September 27. 1830
Love and Friendship Opposed — Marriage — Characterlessness of Women
A person once said to me, that he could make nothing of love, except that it was friendship accidentally combined with desire. Whence I concluded that he had never been in love. For what shall we say of the feeling which a man of sensibility has towards his wife with her baby at her breast! How pure from sensual desire! yet how different from friendship!
Sympathy constitutes friendship; but in love there is a sort of antipathy, or opposing passion. Each strives to be the other, and both together make up one whole.
Luther has sketched the most beautiful picture of the nature, and ends, and duties of the wedded life I ever read. St. Paul says it is a great symbol, not mystery, as we translate it.1
“Most women have no character at all,” said Pope1 and meant it for satire. Shakspeare, who knew man and woman much better, saw that it, in fact, was the perfection of woman to be characterless.
Every one wishes a Desdemona or Ophelia for a wife,—creatures who, though they may not always understand you, do always feel you, and feel with you.
Notes
1
Greek: ——
1
“Nothing so true as what you once let fall—
’Most women have no character at all,’—
Matter too soft a lasting mark to bear,
And best distinguish’d by black, brown, and fair.”
Epist. to a Lady, v. I.],