English Girls in the Olden Time [pp. 366-369]

ENGLISH GIRLS IN THE OLDEN TIME.
all the advantage in the struggle. If it had not
been so, there would have been no independent
England in the sixteenth century. And there
is scarcely a fragment of early English literature but shows us that Romanism, pure and
simple, did not take root in the English mind.
England was Protestant before Wycliffe. The
Reformation revealed, did not create, the gulf
between the religious ideas of the Latin and the
Anglo-Saxon races.
One of the pieces in this collection is entitled,
"How the Good Wife Taught her Daughter,"
and doubtless belongs to the fourteenth century. From the number of manuscripts containing the substance of these counsels, we
may infer that this was a popular poem extensively circulated among the English portion of
the people. It is much shorter than the Knighlt's
book, and contains only about two hundred lines
for his two hundred pages; but if his stories
and repetitions are left out, the difference is not
very great after all. Each set of counsels may
be taken as national in their time, inasmuch as
numerous manuscripts of both remain to us.
The very idea of the mother as the teacher
of her daughters has an Anglo-Saxon face, and
the devolving of this upon tlhe father is not less
Latin in feature. Not that the mother in France
would in no case counsel her daughter, but that,
in general, she would be less recognized as the
guide of her girls; and it is to the credit of the
French character that fathers sustain a closer
relation of affection to children of either sex.
An English father may be expected to instruct
his sons; the daughters would, according to
English ideas, depend more upon maternal wisdom. This divergence carries us to the radical
difference between French and English female
character; the latter has the higher and purer
moral tone, and consequently a stronger posi tion in the family. There were always two
heads to an English household, rarely more
than one in the French family. Not that the
French woman was perfectly subordinated to
her husband, nor that the reverse was always
true on the other side of the channel; but that
the woman of Latin stock is seldom a law giver or a spring of authority.
We miss in the good wife's lines all the
purely ceremonial parts of religion; but devo tion is encouraged. The blessing of the Virgin
is invoked; but there is nothing said of praying
for the dead, or of their power to deliver girls
from temptation. For such deliverance depends
upon the shrewd, common-sense advice which
is still given in all well-regulated Anglo-Saxon
households: "Do n't put yourself where your
lover may get you into trouble." The fair
inference from the Knighlt's teachings is, "Do
what you will, if you have prayed for the dead,
their dead bodies will intervene between you
and peril at the critical moment." Our good
wife's creed is so short on this subject, it is so
homely and practical, so like the best teaching
girls get on these matters in our days, that she
does not, like the French knight, need to teach
modesty by numerous chapters through which
one must hold his nose while he reads.
There is nothing in the religious precepts to
show that the writer was a Papist. The invocation for the Virgin's blessing on her daughter
is the only sign of Romanism. She exhorts
her daughter to love God and holy Church, to
go to church when she can, and not to stay
away for the rain, to give tithes and offering
with a glad heart, to be kind to the poor, and
not to be hard: "He prospers well who loves
the poor." Her daughter must not laugh at
people, old or young, when in church, and
must not chatter or gossip with her neighlbors.
The practical parts of the advice show differences between the olden time and now. It
strikes us oddly enough to read a warning not
to get drunk, and to have this counsel made
important by repetition, and a statement of the
evils of female drunkenness. It may be hoped
that no modern mother needs to give such a
lesson to her girls. And yet the writer heard
Cardinal Manning say in a public meeting, in
i867, that intemperance was destroying the
character of English women, and, what was
worse, of English children. A friend tells us
that he rode recently in a car, in Philadelphia,
which contained a drunken young woman whose
respectability was vouched for by his fellow passengers. These unpleasant remnants of old
English vices mark another contrast between
the Latin and Anglo-Saxon stocks, to the credit
of the former, which is the less given to de bamches of intoxication.
The good wife's daughter is counseled to
despise no offer of marriage, but speedily to
tell it to her friends. This would show that
early English customs were similar to those
which still prevail in this country. Marrying
men first consulted the girls, and thereafter the
girls were expected to report to their mothers.
The Latin custom of consulting the young wo men last, and then, rather as a matter of form,
has never taken root in Anglo-Saxon life. It is
another proof of the superior position of woman
in the English social system.
The strength of the wife's language on this
point, "Scorn him not, whatsoever he be,"
prompts Mr. Furnivall to query whether the
mothers of that time did not find it hard to
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