Amelia Barr - Maids, Wives, and Bachelors

But from whatever cause the women of the present and future generations remain unmarried, they will have no need to dread the condition, as unmarried women of the previous generations have had good cause to do. Every year finds them more independent. They are constantly invading fresh trades, and stepping up into more important positions. They live in pretty chambers; they dress charmingly; they have a bank account; they go to the opera and the theatres in their own protection; and instead of being the humble poor relations of married sisters and brothers, they are now their equals, their patrons, and their honored guests. Besides which, old maids have begun to write novels; and in them they have given us such exquisite portraits of their order – women so rich in every womanly grace – hat we are almost compelled to believe the unmarried women in our midst to be the salt of the community.

At any rate, we are beginning to shift the blame and the obloquy of the position to the old bachelors, where it rightly belongs; and this is at least a move in the just and proper direction. For old bachelors have no excuse whatever for their condition. If we omit the natural and necessary exceptions, which are few enough, then pure selfishness and cowardice must account for every other case. Their despised old-bachelorhood is all their own fault. They have always had the tremendous privilege of asking for what they wanted; and half the battle was in that privilege. Men don’t have wives because they don’t ask for them; and they don’t ask for them because they don’t want them; and in this condition lie their shame and their degradation, and the well-deserved scorn with which the married part of both sexes regard them.

Men are also much more contemptible and useless in their celibacy than are women. An old maid can generally make herself of service to some one. If she is rich, she attaches herself to church work, or to art, or to the children of brothers and sisters. Or she travels all over the world, and writes a book about her adventures. If she is poor, she works hard and saves money; and thus becomes an object of interest and respect in her own set. Or she is nurse and helper for all that need her help in her village, or her church, or her family. At any rate, she never descends to such depths of ennui and selfishness as do the old bachelors who loll about on the club sofas, or who dawdle discontentedly at afternoon teas. An old maid may be troublesome in church business, or particular in household affairs; but it takes an old bachelor to quarrel with waiters and grumble every one insane about his dinner menu. An old maid may gossip, but she will not bore every one to death about her dyspepsia; and if she has to starve others, we may be very certain she would never fall under that tyranny of valets and janitors which are the “sling and arrows” of wealthy, selfish old bachelors.

On the whole, then, the unmarried woman is becoming every year more self-reliant, and more respectable and respected, and the unmarried man more effeminate and contemptible. We look for a day, not far off, when a man will have to become a member of some religious order if he wishes a reputable excuse for his celibacy; and even in secular life it would not be a bad idea to clothe bachelors after forty years of age in a certain uniform. They might also after that age be advised to have their own clubs and recreations; for their assumption of equality with those of their sex who have done their duty as men and citizens is a piece of presumption that married men ought to resent. Men who marry are the honorable progenitors of the future; and their self-denying, busy lives not only bless this generation, but prepare for the next one. The old bachelor is merely a human figure, without duties and without hopes. Nationally and socially, domestically and personally, he is a spoon with nothing in it!

One of the most interesting, piquant, and picturesque of all types of feminine humanity is the American girl, – not the hothouse variety, reared for the adornment of luxury, but the every-day, every-where girls that throng the roads leading to the public schools and the normal schools, and who, even, in a higher state of culture fill the halls of learned colleges with a wondrous charm and brightness, – girls who have an aim in life, a mission to fulfil, a home to order, who know the worth of money, who are not ashamed to earn it, and who manage out of limited means to compass all their desires for pretty dresses and summer vacations, and even their pet dream of an ocean voyage and a sight of the Old World.

Physically, these girls enjoy life at its highest point. Look at their flushed cheeks and bright, fearless eyes, and watch their light, swift, even steps. They have no complaint to make of the heat, or the sunshine, or the frost; they have not yet heard of the east wind. Rain does not make them cross; and as for the snow, it throws them into a delicious excitement; while the wind blowing their dresses about them in colored clouds only makes them the more eager to try their strength against it.

That these girls so physically lovely should have the proper mental training is a point of the gravest personal and national importance. And it is the glory of our age that this necessity has been nobly met. For the American girl, “Wisdom has builded her house and hewn out her Seven Pillars;” and as she points to the lofty entrance she cries to all alike, “Go up; the door is open!” If the girls of fifty years ago could have known the privileges of our era how would they have marvelled and rejoiced and desired “to see their day.”

But manifold as her privileges are, the American girl generally knows how to use them. She proves daily that the parable of the ten talents did not refer to men only. Indeed, the fault girls are most likely to fall into is the belief that they each and all possess every one of the talents. In reality this is so seldom the case that it is impossible to educate all girls after one pattern; and it is therefore a grand thing for a girl to know just what she can and cannot do. For if she have only five talents there is no advantage to be gained by creating fictitious ones, since the noblest education is that which looks to the development of the natural abilities, whether they be few or many, fashionable or unfashionable.

Ask the majority of people “What is education?” and they will be apt to answer “The improvement of the mind.” But this answer does not take us one step beyond the starting-point. Probably the best and most generally useful rule for a girl is a deliberate and conscientious inquiry into her own nature and inclinations as to what she wants to do with her education. When she has faithfully answered the inquiry she is ready to prepare herself for this end. For it is neither necessary nor yet possible that every girl should know everything. Besides which, the growth of individuality has made special knowledge a thing of great value, and on all occasions of importance we are apt to defer to it. If we cross the Atlantic we look for a captain who has a special knowledge of its stormy ways. If we are really ill we go to a specialist on our ailment, no matter what “pathy” we prefer. Special knowledge has a prima facie worth, and without inquiry into a subject we are inclined to consider specialists on the subject better informed than those who have not this qualification. Hence the importance of cultivating some one talent to such perfection as will enable a girl, if need be, to turn it into money.

There is another point in the preparation of the American girl for the duties of life which is often undervalued, or even quite ignored; it is the little remembered fact that all our moral and intellectual qualities are very dependent for their value on our surroundings. The old Quakers used to lay great stress upon being “in one’s right place.” When the right person is in the right place there is sure to be a success in life; failure in this respect is almost certain misfortune; a fine accountant before the mass, a fine lady in the wilderness, are out of their places, and have lost their opportunity. And so educational accomplishments which would bring wealth and honor in a great city may be detrimental to happiness and a drag on duty in an isolated position.