800 Years of Women's Letters (18 page)

Today I have begun my school duties. I hope I may not find them disagreeable although rather confining –
You know I told you, you might dislike your name associated with a teacher
. Think of these matters and if a change comes over your dream, I shall quickly discover it in the tones of your letters. Your generous, noble and impulsive nature, will soon give token, should such a feeling take possession of your mind – Now only one day had elapsed and the
dream
(if such it be) is
still
there – but your feelings and the test of
time
& trial yet – I appreciate the noble gift you
lay
at
my disposal
, and while I would be its ‘guardian angel' I would see every affection of that loving heart, called forth. I have seen you, as the strong man, bowed down, and I bless you for the offering – were you satisfied with what you received in return? Do you remember what I told you Friday night that you had not asked for? . . . It was 11 oclock before our friends left and then I began this long epistle! may you not tire of it! but reply to it soon, and now I must say Good-night wishing you every blessing – prosperity in your daily cares and toils – ‘blessings in your basket and in your store,' but do not forget to take care of
yourself
, for you say ‘I have brought back to my house another true heart.'
Then I have a right to claim a care over it
– you are not ‘quite certain of its happiness depending upon me' – for you may find it happier to be as you have been – I do want you to try yourself and you must not call this letter exacting or formal, I write as I talked with you
calmly & plainly
. Know thyself, fully & truly – and while I pray for thee, think kindly of your true friend.

Bessie H

HUNTTING-RUDD, FAMILY PAPERS, RADCLIFFE COLLEGE, U.S.A.

Mariama Bâ was born in 1929 in Senegal; she died tragically in 1981, just after the publication of her now famous novel
So Long a Letter
(Virago, 1982). Orphaned young, she was brought up a Muslim by her grandparents. She worked as a primary schoolteacher until she married the Minister of Information. She gave him nine children after which he divorced her, an experience central to her novel; this work, in letter form, is an outcry against polygamy, against the suffering of the rejected wife. Here she writes to a friend who has proposed marriage in her loneliness.

Daouda,

You are chasing after a woman who had remained the same, Daouda, despite the intense ravages of suffering.

You who have loved me, who love me still – I don't doubt it – try to understand me. My conscience is not accommodating enough to enable me to marry you, when only esteem, justified by your many qualities, pulls me towards you. I can offer you nothing else, even though you deserve everything. Esteem is not enough for marriage, whose snares I know from experience. And then the existence of your wife and children further complicates the situation. Abandoned yesterday because of a woman, I cannot lightly bring myself between you and your family.

You think the problem of polygamy is a simple one. Those who are involved in it know the constraints, the lies, the injustices that weigh down their consciences in return for the ephemeral joys of change. I am sure you are motivated by love, a love that existed well before your marriage and that fate has not been able to satisfy. It is with infinite sadness and tear-filled eyes that I offer you my friendship. Dear Daouda, please accept it. It is with great pleasure that I shall continue to welcome you to my house.

Shall I hope to see you again?

Ramatoulaye

TRANS. M. BODÉ-THOMAS, MARIAMA BÂ,
SO LONG A LETTER
(1982)

Daouda replied: ‘All or nothing. Adieu.' He never came back again
.

The earliest records of marriages in the West mention dowries. From ancient Greece to France today, the financial arrangements of two families uniting their son and daughter were frequently central. One of the first women's letters which historians have found, in Alexandria, concerns problems over a dowry. There is mention of ‘dowrie and gift' in Genesis XXIV v. 12 which indicates its social importance and the financial value – or cost – of a wife.

In Europe the dowry could pose real barriers to girls wishing to get married. From the Middle Ages in France there are records of girls saving for dowries: a French maid in the late Middle Ages stated that she saved for her own dowry (to escape remaining single and despised) – ‘Jeanne Valence, a farm labourer's daughter, provided, out of her domestic labour the sum of £30 and a blanket and wooden chest.'

