Modern Love and Poems of the English Roadside, with Poems and Ballads

by George Meredith

  8. The following series of quotations are from Paget’s own book, Ecclesiastical Courts. A report of the Judgment Delivered by Dr. Radcliffe, in the Case of Talbot v. Talbot, in the Consistorial Court of Dublin (London: Thomas Blenkarn, 1854), 6–8.

  9. Chancery: the court of the Lord Chancellor of England, a court of equity with jurisdiction over matters such as wills, estates, and trusts

  10. [Paget’s footnote:] Sir Anthony Hart says, speaking of the similar system which formerly prevailed in the Court of Chancery, “As cross-examinations are at present, they are mere random hits in the dark. When I was very young at the bar, I used to cross-examine, but I soon gave it up. For the last thirty years I hardly recommended it—I may say, I left it off as hopeless—I abandoned it in despair.”—Per Sir Anthony Hart, Lord Chancellor of Ireland, in Booth v. Parks, 1 Molloy, 467.

  11. de novo: Latin, “from the beginning”

  John Ruskin, from Sesame and Lilies (1865)1

  John Ruskin (1819–1900) is a major figure of Victorian letters, writing widely as a critic of art, literature, and culture. In Sesame and Lilies, he offers a series of lectures describing education’s role in man’s life and—as follows—in woman’s; along the way, he articulates what he considers to be the essential nature of the sexes. In this excerpt, perhaps the best known from the lectures, Ruskin depends on binary oppositions: he concludes that a “man’s power is active, progressive, defensive” and that man is “the doer, the creator, the discoverer, the defender,” while a woman’s power and intellect is best used “not for invention or creation, but for sweet ordering, arrangement, and decision.” In prose littered with literary allusions, Ruskin constructs an argument that is as conservative as Mill’s is progressive; it is worth noting that Meredith challenges Ruskin’s version of manhood in the Modern Love poems.

  We cannot determine what the queenly power of women should be, until we are agreed what their ordinary power should be. We cannot consider how education may fit them for any widely extending duty, until we are agreed what is their true constant duty. And there never was a time when wilder words were spoken, or more vain imagination permitted, respecting this question—quite vital to all social happiness. The relations of the womanly to the manly nature, their different capacities of intellect or of virtue, seem never to have been yet measured with entire consent. We hear of the mission and of the rights of Woman, as if these could ever be separate from the mission and the rights of Man;—as if she and her lord were creatures of independent kind and of irreconcilable claim. This, at least, is wrong. And not less wrong—perhaps even more foolishly wrong (for I will anticipate thus far what I hope to prove)—is the idea that woman is only the shadow and attendant image of her lord, owing him a thoughtless and servile obedience, and supported altogether in her weakness by the preeminence of his fortitude.

  This, I say, is the most foolish of all errors respecting her who was made to be the helpmate of man. As if he could be helped effectively by a shadow, or worthily by a slave! . . .

  We are foolish, and without excuse foolish, in speaking of the “superiority” of one sex to the other, as if they could be compared in similar things. Each has what the other has not: each completes the other, and is completed by the other: they are in nothing alike, and the happiness and perfection of both depends on each asking and receiving from the other what the other only can give.

  Now their separate characters are briefly these. The man’s power is active, progressive, defensive. He is eminently the doer, the creator, the discoverer, the defender. His intellect is for speculation and invention; his energy for adventure, for war, and for conquest, wherever war is just, wherever conquest necessary. But the woman’s power is for rule, not for battle,—and her intellect is not for invention or creation, but for sweet ordering, arrangement, and decision. She sees the qualities of things, their claims, and their places. Her great function is Praise: she enters into no contest, but infallibly adjudges the crown of contest. By her office, and place, she is protected from all danger and temptation. The man, in his rough work in open world, must encounter all peril and trial:—to him, therefore, the failure, the offence, the inevitable error: often he must be wounded, or subdued, often misled, and always hardened. But he guards the woman from all this; within his house, as ruled by her, unless she herself has sought it, need enter no danger, no temptation, no cause of error or offence. This is the true nature of home—it is the place of Peace; the shelter, not only from all injury, but from all terror, doubt, and division. In so far as it is not this, it is not home; so far as the anxieties of the outer life penetrate into it, and the inconsistently-minded, unknown, unloved, or hostile society of the outer world is allowed by either husband or wife to cross the threshold, it ceases to be home; it is then only a part of that outer world which you have roofed over, and lighted fire in. But so far as it is a sacred place, a vestal temple, a temple of the hearth watched over by Household Gods, before whose faces none may come but those whom they can receive with love,—so far as it is this, and roof and fire are types only of a nobler shade and light,—shade as of the rock in a weary land, and light as of the Pharos in the stormy sea;—so far it vindicates the name, and fulfils the praise, of Home.

