The position of woman: actual and ideal / with preface by Sir Oliver Lodge.

Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The position of woman: actual and ideal / with preface by Sir Oliver Lodge. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    173/192 (page 157)
    a promising career, perhaps as a teacher or ad- ministrator, and suddenly compelled to abandon it in order to look after an aged father or mother, or to care for the orphaned children of a brother or sister. But, as Dr Clouston has pointed out, the interests of the race are higher and more impera- tive than the interests of individuals, and these acts of self-sacrifice are among the martyrdoms upon which Society is built. It will be an evil day for the community when the State has to under- take duties which women have repudiated. Men have recognized this burdensome obligation upon women by cheerfully undertaking the correlative duty of making special provision for the female members of the family. They make sacrifices to fit their sons for the world; they make sacrifices that their daughters shall not be left unprovided for if they have to fulfil duties to the family which only they can perform. Miss Sheavyn made a tentative suggestion that these arrangements might be modified in the direction of doing more to start daughters in the world,which wouldinvolve in most cases a smaller ultimate provision for them. I am inclined to think that such a change would be a dangerous one, and that the existing custom rests upon the wholesome principle that the woman has special duties to the family and that she ought to be endowed for the discharge of those duties. But the duty of the woman to the family 1s not her sole duty, nor is it by any means an exclusive