The first letter about a dowry dates from the first century before Christ. It is from a woman with financial problems, faced with harsh physical restraints.

To Protarchus, from Dionysarion, the daughter of Protarchus, with her brother Protarchus as guardian, and from Hermione, daughter of Hermias, a citizen, on the authority of her
brother's son, Hermias
:

Dionysarion agrees that the contract is invalidated which the son of Hermione, Hermias, made with her, with Hermione serving as bondsman . . . It is agreed, on behalf of her deceased husband, that Dionysarion take from Hermione's house by hand the dowry which she brought to Hermias, with Hermione serving as bondsman: a dowry of clothes to the value of 240 silver pieces, earrings, and a ring. . . . The contract is invalidated with all documents sealed by her. Dionysarion is not to enter suit against Hermione, nor is any man acting on her behalf, not for any of the deceased Hermias' possessions nor concerning the dowry or support nor about any other written or unwritten agreement made in the past up to the present day. Since Dionysarion has become pregnant, she is not to sue for childbirth, because she is more persuasive on that account; she is permitted to expose her baby or to join herself in marriage to another husband. She agrees that if she breaks this authorized agreement she is subject to damages and the established fine. . . .

EDS. MARY R. LEFKOWITZ, AND M.B. FANT,
WOMEN'S LIFE IN

GREECE
AND ROME (1982)

In France dowries continued to be more important than in England. There is evidence from the silk manufacturing mills in Lyons in the 1830s that girls from peasant families came ‘to accumulate savings for their dowries.' Financial arrangements were even more important for the bourgeoisie. In this letter the mother seems more interested in money than in her daughter's feelings towards a young suitor, la Roche.

[Céline Gouever to her uncle]

17 Dec 1890

Now let us talk about la Roche. You ask me how Mama handled it. First she spoke about their wealth, saying that theirs was greatly superior to ours. They replied to her that they weren't concerned with money. That it was the young girl they were asking for and not anything else. Mama decided that the young man should come and he came to make an offer fifteen days ago. Friday Mama saw her sister again. She told her that I hadn't yet made up my mind. She said that we would see a little later, that there was no hurry, that they should give me some time, and shouldn't give up hope.

My ears are still ringing from all the advice. Everybody who knows them tells me that they are decent people and I couldn't find anyone better than this boy on every count, so that I am very confused. Even more confused than I was, what should I do? I haven't the faintest idea. O my poor uncle, there is nothing worse than being a
demoiselle
of marriageable age.

EDS. E.O. HELLERSTEIN
ET AL., VICTORIAN WOMEN
(1983)

Marriage was usually an economic and social bond, though based on an individual relationship. After marriage, the church and state granted men jurisdiction over their wives, and expected offspring. For women marriage seemed to offer adult status, though it could mean subjection to house, and loneliness, as with Pepys's wife; his diaries give unwitting evidence.

Men and women were both expected to contribute. In labouring homes this meant equal labour at work, while the wife also had to undertake most home chores. In middle-and upper-class families, male and female spheres were increasingly differentiated. The church presented women with the ideal of helpmate; St Paul opined that if men must ‘sin', they should channel this into the respectability of marriage. The wife bore the burden of ‘honour', of upholding cultural concepts of ‘virtue'.

Prior to the seventeenth century some sections of society considered a man would do well to marry an older woman with experience and skills. In France and Ireland, peasant women often waited to marry till their late twenties. Yet by the end of the eighteenth century a young dependent wife is represented as the ideal in fiction. In 1780, according to local records in England, 73 per cent of husbands were older than their wives. This situation made it more difficult for young women to assert their rights. They were sexually and economically vulnerable, since divorce was seldom possible, except for the very rich, and even separation rare – above all, it was socially reprehensible.

Courtship and marriage were serious steps for both men and women, particularly the middle class. Men were expected to have begun in business or a profession, and often waited till their late twenties or thirties. No stigma was attached to the bachelor during this time, whereas the unmarried woman, who had previously fed herself by spinning, became a ridiculed ‘spinster'. A girl might be persuaded into marriage merely to avoid the single state.

