her, perhaps, but still he thinks her unnatural, discontented, ambitious, unfeminine; her relatives take their tone from him; nobody gives her a helping hand; so that if she accomplish anything it is against the pressure—to her gigantic—of all that constitutes her world. If her strength and courage fail under the disapproval, they rejoice at the discomfiture which compels her to become what they call a "sensible woman."
Thus the strongest influence in the feminine life, the masculine, combines with our own timidity and self-distrust to make us cherish the false and base theory that women always have been, always will be, and always ought to be, supported by the men; and hence the perfect good faith with which even the noblest women trifle away their time in shopping, visiting, embroidering, ruffling, tucking, and frilling, and spend without scruple on dress and furniture, pleasure and superficial culture, all the money that their husbands will allow them. From early girlhood we are told that "to please is our vocation,—not to act;" and so we have come to believe and to live as though personal adornment were our only legitimate ambition, personal vanity our only legitimate passion.
State op Affairs in Europe.
In England and France, owing to the multitude of trained servants, and their low rate of wages, the baleful work seems completely accomplished of rendering the educated part of the sex, from the princess to the shopkeeper's daughter, thoroughly useless.[1] And having driven every
- ↑ See Miss Ingelow's story of "Laura Richmond," where it is kept as a profound family secret, and felt as a family disgrace, that one of the daughters of a village widow lady, on the diminution of her mother's income, should choose to take care of the silver and glass and china, and to clear-starch her own and her sister's muslins, rather than go out as a governess. One does not wonder that the authoress rewards such astonishing virtue with a rich husband, when it is impossible to discover from their novels what Englishwomen are born for, except to sketch, play croquet, ride, drive, dress for dinner, and read to the poor.
