FullReads

If it be said that Nature and Fact (arguments grounded on aught else are to be left to monks and mediaeval jurists) prove that women are less able than men to keep a house over their head, or to manage their property, the answer is that Fact is the other way. Women are just as capable as men of managing a large estate, a vast wealth. Mr. Mill gives a fact which surprised even him–that the best administered Indian States were those governed by women who could neither read nor write, and were confined all their lives to the privacy of the harem. And any one who knows the English upper classes must know more than one illustrious instance–besides that of Miss Burdett Coutts, or the late Dowager Lady Londonderry–in which a woman has proved herself able to use wealth and power as well, or better, than most men. The woman at least is not likely, by gambling, horseracing, and profligacy, to bring herself and her class to shame. Women, too, in every town keep shops. Is there the slightest evidence that these shops are not as well managed, and as remunerative, as those kept by men?–unless, indeed, as too often happens, poor Madame has her Mantalini and his vices to support, as well as herself and her children. As for the woman’s power of supporting herself and keeping up at least a lodging respectably, can any one have lived past middle age without meeting dozens of single women, or widows, of all ranks, who do that, and do it better and more easily than men, because they do not, like men, require wine, beer, tobacco, and sundry other luxuries? So wise and thrifty are such women, that very many of them are able, out of their own pittance, to support beside themselves others who have no legal claim upon them. Who does not know, if he knows anything of society, the truth of Mr. Butler’s words?–‘It is a very generally accepted axiom, and one which it seems has been endorsed by thoughtful men, without a sufficiently minute examination into the truth of it, that a man–in the matter of maintenance–means generally a man, a wife and children; while a woman means herself alone, free of dependence. A closer inquiry into the facts of life would prove that conclusions have been too hastily adopted on the latter head. I believe it may be said with truth that there is scarcely a female teacher in England, who is not working for another or others besides herself,–that a very large proportion are urged on of necessity in their work by the dependence on them of whole families, in many cases of their own aged parents,–that many hundreds are keeping broken-down relatives, fathers, and brothers, out of the workhouse, and that many are widows supporting their own children. A few examples, taken at random from the lists of governesses applying to the Institution in Sackville Street, London, would illustrate this point. And let it be remembered that such cases are the rule, and not the exception. Indeed, if the facts of life were better known, the hollowness of this defence of the inequality of payment would become manifest; for it is in theory alone that in families man is the only bread-winner, and it is false to suppose that single women have no obligations to make and to save money as sacred as those which are imposed on a man by marriage; while there is this difference, that a man may avoid such obligation if he pleases, by refraining from marriage, while the poverty of parents, or the dependence of brothers and sisters, are circumstances over which a woman obliged to work for others has no control.’

True: and, alas! too true. But what Mr. Butler asserts of governesses may be asserted, with equal truth, of hundreds of maiden aunts and maiden sisters who are not engaged in teaching, but who spend their money, their time, their love, their intellect, upon profligate or broken-down relations, or upon their children; and who exhibit through long years of toil, anxiety, self-sacrifice, a courage, a promptitude, a knowledge of business and of human nature, and a simple but lofty standard of duty and righteousness, which if it does not fit them for the franchise, what can?