The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1866-01-17
Women md Marriage.

| lNsoN, mas Deen lecturlng In New York on
marrying and Giving in Marriage" She
does not positively decry marriage, but she
seems to think that it is put too prominently
before woman as her chief end in life, and
that the training and education of girls is
made to bear too exclusively upon the matri-
monial relation. She says:-
''From the earliest time upwards the woman
Of the present day is taught that the one end of
her life is marriaee-the one happiness and am.
btion of her life, marriage-the only oppor-
tunlty to be or do anything, marriage-and the
only sphere in which she can develop her
powers, or be of service TO herself or others
marriage-everywheTe and by everybody is she
| advised to get husband. The boy on the
other hand, is educated for manhood; he is TO
go through his schoollfe, through the uniyer.
sity and college; he is to choose his trade busi-
ness, profession, or calling; he is to earn money
and make Tor himself home. And then, having
educated himself, and having COTTON a home
society says to him:-"Take wife to help spend
the money, and to be useful and ornamental
appendage of that home.' The man is educated
not Tor husbandhood, but for manhood; and why
is the woman not educated for womanhoodw
Miss DICKINSON but speaks the sentiments
of quite class of people at the present day,
who imagine, or seem to imagine, that mar
riage in some way intereres with the true
development Of woman-chains her down to q
narrower and less noble sphere than she might
otherwise occupy and makes her indifferent"
as Miss DICKINSON expresses it, "to books,
to mental culture, to the cultivation of her
own noble aspirations, and to everything but
marriage"
We dissent entirely from this view of the
subject. 1t is false to the Divine constitution
and end of society. Women look to marriage,
and think about it. and expect it, because for
the vast majority OF them it is their proper,
necessary, and destined relation. In it they
find the sphere tor which God made them,
and in which alone the sweetest, nobest, and
best aspirations oil their souls can find full re-
alization. What is "womanhood" when you
elm mate from it the ideas of wife and
mother? Is it any longer that beautiful and
blessed conception which has always COM
manded the love and reverence of the best of
our race?
Marriage is the Oldest of human relations
it dates back to the Garden of Eden before
the fall; God Himself instituted it; it is the
foundation of the family relation, and through
it of the community and the State; from it
spring the social joys, domestic peace, and
the sweet sanctities of home; it is, in short,
the great conservative institution of human
society. Were some mighty convulsion to
sweep over the race, prostrating every other
institution, and cutting down every other
relation, but leaving marriage intact, with its
essential ideas pure and vital, society would
at once commence to reorganize itself. and
civilization would spring up again, fresh and
vigorous as grass upon the new-mown fields.
Why should women desire different sphere
OF lie from that noble one which God and
nature gives them? Why should they desire
to come doacn from that better field of labor
which is essentially and exclusively theirs by
virtue of their womanhood, and crowd upon a
lower plane, where they are competitors
with all the race, and where their own highest
and most distinctive powers and faculties
must either be not employed at all, or
degraded to lower and less worthy ends ?
Woman is the great educator OF the race.
Her sway over the human mind in its earliest
and most formative stages is complete and
almost exclusive. The mother makes the
man. Can any field of effort be nobler or more
influential than this? And may she not find
her full occasion for the use of a disciplined
mind, a cultivated taste, an educated iudg-
ment, and the accomplishments of science and
art? 1t spreposterous, the idea that a woman
who looks to marriage, and qualities herself
for it, must be "indifferent" to books and
mental culture
The true remedy for the social evils of our
day is not for woman to think less about mar
Iiage, but to think more aciseIy; not to pre-
pare less for it, but to prepare more SenSibly.
The popular ideas Of this diVinely constituted
relation need to be elevated. Its Importance
and its sanctity need to be more thoroughly
impressed upon the public mind. The educa-
ton of girls, instead Of dealing so largely in
frivolities and so-called Accomplishments"
which are so soon laid aside and forgotten,
should be directed to these more solid and en-
during acquisitions that will enable them to
become good wives and faithful mothers, the
competent superintendents of their own
households, and the best educators of their
own children. Were this so, there would be
fewer unhappy marriages than now; better
race OF mothers would arise, and the very
fountains of our social life would be rendered