The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864

V >> Various >> The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864

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In addition to these drawbacks, one finds in Thoreau an unnecessary
defiance of tone, and a very resolute non-appreciation of many things
which a larger mental digestion can assimilate without discomfort. In
his dealings with Nature he is sweet, genial, patient, wise. In his
dealings with men he exasperates himself over the least divergence from
the desired type. Before any over-tendency to the amenities and luxuries
of civilization, in particular, he becomes unreasonable and relentless.
Hence there appears something hard and ungenial in his views of life,
utterly out of keeping with the delicate tenderness which he shows in
the woods. The housekeeping of bees and birds he finds noble and
beautiful, but for the home and cradle of the humblest human pair he can
scarcely be said to have even toleration; a farmer's barn he considers a
cumbrous and pitiable appendage, and he lectures the Irish women in
their shanties for their undue share of the elegancies of life. With
infinite faith in the tendencies of mineral and vegetable nature, in
human nature he shows no practical trust, and must even be severe upon
the babies in the Maine log-huts for playing with wooden dolls instead
of pine-cones. It is, indeed, noticeable that he seems to love every
other living animal more unreservedly than the horse,--as if this poor
sophisticated creature, though still a quadruped and a brother, had been
so vitiated by undue intimacy with man as to have become little better
than if he wore broadcloth and voted.

Yet there was not in Thoreau one trait of the misanthrope; his solitary
life at Walden was not chosen because he loved man less, but because he
loved Nature more; and any young poet or naturalist might envy the
opportunities it gave him. But his intellectual habits showed always a
tendency to exaggeration, and he spent much mental force in fighting
shadows, Church and State, war and politics,--a man of solid vigor must
find room in his philosophy to tolerate these matters for a time, even
if he cannot cordially embrace them. But Thoreau, a celibate, and at
times a hermit, brought the Protestant extreme to match the Roman
Catholic, and though he did not personally ignore one duty of domestic
life, he yet held a system which would have excluded wife and child,
house and property. His example is noble and useful to all high-minded
young people, but only when interpreted by a philosophy less exclusive
than his own. In urging his one social panacea, "Simplify, I say,
simplify," he failed to see that all steps in moral or material
organization are really efforts after the same process he recommends.
The sewing-machine is a more complex affair than the needle, but it
simplifies every woman's life, and helps her to that same comparative
freedom from care which Thoreau would seek only by reverting to the
Indian blanket.

But many-sided men do not move in battalions, and even a one-sided
philosopher may be a boon to think of, if he be as noble as Thoreau. His
very defects are higher than many men's virtues, and his most fantastic
moralizings will bear reading without doing harm, especially during a
Presidential campaign. Of his books, "Walden" will probably be
permanently reckoned as the best, as being the most full and deliberate
exhibition of the author's mind, and as extracting the most from the
least material. It is also the most uniform in texture, and the most
complete in plan, while the "Week" has no unity but that of the
chronological epoch it covers,--a week which is probably the most
comprehensive on record, ranging from the Bhagvat-Geetha to the "good
time coming,"--and the "Excursions" no unity but that of the covers
which comprise them, being, indeed, a compilation of his earliest and
latest essays. Which of his four volumes contains his finest writing it
would really be hard to say; but in structure the present book comes
nearest to "Walden"; it is within its limits a perfect monograph of the
Maine woods. All that has been previously written fails to portray so
vividly the mysterious life of the lonely forest,--the grandeur of
Katahdin or Ktaadn, that hermit-mountain,--and the wild and adventurous
navigation of those Northern water-courses whose perils make the boating
of the Adirondack region seem safe and tame. The book is also more
unexceptionably healthy in its tone than any of its predecessors, and it
is pleasant to find the author, on emerging from his explorations,
admitting that the confines of civilization afford, after all, the best
residence, and that the wilderness is of most value as "a resource and a
background."

There yet remain for publication Thoreau's adventures on Cape Cod; his
few public addresses on passing events, especially those on the Burns
Rescue and the John-Brown affair, which were certainly among the very
ablest productions called forth by those exciting occasions; his poems;
and his private letters to his friend Blake, of Worcester, and to
others,--letters which certainly contain some of his toughest, and
perhaps also some of his finest writing. All these deserve, and must one
day receive, preservation. He who reads most books reads that which has
a merely temporary interest, and will be presently superseded by
something better; but Nature has waited many centuries for Thoreau, and
we can hardly expect to see, during this generation, another mortal so
favored with her confidence.

_Jennie Juneiana_: Talks on Women's Topics. By JENNIE JUNE. Boston: Lee
& Shepard. 12mo. pp. 240.

