and fortitude, find so difficult to conquer, that they seldom attempt it – that she shall notwithstanding lay all these aside as easily as she would her gown and petticoat, and plunge at once into the cold bath of prudence, of which though the wife only is to receive the shock, and make daily use of, yet if she does so, it has the virtue of keeping both husband and wife in a most agreeable temperament. Prudence being one of those rare medicines which affect by sympathy; and this being likewise one of those cases, where the husbands have no objections to the wives acting as principals, nor to their receiving all the honours and emoluments of office; even if death should crown their martyrdom, as has been sometimes known to happen.

For, there are no vices to which a man addicts himself, no follies he can take it into his head to commit, but his wife and his nearest female relations are expected to connive at, are expected to look upon, if not with admiration, at least with respectful silence, and at awful distance. Any other conduct is looked upon, as a breach of that fanciful system of arbitrary authority, which men have so assiduously erected in their own favour; and any other conduct is accordingly resisted, with the most acrimonious severity.

A man, for example, is addicted to the destructive vice of drinking. His wife sees with terror and anguish the approach of this pernicious habit, and by anticipation beholds the evils to be dreaded to his individual health, happiness, and consequence: and the probable misery to his family. Yet with this melancholy prospect before her eyes, it is reckoned an unpardonable degree of harshness and imprudence, if she by any means whatever endeavours to check in the bud, this baleful practice; and she is in this case accused at all hands of driving him to pursue in worse places, that which he cannot enjoy in peace at home. And, when this disease gains ground, and ends in an established habit, she is treated as a fool for attempting a cure for what is incurable.

M. HAYS,
LETTERS AND ESSAYS, MORAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
(1793)

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–97) was a novelist, essayist, travel writer, and a leading feminist and radical. She lived in France for two years, just after the French Revolution. It proclaimed ‘Liberty, Fraternity and Equality', but did not extend these rights to women. Here she writes in ‘patriarchal' registers to a leading French politician, Talleyrand, to persuade him of the wisdom of giving women the right to vote. In the new Constitution of 1791, only
men
over twenty-five were considered citizens and allowed the vote. French women did not get the vote till 1944.

1791

Consider, I address you as a legislator, whether, when men contend for their freedom, and to be allowed to judge for themselves respecting their own happiness, it be not inconsistent and unjust to subjugate women, even though you firmly believe that you are acting in the manner best calculated to promote their happiness? Who made man the exclusive judge, if women partake with him the gift of reason?

In this style, argue tyrants of every denomination, from the weak king to the weak father of a family; they are all eager to crush reason; yet always assert that they usurp its throne only to be useful. Do you not act a similar part, when you
force
all women, by denying them civil and political rights, to remain immured in their families groping in the dark? For surely, Sir, you will not assert, that a duty can be binding which is not founded on reason? If indeed this be their destination, arguments may be drawn from reason: and thus augustly supported, the more understanding women acquire, the more they will be attached to the duty – comprehending it – for unless they comprehend it, unless their morals be fixed on the same immutable principle as those of man, no authority can make them discharge it in a virtuous manner. They may be convenient slaves, but slavery will have its constant effect, degrading the master and the abject dependent.

But, if women are to be excluded, without having a voice, from a participation of the natural rights of mankind, prove first, to ward off the charge of injustice and inconsistency, that they want reason – else this flaw in your N
EW
C
ONSTITUTION
will ever shew that man must, in some shape, act like a tyrant, and tyranny, in whatever part of society it rears its brazen front, will ever undermine morality.

I have repeatedly asserted, and produced what appeared to me irrefragable arguments drawn from matters of fact, to prove my assertion, that women cannot, by force, be confined to domestic concerns; for they will, however ignorant, intermeddle with more weighty affairs, neglecting private duties only to disturb, by cunning tricks, the orderly plans of reason which rise above their comprehension.

Noted for her path-breaking
Vindication of the Rights of Woman
, Wollstonecraft had many intellectual men friends, including Dissenters. In 1787 she was befriended by her publisher, Johnson. He was a middle-aged bachelor and suggested she marry a young acquaintance to prevent gossip. She replied angrily in completely distinct discourses:

1787

I will not be insulted by a superficial puppy – His intimacy with Miss –– gave him a privilege, which he should not have assumed with me – a proposal might be made to his cousin, a milliner's girl, which should not have been mentioned to me. Pray tell him that I am offended – and do not wish to see him again! – When I meet him at your house, I shall leave the room, since I cannot pull him by the nose. I can force my spirit to leave my body – but it shall never bend to support that body – God of heaven, save thy child from this living death!

I scarcely know what I write. My hand trembles – I am very sick – sick at heart.

Through Johnson she met the poet-painter Blake and the painter Fuseli, with whom she had an obsessive, unpromising relationship. She travelled alone to revolutionary France in 1792, and met Gilbert Imlay, an American writer and businessman. They fell in love, and later had a daughter in Le Havre. To her grief, he soon lost interest, and she attempted suicide. She despised Imlay's affairs with ‘beings whom I feel to be my inferiors', yet to hate his behaviour would be to lose her dignity as a rational human being. However she could not prevent herself from expressing her hurt to him, while emphasizing her ‘feminine' needs.

1794

Gracious God! It is impossible to stifle something like resentment, when I receive fresh proofs of your indifference. What I have suffered this last year, is not to be forgiven.

