en impossible to prevent their sharing in
the benefits of the improvement and diffusion of knowledge. All
cultivation of their powers has secured to them the use of new power; so
that their condition is far superior to what it was in any former age.
But new difficulties about securing a maintenance have arisen. Marriage
is less general; and the husbands of the greater number of women are not
secure of a maintenance from the lords of the soil, any more than women
are from being married. The charge of their own maintenance is thrown
upon large numbers of women, without the requisite variety of
employments having been opened to them, or the needful education
imparted. A natural consequence of this is, that women are educated to
consider marriage the one object in life, and therefore to be extremely
impatient to secure it. The unfavourable influence of these results upon
the happiness of domestic life may be seen at a glance.

This may be considered the sum and substance of female education in
England; and the case is scarcely better in France, though the
independence and practical efficiency of women there are greater than in
any other country. The women in the United States are in a lower
condition than either, though there is less striving after marriage,
from its greater frequency, and little restriction is imposed upon the
book-learning which women may obtain. But the old feudal notions about
the sex flourish there, while they are going out in the more advanced
countries of Europe; and these notions, in reality, regulate the
condition of women. American women generally are treated in no degree as
equals, but with a kind of superstitious outward observance, which, as
they have done nothing to earn it, is false and hurtful. Coexisting
with this, there is an extreme difficulty in a woman's obtaining a
maintenance, except by the exercise of some rare powers. In a country
where women are brought up to be indulged wives, there is no hope, help,
or prospect for such as have not money and are not married.

In America, women can earn a maintenance only by teaching, sewing,
employment in factories, keeping boarding-houses, and domestic service.
Some governesses are tolerably well paid,--comparing their earnings with
those of men. Employment in factories, and domestic service, are well
paid. Sewing is so wretched an occupation everywhere, that it is to be
hoped that machinery will soon supersede the use of human fingers in a
lab