will last forever?and look neither backwards nor forwards.
Society triumphs over many. They wish to regenerate the world with their institutions, with their moral philosophy, with their love. Then they sink to living from breakfast till dinner, from dinner till tea, with a little worsted work, and to looking forward to nothing but bed.
When shall we see a life full of steady enthusiasm, walking straight to its aim, flying home, as that bird is now, against the wind?with the calmness and the confidence of one who knows the laws of God and can apply them?
$ * >*
When shall we see a woman making a study of what she does? Married women cannot; for a man would think, if his wife undertook any great work with the intention of carrying it out?of making anything but a sham of it? that she would 'suckle his fools and chronicle his small beer' less well for it? that he would not have so good a dinner?that she would destroy, as it is called, his domestic life.
The intercourse of6 man and woman?how frivolous, how unworthy it is! Can we call that the true vocation of woman?her high career? Look round at the marriages which you know. The true marriage?that noble union, by which a man and woman become together the one perfect being?probably does not exist at present upon earth.
It is not surprising that husbands and wives seem so little part of one another. It is surprising that there is so much love as there is. For there is no
5. See lago's cynical comments on the role of bear' colloquially means 'unimportant matters.' women in Shakespeare's Othello 2.1.162: 'To 6. Social communication between. suckle fools, and chronicle small beer.' 'Small
.
MONA CAIRD / 1601
food for it. What does it live upon-?what nourishes it? Husbands and wives never seem to have anything to say to one another. What do they talk about? Not about any great religious, social, political questions or feelings. They talk about who shall come to dinner, who is to live in this lodge and who in that, about the improvement of the place, or when they shall go to London. If there are children, they form a common subject of some nourishment. But, even then, the case is oftenest thus?the husband is to think of how they are to get on in life; the wife of bringing them up at home.
But any real communion between husband and wife?any descending into the depths of their being, and drawing out thence what they find and comparing it?do we ever dream of such a thing? Yes, we may dream of it during the season of 'passion,' but we shall not find it afterwards. We even expect it to go off, and lay our account that it will. If the husband has, by chance, gone into the depths of his being, and found there anything unorthodox, he, oftenest, conceals it carefully from his wife?he is afraid of 'unsettling her opinions.'
44 4 For a woman is 'by birth a Tory'7?has often been said?by education a 'Tory,' we mean.
Women dream till they have no longer the strength to dream; those dreams against which they so struggle, so honestly, vigorously, and conscientiously, and so in vain, yet which are their life, without which they could not have lived; those dreams go at last. All their plans and visions seem vanished, and they know not where; gone, and they cannot recall them. They do not even remember them. And they are left without the food of reality or of hope.
Later in life, they neither desire nor dream, neither of activity, nor of love, nor of intellect. The last often survives the longest. They wish, if their experiences would benefit anybody, to give them to someone. But they never find an hour free in which to collect their thoughts, and so discouragement becomes ever deeper and deeper, and they less and less capable of undertaking anything.
It seems as if the female spirit of the world were mourning everlastingly over blessings, not lost, but which she has never had, and which, in her discouragement she feels that she never will have, they are so far off.
The more complete a woman's organization, the more she will feel it, till at last there shall arise a woman, who will resume, in her own soul, all the sufferings of her race, and that woman will be the Saviour of her race.
1852-59 1928
7. Nickname for a member or supporter of the British Conservative Party, which generally sought to preserve the established religious and political order. MONA CAIRD
In several novels and many essays, the feminist writer Caird (1854?1932) explored the position of women in Victorian society. The Daughters ofDanaus (1894) features a heroine whose desire to pursue a musical career conflicts with her family ties and responsibilities. Caird's article 'Marriage,' which appeared in the Westminster Review
.
1 582 / THE 'WOMAN QUESTION'
in 1888, inspired a heated exchange in the journals of the 1890s. Her essays on the subject of marriage were later collected and published as The Morality of Marriage, and Other Essays on the Status and Destiny of Woman (1897).
From Marriage
We come then to the conclusion that the present form of marriage?exactly in proportion to its conformity with orthodox ideas?is a vexatious failure. If certain people have made it a success by ignoring those orthodox ideas, such instances afford no argument in favour of the institution as it stands. We are also led to conclude that modern 'Respectability' draws its life-blood from the degradation of womanhood in marriage and in prostitution. But what is to be done to remedy these manifold evils? how is marriage to be rescued from a mercenary society, torn from the arms of 'Respectability,' and established on a footing which will make it no longer an insult to human dignity?
First of all we must set up an ideal, undismayed by what will seem its Utopian impossibility. Every good thing that we enjoy to-day was once the dream of a 'crazy enthusiast' mad enough to believe in the power of ideas and in the power of man to have things as he wills. The ideal marriage then, despite all dangers and difficulties, should be free. So long as love and trust and friendship remain, no bonds are necessary to bind two people together; life apart will be empty and colourless; but whenever these cease the tie becomes false and iniquitous, and no one ought to
