| <The Saturday Review October 10, 1868>
| <Weak Sisters>
| <pb n="484">
| The line at which a virtue becomes a vice through excess 
| can never be exactly defined, being one of those uncertain 
| conditions which each mind must determine for itself.  But 
| there is a line, wheresoever we may choose to set it, and it 
| is just this fine dividing mark which women are so apt to 
| overrun.  For women, as a rule, are nothing if not extreme.  
| Whether as saints or sinners, they carry a principle to its 
| outside limits, and of all partisans are the most thorough 
| going, whether it be to serve God or the devil, liberty or 
| bigotry, Bible Communism or Calvinistic Election.  
| Sometimes they are just as extreme in their absolute 
| negation of force, and in the narrowness of the limits within 
| which they would confine all human expression either by 
| word or deed ~~ and especially all expression of feminine 
| life.  These are the women who carry womanly gentleness 
| into the exaggeration of self-abasement, and make 
| themselves mere footstools for the stronger creature to kick 
| at his pleasure; the weak sisters who think all self-reliance 
| unfeminine, and any originality of thought or character an 
| offence against the ordained inferiority of their sex.  They 
| are the parasitic plants of the human family; creatures 
| which live by and on the strength of others; unable to stand 
| alone, and, when deprived of their adventitious support, 
| falling to the ground in a ruin perhaps worse than death.  It 
| is sad to see one of these weak sisters when given up to 
| herself after she has lived on the strength of another.  As a 
| wife she was probably a docile, gentle kind of Medora ~~ 
| at least on the outside, for we must not confound weakness 
| with amiability ~~ suffering many things because of 
| imperfect servants and unprofitable tradesmen, maybe 
| because of unruly children and encroaching friends, none 
| of whom she has so much moral power as will enable her to 
| hold in check; but on the whole drifting through her days 
| peacefully enough, and, though always in difficulties, never 
| quite aground.  She had a tower of strength in her husband, 
| on whom she leaned for assistance in all she undertook, 
| whether it was to give a dose of Dalby to the child, or a 
| scolding to the maid, or to pronounce upon the soundness 
| of two rival sects each touting for her soul.  While he lived 
| she obeyed his counsel ~~ not always without a futile echo 
| of discontent in her own heart ~~ and copied his opinions 
| with what amount of accuracy nature had bestowed on her; 
| though it must be confessed more often making a travesty 
| than a facsimile, according to the trick of inferior 
| translators, and not necessarily better pleased with his 
| opinions than with his counsels.  For your weak sister is 
| frequently peevish, and though unable to originate is not 
| always ready to obey cheerfully; cheerfulness indeed being 
| for the most part an attribute of power.  Still, there stood 
| her tower of strength, and while it stood, she, the parasite 
| growing round it, did well enough, and flourished with a 
| pleasant semblance of individual life into the hollowness of 
| which it was no one's business to inquire.  But the tower 
| falls, where is the ivy?  Take away the husband and what 
| becomes of the wife, when one has been the life and the 
| other only the parasite?   Abandoned to the poor resources 
| of her own judgment she is like one suddenly thrown into 
| deep water, not knowing how to swim.  She has no 
| judgment.  She has been so long accustomed to rely on the 
| mind of another, that her own is paralysed for want of use.  
| She is any one's tool, any one's echo, and worse than that, if 
| left to herself she is any one's victim.  All she wants is to be 
| spared the hardship of self-reliance, and to be directed free 
| of individual exertion.  She is utterly helpless ~~ helpless to 
| act, to direct, to decide; and it depends on the mere chance 
| of proprietorship whether her slavery will be degradation or 
| protection, ruin or safety.  For she will be a slave, whosever 
| may be her proprietor, being the pabulum of which slaves 
| and victims are naturally formed.  The old age of Medora is 
| Mrs. Borradaile, who, if her husband had lived, would have 
| probably ended her life in an honourable captivity and a 
| well-directed subserviency.
