Archive May 2008
Regarding Her Marriage with a Poor Young Man
And so there is trouble in the house of Harcourt, my dear Jessie. You
want to marry your intellectual young lover, who has only his pen
between him and poverty, and your cruel father, who owns the town, says
it is an act of madness on your part, and of presumption on his.
And you are thinking of going to the nearest clergyman and defying
parental authority.
You have even looked at rooms where you believe you and Ernest could be
ideally happy. And you want me to act as matron-of-honour at that very
informal little wedding.
Now, my dear girl, before you take this important step, give the matter
careful study.
Your impulses are beautiful, and your ideal natural and lovely. God
intended men and women to choose their mates in this very way, with no
consideration of a worldly nature to mar their happiness.
But civilized young ladies are a far call from God's primitive woman.
You have lived for twenty-three years in the lap of modern luxury. Your
father prides himself upon the fact that, although your mother died when
you were very young, he has carefully shielded you from everything which
could cast a shadow upon your name or nature. Your lover is fascinated
with your absolute purity and innocence. Yet he does not realize that a
young woman who has so long "sat in the lap of Luxury," is unfit to be a
poor man's wife.
Some girl who might know much more than you of the dark and vulgar side
of life, would make him a better companion if he could love her enough
to ask her hand in marriage.
The girl who has received the addresses of this fascinating old fellow
"Luxury," never quite forgets him, or ceases to bemoan him if she
throws him over for a poor man.
To look at two rooms and a bath is one thing, to live in them
another, after having all your life occupied a suite which a queen might
envy, with retinues of servitors at call.
You tell me you could die for your lover.
But can you bathe from a wash-bowl and pitcher, and can you take your
meals at cheap restaurants, and make coffee and toast on an oil-stove or
a chafing-dish?
Can you wear cheap clothing and ride in trolleys, and economize on
laundry bills to prove your love for this man?
You never have known one single hardship in your life; you never have
faced poverty, or even experienced the ordinary economies of well-to-do
people.
You are an only daughter of wealth -- American wealth. That sentence
conveys a world of meaning. It means that you are spoiled for anything
but comfort in this life.
For a few weeks you might believe yourself in a fairy-land of romance
if you married your lover and went to live in the two rooms. But at the
end of that period you would begin to realize that you were in a very
actual land of poverty and discomfort.
Discomfort is relative. Those rooms to the shop-girl who had toiled for
years, and lived in a fourth-flight-back tenement, would represent
luxury. To you, after a few months, they would mean absolute penury.
You would begin to miss your beautiful home, and your maids, and your
carriages. Your husband would know you were missing them, and he would
be miserable. Unless your father came to your rescue, your dream of
romantic love would end in a nightmare of regret and sorrow.
Your father knows you, -- the creature of refined tastes and luxurious
habits that he has made you, -- and your lover does not. Neither do you
know yourself.
It requires a woman in ten thousand, one possessed of absolute heroism,
like the old martyrs who sang at the stake while dying, to do what you
contemplate, and to be happy in the doing.
Nothing like a life of self-indulgence disintegrates great qualities.
You are romantically and feverishly in love with a handsome and gifted
young man. But do not rush into a marriage with him until you can bring
your father to settle a competence upon you, or until your lover has
spanned the abyss of poverty with a bridge of comfort. You have had no
training in self-denial or self-dependence. The altar is a bad place to
begin your first lesson.
Wait awhile. I know my advice seems worldly and cold, but it is the
result of wide observation.
If you cannot sit in your gold and white boudoir, and be true to Ernest
while he battles a few more years with destiny, then you could not
remain loyal in thought while you held your numb fingers over a chilly
radiator in an uncomfortable flat, or omitted dessert from your dinner
menu to cut down expenses.
Your brain-cells have been developed in opulence.
You could not train your mind to inexorable economy, even at the command
of Cupid.
Take the advice of a woman of the world, my dear girl, and do not
attempt the impossible and so spoil two lives.
Again I say, wait awhile.
There are girls who could be perfectly happy in the position you picture
for yourself with Ernest, but not you.
Better hide your ideal in your heart than shatter it on the unswept
hearthstone of the commonplace.
Better be in your lover's life the unattained joy, than ruin his
happiness by discontent.
It is less of a tragedy for a man to hear a woman say "I cannot go with
you," than to hear her say "I cannot stay with you."
___________________
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
(1855-1919)
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Archive May 2008
