I think women need, especially at this juncture, a much greater range
of occupation than they have, to rouse their latent powers. A party of
travellers lately visited a lonely hut on a mountain. There they found
an old woman, who told them she and her husband had lived there forty
years. "Why," they said, "did you choose so barren a spot?" She "did
not know; _it was the man's notion."_
And, during forty years, she had been content to act, without knowing
why, upon "the man's notion." I would not have it so.
In families that I know, some little girls like to saw wood, others to
use carpenters' tools. Where these tastes are indulged, cheerfulness
and good-humor are promoted. Where they are forbidden, because "such
things are not proper for girls," they grow sullen and mischievous.
Fourier had observed these wants of women, as no one can fail to do
who watches the desires of little girls, or knows the ennui that
haunts grown women, except where they make to themselves a serene
little world by art of some kind. He, therefore, in proposing a great
variety of employments, in manufactures or the care of plants and
animals, allows for one third of women as likely to have a taste for
masculine pursuits, one third of men for feminine.
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