The weekly clarion. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1863-1882, 1878-08-14
The Failure of woman.

mat women lose more than they gain
by love Is doctrine not so old a. the
nils, perhaps, but certainly much older
IMAM the clouds, and again propounded
by fair writer in The Nineteenth Cen
tury. For individual women Gfnot for
mem, she says, the gradual extinction
OF the sexual feeling might bring com
pensatlons even greater than their loss.
1t IS to them that love presents the long
est dreams and the most short-lived full
ailments. 1t is on them that its heaviest
penalties are charged. 1t is they who
feel most painfully the natural differences
on which it rests and which mean for
men divergent thought, for them too
often disparity of feeling Manxs-a wo-
man will even now exciaim-not+f In 10
norance, but in experience of all it can
gIve--Would that love were forever at
end and we might possess our souls in
peace! All Of which illustrates what
the old theologiIns and rest of mankind
have felt concerning the unsatisfyiug ma
ture OF human pleasures. Some persons
90 several steps further, and ask with
recent essayist in the same periodical,
whether or not life itself is worth having.
The fair writer, however, proceeds to
express her faith that 1.-THE movement for
female emancipation will make life en-
tirely tolerable for women, remodeIling
the aims. activities and interests of thou
sands of solitary ones who are starving
in body and languishing in soul because
the fiction of protecting sex interposes
itself between them and the means of
self preservation. "
She continues as follows: Gin that
way the new leaven will work, nav be
exemplitied by the experiences Of three
women, whom, without any straining of
existing possibilities, we may imagine to
be living thirty, forty, or fifty years hence
and whose actual and relative positions
will show how irrelevant to the nature of
the proposed change are the immediate
tests of good and evil, of failure and
success, by which it is sough. to measure
it. These three women will be sisters
educated alike under the progressive con
ception of female capacities and female
rights, without expectations, or with
very slight ones, but qualified TO eXer-
else some profession. One of these may
love and marry, and be fairly prosperous
in her marriage. She will have 2 kind,
if not always devoted husband; averagely
good and healthy children an average
proportion of domestic pains and pleas
ures, dlsappointments and sucGess->-a life
in short, which will stand for happiness
in the gradual self placement which will
prevent her ever entirely realizing whether
or not it is so. She will never wish to
die. She NAV sometimes feel the kind
of WEAKNESS which only death cures.
"Of the two who will not marry, one,
being devoid of sentiment, will pass
through life without experiencing an at
tachment, or inspiring one. The other
will inspire an attachment, and will re
turn it, but in such manner as to leave
her professional interests and her social
liberties untouched She will be a wife
just so far as is consistent with remaining
free. Her conduct will create no scan
dial, because the increasing equality of the
sexes will naturally, if not logically, have
modified the prevailing view of the mo-
raiities Of female life. The position will
be accepted by a large section of society,
and she will proceed with just so much
caution that The more orthodox members
of her acquaintance will either be ignO-
rant of its facts, or their eyes not forci
bly, opened if they determine not to see.
She will love rather less than she is low
ed, because her lover will be a normal
man, ara she only a modified woman,
while .ae circumstances of their relation
will be such as to stimulate his constancy
and to remove all sense Of anxiety from
hers. Both these women will have pro
fessional success; social prestige, the men,
tai and bodily health which proceeds
from unshackled exercise of natural
powers. They will at no time envy the
lot of their more feminine sisters they
will very often see cause to pity it. Their
lives Will be no more wanting in dignity
than in enjoyment Their intercourse
with women will be naturally free from
littleness; their manner toward men from
all the ungraceful extremes of reserve or
freedom. They will have done some good
in the world they will not consciously
or Intentionally have done any great
harm. Their eccentricities will simply
have been the manifestation of a new
order of things"