But, the fact that so many women were
nowadays lifting up their voices in a demand for various degrees of
emancipation seemed to show that the long tresses and the flowing
garb had really, by process of civilization, come to symbolize
certain traditions of inferiority which weighed upon the general
female consciousness. "Let us, then, ask what these traditions are,
and what is to be said for or against them from the standpoint of a
liberal age."
Denzil no longer looked with horror at the face of the clock; his
only fear was lest the hands should move too rapidly, and forbid him
to utter in spacious periods all he had on his mind. By half-past
eight he was in the midst of a vehement plea for an enlargement of
female education, in the course of which he uttered several things
rather disturbing to the nerves of Mrs. Mumbray, and other ladies
present.--Woman, it was true, lived an imperfect life if she did
not become wife and mother; but this truism had been insisted on to
the exclusion of another verity quite as important: that wifehood
and motherhood, among civilized people, implied qualifications
beyond the physical. The ordinary girl was sent forth into life with
a mind scarcely more developed than that of a child. Hence those
monstrous errors she constantly committed when called upon to accept
a husband. Not one marriage in fifty thousand was an alliance on
terms fair to the woman.
Pages:
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102