The cubs of a humane tigress would starve;
and the daughters of women who cannot bring themselves to devote
several years of their lives to the pursuit of sons-in-law often
have to expatiate their mother's squeamishness by life-long
celibacy and indigence. To ask a young man his intentions when you
know he has no intentions, but is unable to deny that he has paid
attentions; to threaten an action for breach of promise of
marriage; to pretend that your daughter is a musician when she has
with the greatest difficulty been coached into playing three
piano-forte pieces which she loathes; to use your own mature
charms to attract men to the house when your daughters have no
aptitude for that department of sport; to coach them, when they
have, in the arts by which men can be led to compromize
themselves; and to keep all the skeletons carefully locked up in
the family cupboard until the prey is duly hunted down and bagged:
all this is a mother's duty today; and a very revolting duty it
is: one that disposes of the conventional assumption that it is in
the faithful discharge of her home duties that a woman finds her
self-respect. The truth is that family life will never be decent,
much less ennobling, until this central horror of the dependence
of women on men is done away with.
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