MARRIED WOMEN AND WORK.—III.
IF a woman has to choose between work and starvation, no one questions her good sense in working. The young women who live on public doles rather than become cooks and housemaids are continually held up For our disapprobation in the Press, but no one dis- approves of the young women who live on private doles. If it is reprehensible to live in idleness on sixteen shillings a week, it is surely still more reprehensible to live in idleness on a larger amount. To be a wife and a mother has never been sufficient occupation for a woman who does not cook her own meals or mind her own babies, nor until recent times was it considered to be so. Before the days of factories a wife and mother was also a spinner, a weaver, an ernbroideress, a dressmaker, a shirtmaker, a brewer, a bacon-curer, and a chemist. No one suggested a less industrious career for her, except the young man who promised Curly Locks that she should "Sit on a cushion and sew a fine seam, And feed up—on strawberries, sugar and cream," .iind he probably did not keep his, word.
By Victoria's reign woman had been ousted from most of her careers by the man at the machine.- All that remained was her embroidery, and that had become a superfluous task with all the dullness of futile things. Work had become merely a pastime. She began to play tennis and paint marguerite daisies on the panels of doors. Now, instead, she plays tennis and golfs. Since only poets and sages can endure to sit idle with their hands in their laps, the well-to-do woman without a career must tire herself into peace with amusement. Apparently no one scolds her for this. A married woman ..-'is not accused of neglecting her duties if she goes dancing ; but she is accused of neglecting them if she goes doctoring.
This is obviously nonsensical. If a woman has the right to play, she has certainly the right to work instead if she wishes. If she is contented with "doing her hair and the flowers," she will not strive for more exhaust- ing occupations'. If she has young children, she will probably find that her energies are fully employed. But children grow up. That is one of the facts which are not recognized by the opponents of careers for women. Children grow up, and the woman without other interests may find herself intolerably idle and lonely. It is then that a career comes to the rescue. She may take quietly to good works, or less quietly to politics. If she has already practised an art, she will now find that she at last has time for it. A career is a specific against 'dull old age. It is equally a specific against that not unknown misfortune, dull young age.
A career must be an -addition to and not the whole of life, however, if it is not to be dull. The man who has nothing but a career is even poorer company than the *roman who has only domestic interests. Women will do well to preserve the enthusiasm of amateurs in every form of work that is not an art. If they becOme pro- fessionals the bloom will be gone, and they will groan as loudly as men groan when at the same hour every morning they heave on their overcoats and face the routine of
their careers.
The danger of a career for a woman, it seems to me, is not that it will make her neglect her duties, but that it will make her neglect her pleasures. If the career is in one of the arts this can hardly be so, of course, since an art is a most exciting form of enjoyment. But a career that compels the keeping of regular hours is diffi- cult to combine with domestic life. Two days in a household are never alike. There is something wrong with the boiler, or someone coming to lunch, or both. If a woman is a brilliant organizer, she may be able to arrange her life so that she can run out of it into her career at the 'same time every day. But if she works at home and is a person of wavering intentions, she will find it as much as she can do to be punctual once a fortnight Such work as she does will be at the mercy of some happy accident of tranquillity or of a person on business from Porlock. Her day will be a series of interruptions. She will have no time to be dull. She will have no time to be cross—not thoroughly—even that will be inter- rupted. That is one advantage of a woman's career. A second clear shining advantage is that it makes her interesting not only to herself, but to other people. She provides a topic of conversation, an object of admira- tion, derision, vituperation, any or all of them. She is "the demon of the deep and keeps things lively." A career is a little feather from the wing of fame, and there is no doubt that, stuck in the cap, it will be found
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