Wives found contradictions between the cultural ideal of the ‘angel in the house' and the reality of hard household work, with almost yearly childbearing. English society remained ignorant of the many ways of limiting families practised in Africa and Japan. There are few letters on such intimate topics, but I have included an attempt at abortion by an aristocrat, two letters on confinements, and the Empress Eugénie of France on her wretched pregnancy. As motherhood is a topic on which a great deal has been published, I offer only Madame de Sévigné, on an aspect overlooked till recently: the searing sense of loss when an adult daughter leaves home.

Elizabeth I exploited her unviolated status as Virgin in a skilful propagandistic aim to replace some of the worship of the Virgin Mary. However, her ministers urged her to marry throughout her reign, mainly to produce an heir. She may have guessed that her father's syphilis would make her sterile, like her unhappy sister, Mary Tudor. On 30 September 1566, Parliament met yet again, to beg her to reconsider an Austrian pretender. Here she expresses her anger to Parliament:

Was I not born in the realm? Were my parents born in any foreign country? Is not my kingdom here? Whom have I oppressed? Whom have I enriched to other's harm? What turmoil have I made in this commonwealth that I should be suspected to have no regard to the same? How have I governed since my reign? I will be tried by envy itself. I need not to use many words, for my deeds do try me.

Well, the matter whereof they would have made their petition (as I am informed) consisteth in two points: in my marriage and in the limitations of the succession of the crown, wherein my marriage was first placed, as for manners' sake. I did send them answer by my council, I would marry (although of mine own disposition I was not inclined thereunto) but that was not accepted nor credited, although spoken by their Prince.

I will never break the word of a prince spoken in a public place, for my honour's sake. And therefore I say again, I will marry as soon as I can conveniently, if God take not him away with whom I mind to marry, or myself, or else some other great let happen. I can say no more.

ED. G. HARRISON,
LETTERS OF QUEEN ELIZABETH I, 1558–1570
(1935)

However, Elizabeth I sometimes needed the support of a loving man. Once Leicester, her beloved Robin, had married, she encouraged the overtures of Monsieur, the heir to the French throne, from 1572 for nine years. Writing to Monsieur began as a diplomatic ploy, but it was also an outlet for her tangled emotions. Two themes dominate the letters: her deep appreciation of his constancy, which she said was un clair rocher [a clear rock] amid life's storms and tempests, and her concern over the delays in the marriage negotiations, which she always blamed on the French. He sent her a golden flower with a frog perched on its petals, and with his miniature inside; she sent him constant assurances that their souls were meant to be united, but she was not sure when.

Nevertheless, she did not trust the French. When she heard Monsieur was thinking of taking over the Low Countries from Spain, she wisely feared another war. She wrote, in the summer of 1580, warning him that she would not marry for the perpetual harm of England:

Let him never procure her harm whose love he seeks to win. My mortal foe can wish me no greater loss than England's hate. Neither should death be less welcome unto me than such a mishap betide me. You see how nearly this matter wringeth me. Use it accordingly. If it please him the deputies may have the charge of this matter joined with the other two that were aforementioned. I dare not assure Monsieur how this great matter will end until I be assured what way he will take with the Low Countries for rather will I never meddle with marriage that have such a bad covenant added to my part. Shall it be ever found true that Queen Elizabeth hath solemnised the perpetual harm of England under the glorious title of marriage with Francis, heir of France? No, it shall never be.

ED. H. ELLIS,
ORIGINAL LETTERS: ILLUSTRATIVE OF ENGLISH HISTORY
(1924)

After an undistinguished campaign in the Netherlands, Monsieur died in 1584.

Madame de Sévigné adored her daughter, but began to feel a little worried about her prospects after four years of unsuitable suitors. Mme de Sévigné had married at seventeen; now her daughter was already twenty-two.