  And wherever a true wife comes, this home is always round her. The stars only may be over her head; the glowworm in the night-cold grass may be the only fire at her foot: but home is yet wherever she is; and for a noble woman it stretches far round her, better than ceiled with cedar, or painted with vermilion,2 shedding its quiet light far, for those who else were homeless.

  This, then, I believe to be,—will you not admit it to be,—the woman’s true place and power? But do not you see that, to fulfil this, she must—as far as one can use such terms of a human creature—be incapable of error? So far as she rules, all must be right, or nothing is. She must be enduringly, incorruptibly good; instinctively, infallibly wise—wise, not for self-development, but for self-renunciation: wise, not that she may set herself above her husband, but that she may never fail from his side: wise, not with the narrowness of insolent and loveless pride, but with the passionate gentleness of an infinitely variable, because infinitely applicable, modesty of service—the true changefulness of woman. In that great sense—“La donna e mobile,”3 not “Qual piùm’ al vento”;4 no, nor yet “Variable as the shade, by the light quivering aspen made”;5 but variable as the light, manifold in fair and serene division, that it may take the colour of all that it falls upon, and exalt it. . . .

  Generally, we are under an impression that a man’s duties are public, and a woman’s private. But this is not altogether so. A man has a personal work or duty, relating to his own home, and a public work or duty, which is the expansion of the other, relating to the state. So a woman has a personal work or duty, relating to her own home, and a public work and duty, which is also the expansion of that.

  Now the man’s work for his own home is, as has been said, to secure its maintenance, progress, and defence; the woman’s to secure its order, comfort, and loveliness.

  Expand both these functions. The man’s duty, as a member of a commonwealth, is to assist in the maintenance, in the advance, in the defence of the state. The woman’s duty, as a member of the commonwealth, is to assist in the ordering, in the comforting, and in the beautiful adornment of the state.

  What the man is at his own gate, defending it, if need be, against insult and spoil, that also, not in a less, but in a more devoted measure, he is to be at the gate of his country, leaving his home, if need be, even to the spoiler, to do his more incumbent work there.

  And, in like manner, what the woman is to be within her gates, as the centre of order, the balm of distress, and the mirror of beauty; that she is also to be without her gates, where order is more difficult, distress more imminent, loveliness more rare.

  And as within the human heart there is always set an instinct for all its real duties,—an instinct which you cannot quench, but only warp and corrupt if you w
ithdraw it from its true purpose;—as there is the intense instinct of love, which, rightly disciplined, maintains all the sanctities of life, and, misdirected, undermines them; and must do either the one or the other;—so there is in the human heart an inextinguishable instinct, the love of power, which, rightly directed, maintains all the majesty of law and life, and misdirected, wrecks them.

  Deep rooted in the innermost life of the heart of man, and of the heart of woman, God set it there, and God keeps it there. Vainly, as falsely, you blame or rebuke the desire of power!—For Heaven’s sake, and for Man’s sake, desire it all you can. But what power? That is all the question. Power to destroy? the lion’s limb, and the dragon’s breath? Not so. Power to heal, to redeem, to guide, and to guard. Power of the sceptre and shield; the power of the royal hand that heals in touching,—that binds the fiend, and looses the captive; the throne that is founded on the rock of Justice, and descended from only by steps of mercy. Will you not covet such power as this, and seek such throne as this, and be no more housewives, but queens?

