If the college woman is not thus quietly reabsorbed, she is even
reproached for her discontent. She is told to be devoted to her family,
inspiring and responsive to her social circle, and to give the rest of
her time to further self-improvement and enjoyment. She expects to do
this, and responds to these claims to the best of her ability, even
heroically sometimes. But where is the larger life of which she has
dreamed so long? That life which surrounds and completes the individual
and family life? She has been taught that it is her duty to share this
life, and her highest privilege to extend it. This divergence between
her self-centred existence and her best convictions becomes constantly
more apparent. But the situation is not even so simple as a conflict
between her affections and her intellectual convictions, although even
that is tumultuous enough, also the emotional nature is divided against
itself. The social claim is a demand upon the emotions as well as upon
the intellect, and in ignoring it she represses not only her convictions
but lowers her springs of vitality. Her life is full of contradictions.
She looks out into the world, longing that some demand be made upon her
powers, for they are too untrained to furnish an initiative. When her
health gives way under this strain, as it often does, her physician
invariably advises a rest. But to be put to bed and fed on milk is not
what she requires. What she needs is simple, health-giving activity,
which, involving the use of all her faculties, shall be a response to
all the claims which she so keenly feels.

It is quite true that the family often resents her first attempts to be
part of a life quite outside their own, because the college woman
frequently makes these first attempts most awkwardly; her faculties have
not been trained in the line of action. She lacks the ability to apply
her knowledge and theories to life itself and to its complicated
situations. This is largely the fault of her training and of the
one-sidedness of educational methods. The colleges have long been full
of the best ethical teaching, insisting that the good of the whole must
ultimately be the measure of effort, and that the individual can only
secure his own rights as he labors to secure those of others. But while
the teaching has included an ever-broadening range of obligation and has
insisted upon the recognition of the claims of human brotherhood, the
training has been singularly indivi