ginal
sin. For if the first woman had been satisfied with her conditions, if
she had not aspired to be "as gods," and hankered after unlawful
knowledge, Satan would hardly have thought it worth his while to
discuss her rights and wrongs with her. That unhappy controversy has
never ceased; and, with or without reason woman has been perpetually
subject to discontent with her conditions, and, according to her
nature, has been moved by its influence. Some it has made peevish,
some plaintive, some ambitious, some reckless, while a noble majority
have found in its very control that serene composure and cheerfulness
which is granted to those who conquer, rather than to those who
inherit.

But, with all its variations of influence and activity, there has
never been a time in the world's history when female discontent has
assumed so much and demanded so much as at the present day; and both
the satisfied and the dissatisfied woman may well pause to consider
whether the fierce fever of unrest which has possessed so large a
number of the sex is not rather a delirium than a conviction; whether
indeed they are not just as foolishly impatient to get out of their
Eden, as was the woman Eve six thousand years ago.

We may premise, in order to clear the way, that there is a noble
discontent which has a great work to do in the world; a discontent
which is the antidote to conceit and self-satisfaction, and which
urges the worker of every kind continually to realize a higher ideal.
Springing from Regret and Desire, between these two sighs, all
horizons lift; and the very passion of its longing gives to those who
feel this divine discontent the power to overleap whatever separates
them from their hope and their aspiration.

Having acknowledged so much in favor of discontent, we may now
consider some of the most objectionable forms in which it has attacked
certain women of our own generation. In the van of these malcontents
are the women dissatisfied with their home duties. One of the saddest
domestic features of the day is the disrepute into which housekeeping
has fallen; for that is a woman's first natural duty and answers to
the needs of her best nature. It is by no means necessary that she
should be a Cinderella among the ashes, or a Nausicaa washing linen,
or a Penelope forever at her needle, but all women of intelligence now
understand that good cooking is a liberal science, and that there is a
most intimate connection between food