  It is now long since the women of England arrogated, universally, a title which once belonged to nobility only; and, having once been in the habit of accepting the simple title of gentlewoman, as correspondent to that of gentleman, insisted on the privilege of assuming the title of “Lady,”6 which properly corresponds only to the title of “Lord.”

  I do not blame them for this; but only for their narrow motive in this. I would have them desire and claim the title of Lady, provided they claim, not merely the title, but the office and duty signified by it. Lady means “bread-giver” or “loaf-giver,” and Lord means “maintainer of laws,” and both titles have reference, not to the law which is maintained in the house, nor to the bread which is given to the household; but to law maintained for the multitude, and to bread broken among the multitude. So that a Lord has legal claim only to his title in so far as he is the maintainer of the justice of the Lord of Lords; and a Lady has legal claim to her title only so far as she communicates that help to the poor representatives of her Master,7 which women once, ministering to Him of their substance, were permitted to extend to that Master Himself; and when she is known, as He Himself once was, in breaking of bread.

  And this beneficent and legal dominion, this power of the Dominus, or House-Lord, and of the Domina, or House-Lady, is great and venerable, not in the number of those through whom it has lineally descended, but in the number of those whom it grasps within its sway; it is always regarded with reverent worship wherever its dynasty is founded on its duty, and its ambition co-relative with its beneficence. Your fancy is pleased with the thought of being noble ladies, with a train of vassals. Be it so; you cannot be too noble, and your train cannot be too great; but see to it that your train is of vassals whom you serve and feed, not merely of slaves who serve and feed you; and that the multitude which obeys you is of those whom you have comforted, not oppressed,—whom you have redeemed, not led into captivity.

  And this, which is true of the lower or household dominion, is equally true of the queenly dominion;—that highest dignity is open to you, if you will also accept that highest duty. Rex et Regina—Roi et Reine8—“Right-doers”; they differ but from the Lady and Lord, in that their power is supreme over the mind as over the person—that they not only feed and clothe, but direct and teach. And whether consciously or not, you must be, in many a heart, enthroned: there is no putting by that crown; queens you must always be; queens to your lovers; queens to your husbands and your sons; queens of higher mystery to the world beyond, which bows itself, and will for ever bow, before the myrtle crown, and the stainless sceptre, of womanhood. But, alas! you are too often idle and careless queens, grasping at majesty in the least things, while you abdicate it in the greatest; and leaving misrule and violence to work their will among men, in defiance of the power, which, holding straight in gift from the Prince of all Peace, the wicked among you betray, and the good forget.

  “Prince of Peace.” Note that name. When kings rule in that name, and nobles, and the judges of the earth, they also, in their narrow place, and mortal measure, receive the power of it. There are no other rulers than they: other rule than theirs is but misrule; they who govern verily “Dei gratiâ”9 are all princes, yes, or princesses, of peace. There is not a war in the world, no, nor an injustice, but you women are answerable for it; not in that you have provoked, but in that you have not hindered. Men, by their nature, are prone to fight; they will fight for any cause, or for none. It is for you to choose their cause for them, and to forbid them when there is no cause. There is no suffering, no injustice, no misery in the earth, but the guilt of it lies lastly with you. Men can bear the sight of it, but you should not be able to bear it. Men may tread it down without sympathy in their own struggle; but men are feeble in sympathy, and contracted in hope; it is you only who can feel the depths of pain; and conceive the way of its healing. Instead of trying to do this, you turn away from it; you shut yourselves within your park walls and garden gates; and you are content to know that there is beyond them a whole world in wilderness—a world of secrets which you dare not penetrate; and of suffering which you dare not conceive.