| We often see this kind of helpless weakness in the daughter 
| of a man of overbearing will, or of a termagant mother fond 
| of managing and impatient of opposition.  During the 
| plastic time of her life, when education might perhaps have 
| developed a sufficient amount of mental muscle, and by a 
| course of judicious moulding she might have been 
| somewhat fairly set up, she is snubbed and suppressed till 
| all power is crushed out of her.  She is taught the virtue of 
| self-abnegation till she has no self to abnegate, and the 
| backbone of her individuality is so incessantly broken that 
| at last there is no backbone left in her to break.  She has 
| become a mere human mollusc which, when it loses its 
| native shell, drifts helplessly at the mercy of chance 
| currents into the maw of any stronger creature that may 
| fancy her for his prey.  One often sees these poor things left 
| orphans and friendless at forty or fifty years of age.  They 
| have lived all their lives in leading strings, and now are 
| utterly unable to walk alone; they are infants in all 
| knowledge of the world, of business, of human life; their 
| youth is gone, and with it such beauty and attractiveness as 
| they might have had, so that men who might have liked 
| them when fresh and gentle at twenty do not care to accept 
| their wrinkled helplessness at forty; they have been kept in 
| and kept down, and so have had no friends of their own; 
| and then, when the strong-willed father dies, or the 
| termagant mother goes to the place where the wicked cease 
| from troubling, the mollusc they have hitherto protected is 
| left defenceless and alone.  If she has money, her chances 
| of escape from the social sharks always on the lookout for 
| fat morsels are very small indeed.  It is well if she falls into 
| no
| <pb n="485">
| worse hands than those of legitimate priests of either 
| section, whether enthusiastic for chasubles or crazy for 
| missions; and if her money is put to no baser use than 
| supplying church embroidery for some Brother Ignatius at 
| home, or blankets for converted Africans in the tropics.  It 
| might go into Agapemones, into spiritual Athenaeums, into 
| Bond Street back-parlours, where it certainly would do no 
| good, take it any way one would; for, as it must go into 
| some side-channel dug by stronger hands than hers, the 
| question is, into which of the innumerable conduits offered 
| for the conveyance of superfluous means shall it be 
| directed?  This is the woman who is sure to give in to 
| religious excesses of one kind or another, and for whom, 
| therefore, the convent system would be a godsend past 
| words to describe.  She is unfit for the life of the world 
| outside.  She has neither strength to protect herself, nor 
| beauty to win the loving protection of men; she cannot be 
| taken as a precious charge, but she will be made a pitiable 
| victim:  and, under the gloomiest aspect possible, surely the 
| narrow safety of a convent-cell is a better fate for her than 
| the publicity of the witness-box at the Old Bailey.  As she 
| must have a master, her condition depends on what master 
| she has:  and the whole line of her future on whether she is 
| directed or <p> "exploited," </p> and used to serve noble 
| ends or base ones.
| As a mother, the weak sister is even more unsatisfactory 
| than as a spinster left to herself with funds which she can 
| manipulate at pleasure.  She is affectionate and devoted; 
| but of what use are affection and devotion without guiding 
| sense or judgment?  Even in the nursery, and while the little 
| ones need only physical care, she is more obstructive than 
| helpful, never having so much self-reliance or readiness of 
| wit as to dare a remedy for one of those sadden maladies 
| incidental to children, and dangerous just in proportion to 
| the length of time they are allowed to run unchecked.  And 
| if she should by remember anything of present value, she 
| has no power to make her children take what they don't like 
| to take, or do what they don't like to do.  In the horror of an 
| accident she is lost.  If her child were to cut an artery, she 
| would take it up into her lap tenderly enough, but she 
| would never dream of stopping the flow; if it swallowed 
| poison, she would send for the doctor who lives ten miles 
| away; and if it set itself on fire, she would probably rush 
| with it into the street, for the chance of assistance from a 
| friendly passer-by.  She never has her senses under 
| command and serviceable; and her action in a moment of 
| danger generally consists in unavailing pity or in 
| obstructive terror, as she herself is safe or involved, but 
| never in useful service or in valuable suggestion.  But if she 
| is useless in her nursery while her children are young, she 
| is even more helpless as they get older; and the family of a 
| weak woman grows up, unassisted by counsel or direction, 
| just as the old Adam wills and the natural bent inclines.  
