The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1875-03-27 00:00:00

"OLD MAIDS."

Mrs. William Grey lectured in London, on Friday
evening in last week, at the Chelsea Literary and Scien-
tific Institution, on "Old Maids," and, commencing
by definitions, remarked that an honourable member
in a speech in Parliament called old maids "social
failures." A rev. gentleman who took the chair at a
meeting for promoting the higher education of women,
in speaking of the half-million of women who are in
excess of that number of men in this country, and can
therefore not be paired, said women were by that half-
million superfluous. In one of Miss Austen's charm-
ing novels, Emma being told she will be an "old
maid," says, "Never mind, Harriet; I shall not be a
poor old maid." The unmarried lady of good fortune
is a single woman, and only the poor 2,ne is an old ,
maid. There is another definition, that of St. Paul
"The unmarried woman careth for the things of the
Lord that she may be holy in body and in spirit; but
she that is married careth for the things of the world,
how she may please her husband." As to the difficult
question of age, "His Majesty is as old as people in
general," was said by a cautious attendant of Louis
XIV. Others would answer with a character in
Racine Plaideurs, and estimate sixty as the prime of
life. Mr. Buckle said a woman reached her prime
between thirty-five and forty, for, though her beauty
had then lost the charm of youth, it had acquired that
of expression. We might content ourselves with lay-
ing down the rule that so soon as youthful manners and
youthful L.tmusements become ridiculous the woman
who affects them is an old maid. To consider the de-
finitions in their order, in what sense is the old maid
a social failure? She has failed of matrimony. It is
understood in young ladies' school that it is a young lady's
duty to get well married. If she succeeds she takes
for three months at least, the first place in every
society ; if she fail it is a roe victis. Airs. Oliphant
describes a woman whose youth has gone and who is
still obliged to think of marrying as a provision, and
who goes into society as a laborieus trade and yet
cannot stoop low enough, who looks with envy even at
the widow clothed in the dignity of a great sorrow.
To old maids of this class the stigma does apply.
They have failed. Passing to the "superfluous" theory,
it involves the uselessness of 500,000 human brains,
500,000 pairs of human hands, 500,000 human minds
and hearts. One recollects the masacre of St. Ursula
and 11,000 virgins at Cologne, and asks oneself
whether their murderers were imbued with some such
theory of the inutility of single women. The
same disregard for female existence, except as
of ministers to male uses, lay at the root
of the ancient practice of infanticide. In Scinde,
when a female child was born to one of the Princes
it was brought to him in Durbar, and if he did not ap-
prove of it, it was put under the cushion upon which
he sat, and extinguished by the gentle pressure of his
paternal weight. But were unmarried women super-
fluous? In our own country alone, they gave us in lite-
rature, Miss Austenliss Edgeworth, Joanna Baillie,
Harriet Martineau, r rances Power Cobbe. Was El,za-
beth Barrett superfluous till she became Mrs. Brown-
ing? In science, was Miss Herschell superfluous, whose
labours were invaluable to her father and brother?
Was the devoted sister of the poet Wordsworth super-
fluous? In philanthropy, could they count as too
many Florence Nightingale, Lady Burdett Coutts,
Mary Carpenter, Octavia Hill, and the great sister-
hood of nurses of every denomination, under every
garb? Could we spare Miss Davies and Miss Buss
in education? As to the third view, that ex-
pressed by Miss Austen's heroine, no wonder if
women who, when their home was broken up by death,
first learnt the worth of money became soured by
cares and disappointment, and were not all like Miss
Bates, described by the same writer, who, though
tiresome, chattering, irrelevant, incoherent, with
little sense and no beauty, single and poor, "was
very much to the taste of everybody." Yes, she won
the world by loving-heartedness, bonte. It is more
than moral goodness, it is the goodness which diffuses
itself outwardly and socially—bounty. La bonM, est
/a coquetterie des vieilles femme; and perhaps it is the
want of it that makes old bachelors less amiable and
less useful, without being more ornamental than old
maids. No doubt, marriage was the highest form of
life both for men and women, but there are old maids
from choice, who, with a genius for friendship, have
never experienced love, and of these she repeated the
words of the Apostle.
,Tough a sacrament, mar-
riage
,caTio ,t 9 41001* atijn•Litii, 'lower aspect,
as 'a " m*1.141;1011 o litunin frailty, instead of as
the highest form of companionship. The type
of womanhood was taken, not from the women
who followed their Master to the foot of the Cross,
but from Eve, tempted by the serpent, and in her turn
tempting the man to forbidden fruit; and in medheval
pictures the serpent is represented with the face of a
beautiful woman. Protestantism had rehabilitated
marriage, but not woman in the same degree, and she
was now looked upon as inferior and ministering to
man, and not as an equal being, with equal rights of
free development. The conquest of a higher position