" THE GLORIFIED SPINSTER."
THERE is a paper on "The Glorified Spinster" in Macmillan's Magazine which gives a striking picture of the new class of young women who do not regard marriage even among the probabilities, but so lay out their lives as to be altogether as independent of external, help, as if they were young men of the same education and abilities. The writer paints them as hard-working, cheerful, extracting a good deal of pleasure from cheap social amusements, quite indifferent to home society, extremely frugal, more completely emanci- pated than the other sex from old prejudices, and also as at least supposing themselves much more ready than men to act on revolutionary ideas when once they have, as they think, convinced themselves of their truth. The difference between them and " old-maids " is said to be that the old-maid is a woman minus something,—namely, we suppose, a husband,—. whereas the glorified spinster is a woman plus something,— namely, we suppose, self-dependence,—the one wanting to . lean without having any legitimate support to lean upon ; the other not wanting to lean at all. Nevertheless, we should ourselves never have thought of describing her as a woman plus something, especially if the writer's pro- bably rather exaggerated description of her as quite willing to discuss the advantages of State-regulated infanticide, or any equally hideous mode of dealing with the evils of society, be a, true description. Grant the truth of that description, and we should regard her as a woman minus more than any plus could make up for ; and so far from thinking her to be in any sense a spinster glorified, we should treat her as decidedly a spinster mutilated. We suspect, however, that the class of women delineated,—those who maintain themselves without even looking forward to marriage as their natural lot, —are by no means so "emancipated" from all feminine prepossessions as are the few married women who pose as freethinkers, and who really depend a good deal on acquiescent husbands for encouragement in propounding their startling social opinions. The self-dependent women who earn their own livelihood, and who have taught themselves to live happily in comparative solitude, are necessarily keen, prompt, and decisive ; but, like most men who are keen, prompt, and decisive, they have learnt a good deal of intellectual caution from their habits of action, and do not give themselves up to violent speculation with half the abandon with which women who really lean for all practical purposes on others, are prepared to give themselves up to such speculation if they find that by doing so they gain the applause of those on whom they lean. The " glorified spinster" is not half as audacious as the pretty married woman who is sure of masculine sympathy in her flights.
But the interest of this striking sketch consists for us less in the mere picture of the able, cheerful, self-dependent, laborious creature who can earn £80 a year and live upon it, and get a good deal of cheap enjoyment out of it, than in the problem how it happens that women can rid themselves more easily (as they certainly do) of the habit of dependence on others, and of the characteristics of timidity, want of straight- forwardness, and the rest, which come of that habit of leaning, than they can rid themselves of "the power of self-sacrifice, warm sympathies, compassion, patient endurance," which are the more active elements of the same sort of mental inheritance. The writer in Macmillan puts it thus :—" The peculiar womanly virtues—power of self-sacrifice, warm sympathies, compassion, patient endurance—represent an untold amount of suffering on the part of the weaker sex in past ages. It is to the world's interest that the fruit of such suffering be not lost ;" and he evidently thinks that it will be much harder for women to strip themselves of the unselfishness which he regards as the trans- mitted consequence of ages of suffering, than it certainly has been to strip themselves of the timidity, the insincerities, the hesitation, narrowness, stupidity, which also resulted from their habits of dependence on men who had needlessly in- flicted a great deal of that suffering. We hope and believe that he is quite right. But why should it be so much easier to get rid of the evil qualities inherited from their mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers, than it is to get rid of the good ? Or is the assumption a mistake P Is it, in fact, as easy for women who take up the self-dependent life to rid themselves of the higher feminine instincts, as it is to rid themselves of the habits of dependence out of which those instincts are supposed to have grown ? Is it true that our business spinsters con- tinue to " possess by inheritance woman's passionate pity for suffering and power of self-abnegation, while hard necessity has perforce taught them something of self-control, coolness of judgment, and the adaptation of means to ends " ? One would have supposed that if it be the inheritance of suffering which their weakness has brought upon them, to which their unselfishness and compassion are due, the very same causes which were strong enough to eliminate one set of consequences of that weakness and suffering, would have eliminated the others also. If the complaisance which makes the weaker sex desirous to accommodate itself to the stronger, and the con- sequent want of straightforwardness disappear on the cessa- tion of the sufferings of subjection, why should the greater tenderness, the softer sympathy, which are attributed to them as the effect of those sufferings, remain ? If the indecision,
the irresolution, the incapacity for prompt action disappear, why should the sympathy which causes that indecision and irresolution, which diverts the mind from acting strongly on its own sober judgment, remain P If a long inheritance of " subjection," as J S Mill called it, produced the habit of self-sacrifice on the one hand, and the habit of pusillanimity and of looking to others for the directing hand on the other, why should it have been so much easier to extinguish the latter habit by a new education, than it has proved to ex- tinguish the former ? Or was it really equally easy to extinguish both P And have the women who have gained masculine courage, self-dependence, and coolness of judgment, lost at the same time that tenderness of sympathy and sweetness of endurance which were the compensations of their weakness ?
