Bracebridge Hall, or The HumoristsIrving, Washington
General
Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists
Irving, Washington
England -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction; National characteristics, English -- Fiction
It is but doing right by the reader, if interested in the fate of
Abstemia by the preceding extracts, to say, that she was restored to
the arms and affections of her husband, rendered fonder than ever, by
that disposition in every good heart, to atone for past injustice, by
an overflowing measure of returning kindness:
Thou wealth, worth more than kingdoms; I am now
Confirmed past all suspicion; thou art far
Sweeter in thy sincere truth than a sacrifice
Deck'd up for death with garlands. The Indian winds
That blow from off the coast and cheer the sailor
With the sweet savour of their spices, want
The delight flows in thee.
I have been more affected and interested by this little dramatic
picture, than by many a popular love tale; though, as I said before, I
do not think it likely either Abstemia or patient Grizzle stand much
chance of being taken for a model. Still I like to see poetry now and
then extending its views beyond the wedding-day, and teaching a lady
how to make herself attractive even after marriage. There is no great
need of enforcing on an unmarried lady the necessity of being
agreeable; nor is there any great art requisite in a youthful beauty
to enable her to please. Nature has multiplied attractions around her.
Youth is in itself attractive. The freshness of budding beauty needs
no foreign aid to set it off; it pleases merely because it is fresh,
and budding, and beautiful. But it is for the married state that a
woman needs the most instruction, and in which she should be most on
her guard to maintain her powers of pleasing. No woman can expect to
be to her husband all that he fancied her when he was a lover. Men are
always doomed to be duped, not so much by the arts of the sex, as by
their own imaginations. They are always wooing goddesses, and marrying
mere mortals. A woman should, therefore, ascertain what was the charm
that rendered her so fascinating when a girl, and endeavour to keep it
up when she has become a wife. One great thing undoubtedly was, the
chariness of herself and her conduct, which an unmarried female always
observes. She should maintain the same niceness and reserve in her
person and habits, and endeavour still to preserve a freshness and
virgin delicacy in the eye of her husband. She should remember that
the province of woman is to be wooed, not to woo; to be caressed, not
to caress. Man is an ungrateful being in love; bounty loses instead of
winning him. The secret of a woman's power does not consist so much in
giving, as in withholding.
A woman may give up too much even to her husband. It is to a thousand
little delicacies of conduct that she must trust to keep alive
passion, and to protect herself from that dangerous familiarity, that
thorough acquaintance with every weakness and imperfection incident to
matrimony. By these means she may still maintain her power, though she
has surrendered her person, and may continue the romance of love even
beyond the honeymoon.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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