University of Virginia Library

11. CHAPTER XI.
WHY DON'T YOU TAKE HER?

THE next day I spoke to my uncle Jacob of Caroline's
desire to study, and said that some way ought to
be provided for taking her out of her present
confined limits.

He looked at me with a shrewd, quizzical expression, and
said: “Providence generally opens a way out for girls as
handsome as she is. Caroline is a little restless just at
present, and so is getting some of these modern strong-minded
notions into her head. The fact is, that our region
is a little too much out of the world; there is nobody around
here, probably, that she would think a suitable match for
her. Caroline ought to visit, now, and cruise about a little
in some of the watering-places next summer, and be seen.
There are few girls with a finer air, or more sure to make
a sensation. I fancy she would soon find the right sphere
under these circumstances.”

“But does it not occur to you, uncle, that the very idea
of going out into the world, seeking to attract and fall in
the way of offers of marriage, is one from which such a spirit
as Caroline's must revolt? Is there not something essentially
unwomanly in it—something humiliating? I know,
myself, that she is too proud, too justly self-respecting,
to do it. And why should a superior woman be condemned
to smother her whole nature, to bind down all her faculties,
and wait for occupation in a sphere which it is unwomanly
to seek directly, and unwomanly to accept when
offered to her, unless offered by the one of a thousand for
whom she can have a certain feeling?”

“To tell the truth,” said my uncle, looking at me again,
“I always thought in my heart that Caroline was just the

proper person for you—just the woman you need—brave,
strong, and yet lovely; and I don't see any objection in the
way of your taking her.”

Elderly people of a benevolent turn often get a matter-of-fact
way of arranging the affairs of their juniors that is
sufficiently amusing. My uncle spoke with a confidential
air of good faith of my taking Caroline as if she had been
a lot of land up for sale. Seeing my look of blank embarrassment,
he went on:

“You perhaps think the relationship an objection, but I
have my own views on that subject. The only objection
to the intermarriage of cousins is one that depends entirely
on similarity of race peculiarities. Sometimes cousins
inheriting each from different races, are physiologically as
much of diverse blood as if their parents had not been
related, and in that case there isn't the slightest objection
to marriage. Now, Caroline, though her father is your
mother's brother, inherits evidently the Selwyn blood.
She's all her mother, or rather her grandmother, who was a
celebrated beauty. Caroline is a Selwyn, every inch, and
you are as free to marry her as any woman you can meet.”

“You talk as if she were a golden apple, that I had nothing
to do but reach forth my hand to pick,” said I. “Did it
never occur to you that I couldn't take her if I were to try?”

“Well, I don't know,” said Uncle Jacob, looking me over
in a manner which indicated a complimentary opinion.
“I'm not so sure of that. She's not in the way of seeing
many men superior to you.”

“And suppose that she were that sort of woman who did
not wish to marry at all?” said I.

My uncle looked quizzical, and said, “I doubt the existence
of that species.”

“It appears to me,” said I, “that Caroline is by nature so
much more fitted for the life of a scholar than that of an
ordinary domestic woman, that nothing but a most absorbing
and extraordinary amount of personal affection would
ever make the routine of domestic life agreeable to her.

She is very fastidious and individual in her tastes, too, and
the probabilities of her finding the person whom she could
love in this manner are very small. Now it appears to me
that the taking for granted that all women, without respect
to taste or temperament, must have no sphere or opening
for their faculties except domestic life, is as great an
absurdity in our modern civilization as the stupid custom of
half-civilized nations, by which every son, no matter what
his character, is obliged to confine himself to the trade of
his father. I should have felt it a hardship to be condemned
always to be a shoemaker if my father had been
one.”

“Nay,” said my uncle, “the cases are not parallel. The
domestic sphere of wife and mother to which woman is
called, is divine and god-like; it is sacred, and solemn, and
no woman can go higher than that, and anything else to
which she devotes herself, falls infinitely below it.”

