The education and employment of women / by Josephine E. Butler.

  • Butler, Josephine Elizabeth Grey, 1828-1906.
Date:
1868
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The education and employment of women / by Josephine E. Butler. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    practical ways, is a desire which springs from no conceit of cleverness, from no ambition of the prizes of intellectual success, as is sometimes falsely imagined, hut from the conviction that for many women to get knowledge is the only way to get bread, and still more from that instinctive craving for light which in many is stronger than the craving for bread. “ Amongst the wealthier classes,”—-I give the words of one who has much knowledge of that of which she speaks— “ women are better provided for materially, though even here “ they are often left to the mercy of the chances of life, “indulged and petted whilst fortune smiles, left helpless to “ face the storm of adverse circumstances; hut here, more often “ than elsewhere, one meets with those sad, dreary lives, that “ have always seemed to me amongst the worst permitted evils “ of earth,— 1 A wall so blank My shadow I thank For sometimes falling there ’— “ is true of many a life. Even sharp misfortune is sometimes “ a blessing in a life of this sort; something to do, and leave “ to do it. I do not say that any possible education, any “ freedom of career, any high training of faculty, would spare “ all this waste ; some part of it is of that sad mystery of life “ which we cannot explain, and for the unveiling of which we “ can only wait and pray. But I am quite sure that much of “ it is altogether needless, and comes from the shutting up in “ artificial channels of those good gifts of God which were “ meant to flow forth freely and bless the world. If I could “ only tell, as I have felt it in my own life, and in the lives of “ other women whom 1 have loved, how wearily one strains “ the eyes for light, which often comes not at all ! “ God knows it all, and if men do not know it, it is because “ they have been, I will not say they are, cruelly and crimin- “ ally thoughtless. I wish some of those men who talk as if “ they imagined our life a delightful one, could but be women