Suggestions for Thought by Florence Nightingale: Selections and Commentaries

Chapter 5. On Family Life

5. On Family Life We want to give that which the family promises to give and does not. We want to extend the family, not annihilate it. From Nightingale's point of view, society should be in harmony with the essence of religion, which is "the tie, the binding, or connexion between the Perfect and the imperfect, the eternal and the temporal, the infinite and the finite, the universaland the individual/'1 Society should be organized in a way that would strengthen this tie, to allow the divine nature, inherent in all human beings, to emerge and flower. Shewas highly critical of conventional British society, especially the family structure, which she considered a "prison," and the Church of England which she felt neglected women. Instead of nourishing the God-like qualities within young people, she wrote, these institutions starved them to death. Society triumphs over many. They wish to regenerate the world with their institutions, with their moral philosophy, with their love. Then they sink to living from breakfast till dinner, from dinner till tea, with a little worsted work, and to looking forward to nothing but bed. When shall we see a life full of steady enthusiasm, walking straight to its aim, flying home, as that bird is now, against the wind—with the calmness and the confidence of one who knows the laws of God and can apply them? What dowe see? Wesee great and fine organizations deteriorating. We see girls and boys of seventeen, before whose noble ambitions, heroic i. Suggestions far Thought, vol. 2, p. 181. I * * * 98 Suggestionsfor Thought dreams, and rich endowments we bow our heads, asbefore Godincarnate in theflesh.But, ere they are thirty, they are withered, paralysed, extinguished. "We have forgotten our visions,55 they say themselves. But is it extraordinary that it should be so? For do we ever utilize this heroism? Look how it livesupon itself and perishes for lack of food. We do not know what to do with it. We had rather that it should not be there. Often we laugh at it. Alwayswe find it troublesome. To haveno food for our heads, no food for our hearts, no food for our activity, is that nothing? If we have no food for the body, how we do cry out, how all the world hears of it, how all the newspapers talk of it, with a paragraph headed in great capital letters, DEATH FROM STARVATION ! But suppose one were to put a paragraph in the "Times,55 Death of Thought from Starvation^ on Death of Moral Activity from Starvation^ how people would stare, how they would laugh and wonder! II In Victorian England there were two proper choices open to a young upper class woman: to stay at home and be subject to the will of her parents until they died, or to marry and have her inheritancepass into her husband's name. For Nightingale, both optionswere unsatisfactory. She could find no fulfillment at home, whereherfamily (particularly her mother and sister for whom social success was the primary goal in life) had for years thwarted her attempts to study nursing. The other option, to leave the family by marrying, was certainly a possibility for Nightingale . She had several serious suitors, amongthem Richard Monckton Milnes (later Lord Houghton), who her mother thought would be a perfect match. Florence herself loved him, but after a nine-year courtship she refused his offer of marriage. In private notes she analyzed her reasons: I have an intellectual nature which requires satisfaction and that would find it in him. I have a passionate nature which requires satisfaction and that would find it in him. I have a moral, an active, nature which requires satisfaction and that would not find it in his life. . . . I know I could not bear his life, that to be nailed to a continuation, an exaggeration of my present life without hope of another would be intolerable to me—that voluntarily to put it out of my power ever to be able to seize the On Family Life 99 chance of forming for myself a true and rich life would seem to me like suicide.2 The conflict between fulfilling herself and fulfilling the expectations of her family members was particularly great for Nightingale, who sincerely loved them and was sensitive to their needs. She wasplagued by guilt and in a letter to her father she asked forgiveness...