The Upbringing of Daughters
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III HOUSEHOLD DUTIES " Anon came the throned Dawn and awakened Nausicaa of the fair robes, who straightway . . . went through the halls to tell her parents, her father dear and her mother. And she found them within, her mother sitting by the hearth with the women, her handmaids, spinning yarn of sea-purple stain. . . . Standing close by her dear father she spake, saying, ' Father, dear, couldst thou not lend me a high waggon with strong wheels, that I may take the goodly raiment to the river to wash, so much as I have lying soiled ? Yea, and it is seemly that thou thyself, when thou art with the princes in council, shouldest have fresh raiment to wear. Also, there are five dear sons of thine in the haUs, two married, but three are lusty bachelors, and these are always eager for new-washen garments
...wherein to go to the dances; for all these things have I taken thought.'" Of late years the trade or profession of housekeeper has been considered somewhat as an inferior profession or even a misdemeanour; standing for the sort of thing with which an intelligent woman would not like to be mixed up. To say that one has spent a happy and profitable morning making jam or repairing the household linen is to admit either that one is a little odd or else that one's intellect and mental capacities are of an inferior type. Well-trained women were found to be quite ready to accept positions as stewards of schools and colleges, a name originally attached to posts held by men, but they resented as an affront to their sex and dignity any request that they should take up precisely similar duties, under the time-honoured name of housekeeper. For my own part, I have always been well content to be a woman, and I have no desire to assume as the titles of men in this or in other matter...
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