ional curse from labor, and woman has a right to claim her share
in that dignified position.

Yet I cannot agree, on the other hand, with those who maintain that the
true woman should be self-supporting, even in marriage. Woman's part of the
family task--the care of home and children--is just as essential to
building up the family fortunes as the very different toil of the out-door
partner. For young married women to undertake any more direct aid to the
family income is in most cases utterly undesirable, and is asking of
themselves a great deal too much. And this is not because they are to be
encouraged in indolence, but because they already, in a normal condition of
things, have their hands full. As, on this point, I may differ from some of
my readers, let me explain precisely what I mean.

As I write, there are at work, in another part of the house, two
paper-hangers, a man and his wife, each forty-five or fifty years of age.
Their children are grown up, and some of them married: they have a daughter
at home, who is old enough to do the housework, and leave the mother free.
There is no way of organizing the labors of this household better than
this: the married pair toil together during the day, and go home together
to their evening rest. A happier couple I never saw; it is a delight to see
them cheerily at work together, cutting, pasting, hanging: their life seems
like a prolonged industrial picnic; and if I had the ill-luck to own as
many palaces as an English duke I should keep them permanently occupied in
putting fresh papers on the walls.

But the merit of this employment for the woman is that it interferes with
no other duty. Were she a young mother with little children, and obliged by
her paper-hanging to neglect them, or to leave them at a "day-nursery," or
to overwork herself by combining too many cares, then the sight of her
would be very sad. So sacred a thing is motherhood, so paramount and
absorbing the duty of a mother to her child, that in a true state of
society I think she should be utterly free from all other duties,--even, if
possible, from the ordinary cares of housekeeping. If she has spare health
and strength to do these other things as pleasures, very well; but she
should be relieved from them as duties. And as to the need of
self-support, I can hardly conceive of an instance where it can be to the
mother of young children anything but a disaster. As we all know, this
calamity often occurs; I h