Womanhood

“ May I not take it as the very embodiment of all that I have been urging on the women of this day, the immense possibilities of good that lie latent in our womanhood, the vast issues of good to the nation, and through it to the world, if that womanhood is only true to itself? ”

“ A careful study of those times reveals, beneath the surface of the life most conspicuous for its brilliancy and its vices, a type of womanhood as strong and heroic as we find in primitive days, with the added wisdom, culture, and helpfulness which had grown out of the freer development of the intellect. ”

“ These are they who fill our asylums, and make night hideous with their cries and groans.
The women who are called masculine, who are brave, courageous, self-reliant and independent, are they who in the face of adverse winds have kept one steady course upward and onward in the paths of virtue and peace—they who have taken their gauge of womanhood from their own native strength and dignity—they who have learned for themselves the will of God concerning them. This is our type of womanhood. ”

“ But the fact remains that it was largely through the inspired vision, which looked past the entanglements of sense into the pure heart and transparent soul of an idealized womanhood, that the long-enduring sex came into its intellectual kingdom. To the old ties of interest, passion, and habit, were added those of the intellect and spirit. In this new contact of intelligences society had its birth, women took their rightful places, and the world found a new regenerating force. ”

“ But if she is to be raised up to adorn a temple, or represent a divinity—if she is to fill the niche of wife and counsellor to true and noble men, if she is to be the mother, the educator of a race of heroes or martyrs, of a Napoleon, or a Jesus—then must the type of womanhood be on a larger scale than that yet carved by man. ”

“ Why is it that, after one brief glance—giving the lady credit for all these advantages—we feel sure that she has advanced already far into the maturity of womanhood? Perhaps, when the mind has been restless and the thoughts busy for a certain number of years, those years will not be dissembled, and, however carefully the exterior may have been conserved, traces of toil, sensible, if not visible, remain. ”

“ Women were intended for the gentler works of humanity, and who shall say that the great reformers of the earth can surpass her in this mission of love, or find a channel in all society through which her womanhood can be so beautifully perfected? ”

“ And it is this great upward movement, lifting man to a higher level, which is given into the hands of us women, touching, as it does, all the great trusts of our womanhood. What are we women going to do in the face of such vast issues for good or evil? ”

“ It is therefore not surprising that in the late Middle Ages a regard and reverence for womanhood gradually arose—a regard and reverence for woman not merely as the weaker vessel, but as the principle of all good and of moral elevation. ”

“ The spiritual force, slowly unfolding, that has uplifted, and is still uplifting, womanhood, is the foundation of woman's claim that the further progress of humanity is bound up with her restoration to a position of freedom and human equality. ”

“ No religion, no civil government, has ever taught or recognized any other condition for woman than that of subjection. Against the accumulated precedents of all the ages, you and your noble coädjutors have rebelled in the face of derision for fifty long, weary years. Was ever such sublime womanly heroism and self-sacrifice before known? Was ever such worth of culture, such wealth of womanhood, laid on the altar of country and humanity? ”

“ The heart of true womanhood knows where its own sphere is, and never seeks to stray beyond it!" ”

“ It means the elevation of woman by the development of her womanly qualities in the direction of their highest possibilities, and by adding to womanhood a new power, a deeper, more far-reaching sympathy, an ineffable glow and a nobler beauty. ”

“ The best definition we can give of true womanhood is, that it consists in having all the faculties, physical, intellectual, moral, and spiritual, existing in a healthy and vigorous condition, so as to be able to perform, in an efficient manner, all the functions for which they are destined. Our aim is bold, broad, truthful delineation. ”

“ We have found, too, that such husbands can remotivate themselves if they will contemplate the potentialities of womanhood toward which their wives now consciously aspire. I have tried throughout this book to show, in some of their variety, the magnificent and exciting qualities that characterize true womanhood. ”

“ It is this thought which has induced the author to attempt to depict the transformation of a careless maiden into noble womanhood.
In this first book, the process has begun. There are heart burnings, and troubles of girlhood. ”

“ There are attributes of womanhood which directly serve human life, present and to come—attributes of vitality and faithfulness, attributes of body and bosom, of mind and of feeling, which it is within the power of the great artist to portray ”

“ The lady can't do it. This class, of what I suppose you would call peasant women (I won't have the word) , seems made for the purpose of rectifying everything, and redressing the balance, inspiring us with that awe which the immediate presence of absolute womanhood creates in us. The plain, practical woman, with the outspoken throat and the eternal eyes. ”

“ So by the time her womanhood does come it finds every encouragement, and the humanhood which should predominate we have restricted and forbidden. Moreover, whatever of real humanness she does manifest we persist in regarding as feminine. ”

“ Those cheeks, once so beautifully rounded, now sunken into lines and hollows—the livid darkness beneath the eyes—the whitened lip—the sharp, anxious, worn expression, which had replaced that glorious and beaming regard from which all the life of genius, all the sweet pride of womanhood had glowed forth, and in which not only the intelligence, but the eternity of the soul, seemed visibly wrought. ”

“ A figure full of the affluent beauty of womanhood in its prime, bearing unmistakable marks of the polished pupil of the world in the grace that flowed through every motion, the art which taught each feature to play its part with the ease of second nature and made dress the foil to loveliness. The face was delicate and dark as a fine bronze, a low forehead set in shadowy waves of hair, eyes full of slumberous fire, and a passionate yet haughty mouth that seemed shaped alike for caresses and commands. ”

“ The idea of perfect womanhood is perfect independence. ”

“ All in the waning light she stood,
The star of perfect womanhood. ”

