corresponding male than had she toiled at a spinning-wheel with hand and
foot to produce one yard; that the male should desire less of the
companionship of the woman who spends the morning in doctoring babies in
her consulting-room, according to the formularies of the pharmacopoeia,
than she who of old spent it on the hillside collecting simples for
remedies; that the woman who paints a modern picture or designs a modern
vase should be less lovable by man, than her ancestor who shaped the first
primitive pot and ornamented it with zigzag patterns was to the man of her
day and age; that the woman who contributes to the support of her family by
giving legal opinions will less desire motherhood and wifehood than she who
in the past contributed to the support of her household by bending on hands
and knees over her grindstone, or scrubbing floors, and that the former
should be less valued by man than the latter--these are suppositions which
it is difficult to regard as consonant with any knowledge of human nature
and the laws by which it is dominated.

On the other hand, if it be supposed that the possession of wealth or the
means of earning it makes the human female objectionable to the male, all
history and all daily experience negates it. The eager hunt for heiresses
in all ages and social conditions, make it obvious that the human male has
a strong tendency to value the female who can contribute to the family
expenditure; and the case is yet, we believe, unrecorded of a male who,
attracted to a female, becomes averse to her on finding she has material
good. The female doctor or lawyer earning a thousand a year will always,
and today certainly does, find more suitors than had she remained a
governess or cook, labouring as hard, earning thirty pounds.

While, if the statement that the female entering on new fields of labour
will cease to be lovable to the male be based on the fact that she will
then be free, all history and all human experience yet more negates its