University of Virginia Library

WIVES.

Sir P. Sidney.

It is a great pity that plays and novels should
always end at the wedding, and should not give
us another act, and another volume, to let us
know how the hero and heroine conducted themselves
when married. Their main object seems
to be to instruct young ladies how to get husbands;
but not how to keep them; now, this last,
it appears to me, is a desideratum in modern
married life. It is appalling to those who have
not yet ventured into the state to see how soon
the flame of romantic love burns out, or is quench

ed in matrimony; and the passionate poetic lover,
declines into the phlegmatic prosaic husband.
I am inclined to attribute this very much
to the defect I have just mentioned in the plays
and novels which form the principal study of our
young ladies; and which teach them how to be
heroines, but leave them totally at a loss when
they come to be wives. I have lately, however,
met with an exception to this practice, in an old
writer, who has bravely attempted to support
dramatic interest in favour of a woman even after
she was married! I was looking over an
album of the fair Julia's, when I found a series
of poetical extracts in the Squire's handwriting,
which might have been intended as matrimonial
advice to his ward. I was so much struck with
the beauty of several of them, that I took the
liberty of making a copy. They are from the
old play of “The City Nightcap,”[1] in which is
drawn out and exemplified, in the part of Abstemia,
a character of a patient and faithful wife;
which I think might vie with that of the renowned
Griselda; though I fear it would stand almost
as little chance of being adopted as a model.

The following is a commendation of her to
her husband Lorenzo:

Notwithstanding all this excellence, Abstemia
has the misfortune to incur the unmerited jealousy
of her husband. Instead, however, of resenting
his harsh treatment with clamorous upbraidings,
and the stormy violence of high windy
virtue, by which the sparks of anger are so often
blown into a flame; she endures it with the
meekness of conscious but patient virtue, and

makes a beautiful appeal to a friend who has
witnessed her long suffering:

Lorenzo, being wrought on by false representations,
at length repudiates her. To the last,
however, she maintains her patient sweetness;
and her love for him in spite of his cruelty. She
deplores his error even more than his unkindness,
and laments the delusion which has turned his
very affection into a source of bitterness. There
is a moving pathos in her parting address to Lorenzo
after their divorce:

In a short time Lorenzo discovers his error;
and the innocence of his injured wife. In the
transports of his repentance he calls to mind all
her feminine excellence, her gentle, uncomplaining,
womanly fortitude under wrongs and sorrows:

It is but doing right by the reader, if interested
in the fate of Abstemia, by the preceding

extracts, to say that she was restored to the
arms and affections of her husband, rendered
fonder than ever, by that disposition in every
good heart to atone for past injustice, by an
overflowing measure of returning kindness:

I have been more affected and interested by
this little dramatic picture, than by many a
popular love tale; though, as I said before, I do
not think it likely either Abstemia or patient
Grizzle stand much chance of being taken for
a model. Still I like to see poetry now and then
extending its views beyond the wedding day, and
teaching a lady how to make herself attractive
even after marriage.

There is no great need of enforcing on an unmarried
lady the necessity of being agreeable;

nor is there any great art requisite in a youthful
beauty to enable her to please. Nature has multiplied
attractions round her—youth is in itself
attractive. The freshness of budding beauty
needs no foreign aid to set it off; it pleases merely
because it is fresh, and budding, and beautiful.
But it is for the married state that a woman
needs the most instruction, and in which she
should be most on her guard to maintain her
powers of pleasing. No woman can expect
to be to her husband all that he fancied her,
when he was a lover. Men are always doomed
to be duped, not so much by the arts of the sex,
as by their own imaginations. They are always
wooing goddesses, and marrying mere mortals.
A woman should therefore ascertain what was
the charm that rendered her so fascinating when
a girl, and endeavour to keep it up when she has
become a wife. One great thing undoubtedly
was the chairness of herself and her conduct,
which an unmarried female always observes.
She should maintain the same niceness and reserve
in her person and habits, and endeavour
still to preserve a freshness and virgin delicacy
in the eye of her husband. She should remember
that the province of woman is to be wooed,
not to woo—to be caressed, not to caress. Man
is an ungrateful being in love; bounty loses instead
of winning him. The secret of a woman's
power does not consist so much in giving, as in
withholding. A woman may give up too much
even to her husband. It is to a thousand little
delicacies of conduct that she must trust to keep
alive passion, and to protect herself from that
dangerous familiarity, that thorough acquaintance
with every weakness and imperfection incident
to matrimony. By these means she may still
maintain her power, though she has surrendered
her person; and may continue the romance of
love, even beyond the honey moon.

“She that hath a wise husband,” says Jeremy
Taylor, “must entice him to an eternal dearnesse
by the veil of modesty, and the grave robes
of chastity, the ornament of meeknesse, and the

jewels of faith and charity. She must have no
painting but blushings; her brightness must be
purity, and she must shine round about with
sweetnesses and friendship, and she shall be
pleasant while she lives, and desired when she
dies.”

I have wandered into a rambling series of remarks
on a trite subject, and a dangerous one for
a bachelor to meddle with. That I may not,
however, appear to confine my observations entirely
to the wife, I will conclude with another
quotation from Jeremy Taylor, in which the
duties of both parties are mentioned, while I
would recommend his sermon on the marriage
ring to all those who, wiser than myself, are
about entering the happy state of wedlock.

“There is scarce any matter of duty but it
concerns them both alike, and is only distinguished
by names, and hath its variety by circumstances
and little accidents; and what in one is
called love, in the other is called reverence; and
what in the wife is obedience, the same in the

man is duty. He provides, and she dispenses;
he gives commandments, and she rules by them;
he rules her by authority, and she rules him by
love; she ought by all means to please him, and
he must by no means displease her.”