Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women

G >> George Sumner Weaver >> Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women

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A dependent life is an ignoble one, unless compelled by misfortune; just
as ignoble in woman as in man. No woman of health and sound mind should
allow herself to be or feel dependent on any body for her living. The
sick are always dependent, though they have wealth at their command. But
the well should never be dependent. To eat and wear the fruits of
another's labor, tends to degradation. To feel that one is shining in
borrowed plumes and eating the bread of dependence, is degrading to a
noble mind. A noble mind will not willingly do it. The want of
Employment, and the dependence of many women, have ruined their
characters and made them little else than nuisances to their fellow-men.
Thousands of women have no Employment, and live through life in a state
of abject dependence. What are they, what can they be, under such
circumstances? It requires Employment to develop men, why should not it
to develop women? Dependent men are ninnies, why should not dependent
women be? Where is the difference between the male and female mind, that
one should be expected to be noble and magnanimous under circumstances
which would be ruinous to the other? We know that a young man thrown
upon his own resources is more likely to be a great, good man than when
cradled upon the lap of luxury or fortune. Why is it? Simply because he
seeks Employment and depends upon himself for what he is to be and do.
He leans not on another, and hence grows strong by standing alone. Plant
an acorn in the crevice of a barren rock, and it will strike down its
roots and send them out in search of fastening places till it will
surround the rock with a net of clinging fibers; and as the winds grow
fiercer and the storms howl wilder, the oak will strike deeper and wider
its anchoring roots. It will brace itself to meet the emergencies of its
life. It will nerve its energies to stand its ground. It will gather
vigor from every storm, resolution from every wind, strength from every
defiant bolt from heaven.

So it is with man. Place him on his feet in a hard place, where the suns
of life strike hotly upon him, and the storms blow fiercely, where he
must stand by his own strength or fall, and he will grow into strength
by the very pressure of adverse circumstances. Every blow of his own
will give it strength; every effort of his mind will give it vigor;
every trial of his character will knit firmer its binding fibers. This
is equally true of woman. Her character is formed and her power
developed in a similar way. A woman can no more be a true woman than a
man can be a true man without Employment and self-reliance. I would have
every boy and girl in the whole country taught to make their own living
at some useful Employment; to mark out for themselves a sphere of action
and then fill that sphere; to be useful in some honorable pursuit. I
would not put the boys to trades and professions to make them great and
good, and fold up the girls' hands and lay them away in the drawer or
shut them up in the parlor. I would not make the boys self-reliant and
vigorous by generous Employment, and the girls weak, puny, and dependent
by idleness or folly. I would not give the boys opportunities to develop
their powers and become noble men, and deprive the girls of all these
glorious privileges. I would not open a thousand avenues to distinction,
wealth, and worth to the boys and comparatively none to the girls. I
would not send the boys out into the field of life bravely to earn their
own living, and grow strong in doing it, and the girls out to beg their
living of the boys, and grow weak and worthless in their dependent
beggary. I like the girls too well to have them thus mistreated. I would
give them just as good a chance as the boys have. They should not be
degraded with half-pay, and only two or three ways to get a living, just
because they were made to be women. They should not be shut out from a
thousand avenues of distinction and usefulness, for they are richly
endowed, just because they are made to be women. They should not be made
to feel that it is degrading to be a woman, to feel, as a man expressed
it to me the other day, that "women are such good-for-nothing
creatures." I love noble, "strong-minded," and strong-hearted women. I
wish we had more of them. I know of no way to make them but to give our
girls more active Employment. Every girl should have a trade, a
business, a profession, or some honorable and useful way of gaining a
livelihood--some Employment in which her powers of body and mind may be
amply developed. If she has not, she will be dependent upon somebody,
and her dependence will degrade her; and her want of Employment will
keep her a half-developed specimen of humanity.

If I had half-a-dozen boys, and should let them grow up in play around
my house and on the streets, in visiting, gossiping, dressing, riding,
dancing, asking nothing of them only to bring me my slippers, or some
occasional act of kindness now and then, my neighbors would all cry out
against me, declaring that I was spoiling my boys. They would denounce
my course as absolute unkindness to the boys; would declare that they
never would be any thing with such a miserable training. And yet my
neighbors treat their girls in just this way. Now if it will spoil the
boys, why will it not spoil the girls? If it is unkindness to the boys,
why is it not unkindness to the girls? If boys can not be any thing with
such a training, how can the girls be?

