earns the
income and the wife superintends the domestic expenditure, seems to
me in general the most suitable division of labour between the two
persons. If, in addition to the physical suffering of bearing
children, and the whole responsibility of their care and education in
early years, the wife undertakes the careful and economical
application of the husband's earnings to the general comfort of the
family; she takes not only her fair share, but usually the larger
share, of the bodily and mental exertion required by their joint
existence. If she undertakes any additional portion, it seldom
relieves her from this, but only prevents her from performing it
properly. The care which she is herself disabled from taking of the
children and the household, nobody else takes; those of the children
who do not die, grow up as they best can, and the management of the
household is likely to be so bad, as even in point of economy to be a
great drawback from the value of the wife's earnings. In an otherwise
just state of things, it is not, therefore, I think, a desirable
custom, that the wife should contribute by her labour to the income
of the family. In an unjust state of things, her doing so may be
useful to her, by making her of more value in the eyes of the man who
is legally her master; but, on the other hand, it enables him still
farther to abuse his power, by forcing her to work, and leaving the
support of the family to her exertions, while he spends most of his
time in drinking and idleness. The _power_ of earning is essential to
the dignity of a woman, if she has not independent property. But if
marriage were an equal contract, not implying the obligation of
obedience; if the connexion were no longer enforced to the oppression
of those to whom it is purely a mischief, but a separation, on just
terms (I do not now speak of a divorce), could be obtained by any
woman who was morally entitled to it; and if she would then find all
honourable employments as freely open to her as to men; it would not
be necessary for her protection, that during marriage she should make
this particular use of her faculties. Like a man when he chooses a
profession, so, when a woman marries, it may in general be understood
that she makes choice of the management of a household, and the
bringing up of a family, as the first call upon her exertions, during
as many years of her life as may be required for the purpose; and
that she renounces, not all oth