Never having felt
a desire to please, elegance and the refinements of good taste are
foreign to them. They see only themselves in themselves. This instinct
brings them, unconsciously, to choose the things that are most
convenient to themselves, at the sacrifice of those which might be
more agreeable to others. Without rendering account to their own minds
of the difference between themselves and other women, they end by
feeling that difference and suffering under it. Jealousy is an
indelible sentiment in the female breast. An old maid's soul is
jealous and yet void; for she knows but one side--the miserable side
--of the only passion men will allow (because it flatters them) to
women. Thus thwarted in all their hopes, forced to deny themselves the
natural development of their natures, old maids endure an inward
torment to which they never grow accustomed. It is hard at any age,
above all for a woman, to see a feeling of repulsion on the faces of
others, when her true destiny is to move all hearts about her to
emotions of grace and love. One result of this inward trouble is that
an old maid's glance is always oblique, less from modesty than from
fear and shame. Such beings never forgive society for their false
position because they never forgive themselves for it.
Now it is impossible for a woman who is perpetually at war with
herself and living in contradiction to her true life, to leave others
in peace or refrain from envying their happines.
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