Mrs. Mona Caird, who makes a very diffuse communication to
the Manchester Guardian of last Tuesday on the wrongs and woes of women, has arrived at a rather hasty generali- sation that women are suffering, that they are the victims of "an evil that gnaws at the very heart of society," and that makes "of almost every woman the heroine of a silent tragedy ;" and further, that the exceptions to this rule, the women who are really contented, are "women of very placid temperament and very little sensibility," while those of "more highly wrought nervous systems and imaginative faculty in nine cases out of ten are secretly intensely miserable." The remedy appears to be to give them votes and perfect equality with men in every respect, political and social. If these generalisations and inferences be true, we ought surely to find the women who agitate most actively, and who make these elaborate communications to the Press, amongst the happiest of their sex. They have at least found full occupation for their intellectual energy, and are engaged on the regeneration of their kind. If we may judge by their groanings and their pessimism, that is not the case. Mrs. Mona Caird at least, to take the first example, seems haunted by the gloomiest possible forebodings, and by no means to enjoy that journal- istic freedom which she has vindicated for herself. Her style is as tearful and hopeless as Mr. Augustus Moddle's.
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