The Norton Anthology of English literature. Volume 2

result of what Mrs. Malaprop well calls "the ineffectual qualities in a

woman"'�mere acquisitions carried about, and not knowledge thoroughly

assimilated so as to enter into the growth of the character. To return to Margaret Fuller, some of the best things she says are on the

folly of absolute definitions of woman's nature and absolute demarcations of

woman's mission. "Nature," she says, "seems to delight in varying the arrange

ments, as if to show that she will be fettered by no rule; and we must admit

4. See Douglas Jerrold's comic sketches of a wife 3.2. In response to compliments about her "intelwho delivers nightly lectures to her husband from lectual accomplishments," Mrs. Malaprop�famed behind their bed curtains, Mrs. Caitdle's Curtain for her mistaken use of words�exclaims: "Ah! few Lectures (1846). gentlemen, nowadays, know how to value the inef5. Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The Rivals (1775), fectual qualities in a woman!"

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1340 / GEORGE ELIOT

the same varieties that she admits." Again: "If nature is never bound down,

nor the voice of inspiration stifled, that is enough. We are pleased that women

should write and speak, if they feel need of it, from having something to tell;

but silence for ages would be no misfortune, if that silence be from divine

command, and not from man's tradition." And here is a passage, the beginning

of which has been often quoted: If you ask me what offices they [women] may fill, I reply�any. I do not

care what case you put; let them be sea-captains if you will. I do not doubt

there are women well fitted for such an office, and, if so, I should be as

glad as to welcome the Maid of Saragossa, or the Maid of Missolonghi,

or the Suliote heroine, or Emily Plater.6 I think women need, especially

at this juncture, a much greater range of occupation than they have, to

rouse their latent powers. .. . In families that I know, some little girls like

to saw wood, others to use carpenter's tools. Where these tastes are

indulged, cheerfulness and good-humor are promoted. Where they are

forbidden, because "such things are not proper for girls," they grow sullen

and mischievous. Fourier had observed these wants of women, as no one

can fail to do who watches the desires of little girls, or knows the ennui

that haunts grown women, except where they make to themselves a serene

little world by art of some kind. He, therefore, in proposing a great variety

of employments, in manufactures or the care of plants and animals, allows

for one-third of women as likely to have a taste for masculine pursuits,

one-third of men for feminine.7 .. . I have no doubt, however, that a large

proportion of women would give themselves to the same employments as

now, because there are circumstances that must lead them. Mothers will

delight to make the nest soft and warm. Nature would take care of that;

no need to clip the wings of any bird that wants to soar and sing, or finds

in itself the strength of pinion for a migratory flight unusual to its kind.

The difference would be that all need not be constrained to employments

for which some are unfit. Apropos of the same subject, we find Mary Wollstonecraft offering a sug

gestion which the women of the United States have already begun to carry

out. She says: Women, in particular, all want to be ladies, which is simply to have

nothing to do, but listlessly to go they scarcely care where, for they cannot

tell what. But what have women to do in society? I may be asked, but to

loiter with easy grace; surely you would not condemn them all to suckle

fools and chronicle small beer.8 No. Women might certainly study the art

of healing, and be-physicians as well as nurses. . . . Business of various kinds

they might likewise pursue, if they were educated in a more orderly man

ner. . . . Women would not then marry for a support, as men accept of

places under government, and neglect the implied duties.

6. A Polish patriot who became a captain in com-heroine": probably Moscha, who led a band of mand of a company in the insurgent army fighting three hundred women to rout the Turks during the the Russians in 1831. "Maid of Saragossa": Maria siege of Souli, in Albania, in 1803. Agustin, who fought against the French at the 7. Charles Fourier (1772�1837), in his Utopian siege of Saragossa, in Spain, in 1808 (see Byron, treatise The New Industrial World (1829-30), Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, 1812, 1.54-56). "Maid develops these theories in his discussion of "the of Missolonghi": an unidentified Greek, who must Little Hordes." have made some heroic exploit during the Turkish 8. Iago on the role of women; Shakespeare's Othsieges of that town in 1822 or 1826. "The Suliote ello!.1.162.

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MARGARET FULLER AND MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT / 1341

Men pay a heavy price for their reluctance to encourage self-help and inde

pendent resources in women. The precious meridian years of many a man of

genius have to be spent in the toil of routine, that an "establishment" may be

kept up for a woman who can understand none of his secret yearnings,9 who