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THE DISPUTED QUESTION* 363
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
, "With An Increasing 1 Majority Of Abov...
were intended . Though , the present is an age of much progress , yet as this progress partakes largely of the material , it is perhaps
scarcely so surprising that the improvement of women should be considered a novel experiment yet to be tried , rather than a
truth to be wrought out from any higher principle or wider view . So greatly does feeling instead of understanding enter into
the merits of the question , that what is fragmentary and minor in their being is chiefly addressed even hj the friends of the cause , and
the passing and secondary purposes to which such portions may be applied . Hence it is propounded that if they are to work , it must
be work small in its own value , and only indirectly productive to themselves , or indeed to be requited , not in this life , but in the
life beyond the tomb . Statistics shew thousands of women burthensome to male
relatives , useless to the community—without note of the other thousands useless to themselves ;—and we are forced here to confine our
remarks to the narrower basis , as the likeliest to gain attention . It is askedwhy do not these women act instead of speaking about
, it , why not work instead of writing about working—in short , why not practise instead of theorizing ? Well , some attempt all these ,
but only a few are successful ; trained to no real work , educated for no adequate end , ' making efforts all but obnoxious in the public
eye , if they succeed they do so in the face of obstacles such as never confront the other sex , and thus accomplish in the little they effect
( comparatively ) more than men . In the pecuniary sense , they succeed only by giving the same work at lower remuneration ; in
working at all , they sink from their former position , and even among the working classes , where labor is a necessity alike for them and
for the uses of those above them , they lose the chance of husbands , who invariably make the great mistake of preferring idlers as the
better fitted for wives . We are barely , and , apparently unwillingly , beginning to discover that women cannot perform all they have to
do in life by untutored instinct , and as in many other states of transitionthe trial is a severe one to those undergoing it , and one
of shuddering , uncertainty to observers . From our advances in certain directions , bringing * about such
immediate results , we estimate ourselves as vastly beyond our fathersforgetting how much we are indebted to them for smoothing
the way , , forgetting also that our advance is sometimes only zig-zag . On the whole our ancestresses worked more than we do , and in other
employments than household cares , though they had no vast mills or manufactories to supply with labor ; their education , too , if more
homely , was more real . And while remembering those select women of our day , to whose intelligence no less than virtues we
are so much indebted , it cannot be denied that some of the superior women of the past seem to have been accorded a position nearer
the other sex than is now conceded . True , until the whole sex shall be improved , the few must suffer through the many ; but
vol . i . 2 c 2
The Disputed Question* 363
THE DISPUTED QUESTION * 363
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Aug. 1, 1858, page 363, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01081858/page/3/
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