Can All Marry?

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CAN ALL MARRY?

There is a pleasant theory—That every woman may be loved, once at least in her life, if she so wills it. It must be true: how, otherwise, can you account for the number of hard-featured visages—light up by no redeeming rays of intellect—that preside at "good men's feasts," and confront them at their fire-sides? How do the husbands manage? Do they, from constantly contemplating an inferior type of creation, lose their comparing and discriminating powers; so that, like the Australian and Pacific aborigines, they come to regard as points of beauty peculiarities that a more advanced civilization shrinks from? Or do their visual organs actually become impaired, like those of captives, who can see clearly only in their own dungeon's twilight, and flinch before the full glare of day? Some, of course, are fully alive to the outward defects of their partners; but few are so candid as to emulate the sturdy plain-speaking of the "gudeman" in the Scottish ballad, who, when his witch-wife boasted how she bloomed into beauty, after drinking the "wild-flower wine," replied undauntedly—

'Ye lee, ye lee, ye ill woman, Sae loud I hear ye lee; The ill-faured'st wife i' the kingdom of Fife, Is comely compared wi' thee.'

No doubt many of these Ugly Women are endowed with excellent sterling qualities. But such advantages lie below the surface, and take some time in being appreciated. The first process of captivation is what we don't understand; unless, indeed, there are spares in the quartz, invisible to common eyes, that tell the experienced gold seeker of a rich vein near.

Well, we will allow the proposition with which we started; but do you suppose its converse would hold equally good—That every woman could love once, if she wished it? Perhaps not. The precise mould that will fit some fancies is as hard to find as the slipper of Cinderella; and so, in default of the fairy chaussure, the small white foot goes on its road unshod, and the stones and briers gall it cruelly.

With men it does not so much matter. They have always the counteracting resources of bodily and mental exertion, against which the affections can make but little head. But with women it is different. They can't be always resorting to any of our thousand and one safety-valves to superfluous excitement. Are crochet, or crossed letters, or Sunday schools, so entirely engrossing as to drown forever the reproaches of Nature, that will make herself heard? If not, surely the most phlegmatically proper of her sex does sometimes feel sad and dissatisfied when she thinks that she has never been able to care for any one more than her own brother. Every one remembers the reply of the debutante to her austere parent, when the latter refused to take her to a ball, saying that 'she had seen the folly of such things.' 'I want to see the folly of them too.' Few of us men can realize the feeling that, with our sisters, may account for, though not excuse, much folly and sin. They see others happy all around them: it is hard to fast when so many are feasting. So there comes a shameful sense of ignorance—a vague, eager desire for knowledge,—a terror of an isolation deepening and darkening upon them, and a determination, at any risk, to baulk, at least, that enemy—and so, they grow restless, and reckless, and rebellious, at last. They are safe where they are, butt the days have so much of dull sameness that there is a sore temptation in the unknown peril. "Better," they say, "than the close atmosphere of the guarded castle, and the phantasms of fairy-land, one draught of the fresh outer air—one glimpse of real life and nature—one taste of substantial joys and sorrows that shall wake all the pulses of womanhood; even though the experience be brief and dearly bought; though the web woven while we sat dreaming must surely be rent in twain; aye, even though the curse, too, may follow very swiftly, and the swans be waiting at the gate, that shall bear us down to our burying."¹

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