e not full. Many a candidate falls
out by the way, confronted by something she had not reckoned with--the
eternal command that she be a woman. She compromises--grudgingly. She
will be a woman on condition that she is guaranteed economic freedom,
opportunity for self-expressive work, political recognition. What this
amounts to is that she does not see in the woman's life a satisfying
and permanent end. There are various points at which she claims it
fails. It is antagonistic to personal ambition. It makes a dependent
of her. It leaves her in middle life without an occupation. It keeps
her out of the great movements of her day--gives her no part in the
solution of the ethical and economical problems which affect her and
her children. She declares that she wants fuller participation in
life, and by life she seems to mean the elaborate machinery by which
human wants are supplied and human beings kept in something like
order; the movements of the market place, of politics, and of
government.

Now if there were not something in her contention, the Uneasy Woman
would not be with us as she is to-day, more vociferous, more insistent
than ever in the world's history. What is there in her case?

If the cultivation of individual tastes and talents to a useful,
productive point is out of question in the woman's business, if it is
not a part of it, something is weak in the scheme. Something is weak
if the woman is or feels that she is not paying her way. Both are not
only individual rights; they are individual duties.

Moreover, she is certainly right to be dissatisfied, if, after
spending twenty-five years, more or less, she is to be left in middle
life, her forces spent, without interests and obligations which will
occupy brain and heart to the full, without important tasks which are
the logical outcome of her experience and which she must carry on in
order to complete that experience.

But what is the truth about it? What is the Business of Being a Woman?
Is it something incompatible with free and joyous development of one's
talents? Is there no place in it for economic independence? Has it no
essential relation to the world's movements? Is it an episode which
drains the forces and leaves a dreary wreck behind? Is it something
that cannot be organized into a profession of dignity, and opportunity
for service and for happiness?

CHAPTER III

THE BUSINESS OF BEING A WOMAN

Respect for the Creator of this world is ba