56
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
everybody miserable about her. She constantly seeks change. She is going somewhere all the time. Her frame of mind, with the late hours and excitement of society life, rob her of her youthful charms, and her spirit loses its sweetness and fastens unerringly the lines of pain and suffering upon her face. It is so strange that parents do not see that their daughters, as well as their sons, are really human beings. You wish your son to make a choice of profession or calling. You strive to assist him in every possible way to do so, and feel dissatisfied with him if he continually puts off this choice and seems to center upon nothing. But it is far otherwise with your daughter. The kind of limitation spoken of is what is most often imposed upon her, and a great part of the viciousness of this whole order of things consists in the absolute dependence in which she is placed. These girls are made to feel that their own judgment is not final in any respect; that they are pensioners on the bounty of their father or male relatives; that the services they render have no money value; and it is the surest of methods to produce weakness of judgment, irresponsibility in expenditure, and incapacity for any useful service. What all about us expect from us that is what we are most likely to give; and we either sink or rise to the level of the opinions of our friends concerning us. We are in a world of material things. Our feet are on the solid earth. It seems to be a law of nature that we desire to acquire something that we can call our own.
A young man never makes a success in life until he has some capital of money, profession, or business training. He must be a center, and be capable of gathering and holding something. He does not get a foothold in a community until he accomplishes this. He does not become conscious of his own possibilities or capabilities until he does it. Neither does the community about him.
Now is it so easy a matter to train the young for life that we can afford to throw away the strength and dignity that come from the acquisition of property, simply because the young man chances to be a young woman. Now I hear some one say, “You are leaving marriage out of the question.” No, I am but speaking for those for whom a desirable marriage does not yet appear. I would not ignore marriage, but I would have a young girl so trained and prepared for life that she should enter into it only because of the compelling persuasiveness of a genuine love.
And I think most women would bear me out in the opinion, that the power to acquire and to properly care for money would rather sweeten the path of matrimony than lessen its advantages.
Anything that is so powerful in the human make-up as the love of possession, the desire to feel “This is mine,” and is so inherent in our very nature, we do wrong to cast aside and give no legitimate field of action. Our daughters are crippled and dwarfed, and are not the grand and well-rounded women they might become.
Then this extreme dependence we impose upon them causes them to look upon marriage as the only loop-hole of escape from an irksome bondage, and they come to seek marriage as a means to this end. There is something terribly degrading in this attitude in which many of our well-to-do young women of today are placed. In a sneering way it is said, “They are in the market.”
How much nobler and finer is the attitude of a woman who prepares herself for some useful profession or calling, and finds enough of interest in the busy activities of life to engross her best energies, to expand her powers, and to make her what God intended her to be—a ministering, self-helpful woman. Then when love speaks, and the love of her own heart answers, is she the less prepared for a happy marriage? I think not.
Many of us have known the genteel lady of poverty and have seen her willing to i)eg or borrow without the slightest idea of return, rather than do the useful things of life.
A bright friend has suggested that when the stress of need and trouble has come the battle of life is half won; when one’s own opinions, which act as suckers upon the roots of strength and energy, are cut down, an open field is left free and clear.