the home,
and often suffered, as well as inflicted, much pain in tearing themselves
loose from the spiritual bonds--especially perhaps in matters of
religion--woven by long tradition to bind them to their parents. It was on
the daughters that the chief stress fell. For the working class, indeed,
there was often the possibility of escape into hard labour, if only that
of marriage. But such escape was not possible, immediately or at all, for
a large number. During the nineteenth century many had been so carefully
enclosed in invisible cages, they had been so well drilled in the
reticences and the duties and the subserviences that their parents
silently demanded of them, that we can never know all the tragedies that
took place. In exceptional cases, indeed, they gave a sign. When they
possessed unusual power of intellect, or unusual power of character and
will, they succeeded in breaking loose from their cages, or at least in
giving expression to themselves. This is seen in the stories of nearly all
the women eminent in life and literature during the nineteenth century,
from the days of Mary Wollstonecraft onwards. The Brontes, almost, yet not
quite, strangled by the fetters placed upon them by their stern and
narrow-minded father, and enabled to attain the full stature of their
genius only by that brief sojourn in Brussels, are representative.
Elizabeth Barrett, chained to a couch of invalidism under the eyes of an
imperiously affectionate father until with Robert Browning's aid she
secretly eloped into the open air of freedom and health, and so attained
complete literary expression, is a typical figure. It is only because we
recognise that she is a typical figure among the women who attained
distinction that we are able to guess at the vast number of mute
inglorious Elizabeth Barretts who were never able to escape by their own
efforts and never found a Browning to aid them to escape.

It is sometimes said that those days are long past and that young women,
in all the countries which we are pleased to called civilised, are now
emancipated, indeed, rather too much emancipated. Critics come forward to
complain of their undue freedom, of their irreverent familiarity to their
parents, of their language, of their habits. But there were critics who
said the very same things, in almost the same words, of the grandmothers
of these girls! These incompetent critics are as ignorant of the social
history of the past as they are of the