“I think it can not be doubted that even the loss of personal chastity does not indicate total corruption, or entail permanent degradation; that after it, and in spite of it, many estimable and womanly qualities may be found existing, not only in our picturesque Nell Gwynnes and Peg Woffingtons, but our poor every-day sinners: the servant obliged to be dismissed without a character and with a baby; the seamstress quitting starvation for elegant infamy; the illiterate village lass, who thinks it so grand to be made a lady of—so much better to be a rich man’s mistress than a working man’s ill-used wife, or, rather, slave.
“Till we allow that no one sin, not even this sin, necessarily corrupts the entire character, we shall scarcely be able to judge it with that fairness which gives hopes of our remedying it, or trying to lessen, in ever so minute a degree, by our individual dealing with any individual case that comes in our way, the enormous aggregate of misery that it entails. This it behooves us to do, even on selfish grounds, for it touches us closer than many of us are aware—ay, in our own hearths and homes; in the sons and brothers that we have to send out to struggle in a world of which we at the fireside know absolutely nothing: if we marry, in the fathers we give to our innocent children, the servants we trust their infancy to, and the influences to which we are obliged to expose them daily and hourly, unless we were to bring them up in a sort of domestic Happy Valley, which their first effort would be to get out of as fast as ever they could. And supposing we are saved from all this; that our position is one peculiarly exempt from evil; that if pollution in any form comes nigh us, we sweep it hastily and noiselessly away from our doors, and think we are right and safe—alas! we forget that a refuse-heap outside her gate may breed a plague even in a queen’s palace.”—A Woman’s Thoughts upon Women (New York ed.), p. 261.
[390] Miss Mulock remarks on female occupations: “Equality of sexes is not in the nature of things. One only ‘right’ we have to assert in common with mankind, and that is as much in our hands as theirs—the right of having something to do.”—A Woman’s Thoughts upon Women (New York ed.), p. 13.
“The Father of all has never put one man or one woman into this world without giving each something to do there.”—Ibid., p. 19.
“This fact remains patent to any person of common sense and experience, that in the present day one half of our women are obliged to take care of themselves, obliged to look solely to themselves for maintenance, position, occupation, amusement, reputation, life.”—Ibid., p. 29.
“Is society to draw up a code of regulations as to what is proper for us to do, and what not?”—Ibid., p. 31.
“The world is slowly discovering that women are capable for far more crafts than was supposed, if only they are properly educated for them; that they are good accountants, shop-keepers, drapers’ assistants, telegraph clerks, watch-makers; and doubtless would be better if the ordinary training which almost every young man has a chance of getting were thought equally indispensable to young women.”—Ibid., p. 76.
[391] Histoire Morale des Femmes. Par M. Ernest Legouvé. Paris, 1849.
[392] Westminster Review (London), July, 1850. American edition, vol. xxx. No. 2.
[393] De la Prostitution dans la Ville de Paris, vol. i. p. 96.