“Well, then,” said I, “let me use another simile. My father
was a minister, and I reverence and almost adore the ideal
of such a minister, and such a ministry as his was. Yet it
would be an oppression on me to constrain me to enter into
it. I am not adapted to it, or fitted for it. I should make
a failure in it, while I might succeed in a lower sphere.
Now it seems to me that just as no one should enter the
ministry as a means of support or worldly position, but
wholly from a divine enthusiasm, so no woman should enter
marriage for provision, or station, or support; but simply
and only from the most purely personal affection. And my
theory of life would be, to have society so arranged that
independent woman shall have every facility for developing
her mind and perfecting herself that independent man
has, and every opportunity in society for acquiring and
holding property, for securing influence, and position, and
fame, just as man can. If laws are to make any difference
between the two sexes, they ought to help, and not to
hinder the weaker party. Then, I think, a man might feel
that his wife came to him from the purest and highest

kind of love—not driven to him as a refuge, not compelled
to take him as a dernier resort, not struggling and striving
to bring her mind to him, because she must marry somebody,—but
choosing him intelligently and freely, because he
is the one more to her than all the world beside.”

“Well,” said my uncle, regretfully, “of course I don't
want to be a matchmaker, but I did hope that you and
Caroline would be so agreed; and I think now, that if you
would try, you might put these notions out of her head, and
put yourself in their place.”

“And what if I had tried, and become certain that it was
of no use?”

“You don't say she has refused you!” said my uncle, with
a start.

“No, indeed!” said I. “Caroline is one of those women
whose whole manner keeps off entirely all approaches of
that kind. You may rely upon it, uncle, that while she
loves me as frankly and truly and honestly as ever sister
loved a brother, yet I am perfectly convinced that it is
mainly because I have kept myself clear of any misunderstanding
of her noble frankness, or any presumption
founded upon it. Her love to me is honest comradeship,
just such as I might have from a college mate, and there
is not the least danger of its sliding into anything else.
There may be an Endymion to this Diana, but it certainly
won't be Harry Henderson.”

“H'm!” said my uncle. “Well, I'm afraid then that she
never will marry, and you certainly must grant that a
woman unmarried remains forever undeveloped and incomplete.”

“No more than a man,” said I. “A man who never
becomes a father is incomplete in one great resemblance to
the divine being. Yet there have been men with the element
of fatherhood more largely developed in celibacy than
most are in marriage. There was Fénelon, for instance,
who was married to humanity. Every human being that
he met held the place of a child in his heart. No individual

experience of fatherhood could make such men as he more
fatherly. And in like manner there are women with more
natural motherhood than many mothers. Such are to be
found in the sisterhoods that gather together lost and orphan
children, and are their mothers in God. There are natures
who do not need the development of marriage; they know
instinctively all it can teach them. But they are found only
in the rarest and highest regions.”

“Well,” said my uncle, “for every kind of existence in
creation God has made a mate, and the eagles that live on
mountain tops, and fly toward the sun, have still their
kindred eagles. Now, I think, for my part, that if Fénelon
had married Madame Guyon, he would have had a richer
and a happier life of it, and she would have gone off into
fewer vagaries, and they would have left the Church some
splendid children, who might, perhaps, have been born
without total depravity. You see these perfected specimens
owe it to humanity to perpetuate their kind.”

“Well,” said I, “let them do it by spiritual fatherhood
and motherhood. St. Paul speaks often of his converts
as those begotten of him—the children of his soul; a thousand-fold
more of them there were, than there could have
been if he had weighted himself with the care of an individual
family. Think of the spiritual children of Plato and
St. Augustine!”

“This may be all very fine, youngster,” said my uncle,
“but very exceptional; yet for all that, I should be sorry
to see a fine woman like Caroline withering into an old
maid.”