| Her girls may be loud and fast, her sons idle and dissipated, 
| but she is powerless to correct or to influence.  If her 
| husband does not take the reins into his own hands, or if 
| she is a widow, the young people manage matters for 
| themselves under the perilous guidance of youthful 
| passions and inexperience.  And nine times out of ten they 
| give her but a rough corner for her own share.  They have 
| no respect for her, and, unless more generously 
| compassionate than young people usually are, scarcely care 
| to conceal the contempt they cannot help feeling.  What can 
| she expect?  If she as not strong enough to root out the tares 
| while still green and tender, can she wonder at their 
| luxuriant growth about her feet now?  She, like 
| <reg orig="every one"> everyone </reg> else, must learn the
| sad meaning of retribution, and how the weakness which has 
| allowed evil to flourish unsubdued has to share in its 
| consequences and to suffer for its sin.
| Unsatisfactory in her home, the weak sister does not do 
| much better in society.  She is there the embodiment of 
| restriction.  She can bear nothing that has any flavour or 
| colour in it.  Topics of broad human interest are forbidden 
| in her presence because they are vulgar, improper, or 
| unfeminine.  She takes her stand on her womanhood, and 
| makes her womanhood to be something apart from 
| humanity in the gross.  There must be no cakes and ale for 
| others if she is virtuous, and spades are not to be called 
| spades when she is by to hear.  She is the limit beyond 
| which <reg orig="no one"> no-one </reg> must go, under 
| pain of such displeasure as the weak sister can show.  And, 
| weak as she is in many things, she can get to a certain 
| strength of displeasure; she can condemn, persistently if not 
| passionately.  Nothing is more curious than the way in 
| which the weak sister exercises this power of 
| condemnation, and nothing much more wide than its scope.  
| If incapable of yielding to certain temptations, because 
| incapable of feeling them, she has no pity for those who 
| have not been able to resist; yet, on the other hand, she 
| cannot comprehend the vigour of those who withstand such 
| influences as conquer her.  If she is still under the shadow 
| of family protection, safe in the power of those who know 
| how to hold her in all honour and prosperity, she cannot 
| forgive the poor weak waif ~~ yet no weaker than herself 
| ~~ who has been caught up in the outside desert of 
| desolation, and made to subserve evil ends.  As for the 
| woman who is able to think and act for herself, she has a 
| kind of superstitious horror of such a person, and shrinks 
| from one who has made herself notorious, no mater what 
| the mode or method, as from something tainted, something 
| unnatural and unwomanly.  She has even grave doubts 
| respecting the lawfulness of doing good if the manner of it 
| gets into the papers, and names are mentioned as well as 
| things; and though the fashion of the day favours feminine 
| notoriety in all directions, she holds by the instinct of her 
| temperament, and languidly maintains that woman is the 
| cipher to which man alone gives distinctive value.  Griselda 
| and Medora are the types of womanly perfection, and the 
| only strength she tolerates in her own sex is the strength of 
| endurance and the power of patience.  She has no doubt in 
| her own mind that the ordained purpose of woman is to be 
| convenient for the high-handedness and brutality of man, 
| and any woman who objects to this theory, and demands a 
| better place for herself, is flying in the face of Providence 
| and forfeiting one of the distinctive privileges of her sex.  
| For the weak sister thinks, like some others, that it is better 
| to be destroyed by orthodox means than saved by 
| heterodox ones; and that if good Christians uphold moral 
| suttee, they are only pagans and barbarians who would put 
| out the flames and save the victim from the burning.  So far 
| she is respectable, in that she has distinct theory about 
| something; but it is wonderfully eloquent of her state that it 
| should only be the theory of Griseldadom as womanly 
| perfection, and the beauty to be found in the moral of 
| Cinderella sitting supinely among the ashes, and forbidden 
| to own even the glass-slipper that belonged to her.  
| Fortunately for the world, the weak sister and her theories 
| do not rule; indeed we are in danger of going too much the 
| other way in these times, and the revolt of our women 
| against undue slavery goes very near to a revolt against due 
| and wise submission.  Still, women who are to be the 
| mothers of men ought to have some kind of power, if the 
| men are to be worth their place in the world; and if we want 
| creatures with backbones we must not look for them from 
| molluscs.