10. Chapter X: The Young Woman In The Character Of A Wife
In America the independence of woman is irrevocably lost in
the bonds of matrimony: if an unmarried woman is less constrained
there than elsewhere, a wife is subjected to stricter
obligations. The former makes her father's house an abode of
freedom and of pleasure; the latter lives in the home of her
husband as if it were a cloister. Yet these two different
conditions of life are perhaps not so contrary as may be
supposed, and it is natural that the American women should pass
through the one to arrive at the other.
Religious peoples and trading nations entertain peculiarly
serious notions of marriage: the former consider the regularity
of woman's life as the best pledge and most certain sign of the
purity of her morals; the latter regard it as the highest
security for the order and prosperity of the household. The
Americans are at the same time a puritanical people and a
commercial nation: their religious opinions, as well as their
trading habits, consequently lead them to require much abnegation
on the part of woman, and a constant sacrifice of her pleasures
to her duties which is seldom demanded of her in Europe. Thus in
the United States the inexorable opinion of the public carefully
circumscribes woman within the narrow circle of domestic interest
and duties, and forbids her to step beyond it.
Upon her entrance into the world a young American woman
finds these notions firmly established; she sees the rules which
are derived from them; she is not slow to perceive that she
cannot depart for an instant from the established usages of her
contemporaries, without putting in jeopardy her peace of mind,
her honor, nay even her social existence; and she finds the
energy required for such an act of submission in the firmness of
her understanding and in the virile habits which her education
has given her. It may be said that she has learned by the use of
her independence to surrender it without a struggle and without a
murmur when the time comes for making the sacrifice. But no
American woman falls into the toils of matrimony as into a snare
held out to her simplicity and ignorance. She has been taught
beforehand what is expected of her, and voluntarily and freely
does she enter upon this engagement. She supports her new
condition with courage, because she chose it. As in America
paternal discipline is very relaxed and the conjugal tie very
strict, a young woman does not contract the latter without
considerable circumspection and apprehension. Precocious
marriages are rare. Thus American women do not marry until their
understandings are exercised and ripened; whereas in other
countries most women generally only begin to exercise and to
ripen their understandings after marriage.
I by no means suppose, however, that the great change which
takes place in all the habits of women in the United States, as
soon as they are married, ought solely to be attributed to the
constraint of public opinion: it is frequently imposed upon
themselves by the sole effort of their own will. When the time
for choosing a husband is arrived, that cold and stern reasoning
power which has been educated and invigorated by the free
observation of the world, teaches an American woman that a spirit
of levity and independence in the bonds of marriage is a constant
subject of annoyance, not of pleasure; it tells her that the
amusements of the girl cannot become the recreations of the wife,
and that the sources of a married woman's happiness are in the
home of her husband. As she clearly discerns beforehand the only
road which can lead to domestic happiness, she enters upon it at
once, and follows it to the end without seeking to turn back.
The same strength of purpose which the young wives of
America display, in bending themselves at once and without
repining to the austere duties of their new condition, is no less
manifest in all the great trials of their lives. In no country
in the world are private fortunes more precarious than in the
United States. It is not uncommon for the same man, in the
course of his life, to rise and sink again through all the grades
which lead from opulence to poverty. American women support
these vicissitudes with calm and unquenchable energy: it would
seem that their desires contract, as easily as they expand, with
their fortunes. [4]
The greater part of the adventurers who migrate every year
to people the western wilds, belong, as I observed in the former
part of this work, to the old Anglo-American race of the Northern
States. Many of these men, who rush so boldly onwards in pursuit
of wealth, were already in the enjoyment of a competency in their
own part of the country. They take their wives along with them,
and make them share the countless perils and privations which
always attend the commencement of these expeditions. I have
often met, even on the verge of the wilderness, with young women,
who after having been brought up amidst all the comforts of the
large towns of New England, had passed, almost without any
intermediate stage, from the wealthy abode of their parents to a
comfortless hovel in a forest. Fever, solitude, and a tedious
life had not broken the springs of their courage. Their features
were impaired and faded, but their looks were firm: they appeared
to be at once sad and resolute. I do not doubt that these young
American women had amassed, in the education of their early
years, that inward strength which they displayed under these
circumstances. The early culture of the girl may still therefore
be traced, in the United States, under the aspect of marriage:
her part is changed, her habits are different, but her character
is the same.