Little Essays of Love and Virtue by Havelock Ellis
page 14 of 141 (09%)
page 14 of 141 (09%)
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seemingly harsh. Parents no longer whipped their children even when grown
up, or put them in seclusion, or exercised physical force upon them after they had passed childhood. They felt that that would not be in harmony with the social customs of a world in which ancient feudal notions were dead. But they merely replaced the external compulsion by an internal compulsion which was much more effective. It was based on the moral assumption of claims and duties which were rarely formulated because parents found it quite easy and pleasant to avoid formulating them, and children, on the rare occasions when they formulated them, usually felt a sense of guilt in challenging their validity. It was in the nineteenth century that this state of things reached its full development. The sons of the family were usually able, as they grew up, to escape and elude it, although they thereby often created an undesirable divorce from the home, and often suffered, as well as inflicted, much pain in tearing themselves loose from the spiritual bonds--especially perhaps in matters of religion--woven by long tradition to bind them to their parents. It was on the daughters that the chief stress fell. For the working class, indeed, there was often the possibility of escape into hard labour, if only that of marriage. But such escape was not possible, immediately or at all, for a large number. During the nineteenth century many had been so carefully enclosed in invisible cages, they had been so well drilled in the reticences and the duties and the subserviences that their parents silently demanded of them, that we can never know all the tragedies that took place. In exceptional cases, indeed, they gave a sign. When they possessed unusual power of intellect, or unusual power of character and will, they succeeded in breaking loose from their cages, or at least in giving expression to themselves. This is seen in the stories of nearly all the women eminent in life and literature during the nineteenth century, from the days of Mary Wollstonecraft onwards. The Brontës, almost, yet not quite, strangled by the fetters placed upon them by their stern and |
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