with more general physiological or psychological problems; e.g., "Letters to Myself," by a Woman of Forty, and Karin Michaelis's "The Dangerous Age." Some deal either incidentally or specifically with the primitive or natural instincts of women and the relations of these to married life and social conditions—I may instance "Phrynette Married," by Martha Troly-Curtin, and "The Woman Who Did," by Grant Allen, one of the earliest and best studies. In a vast number of modern books of every description one finds detached references to woman's place, woman's work, woman's power, woman's possibilities, woman's rights, woman's wrongs, woman's desires, woman's demands—to the woman progressive and the woman aggressive, who are not necessarily one.
From these works, the products, so to speak, of pamphleteers and general' writers, let us turn now to literature of a different class, to works which endeavour to get right to the heart of things, which
"Go straight at all the stir and strife,
That agitate our human life;
All have it, but not many know it."
First, then, is Olive Schreiner's "Woman and Labour," one of the most comprehensive and best thought-out books on the subject, and, withal, probably the most literary.
The book, as she says, is not a general view of the whole vast body of phenomena connected with woman's position; it is not even a bird's eye view of the whole question of woman's relation to labour. She deals with certain things that she considers of prime importance, viz.: the question of the "parasitism" of women; the non-recognition of, and the inadequate compensation given for, woman's labour; the necessity for an increased sense of sexual and paternal responsibility, and an increased
