“No. Not henceforth profitless! There’s the very point I insist upon. So far is it from profitless, that it has made her a wholly different woman from what she would otherwise have been. Instead of a moping, mawkish creature, with—in most instances—a very unhealthy mind, she is a complete human being. She stands on an equality with the man. He can’t despise her as he now does.”
“Very good,” assented Everard, observing Miss Nunn’s satisfied smile. “I like that view very much. But what about the great number of girls who are claimed by domestic duties? Do you abandon them, with a helpless sigh, to be moping and mawkish and unhealthy?”
“In the first place, there needn’t be a great number of unmarried women claimed by such duties. Most of those you are thinking of are not fulfilling a duty at all; they are only pottering about the house, because they have nothing better to do. And when the whole course of female education is altered; when girls are trained as a matter of course to some definite pursuit; then those who really are obliged to remain at home will do their duty there in quite a different spirit. Home work will be their serious business, instead of a disagreeable drudgery, or a way of getting through the time till marriage offers. I would have no girl, however wealthy her parent, grow up without a profession. There should be no such thing as a class of females vulgarized by the necessity of finding daily amusement.”
“Nor of males either, of course,” put in Everard, stroking his beard.
“Nor of males either, cousin Everard.”
“You thoroughly approve all this, Miss Nunn?”
“Oh yes. But I go further. I would have girls taught that marriage is a thing to be avoided rather than hoped for. I would teach them that for the majority of women marriage means disgrace.”
“Ah! Now do let me understand you. Why does it mean disgrace?”
“Because the majority of men are without sense of honour. To be bound to them in wedlock is shame and misery.”
Everard’s eyelids drooped, and he did not speak for a moment.