elves, or purchase support from the rich by
sacrifices which are inconsistent with their personal dignity and the
morality of the social body. As the imagination of humanity has been
long since given up to sentiment and passion, it is only too clear that
the more vicious alternative is the one oftenest embraced. Society,
then, has come to this--that woman must still depend on man, while man
no longer, except on his own terms, fulfills his part of the tacit
bargain by maintaining woman.

The first thing to be considered is what the public gains by keeping up
the sentimental notion about woman's mission. It is her business, most
of us think, to charm and to attract, partly in order that she may do
man real good, and partly that she may add to the luxury, the
refinement, and the happiness of life. With this view, society is very
solicitous to keep her at a distance from everything that may spoil or
destroy the bloom of her character and tastes. Few people go so far as
to say that she ought not to work for her livelihood, if her
circumstances render the effort necessary and prudent. As a fact, we see
at once that such a proposition cannot be broadly supported, and that
any attempt to enforce it would lead to endless misery and mischief.
Poor women, for example, must work hard, or else their children and
themselves will come to utter degradation.

But though society abstains from committing itself to the doctrine of
the enforced idleness of women, it takes refuge in a species of half
measure, and restricts, as far as it can, by its legislative enactments
or its own social code, the labors which women are to perform to the
narrowest possible compass. A woman may work, but she must do nothing
which is called unfeminine. She may get up linen, ply her needle, keep
weaving-machines in motion, knit, sew, and in higher spheres in life
teach music, French, and English grammar. She may be a governess, or a
sempstress, or even within certain limits may enter the literary market
and write books. This is the extreme boundary of her liberty, and
somewhere about this point society begins to draw a rigid line.

It earnestly discourages her from commercial occupations, except under
the patronage of a husband who is to benefit by her exertions; she is
not to be a counting-house clerk, or a doctor, or a lawyer, or a parson.
The great active avocations, all those that lead either to fame or
fortune, are monopolized by men. Strong-minded wome