| <The Saturday Review December 29, 1866>
| <Feminine Influence>
| <Pb n="784">
| All English ladies who are warmly devoted to the great 
| cause of feminine authority have got their eyes just now 
| upon the Empress of the French.  It is understood in 
| English domestic circles that the Empress has decided to go 
| to Rome, and that the Emperor had decided on her staying 
| at home, and the interest of the situation is generally 
| thought to be intense.  The ocean race between the yachts 
| was nothing to it.  Every woman of spirit has been betting 
| heavily this Christmas upon the Empress, and
| <pb n="785">
| praying mentally for the defeat of the Emperor, and every 
| new telegram that bears upon the subject of the difficult 
| controversy is scanned by hundreds of dovelike eyes every 
| morning with indescribable eagerness.  M. Reuter, who is a 
| man probably, if he is not a joint-stock company, is 
| believed not to be altogether an impartial historian; and it is 
| felt in many drawing-rooms that what is on this occasion, at 
| the telegraph offices, is a sound and resolute Madame 
| Reuter, to correct the deviations of M. Reuter's compass.  
| In default of all trustworthy telegraphic intelligence, 
| Englishwomen are compelled to fall back on their vivid 
| imagination, and to construct a picture of what is happening 
| from the depths of their own moral consciousness.  And 
| several things their moral consciousness tells them are clear 
| and certain.  The first is, that the Empress, Eugenie is an 
| injured and interesting victim.  She has made a vow, under 
| the very touching circumstances of measles in the Imperial 
| nursery, to pay a visit to the Pope; and Cabinet Ministers 
| like M. Lavalette, who throw suspicion on the binding 
| nature of such a holy maternal obligation, are worse than 
| "S. G. O."  In the second place, she has set her heart upon 
| going.  Even if a vow were not binding, this is.  It is mere 
| nonsense to say that her pilgrimage would interfere with 
| politics.  A woman's fine tact is often of considerable use in 
| politics, and the sight of the Prince Imperial in his mother's 
| arms might exercise the most beneficial influence on the 
| Pope's mind.  Pio Nono has held out hitherto in the most 
| inexplicable manner against the Prince Imperial's 
| photograph, but he never could resist a sight of the original.  
| And, thirdly, if a wife and a mother may not have her own 
| way about going to see the Head of her own Church, when 
| is she ever to have her way at all, and where is the line to 
| be drawn?  The next downward step in a husband's 
| declension will be to prevent her from frequenting all 
| religious exercises, or, still worse, from selecting her own 
| balls and evening parties.  This is what English ladies feel, 
| and feel keenly.  It is some consolation to them to learn 
| that, if the Empress Eugenie is discomforted, she will not 
| have been discomfited without a struggle.  Of course there 
| will be no evening reception on the New Year at the 
| Tuileries.  No lady with a proper sense of what was due to 
| her own dignity would receive under such circumstances.  
| But till the most authentic news arrive, it will still be 
| possible to hope and to believe that victory will eventually, 
| and in spite of all appearances, declare itself upon the side 
| of right and of propriety, and that Her Majesty will not be 
| interfered with merely to satisfy the idle caprices of a 
| Foreign Office.
| The question of the proper limits of feminine influence is 
| one which such universal enthusiasm forces naturally on 
| one's notice.  Not even the most rigid cynic can deny that 
| women ought to have some influence on the mind and 
| judgment of the opposite sex, and the only difficulty is to 
| know how far that influence ought to go.  