Great are the resources of human invention, and the tiresome passion for
alliterative titles may possibly have culminated in some name yet more
foolish than that of this little green and gold volume. If so, the rival
has proved too much for the trump of Fame to carry, and has dropped
unnoticed. In the present case, the title does perhaps some injustice to
the book, which is not a silly one, though it contains very silly
things. It seems to be written from the point of view afforded by a
second-rate New-York boarding-house, and by a person who has never come
in contact with any refined or well-bred people. With this allowance, it
is written in the interest of good manners and good morals, and with
enough of natural tact to keep the writer from getting far beyond her
depth, although she does talk of "Goethe's Mignion" and "Miss
Werner,"--whoever these personages may be,--and of "the substantial fame
achieved by the unknown author of 'Rutledge.'" It is written in the
prevalent American newspaper-style,--a style which is apt to be graphic,
piquant, and dashing, accompanied by a flavor, slight or more than
slight, of flippancy and slang,--a style such as reaches high-tide in
certain "popular" native authors, male and female, and in ebbing strands
us on "Jennie June."

Of course, writing from the windows of Mrs. Todgers, "Jennie" manifests
the usual superfluous anxiety of her kind not to be called
strong-minded. She is prettily indignant at the thought of female
physicians: there is nothing improper in having diseases, but to cure
them would be indelicacy indeed. Girls out of work, who wish for places
in shops, are only "patriotic young ladies who desire to fill all the
lucrative situations at present occupied by young men." She would even
banish Bridget from the kitchen and substitute unlimited Patricks, which
will interest housekeepers as being the only conceivable remedy worse
than the disease. Of course, a female lecturer is an abomination:
"Jennie" proves, first, that a "strong-minded woman" must be either
unmarried or unhappy in marriage, and then turns, with rather illogical
wrath, upon Lucy Stone and Antoinette Brown, for being too domestic to
make speeches since their marriage. To follow the court phraseology,
"This reminds us of a little anecdote." When the fashion of long,
flowing wigs was just vanishing in Boston, somebody wore one from that
town down to Salem, where they were entirely extinct. All the
street-boys ran after him all the morning, to ask him why he wore a wig.
He, wishing to avoid offence, left it in the house at dinner-time; and
was pursued all the afternoon by the same boys, with the inquiry why he
did _not_ wear a wig. These eloquent women find it equally hard to
please their little critic by silence or by speech. The simple truth
probably is, that they hold precisely the same views which they always
held, and will live to trouble her yet, when the epoch of the nursery is
over. The majority of women's-rights advocates have always been wives
and mothers, and, for aught we know, excellent ones, since that dear,
motherly old Quakeress, Lucretia Mott, first broached the matter; and
the great change in our legislation on all the property-rights of that
sex is just as directly traceable to their labors as is the repeal of
the English corn-laws to the efforts of the "League." If, however,
"Jennie" consoles herself with the reflection that the points made in
this controversy by the authors of "Hannah Thurston" and "Miss Gilbert's
Career" are not much stronger than her own, she must remember her
favorite theory, that all foolishness sounds more respectable when
uttered from masculine lips.

1. _Woman and her Era._ By ELIZA W. FARNHAM. In Two Volumes. New York:
A. J. Davis & Co.

2. _Eliza Woodson; or, The Early Days of one of the World's Workers._ A
Story of American Life. New York: A. J. Davis & Co.

In the three and a half centuries since Cornelius Agrippa, no one has
attempted with so much ability as Mrs. Farnham to transfer the theory of
woman's superiority from the domain of poetry to that of science. Second
to no American woman save Miss Dix in her experience as a practical
philanthropist, she has studied human nature in the sternest practical
schools, from Sing-Sing to California. She justly claims for her views
that they have been maturing for twenty-two years of "experience so
varied as to give it almost every form of trial which could fall to the
intellectual life of any save the most favored women." Her books show,
moreover, an ardent love of literature and some accurate scientific
training,--though her style has the condensation and vigor which active
life creates, rather than the graces of culture.

The essence of her book lies in this opening syllogism:--

"Life is exalted in proportion to its organic and functional complexity;

"Woman's organism is more complex and her totality of function larger
than those of any other being inhabiting our earth;

"Therefore her position in the scale of life is the most exalted,--the
sovereign one."

This is compactly stated and quite unequivocal, although the three last
words of the conclusion are a step beyond the premises, and the main
fight of her opponents would no doubt be made on her definition of the
word _being_. The assumption that either sex of a given species is a
distinct "being" cannot probably be slid into the minor premise of the
argument without some objection from the opposing counsel. However, this
brings us at once to the main point, and the chapter called "The Organic
Argument," which opens with this syllogism, is really the pith of the
book, and would, perhaps, stand stronger without the other six hundred
pages. In this chapter she shows the strength of a system-maker, in the
rest the weaknesses of one; she feels obliged to apply her creed to
everything, to illustrate everything by its light, to find unexpected
confirmations everywhere, and to manipulate all the history of art,
literature, and society, till she conforms them all to her standard. She
recites, with no new power, historical facts that are already familiar;
and gives many pages to extracts from very well known poets and very ill
known prose-writers, to the exclusion of her own terse and vigorous
thought. All this is without a trace of book-making, but is done in
single-hearted zeal for views which are only damaged by the process.

