Cincinnati daily press. [volume] (Cincinnati [Ohio]) 1860-1862, 1861-02-11
unHedded Wnmnn.

N0NN' W ~ .
Unwedded Women.
The woman who refrains from matrimony
is, in her way, q feminine Leonidas. Celib-
acy is, in her, the highest proof of moral
courage the best evidence of spiritual
heroism,
For unwedded women we have, usually,
the largest esteem, the loftiest regard; for
they dare to disobey the tyrant, Custom, and
brave the narrow prejudice of the shallow
sovereign, Society.
The woman who marries, says Heraclitus
becomes her own, her husbands and her
children's slave; and death alone relieves
her from her abject bondage.
Whatever view may be held of Wedlock
in the abstract, it is generally in the concrete
farce or tragedy, and often an admixture
Of the two.
And no marvel, either; since they who
wed have rarely mutual affection or common
sympathy, or even comprehension of each
others character.
cOnnubiality, and expiate their rashness with
years of inefable disgust snd indescribable
affiiction.
Man marries because his father, his rela-
tives and his neighbors have done so before
HMM compliance with custom merely,
and in conformity with social creed.
He never asks himself if he needs O wife
if his nature is adapted to the hymeneat
state; if there be aught of harmony between
his soul and hers.
Those are unimportant questions. To
marry is the theme, and marry does he.
Even grim Lachesis smiles sardonically,
and the Eeumendes rejoice at the human
sacrifice.
Woman, poor creature, in what most con-
Germs her welfare, has no power of election.
These she might love pass by her, and she
can not bid them pause, though they bear her
capacity for happiness away.
She must tarry until she is chosen; she
must not speak until she is questioned; she
must hide her beauteous bushes she must
repress the ebullitions of her heart she
must stand a shadowed falsehood in the self.
revealing light of her own God. given ma
ture.
Those who would have cherished know
he5oIS her n0t i.g guess not her yearning They
though the sun rises, Memnon is silent.
The gate of Paradise was open but the
small voice that bade them enter did not
reach their ears. They go, and the gates
are closed; it. maybe, never to be opened
more.
He whom the woman can not approve nor
esteem, much less love, comes to her, and
woos her for his bride.
Alas how unlike to those she has met in
reality, or seen in her waking dreams She
would fain tell him this; but her wise coun-
| sellors say that would be romantic. 1t is
| not love nor sympathy she needs, but hus-
band only. So is she reminded and with a
| forboding heart offers herself q holocaust to
Hymen.
The act is accomplished
Sensibility and stolidity, poetry and prose,
| melody and harshness, longing and indif-
ference, love and lust are Joined together,
| not united.
Spiritual antipodes, what must be their
1 futurei Heaven help themi They have
violated the law of their own being, and the
planet of their hope is eclipsed forever
| But woman is far more to be pitied in the
matrimonial relation than is man. She is
| the great sufferer, the genuine victim, and
| the truly doomed to despair.
Man may find excitement, qualification,
| semi-cOnsolation in thousand ways; may
| forget his sorrows and his home in count
| less designations.
| The woman is tied to the domestic stake,
and consumed by the slow fires of regret and
misapprehension. Her days drag wearily
and painfully; her nights throb with torture
| and remorse. The air is her only conf
dant, and the zephyer's kisses can not calm
her aching brow, nor dry her burning tears,
| shed in bitterness upon her paliid pillow.
How million times she laments she had
not had the power TO be herself; to say nay
| TO him who never could be her bosom's lord,
her spirits masterl
| Wise, had she refused her hand when her
heart rebelled Fortunate, had she clung to
celibacy and the memories of the past rather
than become the legal leman of her uncon-
| genial mate.
The fear of being an ''old maid,n as flip
| PANTY it is called, determined her and her
future; destroyed her peace; shattered the
fair fabric of her heart.
"Old maidp' What power has that to
wound What dread is in the honored title ?
What means it but that woman has had
the strength of will and the force of charac-
ter not to prostitute her heart
The fact of her unweddedness is the strong
est proof that she refrained from marriage
because her reason, or her affection, forbade
the state; for every being, however hideous,
or deformed, or mean, or poor, or vile, OF
degraded, can find with ease a connubial
| partnerT
No wall can shut out; no circumstance
prevent; no nature repel some petition Of
marriage. Every creature has his or her
candidate for matrimonial martyrdom, as
every blessing has its bane; every sweet its
| bitterness.
This known and believed, told maid
should lose its terror-should be an honor
instead of a reproach. And then the cheap
ridicule of, and the common filings at, un-
welded women, if they will be true to them.
selves, must lose their potency.
Old maids are ineffably superior to unloy-
ing and unloved wives; more interesting
more noble, more honorable, more beautiful
thousand times.
Once again we say, we honor them from
| our inmost nature, and hail the era WheI
they will prefer celibacy to convenience
chastity, cOrporeal and spiritual, to sensua
indulgence, sanctioned by no law but tina
of legislators; sacred individuality and glo
rious freedom to coupled bondage and de
basing responsibility.
Behold Egeria, no longer blooming, NJ
longer young, but handsome still an air o
calmness and dignity about her graceful
form intellect speaking from her eye, an(
goodness from her face.
She is not devoted to one cause, to ont
life; but to many. She has her liberty, hel
sovereignty of self, and is every day pro
crossing toward the better-liVing for tn,
ideal All who see her, honor her; all whC
know her, love her, from their comprehen
sion Of her soul.
Near her is Imogen. She was lovely,
few years sgone, being OF beauty and o
! poesy. BaTds caught inspiration from he
eve, and nature music FROM her lips. Dainty
sweet and elegantly. delicious was she t
spirit and to sense.
A new phase of existence-She married
and 10, how great and sad the changel Sc
her now She is the grim skeleton of he
former self-the mother Of rude children
the offspring of unsympAthetic and ever
diYeTginR natures. No syllable of poetr,
ever reyerberates through the emptiness Q
her prosaic life. What attraction has sh
noW2 Matrimonially metamOrphosed, sh
is a satire on her former self.