th their daughters when they
observe their manoeuvres--they order them to stay at home. What do they
expect them to do at home? If you ask, they would answer, sew and cook.
They expect them to do this, and this only, contentedly, regularly,
uncomplainingly, all their lives long, as if they had no germs of
faculties for anything else--a doctrine as reasonable to hold as it
would be that the fathers have no faculties but for eating what their
daughters cook or for wearing what they sew. Could men live so
themselves? Would they not be very weary? And when there came no relief
to their weariness, but only reproaches at its slightest manifestation,
would not their weariness ferment it time to frenzy? Lucretia, spinning
at midnight in the midst of her maidens, and Solomon's virtuous woman
are often quoted as patterns of what 'the sex,' as they say, ought to
be. I don't know. Lucretia, I dare say, was a most worthy sort of
person, much like my cousin Hortense Moore; but she kept her servants up
very late. I should not have liked to be amongst the number of the
maidens. Hortense would just work me and Sarah in that fashion, if she
could, and neither of us would bear it. The 'virtuous woman,' again, had
her household up in the very middle of the night; she 'got breakfast
over,' as Mrs. Sykes says, before one o'clock a.m.; but _she_ had
something more to do than spin and give out portions. She was a
manufacturer--she made fine linen and sold it; she was an
agriculturist--she bought estates and planted vineyards. _That_ woman
was a manager. She was what the matrons hereabouts call 'a clever
woman.' On the whole, I like her a good deal better than Lucretia; but I
don't believe either Mr. Armitage or Mr. Sykes could have got the
advantage of her in a bargain. Yet I like her. 'Strength and honour were
her clothing; the heart of her husband safely trusted in her. She opened
her mouth with wisdom; in her tongue was the law of kindness; her
children rose up and called her blessed; her husband also praised her.'
King of Israel! your model of a woman is a worthy model! But are we, in
these days, brought up to be like her? Men of Yorkshire! do your
daughters reach this royal standard? Can they reach it? Can you help
them to reach it? Can you give them a field in which their faculties may
be exercised and grow? Men of England! look at your poor girls, many of
them fading around you, dropping off in consumption or decline; or, what
is worse,