The freedom
which she enjoys she does not trespass upon, for if she did not learn at
school she has acquired since habits of strong self-reliance,
self-support, earnest thinking, deep discriminations, and firmly
believes that the most perfect liberty is that state in which humanity
conforms itself to and obeys strictly, without deviation, those laws
which are best fitted for their mutual self-advancement.
And so your independent working woman of to day comes as near being
ideal in her equable self poise as can be imagined. So why should she
hasten to give this liberty up in exchange for a serfdom, sweet
sometimes, it is true, but which too often becomes galling and
unendurable.
It is not marriage that I decry, for I don't think any really sane
person would do this, but it is this wholesale marrying of girls in
their teens, this rushing into an unknown plane of life to avoid work.
Avoid work! What housewife dares call a moment her own?
Marriages might be made in Heaven, but too often they are consummated
right here on earth, based on a desire to possess the physical
attractions of the woman by the man, pretty much as a child desires a
toy, and an innate love of man, a wild desire not to be ridiculed by the
foolish as an "old maid," and a certain delicate shrinking from the work
of the world--laziness is a good name for it--by the woman.
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