Narrow and Fettered Minds

About two years ago, I read Shirley, by Charlotte Bronte.  One particular passage from the book has been echoing through my mind since I read it.  Here it is:

Old maids, like the houseless and unemployed poor, should not ask for a place and an occupation in the world: the demand disturbs the happy and rich: it disturbs parents. Look at the numerous families of girls in this neighbourhood: the Armitages, the Birtwistles, the Sykes. The brothers of these girls are every one in business or in professions; they have something to do: their sisters have no earthly employment, but household work and sewing; no earthly pleasure, but an unprofitable visiting; and no hope, in all their life to come, of anything better. This stagnant state of things makes them decline in health: they are never well; and their minds and views shrink to wondrous narrowness. The great wish - the sole aim of every one of them is to be married, but the majority will never marry: they will die as they now live. They scheme, they plot, they dress to ensnare husbands. The gentlemen turn them into ridicule: they don't want them; they hold them very cheap: they say - I have heard them say it with sneering laughs many a time - the matrimonial market is overstocked. Fathers say so likewise, and are angry with their daughters when they observe their manoeuvres: they order them to stay at home. What do they expect them to do at home? If you ask, - they would answer, sew and cook. They expect them to do this, and this only, contentedly, regularly, uncomplainingly all their lives long, as if they had no germs of faculties for anything else: a doctrine as reasonable to hold, as it would be that the fathers have no faculties but for eating what their daughters cook, or for wearing what they sew. Could men live so themselves? Would they not be very weary? And, when there came no relief to their weariness, but only reproaches at its slightest manifestation, would not their weariness ferment in time to frenzy? Lucretia, spinning at midnight in the midst of her maidens, and Solomon's virtuous woman, are often quoted as patterns of what 'the sex' (as they say) ought to be. I don't know: Lucretia, I dare say, was a most worthy sort of person, much like my cousin Hortense Moore; but she kept her servants up very late. I should not have liked to be amongst the number of the maidens. Hortense would just work me and Sarah in that fashion, if she could, and neither of us would bear it. The 'virtuous woman,' again, had her household up in the very middle of the night; she 'got breakfast over' (as Mrs. Sykes says) before one o'clock A.M.; but she had something more to do than spin and give out portions: she was a manufacturer - she made fine linen and sold it: she was an agriculturist - she bought estates and planted vineyards. That woman was a manager: she was what the matrons hereabouts call 'a clever woman.' On the whole, I like her a good deal better than Lucretia; but I don't believe either Mr. Armitage or Mr. Sykes could have got the advantage of her in a bargain: yet, I like her. 'Strength and honour were her clothing: the heart of her husband safely trusted in her. She opened her mouth with wisdom; in her tongue was the law of kindness: her children rose up and called her blessed; her husband also praised her.' King of Israel! your model of a woman is a worthy model! But are we, in these days, brought up to be like her? Men of Yorkshire! do your daughters reach this royal standard? Can they reach it? Can you help them to reach it? Can you give them a field in which their faculties may be exercised and grow? Men of England! look at your poor girls, many of them fading round you, dropping off in consumption or decline; or, what is worse, degenerating to sour old maids, - envious, backbiting, wretched, because life is a desert to them: or, what is worst of all, reduced to strive, by scarce modest coquetry and debasing artifice, to gain that position and consideration by marriage which to celibacy is denied. Fathers! cannot you alter these things? Perhaps not all at once; but consider the matter well when it is brought before you, receive it as a theme worthy of thought: do not dismiss it with an idle jest or an unmanly insult. You would wish to be proud of your daughters and not to blush for them - then seek for them an interest and an occupation which shall raise them above the flirt, the manoeuvrer, the mischief-making tale-bearer. Keep your girls' minds narrow and fettered - they will still be a plague and a care, sometimes a disgrace to you: cultivate them - give them scope and work - they will be your gayest companions in health; your tenderest nurses in sickness; your most faithful prop in age.

I think, and think, and think about this passage.  We are in a time where especially many homeschooling families are rethinking the role of the woman in the home, and are focusing their attentions on their own daughters.  So many seem to be looking back to the Victorian and earlier ages as some sort of glorious period of time for womanhood, but I can't imagine that Charlotte Bronte included the passage above in her book as part of the entertainment.  She was obviously trying to say something to the generation of her day, and it's something that I hope that our generation listens to. 

We must be careful not to raise our daughters to be nothing but mere ornaments in ours or their own households.  We, as women, have so much to contribute, and by the number of women bloggers, so much to SAY!  ;-)  We must be careful to raise our girls to have more interests than knitting and playing an instrument.  They need to have a true-blue occupation until they are ready to leave our home to start their own homes.

With that said, my own daughter is still quite young.  She is only eight.  So what does it look like for a daughter to stay under the protection of her parents until marriage, while living a fulfilling and meaningful life?  Of course I didn't grow up to think this way, so I am still trying to figure all this out.  I'm not sure what it looks like, but I am earnestly praying that God will reveal to my husband and me what the proper path is for our daughter as she gets older.  Heaven forbid that we keep her locked up and ineffective.

If you are reading this post, and have thoughts on this issue, PLEASE post them!  :-)