The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1882-06-15
Step-Mothers.


If the pedigree OF prejudice could
make it respectable, the popular sent-
ment against step-mothers might claim
respect Homer had his fling at the
women who marry widower with child
rem; Virgil went out of his way to cast
particularly hard and jagged stones at
their defenselessness; Ovid accused them
OF such things that it were better their
mothers had not borne them. Where
these great ones denounced, lesser
voices rallied; and the scandalizing of
step-mothers gradually became as classic
as many other stupidities and falsities.
Medieval literature accepted this con-
ventionality of antiquity, precisely as it
accepted other Representations of women
handed down from those mighty ages,
without question as to their probability
or naturalness. 1t was enough for re-
viving intelligence to learn what had
been thought, without thinking on its
own account. But it is little hard that
the books of modern times, and espec-
tally the novels of our own day, which
go everywhere, and present to many
people the only mental impressions they
receive, should echo the jests of Ovid
without their wit, or the ISLANDERS of Viz
gil without their brilliancy.
The matrons of antiquity who pointed
the moral for detraction were never heard
in their own behalf, and may have been
neither SO fierce nor so risky as the poets
delighted to draw them. Besides, the
offending DANES of Homer, the half
savage princesses of Thessaly, the slow
witted farmers wives of Epirus, were
hardly of the same humanity with the
flne-fibred womanhood of to-day. Shall,
therefore, some sensitive soul, doing her
bestfor the happiness of her husbands
children, be dismayed by cheap iests,
stale two thousand years ago, or by de-
traction, which but repeats the comments
OF scandal-mongers dead before the
Ionian immigration.
What is there in the contact with ten.
der orphans to harden a woman's heart
against themp If she have babies of her
own, her love for them, her longing to
live for their sakes, teach her what bitter
ness OF parting, what pangs of appre-
hensioa, the dead mother must have
known, and tonch her spirit to unspeak-
able compassion for the motherless chill
dren given to her to rear. If she be child
less, then thatinstinct of maternity which
lives in nearly every woman's heart, and
must be satisfied, reaches out naturally,
almost inevitably, toward her husbands
children, for his sake hardly more than
for theirs. In families where the chill
dren of the first wife are too young to
remember her with regret, when the
step-mother comes to them it is the rule,
and not the exception, thatthey love their
new protector with love that makes no
abatement, and are perhaps happier than
they would have been had their own
mother lived.
For we maintain that the popular inn
age OF the step-mother is so far phan-
tom, mere Pigment of the imagination,
that mans second wife is likely to be a
much higher type of woman than his
iirst. Beauty, grace of manner, an
idiotic fondness for himself, the most
perishable and accidental charms. en-
chant the boy-lover, and make him the
husband. When his girl-wife becomes
the mother of his children, folly is not
thereby translated into wisdom; and if
she be compact of follies, however pretty
and well-behaved, her offspring will suffer
for that combination. Does ANYBODY
doubt that Agnes would have made far
better mother for Dora's baby, had it
lived, than thatpoor sweet-faced, loving.
silly, altogether charming simpletono
And Agnes is the woman whom the
Davids, in their thoughtful prime, would
choose.
Step-mothers are impatient, unjust.
unable to see its conduct from the ehild's
point OF view. we are told. Are mothers.
then, SO uniformly patient, just, full OF
loving imagination? Their children fret
them, bore them, offend against them
nnocently, and are sharply and unfairly
punished constantly. But their love is
aiken for granted by censorious world.
and very likely a perverse generation
praises their discipline. Against the
avs of the step-mother the young Of
lender may trespass seventy times seven
lines, and if her voice be harsh at the
'eventy-first infraction, all the child's
relatives on the maternal side |
openly pity him, or with ostentations
orbearance, with arms encountered I
hus, or this head-shake, or by pronounc- |
ng of some doubtful phrase,n aid and |
comfort the rebel vastly more than by |
,spousal of his cause.
We mean merely to assert that the
World is peopled by human beings. Ma
ernity comes by nature, but mother +
lood is the fruit of grace. It is as likely
o be the possession of some maiden
lunt, of some childless matron, of some |
misunderstood step-mother, as of her
Who has suffered in travail. Children I
ire wearing, and those who have them
n Keeping are worn. The temper of the
ace is not fawless, and the list is short
# our own acquaintance who are too
patient, too tolerant, and too just. But
t is unfair. it is monstrous, to condemn
whole class of women to reprobation,
md assume their guilt as well, for
lind of OffnuSac which xyo H. ~ 49,. |