To those who base their opposition on the domestic functions of woman, he answers: "If there (in the household) is their kingdom, then there they should be queens; their own faculties assure them there of authority, and their adversaries are forced, by their own principles, to emancipate them as daughters, as wives, as mothers. Or, on the contrary, it is sought to extend their influence, to give them a rôle in the state, _and we believe that they should have one_: well; it is also in this dissimilarity (between the two sexes), that it is fitting to seek it. When two beings are of value to each other, it is almost always because they differ from, not because they resemble each other. Far from dispossessing men, the mission of women therefore would be to do what men leave undone, to aspire to empty places, in short, to represent in the commonwealth the spirit of woman." As is evident, Legouvé demands the civil emancipation of woman in the name of the eternal Right, in the name of the happiness of the family, in the name of the commonwealth; their long standing oppression is an iniquitous fact, and he casts blame on all who have perpetuated it. This blame from a man of heart and justice may perhaps have some weight with those women who are so much accustomed to bondage that they do not blush at it--that they even no longer feel it! In his first book, "The Daughter," which is divided into seven chapters, Legouvé takes the child from her birth; he shows her made inferior in the ancient religions and systems of legislation by Menu, by Moses, at Rome, at Sparta, at Athens, and under the feudal régime; and he asks why, even in our days, the birth of a daughter is received with a sort of disfavor. It is because she will neither continue the name nor the works of her father, says he; it is because her future gives rise to a thousand anxieties. "Life is so rude and so uncertain for a girl! Poor, how many chances of misery! Rich, how many chances of moral suffering! If she is to have only her labor for a maintenance, how shall we give her an occupation that will support her in a state of society in which women scarcely earn wherewith not to die? If she has no dowry, how can she marry in this world in which woman, never representing anything but a passive being, is forced to buy a husband?... From this _début_, and in this child's cradle, we have found and caught a glimpse of all the chains that await women: insufficiency of education for the rich girl; insufficiency of wages for the poor girl; exclusion from the greater part of the professions; subordination in the conjugal abode."