And where--here
slips out the male--where would be much of the glory of
inspiring love, if there were no contempt to overcome?
*
The drawing-room is, indeed, an artificial place; it is so
by our choice and for our sins. The subjection of women;
the ideal imposed upon them from the cradle, and worn, like
a hair-shirt, with so much constancy; their motherly,
superior tenderness to man's vanity and self-importance;
their managing arts-the arts of a civilised slave among
good-natured barbarians-are all painful ingredients and all
help to falsify relations. It is not till we get clear of
that amusing artificial scene that genuine relations are
founded, or ideas honestly compared. In the garden, on the
road or the hillside, or TETE-A-TETE and apart from
interruptions, occasions arise when we may learn much from
any single woman; and nowhere more often than in married
life. Marriage is one long conversation, chequered by
disputes. The disputes are valueless; they but ingrain the
difference; the heroic heart of woman prompting her at once
to nail her colours to the mast. But in the intervals,
almost unconsciously and with no desire to shine, the whole
material of life is turned over and over, ideas are struck
out and shared, the two persons more and more adapt their
notions one to suit the other, and in process of time,
without sound of trumpet, they conduct each other into new
worlds of thought.
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