Daughters of Danaus

“ In all Aeschylus there is on the other hand only one noticeable reference to a genuine womanly quality—the injunction of Danaus to his daughters to honor modesty more than life while they are travelling among covetous men; an admonition much needed, since, as Danaus adds—characterizing the coarseness and lack of chivalry of the men—violence is sure to threaten them everywhere, "and on the fair-formed beauty of virgins everyone that passes by sends forth a melting dart from his eyes, overcome by desire." ”

“ The final play was probably called The Danaides, and described the acquittal of the brides through some intervention of Aphrodite: a fragment of it survives, in which the goddess appears to be pleading her special prerogative. The legends which commit the daughters of Danaus to an eternal penalty in Hades are, apparently, of later origin. Homer is silent on any such penalty; and Pindar, Aeschylus’ contemporary, actually describes the once suppliant maidens as honourably enthroned (Pyth. ix. 112: Nem. x. ll. 1-10) . ”

“ For his brother Ægyptus, enraged to find Danaüs forsworn, and hearing of his fortune in Argos, called his sons together and cried to them, saying: "Sons, will ye suffer yourselves to be fooled? Shall this man snatch from you your brides and rule in peace on the throne which he hath stolen? Nay, if ye be sons of mine, go, gather to yourselves a mighty army and take from him his daughters and his land, and the gods prosper you and protect your rights." ”

“ The Suppliant Women presents one particular phase of women’s subjection considered impersonally, and scarcely deals with the great question of how far force may be rightly met by force. In the legend the daughters of Danaus escape from slavery by killing their husbands on their wedding night, but of that Æschylus in this play tells us nothing. ”

“ Hadria looked bewildered.
“To tell you the truth, I have always wondered why women have never felt as I am sure you feel towards life. You remember that day at Dunaghee when you were so annoyed at my guessing your thoughts. They were unmistakeable to one who shared them. Your sex has always been a riddle to me; there seemed to be something abject in their nature, even among the noblest of them. But you are no riddle. While I think you are the least simple woman I ever met, you are to me the easiest to understand.” ”

“ But the long choric song comes to an end; and now Danaus, who has hitherto been waiting in suppliant posture at the foot of the statues of the gods which stand upon the stage, addresses his daughters, and calls them to come and take a position near him, within the place of sanctuary. For a host, he says, is approaching; and whether their coming be friendly or hostile, it is well to await it under the immediate protection of the gods. He warns them, too, how to bear themselves towards the strangers ”

“ Hadria remained till it was time to dress for dinner. Professor Fortescue had promised to dine with her and Valeria on this last evening. Little Martha had been put early to bed, in order that she might have a long rest before the morrow’s journey. The golden curls lay like strands of silk on the pillow, the bright eyes were closed in healthful slumber. The child lay, the very image of fresh and pure and sweet human life, with no thought and no dread of the uncertain future that loomed before her. Hannah had gone upstairs to pack her own belongings. ”

“ Temperley dared to assert—in the same cause. They were both victims of the same creed. It was a terrible cultus, a savage idol that had devoured them both, as cruel and insatiable as the brazen god of old, with his internal fires, which the faithful fed devoutly, with shrinking girls and screaming children.
“I still fail to understand why you adopt this child,” said Valeria. “My Caterina would never have done it.”
“The little creature interests me,” said Hadria. “It is a tiny field for the exercise of the creative forces. Every one has some form of active amusement. ”

“ Perseus When the wicked King Danaüs persuaded his daughters to kill their husbands on their wedding night, there was one, Hypermnestra, who refused to slay her lover, and by saving him brought upon the head of cruel Danaüs the doom that he had striven to escape.85 The grandson of Hypermnestra and Lynceus was Acrisius, king of Argo, a kindly ruler who dearly loved his only daughter Danaë, and kept her always near him to delight his eyes with her great beauty. Unfortunately the king chanced to learn from an oracle that he would one day be killed by his grandson ”

“ Algitha was walking restlessly to and fro.
“And I went to Dunaghee so often, so often,” she cried tearfully, “so that mother should not feel deserted, and you too came, and the boys when they could. But she never got over my leaving; she seemed to resent my independence, my habit of judging for myself; she hated every detail in which I differed from the girls she knew. If I had married and gone to the Antipodes, she would have been quite satisfied, but——”
“Ah, why do people need human souls for their daily food?” cried Hadria mournfully. ”

“ If we imagined that she had never felt the dulness of her life, and never longed to go about and see people and things, we were much mistaken. But she had renounced everything she cared for, from her girlhood—she was scarcely older than I when her sacrifices began—and now her children gave no consideration to her; they were ready to scatter themselves hither and thither without a thought of her, or her wishes. They even talked scoffingly of the kind of life that she had led for them—for them, she repeated bitterly.”
Hadria’s face had clouded. ”

“ Triumphant in wrath I fear!
Danaus.
Even let them come. They’ll find their match in Argos;
A strong-limbed race with noon-day sweats well hardened.n45
STROPHE II.
Chorus.
Only not leave me! Pray thee, father, stay!
Weak is a lonely woman. No Mars is in her.n46
Dark-counselled, false, cunning-hearted are they,
Unholy, as obscene crows
On the feast of the altar that filthily prey;
They fear not the gods, my foes!
Danaus.
’Twill make our cause the stronger, daughters, if
Their crime be sacrilege, and their foes the gods. ”

“ Hadria received this letter from the postman when she was coming out of Dodge’s cottage.
It threw her into a conflict of strong and painful feeling: foreboding, heart-sickness, a longing so strong to see her friends that it seemed as if she must pack up instantly and go to them, and through it all, a sense of loneliness that was almost unbearable. How she envied Valeria! To love with her whole heart, without a shadow of doubt; to have that element of warmth in her life which could never fail her, like sunshine to the earth. ”