“ There played around her mouth, and beamed out of her eyes, a radiant and tender smile, that seemed gushing from the very heart of womanhood. A crimson flush was glowing on her cheek, that had been long so pale. Her sex, her youth, and the whole richness of her beauty, came back from what men call the irrevocable past, and clustered themselves with her maiden hope, and a happiness before unknown, within the magic circle of this hour. And, as if the gloom of the earth and sky had been but the effluence of these two mortal hearts, it vanished with their sorrow. ”

“ In these pages we have made some record of woman's work in past centuries, and also caught glimpses of duties, loves, hopes, fears, and sorrows not unlike our own. A wider sphere is now accorded, and a deeper responsibility devolves upon woman to fill it wisely and well. We should never forget that, as far as they were faithful to the duties appointed to them, they elevated their sex to a higher and nobler position, and therein performed the best work of the women of the Middle Ages. ”

“ Perhaps that is so; but people putting in practice commonly this sense of interest in the ordinary occupations of life rather startles me. I will ask you a question or two presently about that. But I want to return to the position of women amongst you. You have studied the 'emancipation of women' business of the nineteenth century: don't you remember that some of the 'superior' women wanted to emancipate the more intelligent part of their sex from the bearing of children? ”

“ In Christian lands, and beneath our own observation, we can see that it is so. Mark the nation, the city, the village, where order, purity and the social virtues in general, prevail. What is there the female character? We hazard nothing in the reply, that it is elevated, accomplished, and pure. The coarse jest, the impure expression, the subtle inuendo,—poisoning the more surely and deeply, by its very obscureness,—where are these tolerated? Where woman maintains the high rank of her sex? ”

“ I cannot better conclude than with the hope that these examples of what may be done may excite a noble emulation in their own sex, and in ours such a conviction of the value of the female mind, as shall overcome our long-cherished prejudices, and induce us to give our earnest endeavors to the promotion of women's best interests. ”

“ Every good quality, every virtue which we regard as distinctively feminine, will, under conditions of greater freedom, develop more freely, like plants brought out into the light from a cellar in which they languished, dwarfed and blanched, without sun or air. The woman is strong in almost every woman ”

“ But see what (in order to make itself effective) it has had to throw over at each stage of its advance—things to which beautiful names have been given, things which were assumed all through the Victorian era to be essential to womanliness, and to be so engrained in the woman's nature, that without them womanliness itself must perish. ”

“ It is written in the true spirit, and evinces extensive observation of society, a clear insight into the evils surrounding and pressing down her sex, and a glorious determination to expose and remove them. Read her work. She will win a willing way to the heart and home of woman, and her mission will be found to be one of beneficence and love. Truly, woman has her work and her reward.”—American Spectator. ”

“ In searching the history of women, the mild, unobtrusive domestic virtues, which constitute their greatest charm, and ought always to be the ground-work of their character, are not found on record. We hear of storms and tempests, and northern lights; but men do not describe the perpetual blessing of sunshine. ”

“ She makes every allowance for human nature, [Pg 81] every concession to the necessities of temperament, every recognition of the human need for freedom, and yet makes the love of one man and one woman seem the highest ideal, a thing worth striving and waiting and suffering for.
She cherishes the spiritual magic of sex as the finest achievement of the race, and sees it as the central and guiding principle in our social and economic evolution. ”

“ If this new evaluation of woman’s work in civilization seems to err on the side of woman, we shall be satisfied if it helps to bring about a re-evaluation which shall include women not in an incidental way but as people of flesh and blood and brain—feeling, seeing, judging and directing, equally with men, all the great social forces which mold character and determine general comfort, well-being and happiness. ”

“ Then let us have our daughters educated as women, and not as men. Let us have them trained for the duties of the household and the nursery, and the sweet enchantments of the domestic hearth. "Be that you are—that is, a woman; if you be more, you're none." ”

“ She comes to meet us half absorbed in her own thoughts, a complete woman,—complete in that indissoluble unity which is the basis of a healthy woman’s nature: woman-child and also woman-mother, a woman with the stamp which is the result of deep, vital experience, with a woman’s tragedy ineffaceably engraved on every feature,—this same woman’s tragedy which she reproduces upon the stage. ”

“ THE woman's question—woman as she is, woman as she will be! That is my subject; and I want, at the outset, to get away from woman as the individual, more or less pleasing, more or less aggravating, more or less useful. I want to study woman in the abstract: the great woman-principle in life, in thought, and in action. ”

“ But the most interesting question for women to consider is this: Who conducts this picturesque consistory, with its rites, its titles, and its uniforms? Which sex is it that makes up this society, and twenty other societies so absorbing in their “work” that some worthy persons have a “society” for almost every evening in the week? ”

“ Reforms are needed—none can be more sensible of this fact than we—and the remedy can be applied by woman; this we not only concede, but claim. But it is as woman, as wife, as mother that she must do the work: as woman, to soften asperities, and to refine what else were coarse and brutal ”

“ And yet those women—the sweet and gracious ornaments of a self-respecting society—were full of spirit, of modest pride in their position, were familiar with much good literature, could converse with piquancy and understanding on subjects of general interest, were trained in the subtleties of a solid theology, and bore themselves in any company with that traditional breeding which we associate with the name of lady. ”

“ They may be better adapted to the constitution of the female sex, but the question arises, Are those in which women now engage, except domestic duties, more congenial [Pg xii] to their taste, more acceptable to their feelings, more likely to develop their mental powers, and rightly direct their moral nature, than many others in which they might engage? ”