“She certainly will,” said I, “unless you and mother
stretch forth your hands and give her liberty to seek her
destiny in the mode in which nature inclines her. You
will never get her to go husband-hunting. The mere idea
suggested to her of exhibiting her charms in places of resort,
in the vague hope of being chosen, would be sufficient to
keep her out of society. She has one of those independent
natures to which it is just as necessary for happiness that

she should make her own way, and just as irksome to
depend on others, as it is for most young men. She has a
fine philosophic mind, great powers of acquisition, a curiosity
for scientific research; and her desire is to fit herself
for a physician,—a sphere perfectly womanly, and in which
the motherly nature of woman can be most beautifully
developed. Now, help her with your knowledge through
the introductory stages of study, and use your influence
afterward to get her father to give her wider advantages.”

“Well, the fact is,” said my uncle, “Caroline is a splendid
nurse; she has great physical strength and endurance,
great courage and presence of mind, and a wonderful
power of consoling and comforting sick people. She has
borrowed some of my books, and seemed to show a considerable
acuteness in her remarks on them. But somehow the
idea that a lovely young woman should devote herself to
medicine, has seemed to me a great waste, and I never
seriously encouraged it.”

“Depend upon it,” said I, “Caroline is a woman who will
become more charming in proportion as she moves more
thoroughly and perfectly in the sphere for which nature
has adapted her. Keep a great, stately, white swan shut up
in a barn-yard and she has an ungainly gait, becomes
morose, and loses her beautiful feathers; but set her free
to glide off into her native element and all is harmonious
and beautiful. A superior woman, gifted with personal
attractions, who is forgetting herself in the enthusiasm of
some high calling or profession, never becomes an old
maid; she does not wither; she advances as life goes on,
and often keeps her charms longer than the matron exhausted
by family cares and motherhood. A charming
woman, fully and happily settled and employed in a life-work
which is all in all to her, is far more likely to be
attractive and to be sought than one who enters the ranks of
the fashionable waiters on Providence.”

“Well, well,” said my uncle, “I'll think of it. The fact is,
we fellows of three-score ought to be knocked on the head

peaceably. We have the bother of being progressive all
through our youth, and by the time we get something
settled, up comes your next generation and begins kicking
it all over. It's too bad to demolish the house we spend
our youth in building just when we want rest, and don't
want the fatigue of building over.”

“For that matter,” said I, “the modern ideas of woman's
sphere were all thought out and expressed in the Greek
mythology ages and ages ago. The Greeks didn't fit every
woman to one type. There was their pretty, plump little
Aphrodite, and their godlike Venus de Milo; there was
Diana—the woman of cold, bright, pure physical organization,—independent,
free, vigorous. There was Minerva, the
impersonation of the purely intellectual woman, who neither
wished nor sought marriage. There was Juno, the house-keeper
and domestic queen, and Ceres, the bread-giver and
provider. In short, the Greeks conceived a variety of
spheres of womanhood; but we, in modern times, have
reduced all to one—the vine that twines, and the violet hid
in the leaves; as if the Victoria Regia hadn't as good a right
to grow as the daisy, and as if there were not female oaks
and pines as well as male!”

“Well, after all,” he said, “the prevalent type of sex
through nature, is that of strength for man and dependence
for woman.”

“Nay,” said I; “if you appeal to nature in this matter of
sex, there is the female element in grand and powerful forms,
as well as in gentle and dependent ones. The she-lion and
tiger are more terrible and untamable than the male. The
Greek mythology was a perfect reflection of nature, and
clothed woman with majesty and power as well as with
grace; how splendid those descriptions of Homer are,
where Minerva, clad in celestial armor, leads the forces of
the Greeks to battle! What vigor there is in their impersonation
of the Diana; the woman strong in herself, scorning
physical passion, and terrible to approach in the radiant
majesty of her beauty, striking with death the vulgar curiosity

that dared to profane her sanctuary! That was the
ideal of a woman, self-sufficient, victorious, and capable of
a grand, free, proud life of her own, not needing to depend
upon man. The Greeks never would have imagined such
goddesses if they had not seen such women, and our modern
civilization is imperfect if it does not provide a place and
sphere for such types of womanhood. It takes all sorts of
people to make up a world, and there ought to be provision,
toleration, and free course for all sorts.”

