Note 72 — THE ECONOMIC RELATIONS OF THE HOUSEHOLD By MABEL ATKINSON, M.A. (Glasgow)

I cannot refrain at this point from inserting the following quotations from “Shirley” (chapter xxii.). Charlotte Brontë’s genius illumined the situation of many girls even in her time, and of a larger number since. Caroline is speaking. “Old maids, like the houseless and unemployed poor, should not ask for a place and an occupation in the world; the demand disturbs the happy and rich; it disturbs parents. Look at the numerous families of girls in this neighbourhood. The brothers of these girls are every one in business or in professions ... their sisters have no earthly employment but household work and sewing.... Men of England! look at your poor girls, many of them fading around you, dropping off in consumption or decline; or, what is worse, degenerating to sour old maids, envious, backbiting, wretched, because life is a desert to them; or, what is worst of all, reduced to strive, by scarce modest coquetry and debasing artifice, to gain that position and consideration by marriage which to celibacy is denied.”