“ Algitha exclaimed with a dispirited laugh.
“It will be a trial,” Hadria admitted; “but it is said that suffering strengthens the character. You may look forward before long, to claiming as sister a creature of iron purpose.”
“I wonder, I wonder,” cried Algitha, bending her fine head; “we owe everything to her.”
“I know we do. It’s of no use disguising the unpleasant side of the matter. A mother disappointed in her children must be a desperately unhappy woman. She has nothing left; for has she not resigned everything for them? But is sacrifice for ever to follow on sacrifice? ”

“ Of course all this anxiety was telling seriously on their mother. And, alas! she had been fretting very much about Hadria. After Algitha’s misdeed, this second blow struck hard.
One must act on one’s own convictions and not on those of somebody else, however beloved that other person might be, but truly the penalty of daring to take an independent line of action was almost unbearably severe. It really seemed, at times, as if there were nothing for it but to fold one’s hands and do exactly as one was bid. ”

“ She felt twenty years older since her marriage. She wondered why it was that marriage did not make all women wicked,—openly and actively so. If ever there was an arrangement by which every evil instinct and every spark of the devil was likely to be aroused and infuriated, surely the customs and traditions that clustered round this estate constituted that dangerous combination! Hardship, difficulty, tragedy could be faced, but not the humiliating, the degrading, the contemptible. Hadria had her own particular ideas as to what ought to be set down under these headings. ”

“ I deny that motherhood has duties except when it is absolutely free, absolutely uninfluenced by the pressure of opinion, or by any of the innumerable tyrannies that most children have now to thank for their existence.”
Miss Temperley shook her head. “I don’t see that any ‘tyranny,’ as you call it, exonerates a mother from her duty to her child.”
“There we differ. Motherhood, in our present social state, is the sign and seal as well as the means and method of a woman’s bondage. It forges chains of her own flesh and blood; it weaves cords of her own love and instinct. ”

“ Hadria had begun to feel a more personal interest in her charge. She had taken it under her care of her own choice, without the pressure of any social law or sentiment, and in these circumstances of freedom, its helplessness appealed to her protective instincts. She felt the relationship to be a true one, in contradistinction to the more usual form of protectorate of woman to child.
“There is nothing in it that gives offence to one’s dignity as a human being,” she asserted, “which is more than can be said of the ordinary relation, especially if it be legal.” ”

“ How was the child to be saved from the usual fate of womanhood? Hadria often felt a thrill of terror, when the beautiful blue eyes looked out, large and fearless, into the world that was just unfolding before them, in its mysterious loveliness.
The little girl gave promise of beauty. Even now there were elements that suggested a moving, attracting nature. “At her peril,” thought Hadria, “a woman moves and attracts. If I can only save her!”
Hadria had not seen Professor Fortescue since her return from Paris. ”

“ It can never be entirely out of date, dear Hadria. Nature has asked of women a great and hard service, but she has given them the maternal instinct and its joys, in compensation for the burden of this task, which would otherwise be intolerable and impossible. It can only be undertaken at the instigation of some stupendous impetus, that blinds the victim to the nature of her mission. ”

“ Throughout history, she reflected, children had been the unfailing means of bringing women into line with tradition. Who could stand against them? They had been able to force the most rebellious to their knees. An appeal to the maternal instinct had quenched the hardiest spirit of revolt. No wonder the instinct had been so trumpeted and exalted! Women might harbour dreams and plan insurrections ”

“ It is all very well what she says, about not allowing her woman’s sole weapon to be wrenched from her, but she can’t use it in this way, safely. One can’t play with human emotions without coming to grief.”
“A man, at any rate, has no idea of being led an emotional dance,” said Miss Du Prel.
“Hadria has, I believe, at the bottom of her heart, a lurking desire to hurt men, because they have hurt women so terribly,” said Algitha.
“One can understand the impulse, but the worst of it is, that one is certain to pay back the score on the good man, and let the other go free.” ”

“ Hadria told her sister that she felt herself unreal and fanciful in her presence. “I go twirling things round and round in my head till I grow dizzy. But you compare ideas with fact; you even turn ideas into fact; while I can get no hold on fact at all. Thoughts rise as mists rise from the river, but nothing happens. I feel them begin to prey upon me, working inwards.”
Algitha shook her head. “It is a mad world,” she said. “Week after week goes by, and there seems no lifting of the awful darkness in which the lives of these millions are passed. ”

“ This sense of brotherhood was strongest with regard to the poorer members of the congregation: the labourers with their toil-stained hands and bent heads, the wives, the weary mothers, their faces seamed with the ceaseless strain of child-bearing, and hard work, and care and worry. In their prematurely ageing faces, in their furrowed brows, Hadria could trace the marks of Life’s bare and ruthless hand, which had pressed so heavily on those whose task it had been to bestow the terrible gift. ”

“ Miss Du Prel laughed. “What an observant young woman you are.”
“Renunciation is always preached to girls, you know,” said Hadria—“preached to them when as yet they have nothing more than a rattle and a rag-doll to renounce. And later, when they set about the business of their life, and resign their liberty, their talents, their health, their opportunity, their beauty (if they have it) , then people gradually fall away from the despoiled and obedient being, and flock round the still unchastened creature who retains what the gods have given her, and asks for more.” ”

“ Valeria might scoff, as those proverbially did who never felt a wound. Hadria found a certain lack of tender feeling among the happy few who had no such tragic burdens to sustain.
Not only were these prosaic subjects banished from within the cincture of the gentle griffins, but also the suspicions, spites, petty jealousies, vulgar curiosities, and all the indefinable little darts and daggers that fly in the social air, destroying human sympathy and good-will. Each mind could expand freely, no longer on the defensive against the rain of small stabs. ”