Victorian parent had a short way with any daughter who wished to take any art seriously. We know how Maria Edgworth humbly submitted to have her work blue-pencilled by her affectionate but inferior father, how Harriet Martineau suffered from the endless task of shirt-making, how Jane Austen hid her compositions under fancy work, lest visitors should suspect she was that unsexed thing, an artist. But the whole discussion whether women are mentally inferior to men is indeed impertinent to the practical issue whether or no women should have their lives and work controlled by men. Only by liberty of action and scope for our powers can we develop healthily and harmoniously, and the fact that so much of a woman’s life and experience lies altogether outside what a man can experience should surely make men a little diffident about dictating conditions. The opportunity to develop is not a reward of virtue nor a prize for genius. Women, as well as men, should have the fullest possible opportunities for development, not because they are “equal” to men (a most unfortunate phrase), but because it is good business, socially speaking, to develop all your human as well as your material resources. The developed person will be more useful, more companionable, more reasonable, more happy and more amusing than the undeveloped. And if man be really the intellectual superior of woman, why should he fear her competition? CHAPTER IV PHYSICAL FORCE “He will not read her good, Or wise, but with the passion Self obscures; Through that old devil of the thousand lures, Through that dense hood: Through terror, through distrust; The greed to touch, to view, to have, to live: Through all that makes of him a sensitive Abhorring dust.” GEORGE MEREDITH.