Love is a want of my heart. I have examined myself lately with more care than formerly, and find, that to deaden is not to calm the mind – Aiming at tranquillity, I have almost destroyed all the energy of my soul . . . Despair, since the birth of my child, has rendered me stupid . . . the desire of regaining peace (do you understand me?) has made me forget the respect due to my own emotions – sacred emotions that are the sure harbingers of the delights I was formed to enjoy – and shall enjoy, for nothing can extinguish the heavenly spark.

CLAIRE TOMALIN,
THE LIFE AND DEATH OF MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT
(1974)

Middle-class girls in the nineteenth century wanted some fulfilment in marriage. They also wanted to please their families, to help if possible. The Parisian Stéphanie Jullien was twenty-two when she wrote this to her father. Her worries about whether to marry make her anxious about her whole life and exacerbate her self-doubt.

Feb. 20, 1836

You want an answer to your letter and I believe, in reality, that this is the best way to express a thousand things that one can lose sight of during a conversation in which one speaks only with difficulty and embarrassment. . . . I don't want to enumerate my anxieties about the future, the discord in my family that I felt more than anyone else, the vexations my mother endured and to which I was the only witness and consolation, the six months passed in anguish and despair over her deathbed. . . . I only want you to understand that I know grief. You men have a thousand occupations to distract you: society, business, politics, and work absorb you, exhaust you, upset you. But all these things also help you forcibly. As for us women who, as you have said to me from time to time, have only the roses in life, we feel more profoundly in our solitude and in our idleness the sufferings that you can slough off. I don't want to make a comparison here between the destiny of man and the destiny of women: each sex has its own lot, its own troubles, its own pleasures. I only want to explain to you that excess of moroseness of which you complain and of which I am the first to suffer. My life has been sad, and my character shows it. But even now, when I do appear to be calm and happy, what anxieties, what worries about the future don't I have? I am not able to do anything for myself and for those around me. I am depriving my brothers in order to have a dowry. I am not even able to live alone, being obliged to take from others, not only in order to live but also in order to be protected, since social convention does not allow me to have independence. And yet the world finds me guilty of being the only person that I am at liberty to be; not having useful or productive work to do, not having any calling except marriage, and not being able to look by myself for someone who will suit me, I am full of cares and anxieties.

Is it astonishing that since any work that I could do would be
null
and
useless
for others as well as for myself, since it would not lead to anything, that I let myself be lazy, that I try to prolong my sleep in order to escape life? This laziness that you seem to reproach me for is really a means of discharging an excess of energy that has no outlet. If you believe that this
laziness
prevents me from doing anything, you are mistaken. I would quickly find courage and ardour again if I had some mission to fulfill or if some goal were proposed to me. But that is not the case. I don't have any calling, nor could I have one. That has been the most ardent of my wishes and no one will let me do it. I don't understand the reasons, and I'm not accusing anyone if I don't have a calling. I hope that one gives me the same benefit of a doubt, because it is not my fault. As for the sadness that I am accused of, one should not be astonished by it. This awkward position in which I find myself, my memories, my fears, my anxieties, often the delicacy of my health, are enough cause for it. . . . Would one be just if one reproached you for the annoyed and said air that you often have?

EDS. E.O. HELLERSTEIN, L.P. HUME AND K.M. OFFEN,
VICTORIAN WOMEN
(1981)

Geraldine Jewsbury (1812–80) published six novels and contributed to
Westminster Review
and
Household Words.
She spent many years housekeeping for her father and brother. Fortunately she met Jane Carlyle, who found a publisher for her first novel
Zoë
(1845). These two women had a great deal in common and when not in London both wrote lively, thoughtful, long letters. They express warmth, intelligent reflection on life and skill with words that deserve a wider audience. Here Jewsbury comments on the different attitudes men and women bring to relationships.

15 June 1841

Dearest Jane,

There is a great deal I want to say to you, but when I begin it seems difficult, almost impossible, to put it down as it really is . . . How much I wish you would give me some of your own philosophy! One day, whilst at Seaforth, a youth I have known a long time took it into his head to be very confidential, and preached his own gospel for the space of a whole afternoon! He had been thrown on the world very young to shift for himself, and a real little youth of the world he had become. He looked so young – though he is twenty-five – that one could not call him a man! The mere facts that he told me were not disguised and beautified, yet the
morale
that stood out clear was to the effect that men cannot afford to be very long or very much in earnest in their intercourse with women: that when a woman got thoroughly earnest and engrossed, a man who had any regard for himself or her would break off at once! That
une grande passion
was an embarrassing affair, and was very dangerous to people who had to get a living, and that he had always broken off as soon as he came to his senses: that women seemed to think it was the only object of interest in life, and it was a desperate thing to let them go too far. One thing specially struck me – though this was not said to me, only repeated to me – viz., that all men who have received an English education hate a woman in proportion as she commits herself for them, though a woman cares for a man exactly in the proportion in which she has made sacrifices for him, evidently thinking and showing, he thought, that all that was in the world – business and riches and success and so forth – were the only realities, and the only things worth making objects! He is neither better nor worse, but an average specimen of the generality of men. He once did me a material piece of kindness, and he was not in love with me: he had taken a fit of kindness to a friend of mine, and he raised himself in my opinion, and showed more real feeling than I had supposed in him. To be sure, the fact that my friend did not care about him would account for his good behaviour; it was not in his power to behave ill! This will seem stupid to you, not knowing the people and the circumstances: but it had a great interest for me, and it set me moralising to think how much more miserable we should be than we are if we had our eyes opened to discern always true from make-believe. I have great sympathy with that prayer of the Ancient Mariner, ‘O let me be awake, my God, or let me sleep away!' There is something else I long very much to tell you, but I dare not in a letter.