The Death of Christian Britain
The Death of Christian Britain
The Death of Christian Britain
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— <strong>The</strong> <strong>Death</strong> <strong>of</strong> <strong>Christian</strong> <strong>Britain</strong> —<br />
hearts,” or whether it shall be a house from which husband and children<br />
are glad to escape either to the street, the theatre, or the tavern.’ 31 Female<br />
vices would undermine the home: ‘Gossiping <strong>of</strong>ten leads to disorder. A<br />
woman who “looks well to the ways <strong>of</strong> her household” never has leisure<br />
to stand for an hour or two during the day in a self-constituted court <strong>of</strong><br />
busybodies to discuss the character <strong>of</strong> her neighbours.’ 32 Gossip, the<br />
woman’s column in the British Messenger reported in 1930, is always to<br />
be found amongst women having tea together, but warned that ‘when we<br />
are retailing tit-bits <strong>of</strong> gossip, even should it be true, it is neither more nor<br />
less than evil speaking’. 33 Bad temper was a particular vice; one moral tale<br />
was told <strong>of</strong> a Mrs Bryson who had ‘marred her son’s character for life by<br />
her variable, uncertain treatment <strong>of</strong> him in childhood’. 34 <strong>The</strong> Girl’s Own<br />
Paper in 1883 advised the teenager that ‘no trait <strong>of</strong> character is more valuable<br />
to a woman than a sweet temper. Let a man go home weary and worn<br />
by the toils <strong>of</strong> day . . . [and] it is sunshine on his heart.’ 35 Obstinacy in<br />
curmudgeonly old women was frequently harangued: a minister rebuffed<br />
on district visiting at a door grieved that ‘a woman <strong>of</strong> seventy-five, so soon<br />
to take her trial before the judgement seat <strong>of</strong> God, should have so little<br />
concern for her soul’. 36 <strong>The</strong> codes <strong>of</strong> female respectability were many and<br />
varied. Yet, obsessive regard for some codes was unhealthy: in 1890 ‘a<br />
respectable maid’ thought it improper to take all her clothes <strong>of</strong>f for a bath,<br />
even when alone, and as a result had not washed her chest and back for<br />
sixteen years, giving her ‘blocked sweat glands and pimples’. 37 In these<br />
ways, piety and femininity were explored and discursively constructed by<br />
mutual cross-reference.<br />
Meanwhile, other’s virtues were endangered by female faults. ‘Our light<br />
words, our frivolous treatment <strong>of</strong> sacred things, may <strong>of</strong>ten have helped to<br />
lower another’s standard <strong>of</strong> goodness.’ 38 Mothers could also do harm by<br />
their innate goodness. In a tract <strong>of</strong> the 1870s, a mother was criticised for<br />
not being honest with her dying seventeen-year-old son, whom she had<br />
‘always comforted, telling him that the Lord will never suffer such a poor<br />
suffering creature to perish, but will take him to heaven’. This was ‘a fearful<br />
mistake’ by ‘the affectionate mother’, an ‘unscriptural and most dangerous’<br />
lie, leaving the son ‘at death’s door, I fear, unprepared, and needing to be<br />
warned to seek mercy where alone it could be found, and to cry, “Lord,<br />
save me; I perish.”’ 39 Evangelical magazines carried long and detailed articles<br />
for young men on how to detect the flawed future wife and mother.<br />
<strong>The</strong> <strong>Christian</strong> Miscellany advised in 1867 to ‘get to know . . . the stock’<br />
from which a bride-to-be came: ‘Moral as well as physical qualities must<br />
be considered. Dirty, slatternly, brawling mothers have sometimes clean,<br />
tidy, gentle daughters; but, I am afraid, not <strong>of</strong>ten. In most cases the scold<br />
and the slattern are reproduced.’ 40<br />
If the godly mother was the ideal <strong>of</strong> pious womanhood, the young girl<br />
had detailed injunctions for every step <strong>of</strong> the way to that condition.<br />
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