Nothing Could Be Nicer
Than The Lady's Figure, More Flowing Than The Broad Lines Of Her
Drapery, Or More Attractive Than Her Auburn Ringlets.
There she
stood at work, earning her bread without any impediment to the
natural operation of her female charms, and adjusting the accounts
of some great firm with as much facility as grace.
I wonder
whether he who designed that figure had ever sat or stood at a desk
for six hours; whether he knew the dull hum of the brain which
comes from long attention to another man's figures; whether he had
ever soiled his own fingers with the everlasting work of office
hours, or worn his sleeves threadbare as he leaned, weary in body
and mind, upon his desk? Work is a grand thing - the grandest thing
we have; but work is not picturesque, graceful, and in itself
alluring. It sucks the sap out of men's bones, and bends their
backs, and sometimes breaks their hearts; but though it be so, I
for one would not wish to throw any heavier share of it on to a
woman's shoulders. It was pretty to see those young women with
spectacles at the Boston library; but when I heard that they were
there from eight in the morning till nine at night, I pitied them
their loss of all the softness of home, and felt that they would
not willingly be there, if necessity were less stern.
Say that by advocating the rights of women, philanthropists succeed
in apportioning more work to their share, will they eat more, wear
better clothes, lie softer, and have altogether more of the fruits
of work than they do now? That some would do so there can be no
doubt; but as little that some would have less. If on the whole
they would not have more, for what good result is the movement
made? The first question is, whether at the present time they have
less than their proper share. There are, unquestionably, terrible
cases of female want; and so there are also of want among men.
Alas! do we not all feel that it must be so, let the
philanthropists be ever so energetic? And if a woman be left
destitute, without the assistance of father, brother, or husband,
it would be hard if no means of earning subsistence were open to
her. But the object now sought is not that of relieving such
distress. It has a much wider tendency, or at any rate a wider
desire. The idea is that women will ennoble themselves by making
themselves independent, by working for their own bread instead of
eating bread earned by men. It is in that that these new
philosophers seem to me to err so greatly. Humanity and chivalry
have succeeded, after a long struggle, in teaching the man to work
for the woman; and now the woman rebels against such teaching - not
because she likes the work, but because she desires the influence
which attends it.
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