Let me say a few words more on this point. There are those who, while they pity the two millions and a half, or more, of unmarried women earning their own bread, are tempted to do no more than pity them, from the mistaken notion that after all it is their own fault, or at least the fault of nature. They ought (it is fancied) to have been married: or at least they ought to have been good-looking enough and clever enough to be married. They are the exceptions, and for exceptions we cannot legislate. We must take care of the average article, and let the refuse take care of itself. I have put plainly, it may be somewhat coarsely, a belief which I believe many men hold, though they are too manly to express it. But the belief itself is false. It is false even of the lower classes. Among them, the cleverest, the most prudent, the most thoughtful, are those who, either in domestic service or a few—very few, alas!—other callings, attain comfortable and responsible posts which they do not care to leave for any marriage, especially when that marriage puts the savings of their life at the mercy of the husband—and they see but too many miserable instances of what that implies. The very refinement which they have acquired in domestic service often keeps them from wedlock. ‘I shall never marry,’ said an admirable nurse, the daughter of a common agricultural labourer. ‘After being so many years among gentlefolk, I could not live with a man who was not a scholar, and did not bathe every day.’
And if this be true of the lower class, it is still more true of some, at least, of the classes above them. Many a ‘lady’ who remains unmarried does so, not for want of suitors, but simply from nobleness of mind; because others are dependent on her for support; or because she will not degrade herself by marrying for marrying’s sake. How often does one see all that can make a woman attractive—talent, wit, education, health, beauty,—possessed by one who never will enter holy wedlock. ‘What a loss,’ one says, ‘that such a woman should not have married, if it were but for the sake of the children she might have borne to the State.’ ‘Perhaps,’ answer wise women of the world, ‘she did not see any one whom she could condescend to many.’
And thus it is that a very large proportion of the spinsters of England, so far from being, as silly boys and wicked old men fancy, the refuse of their sex, are the very élite thereof; those who have either sacrificed themselves for their kindred, or have refused to sacrifice themselves to that longing to marry at all risks of which women are so often and so unmanly accused.
Be all this as it may, every man is bound to bear in mind, that over this increasing multitude of ‘spinsters,’ of women who are either self-supporting or desirous of so being, men have, by mere virtue of their sex, absolutely no rights at all. No human being has such a right over them as the husband has (justly or unjustly) over the wife, or the father over the daughter living in his house. They are independent and self-supporting units of the State, owing to it exactly the same allegiance as, and neither more nor less than, men who have attained their majority. They are favoured by no privilege, indulgence, or exceptional legislation from the State, and they ask none. They expect no protection from the State save that protection for life and property which every man, even the most valiant, expects, since the carrying of side-arms has gone out of fashion. They prove themselves daily, whenever they have simple fair play, just as capable as men of not being a burden to the State. They are in fact in exactly the same relation to the State as men. Why are similar relations, similar powers, and similar duties not to carry with them similar rights? To this question the common sense and justice of England will have soon to find an answer. I have sufficient faith in that common sense and justice, when once awakened, to face any question fairly, to anticipate what that answer will be.