Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880.Various
Science
Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880.
Various
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Science -- Periodicals
A woman who marries one of these spoiled children may be sure of an
opportunity to practise all the feminine virtues. She is certain to have
been very much in love with him, for he was handsome, could dance and
flirt to perfection, and was the very ideal of a charming lover. The
little dash of selfishness in his ante-nuptial imperiousness and tender
tyranny pleased her, for it seemed to be the expression of a more ardent
love than that of every-day men. It depends very much upon her
generosity and largeness of heart whether she soon wakes up to the fact
that she has married a being destitute of sympathy, wholly careless and
ignorant of others' needs and requirements, full of caprices, allowing
every impulse to carry him away, and thoroughly bent on having his own
will and bending everybody about him to his own purposes.
Self-renunciation and absolute devotion and self-sacrifice are natural
to women of a certain quality of intellect and heart, and possess the
most powerful charm to their imagination, provided they can have a dash
of romance or a kindling of sentiment. Hence this form of martyrdom
offers the female sex the pose in which it has sat for its portrait all
the centuries since civilization began, and the picture stands out
impressively against a background we all can recognize. As a school for
heroism nothing can equal marriage with a spoiled child.
But, although probably quite as many instances may be found in one sex
as in the other, the characteristics of a spoiled child are distinctly
feminine, and in no measure belong to robust masculinity. Thus, for a
study, let us take a girl who from her cradle has found everything
subordinate to her princess-like whims, inclinations and caprices, and
has had her way by smiles and cajoleries or sobs and tears, as the case
may be. She finds out at an early age that it is pleasanter and more
profitable to be petted and pampered than to be forced to shift for
herself. She learns that an easy little pitiful curve of her coral lips
and upward glance of her baby orbs is answered by certain manifestations
of tenderness and concern: thus she "makes eyes," flirts, as it were,
before she can talk, and studies the art of successful tyranny. The
nursery--in fact, the entire house--rejoices when she rejoices and
trembles when she weeps. She wants everything she sees, and sulks at any
superiority of circumstances in another; but then she sulks
bewitchingly. Wherever she goes she carries an imperious sway, and keeps
her foot well on the necks of her admirers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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