Society has not liked it--was there to be no quiet anywhere? It is
poor understanding that does not appreciate John Adams' parry of his
wife Abigail's list of grievances, which she declared the Continental
Congress must relieve if it would avoid a woman's rebellion. Under the
stress of the Revolution children, apprentices, schools, colleges,
Indians, and negroes had all become insolent and turbulent, he told
her. What was to become of the country if women, "the most numerous
and powerful tribe in the world," grew discontented?

Now this world-old restlessness of the women has a sound and a tragic
cause. Nature lays a compelling hand on her. Unless she obeys freely
and fully she must pay in unrest and vagaries. For the normal woman
the fulfillment of life is the making of the thing we best describe as
a home--which means a mate, children, friends, with all the radiating
obligations, joys, burdens, these relations imply.

This is nature's plan for her; but the home has got to be founded
inside the imperfect thing we call society. And these two, nature and
society, are continually getting into each other's way, wrecking each
other's plans, frustrating each other's schemes. The woman almost
never is able to adjust her life so as fully to satisfy both. She is
between two fires. Euripides understood this when he put into Medea's
mouth a cry as modern as any that Ibsen has conceived:--

Of all things upon earth that grow,
A herb most bruised is woman. We must pay
Our store of gold, hoarded for that one day,
To buy us some man's love; and lo, they bring
A master of our flesh! There comes the sting
Of the whole shame. And then the jeopardy,