February 12, 2011: His Sister's Keeper: George MacDonald And The Honorable Treatment Of Women

The good men in George MacDonald's novels always treat women with dignity. MacDonald taught that no good man ever violates a woman's honor, or even attempts to compromise it. If a woman of his acquaintance is weak, the man of moral conscience - far from exploiting her vulnerability - will protect her and help her to do right. He will even shield her from the darkest features of his own corruption, his own temptations to seize her as prey.

In The Highlander's Last Song, a worldly businessman, at dinner with other men, maintains, "it is necessary for developing manhood that young men should drink a little and gamble a little and sow a few wild oats...A fellow that will neither look at a woman nor drink his glass is not cut out for a man's work in the world!"

A Christian at the table responds,

"Pray, Mr. Palmer, let us understand each other: do you believe God made woman to be the slave of man? Can you believe he ever made a woman that she might be dishonored - that a man might caress and despise her?"

Palmer replies,

"I know nothing about God's intention; all I say is we must obey the laws of our nature."

The Christian answers,

"Is conscience, then, not a law of our nature? Is it not even on the level of our instincts? Must not the lower laws be subject to the higher? It is a law - forever broken, yet eternal - that a man is his brother's keeper: still more must he be his sister's keeper."

His sister's keeper - the phrase comes up more than once in MacDonald's writings. We see it again in The Lady's Confession, where a doctor confesses to a minister that, as a young medical student, he seduced a woman and fathered a child with her out of wedlock. He did not know what became of the woman or their offspring (he could barely remember if it was a boy or girl!). Concerning that old "romantic fling," MacDonald writes,

"He did her no end of kindness - taught her much, gave her good advice, still gave her books, went to chapel sometimes with her on a Sunday evening, took her to concerts and the theater, and would have protected her from every enemy, real and imaginary. But all the while he was slowly depriving her of the last line of her self-defense against an enemy neither he nor she could see. For how is an ignorant man to protect even a woman he loves from the hidden god of his idolatry - his own grand, contemptible self?...With all his tender feelings and generous love of humanity, [he] had not yet learned the simple lesson of humanity - that a man who would be his brother's keeper, or his sister's, must protect every woman first of all from himself."

Neglecting to protect a vulnerable young lady from himself, the narcissist physician condemned the poor woman to a miserable life of single motherhood while he quietly moved on to success and relative ease. He felt a bit guilty, but soothed his conscience by blaming her for most of it.

Some years ago when I was a pastor a woman with a heavy heart came to speak to me. Naive and bewildered, she had fallen hard for a powerful older man who had seemed to be a model of mature Christian virtue. Cherishing hopes that he would some day be hers, she ventured intimacy with him. But he used her a few times and then dumped her. Despite his actions, she continued to wrestle with a longing for him, and wondered whether somehow she might still have a future with him.

Gently as I could I told her what MacDonald said about how a good man protects rather than seduces a woman - protects her even from himself! And any man who could not do that was not worth having. I also thought it best to tell her (though I'm sure it was painful) what my intuition affirmed to be true: that what this man had done to her he had almost certainly done to other women as well. That is because a man either treats women with respect or he does not. Seduction is an art practiced by repeat offenders, not by chronically innocent men of honor.

So far I have counted no less than three occasions in MacDonald's books where a woman confesses her love to a good man and all but proposes to him. (It makes me wonder if such a thing happened to MacDonald himself!) In each case the good man, who knows he cannot marry the woman, treats her with the kindest of grace and charity and good will. But he carefully refrains from embracing her, or taking her hand, or doing anything at all to encourage an attachment to him that he cannot honorably fulfill.

In other words, he obeys the commandment of Matthew 5:28 according to its true meaning. More on that next week, Lord willing.