"The Best Or None!" Spinsterhood In Nineteenth-Century New England

Journal of Social History, Summer, 2000 by Zsuzsa Berend

Love, involuntary and mysterious, held a strong grip on the imagination. However, even in the most "untamed" versions, the tragic side of romantic love was conspicuously missing, and love had an easy affinity with domestic bliss. This quality of American romantic love accounts for its harmonious coexistence with the social institution of marriage. The lovers were not pitted against social and familial forces, as was often the case in European romanticism, but were happily planning to walk down the aisle. This easy and intimate connection between love and marriage on the one hand and marriage and society on the other made the link between love and society seem more commonsensical, the implication being that even in their private emotions people carry the kernel of public responsibility. And we should not underestimate the attraction of the true-love ideal; it was influential beyond the realm of the advice literature. In the moralistic, serious idiom that informed women's self-appraisals in letters and diaries , romantic love seemed somewhat frivolous and selfish, while true love connected the individual with the larger moral universe in a satisfying way. True love led to marriage, and marriage could not be contemplated lightly. Susan B. Anthony found a deep resonance with her own values when she read Elizabeth Oakes Smith's Bertha and Lily. Bertha's opinion of marriage is that it is very sacred, very lovely, in my eyes, and therefore, to be sustained from pure motives." Anthony sent a note of thanks to the author. "From the very depth of my heart, do I rejoice that the good Father put it into your heart to pen those noble truths." [27]

These "noble truths" about love and marriage influenced many a young woman's resolution not to marry unless she could give her whole heart to someone. As Emily Howland recorded with pleasure: "M.H. ... will not lower her ideals to enter the state of matrimony." [28] For Lucy Larcom, "A true marriage ... is the highest state of earthly happiness--the flowing of the deepest life of the soul into a kindred soul, two spirits made one." [29] This formulation expresses the promise of marriage as most nineteenth-century middle-class women understood it, and for some, it also implied that extreme caution was necessary when contemplating such a union. If spiritual fusion was possible in true marriage, anything less was a compromise. The Young Lady's Friend (1837) urged women to remember that "the great end of existence, preparation for eternity, may be equally attained in married or single life; and that no union, but the most perfect one, is at all desirable." For this end, young women were urged to set their standa rds high: "The more perfectly you perform all your duties, the more diligently you carry on your moral and intellectual education, the higher is your standard of character, and the more spiritual are your aims, the less will be your danger from the tenderness of your heart." [30] By "tenderness of heart" the author meant an undiscriminating romantic sensibility. Mrs. Abell (1853) also believed that young women who did not have high standards would fall in love indiscriminately, thereby compromising the very ideal of Victorian love. [31] "Falling in love" was morally admirable only if it was accompanied by a strong conviction that the beloved was ones other half.