These are merely literary defects; but Mrs. Farnham really suffers in
thought by the same unflinching fidelity to her creed. It makes her
clear and resolute in her statement; but it often makes her as one-sided
as the advocates of male supremacy whom she impugns. To be sure, her
theory enables her to extenuate some points of admitted injustice to
woman,--finding, for instance, in her educational and professional
exclusions a crude effort, on the part of society, to treat her as a
sort of bird-of-paradise, born only to fly, and therefore not needing
feet. Yet this authoress is obliged to assume a tone of habitual
antagonism towards men, from which the advocates of mere equality are
excused. Indeed, the technical Woman's-Rights movement has always
witnessed a very hearty cooeperation among its advocates of both sexes,
and it is generally admitted that men are at least as ready to concede
additional rights as women to ask for them. But when one comes to Mrs.
Farnham's stand-point, and sees what her opinion of men really is, the
stanchest masculine ally must shrink from assigning himself to such a
category of scoundrels. The best criticism made on Michelet's theory of
woman as a predestined invalid was that of the sensible physician who
responded, "As if the Almighty did not know how to create a woman!"--and
Mrs. Farnham certainly proves too much in undertaking to expose the
blunders of Deity in the construction of a man. Assuming, as she
invariably does, the highest woman to be the typical woman, and the
lowest man to be the typical man, she can prove anything she pleases.
But even this does not content her; every gleam of tenderness and
refinement exhibited by man she transfers by some inexplicable
legerdemain of logic to the feminine side, and makes somehow into a new
proof of his hopeless inferiority; and she is landed at last in the
amazing paradox, that "the most powerful feminine souls have appeared in
masculine forms, thus far in human career." (Vol. II. p. 360.)

In short, her theory involves a necessity of perpetual overstatement.
The conception of a pure and noble young man, such as Richter delineates
in his Walt or Albano, seems utterly foreign to her system; and of that
fine subtilty of nature by which the highest types of manhood and
womanhood approach each other, as if mutually lending refinement and
strength, she seems to have no conception. The truth is, that, however
much we may concede to the average spiritual superiority of woman, a
great deal also depends on the inheritance and the training of the
individual. Mrs. Farnham, like every refined woman, is often shocked by
the coarseness of even virtuous men; but she does not tell us the other
side of the story,--how often every man of refinement has occasion to be
shocked by the coarseness of even virtuous women. Sexual disparities may
be much; but individual disparities are even more.

Mrs. Farnham is noble enough, and her book is brave and wise enough, to
bear criticisms which grow only from her attempting too much. The
difference between her book and most of those written on the other side
is, that in the previous cases the lions have been the painters, and
here it is the lioness. As against the exaggerations on the other side,
she has a right to exaggerate on her part. As against the theory that
man is superior to woman because he is larger, she has a right to plead
that in that case the gorilla were the better man, and to assert on the
other hand that woman is superior because smaller,--Emerson's mountain
and squirrel. As against the theory that glory and dominion go with the
beard, she has a right to maintain (and that she does with no small
pungency) that Nature gave man this appendage because he was not to be
trusted with his own face, and needed this additional covering for his
shame. As against the historical traditions of man's mastery, she does
well to urge that creation is progressive, and that the megalosaurus was
master even before man. It is, indeed, this last point which constitutes
the crowning merit of the book, and which will be permanently associated
with Mrs. Farnham's name. No one before her has so firmly grasped this
key to woman's historic position, that the past was an age of coarse,
preliminary labor, in which her time had not yet come. This theory, as
elucidated by Mrs. Farnham, taken with the fine statement of Buckle as
to the importance of the intuitive element in the feminine intellect,
(which statement Mrs. Farnham also quotes,) constitutes the most
valuable ground logically conquered for woman within this century. These
contributions are eclipsed in importance only by those actual
achievements of women of genius,--as of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Rosa
Bonheur, and Harriet Hosmer,--which, so far as they go, render all
argument superfluous.

In this domain of practical achievement Mrs. Farnham has also labored
well, and the autobiography of her childish years, when she only aspired
after such toils, has an interest wholly apart from that of her larger
work, and scarcely its inferior. Except the immortal "Pet Marjorie," one
can hardly recall in literature a delineation so marvellous of a
childish mind so extraordinary as "Eliza Woodson." The few characters
appear with an individuality worthy of a great novelist; every lover of
children must find it altogether fascinating, and to the most
experienced student of human nature it opens a new chapter of startling
interest.

_The Cliff-Climbers; or, The Lone Home in the Himalayas._ A Sequel to
"The Plant-Hunters." By CAPTAIN MAYNE REID, Author of "The Desert Home,"
"The Boy-Hunters," etc., etc. With Illustrations. Boston: Ticknor &
Fields.

Beloved of boys, the adventurous Mayne Reid continues from year to year
his good work as a story-teller. Since he held the youthful student a
spellbound reader of "The Desert Home," he has sent abroad a dozen
volumes, all excellent in their way, for the entertainment of his
ever-increasing audience. He has not, however, dealt quite fairly by his
boy-friends. He kept them waiting several years for the completion of
"The Plant-Hunters," and it is only now that he has found time to add
"The Cliff-Climbers" as a sequel to that fascinating story. While we
thank him for the book that gives us farther acquaintance with those
stirring individuals, Karl and Caspar, we cannot help reminding him how
long ago it is since we read "The Plant-Hunters," and wished for more.

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