If the present generation of boys should be reared just as we are
rearing our girls, what a puny race of men we should have with which to
commence the next century! Men complain that women are such weak,
good-for-nothing creatures that they are only fit to be wives and
mothers. Now it seems to me that no woman is fit to be a wife and mother
until she is a strong, self-reliant woman, both bodily and mentally. I
take it that the more vigorous a woman's body and mind are, the better
she is qualified to fulfill the duties of wife and mother.

I take it that the more self-reliant and independent a woman is, the
better she is qualified to be a helpmate for her husband, and a wise and
judicious counselor for her children. I take it that dignity of
character, power of action, resolute will, commanding judgment, steady
temper of mind, strong inward resources, are as essential in a good wife
and mother as in a good husband and father. In a word, I take it that
all that is noble, dignified, useful, and beautiful in character and
life, is as essential in women as in men. If so, then why not give woman
opportunities such as are necessary to develop her powers and form her
character? Those opportunities can not be given without Employment. We
can not make men without Employment; how can we expect to make women?
How can a woman who has no aim in life, who lives to no purpose, who has
nothing to accomplish, whose hands are idle, whose mind has nothing on
which to fix its energies--who, in a word, spends a listless, trifling
life--how can such a woman possess weight of character, force of mind,
or mental worth? When God calls for her stewardship, how can she answer
with any honor to herself? When she comes to see her soul disrobed of
mortality, how naked and undeveloped it will look!

It appears to me that every young woman should aim to be something and
do something. Her powers of mind and body should be applied to a good
end. Her hands should be set to some useful employment and made skillful
in it. It matters not so much what it is, as how she perseveres in it.

Great men are made in all trades and professions. So may great women be.
Woman may rightfully employ her powers wherever she may do it most
successfully to herself and her fellows. If our young women feel that
they can sell tape and pins, set type or make shoes, keep books or
manage a telegraph office; if they can keep a bakery or a dry-goods
store, direct a Daguerreian gallery, or do any thing else that is right
and proper to be done, let them not hesitate to do it. Let them
accomplish themselves in the art or business that to them seems most
agreeable, and set up for themselves. They will be a thousand times more
happy and useful than in leading listless and thriftless lives. The kind
of Employment is not a matter of so much importance as the fact of being
employed. Our boys choose their occupations; so should our girls. But
they should always choose to do something that is useful. Our homes are
full of necessary and useful employments. Our girls should engage in
them with zeal.

No matter if they are rich. They need Employment just as much. A rich
young man is not excused from business--from acting nobly his part in
life, and doing something worthy of a man. And if he excuses himself he
will only be despised by the community in which he lives. We all
understand that a young man has got a part to act in useful life,
whether he is rich or poor. Why should it not be so with a young woman?
Why should we excuse her on account of her riches? Why should she excuse
herself? Idleness is the ruin of her body and mind; Employment will give
both activity and strength. She will be wiser, better, happier by being
employed in something that will benefit herself and the world. We have a
strange theory about our young women that are well to do in the world.
We think that they must be great babies, and be fed, and clothed, and
housed, and posted about in carriages, waited upon and petted as though
they were made for nothing else. It is horridly vulgar for such young
women to work. It would be a violation of propriety for them to be
useful. They would lose caste if they should engage in any useful
employment. So they must be useless appendages, hung about the body of
humanity to torment themselves and as many others as they can. What a
torment it must be to them to lead such aimless lives, studying all the
while for some new way to kill time! How many women there are over whose
heads time drags heavily! They have nothing to do. The dull round of
society is irksome. They have stood at the toilet till every thing there
is fatiguing. They have talked over and over their little round of
fashionable nonsense. They are weary of their monotonous, inactive,
inglorious life. Thousands are the women in easy circumstances who feel
thus. They would be glad to lift up their hands and do something, but
the chains of custom and fashion are upon them. A false social position
has made them timid and fearful. I know that many noble women are weary
of such a life. They are tired of being dolls. They would be glad to be
women and fill the places of useful, energetic, resolute women.

