The Clergyman's Wife and Other Sketches/Woman-Friendships

by Anna Cora Mowatt

WOMAN-FRIENDSHIPS.

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ll the world gives ready credence to the possibility of friendship between man and man; some people are even inclined to believe that the immutable attachment of Orestes and Pylades, of Æneas and Achates, may be repeated among men in these inconstant, modern times; but the devotion of woman to one of her own sex, the sincerity with which she clasps the hand or presses the lip of woman, the genuineness of her self-sacrifices daily made for a beloved sister, are subjects of a vast amount of skepticism. Philosophic writers, poets, wits, have openly declared their disbelief in the existence of the strange phenomena of woman-friendships. Even Diana Mullock, who has written so many lines of woman which bear the impress of truth and wisdom, who has solved so many of the enigmas inseparable from woman's nature, gravely shakes her head when she touches upon "female friendships," and calls up such a doubting host of "ifs" and "buts" to usher in the possibility of perfect love between women, that we inevitably draw the inference that she sides with the unbelievers.

On the other hand, Shakspeare, that "intellectual miracle," (as he has been called), whose seer-like vision pierced deeper than the eyes of grosser mortals,—Shakspeare, whose magic plummet sounded the unreached, uncomprehended depths of the human soul, reveals the hearts of women united by adamatine links.

Instance the clinging fondness of Helena and Hermia, in Midsummer Night's Dream:"

"We, Hermia, like two artificial gods,Have, with our needles, created both one flower,Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion,Both warbling of one song, both in one key,As if our hands, our sides, voices and minds,Had been incorporate, So we grew together,Like to a double cherry, seeming parted,But yet a unison in partition;Two lovely berries moulded on one stem;So with two seeming bodies, but one heart,Two of the first, like coats in heraldry,Due but to one, and crownèd with one crest."

We have another illustration of woman-friendship, in its consummate beauty, portrayed in the passionate, protecting love of Beatrice for Hero, in "Much Ado About Nothing;" and in "As You Like It," a still stronger picture in the self-renouncing, absolute devotion for Rosalind of the gentle Celia, who startles her wrathful father with the declaration:

———"if she be a traitor,Why so am I; we still have slept together,Rose at an instant, learn'd, play'd, eat together;And wheresoe'er we went, like Juno's swans,Still we went coupled and inseparable!"

When the implacable duke banishes Rosalind, Celia replies:

"Pronounce that sentence then on me, my liege,I cannot live out of her company!"

Shakspeare against the world! for who knew the world one half so well?

Not only are we impressed by the conviction that his glowing portraitures of woman-friendship are life-drawn; not only have we perfect faith in the possibility of a thoroughly unselfish, all-absorbing attachment between two women, but we entertain the belief that there are certain female minds so constituted that a tender friendship with one of the same sex is positively indispensible to happiness. Such natures experience an irresistible impulse to confide in one who, enlightened by her own yearnings and failings, can understand feminine wants and frailties; who can look upon feminine insufficiencies, not from a strong, manly, but a weak, womanly point of view.

A woman may be the most irreproachable of wives to the best of husbands, and yet feel a void in her affections, a chamber in her large heart unfilled; a something needful lacking, if there be no Celia into whose ear she can pour the history of her joys and sorrows, to whom she can turn for advice, and lenient judgment, and comprehending sympathy.

There are trivial domestic difficulties, petty annoyances, perplexing positions, which no woman of tact will trouble and bewilder her husband by relating to him. If he is a man of decided intellect, he will not attach any importance to these small crosses, will not even understand these minor miseries, and the wife is thrown back upon her own resources, vexed and disheartened by her failing attempt to enlist his aid or sympathy. If he is a man of limited mental powers, he will be more annoyed than she, and will only increase her vexations without disentangling a single thread of the fine web of dilemmas into which she is snared. But to a sympathetic female companion, a woman may enter into all the details of these insignificant trials, and, clasping a friend's hand, she may search for and discover the clue that can guide her out of her domestic labyrinth.

The higher love, the love for man, neither absorbs nor forbids the lower, the friendship for woman. They are distinct, emotional capacities, which may be co-existent in one heart. They are evidences of a rich, spiritual organization. If they dwell together in pristine purity, one affection strengthens rather than weakens the other.

Who can deny that two women, through a mysterious affinity, may become, and recognize each other as sisters in heart? Who can doubt that there is a bond of sisterhood between their spirits, as real and as strong as the tie of blood between sisters? And if this be true, must not that internal kinship outlive even the dissevering stroke of death, and proclaim them true sisters in the great. hereafter? But in this lower sphere, what name can we give to their attachment but that of "woman-friendship?"