If a woman has to those he-tween work and starvation, no one questions her good sense in working. (The young women who live on public doles rather than become cooks and housemaids are continually held up for our disapprobation in the Press, but no one disapproves of the young women who live on private doles. If it is reprehensible to live in idleness on sixteen shillings a week, it is surely still more reprehensible to live in idleness on a larger amount. To be a wife and a mother has never been sufficient occupation for a woman who does not cook her own meals or mind her own babies nor until recent times was it considered to be so. Before the days of factories a wife and mother was also a spinner, a weaver, an embroideress, dressmaker, a shirtmaker, a brewer, a bacon-curer, and a chemist. No one suggested a less industrious career for her, except the young man who promised Curly Locks that she should.
"Sit on a cushion and sew a fine seam.
And feed upon strawberries, sugar and cream," and he probably did' not keep his word.
By Victoria's reign woman had been ousted from most of her careers by the man at the mach-me. All that remained was her embroidery, and that had become a superfluous task with all the dullness of futile things. Work kad become merely a pastime She began to play tennis and paint marguerite daisies on the panels of doors. Now, instead, she plays tennis and golfs. Since only poets and sages can endure to sit idle with their hands in their laps, the well-to-do woman without a career must tire herself into peace with amusement. Apparently no one scolds her for this. A married woman is not accused' of neglecting her duties if she goes dancing; but she is accused of neglecting them if she goes deciaring.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.