Homepage
Login
Profile
BookClubs
dmBox
Read Ebook: Novelas ejemplares by Cervantes Saavedra Miguel De
Font size:
Background color:
Text color:
Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page Prev Page
Ebook has 1097 lines and 70483 words, and 22 pages
MEDON.
Then, in a few words, what is the subject, and what the object, of your book?
ALDA.
I have endeavoured to illustrate the various modifications of which the female character is susceptible, with their causes and results. My life has been spent in observing and thinking; I have had, as you well know, more opportunities for the first, more leisure for the last, than have fallen to the lot of most people. What I have seen, felt, thought, suffered, has led me to form certain opinions. It appears to me that the condition of women in society, as at present constituted, is false in itself, and injurious to them,--that the education of women, as at present conducted, is founded in mistaken principles, and tends to increase fearfully the sum of misery and error in both sexes; but I do not choose presumptuously to fling these opinions in the face of the world, in the form of essays on morality, and treatises on education. I have rather chosen to illustrate certain positions by examples, and leave my readers to deduce the moral themselves, and draw their own inferences.
MEDON.
And why have you not chosen your examples from real life? you might easily have done so. You have not been a mere spectator, or a mere actor, but a lounger behind the scenes of existence--have even assisted in preparing the puppets for the stage: you might have given us an epitome of your experience, instead of dreaming over Shakspeare.
ALDA.
I might so, if I had chosen to become a female satirist, which I will never be.
MEDON.
You would, at least, stand a better chance of being read.
ALDA.
MEDON.
But this being so, we must either revolve with these earthly natures, and round the same centre, or seek a sphere for ourselves, and dwell apart.
ALDA.
I trust it is not necessary to do either. While we are yet young, and the passions, powers, and feelings, in their full activity, create to us a world within, we cannot look fairly on the world without:--all things then are good. When first we throw ourselves forth, and meet burs and briars on every side, which stick in our very hearts;--and fair tempting fruits which turn to bitter ashes in the taste, then we exclaim with impatience, all things are evil. But at length comes the calm hour, when they who look beyond the superficies of things begin to discern their true bearings; when the perception of evil, or sorrow, or sin, brings also the perception of some opposite good, which awakens our indulgence, or the knowledge of the cause which excites our pity. Thus it is with me. I can smile,--nay, I can laugh still, to see folly, vanity, absurdity, meanness, exposed by scornful wit, and depicted by others in fictions light and brilliant. But these very things, when I encounter the reality, rather make me sad than merry, and take away all the inclination, if I had the power, to hold them up to derision.
MEDON.
Unless, by doing so, you might correct them.
ALDA.
Correct them! Show me that one human being who has been made essentially better by satire! O no, no! there is something in human nature which hardens itself against the lash--something in satire which excites only the lowest and worst of our propensities. That avowal in Pope--
I must be proud to see Men not afraid of God, afraid of me!
--has ever filled me with terror and pity--
MEDON.
From its truth perhaps?
ALDA.
MEDON.
'Tis an old allegory, and a sad one--and but too much to the purpose.
ALDA.
I abhor the spirit of ridicule--I dread it and I despise it. I abhor it because it is in direct contradiction to the mild and serious spirit of Christianity; I fear it, because we find that in every state of society in which it has prevailed as a fashion, and has given the tone to the manners and literature, it marked the moral degradation and approaching destruction of that society; and I despise it, because it is the usual resource of the shallow and the base mind, and, when wielded by the strongest hand with the purest intentions, an inefficient means of good. The spirit of satire reversing the spirit of mercy which is twice blessed, seems to me twice accursed;--evil in those who indulge it--evil to those who are the objects of it.
MEDON.
"Peut-?tre fallait-il que la punition des imprudens et des faibles fut confi?e ? la malignit?, car la pure vertu n'e?t jamais ?t? assez cruelle."
ALDA.
That is a woman's sentiment.
MEDON.
ALDA.
MEDON.
That she reminds us of the dragon of old, which was generated between the sunbeams from heaven and the slime of earth.
ALDA.
No such thing. Rather of the powerful and beautiful fairy Melusina, who had every talent and every charm under heaven but once in so many hours was fated to become a serpent. No, I return to my first position. It is not by exposing folly and scorning fools, that we make other people wiser, or ourselves happier. But to soften the heart by images and examples of the kindly and generous affections--to show how the human soul is disciplined and perfected by suffering--to prove how much of possible good may exist in things evil and perverted--how much hope there is for those who despair--how much comfort for those whom a heartless world has taught to contemn both others and themselves, and so put barriers to the hard, cold, selfish, mocking, and levelling spirit of the day--O would I could do this!
MEDON.
On the same principle, I suppose, that they have changed the treatment of lunatics; and whereas they used to condemn poor distempered wretches to straw and darkness, stripes and a strait waistcoat, they now send them to sunshine and green fields, to wander in gardens among birds and flowers, and soothe them with soft music and kind flattering speech.
ALDA.
You laugh at me! perhaps I deserve it.
MEDON.
ALDA.
MEDON.
But instance--instance!
ALDA.
MEDON.
But these are contradictions which we meet on every page of history, which make us giddy with doubt, or sick with belief, and are the proper subjects of inquiry for the moralist and the philosopher.
ALDA.
MEDON.
Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page Prev Page