The position of dependence in which society places its wealthy and easy
circumstanced women is directly calculated to destroy their
self-reliance and force of character. They are attended by servants
wherever they go, who do what they ought to do, and often think what
they ought to think. The woman who always asks her servant to do what
she may do herself, soon becomes dependent upon and loses a good portion
of herself in her servant. If my servant eats my dinner for me, he gets
the benefit and I lose it. If my servant takes my morning bath from me,
he gets the benefit and I lose it. If he takes my morning walk for me,
he receives what I lose. So if he takes my Employment, does what I may
and ought to do myself for my own good, he receives the benefit while I
lose it. Thus it is that this system of servitude in all its forms tends
to degrade the party to whom the service is done. To have done for us
what it is best we should do ourselves always injures us. If we have
duties to perform, and hire or command another to perform them, we rob
ourselves of one of the richest blessings that can come to a mortal
being--the consciousness of having performed a duty and the improvement
gained by its performance. Thousands of women in our country are greatly
injured by the presence of their servants. Servants do for them what
they ought to do for themselves. They acquire the habit of dependence,
and it soon degenerates them into petty tyrants. If I had but two
lessons to impress upon the young women of my generation, the first
should be that a useful Employment is the primary means of developing a
true womanhood.

I know there is an antipathy to labor among a large class of women; I
know that women as well as men seek to avoid care and responsibility; I
know that useful Employments are looked upon as hard necessities, to be
avoided if possible. But still I know that Employment--daily, constant,
responsible Employment--is the stepping-stone to mental and moral worth,
to usefulness and happiness. I do not contend for degrading toil, but
for honorable, mind-developing, soul-redeeming, heart-adorning
Employment. Both men and women are made better by useful Employment.
Life is given for Employment; our powers are made for activity. If God
had intended that any of us should be idle, he would have built houses,
made clothes, cooked victuals, formed characters, accumulated knowledge,
and had every thing that we need both for mind and body ready made at
our hands. But not so. He has made all that is grand in life, that is
glorious in thought, depend upon our own exertions. This is as true of
women as of men. Then the idler is a leech on himself--his own
despoiler. An idle woman is as base a thing as an idle man. She was made
for usefulness. A drone in any hive is a base bee--a nuisance, a leech,
a moth.

I know young women have refined ideas of delicacy; sometimes imagine it
is vulgar to be useful; that delicate hands are evidences of ladyship.
They ought to know that a delicate hand is an evidence of a shallow
brain; that a soft hand is an evidence of a soft head. Ladyship and
womanhood are two things. A soft hand and a faint heart may make one,
but not the other. Womanhood is put on by industry in the pursuit of
good. It is made in the field of noble Employment.

I seek to elevate woman. I look to her elevation as the elevation of the
race. I see in her powers capable of great actions and a sublime life;
but I see no way in which those powers can be developed and that life
lived but in active and useful Employment. Woman ought to stand by man's
side in all that is great and good in thought and action. The history of
every country should have as much to record of woman as of man; but this
can never be until woman's field of Employment is extended. She must go
out and work. She must do her own business, execute her own intentions,
act nobly her part in life wherever she can be the best rewarded for her
industry and judgment. I would not make woman unwomanly, but would crown
her with all the grace and dignity of true female worth. I look to
useful Employment as the best and only means of securing this end.
Idleness will not make any woman womanly. Ignorance of business and the
world will not. In the pursuit of their own elevation let them learn how
to be true to themselves and their duties, and we shall soon have a
generation of women such as the world has never seen--of strong, brave,
accomplished, and useful women whom history will record as the
benefactors of their race.

Lecture Nine.

HOME.

Maternal Love--Ideas of Future Home Universal--Heaven's Home
Perfected--Home the Garden of Virtue--Home Influence Permanent--Home
is Woman's World--Place does not constitute Home--Our Homes will be
like us--Home a Sensitive Place--Home Habits Second Nature.

My theme is _Home_. If my essay could be as good as my subject it would
be worthy of devoutest attention. I believe that there are three things
of universal interest among men--_Mother_, _Home_, _and Heaven_. In all
ages and countries mother has been a sacred word. It has laid on the
heart of childhood like a dew-drop on the rose, sweetening and
refreshing it. A man loves to think of his mother; of her watchful care,
her tender vigils, her holy charity, her forgiving goodness, her
matchless and marvelous love.

