rance, a great stigma on the woman with whom no man has
been willing to share the blessings or endure the ills of life. Now,
there comes to all unmarried women a period when the world, be it right
or wrong, condemns them on the fact of this contempt, this rejection.
If they are ugly, the goodness of their characters ought to have
compensated for their natural imperfections; if, on the contrary, they
are handsome, that fact argues that their misfortune has some serious
cause. It is impossible to say which of the two classes is most
deserving of rejection. If, on the other hand, their celibacy is
deliberate, if it proceeds from a desire for independence, neither men
nor mothers will forgive their disloyalty to womanly devotion, evidenced
in their refusal to feed those passions which render their sex so
affecting. To renounce the pangs of womanhood is to abjure its poetry
and cease to merit the consolations to which mothers have inalienable
rights.

Moreover, the generous sentiments, the exquisite qualities of a woman
will not develop unless by constant exercise. By remaining unmarried,
a creature of the female sex becomes void of meaning; selfish and
cold, she creates repulsion. This implacable judgment of the world is
unfortunately too just to leave old maids in ignorance of its causes.
Such ideas shoot up in their hearts as naturally as the effects of their
saddened lives appear upon their features. Consequently they wither,
because the constant expression of happiness which blooms on the faces
of other women and gives so soft a grace to their movements has never
existed for them. They grow sharp and peevish because all human beings
who miss their vocation are unhappy; they suffer, and suffering gives
birth to the bitterness of ill-will. In fact, before an old maid blames
herself for her isolation she blames others, and there is but one step
between reproach and the desire for revenge.

But more than this, the ill grace and want of charm noticeable in these
women are the necessary result of their lives. Never having felt a
desire to please, elegance and the refinements of good taste are foreign
to them. They see only themselves in themselves. This instinct brings
them, unconsciously, to choose the things that are most convenient to
themselves, at the sacrifice of those which might be more agreeable to
others. Without rendering account to their own minds of the difference
between themselves and other women, they end by