| <reg orig="Every one"> Everyone </reg> will be 
| ready to concede that sound reasoning is worth hearing, 
| whether it comes from a woman or a man; and that, so far 
| as a lady argues well, she has as much claim on our 
| attention as Dictima had on the attention of Socrates.  This, 
| however, is not precisely the point which is so difficult to 
| settle.  The problem is to know how much influence a 
| woman ought to have when she does not argue well; and 
| further, what are the matters on which her opinion, whether 
| it be based on argument or instinct, is of value.  One of the 
| most important subjects on which women have some, and 
| always want to have a great deal of power, is religion.  This 
| is one part of the supposed mission of the Empress upon 
| which feminine observers look with especial sympathy, and 
| on which experienced masculine observers, on the other 
| hand, look with some awe.  The correspondents of the daily 
| papers, whose pleasure and privilege it is to be able to 
| instruct us in all the secrets of high life, have given us 
| recently to understand that, for some time back, Her 
| Majesty has been hard at work on the Emperor's soul.  Ever 
| thoughtful woman likes to be at work on her husband's 
| soul.  Young ladies enjoy the prospect before they are 
| married, and no novel is so thoroughly popular among them 
| as one in which beauty is the instrument in the hands of 
| Providence for the conversion of unbelief.  And it is partly 
| because the Empress Eugenie is discharging this high 
| missionary duty, that she is an object of particular 
| admiration just at this moment.  When Englishwomen hear 
| that she is very active in favour of the Pope, and couple this 
| news with the fact that the Emperor's soul is uneasy, they 
| sniff ~~ if we may be forgiven the expression ~~ the battle 
| from afar.  Their education in respect of theology and 
| religious opinion is very different from that of men.  They 
| have been brought up to believe strongly and heartily what 
| they have been told, and they do not understand the 
| half-sceptical way of regarding such things which is the result of 
| larger views and more liberal education.  It appears to them 
| a terrible thing that the men they care for should be 
| hesitating and doubtful about subjects where they 
| themselves have been trained only to believe one view 
| possible.  And they set to work in the true temper of 
| missionaries, with profound eagerness and energy, and 
| narrowness of grasp.  Many genuine prayers and tears are 
| worthily spent in the effort to tether some truant of a 
| husband or a son to a family theological peg, and to prevent 
| him from roving.  And, up to a certain point, men 
| continually give in.  They find it easier and more 
| comfortable to lower their arms, and not always to be 
| maintaining a barren controversy.  They have not the 
| slightest wish to convince their affectionate feminine 
| disputant, to take from her the sincere and positive dogmas 
| on which her happiness is built, and to substitute for these a 
| phase of doubt and difficulty for which her past intellectual 
| life has not fitted her.  Accordingly, they indulge in a 
| thousand little hypocrisies of a more or less harmless kind.  
| So long as women's education continues to differ from that 
| of men as widely as it does in England, this flexibility on 
| the part of the latter under the influence of the former is not 
| always amiss.  It is better that the husband should be 
| yielding than that he should hold aloof from all that 
| interests and moves the wife, as is the case in countries 
| where the one sex may be seen professing to believe in 
| nothing, while the other as implicitly believes in 
| everything.  It is, however, easy to conceive of cases in 
| which this feminine influence that seems so innocent, is in 
| reality injurious.  It may perhaps be the business of the 
| husband to take a public part in the affairs of his time.  
| Conscience tells him that he should be sincere, 
| uncompromising, logical, even to the point of disputing 
| conclusions which good and pious people consider 
| essential and important.  Or he may be a religious preacher, 
| or a religious reformer of his day, bound, in virtue of his 
| character, to maintain truth at the risk of being unpopular; 
| or, it may be, to prosecute inquiries and reforms at the risk 
| of shocking weaker brethren.  There are many who could 
| tell us from their experience how terribly at such a time 
| they have been perplexed and hampered in their duty by the 
| affectionate ignorance, the tears, and the piety of women.  
| Protestant clergymen in particular are sometimes taunted 
| with their conservative tendencies, their indifference to the 
| new lights of science, or of history, and their disinclination 
| to embark in perilous voyages in quest of truth.  Part of 
| their conservatism arises from the fact that their practical 
| business is generally to teach what they do know, rather 
| than to inquire into what they do not know.  Part of it 
| comes, as we suspect, from the fact that they are married.  
| A wife is a sort of theological drag.  It serves no doubt to 
| keep some of us from rolling too rapidly down hill.  It 
| impedes equally the progress of others over ordinarily level 
| ground.
| The importance of a social position to women is a thing 
| which affects their influence upon men no less materially 
| than does their religious sensibility.  As a rule, they have no 
| other means of measuring the consideration in which they 
| are held by the world, or the success in life of those to 
| whose fortunes they are linked, than by using a trivial and 
| worthless social standard.  Men, whose training is wider, 
| estimate both their male and their female friends pretty 
| fairly according to their merits.  But the majority of 
| women, from their youth up, seldom think of anybody 
| without contrasting his or her social status with their own.  