  Notes

  1. John Ruskin, “Of Queens’ Gardens,” in Sesame and Lilies (London: Smith, Elder, 1865), 123–25, 146–50, 177–87.

  2. vermilion: red

  3. La donna e[é] mobile: “Woman is fickle,” the opening line of a famous aria from Verdi’s 1851 opera Rigoletto

  4. Qual piùm’[piuma] al vento: “Like a feather on the wind,” the second line of the aria

  5. Variable . . . made: from Sir Walter Scott’s Marmion, Canto VI, XXX.3–4

  6. [Ruskin’s footnote:] I wish there were a true order of chivalry instituted for our English youth of certain ranks, in which both boy and girl should receive, at a given age, their knighthood and ladyhood by true title; attainable only by certain probation and trial both of character and accomplishment; and to be forfeited, on conviction, by their peers, of any dishonourable act. Such an institution would be entirely, and with all noble results, possible, in a nation which loved honour. That it would not be possible among us, is not to the discredit of the scheme.

  7. Master: Here, Master refers not to a wife’s husband, but to the Christian God.

  8. Rex et Regina—Roi et Reine: “King and Queen” in Latin and French, respectively

  9. Dei gratiâ: Latin, “By the Grace of God”

  John Stuart Mill, from The Subjection of Women (1869)1

  Social theorist and political philosopher John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) offers here an impassioned, utilitarian argument for the value of a marriage based on notions of personal and legal equality. The text made a strong impression on Meredith: John Morley writes in Recollections that Meredith “eagerly seized [The Subjection of Women], fell to devouring it in settled silence, and could not be torn from it all day.”2 In the section excerpted here, Mill outlines reasons for redressing structural imbalances regarding the rights and expectations of husbands and wives, arguing, for example, that a woman’s contributions to household duties should be considered on par with a husband’s income.

  I readily admit (and it is the very foundation of my hopes) that numbers of married people even under the present law, (in the higher classes of England probably a great majority,) live in the spirit of a just law of equality. Laws never would be improved, if there were not numerous persons whose moral sentiments are better than the existing laws. Such persons ought to support the principles here advocated; of which the only object is to make all other married couples similar to what these are now. But persons even of considerable moral worth, unless they are also thinkers, are very ready to believe that laws or practices, the evils of which they have not personally experienced, do not produce any evils, but (if seeming to be generally approved of) probably do good, and that it is wrong to object to them. It would, however, be a great mistake in such married people to suppose, because the legal conditions of the tie which uni
tes them do not occur to their thoughts once in a twelvemonth, and because they live and feel in all respects as if they were legally equals, that the same is the case with all other married couples, wherever the husband is not a notorious ruffian. To suppose this, would be to show equal ignorance of human nature and of fact. The less fit a man is for the possession of power—the less likely to be allowed to exercise it over any person with that person’s voluntary consent—the more does he hug himself in the consciousness of the power the law gives him, exact its legal rights to the utmost point which custom (the custom of men like himself) will tolerate, and take pleasure in using the power, merely to enliven the agreeable sense of possessing it. What is more; in the most naturally brutal and morally uneducated part of the lower classes, the legal slavery of the woman, and something in the merely physical subjection to their will as an instrument, causes them to feel a sort of disrespect and contempt towards their own wife which they do not feel towards any other woman, or any other human being, with whom they come in contact; and which makes her seem to them an appropriate subject for any kind of indignity. Let an acute observer of the signs of feeling, who has the requisite opportunities, judge for himself whether this is not the case: and if he finds that it is, let him not wonder at any amount of disgust and indignation that can be felt against institutions which lead naturally to this depraved state of the human mind.

  We shall be told, perhaps, that religion imposes the duty of obedience; as every established fact which is too bad to admit of any other defence, is always presented to us as an injunction of religion. The Church, it is very true, enjoins it in her formularies, but it would be difficult to derive any such injunction from Christianity. We are told that St. Paul said, “Wives, obey your husbands”: but he also said, “Slaves, obey your masters.” It was not St. Paul’s business, nor was it consistent with his object, the propagation of Christianity, to incite anyone to rebellion against existing laws. The apostle’s acceptance of all social institutions as he found them, is no more to be construed as a disapproval of attempts to improve them at the proper time, than his declaration, “The powers that be are ordained of God,” gives his sanction to military despotism, and to that alone, as the Christian form of political government, or commands passive obedience to it. . . .