Page:The Future of Single Women.pdf/6

 "from a benefit (!) to women or to the world. It would be impossible to conceive any institution more needed than one which should furnish a shelter for the many women who, from poverty or domestic unhappiness or other causes, find themselves cast alone and unprotected into the battle of life &hellip; it would largely mitigate the difficulty of providing labour and means of livelihood for single women,which is one of the most pressing, and in our own day one of the most appalling, of social problems. Most unhappily for mankind,this noble conception was from the first perverted.'"

Although, according to Mr. Lecky, the convent became the perpetual prison of the daughter whom a father was disinclined to endow, yet, he concludes, "There is no fact in modern history more deeply to be deplored than that the reformers should have levelled to the dust, instead of attempting to regenerate, the whole conventual system of Catholicism." The single women of the future or of the present day will not join in Mr. Lecky's regrets. However hard the battle of life may be, we all prefer to have our share in it. It could only be taken as a sign of weakness and the degradation of the spirit of women if they feared to meet the ordinary ills of life, or if they welcomed a deliverance from them by any such artificial and unwholesome scheme as a regenerated conventual system.

We maintain that the present condition, imperfect as it is, is better than the old; we maintain, too, that the mere struggle to secure improved conditions is a bracing and wholesome stimulus for the character. The discipline of ordinary life, the invaluable lessons of experience, are as necessary to the development of a woman's character as of a man's; their instinct has led them, in common with men, to hail the modern awakening in national feeling. The increasing power of public spirit has touched and profoundly modified their nature, it has made a breach in the old condition of things which relegated them to a life of domestic duty or to the convent, and denied to any of them a share in public responsibility But this change is not an abrupt departure from the old lines. It is a logical necessary sequence of what has gone before, as are all profound and extensive modifications of society. The change has been anticipated by many writers. Mr. Lecky himself points a prophetic finger in the direction of an important variation in the types of womanhood.

"'A very large and increasing proportion of women are left to make their way in life without any male protector, and the difficulties they have to encounter through physical weakness have been most unnaturally and most fearfully aggravated laws and customs, which, by that resting on the old assumption every woman should be a wife, habitually deprive them of the pecuniary and educational advantages of"