Page 116, l. 12. "_Dienen lerne_," etc.:
Early a woman should learn to serve, for that is her calling;
Since through service alone she finally comes to governing,
Comes to the due command that is hers of right in the household.
Early the sister must wait on her brother, and wait on her parents;
Life must be always with her a perpetual coming and going,
Or be a lifting and carrying, making and doing for others.
Happy for her be she accustomed to think no way is too grievous,
And if the hours of the night be to her as the hours of the daytime;
If she find never a needle too fine, nor a labour too trifling;
Wholly forgetful of self, and caring to live but in others!
Page 117, l. 31. "_Par une recontre_," etc.: "By a strange
chance," says Monsieur Taine, "women are more feminine and men
more masculine here than elsewhere. The two natures go to
extremes, the one to boldness, to a spirit of enterprise and
opposition, to a character that is warlike, imperious, and
rough; the other to gentleness, self-denial, patience,
inexhaustible affection. Here woman yields completely, a thing
unknown in foreign lands, especially in France, and looks upon
obedience, pardon, adoration as an honour and a duty, without
desiring or striving for anything beyond subordinating herself
and becoming daily more absorbed in him whom she has chosen of
her own accord and for all time. It is this instinct, an old
Germanic instinct, that those great delineators of instinct all
paint in a high light!... The spirit of this race is at once
primitive and serious. Among women simplicity lasts longer than
it does elsewhere. They are slower in losing respect, and in
weighing values and characters; they are less ready to suspect
evil and to analyse their husbands.... They have not the
cleverness, the advanced ideas, the assured behaviour, the
precocity which with us turns a young girl into a sophisticated
woman and a queen of society in six months. A secluded life and
obedience are easier for them. More yielding and more sedentary,
they are at once more reserved, more self-centred, more disposed
to gaze upon the noble dream that they call duty."
Page 118, l. 28. "_Voir la peinture_," etc.: "Depiction of this
character is to be seen in all English and German literature,"
he says in a footnote. "The closest of observers, Stendhal,
thoroughly impregnated with Italian and French ideas and
customs, is amazed at sight of it. He understands nothing of
this kind of devotion, 'of this slavery which English husbands
have had the cleverness to impose upon their wives under the
name of duty.' These are 'customs of the seraglio.'"
Page 121, l. 5. _lèse majesté_: high treason.
Page 124, l. 5. _ordentliche Frau_: respectable woman.
Page 127, l. 8. "_Mir ist ein Greuel_": it is a horror for me.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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