Page:The Mothers of England.djvu/33

28 Our next subject of consideration is influence, and here we come at once to the great secret of woman's power in her social and domestic character. By absolute and mere authority it is little indeed that woman can do, because the weakness of her bodily frame, and the natural susceptibility of her feelings, render her wholly unfit for wielding the weapon of authority to any useful purpose, and especially in her management of boys. Indeed it is a sight most pitiful to contemplate, where a poor feeble mother, unsupported by any moral or intellectual influence, deals out among her unheeding children, alternate slaps and thrusts, accompanied by the tone and language of command, without its apparently anticipated results; while she wonders in her own mind, and sometimes inquires of her friends, how it can be that her children are more rebellious than others, though undergoing either scolding or chastisement every day of their lives. Such, for the most part, is the situation of woman when attempting to exercise authority without having obtained influence; for though authority alone may be made available in the management of infancy, no sooner is the discovery made, that the requisites for maintaining influence are wanting in the mother, than she becomes in some degree an object of contempt, and her commands are consequently set at naught.

It is just possible that there should be among women some of those stern, cold, commanding characters, to which authority, simply as such, appropriately belongs. Happily, however, such mothers are but rarely found, and, where they are, present a strange deviation from the usual course of nature, the contemplation of which has the effect of making us admire the more the harmony and beauty of that course as it most uniformly flows.

If, however, authority belongs as a natural right to such characters, the finer and more vital elements of moral influence never can be theirs; and to imagine the tenderness of childhood committed to a mother of this description, is to call up a picture too revolting for the mind to dwell upon without shrinking and horror. Such a mother may possibly govern the actions of her children by the exercise of absolute power, but she can never know the sweet security of moral influence, which operates as effectually when distant