The Sun.
London, England, 1868-04-01 00:00:00

WOMEN.

People differ widely in describing "The Girl of
the Period." The Saturday Review does this in
terms which have excited the indignation of Eng-
land, and brought down on that great literary
journal the wrath of society. The Review week by
week had worked itself up till it reached the climax
the Saturday before last, when it exploded in a
furious diatribe against the young lady portion of
the sex. We believe that the Saturday and the
world owe these charitable and generous criticisms
to the pen of a lady, and we hope Mrs. Stanton,
when she comes to deal with the Review's com-
ments, will make herself acquainted with the fact.
She says, in the Revolution :—" Women are waking
up everywhere to the claims of the new and higher
civilization. When in old monarchical England,
where the best minds are in a measure palsied by
the demon of caste, women are rising up in their
dignity, throwing off the shackles of custom, and
demanding a voice in the Government, shall it be
said that here, under the inspiration of our free in-
stitutions, the most enlightened minds in the coun-
try do not know enough of the machinery of Go-
vernment to demand their political rights ?" In
answer to Mr. Cronyn, who observes "there must be
some serious defect in our domestic and educational
institutions that furnishes such an inferior article of
woman," Mrs. Stanton says, the supply is always
suited to the demand ; the women of a nation are
always moulded after man's highest idea. For a
quarter of a century strong-minded women have
been the target of politician, priest, and press in
this Republic ; hence the harvest of weak-minded
ones we all alike deplore to-day." Finally, Mrs.
Stanton remarks that, "in spite of the heresies
of David Cronyn, she prefers his scarifying
women to worshipping them in the clouds
as of yore. We are glad to have woman
at last touch terra firma, the change of base
is a confession of weakness, and argues a
speedy surrender of the usurpers. They are sur-
rounded, cornered, they cannot answer the argu-
ments ; no man of common sense attempts it.
Now the question is shall they stand still, and let
us fire hot shot on their devoted heads till they are
annihilated with the sense of their awful responsi-
bilities, or shall they spring to the battlements and
turn their guns on us ? We say' fire away, gentle-
men,' but do not load too heavily lest your guns
kick, and kill man instead of woman." What
sort of a charge was that fired by the Saturday
Review? Doubtless that gun kicked ! " There
must be," says David Cronyn, " some grave defects
in the instruments employed, that society fails to
get more of a higher type of woman. But where-
ever the difficulty lies, whether in curriculum or
system, the great vital necessity still stands. The
characterless condition of female characters must
be removed before any true and permanent ame-
lioration is possible. Until then society will not be
just to her. In the nature of things weakness
commands love and pity, not respect and power."
There is an article in the Nation explaining why
single life is becoming more general. The decrease
of marriage among the upper gild middle classes of
France, England, and New England, is a fact esta-
blished by abundant statistical proof. In France,
it is said, to be owing to the drafting and retention
of young men for the army, enforcing bachelor.
hood; to the expense and trouble attending the
ceremony; to the usage which makes it an affair
de convenance ; and to the increase of the
demi-monde. In England "it is those hateful
clubs," the prohibitory expense, the frivolity,
vanity, mental inferiority of the other sex, say the
clever men, who do the social philosophy for the Eng-
lish weeklies. Iu New England the ladies are so ex-
travagant in dress. They desire to commence house-
keeping at the point their parents left off, and they
will not marry unless the man is rich. The young
men go West, and leave an excess of women at
home. The Woman's Right advocates charge the
decrease to the inequitable constitution of the mar-
riage relation, to the loss of individuality, and the
law against property iu the wife; to her treatment
as the plaything, pet, or upper servant without
wages of the husband. Again, it is alleged that it
is only one of the advancing ripples of the Woman's
Rights' movement. "It is the effort of woman to
make herself independent of man, and equal to him.
Denying man's claim to submission from woman,
even the great mass of women who do not belong to
Woman's Rights' party exhibit a growing self-asser-
tion, masculinity, independence, which make men
more and more weary of the matrimonial noose."
These are all the effects, not causes, of the decrease.
'Women are becoming masculine, independent,
and desirous of equal rights, because so many of
them are left unmarried, which enforces indepen-
dence, and the struggle for the means of living com-
pels them to be masculine. They enter professions
because they fail to secure a husband's hand and
heart. Patient Griseldas are left single with the
moral Camillas, and the social Amazons; the mascu-
line English girl, and the convent educated, un-
sophisticated French jeune filk. That the rea-
sons given by the essayist, as well as the
champions of Woman's Rights, the Social Science
Conventions, the pulpit, and the press, are wrong, is
seen in the case of New England. In these States
there is neither army service clubs, a numerous
demi-monde, nor expense and trouble in the cere-
mony. The New England girls are neither fast,
masculine, frivolous, nor inferior in education or
culture to the young men. The young people are
left in complete freedom to follow their own hearts
and tastes in choosing their companions, yet the
same phenomenon is exhibited. In Massachusetts
the excess of 40,000 women only accounts for the
unmarried state of one-fifth of the single women.
The Nation points out that the decrease is propor-
tioned to the respective height of social development
in France, England, and the United States—the
three nations which have advanced the .most iu the
path of modern civilization. It argues that the
cause proceeds from the higher development of
civilization, and the new form that modern progress
has given to modern life, by which the domestic
circle does not fill so large a place, and married life
has lost in some measure its advantage over a single
life. Tastes have become widened, desires multi-
plied, and the new gratifications and pleasures sup-
plied have but created a taste for more. The city
is the habitat for the single ; the country town iejan
uncongenial clime for the species. For example,
Jonathan in the little town of Tyanius fifty years
ago had no daily papers,
few books, nor any
taste for literature ; not even a Sunday school
library ; nor theatre or concert-ball ; billiard tables
unknown ; cigar and meerschaum little known ;
public amusements or weekly lyceum, an occasional
circus, or political meeting. Mary Jane without a
piano, studio, sensation novels,
and picture gal-
leries; without German or Italian, was still worse
off for single enjoyments. The case is very different
with the bachelor and girl of to-day, who have a
surfeit of independent resource ; most of which
they must drop if they marry, and the after conse-
quences are too heavy not to be felt in balancing
the scale for and against the engagement. The '
widening and heightening tastes tend to the de-
crease. Man's desires in civilization grow faster
than hia productive power, and so also education
developer sensibility and the critical faculty, more
than character or executive ability. Thus the taste
being elevated by culture, few come up to the ideal
standard. When people have no other amusement,
it has been cynically said they are apt to imagine
themselves in love. But when they have abundant
amusement, which tends to raise their ideal, thus
filling the vacant heart and educating the mind's
eye to require a periection seldom met, the double
process goes on of lessening the desire, and desiring
only the unprocurable. Should this decrease in
marriage excite alarm and lamentation? Fifty
years ago social philosophers were frightened