Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 8.djvu/97

Rh lot to set these persons to such work, as it would be to take a born sailor and make him a farmer; or to take a man who is born to drive oxen, delights to give the kine fodder, and has a genius for it, and shut him up in the forecastle of a ship. Who would think of making Jenny Lind nothing but a housekeeper? or of devoting Madame de Stäel, or Miss Dix, or a dozen other women that any man can name, wholly to that function?

IV. Then there is another class of women—those who are not married yet, but are to be married. They, likewise, have spare time on their hands which they know not what to do with. Women of this latter class have sometimes asked me what there was for them to do. I could not tell.

All these four put together make up a large class of women, who need some other function besides the domestic. What shall it be? In the Middle Ages, when the Catholic Church held its iron hand over the world, these women went into the Church. The permanently unmarried, getting dissatisfied, became nuns, often calling that a virtue which was only a necessity; making a religious principle out of an involuntary measure. Others voluntarily went thither. The attempt is making anew in England, by some of the most pious people, to revive the scheme. It failed a thousand years ago, and the experiment brought a curse on man. It will always fail; and it ought to fail. Human nature cries out against it.

Let us look, and see what women may do here.

First, there are intellectual pursuits—devotion to science, art, literature, and the like.

In the first place, that is not popular. Learned women are met with ridicule; they are bid to mend their husbands' garments, or their own; they are treated with scorn. Foolish young man number one, in a liquor-shop, of a morning, knocks off the ashes from the end of his cigar, and says to foolish young man number two, who is taking soda to wash off the effect of last night's debauch, or preparing for a similar necessity to-morrow morning—in the presence of foolish young man number three, four, five, six,