CHAPTER IV TENNYSON'S IDEA OF THE WORTH AND WORK OF WOMAN Tennyson has written so much concerning the place and mission of woman, has pictured so many types of the female character, that a volume would be required to give in detail his study and estimate of the qualities which are regarded as peculiarly feminine. We need not here repeat the questions: Are Tennyson's women real or unreal; are they portrayed with artistic power; do they show as great poetic insight as is revealed in other features of his work? These are interesting and important questions, but they are not ours. We ask: What was Tennyson's conception of the function of woman in the social organism? and seek to find the correct answer to this inquiry. In King Arthur, Tennyson has given us his ideal man. This beautiful character has no feminine counterpart. Arthur was wedded to Guinevere, who wrought the ruin of the round table. Tennyson has portrayed women of wondrous virtue, beauty, love; but there is not one in all the gallery of his art to whom we can point and say: "This is the ideal woman." The noblest women of his song are not the creations of his imagination, but the product of his photographic skill. Lilian, Mariana, Madeline, Oriana, Margaret, are not without attractiveness; but when he wrote of Victoria, in whom "a thousand claims to reverence closed . as mother, wife and queen," or of his own mother as he did in "Isabel," he wrote with a power not evinced in the descriptive analyses of the women of his imagination. The women of his brain are pretty girls. The noblest women whom he knew were strong in character and life and love. In general it is true that the lines written in earlier manhood portray women whose attractiveness is transient and external, while his maturer genius delighted to present those whose power is in intellect and noble qualities of heart, the virtues that endure. He views woman primarily from the standpoint of sex. The woman conquers, where she conquers at all, not because of her knowledge, not because of her keener intuitions or her developed power to struggle and attain, but because of her sex-relations. Her jealousies sharpen her wits, the charms of her woman's nature bring warriors to her feet, and by her loves she makes and unmakes men and kingdoms. Vivian conquers Merlin. Guinevere dooms the round table to dissolution. The Princess as a college president is a feminine fizzle, but as the beloved of the amorous prince she is winsome, strong, and womanly. She finds her true self and her place in the world by loyalty to sex-instincts and by the performance of sex-functions. Margaret is besought not to enter the toil of life.2 At every crossroads the poet erected a guidepost pointing lonely maidens to the larger woman-world Of wives and mothers." This is not, to the poet's mind, belittling woman's nature, or her work in the world. It is only saying that her nature is not the same as man's, and that her mission in the world is determined by her natural capacities, tastes, and endowments. He really holds up to condemnation a false idea of woman by putting into the mouth of the upstart, raving youth of Locksley Hall such words as these: Woman's pleasure, woman's pain Nature made them blinder motions bounded in a shallower brain: 2 P. 21. Woman is the lesser man, and all thy passions, matched with mine, Are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine.* He does not sanction the theories of Lady Psyche and Lady Blanche, who maintained that with equal husbandry The woman were an equal to the man. He does not join in the effort of the Princess, To lift the woman's fallen divinity Upon an even pedestal with man." Much less does he approve of the low ideal of the fat-faced curate, Edward Bull: God made the woman for the use of man, On the contrary, he demands that we let this proud watchword rest of Equal For woman is not undevelopt man But diverse." If it be true, as one lecturer in the Princess' college affirmed, that woman's progress has been retarded by prejudice and custom and convention, these fetters should be broken. The right to 'P. 102. B P. 183. "Edwin Morris," p. 84. freedom is the inalienable right of every soul. But the fundamental fact is this that either sex alone Is half itself, and in true marriage lies Nor equal, nor unequal: each fulfils Defect in each, and always thought in thought, The single, pure and perfect animal, The two-celled heart beating, with one full stroke, Life." This summarizes the poet's doctrine of the significance of sex-differences and of woman's proper partnership with man, especially in the family. Tennyson also puts strong and repeated emphasis upon the motherhood function of woman. With this is often connected her peculiar gift of 'ministry as nurse in hospital or home. It was Psyche, The mother of the sweetest little maid, That ever crow'd for kisses, to whom Florian addressed the question, are you That, Psyche, wont to bind my throbbing brow, 8 Loc. cit. |