What a great refreshing fountain of life is a mother's love! We all turn
to it as the heart's common resting-place. We love to think of our
mothers. They loved us with such a deep devotion; did, and sacrificed,
and suffered so much for us; were so unselfish and ready to forgive, so
vividly alive to our interests, and felt their beings so intertwined
with ours that we feel that we must love them. It is the last and
lowest ingratitude of a human heart not to love its mother. God made the
mother. Such love is Heaven's work. Not in angels' hearts beats a
sweeter, deeper, richer feeling. Mother is another name for consecrated
love. Not all the theologians in the world could convince me that the
natural mother-heart is not holy. I have seen too deeply into my own
mother's soul; I have felt too much of the fire of her deathless love; I
have witnessed too many evidences of its immaculate purity to believe it
inherently depraved. I have always felt that it was a slander against
our own mother to believe the mother-heart naturally corrupt. Yes, all
the mother is holy. God loves the mother for what she is. She is a
reflection of himself. The gates of his everlasting Home will never
close against a mother. Though she may be wicked in other respects, in
her maternal heart lives a germ of the tree of life which can never
wholly die. What love sometimes beams in a wicked mother's heart! All
mothers are alike. The wise and the foolish, the idiotic and
philosophic, the rich and poor, the cultivated and barbaric, are all the
same in love; the same beautiful, tender, forgiving spirit of devoted
affection dwells in all. Oh, see the mother as she gazes fondly upon her
child; as she feeds him from her breast; as she watches by his sick
couch; as she counsels him to virtue and goodness; as she weeps over his
waywardness and toils for his happiness!

All the arching glory of the moral world bows in reverence before the
mother's love. This is the radiant center, the focus of human
affection. And this is the central sun of _Home_! Home has no permanent
force, no abiding stability without a mother's love. Take mother out of
Home, and the Home is gone. She is the regulator, the main-spring, the
center around which all else revolves. How rich is every Home that has
in it a true mother! If there were no other attraction in this sacred
spot, no other charm, the mother's presence would make it dear and
glorious. While a mother lives, Home will be a blessed place. Then
_heaven_ is another word of universal use and power. In every human soul
there lies an idea of heaven; dim and shadowy sometimes, bright and
glorious at others; but yet everywhere present. The Arab wanderers, the
wild men of the forest, the jabbering Ajetas, the South Sea Islanders,
the wall-girt Chinamen, the sable Ethiopians, the cultured Christians,
all cherish the thought of heaven--another home, a final resting-place
from all that wearies or troubles. It seems as though God in goodness
had implanted this thought in all creatures' minds as the germ of
eternal life, to cheer and support them in the shadowy hours of earth
and time. Yes, the thought and hope of heaven is universal. Many men
cherish ideas of hell, the very opposite of heaven; but this does not
interfere with their own hope of heaven. All men hope for heaven for
themselves. Hell is always for somebody else, if they are so unfortunate
as to be tormented with so fearful and saddening a thought. And this
thought of heaven, this universal impression of a better land, a
spirit-bower, so comforting, so elevating, so inspiring, grows naturally
out of our primary conceptions of Home. We all love Home--Home that is
a Home--and this love enlarged by the imagination, pictured in
perfection by the quick hand of Faith, consecrated by natural religion,
is our idea of heaven. Heaven is Home perfected, the consummation of the
heart's love of Home. In our ideas of heaven we gather our loved ones
about us just as we do in our Homes. What would heaven be to us without
our mother, our brothers and sisters, the dear home-companions of our
hearts? It would not be heaven because it would not be Home. The heart
could not rest there. It would fly away on the quick wings of its love
to the dear absent ones. A heaven half filled would not be a heaven. A
heaven with broken families would be heaven with broken hearts.

