Quaker woman

“ The distinctions of dress which announce the female Quaker are all in her favour. In a nation eminent for personal purity, and where it should seem beforehand impossible for any woman to create a pre-eminence for herself in that respect, so it is, however, that the female Quaker, by her dress, seems even purer than [Pg 387] other women, and consecrated to a service of purity; earthly soil or taint, even the sullying breath of mortality, seems as if kept aloof from her person—forcibly held in repulsion by some protecting sanctity. ”

“ The Quaker was the sort of man in whose face and mind one could see exactly what his mother was like. Some men are like that, and others, one would say, could never have been so intimate with a woman as to be born of her. ”

“ On Monday morning, we took the stage-coach at Middlebury for this place. An old Quaker, in a broad-brimmed hat and a coat of the ancient cut, shaped somewhat like the upper shell of the tortoise, came to hand in his granddaughter, a middle-aged woman, whom he had that morning accompanied from Lincoln, a place about eighteen miles distant, where there is a Quaker neighborhood and a Quaker meeting-house. The denomination of Quakers seems to be dying out in the United States, like the Indian race; not that the families become extinct, but pass into other denominations. ”

“ She had been married by her parents to a sordid lout of a Quaker, in New England, whose horrid barbarities and persecutions had finally compelled the weak and hitherto unresisting woman to seek a separation, the scandal of which had roused against her the relentless animosity of the whole body of New England Quakers, who finally carried their brutal persecution to the extreme of assisting her yet more brutal husband, in robbing her of her dear and only child, under the plea that she was neither a suitable nor capable person to have charge of it. ”

“ A woman born into a Quaker family inherits the tradition of a faith which is of the heart rather than of the head, of intuition rather than intellectation, of life primarily rather than of doctrine; and, therefore, it would seem particularly suited to the development of her religious consciousness ”

“ They are more the creatures of nature and impulse, and less cast in the mould of habit or prejudice. If a young man and woman in common life are seen walking out together on a holiday, the girl has the advantage in point of air and dress. She has a greater aptitude in catching external accomplishments and the manners of her superiors, and is less depressed by a painful consciousness of her situation in life. A Quaker girl is often as sensible and conversable as any other woman: while a Quaker man is a bundle of quaint opinions and conceit. ”

“ People of other denominations have charged the Quakers with a more than usually censurable pride, on account of their adoption of this law. They consider them as looking down upon the rest of their fellow-creatures, as so inferior or unholy, as not to deign or to dare to mix in alliance with them, or as looking upon them in the same light as the Jews considered the Heathen, or the Greeks the Barbarian world. And they have charged them also with as much cruelty as pride, on the same account. "A Quaker, they say, feels himself strongly attached to an accomplished woman ”

“ This same friend also told me of a Quaker who had a very large grocer’s shop. He was often asked for a little piece of string by the country women, and I suppose he got rather tired of giving it, so on one occasion he said in his quiet way, “Take what thy conscience will allow.” The woman said it would allow her to take it all.
They always looked well after their pounds, shillings, and pence, and very often amassed large fortunes; it is rare to hear of a really poor Quaker. In this respect they are very good to one another and talk little about it. ”

“ When men wish to marry, they wish, at least if they are men of sense, to find such women as are virtuous; to find such as are prudent and domestic, and such as have a proper sense of the folly and dissipation of the Fashionable world; such in fact as will make good mothers and good wives. Now if a Quaker looks into his own society, he will generally find the female part of it of this description. Female Quakers excel in these points. But if he looks into the world at large, he will in general find a contrast in the females there. ”

“ But the same reason, which thus operates with Quaker-men in the choice of Quaker-women, operates with men who are not of the society, in choosing them also for their wives. These are often no strangers to the good education, and to the high character, of the Quaker-females. ”

“ Fearful often of marrying among the badly educated women of their own persuasion, they frequently address themselves to this society, and not unfrequently succeed.
To this it may be added, that if Quaker-men were to attempt to marry out of their own society, they would not in general be well received. Their dress and their manners are considered as uncouth in the eyes of the female-world, and would present themselves as so many obstacles in the way of their success. The women of this description generally like a smart and showy exterior. They admire heroism and spirit. ”

“ The execution of these and other, public offices, by which the Quaker women have an important station allotted them in society, cannot but have an important influence on their minds. It gives them, in fact, a new cast of character. It imparts to them, in the first place, a considerable knowledge of human nature. It produces in them thought, and foresight, and judgment. It creates in them a care and concern for the distressed. It elevates their ideas. ”

“ We may look with wonder and admiration at the great figures amongst Quaker women, upon those who built their lives into the first spreadings of the message; upon those who went, under the urgency of their faith, alone into strange lands, where means of communication were the scantiest; upon the persecuted and martyred women, the women of initiative and organizing genius ”

“ It was suggested that of late years the increasing membership had brought in women who were without the Quaker tradition—a fact which would account for the growing deficit of feminine activities. Attention was also drawn to the unseen mass of feminine initiative, the result of which is credited to men. ”

“ Neither will the Quaker women be considered as deficient in knowledge, if compared with women of other religious denominations. It is too much the practice, but particularly in the higher circles, to educate females for shew. ”

“ But even among the straitest there was a vague appreciation of beauty, as if it were a delusion and a snare. And the Quaker child glanced at the shining hair, the clear, pearly skin, the large lustrous eyes, the dainty hand, and the frock that, though plain, had a certain air like Lord's Day attire, and was not faded as an every-day garb would be. Then she glanced at hers, where a tuck had been pulled out to lengthen it, and left a band of much deeper blue, and the new half sleeves shamed the old tops. Her heart was filled with sudden envy.
"Thou art not to live here always," she began. ”

