Matrimonial Advances.

Cromwell Argus, Volume I, Issue 14, 16 February 1870, Page 7

Matrimonial Advances.

The Rev. Dr Bushnell, in his new book, The, Reform against Nature, writes on this subject as follows ; “ There is one matter where a genuine reform would accomplish more for women, as I verily believe, and take them out of the corner that now pinches them a great deal more certainly than to give them the right of suffrage and of civil office; having also the further advantage that it would give them a more open way to the proper woman’s life, for which they are better made, instead of taking them off into quasi battles with men for points of precedence and prerogatives of government which do not belong to them and never can. I speak here of a reform that takes off or somehow loosens the embargo on women, as respects advances towards marriage. The assumption now is, that women must first be lassoed and taken, courted long and skilfully then, and almost to the death, before they can venture an approving look. If they cannot be conquered then, they must not be had, and they must take this ground themselves. On one side there must be a close fence of prudery, hard as possible to get over ; and on the other, the man who will try, must go to it bravely, which, alas for modesty, is likely to be quite impossible. Full three quarters of the men who get stuck in their bachelor life, and are never married, are, in fact, the most inborn adorers of women ; such as never in their life can muster courage for any advance, just because the shrine they look upon has too much divinity in it for their mortal approach. Of course it will not do for women to put themselves in a way of being suitors to men. That kind of suitorship would even be an offence, and raise a scene of repulsion; nobody would recommend to women that they get over their modesty ; but the almost cholic stringency of what are called good manners in this matter might be relaxed, and with great advantage. ♦ The present ironclad modesty, which is simply ridiculous in either party, might be so far mitigated as to let feeling feel its way, and carry on its own courtship, requiring no restriction save the restriction of the words and formal advances, and allowing nature to interpret and work out their problem hampered by no unnatural coyislmess. Women cannot be forward and bold, but they are now a great way further off than they need be.

Fanny Fern says—“ If one half the girls knew the previous lives of the men they marry, the list of old maids would be wonderfully increased. ” Whereupon the Boston Post asks, “ If the men knew what their future lives were to bo, would it not increase the list of old maids still further 1”