Every heart would pine in sadness in the loss of some of its dear
ones--some of its Home souls. Home-love is the germ of heaven-love. God
plants in Homes the seeds that shall bear fruit in heaven. Thus we see
that _Mother_, _Home_, and _Heaven_--these three words of such universal
interest and power--are associated and related words. They convey a
blessed trinity of ideas meeting in one associated glow of spiritual
beauty. They belong together and can not be separated. They are parts of
the same golden whole. Home, in all well-constituted minds, is always
associated with moral and social excellence. The higher men rise in the
scale of being, the more important and interesting is Home. The Arab or
forest man may care little for his Home, but, the Christian man of
cultured heart and developed mind will love his Home, and generally
love it in proportion to his moral worth. He knows it is the
planting-ground of every seed of morality--the garden of virtue, and the
nursery of religion. He knows that souls immortal are here trained for
the skies; that private worth and public character are made in its
sacred retreat. To love Home with a deep and abiding interest, with a
view to its elevating influence, is to love truth and right, heaven and
God. I envy not the soul that loves not Home. There is moral safety and
force in this love. Many a man who is an ornament to his family and a
blessing to the world would have gone to ruin had it not been for the
love he bore his Home and its inmates. A weakness of the home-love is
often the cause of moral ruin. Many a man of strong impulses and
impetuous character has braved hardships, faced dangers, resisted
temptations which would have been too powerful for him had it not been
for his strong love of Home. A strong love of Home in any man's heart is
a triple wall of brass around his moral nature--an impregnable bulwark
against the assaults of moral evil. No labor is too great for the strong
lovers of Home to accomplish. See them on ocean's billowy bosom; on
mountains of ice and snow; on fields of bloody strife; on burning
deserts; in trackless forests; amid disease, danger, and death, braving
every foe to life and peace, and all to fill their homes with comfort
and joy. In every proper sense in which Home can be considered, it is a
powerful stimulant to noble action and a high and pure morality. So
valuable is the love of Home, that every man should cherish it as the
apple of his eye. As he values his own moral worth, as he prizes his
country, the peace and happiness of the world; yea, more: as he values
the immortal interests of men, he should cherish and cultivate a strong
and abiding love of Home.

I take it that it affects our whole lives; ay, that it runs over the
grave, sweeps by death, and affects our future condition. Then is not
the idea of Home important? Shall we look thoughtlessly upon these
nurseries of immortal fruits? Shall we pollute and degrade the Homes in
which we dwell? Shall we send out from them unholy influences to corrupt
the world? These Home questions are the most important ones we can
raise. Their decision is to affect us more than any decision by the
supreme authority of our country. Not all the judges in the world ever
decide questions half so important and pregnant with solemn results as
those we are left to decide in our own Homes. Hence I would present the
subject of Home to young women as one in which they are as deeply
interested as they can be in any subject. It is expected that every
young woman will preside over the destinies and interests of a Home. In
some way her interests, through her whole earth-life, will be connected
with Home. Woman's nature and tastes fit her in a peculiar manner to be
the presiding genius of Home. However widely may be extended the
rightful sphere of woman's operations, the mass of women will find
employment and usefulness in the embossmment of their families.

Home will always be woman's world. She will be queen over its rich and
far-stretching realms. In the studios of Home she will carve the
statuary of her moral heroism, and picture the spiritual beauty of her
faith and love. Home is her kingdom, and she will always reign over it.
Though she may go out to do great deeds of goodness in the world, though
she may speak from forums, teach from college chairs, write books, fill
offices of trust and profit, go on missions of truth, peace, and mercy
among her fellows, she will still love best of all places the
sequestered scene of Home. I would not, either by law, or custom, or
public opinion, confine woman's powers to the routine of domestic
duties. I would open the whole world to her, and tell her to find
employment, usefulness, and happiness wherever she can; but in so doing
I should feel that not a Home would be desolated; not a woman would
become less a lover and blesser of Home. On the contrary, woman would
love her Home all the more, and make it all the purer and nobler. She
would choose its sweet vocations, not from the stern dictation of
society, but from her soul's choice. Every family must have a Home; and
every Home must have a head, a heart, a guardian. Woman is nobly fitted
to fill this responsible post of honor and trust; but let her do it from
choice. Do not compel her to do it. Woman does not like compulsion. It
is not human to like compulsion. Give to woman the same freedom you do
to man. Open the whole width of the field of life to her, and she will
choose with avidity her own appropriate place. She has a strong sense
of propriety and a good judgment in the choice of her sphere of
activity.

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