We think not, and are indeed very sceptical as to almost all the deeper assumptions of the essayist. We question most of all his belief that the unselfishness of women is due to the long inheritance of suffering which their weakness entailed upon them. For, in point of fact, the power of feeling with others is much more easily crushed out by tyrannical oppression, than by any other cause. Look at the men who have been made slaves and ill-used, and see how frequently their power of unselfish feeling for others has been crashed out of them by that process. Why should not women, who are supposed to have suffered still more than men from the same cause, because they are weaker, have had their power of sympathy even more crushed out of them than men, instead of having been made more unselfish, as the writer supposes, by that very curious receipt for making human nature unselfish? It is much more true that it is women's natural gift for feeling with others, i.e., their natural unselfishness, which has made them suffer where men would not have suffered, or would not have suffered nearly so much,. than that it is their inheritance of suffering which has made• them unselfish. There is no tendency at all in suffering to make either men or women unselfish, though it is unselfishness which. makes suffering enlarge the nature instead of contracting it. Submit an unselfish person, whether man or woman, to a long course of suffering, and no doubt the result will be a great elevation and spiritualisation of character ; but submit a selfish person, whether man or woman, to the same dis- cipline, and unless there is enough conscience to overcome the selfishness, the suffering will degrade and deaden instead of elevating and purifying. We do not believe that men are
more necessary to women than women are to men. They are mutually dependent, though in very different ways, and it is not harder for women to become independent of men (except so far as their power of earning money is less) than it is for men to become independent of women. The natural differences between men and women have certainly never been produced by the mere relative strength of the one and the relative weakness of the other. The mental differences have been at least as original as the relative difference in strength.
And the greatest of these differences is, we should say, that women's nature inclines and enables them to enter into the feelings of others, whether men or women, more easily than men ; while men's nature inclines and enables them to take up active work for others more easily than women. It is an unsexed woman who cannot feel more truly for either man or woman than the average man ; it is an unsexed man who does not feel the impulse to act for those who need it, whether men or women, more imperiously than the average woman. The former have the greater gift for passive sympathy, the latter the greater gift for active help. But it is certainly true that the gift for sympathy will constantly lead the stronger women into active help, and that the gift for active help will often lead the more sensitive men into a very deep and discriminating power of sympathy.
As for "the Glorified Spinster," we decline to think her glorified at all. She is simply a woman who lives a more or less unnatural life of self-dependence,—the degree of the un- naturalness depending on the degree of her self-dependence and the completeness of the disappearance of that religious devoutness which prevents loneliness from degenerating into self-dependence,—just as a glorified bachelor, if there be such a being, is simply a man who lives a more or less unnatural life of anxiety for himself, instead of for others on behalf of whom his nature craves to act. There is no glorification in any kind of mutilation, and it is as much a mutilation of the feminine nature to live the self-dependent life without the power of constantly entering into the feelings and wants of others, as it is a mutilation of the masculine nature to live a life of self-dependence in which there is no large element of constant responsibility for the external necessities of fellow- creatures.
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