him, I wonder, that the poor objects of his scorn might venture to take some interest In themselves? Probably he did not credit them with so much presumption.
The above has, I hope, explained in how far my Idea of woman differs from male ideas on the same subject and has also made it clear that I do not look upon women as persons whose destiny it is to be married. On the contrary, I hold, and hold very strongly, that the narrowing down of woman's hopes and ambitions to the sole pursuit and sphere of marriage is one of the principal causes of the various disabilities, economic and otherwise, under which she labours to-day. And I hold, also, that this concentration of all her hopes and ambitions on the one object was, to a great extent, the result of artificial pressure, of unsound economic and social conditions—conditions which forced her energy into one channel, by the simple expedient of depriving It of every other outlet, and made marriage practically compulsory.
To say the least of it, marriage is no more essentially necessary to woman than to man—one would imagine that it was rather the other