“Well, youngster,” said my uncle, “I think you'll write
tolerable leaders for some radical paper, one of these days,
but you fellows that want to get into the chariot of the sun
and drive it, had better think a little before you set the
world on fire. As for your Diana, I thank Heaven she isn't
my wife, and I think it would be pretty cold picking with
your Minerva.”

“Permit me to say, uncle, that in this `latter day glory' that
is coming, men have got to learn to judge women by some
other standard than what would make good wives for them,
and acknowledge sometimes a femininity existing in and for
itself. As there is a possible manhood complete without
woman, so there is a possible womanhood complete without
man.”

“That's not the Christian idea,” said my uncle.

“Pardon me,” I replied, “but I believe it is exactly what
St. Paul meant when he spoke of the state of celibacy, in
devotion to the higher spiritual life, as being a higher state
for some men and women than marriage.”

“You are on dangerous ground there,” said my uncle, “you
will run right into monastic absurdity.”

“High grounds are always dangerous grounds,” said I,
“full of pitfalls and precipices, yet the Lord has persisted in
making mountains, precipices, pitfalls, and all, and being
made they may as well be explored, even at the risk of
breaking one's neck. We may as well look every question
in the face, and run every inquiry to its ultimate.”

“Go it then,” said my uncle, “and joy go with you; the

chariot of the sun is the place for a prospect! Up with you
into it, my boy, that kind of driving is interesting; in fact,
when I was young, I should have liked it myself, but if
you don't want to kick up as great a bobbery as Phæton did,
you'd better mind his father's advice: spare the whip, and
use the reins with those fiery horses of the future.”

“But, now,” said I, “as the final result of all this, will
you help Caroline?”

“Yes, I will; soberly and seriously, I will. I'll drive over
there and have a little talk with the girl, as soon as you're
gone.”

“And, uncle,” said I, “if you wish to gain influence with
her, don't flatter nor compliment; examine her, and appoint
her tasks exactly as you would those of a young man in
similar circumstances. You will please her best so; she is
ready to do work, and make serious studies; she is of a thorough,
earnest nature, and will do credit to your teaching.”

“What a pity she wasn't born a boy,” said my uncle,
under his breath.

“Well, let you and me do what we can,” said I, “to bring
in such a state of things in this world that it shall no longer
be said of any woman that it was a pity not to have been
born a man.”

Subsequently I spoke to my mother on the same subject
and gave her an account of my interview with Caroline.

I think that my mother, in her own secret heart, had cherished
very much the same hopes for me that had been expressed
by Uncle Jacob. Caroline was an uncommon person,
the star of the little secluded neighborhood, and my mother
had seen enough of her to know that, though principally
absorbed in the requirements of a very hard domestic sphere
she possessed an uncommon character and great capabilities.
Between her and my mother, however, there had been
that silence which often exists between two natures, both
sensitive and both reticent, who seem to act as non-conductors
to each other. Caroline stood a little in awe of the

moral and religious force of my mother, and my mother
was a little chilled by the keen intellectualism of Caroline.

There are people that cannot understand each other
without an interpreter, and it is not unfrequently easier for
men and women to speak confidentially to each other than
to their own sex. There are certain aspects in which each
sex is sure of more comprehension than from its own. I
served, in this case, as the connecting wire of the galvanic
battery to pass the spark of sympathetic comprehension
between these two natures.

My mother was one of those women naturally timid, reticent,
retiring, encompassed by physical diffidence as with a
mantle—so sensitive that, even in an argument with me,
the blood would flush into her cheeks—yet, she had withal
that deep, brooding, philosophical nature, which revolves all
things silently, and with intensest interest, and comes to
perfectly independent conclusions in the irresponsible liberty
of solitude. How many times has this great noisy world
been looked out on, and silently judged by these quiet,
thoughtful women of the Virgin Mary type, who have never
uttered their magnificat till they uttered it beyond the veil!
My mother seemed to be a woman in whom religious faith
had risen to that amount of certainty and security, that she
feared no kind of investigation or discussion, and had no
prejudices or passionate preferences. Thus she read the
works of the modern physical philosophical school with a
tranquil curiosity, and a patient analysis, apparently enjoying
every well-turned expression, and receiving with interest,
and weighing with deliberation every record of experiments,
and every investigation of facts. Her faith in her
religion was so perfect that she could afford all these explorations,
no more expecting her Christian hopes to fall,
through any discoveries of modern science, than she expected
the sun to cease shining on account of the contradictory
theories of astronomers. They who have lived in communion
with God have a mode of evidence unknown to philosophers;

a knowledge at first hand. In the same manner,
the wideness of Christian charity gave my mother a most
Catholic tolerance for natures unlike her own.

