< Page:Woman in the Nineteenth Century 1845.djvu
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WOMAN IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

[1]We rejoice to see that she, who expresses such a

painful contempt for men in most of her works, as shows she must have known great wrong from them, depicting in “La Roche Mauprat,” a man raised by the workings of love, from the depths of savage sensualism, to a moral and intellectual life. It was love for a pure object, for a steadfast woman, one of those who, the Italian said, could make the stair to heaven.

This author, beginning like the many in assault upon bad institutions, and external ills, yet deepening the experience through comparative freedom, sees at

  1. ↑
      Drawing two pinions, white as wings of swan,
    From the strong shoulders, to amaze the place
     With holier light! that thou to woman's claim.
    And man's might join, beside, the angel's grace
     Of a pure genius sanctified from blame;
    Till child and maiden pressed to thine embrace,
     To kiss upon thy lips a stainless fame.
    TO THE SAME. A RECOGNITION.
    True genius, but true woman! dost deny
     Thy woman's nature with a manly scorn,
    And break away the gauds and armlets worn
     By weaker women in captivity?
    Ah, vain denial! that revolted cry
     Is sobbed in by a woman's voice forlorn:—
    Thy woman's hair, my sister, all unshorn,
     Floats back dishevelled strength in agony,
    Disproving thy man's name, and while before
     The world thou burnest in a poet-fire,
    We see thy woman-heart beat evermore
     Through the large flame. Beat purer, heart, and higher,
    Till God unsex thee on the spirit-shore;
     To which alone unsexing, purely aspire.
    This last sonnet seems to have been written after seeing the picture of Sand, which represents her in a man's dress, but with long loose hair, and an eye whose mournful fire is impressive even in the caricatures.
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