“ This escape was the result, not of any kind of feminism, any sort of special solicitude for or belief in women as a class. Nor was it the result of a protest against any definitely recognized existing attitude. Such unstable and fluctuating emotions could not have carried through the Quaker reformation of the relations of the sexes. The recognition of the public ministry of women was an act of faith. It was a step that followed from a central belief in the universality of the inner light. ”

“ The Quakers, it is confessed by their adversaries, are not chargeable with the same sort of pride and vanity, which attach to the characters of other people, who dress in a gay manner, and who follow the fashions of the world, but it is contended, on the other hand, that they are justly chargeable with a preciseness, that is disgusting, in the little particularities of their cloathing. This precise attention to particularities is considered as little better than the worshipping of lifeless forms, and is usually called by the world the idolatry of the Quaker-dress. ”

“ He kissed her so savagely that she lay quiet in his arms.
“Bell-Bell,” murmured the happy and dishevelled Quaker lady to the sleepy lady of the house of Jarn, “I’m sorry. Forgive me. It was more than a minute—wasn’t it?”
“I think it was an hour,” snapped Bell-Bell, with pretended savagery.
“Bib—but thee did not call,” half sobbed the happy one, “and—and I—forgot!”
“God bless you both!” shouted the little wife, and in a moment had the dishevelled head with the damp tendrils of hair on her breast. “I am almost as happy as you.”
“Why?” questioned the Quaker lady. ”

“ It is interesting to note that one of the most striking features of the technique of Quaker meetings, whether for business or worship, is the working out of the distinctive characteristics of the sexes. Their contradiction, and the tendency psychology has roughly summarized of women, as a class, to control thought by feeling, and of men, as a class, to allow “reason” the first place, is here at its height.
The two rival and ever-competing definitions of reality both find expression. Each must tolerate the other. Reaction takes place without bitterness. ”

“ After the deification of Woman in the Catholic Church, in the sixteenth or seventeenth century,—when her religious nature gave her, of course, new importance,—the Quakers have the honor of having first established, in their discipline, the equality in the sexes. It is even more perfect in the later sect of the Shakers, where no business is broached or counselled without the intervention of one elder and one elderess. ”

“ The truth is, that the discipline and education of the Quakers produce an appearance of a want of animation, and this outward appearance the world has falsely taken as a symbol of the character of the heart. Can we expect that a due subjugation of the passions, which is insisted upon in true Quaker families, will give either warmth to the countenance, or spirit to the outward manners? Do not the passions animate, and give a tone to the characters of men? ”

“ She leaves the Quakers, and goes as secretary to a lady who holds eccentric if broadminded views on every conceivable subject, and the change of atmosphere, however delightful in various ways, was too much for Margaret's peace of mind. The young Quaker was an obstinate wooer and followed her up, but his chances of success, which were never rosy, grew dimmer and dimmer as Margaret, freeing herself of shackles, gradually began to see life as a whole instead of through the eye of a darning-needle. ”

“ What, if that inner light illumines a dark desire in the human soul? if the inward voice finds itself opposed by a debased or evil impulse of the heart? The Quakers have forgotten, or have not regarded the old saying, that “there is a drop of black blood in every man's heart.” And in order to make this pure, neither light nor admonishing voice avails anything, but only another drop of blood of divine power and purity. The Quakers may, in the mysteries of Quaker life, find proofs enough of the existence of this black drop, even among the children of the inner light ”

“ So I have heard charming young Quaker girls, who in more thoughtless days indulged in what for them was a slight shading of worldly conformity, say that it was to them a blessed rest when they put on the strict, plain dress, and felt that they really had taken up the cross and turned their backs on the world. ”

“ It is not surprising that in a riper age of the world, after lifetimes of this idealization of peasant states of mind, their children find themselves morally and mentally unprepared for the responsibilities of citizenship, of high ethical trust and of the varied ways of a moral world, whose existence their fathers made believe to ignore and deny.
Women have always occupied in Quakerism a place theoretically equal to that of the men, in business and religious affairs. George Fox and his successors declared men and women equal, inasmuch as the Divine Spirit is in every human soul. ”

“ They had themselves suffered for their faith, though not as these others; and they found a respect for those who shrank from no penalty so that they might testify to their faith and do service. It is after the coming of the Quakers that we find the New England woman more determined, more active, more bound to high ideals. The mark of the despised Quakers remained deeply graven, in effect if not in heredity, on the New England character, especially in its women. ”

“ For though it might be supposed at the first sight (the Quakers being cast as it were in one mould) that the same character would attach to both, yet it must be obvious, on farther consideration, that it cannot be wholly applicable to the female sex.
It may be laid down as a position, that the women of this society share in the virtues of the men. They possess their benevolence, their independence of mind, and the other good traits in their moral character. But they do not always partake of all their reputed imperfections. ”

“ In the same manner as the dress, which they received from their ancestors has operated as a guardian, or preservative of virtue, so has the language which they received from them also. The language has made the world overseers of the conduct of the society. A Quaker is known by his language as much as by his dress. It operates, by discovering him, as a check upon his actions. It keeps him also, like the dress distinct from others. And the Quakers believe, that they can never keep up their Christian discipline, except they keep clear of the spirit of the world. ”