“I have always believed in the doctrine of vocations,” she
said, as she listened to me; “it is one of those points where
the Romish church has shown a superior good sense in discovering
and making a place for every kind of nature.”

“Caroline has been afraid to confide in you, lest you should
think her struggles to rise above her destiny, and her dissatisfaction
with it, irreligious.

“Far from it,” said my mother; “I wholly sympathize with
her; people don't realize what it is to starve faculties; they
understand physical starvation, but the slow fainting and
dying of desires and capabilities for want of anything to
feed upon, the withering of powers for want of exercise, is
what they do not understand. This is what Caroline is condemned
to, by the fixed will of her father, and whether any
mortal can prevail with him, I don't know.”

“You might, dear mother, I am sure.”

“I doubt it; he has a manner that freezes me. I think
in his hard, silent, interior way, he loves me, but any argument
addressed to him, any direct attempt to change his
opinions and purpose only makes him harder.”

“Would it not, then, be her right to choose her course
without his consent—and against it” My mother sat with
her blue eyes looking thoughtfully before her

“There is no point,” she said slowly, “that requires more
careful handling, to discriminate right from wrong, than the
limits of self-sacrifice. To a certain extent it is a virtue,
and the noblest one, but there are rights of the individual
that ought not to be sacrificed; our own happiness has its
just place, and I cannot see it to be more right to suffer injustice
to one's self than to another, if one can help it. The
individual right of self-assertion of child against parent is
like the right of revolution in the State, a difficult one to
define, yet a real one. It seems to me that one owes it to
God, and to the world, to become all that one can be, and to

do all that one can do, and that a blind, unreasoning authority
that forbids this is to be resisted by a higher law. If I
would help another person to escape from an unreasoning
tyranny, I ought to do as much for myself.”

“And don't you think,” said I, “that the silent self-abnegation
of some fine natures has done harm by increasing in
those around them the habits of tyranny and selfishness?”

“Undoubtedly,” said my mother, “many wives make their
husbands bad Christians, and really stand in the way of their
salvation, by a weak, fond submission, and a sort of morbid
passion for self-sacrifice—really generous and noble men are
often tempted to fatal habits of selfishness in this way.”

“Then would it not be better for Caroline to summon
courage to tell her father exactly how she feels and views
his course and hers?”

“He has a habit,” said my mother, “of cutting short any
communication from his children that doesn't please him,
by bringing down his hand abruptly and saying, `No more
of that, I don't want to hear it.' With me he accomplishes
the same by abruptly leaving the room. The fact is,” said
my mother, after a pause, “I more than suspect that he set
his foot on something really vital to Caroline's life, years ago,
when she was quite young.”

“You mean an attachment?”

“Yes. I had hoped that it had been outgrown or superseded,
probably it may be, but I think she is one of the sort
in which such an experience often destroys all chance for
any other to come after it.”

“Were you told of this?”

“I discovered it by an accident, no matter how. I was
not told, and I know very little, yet enough to enable me to
admire the vigor with which she has made the most of life,
the cheerfulness and thoroughness with which she has
accepted hard duties. Well,” she added, after a pause, “I
will talk with Caroline, and we will see what can be done,
and then,” she added, “we can carry the matter to a higher
One, who understands all, and holds all in his hands.”

My mother spoke with a bright assured force of this
resort, sacred in every emergency.

This was the last night of my stay at home, the next day
I was to start for my ship to go to Europe. I sat up late writing
to Caroline, and left the letter in my mother's hands.