| Success signifies to them introduction to this or that 
| feminine circle, admission to friendships from which they 
| have been as yet excluded, and visiting cards of a more 
| distinguished appearance than those which at present lie 
| upon their table.  They are unable to enjoy even the 
| ordinary intercourse of society without an 
| <hi rend="italic"> </f> </f> </hi> as to their chance of  
| landing themselves a step higher on the social ladder. From 
| such absurdities the best and most refined women of course are 
| free, but the mass of Englishwomen seldom meet without 
| wondering who on earth each of the others is, and to which 
| county family she belongs.  Humorous as is the spectacle of 
| a crowd of English ladies, each of whom is employed in 
| eyeing the lady next her and asking who she is, and comical 
| as the point of view appears to 
| <reg orig="any one"> anyone </reg> who reflects on the 
| shortness of human life and the littleness of human 
| character, the effect of these feminine weaknesses is one 
| which <reg orig="no one"> no-one </reg> can be 
| sure of escaping.  We are afraid that 
| half of the Englishmen who are snobs are made so by 
| English women.  It is impossible for the female portion of 
| any domestic circle to be perpetually dwelling on their own 
| social aspirations without communicating the infection to, 
| or even forcing it upon, the male.  Wives and daughters 
| become dissatisfied with their husbands' or their fathers' 
| friends.  They want to meet and to associate with people 
| whom it is a social credit to know, and who in turn may 
| help them to know somebody beyond.  Every fresh 
| acquaintance of distinction, or of fashion, is a sort of 
| milestone, showing the ground that has been traveled over 
| by the family in the direction of their hopes.  This sort of 
| fever is very catching.  But though men often catch it, they 
| generally catch it from the other sex.  And even when they 
| are not impregnated with it themselves, the effect of 
| feminine influence upon them is that they accept their lot 
| with placidity, and acquiesce in the social struggle through 
| which they are dragged.  No man in his senses can wish or 
| hope to order the social life of his belongings according to 
| his own sober judgment.  He is compelled to allow them a 
| free rein in the matter, and to abstain from even expressing 
| the astonishment he inwardly feels.  Perhaps the world of 
| women is a new world to him, and he feels incapable of 
| regulating any of its movements; or perhaps, if he is wise, 
| he is content with the reflection that little foibles do not 
| altogether spoil real nobility of nature, and takes the bad 
| side of a woman's education with the good.  But there are 
| innumerable matters in respect of which he cannot 
| withdraw himself from the feminine influence about him.  
| By degrees he comes to sympathize with the little social 
| disappointments of his family group, and to take pleasure in 
| their little social triumphs, which appear to be so 
| productive of satisfaction and enjoyment to those to whom 
| they fall.  But the effect on his character is not usually 
| wholesome.  His eye is no longer single.  Feminine 
| influence has engrafted on his nature the defects of 
| feminine character, without engrafting on it also its many 
| virtues.  Women usually fail in communicating to men their 
| self-devotion, their gentleness, their piety; all that they 
| manage to communicate amounts to little more than a 
| respect for the observances of religion, and a nervous 
| sensibility to social distinctions.
| While the mental development of women continues to be 
| so little studied, it is not surprising that the intellectual 
| influence of the sex should be almost <hi> nil, </hi> or that 
| such a modicum of it as they possess should be exerted 
| within a very narrow sphere. It is the fault, no doubt, of our 
| systems of female education that the metal power of the 
| cleverest women really comes in England to very little. In 
| its highest form it amounts to a capacity for conversation 
| on indifferent matters, a genius for music or some other 
| fine art, a turn for talking about the poets of the day, and 
| perhaps for imitating their style with ease, coupled, in 
| exceptional cases, with a talent for guessing double 
| acrostics. To be able to do all this, and to be charming and 
| religious too, is the whole duty of young women.
| It would be difficult possibly to fit out an English young 
| lady with the various practical accomplishments that are of 
| use in matrimony, and to make her at the same time an 
| intellectual equal of the other sex. But it would surely be 
| possible to train her to understand more of the general 
| current of the world’s ideas, even if she could not devote 
| herself to studying them in detail. What woman has now 
| any notion of the broad outline of history of human 
| thought? All philosophy is a sealed book to her. It is the 
| same with theology and politics. She has not the wildest 
| conception, as a rule, of the grounds on which people think 
| who think differently from herself; and all through life she 
| is content to play the part of a partisan or a devotee with 
| perfect equanimity.
| While, however, feminine influence in intellectual subjects 
| is, as it deserves to be, infinitesimal, in practice and in 
| action women are proud of being recognized as useful and 
| sound advisers. As outsiders and spectators they see a good 
| deal of the game, have leisure to watch narrowly all that is 
| going on about them, and a subtle instinct teaches them to 
| tread delicately over all dangerous ground. It is curious 
| how many enemies women make amongst themselves, and 
| yet how many enemies they prevent men from making. 
| They seem to have less of self-control or prudence as far as 
| their own strong feelings and fortunes are concerned, than 
| they have of tact and temper in managing the fortunes and 
| enterprises of others.
| There can, for example, be no doubt whatever that the 
| parson who aims at being a bishop before he dies ought to 
| marry early. The great strokes of policy which bring him 
| preferment or popularity are pretty sure to have been 
| devised in moments of happy inspiration, or perhaps during 
| the watches of the night, by a feminine brain. Good 
| mothers make saints and heroes, says the proverb, and 
| beyond a doubt wise wives make bishops. Their influence 
| is not the less real because, unlike that of Mrs. Proudie, it is 
| exerted chiefly behind the scenes. It is possibly because the 
| influence possessed by women is so intangible, depending 
| as it does less on the reason than on the sentiment, 
| affection, and convenience of the other sex, that women are 
| so jealous to assert and to protect it.