Characteristics of Women: Moral, Poetical, and Historical - Mrs. (Anna) Jameson

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when, after summing up all the possible consequences of her own act, till she almost maddens herself with terror, she drinks the sleeping potion; and for that passive fortitude which is founded in piety and pure strength of affection, such as the heroism of Lady Russel and Gertrude de Wart, he has given us some of the noblest modifications of it in Hermione, in Cordelia, in Imogen, in Katherine of Arragon.

      MEDON.

      And what do you call the courage of Lady Macbeth?—

      My hands are of your color, but I shame

       To wear a heart so white.

      And again,

      A little water clears us of this deed,

       How easy is it then!

      If this is not mere masculine indifference to blood and death, mere firmness of nerve, what is it?

      ALDA.

      Not that, at least, which apparently you deem it; you will find, if you have patience to read me to the end, that I have judged Lady Macbeth very differently. Take these frightful passages with the context—take the whole situation, and you will see that it is no such thing. A friend of mine truly observed, that if Macbeth had been a ruffian without any qualms of conscience, Lady Macbeth would have been the one to shrink and tremble; but that which quenched him lent her fire. The absolute necessity for self-command, the strength of her reason, and her love for her husband, combine at this critical moment to conquer all fear but the fear of detection, leaving her the full possession of her faculties. Recollect that the same woman who speaks with such horrible indifference of a little water clearing the blood-stain from her hand, sees in imagination that hand forever reeking, forever polluted: and when reason is no longer awake and paramount over the violated feelings of nature and womanhood, we behold her making unconscious efforts to wash out that "damned spot," and sighing, heart-broken, over that little hand which all the perfumes of Arabia will never sweeten more.

      MEDON.

      I hope you have given her a place among the women in whom the tender affections and moral sentiments predominate.

      ALDA.

      You laugh; but, jesting apart, perhaps it would have been a more accurate classification than placing her among the historical characters.

      MEDON.

      Apropos to the historical characters, I hope you have refuted that insolent assumption, (shall I call it?) that Shakspeare tampered inexcusably with the truth of history. He is the truest of all historians. His anachronisms always remind me of those in the fine old Italian pictures; either they are insignificant, or, if properly considered, are really beauties; for instance, every one knows that Correggio's St. Jerome presenting his books to the Virgin, involves half-a-dozen anachronisms—to say nothing of that heavenly figure of the Magdalen, in the same picture, kissing the feet of the infant Saviour. Some have ridiculed, some have excused this strange combination of inaccuracies but is it less one of the divinest pieces of sentiment and poetry that ever breathed and glowed from the canvas? You remember too the famous nativity by some Neapolitan painter, who has placed Mount Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples in the background? In these and a hundred other instances, no one seems to feel that the apparent absurdity involves the highest truth, and that the sacred beings thus represented, if once allowed as objects of faith and worship, are eternal under every aspect, and independent of all time and all locality. So it is with Shakspeare and his anachronisms. The learned scorn of Johnson and some of his brotherhood of commentators, and the eloquent defence of Schlegel, seem in this case superfluous. If he chose to make the Delphic oracle and Julio Romano contemporary—what does it signify? he committed no anachronisms of character. He has not metamorphosed Cleopatra into a turtle-dove, nor Katherine of Arragon into a sentimental heroine. He is true to the spirit and even to the letter of history; where he deviates from the latter, the reason may be found in some higher beauty and more universal truth.

      ALDA.

      I have proved this, I think, by placing parallel with the dramatic character all the historic testimony I could collect relative to Constance, Cleopatra, Katherine of Arragon, &c.

      MEDON.

      Analyzing the character of Cleopatra must have been something like catching a meteor by the tail, and making it sit for its picture.

      ALDA.

      Something like it, in truth; but those of Miranda and Ophelia were more embarrassing, because they seemed to defy all analysis. It was like intercepting the dew-drop or the snow-flake ere it fell to earth, and subjecting it to a chemical process.

      MEDON.

      Some one said the other day that Shakspeare had never drawn a coquette. What is Cleopatra but the empress and type of all the coquettes that ever were—or are? She would put Lady—— herself to school. But now for the moral.

      ALDA.

      The moral!—of what?

      MEDON.

      Of your book. It has a moral, I suppose.

      ALDA.

      It has indeed a very deep one, which those who seek will find. If now I have answered all your considerations and objections, and sufficiently explained my own views, may I proceed?

      MEDON.

      If you please—I am prepared to listen in earnest.

      FOOTNOTES:

       Table of Contents

      [1] See Foster's Essay on the application of the word romantic—Essays, vol. I

       Table of Contents

       Table of Contents

      We hear it asserted, not seldom by way of compliment to us women, that intellect is of no sex. If this mean that the same faculties of mind are common to men and women, it is true; in any other signification it appears to me false, and the reverse of a compliment. The intellect of woman bears the same relation to that of man as her physical organization;—it is inferior in power, and different in kind. That certain women have surpassed certain men in bodily strength or intellectual energy, does not contradict the general principle founded in nature. The essential and invariable distinction appears to me this: in men the intellectual faculties exist more self-poised and self-directed—more independent of the rest of the character, than we ever find them in women, with whom talent, however predominant, is in a much greater degree modified by the sympathies and moral qualities.

      In thinking over all the distinguished women can at this moment call to mind, I recollect but one, who, in the exercise of a rare talent, belied her sex, but the moral qualities had been first perverted.[5] It is from not knowing, or not allowing this general principle, that men of genius

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