THE HEBREW WOMAN.
From The New Quarterly Review.
THE HEBREW WOMAN.
BY CONSTANCE DE ROTHSCHILD.
To love the weak, to shield and protect the tender, to succour the troubled, are precepts which form the texts of innumerable sermons, preached year after year from every pulpit, and which have ever found a willing response in all generous hearts rich in charity and love.
It was during the gloomy Middle Ages that the "enthusiasm of humanity" found its earliest votaries; it was in that period of violence and bloodshed that the feelings of charity and pity, so long stunted in their growth, burst into full and beautiful flower, and it was under the shadow of the mediaeval Church that they attained their fullest maturity. It was then that the sick and the suffering were cared for by men and women of noble birth, it was then that the strong man and the delicate woman tended their unhappy brother or fever-stricken sister with their own hands. The story of the Middle Ages is blotted with dark and terrible sins, but it is also glorified by brilliant virtues, which show forth all the brighter in the midst of the long annals of cruelty and oppression.
Homage to the weak!
It was a doctrine preached by hermit and priest, and practised — partially, at all events — by the chivalry of the time.
Homage to the weak, the sick, and the miserable! And homage also to the gentle and the beautiful! Woman, in her weakness, shared with the poor and the suffering in the charity and tenderness inculcated by religion, and strengthened not unfrequently her claims by the magical potency of youth and loveliness.
But may there not have been a lurking danger about this great and noble precept? Poverty and helplessness can be fostered by the love and care which are spent upon them, until they become entangling weeds, destroying the healthy plants of independence and industry. Woman, made the object of excessive homage, without receiving corresponding cultivation, too easily becomes selfish, vain, and even cruel. We know how rapidly mendicants multiplied in all the civilized countries of Europe, and became ere long the plaie sanglante of the social body. From being "the Lord's poor," they have come to be looked upon as the disgrace and bane of the community. And, in like manner, the chivalry which has (at least, in theory) for ages surrounded woman in all Christian lands, has too often allowed her practically to decline into a helpless and useless being, unfitted either to perform the duties or enjoy the higher pleasures of human existence.
"Homage to the woman morally and intellectually strong!" to the woman of sound judgment, powerful thought, and independent action! This was a text preached in an earlier age: "Strength and honour are her clothing" are words which were originally written in a Hebrew tongue, and they belong to the Hebrew picture of a perfect woman — the ideal of a nation amongst whom woman was honoured and unfettered, and who, while it held her beauty and grace to be precious, yet said of her, "Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain; but the woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised."
From early ages the women of Israel seem to have enjoyed a considerable degree of freedom. They resembled, indeed, in not a few respects the Teuton women, who, like them, were vigorous and high-spirited, renowned for their purity and courage, and who could, when occasion required, appear on the field of battle, and urge their husbands to defy death rather than submit to the victor's mercy, and who, we are told also, counted prophets and priests amongst their ranks. A wide chasm, however, separates the women of Israel from their contemporaries, who lived either in Eastern climes or on European shores. Perhaps we may fairly imagine them to have been influenced throughout all their history by those words which I have selected as the key-note to this article, and which may well have been their treasured device from the early days, when they dwelt apart in a corner of Syria, up to the present time, when a wonderful concatenation of circumstances has carried2001:569:7F43:4C00:91B1:7110:B343:E74F 21:42, 8 December 2024 (UTC)Apiphine
- ↑ "She girdeth her loins with strength, and strengtheneth her arms. . . . Strength and honour are her clothing: she shall rejoice in time to come." — Proverbs xxxi. 17, 25.
